Believing
Page 23
History however has its own timetable largely irrespective of what the brain and culture are up to. The year 1908 saw the dawn of flight, a competitive but nonhostile race to the South Pole, and the invention of the Model T Ford.24 Over a century later, the ramifications of these events have yet to fully play out. Satellites fly around the globe, collecting information for both good and bad reasons. The world is clogged with automobiles and their combustion products. And nations spar over the control of Antarctica.
Or consider the disappearance of a future for much of the earth’s natural environment and animal populations. Despite serious and expensive efforts to preserve endangered species and isolated pockets of progress, the battle is being lost, so much so that a number of scientists have suggested that the Earth’s sixth mass extinction is already underway.25 It is as if, as a species, we are helpless to address these issues successfully. Intransigent beliefs, information overload, and belief fragmentation are three of the reasons why. The time-compact present is a fourth.
There is a vaudeville act that goes something like this:
The stage is dark except for a streetlight that illuminates an area a few feet from its base. A man is searching for something in the light.
A policeman arrives and asks, “What are you looking for?”
“My keys,” the man replies.
The policeman joins in the search for several minutes but fails to find the keys. Frustrated, he turns to the man, points to the lighted area and asks, “Are you sure you lost your keys there?”
“Not there,” replies the man.
“Where then?” asks the policeman.
The man points to the dark.
“Then why are you searching here?” asks the policeman.
“The light’s better,” replies the man.
The original intent of this book was not to develop suggestions dealing with possible ways of changing beliefs and divides. Rather, my aim was to write about the amazing features of the brain that contribute to them. As the book has evolved, it is possible to infer some suggestions. I will come to these below. First, a few words about context.
Our brains aren’t going to change in the foreseeable future. Our strong tendency to believe isn’t going to disappear. The nature of human nature isn’t going to undergo a miraculous transformation overnight. Motivations to succeed, control others, obtain fame, and act in self-interested ways aren’t going to go away. Granting these points, it is easy to imagine why people seek solutions to problems in the light. New laws, regulations, and ideological persuasion are typical means of doing so. Yet these have proven successful on only occasion. The presence of intransigent beliefs and belief fragmentation means that there will be significant resistance, often open opposition, to any suggested solutions, whatever their merit. For example, a June 25, 2012, edition of the Wall Street Journal featured a section titled “Squaring Off on Education” in which it reported on responses of experts to six questions: (1) Should all US students meet a single set of national proficiency standards? (2) Should student test scores be used to evaluate teachers? (3) Should more college financial aid be based on need, not merit? (4) Do too many young people go to college? (5) Should tenure for college professors be abolished? (6) Should colleges consider legacies in the admissions process? Sturdy “yes” and “no” answers were offered for each question.
Education is often proposed as a solution to the perceived ills of society. Thus it is not surprising that recently there has been an increased call for the teaching of science and mathematics at all levels of education.1 These well-intended recommendations are based on the belief and hope that science and math education will transform ways of thinking and, among other things, significantly reduce the prevalence of unfounded and intransigent beliefs and their consequences.2 This hope is closer to an illusion than reality, however. There is a limited number of beliefs that science and math can address. Most of the world runs most of the time on beliefs that science can’t address. They reside in the dark, not in the light that science might shed.
Now to the suggestions.
First, be skeptical about everything you and others believe—this book is no exception. There is nothing in the dark about this suggestion. It has been around since the Enlightenment. At times, skepticism is easy, as in instances when others express beliefs with which one disagrees. But when it comes to our own beliefs, skepticism can be very hard. The brain has assured that.
Second, intensify the teaching of a liberal education—that is, an education that introduces students to different models, teaches strong analytic skills, exposes them to how the brain works, and respects both the past and the uncertainty of the future. Currently this suggestion is in the dark. Why this type of education? Because models, analytic skills, knowledge of the past, and details about how the brain works are the best safeguards we have to offset the effects of the time-compact present, beliefs without supporting evidence, intransigent beliefs, and belief disconfirmation failure.
