Language and Religion: A Journey Into the Human Mind

Language and Religion

Language and Religion offers an innovative theory of religion as a class of cultural representations, dependent on language to unify diverse capacities of the human mind. It argues that religion is widespread because it is implicit in the way the mind processes the world, as it determines what we ought to do, practically and morally, to achieve our goals. Focusing on the world religions, the book relates modern cognitive theories of language and communication to culture and its dissemination. It explains basic features of religion such as the supernatural, the normative, abstract and ideal theological concepts such as ‘God’, and religious feeling. It develops a linguistic theory, based on how utterances are understood, of metaphysical and moral ‘mysteries’ and their key role in thought and action. It shows how such concepts gain strength in the light of their successful use, and when tempered by criticism, can also have genuine authority. w i l l i a m d o w n e s is currently Adjunct Professor of English and Linguistics, Glendon College, York University, Toronto, and Senior Fellow in the School of Language and Communication Studies, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK. He has lectured in linguistics at the London School of Economics and Political Science, University of London, and the University of East Anglia.

Language and Religion A Journey into the Human Mind William Downes York University, Toronto, and the University of East Anglia

cambridge university press Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, Sa˜o Paulo, Delhi, Dubai, Tokyo, Mexico City Cambridge University Press The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York www.cambridge.org Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521792233 # Cambridge University Press 2011 This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2011 Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Downes, William. Language and religion : a journey into the human mind / William Downes. p. cm. ISBN 978-0-521-79223-3 (Hardback) 1. Psycholinguistics. 2. Language and languages–Religious aspects. 3. Language and culture. 4. Thought and thinking. I. Title. P37.D67 2010 4010 .9–dc22 2010028675 ISBN 978-0-521-79223-3 Hardback Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Contents

List of figures Acknowledgements

page vi vii

Introduction

1

1

A cognitive theory of religion

8

2

The supernatural and the uses of the intentional

3

Dissemination and the comprehension of mysteries

109

4

Pragmatics and pragmatism

163

5

Authority

195

6

Conceptual innovation and revelatory language

227

References Index

264 275

53

v

Figures

Action and consciousness (after Libet, B., ‘Conscious subjective experience and unconscious mental functions: a theory of the cerebral processes involved’, in R. Cotterill (ed.) (1990) Models of Brain Function, Cambridge University Press). page 93 Figure 2 The five stages of utterance comprehension. 130 Figure 1

vi

Acknowledgements

I must acknowledge all the help I have received in this project. First of all, I want to thank my wife, Magdalen, who has also been both my editor and a wonderfully supportive first reader, for the hundreds of hours spent listening and arguing about every issue dealt with in the book. Jean Boase-Beier, John Collins and Alan Durant generously read early drafts and were most helpful and encouraging, pointing me to new material, explaining difficult issues and giving me the confidence to proceed. Thanks also to Ming-yu Tseng for introducing me to the literature of Buddhism and whose PhD on koans was the original impetus for this wider study of religion, Clive Matthews and Paul Chilton for their discussions, especially of modularity and metaphor, the Language, Linguistics and Translation Studies and the Philosophy Society research seminars at the University of East Anglia for attentive responses to my papers, and Andrew Winnard, Sarah Green and the very helpful anonymous readers from CUP. Thanks also to the UEA for two study leaves and the Arts and Humanities Research Board (AHRB) for financially supporting the project. Special thanks to Jim Benson for the many efforts he has made on my behalf that made this research possible, to all the staff at Glendon College, York University, who have made me very welcome and participated in my research seminars; to Victoria University in the University of Toronto for the Northrop Frye Fellowship and Massey College for a Senior Residency in 1999. Thanks to Bill Clarke, Snr, for the hours discussing religion and atheism and to Barry and Brenda Ross for inviting us to the pow-wows of the Algonquins of Pikwakanagan which initiated an interest in the revived First Nation spirituality. Dr Chris Gribble of the Writers’ Centre Norwich and my son Matthew generously gave invaluable help with technology. Finally, the amazing number and beauty of the mediaeval churches of Norwich were important to this research. These include St Peter Mancroft,

vii

viii

Acknowledgements

Sir Thomas Brownes’ parish church, and tiny St Julian’s with its cell where Julian of Norwich was enclosed. These places and the remarkable books, Julian’s Showings and Brownes’ Religio Medici, were instrumental in generating my respect for the quality of the minds of our ancestors whose lives were absorbed by their struggle with religious thinking.

Introduction

It is a measure of how central religion is to humanity’s confrontation with reality that attempts to explain it provoke so much controversy. Since the nineteenth century, thinkers have repeatedly tried to explain religion as a natural phenomenon. Since science is our name for how we study nature, these were attempts to naturalize religion employing the science of the time. In his book on the classical theories of religion, James Thrower (1999) categorizes naturalistic theories: religion as human construct, or as primitive error, or as psychological or social construct. The views of Marx and Freud, the classical sociologists Durkheim and Weber and the classical anthropologists Tyler and Malinowski, broadly fit these categories. Since the late 1960s, there has been a revolution in the human sciences. A stance has emerged based on the new cognitive sciences of the mind and brain; an explosive inter-disciplinary approach that tells us as a species new things about who we are. The research paradigm now brings together linguistics, philosophy, psychology, computing, anthropology, archaeology, neuroscience, biology and evolutionary theory. Rightly, this is having an impact on how we can think about cultural forms of life and the social order. Whole new fields have emerged such as consciousness studies and computational psychology. With respect to religion, this has taken diverse forms. Most recently, the new research programme of evolutionary psychology has tried to show how religion, viewed in terms of certain cognitive processes, could have emerged from the evolution of the human mind and brain. This object of study is now sometimes referred to as the mind/brain. We can think of the mind as an abstract characterization of properties of the brain; sometimes presenting itself to consciousness, sometimes not. If a process is available to consciousness, it is mind as personal, phenomenal experience; otherwise the mental process is unconscious, or sub-personal. I shall use the mind/brain compound as a reminder of this meaning. This approach has grown rapidly. The ‘cognitive science of religion’ was reviewed by Justin Barrett (2000), and new research appears almost daily. Three major books by cognitive anthropologists are Pascal Boyer’s (2001) Religion Explained, Scott Atran’s (2002) In Gods We Trust and Barrett’s 1

