Believing

by Michael McGuire

  But why? Why not just acknowledge far more often than we do and that all we have in hand is a mixed bag of evidence and possible explanations with indeterminate or wide divides? What could be more sensible? Part of the answer has been suggested: the brain has evolved to believe, and it has inbuilt systems that narrow divides on their own.

  INTERVIEWS AND SOURCES

  Insights about the sources of evidence and belief might be gained simply by asking, “What makes you believe X?” The question is asked daily, everywhere. Yet answers are seldom fully satisfying.

  An interview with a thirty-two-year-old female doctor who was brought up in a family with no religious affiliation illustrates some of the difficulties in identifying sources of belief.

  Author: “You mentioned Karma. Tell me more.”

  Interviewee: “It’s hard to put my finger on it. But in essence it’s this: I believe there is a force in the universe that equalizes what people do.”

  Author: “For example?”

  Interviewee: “If you do something bad or selfish, you will experience some form of retaliation; a payback, so to speak.”

  Author: “You believe that?”

  Interviewee: “Yes.”

  Author: “It’s happened to you?”

  Interviewee: “When I’ve been selfish, I always end up paying a price.”

  Author: “But you must know people who are selfish who don’t experience paybacks?”

  Interviewee: “I do. And at times, I have wondered if Karma applies to everyone. But their time will come. Karma has its own time frame.”

  Author: “Do you recall when you first came to believe in Karma?”

  Interviewee: “Sometime in high school. I noticed that it—I mean retaliation—happened to me and my friends.”

  Author: “Do you recall where the idea of Karma came from?”

  Interviewee: “I’ve often wondered about that. But I don’t. Maybe it was in the air, or maybe someone told me.”

  Author: “Can you recall if you ever read about it?”

  Interviewee: “I don’t think so. But maybe I did. I can’t be sure—I read a lot.”

  Author: “And what about your thoughts? Say you have a mean thought but don’t act on it. What happens then?”

  Interviewee: “It’s the same. I’ll pay a price.”

  Author: “Can you think of anything that might change your mind about Karma?”

  Interviewee: “I’ve tried to change my mind, to get away from it. But it keeps recurring.”

  As in the interview above, answers to questions about the source of beliefs are many and diverse and often lack precision. There are exceptions. When individuals are asked about why they like a close friend, they usually respond with a list of positive attributes and experiences. Or those who work at stressful jobs such as policing dangerous neighborhoods, teaching in troubled classrooms, fighting wars, or controlling air traffic can be very specific about why they believe their work is stressful. The point also applies to individuals who have been indoctrinated. People brought up in highly structured religious communities or cults can usually articulate the sources of their beliefs. Revelations also qualify. Exceptions are not rules, however. Normally, source information lacks precision.

  Other factors also influence interviewing. Self-deception is one: the brain often “tricks” itself into experiencing specific thoughts and feelings by altering or blocking unconscious motives or information.26 Self-deception is not a new topic. Much of psychoanalysis is about why and how it happens and its consequences. Or, as Sartre viewed it, we are living our lives in terms of the tales we make up about ourselves and are endowing our present moment with specious significance.27 Both Freud and Sartre would agree that self-deception is pervasive. They would agree that self-deception is associated with divide reduction—this is the case for example for Jean Baptiste in Camus’s The Fall and Captain Vere in Melville’s Billy Budd, Sailor.28 And they would agree that its pervasiveness raises obvious questions about the accuracy of responses when people are asked to identify the sources of their beliefs.

  LANGUAGE

  Then there is language, with its capacity to create evidence, contribute to beliefs, and alter divides.

  Philosophers of language are responsible for a complex body of ideas and explanations dealing with how language relates to the brain, confers meaning and truth, and serves multiple uses.29 While their ideas are inviting topics for discussion, here is not the place to address them. Two points only are discussed: (1) how verbal statements can create social beliefs and (2) the impressive way such beliefs can narrow divides.30

  Say a new school is given the name of XYZ. The naming does not describe a state of affairs. Rather, it creates a state. Provided we all agree to call the school XYZ, it can become a “social belief.” That is, we come to believe it’s the school’s name and we conduct school-related business accordingly—literally, there is no divide. Social beliefs are created daily, as when we name our pets or the constellations across the sky, or when we describe others as “jerks,” “narcissists,” or “airheads.” It’s a behavior that commences before kindergarten and continues throughout life.

  Social beliefs not only make up much of the world we come to believe exists and attempt to explain, but they also end up in unexpected places with questionable influence. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), published by the American Psychiatric Association and now in its fifth edition, provides an example.31 Many diagnostic designations—that is, names given to clusters of clinical signs and symptoms—found in earlier editions have either disappeared or changed. In addition, new designations have appeared.