Third, remember that belief representations in the unperceived brain are composed of networks of information created from a variety of internal and external sources and systems, including triggering, brain reading, imaginings, stories, models, direct and indirect evidence, inferences, and far more. The brain is prepared for belief creation and acceptance. It is biased in favor of divide reduction. It prefers beliefs that are pleasurable and rewarding to those that are unpleasant and aversive. It is composed of systems that organize and process information in ways over which we have minimal influence. Evidence has only limited efficacy in altering beliefs. These many factors assure that for the foreseeable future there will be a near-endless number of beliefs and divides. Intransigent beliefs will contribute prominently to this number.
Some Updates
As scheduled, Mrs. X and I met several months after we had temporarily parted ways. Her belief that she was not the child of her parents had disappeared. Why and how remains a mystery.
Greg returned to the United States, married Francesca, and turned his attention to history.
Howard remained the rogue psychologist.
The vervet monkeys on Saint Kitts continue to thrive.
And finally. When I was a boy, I believed in ghosts. Then for decades I didn’t. Now I wonder: there may be belief representations of ghosts located somewhere in my brain.
CHAPTER 2. WHERE TO START?
1. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 11th ed. (Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster, 2003), s.v. “belief.”
2. R. R. Britt, “Monsters, Ghosts, and Gods: Why We Believe,” LiveScience, August 18, 2008.
3. M. Alvarez, Kinds of Reasons (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010); see also J. O. Beahrs, “Self-Deception and Intrapsychic Structure,” American Psychiatric Association, May 17, 1990.
4. L. B. Steadman et al., “Toward a Testable Definition of Religious Behavior,” in The Biology of Religious Behavior, ed. J. Feierman (Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger, 2009), pp. 20–35.
5. S. Bowles and H. Gintis, A Cooperative Species (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2011).
6. J. Feierman, personal communication with the author.
CHAPTER 3. TYPES AND USES
1. C. MacKay, Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds (1841; repr., Lexington, KY: Maestro Reprints, 2010).
2. A. Mazur, Implausible Beliefs (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2008).
3. L. Tiger, Men in Groups (New York: Random House, 1969); see also M. Alvarez, Kinds of Reasons (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010).
4. J. Denrell, “Indirect Social Influence,” Science 321 (2008): 47–48.
5. R. V. Hine, California’s Utopian Colonies (1953; repr., Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983); see also R. A. Billington, The Far Western Frontier (New York: Harper and Row, 1956); H. N. Smith, Virgin Land (1950; repr., Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971); and W. H. Goetzmann and W. N. Goetzmann, The West of the Imagination (New York: Norton, 1986).
7. T. Jeal, Stanley (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2007).
8. J. Hayman, ed., Sir Richard Burton’s Travels in Arabia and Africa (San Marino, CA: Huntington Library, 2005).
9. M. C. Keller and G. Miller, “Resolving the Paradox of Common, Harmful, Heritable Mental Disorders: Which Evolutionary Genetic Models Work Best?” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 29 (2006): 385–452.
10. H. B. Stowe, Uncle Tom’s Cabin (1852).
11. P. Singer, Animal Liberation (New York: Random House, 1975).
12. J. S. Foer, Eating Animals (London: Penguin, 2010).
13. P. Bloom, “How Do Morals Change?” Nature 464 (2010): 490.
14. L. Tiger and M. McGuire, God’s Brain (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2010).
15. C. Burnes, Deadly Decisions (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2008).
16. W. Northcutt, The Darwin Awards (New York: Dutton, 2000).
17. J. Bohannon, “The Nile Delta’s Sinking Future,” Science 327 (2010): 1444–47.
18. E. Quill, “Can You Hear Me Now?” Science News, April 24, 2010.
19. “List of Philosophies,” Wikipedia, last modified May 27, 2013, http://en.wikipedia .org/wiki/List_of_philosophies (accessed May 29, 2013).
20. “University of Oregon Survey of Beliefs and Opinions,” http://darkwing.uoregon .edu/-prsnlty/surveySBO/SBOlist.htm (accessed May 3, 2010).