2

Introduction

Why Would Anyone Believe in God? (2004). A key topic is the evolutionary psychology of religion. There are studies of religion focused on the brain, including new research paradigms within neuroscience by scholars such as Andrew Newberg and Eugene D’Aquili (2001) and Ramachandran et al. (1998a, 1998b). There have been studies of the neural correlates of religious experience; for example, Saver and Rabin (1997). And there are popular books like Dean Hamer’s (2004) The God Gene. All this material is properly assembled as a research area in religious studies and will surely be the seedbed for new theologies within the religious traditions. (A theology makes religious pre-suppositions: a science does not.) From this ferment, a public debate about what religion is and how it has affected the species has emerged with such books as Daniel Dennett’s (2006) Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon and Richard Dawkins’ (2006) The God Delusion. John Lennox’s (2007) God’s Undertaker: Has Science Buried God? is a riposte to Dawkins from within science. There has been a re-opening of the historic debate about science and religion, the scientific study of religion, about religion in our culture and politics. Many had assumed that religion would wither away within modernity. Instead, it remains as incorrigibly present and difficult to explain as ever. This book is intended as a contribution to this inquiry. Our topic is language and religion, but I need to be more precise about just what we are going to investigate and why. Agreeing with Noam Chomsky that linguistics is a branch of cognitive psychology, my approach can be termed “cognitive pragmatics”, where pragmatics refers to the theory of language use. Both “language” and “religion” are general terms covering a multitude of sins. Language includes not only specific historical languages, not only the universal principles of phonology, syntax and the lexicon, not only how these principles arise and are used within the mind/brain, but how language is used to communicate messages and to perform actions within various registers: to pray, to engage with a sermon, to study scripture, to participate in liturgy or discuss theology, and so on. (A register is a variety of language determined by the functions it serves in a situation type.) But underlying all these uses, there is the principle that language is used to make thought manifest, either publicly within communities or privately within consciousness, in inner speech. Religious terms like “God”, “Karma”, “spirit travel”, “prophet”, “Sufism”, etc. make manifest thoughts whose constituents are the concepts which the words expound. Thoughts are representations which have semantic content, functions from representations to states of affairs or worlds – they are about something. Until one has a theory of how this content fits into the structure of the mind/brain, is believed and communicated, then the analysis of religious registers like prayer must be superficial. It is limited to the social functioning of language. It takes for granted just how

Introduction

3

those utterances hook up with the world, communicate contents to other users or are produced by mind/brains. Furthermore, to study religious reasoning and thinking, one has to study language in psychological terms. This is to engage in cognitive pragmatics; to study language and communication as part of cognitive psychology. There are deep questions that can only be considered within this framework. What is it about religious concepts, and hence thoughts, that makes them religious? Hence the key question of this book: what is religion in conceptual terms? How does it emerge from and relate to the structure and functioning of the modern human mind/brain? How are religious thoughts, many of which are unclear and mysterious, actually grasped and used? Why are these representations so widespread within mind/brains throughout history as to be practically universal, but at the same time so various? Finally, we will ask why communities of mind/brains collectively accept religious beliefs, purportedly about mysterious realities, and pose the question whether these semi-understood beliefs could be true in some sense, actually have a rational warrant as a basis for action. Only then would we have a cognitive basis from which to understand religious practices. Although I have posed these questions in terms of ‘thought’, we shall see that our languages are the means by which religious thinking is made manifest and disseminated. Again, to approach this we need a cognitively grounded linguistic pragmatics. For the purposes of this book, I consider pragmatics as that sub-discipline within linguistics that develops theories of how language is used to make manifest and communicate thoughts within communities and in doing so conceptualizes the world individually and collectively. I have adopted and adapted relevance theory, the pragmatic theory of Dan Sperber and Dierdre Wilson as outlined in their ground-breaking book, Relevance: Communication and Cognition (1995). Relevance theory also takes pragmatics to be a part of cognitive psychology and employs the general methodological and theoretical framework of modularity of mind, mental representation and natural language developed by Jerry Fodor (1975, 1983) and Noam Chomsky (1986, 2000). Relevance theory is therefore a form of cognitive pragmatics needed to explore the questions outlined above. This work is at the philosophical end of the explanation of language and its role in the mind/brain, but answerable to the norms of scientific inquiry. The second body of theory I have adopted and adapted is that of the cognitive approach to culture, in particular Dan Sperber’s (1996) epidemiology of representations. The question is how the mental representations that we call “culture” become widespread. Culture emerges through the way certain types of thought spread from mind to mind, individual mind/brains in communication with other mind/brains and so its study is properly a cognitive science. I will introduce the necessary ideas from cognitive psychology and pragmatics gradually as my story needs them.

4

Introduction

As an aside, it is worth noting that I have not employed another prominent approach to mind and language, one that proposes that both are projections of the body, the cognitive linguistics or cognitive stylistics theory developed from the original insights of Mark Johnson and George Lakoff: see Lakoff and Johnson (1980; 1999), Johnson (1987), Lakoff (1987). Although I find these views fruitful in thinking about religious ritual and artefacts and underlying metaphors used throughout religions, I haven’t used this approach in the present project. Instead, this study is conducted within the computational cognitive science/relevance theory paradigm which I find more useful for my analysis of the nature and epistemic status of religious mysteries within human culture. My examples are mainly drawn from the “world religions” – a term commonly used in religious studies. Religion has both conceptual and nonconceptual aspects. But this book is concerned only with religious thought. The examination of non-conceptual aspects of religion, its linguistic practices, its affective states, are the subjects of another inquiry (see Downes, 2000). Naturalistic theories of religion must be reductive. If science is the theorization of nature, and religion is the object of inquiry, the theory must explain how religious thinking and its forms of life emerge through natural processes. Science assumes we are part of nature, and as religious thinking arises in our mind/brains, it is part of nature too. This sort of reduction is neutral in itself. But a crisis arises for the religion viewpoint if the scientific explanation is then taken to imply that religious thought is merely that natural process, offering no insight into reality, including the possible reality of moral obligation. If the term “nature” is construed metaphysically as the totality of being, all there is or could possibly be, and that what is explained by natural science exhausts reality, then aspects of the religious world picture might be eliminatively reduced, depending on one’s philosophy of science. If so, it would simply follow that religious thinkers, to the degree they think that what is real differs from science must be wrong. Eliminative reduction claims that epistemologically, scientific inquiry provides the only reliable foundation for knowledge, and therefore religions must be founded on systematic illusions, which cannot be rationally held under any realistic interpretations. Whether eliminative reduction takes place or not depends on the philosophy of science one adopts and on the theory of meaning it assumes. The most extreme eliminative position is the logical positivism of the Vienna circle. One can see this most clearly in Rudolf Carnap’s (1932/1959: 61–81) ‘The elimination of metaphysics through logical analysis of language’, or A. J. Ayer’s (1936/ 1990) account of religion in terms of emotion. Today, echoing Weber, Marx and Durkheim, we might formulate the attraction of religion in dealing with cognitive distress in the face of death and grief or being of use in the unconscious manipulations of power in exploiting and maintaining social