  It is unlikely that those individuals who are responsible for revising the DSM are simply creating names for clusters without any ties to evidence. There is extensive evidence that people suffer from aversive symptoms, atypical thoughts, and behave in socially atypical ways, and that subsets of these factors often cluster. There is also good evidence that experienced clinicians don’t view the designations as entities in the real world—that is, as things-in-themselves—but as convenient ways to reference clusters of signs and symptoms even though clusters are never exactly the same for any two individuals with the same designation. For these clinicians, the designations are not beliefs but better described as possibly helpful yet imprecise characterizations for which divides separating designation and evidence vary across individuals with the same designation. But it is also the case that the designations sometimes become social beliefs, at which point divides narrow or disappear. This happens when treatment decisions are made only on the basis of a designation, when pro-illness groups lobby the government or private foundations for research funding to study a designation, or when lawsuits follow because of alleged wrongful treatment of a social belief.

  CLIMATE CHANGE

  Reports, predictions, explanations, and uncertainties about climate change provide a telling example of conflicting beliefs, the fortunes of direct, indirect, and circumstantial evidence, divides, and political influence—yes, all of these!

  The majority of scientists working in the field of climatology believe that the world’s average temperature is increasing32 and that a primary cause is excessive CO2 emissions from the burning of fossil fuels. There is direct evidence of increased levels of CO2 emissions compared to measures in the past. Further, there is direct evidence of changes that have occurred in parallel with elevated CO2, such as melting glaciers,33 rising sea levels,34 a reduction of ocean biodiversity,35 and a variety of other effects.36

  It is often assumed that science and critical thinking resolve differences between what is deemed to be true and false. But this is not necessarily so. For example, there are other—but far fewer—scientists who, while acknowledging that a temperature increase may be occurring, argue that it could be a consequence of normal cyclical changes in the earth’s temperature.37 Significant rises and declines in temperature during past periods have been detected geologically, and the
y have occurred during periods in which today’s humans or their ancestors were few in number and fossil fuels were not burned.38 From a geologist’s perspective, geological evidence is direct evidence. The inference that temperature changes may have causes other than an increase in atmospheric CO2 due to the burning of fossil fuel is consistent with such evidence.39

  Clearly the beliefs and evidence supporting these divergent views are not watertight.40 Also, for many people, there has been an erosion of trust in climate-related research.41 This is in part due to botched environmental forecasts, such as that the polar ice cap would melt by the year 2000.42 Further, the issue has become politicized as in instances in which climatologists have been surveyed as to their beliefs and survey results cited as proof of warming.43 Such surveys are simply popularity polls, not science.

  What does this example illustrate? Many things, of course. One is that, for many people, climate change or global warming has acquired the authority of a social belief with a narrow or nonexistent divide. For others, an explanation-evidence divide regarding the causes of temperature change is present despite serious efforts of scientists to specify the width of the divide. Another is that once scientific issues become politicized, explanations and evidence become blurred.

  One might assume that, over time, an evidence-based understanding of our world would gradually win the day. This appears to be the case within many areas of science and engineering. On average, bridges are safer today than they were fifty years ago, airplanes are less likely to have accidents than they were in 1925, and water can be desalinated more efficiently this year compared to ten years ago. Specific organisms are now known to be the cause of plague, sleeping sickness, malaria, flu, and Chagas’ disease. But when it comes to our ability to convincingly tie explanation to evidence for human relationships, politics, ideologies, and many beliefs—­essentially, things where evidence is difficult to accurately identify, describe, and measure—it is unclear if there is any improvement in our ability.

  In 1992, a group of which I was a member created a foundation for the study and preservation of rock art. Our first act was to explore rock-art paintings in the Kimberley area of northwestern Australia.1

  The Kimberley, as it is called, is blessed with considerably more rain than much of Australia, especially at its center. There are areas of lush vegetation, large bodies of water, and a plentitude of animals such as kangaroos, dingoes, snakes, crocodiles, and bugs. Over much of the region, the runoff from the rain has carved large gorges with overhanging ledges. Beneath these ledges are thousands of unique and highly similar paintings, which are almost always red.

  The paintings are known as “Bradshaws” in honor of the German archeologist who first made them known to the public.2 Chemical analysis dates them at various ages with the most recent at 3400 BCE. At this writing, there is no archeological, historical, or mythological evidence that might identify the artists or their culture. Their origins remain a mystery to this day.

  Currently, the Kimberly is inhabited by First People (Australian Aboriginals) who have their own unique painting style and whose arrival in Australia dates back approximately fifty thousand years.

  Local lore was that the First People disavowed that their ancestors had painted the Bradshaws and that the paintings were created by birds using blood from their beaks. I was skeptical.

  At the end of the trip, I spent a few days in the seashore town of Cairns in eastern Australia, waiting for an airplane to start the journey home. Numerous First People lived nearby. Wandering on the local beach one afternoon, I encountered a teenager and his grandfather.

  “Hello, I’m Michael from the United States.”

  “Hello, they call me B,” the teenager replied. “This is my grandfather; he is also B.”

  This rock art was a personal gift to the author from G. L. Walsh. This image by G. L. Walsh appears in Bradshaws: Ancient Rock Paintings of North-West Australia, by Grahame Walsh and the Brad­shaw Foundation (Carouge-Geneva, Switz.: Edition Limitée, 1994).