21. A. M. Josephy Jr., 500 Nations (New York: Knopf, 1994).
22. “Unusual Trivia Collection,” http://www.corsinct.com/trivia/scary/html (accessed May 3, 2010).
CHAPTER 4. WHAT PSYCHOLOGISTS HAVE FOUND
1. T. Gilovich, How We Know What Isn’t So (New York: Free Press, 1991).
2. M. Shermer, Why People Believe Weird Things (New York: St. Martin’s Griffin, 1997), p. 297.
3. Ibid.
4. T. Kida, Don’t Believe Everything You Think (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2006).
5. C. A. Fine, A Mind of Its Own (New York: Norton, 2006).
6. M. Shermer, The Believing Brain (New York: Times Books, 2011).
7. D. Kahneman, Thinking Fast and Slow (New York: Farrar, 2011).
8. D. Eagleman, Incognito (New York: Pantheon, 2011).
CHAPTER 5. LESSONS FROM HISTORY
1. J. G. Frazer, The New Golden Bough (1890; repr., New York: Criterion Books, 1959); see also J. Barzun, From Dawn to Decadence (New York: HarperCollins, 2000); C. Freeman, The Closing of the Western Mind (New York: Vintage, 2005); F. K. Salter, ed., Welfare, Ethnicity, and Altruism (London: Frank Cass, 2004); T. Kamusella, The Politics of Language and Nationalism in Modern Central Europe (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009); and T. Bulfinch, Bulfinch’s Mythology (1855; repr., New York: HarperCollins, 1991).
2. J. Lennon, Irish Orientalism (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2008).
3. Ibid.
4. Ibid.
5. R. G. Collingwood, The Idea of History (1946; repr., New York: Galaxy, 1956).
6. S. Kennedy, ed., Beckett and Ireland (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010).
7. Kamusella, Politics of Language and Nationalism.
8. M. Laruelle, Russian Eurasianism (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2008).
9. Ibid.; see also J. Weatherford, Genghis Khan (New York: Three Rivers Press, 2004).
10. F. O. Matthiessen, American Renaissance (New York: Oxford University Press, 1941); see also H. N. Smith, Virgin Land (1950; repr., Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1971); H. Zinn, A People’s History of the United States (New York: HarperCollins, 1980); C. N. Degler, Out of Our Past (1959; repr., New York: Harper and Row, 1970); P. A. Smith, A New Age Now Begins (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1976); R. A. Billington, ed., The Reinterpretation of Early American History (San Marino, CA: Huntington Library, 1966); A. de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, translation of the original 1848 edition by J. P. Mayer (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1969); P. Miller, The Life of the Mind in America (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1965); W. L. Warner, American Life (1953; repr., Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962); R. M. Dorson, American Folklore (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1959); and J. Rakove, Revolutionaries (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010).
11. W. J. Johnson, A Dictionary of Hinduism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009).
12. E. Cameron, Enchanted Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010).
13. Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 11th ed. (Springfield, MA: Merriam-Webster, 2003), s.v. “myth.”
14. Ibid., s.v. “belief.”
15. P. G. Maxwell-Stuart, Satan (London: Amberley Publishing, 2009).
16. P. Ricoeur, The Symbolism of Evil (Boston: Beacon Press, 1969); see also C. Sagan, The Demon-Haunted World (New York: Ballantine, 1997); M. Alvarez, Kinds of Reasons (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010); L. Tiger and M. McGuire, God’s Brain (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 2010); P. Ackroyd, The English Ghost (London: Chatto and Windus, 2010); and T. Chesters, Ghost Stories in Late Renaissance France (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011).
17. Ricoeur, Symbolism of Evil.
18. M. B. Norton, In the Devil’s Snare (New York: Knopf, 2002).
19. J. C. Baroja, The World of Witches (1964; repr., London: Phoenix Press, 2001).
20. Ibid.
21. Ricoeur, Symbolism of Evil.
22. J. Feierman, personal communication with the author.
23. K. Knudsen, “Ghana Health Survey,” Medicine & Health/HIV & AIDS, March 24, 2010.
24. S. M. McClure, “Neural Correlates of Behavioral Preference for Culturally Familiar Drinks,” Neuron 44 (2004): 379–87; see also N. Singer, “Making Adds That Whisper to the Brain,” New York Times, November 14, 2010.