Introduction

5

order. But the eliminative reduction of its conceptual content is the same. Scientific explanations of religion must then take on an ideological dimension. It can be said that religious thought is generated by a pre-modern lack of sophistication – primitive or unenlightened minds are steeped in ignorance – by psychological phenomena – it is a form of delusion – or generated by the social order itself as ideological mystifications for reasons of political manipulation by pharaohs and popes. But because of the conception of science behind the first move, the debate is one about the nature of reality, really about the metaphysics of science. The inquiry is no longer scientific. It is philosophical and political. The logic of my project is naturalistic and therefore, by definition, reductive, but not eliminatively so. This needs to be understood in the context of the limits of naturalization. In Chapter 2, I employ a picture of the relation of naturalization and philosophy in Western thought presented by the philosopher, Wilfred Sellars (1963). He proposes a series of contemporaneous images of humanity, one emerging out of the other and enfolding it in a dialectic starting at the very first moments of self-conscious human cognition in the origin of modern humans. Arising from a primal original image of humanity, the first is the manifest image, humanity’s making manifest to itself its self-conception. It begins to collectively represent the world and what it is to be human within it. This is higher-order reflection on the lower-level image, which is still ongoing and the very essence of philosophical reflection. Emerging from within and built upon the assumptions of the manifest image with its philosophical elaborations is the scientific image of humanity which is still being formed. This is abundantly clear in the emergence of the new sciences of the mind/brain on whose beginnings Sellars was reflecting. On the one hand, this is a more adequate, truer picture of what humanity is on multiple dimensions: it is an evolved species, individuals are physical systems, the mind/brain itself has evolved, culture ‘runs’ on individual mind/brains and is not determined by innate factors, and so on. A better, more accurate, image of humanity is the project. In the slow development of a truer scientific image of humanity, inquiry demands we take care of its relationship with the inherited manifest image. Science is built on the manifest image and we lead our everyday moral, social and political lives within its terms, so the on-going vision of what humanity is has to be stereoscopic. Accordingly, although I’m not a ‘believer’ in any system of religious ideas, I was very concerned not to develop a theory of religion that eliminatively reduces the whole cultural complex; or proposes that the majority of human beings have lived their mental lives in a way that is too easily dismissed as illusory or pernicious. For example, if mind/brains have understood themselves as objectively bound by the very structure of reality to ‘freely choose’ to co-operate with others, I questioned any stance

6

Introduction

that specified that this was not possible. Nevertheless, it is possible that what language terms “freedom”, although real, isn’t how we consciously conceive it. The two images of humanity need to be held in a subtle dance. This further meant that I had to follow Sellars in the process of philosophical reflection on my attempts to reduce religion. I needed a philosophical position that is both consistent with the new cognitive science as a science and yet doesn’t inappropriately reduce religion in the eliminative sense. Appropriate is the key word. It is certainly necessary to eliminate many supernatural entities that populate thought in the world religions or the conceptual motivations for religious authoritarianism and violence and to understand them solely within the scientific image of humanity. But some of the metaphysical presuppositions behind ‘ordinary’ science within Western culture, may be more contingent and at issue than is usually thought, and get in the way of explaining religion. We need to reflect on the scientific image itself if its explanations imply an inappropriate eliminative reduction of religion within the manifest image of humanity. This stereoscopic requirement leads to the view that different kinds of understanding may reflect different properties of the mind/brain and its possible relationships to reality. Within recent cultural history, the scientific image has a rich complex of factors which when taken together provide its warrant for the species-mind. How these play out within the manifest image, the nonscientific self-conception of humanity with its mysteries, depend also on their relation to forms of life – just consider the problem of ‘scientism’ in economics and management. In most situations the most important representations treated as representing reality are semi-understood, accepted on faith, held as ideals, felt as binding obligations, which have it in common that they either motivate or are essential to action in practical matters. From this perspective, two modern philosophers whose positions most enable my project with respect to cognitive science and religion are Immanuel Kant from the eighteenth century and Charles Saunders Peirce from the nineteenth. A naturalized Kant is relevant to my interpretation of cognitive science; a naturalized Peirce to my interpretation of cognitive pragmatics. Like Peirce, I think that within philosophy a dialogue engaged with the living past with respect to our deepest problems is relevant in the constant play of manifest and scientific images of humanity. This inquiry is atemporal, gaining new insights by adjusting the insights of predecessors both to the gradual revelations of science and paradigm shifts like the cognitive science of culture. They will be introduced at various places in the text. Chapter 1 develops a cognitive theory of religion as a cultural ensemble organized on four main dimensions. Chapter 2 develops one of these dimensions, the supernatural, and shows how it emerges as an automatic possibility given the way the mind is governed by principles of relevance. Chapter 3 uses

Introduction

7

the concept of the epidemiology of representations to explain the dissemination of religious mysteries. Chapter 4 naturalizes philosophical pragmatism by showing that this position is implied by the nature of processing according to the principles of relevance. This reveals why it is possible for it to be rational to believe some religious mysteries but with a critical stance. Chapter 5 relates this notion of critical rationality to authority and discusses the conditions under which authority is legitimate, leading to the examination of whether religion could represent what is ‘real’ in some sense. Chapter 6 analyses the nature of conceptual change and innovation, relating it to social factors in order to reveal the necessity of a critical stance, and concludes with an exploration of the ‘revelatory’, or ‘poetic’, in conceptual innovation within an inexhaustible process which, in spite of the rational warrants for beliefs in both aspects of the stereoscopic vision, requires humanity to live in a state of fundamental uncertainty with respect to its images of itself.