  “I have some pictures of paintings. Would your grandfather let me ask him some questions about them?”

  The teenager spoke to his grand­­father in a tongue I didn’t understand. Eventually, he replied, “OK.”

  I showed the boy and his grand­father several pictures of First People paintings. “Are these the kinds of paint­ing that you and your people paint?”

  The boy spoke with his grandfather. Both nodded their heads indicating yes.

  Then I showed them pictures of Bradshaw paintings. “Do you or your people paint these kinds of paintings?”

  The boy spoke with his grandfather. “No,” was the grandfather’s reply.

  “Does your grandfather know who painted them?”

  Again a pause and a discussion in a foreign tongue. “My grandfather says they are painted by birds with blood from their beaks. They are not what he and his people paint.”

  “Is your grandfather certain that birds painted these pictures?” I asked.

  They talked. “Yes, a bird, says my grandfather.”

  “Would you ask your grandfather if he sees people in these pictures [the Bradshaw pictures]?”

  They examined the pictures again. Eventually the boy answered, “No. He calls them paintings of nothing. They are not people.”

  “Are you certain that’s what he said?”

  The boy repeated the question to his grandfather who nodded yes and moved his hand back and forth as if scribbling on a piece of paper. “Yes, he is certain. He says that they are not people.”

  Turning to the boy, I asked, “What about you? What do you see?

  “People.”

  “Would you ask your grandfather if others his age believe as he does?”

  They talked for several moments, then, “Yes.”

  We agreed to meet the next day to talk—I offered to bring lunch. I asked the boy to check with other elders about the Bradshaws. The next day, their responses were the same. Other elders agreed with the grandfather.

  What the grandfather and other elders actually see when looking at Bradshaw paintings remains unclear. To everyone else, the paintings depict humans and reflect the human hand at work. Could what the First People see be colored by their beliefs?

  A cold, hard fact of life is that beliefs are acquired from a variety of sources, such as experience, what others say, books, newspapers, radio, television, and the Internet. Another cold, hard fact is that at times we make them up, often irrespective of evidence. And yet another fact is that at times we make information or its absence fit our beliefs: we see what we believe.

  We know that strongly held beliefs change infrequently. So, as part of the preparation for this book, I asked forty adults to identify and discuss one of their “strongly and deeply held beliefs” that had changed during the previous six months. Only two changes were reported. One person resigned from his church and joined an atheist group. The other changed his lifelong political affiliation from Republican to Democrat. None of the remaining interviewees reported changes in their deeply held political, religious, ideological, nature-of-man, or moral beliefs. Their political affiliations, convictions about God or higher powers, and views about human nature were surprisingly stable. In some instances, they had been rock solid since adolescence.

  Forty adults isn’t a sufficient number for a well-controlled research study. Nonetheless, their responses provide an illustration of the durability of strongly held beliefs.

  The idea is not new. In 1620, Francis Bacon wrote:

  The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion draws all things else to support and agree with it. And though there be a greater number and weight of instances to be found on the other side, yet these it either neglects and despises, or else by some distinction sets aside and rejects, in order that by this great and pernicious predetermination the authority of its former conclusion may remain inviolate.3 [p. 112]

  And why does this happen? The creation of illusory correlation
s—selecting confirming rather than disconfirming evidence—has been mentioned.4 At times, confirming evidence is imagined. Or beliefs may be coveted because they are pleasurable. And so forth. One upshot of studies of belief is that the antiquated notion that knowledge arises directly from evidence has been jettisoned and superseded by a complex paradigm in which the emotional and cognitive components of belief, experience, and information from external sources interact with a bias favoring molding reality to conform to one’s beliefs. In extreme instances, “beliefs tend to sustain themselves even despite the total discrediting of evidence that produced the belief.”5 An inescapable implication from these studies is that once beliefs are established, they acquire their own authority and the brain orchestrates information in ways that extend their longevity.

  The tendency to see what one believes is consistent with another key theme of this book: in addition to our tool kits of familiar procedures and beliefs, the brain also harbors a ready library of beliefs in the form of models or templates that serve to order and explain information. Chapter 14 deals with these topics in detail, yet already a number of points seem clear: some models in the library are mostly innate, some are mostly learned, some are constructed from evidence, and some are imagined. Whether or not people regularly distinguish between these types is unknown, although it seems unlikely.

  Decades ago, I and others conducted experiments that illustrated how beliefs color the way evidence is interpreted and how beliefs that are already present are preserved. The implications are disturbing.

  COMPUTER STUDIES

  Studies conducted over more than four decades ago provide an informative if not amusing example of people bringing deep-rooted beliefs coupled with confidence about their correctness to a novel experimental situation.

  The studies were part of a research project designed to identify factors that lead individuals to change their beliefs. The research subjects who volunteered for the study were undergraduate students from premier American universities. They were paid to engage in conversations via a Teletype machine connected to a remotely located time-shared computer that generated replies to their typed statements. Although these studies took place during the early days of computer development (the late 1960s), it was public knowledge that local universities had designed computers that could interact with individuals at remote locations.