25. E. Thompson, Mind in Life (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007).
26. L. Brothers, Friday’s Footprint (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997).
27. D. Wigal, Historic Maritime Maps (London: Sirrocco, 2007).
28. Ibid.
29. D. Carrasco, ed., Mesoamerican Cultures (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001); see also C. C. Mann, Ancient Americans (London: Granta Books, 2005); M. D. R. Martinez et al., “Oldest Writing in the New World,” Science 313 (2006): 1610–14.
30. N. Crane, Mercator (New York: Henry Holt, 2002).
31. D. C. Dennett, Darwin’s Dangerous Idea (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1995).
32. E. O. Wilson, From So Simple a Beginning (New York: Norton, 2006).
33. T. S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1962).
34. J. D. Miller et al., “Public Acceptance of Evolution,” Science 313 (2006): 765.
35. Ibid.
36. E. G. Scott, “Defending the Teaching of Evolution in the Public Schools,” National Center for Science Education (April 2010).
37. J. Mervis, “Tennessee House Bill Opens Door to Challenges to Evolution, Climate Change,” Science 332 (2011): 295; see also Scott, “Defending the Teaching of Evolution.”
38. M. B. Berkman and E. Plutzer, “Defeating Creationism in the Courtroom, but Not in the Classroom,” Science 331 (2011): 404–405.
39. R. Dawkins, The Greatest Show on Earth (London: Bantam, 2009).
40. J. Parker, The Astrologer’s Handbook (Sebastopol, CA: CRCS Publications, 1995); see also W. F. Williams, ed., Encyclopedia of Pseudoscience (New York: Facts on File, 2000); W. Shumaker, The Occult Sciences in the Renaissance (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1972); and S. Reardon, “The Alchemical Revolution,” Science 332 (2011): 914–15.
41. Shumaker, Occult Sciences in the Renaissance.
42. Ibid.; see also Reardon, “Alchemic Revolution.”
43. Reardon, “Alchemic Revolution.”
44. S. Shapin, Never Pure (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010).
45. G. M. Edelman, Neural Darwinism (New York: Basic Books, 1
987).
CHAPTER 6. EVIDENCE, SOURCES, AND INTERPRETATION
1. M. Heidegger, Being and Time (London: SCM Press, 1962). Originally published 1927; see also J. Derrida, Of Sprit: Heidegger and the Question (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989); and M. Foucault, History of Madness (New York: Routledge, 2006).
2. E. S. Reich, “G-whizzes Disagree over Gravity,” Nature 466 (2010): 1030; see also G. Amelino-Camelia, “Gravity’s Weight on Unification,” Nature 468 (2010): 40–41; R. Davis, “Big G Revisited,” Nature 468 (2010): 181–83; and T. Siegfried, “A New View of Gravity,” Science News, September 25, 2010.
3. P. Ball, “Beyond the Bond,” Nature 469 (2011): 26–28; see also R. Ehrenberg, “Chemists Want You to Know That Atomic Weights Aren’t Constant,” Science News, January 29, 2011; and D. Clery, “Which Way to the Island?” Science 333 (2011): 1377–79.
4. T. H. Saey, “Scientists Still Making Entries in Human Genetic Encyclopedia,” Science News, November 6, 2010.
5. K. Popper, Conjectures and Refutations (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963).
6. J. M. Ackerman et al., “Incidental Haptic Sensations Influence Social Judgments and Decisions,” Science 328 (2010): 1712–15; see also A. Lleras, “Body Movements Can Influence Problem Solving,” Medicine & Health/Psychology & Psychiatry, May 12, 2009.
7. S. Pepper, World Hypotheses (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1942).
8. C. Chabris and C. Simons, The Invisible Gorilla (New York: Crown 2010), pp. 7, 151.
9. Ibid.
10. C. Schmeltzer and H. Markovits, “Belief Revision, Self-Construction and Systematic Certainty,” Behavior, Brain & Cognition 17 (2005): 1–9.