1

A cognitive theory of religion

1.1

Religion as a cultural ensemble A mind/brain of many parts

Consider the contrast between two distinct ways of interacting with the environment. On the one hand, the mind/brain sees the world. It perceives colour, shape and movement, noticing just what is salient. On the other hand, the mind/brain comprehends speech. It grasps from sounds the content of what is uttered and just what the speaker meant in uttering it. Now reflect upon how different these are, how different the input and how differently they are presented to consciousness. The structures of the mind/brain that process language and process vision deal with two different kinds of input and perform two different functions. This isn’t surprising. In any organism, we find the same pattern; a hierarchy of systems performing specialized jobs within larger containing systems right up to the level of how the whole organism is adapted to its environment. This picture of the mind is an abstract characterization of properties of the brain. We hope and assume that these abstract accounts are ultimately reducible into less abstract descriptions of neuro-physiological functioning at the level of biology. But for an abstract explanation to be true as a theory in psychology, descriptions of the physical substrate which expounds it don’t need to be in a one-to-one relation to the objects and processes in the abstract account. Nevertheless, most scientists assume that the system described by psychology is ultimately physical so that the mind and brain are the same phenomenon under different descriptions. As noted above, I will often use the term “mind/brain” to refer to that phenomenon. Psychological systems like language and vision are called modules of mind. They have specialized ways to construe input and represent and manipulate information, resulting in specialized outputs which hand information on to other systems. For example, the language module consists of principles and parameters that at one interface accept articulatory and perceptual input and at the other interface, produce logical forms suitable for 8

1.1 Religion as a cultural ensemble

9

interpretation in terms of concepts and what people mean when they use them. The highly implausible empiricist alternative proposes that the mind/ brain isn’t modular but instead consists of a single enormously versatile learning system that can extract what it needs to know in every domain solely from the environment: one big system suitable for all kind of information, as opposed to many little learning systems richly specialized for different domains. The implausibility of this was demonstrated by Noam Chomsky, who showed that linguistic competence could not be acquired this way. Instead, children bring to the task of language learning a rich innate knowledge which is specialized to grow their linguistic competence when it interacts with appropriate input. Linguists characterize this process abstractly, as knowledge. But Chomsky also interprets it biologically, as the development of an “organ” of the mind/brain; the cognitive capacity specialized to acquire a language. The specific mapping between interfaces is characterized abstractly by what is called “recursive syntax” – a formal system that can generate an infinite number of well-formed structures by successively re-applying a finite set of rules. This mapping system is one rather technical use of the word “language”. However, there are other aspects of language. Not only is there fine motor control specialized for articulation of speech, but speech perception also appears adapted to just those sounds. And not only are syntactic structures automatically and speedily retrieved and conceptually interpreted, but this process is part of the communication of intended messages conveyed either in gestural signs, speech or writing. The term “language” is also used for this entire language complex: consisting of an ensemble of modules and submodules which function together as a system specialized for language processing connected to communication (Downes, 1998: 453). Hauser, Chomsky and Fitch (2002: 1569–1578) refer to this ensemble as ‘language in the broad sense’, as opposed to recursive syntax, or ‘language in the narrow sense’. In terms of neurophysiology – its biological substrate – visual perception is perhaps the best understood modular system. It is also well characterized abstractly as information processing (Johnson-Laird, 1988: 57–106). The inevitability of a biological, evolutionary explanation for mammalian vision is clear. From the structure of the eye, with its specialized focusing lens, its lubricating tears, its arrays of light sensitive retinal cells that transduce environmental information to the primary visual processing area to which these cells project, it is clearly modular and sub-modular in structure. One strikingly counter-intuitive feature of vision is the possibility of two separate, although highly interconnected, systems or modes of seeing with different functions. Briefly, information travels to the primary area in two distinct streams which are referred to two distinct areas of the cortex; the ventral stream to the temporal cortex and the dorsal stream to the parietal cortex.

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A cognitive theory of religion

Each stream has a different function: the ventral-temporal resulting in conscious and therefore slower object recognition – widely accessible for inference and affectivity – and the dorsal-parietal guiding action below the level of consciousness. Counter-intuitively, the mind/brain perceives without seeing anything. (“Phenomenology” is the term for what is presented to consciousness, so with the dorsal stream the mind/brain perceives but there is no phenomenal experience of seeing.) What both examples illustrate is the beautiful complexity of a modular system of systems (Carruthers, 2006: 84–95; Milner and Goodale, 1995). The term “modular” and the hypothesis of the modularity of mind originate with Fodor (1983). There the term is restricted to peripheral systems whose function is to process the information flow that connects the mind/brain to its environment. Fodor-modules are processing systems which achieve their functions in a distinctive way. They are domain specific, specialized to extract information from a particular type of input, such as light of certain wave lengths. Given that input, they are mandatory and fast. They are innate. They have characteristic kinds of failure which reflect their structure, and are informationally encapsulated. For Fodor, a module functions to accept input only of a certain kind, to represent it, and to perform syntactic operations on those representations to yield output. To be encapsulated means that, although a module may have its own data-base memory, it can’t access information from elsewhere in the mind/brain, nor do other systems have access to its internal operations, but only to its output. Fodor contrasts modules with nonmodular un-encapsulated central systems which accept input from various modules and use it to reason in theoretical, practical and analogical ways that integrate information from various sources; a form of informational demodularization. For Fodor, while modules deliver informational output which is semi-formed or shallow, the representations of central processes are more fully formed, concepts and thoughts in the medium of the language of thought. In contrast to Fodor’s bifurcated image of the mind/brain is the hypothesis of massive modularity, sometimes called The New Synthesis (Carruthers, 2006; Pinker, 1997; Sperber, 1994, 1996; Tooby and Cosmides, 1992). In this view, the mind/brain is organized on a modular basis through and through. The hypothesis is that the mind/brain has been richly differentiated by evolution in its intrinsic functional architecture. In Barkow, Cosmides and Tooby (1992) The Adapted Mind is pictured as an aggregate of specialisms, a highly differentiated system of systems. More and more domain-specific mechanisms are added to ‘the elaborately sculpted product of the evolutionary process’ (Cosmides, Tooby and Barkow, 1992: 3). There is ‘a face-recognition module, a spatial relations module, a rigid object mechanics module, a tool-use module, a fear module, a social-exchange module, an emotion-perception

1.1 Religion as a cultural ensemble

11

module, a kin-oriented motivation module’ and so on and so forth (Tooby and Cosmides, 1992: 112–113). Peter Carruthers (2006: 1–62) gives us a powerfully argued case for a massively modular model of mind: for example, the discreteness and dissociability of parts which, working together, function to sustain an overall mechanism in a containing environment, is the basic way that ‘organized complexity’ in biology or engineering works. Furthermore, as each module is ultimately the result of evolution in some way, there will be a Heath Robinson effect; of modules having multiple functions, of sharing and using the same kinds of parts, of being the results of pre-adaptation or accidental by-products of another adaptation, all of which structurally reflect the opportunism of natural selection. Taken together, Carruther’s arguments are convincing, although there is an ongoing debate (see Fodor, 2001). Carruther’s case rests upon a plausible weakening of the idea of the Fodor-module with respect to encapsulation. For each distinct cognitive function to be performed in a computationally plausible way within a massively modular mind/brain, modules must function independently of each other and be largely inaccessible to each other; being unaffected by most of the information being processed by other systems. At the same time, any sub-module must have access to outputs from other systems of just the information it needs. Equally, other sub-modules must also have access to them. In other words, the sub-modules in a system are richly interconnected. For example, Carruthers cites the visual cortex of a macaque, in which each one is connected to about 25 per cent of the others (Carruthers, 2006: 64). When one looks into the nuts and bolts of proposed modules, there is basic agreement about those which I shall employ in this book. Shortly, I will discuss three key systems: Mind-reading, Metarepresentation and Normative systems. The first of these is the ability to interpret the actions of others through the attribution of an inner life. The second is the ability to construct a representation of a representation (a pre-requisite of the first). The third, obvious from the name, is the innate capacity to internalize norms and to judge in terms of them. Firstly, however, I will outline a few other proposed modules. Visual perception and language have been discussed already. There are systems for planning action, for motor control and for monitoring. Somaticsensory monitoring interconnects with affective-motivational systems. Language, intentional communication, the meta-representational capacity and mind-reading are deeply interconnected and form a cluster. Linked to this, we can group a number of inter-related cognitive capacities under the rubric of Social Intelligence. The extraordinary human ability in facerecognition to distinguish individuals, the ability to differentiate individuals with respect to status in a social hierarchy and the capacity for solidarity and strategic and tactical alliances, form another cluster (Jackendoff, 1992,

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A cognitive theory of religion

chapter 4). In sociolinguistics, these appear as the well-known dimensions of power and solidarity. We appear to share these social abilities, among others, with the great apes, which suggests they were developed early in our evolutionary history (DeWaal, 2005). Furthermore, the evolved abilities to deceive and manipulate and to detect deception – or Machiavellian intelligence – are darker aspects of primate social psychological abilities. According to Jackendoff (1992: 72) the task of this system is to develop ‘an integrated picture of self in society’. Human social intelligence is in turn clearly dependent on our ability to mind-read; to interpret other people in terms of the intentions behind their actions. We can group intuitive physics and intuitive biology under the heading of Natural History Intelligence. The physics module comprises the innate prestructuring of the mind with respect to processing the behaviour of physical objects and must include other Kantian a priori concepts such as causality, space and time. All normal human beings intuitively grasp the properties and behaviour of material objects and the way they causally interact in space and time according to regular laws (Pinker, 1997: 316–321; Mithen, 1996: 57–58). This contributes the mental vocabulary of basic concepts to metarepresentational causal-mechanical explanations. In intuitive biology, it is claimed that humans have a specialized innate ability to distinguish animate from inanimate objects with respect to how we automatically perceive the world; for example, in the structure of motion-detection. We incorrigibly conceive of animate objects as having an inner source that governs their self-directed behaviour and as having an inner essence, an essential nature (Pinker, 1997: 321–327). Such cognitions, like those of social intelligence, must also be mappable onto the ability to interpret others. If there are innate modules, how can there be culture? Although modules are innate, what people actually do is not genetically ‘determined’. Human behaviour is not the automatic outcome of predetermined scripts (although some surely is). Instead, what is genetically coded is schematic, an abstract recipe, which makes domain specific learning possible in context. Consider how innate knowledge of language, the same for all human beings, grows into adult knowledge of a historic language like English which is not mutually intelligible with other historic languages. But things are not learned by rote. Knowledge grows and changes in the process of development – has developmental plasticity – as it interacts with the environment; learners change the grammars, and even more so, the accents of languages. And there is also a vast innovative flexibility in the contextual expression of modular knowledge in response to creative stress and functional opportunity; users constantly create new ways of using language.

1.1 Religion as a cultural ensemble

13

The mind/brain has a diverse, intrinsic, architecture in which functionally specialized modules have their own mental operations and specialized database/memories which provide a mode of construal of input. It processes inputs, either from the external environment or from interrogating another module, that it has been adapted to process because that is its biological function. Information that satisfies a module’s input conditions for this reason are its proper domain (Sperber, 1994: 50–53; Sperber and Hirschfeld, 2004: 41). In processing this input, the template of each specialized module will generate concepts with contents required for that biological function. For example, I would suggest that basic modular concepts such as causality, substance, individuated physical objects in space and time, are the incorrigible part of intuitive physics’ representation of the physical world. Dan Sperber introduces the notion of intuitive beliefs, of which basic concepts are constituents. These beliefs have contents which are derivable from ‘perceptually identified phenomena and innately pre-formed, unanalyzed abstract concepts’ (including perception of one’s own inner states and inferences based on them). As he says, ‘Together, they paint a kind of common-sense picture of the world. Their limits are those of common sense: they are fairly superficial, more descriptive than explanatory, and rather rigidly held’ (Sperber, 1996: 89). Of course, the beliefs we are concerned with in religion are different. So how can this be explained? Sperber’s solution is that each module has an actual domain that is vastly wider than its proper domain. It encompasses all the information that might satisfy the module’s input condition, that actually can be processed by that module. These merely mimic naturally evolved input conditions: for example, the way a caricature or a mask mimics the input to the innate face-recognition capacity mentioned above. Thus, there is a mismatch between a module’s proper and actual domains. The actual elaborations of modular potentials are cultural domains. Sperber and Hirschfeld (2004: 43) point out that the modular proclivities to organize data in certain ways lend themselves to ‘massive cultural exploitation’. Thus, the mind/ brain’s many highly evolved modular specialisms are only the scaffolding for building human cultures. This answers the question: if there are innate modules, how can there be culture? The position adopted in this book is that the information that religion organizes within the overall ecology of the mind/ brain in its physical, social and metaphysical environment, forms such a cultural domain. The claim is that religion is not a module, it is cultural. Tooby and Cosmides (1992: 117f.) point out that there are different kinds of cultural representations. Some cultural phenomena are universal, not because they are themselves modular, but because the contexts of human life are such that modular processing is triggered in the same way for all human beings. They call these meta-culture. The potential for the growth of some

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natural language in any normal human mind is universal, because modular. But how language is used in a culture is evoked by the inputs from contingent social and historical contexts and the interactions between various mental capacities and therefore varies culturally. Other features are universal potentials for culture, not necessarily realized: the concepts of arithmetic or the wheel might be examples of such things. However, to the degree that there are social conditions that vary between groups, there is cultural variation triggered by differing local circumstances. Within the constraints of the intrinsic structure of the mind, there is ample room for massive cultural elaboration of different kinds. This is evoked culture, responses to particular social and historical circumstances (Tooby and Cosmides, 1992: 116). To be a cultural representation is to be entertained, not only by one single mind/brain, but many, and not only to persist, but to become wide spread. As Sperber (1996: 57–58) puts it, ‘a representation is cultural only if it is widely disseminated and long-lasting, spread throughout many minds over time’. Cultural universals are limiting cases. But evoked culture is more contextual and contingent, historically spread from mind to mind through communication. In religion, an example of such a contingent cultural thought spread through communication to cultural levels of distribution might be that Jesus Christ was raised from the dead by God. Such concepts and the thought to which they contribute are part of reconstructed culture, adopted culture or, according to Sperber, epidemiological culture (Tooby and Cosmides, 1992: 118: Sperber, 1985; 1994; 1996: 25–27; chapter 4). Religion as ensemble We are analysing religion as a set of mental representations with particular contents that underlie religious behaviour. First of all, religious representations are not the cultural elaborations of any one modular system. Instead, they collectively represent purported information that satisfies the input conditions, the modes of construal, of an ensemble of modules and can be processed by them, yielding outputs. These function together in a more or less integrated way to create inter-connecting structures of representation which become widely distributed within many minds over time and are expounded in religious utterances, actions and artefacts. The four central contents of religious representations and their relation to modular capacities are: The Supernatural. This content purportedly refers to supernatural logical individuals, the supernatural properties they have and the super-mundane realms they inhabit and, as a corollary, all our possible relationships to them. These objects are represented on scales of personhood and abstraction. They may be more or less personal, experiencing selves, like the Judeo-Christian-Islamic God or Jesus, or more or less impersonally abstract like Brahman or the

1.1 Religion as a cultural ensemble

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Platonic Ideas or impersonal ‘powers’ like Destiny or Luck. The content of a concept or thought about a state of affairs involving the supernatural satisfies the input conditions for mind-reading. These supernatural logical individuals behave like disembodied persons or somewhat mind-like abstract realities and are the glue that integrates the various religious contents originating in other modular-based processing. Chapter 2 is devoted to the explanation of this definitive feature of religion. Religious Normativity. The content of the representation can be the object of normative attitudes. They represent not only what is, but what ought to be; for example, a commandment or dietary law. The content satisfies the input condition for the normative systems: the innate norm acquisition device. The output of normative thinking feeds into both practical reasoning and the affective-motivational. This is the basis for normative judgements and for desires and motivations in accordance with religious norms. Rationalized Contents. The content of the representations can be rationalized to a greater or lesser extent when processed by meta-representational and language capacities and become abstractions or generals. They are manifested in reflective theology or philosophy, or express ideals of varying degrees of generality. They may refer to ideas such as justice and truth, or abstractions such as infinity, being and suchness etc., perhaps as properties of supernatural individuals. When interacting with norms, these can become ideals. Abstract or ideal contents are the output of meta-representational and language capacities, in the broad sense of “language”, which put the contents into words and communicate them within religious discourses. Religious Affect and Motivation. The contents represented more or less arouse certain culturally shaped religious affect – awe, humility, reverence, love, moral disgust etc. – and generate various dispositional states of will and commitment; for example, a ‘good will’ or duty with respect to religious norms. These contents satisfy the input conditions for modular affectivemotivational systems and generate specifically religious feelings, desires and motives. Each property is a more or less affair. Thus, fear of ghosts is quite marginally religion-like. A very normative and highly rationalized ‘way’ involving affective-motivational states like Hinayana Buddhism or philosophical existentialism, are religion-like, but they don’t have supernatural entities. The Buddhist Arhant, a perfected one who through meditative discipline has reached a high level of development, is super-normal in some sense, but not a supernatural entity. Heidegger’s ultimate abstraction, ‘Being Itself’, has metaphysical properties which provide a normative context for how we should properly relate to it. These contents of concepts and thoughts, and the associated affects, are inter-connected and integrated to form a cultural ensemble. They define

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A cognitive theory of religion

religious thinking and motivate religious behaviour. These contents find linguistic expression in the multiplicity of genres of language use in situations in which they are communicated and used in religious practices and in religiously motivated everyday actions in the life of the community. Concepts of the supernatural are integrative inter-modular devices which connect the concepts and bring them together; that is the role of the supernatural in the ensemble. As we shall see, the kind of processing that produces these intermodular concepts is not religious, nor unique to religion, although very characteristic of it. But the particular integrative representations of the religion ensemble especially enable the ‘putting together’ of more or less cognitively integrated persons who, being true to themselves, think and behave as co-operating members of an integrated society with religious values motivating its form of life. To the degree that such co-operation is adaptive in evolutionary terms, it is arguable that there may be a disposition to acquire a meta-cultural ensemble with this function, culturally variable with respect to specific content. But any such disposition waits on an understanding of how mind-reading as a form of processing makes the species susceptible to supernatural concepts, the topic of Chapter 2, since the potential actual domains of the other modules are more obvious. However, the adaptive function in question can be achieved in other ways, while religions and religious persons can be critical or revolutionary which doesn’t foster co-operation or uniformity of values in any simple way. So religion as such has a wide functional potential. It is also evaluatively neutral. A religion has the potential to function for good or for ill, and usually for both at the same time. In this respect, it is like most other cultural ensembles: for example, gender and sexuality, ethnicity and nationalism or science and technology. If there is a disposition to acquire anything, it would be metacultural ensembles that foster co-operation in general. But no separate disposition is required for that task. Each module is a learning device. The cultural ensembles that are actually acquired simply follow from whatever can satisfy each module individually, which then become integrated. It is this inter-modular integration that needs explaining; and our species’ susceptibility to the supernatural and other concepts. It is also a fact that religious thoughts characteristically grapple with genuine mysteries. I return to this in Section 1.3 and in later chapters. Religious speculations are the basis from which philosophy and then the special sciences emerged in the historical movement from original to manifest to scientific images of humanity (for Greek ‘philosophical religion’, see Burkert, 1985). How best to be a human person/self in the world poses universal problems, especially acute for mass societies and the individuals within them. As a response to a universal challenge, the whole religion structure, in the most abstract sense, is meta-cultural. But widely

1.1 Religion as a cultural ensemble

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disseminated religious concepts which deal with these mysteries in ways specific to particular traditions are examples of epidemiological culture. The acquisition of cultural quasi-modules In some respects, even though it is cultural, the religion ensemble once acquired does appear to act as a unified mental structure. This is a feature of cultural systems. On the level of the flexible brain, it is probable that a rich set of connectivities are built up as one learns a cultural ensemble like religion. The mind/brain is re-modularized through learning, creating what we might call quasi-modules. The building of cultural quasi-modules is a phenotypical response in evolutionary terms. Such cultural systems become part of the extended phenotype. We can think of it as an adaptation in which our biological mind/brains are designed to grow cultural mind/brains. (One can grow a religious brain, just as one can grow the brain of a pianist or a soccer player.) Mature knowledge of any historical language illustrates this: the final output of the universal schema of the modular language acquisition device and the knowledge required for language use. Furthermore, adult use of ‘language in the wide sense’ – for example, extended to literacy – is like religion, a learned quasi-modular ensemble. Sport is another example. Consider what a soccer player’s brain can do, unconsciously and automatically; how unnatural and culturally specific it is. The specialized motor control of programmes required for ball control, passing, tackling, striking, taking penalties, etc., using only feet and head and therefore repressing reflexes with respect to arms and hands; this highly unusual cultural ensemble is put together from diverse abilities. Modelled in cognitive terms this could be thought of as building, through training, a kind of unified cultural perception–action system. For example, the cultural movement of ‘heading’, although originating in the modules that biologically control any head movement, integrates these with other abilities – for example, controlling arms and hands and knowing the social rules of the game – to produce a unique behavioural ensemble unlike any other, which becomes quite automatic. Inter-modular integration, the literal and the analogical The religion cultural ensemble is inter-modular because it integrates information which originates in more than one specialized function of the mind/ brain. In this respect, a cultural domain is doing the same job within the context of a theory of massive modularity as a central system in Fodor’s picture. We need to suggest how this is accomplished by the mind/brain and

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A cognitive theory of religion

the effect it has on the nature of the concepts and thoughts that represent the integrated information. Fodor (1983) says that central processes have a passion for analogy. One might predict that representations built of basic concepts that originate within a single module are literal. And cultural elaborations, for example, a mask as opposed to a face with respect to the face recognition capacity, are non-literal. Maybe a cultural concept that integrates information from more than one module would have a non-literal flavour because of its use of analogy (Black, 1979, 1982; Chiappe, 2000; Mithen, 1996). Let’s begin with the idea of a literal representation. A first point is epistemological. The mind knows its innate principles and parameters a priori – it can’t be mistaken about them since they are not acquired from the environment. They are pre-requisites to gaining information from it. At the same time, if we formulated them as propositions, such innate principles would also be synthetic; true, if they are true, by virtue of their relationship to the environment. One assumes that they aren’t wrong since they must at least satisfy real states of affairs to the extent required for individuals to survive and reproduce in the human evolutionary niche, or we would be extinct. Thus, it appears that such representations are Kantian; the synthetic a priori naturalized, explained as a phenomenon of nature. Similarly, a modular theory of mind distinguishes the equivalent of mental faculties, just as Kant does with different forms of reasoning and judging. We are referring here to a contrast, literal versus non-literal, not with respect to language but with respect to thoughts. A biologically guaranteed concept when it forms a constituent of a propositional mental representation must to that degree make it appear to be literally true, if it is true. Its contribution to the truth conditions are known independently of experience and faced with appropriate input, apply automatically. Representations that contain the concept ANIMATE, a denizen of intuitive biology and a basic concept, illustrate this. (I will henceforth use the convention when appropriate in which the use of capitals designate concepts, lower case the content of the concept and quotation marks the corresponding words.) If I think, THAT OBJECT IS ANIMATE, if it is true in that context, it is literally true. I perceive that living object, and can’t believe the proposition that the object is inanimate (the way a stone is inanimate) because of the way my mind/brain has been structured by evolution. This is the same for propositions containing basic concepts deriving from any module; for example, thoughts that identify individuals, that represent their movement, their relation within events as cause and effect, the attribution of a unique identity to a recognized face, relative social status to people, beliefs and desires to an agent, or defection from co-operation. That is not to say that the mind/brain can’t make mistakes, or be deceived in application, but that the criterion of judgement is intuitive. So if I represent

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that X MOVED, or THAT TRANSACTION IS NOT FAIR, faced with the appropriate perceptual input, I am thinking something that there is no more direct way to think. It is not an indirect analogical way of representing that information. I might use such basic concepts to intentionally convey another thought in a figurative way as in the utterances, ‘I was moved by the gift’, or ‘This bad weather is unfair’, but I can’t use other thoughts to represent the perception of X’s movement or Y’s unfairness more literally than when I say ‘That moved’ or ‘That’s not fair’. I can only paraphrase them. It is literal thoughts like this that are the most epistemologically reliable and hence intuitive beliefs. In the cases of cultural elaboration where some input mimics the input conditions, if the attribution is not a mistake or a deception, there is an intrinsic non-literalness with respect to truth conditions. The mask or caricature is an analogue of a face, not literally a face, but with a structural correspondence providing input face-like enough to satisfy face recognition input conditions. It also differs from a real face in contextually relevant ways, enough to make the analogue worthwhile. So a proposition containing a cultural concept will have a different kind of truth condition, sensitive to analogy and its significance. Furthermore, in a cultural ensemble concepts and thoughts can be intermodular, with representations integrating information from more than one modular source. One would expect such cultural concepts to contain analogies between the domains of at least two distinct modules. So the truth or falsity of thoughts containing cultural concepts based on analogy will depend on whether one believes the analogy is literally true or false, whether the terms of the analogy obtain in the world or not. If it does, the representation contains a literal analogy and may be intended literally; X is actually like Y in relevant respects. If it doesn’t, this probably implies a metaphorical intention based on the analogy. This can be illustrated by the religious concept SPIRIT TRAVEL, common in shamanism. In this inter-modular concept, an individual entity – to which the psychological attributions of mind-reading are applicable and which normally is believed to be contained within the physical body that provides the perceptual input for mind-reading – separates from that host and travels in space and time analogous to a possible physical object derived from intuitive physics or biology: perhaps it flies like a bird. In religious contexts, the ‘travel’ analogy is meant literally, not metaphorically. So it is question-begging for an analyst to refer to spirit travel as metaphorical or symbolic. The input conditions for this are perceptually satisfied within altered states of consciousness, such as dreams, trances or out-of-body experiences. It is a commonplace that interpretation is relative to metaphysical assumptions. Therefore, anyone who believed that the perceptions of these inner states could not represent reality must construe the representation as either false or intended figuratively. So for propositions

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A cognitive theory of religion

containing such inter-modular cultural concepts, as opposed to one containing only modular-based beliefs, the status of truth-conditions can be epistemologically problematic on metaphysical grounds. This is one kind of what Sperber calls reflective beliefs, those that dominate culture (Sperber, 1997; 1996: 91). They have a special place in the mind. They differ from that of the intuitive beliefs, reflecting their different epistemological status (see Chapter 3 below). To make clear the significance of inter-modular cultural concepts and to explore conceptual integration in a modular mind, I will analyse a key concept in the domain of economics. Consider the diverse modular sources of the information represented in the concept PRICE, associated with the word in the utterance, ‘I think that the price of that house is X dollars’. The concept brings together the basic physical concepts necessary to identify the house to which the price is attributed, the social intelligence required to comprehend its ownership and buying and selling, the mind-reading required to evaluate what an arbitrary buyer in the market might be ‘willing’ to pay, the affective-motivational basic concepts of desire and will, perhaps a normative judgement about whether the price is fair and the meta-representational and number system abilities required to calculate the measurement of value in dollars and attribute just that number as a property of the house. This cultural operation transforms the house into a commodity. Its price, of course, cannot be a perceptual input unless it is made manifest in communication. The concept PRICE represents an analogy between two things: the affectivemotivational attributes, desire and will, attributed to arbitrary participants in a housing market and a numerical value in the measuring medium, dollars, attributed to the house in a particular context. In spite of both this analogical basis and the fact that a price can’t be perceived, the utterance is meant literally and used as the basis for cultural actions. This analysis suggests that inter-modular cultural concepts integrate information from across the modular mind. We shall examine the nature of concepts more fully in Chapter 3 and only make a few remarks here. A concept is a complex structure the function of which is to bring together and organize diverse types of information, both conceptual and linguistic (Sperber and Wilson, 1995: 85f.). Crucially, it connects semantic content with both words, lexical items, and beliefs or assumptions about that content, e.g. price. A concept appears to be an encapsulated function, a module in Carruthers’ weak sense. It is accessed by functions like language (in the narrow sense) for the compositional semantic interpretation of syntax, by mind-reading, communication and practical reason, just where and when information about the concept PRICE is needed in processing. It has access to just those other concepts containing the information that it needs to bring together and organize its domain. Thus, PRICE would connect with the

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information in BUY, SELL, and so on. (Of course, the more the factual information grows and is used, the richer the connectivity.) Given the vast number of concepts, the first-order mutual connectedness between a concept and all the others would be lower than the average 25 per cent cited by Carruthers for sub-modular inter-connectedness. In our picture of the mind/brain, the process of inter-modular integration of conceptual information is represented by kinds of inference between propositions governed by relevance within the appropriate modules and sub-modules, like mindreading, practical reasoning and communication. Our model of mind is symbolic information processing. Language is important for this inter-modular conceptual integration because it makes conscious, it globally broadcasts, cultural concepts that are not constrained to a single module (Carruthers, 2006: 232). The meta-representational function is clearly necessary to represent the two terms of the mappings that make up inter-modular cultural concepts. Meta-representation requires the recursive syntactic structures that language builds. Meta-representation is also required for inter-personal communication, mind-reading, and in reflective thinking or rehearsal in inner speech, in imagination, fantasy and planning. In these contexts, the manipulation of sentences containing lexical items gives the conscious mind access to conceptual information from various modules. This higher-level access gives the mind the flexibility to solve problems and explore opportunities by creating new cultural concepts like SPIRIT TRAVEL or PRICE, that are subsequently used in actions. This species creativity which, through thinking, creates a reality – like a price – out of the merely possible, is modelled by the familiar religious analogy; ‘And God said let there be . . .’. 1.2

Key modular systems

As we saw in the definition of religion as a cultural ensemble, four modular systems are criterial for religion: the mind-reading system; the metarepresentational and language systems; normativity; and affective-motivational systems. I will return to the last in Section 1.3. Mind-reading This is one of the best established modular systems, especially in developmental and clinical terms. Following Carruthers (2006), I will employ the term “mind-reading”, rather than “theory of mind”, because of the assumptions implicit in the latter. (See Baron-Cohen, 1995; Carruthers, 2006; Carruthers and Smith, 1996; Leslie, 1987, 1994; Nichols and Stich, 2003; Premack and Woodruff, 1978. There is a summary in Barrett et al., 2002.) The species has evolved to have the capacity to mind-read, a skill certainly

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A cognitive theory of religion

adaptive with respect to every aspect of human interaction, especially co-operation. We automatically grasp intentional behaviour by assigning mental states to each other. Recent studies have attempted to find the neural correlates of this psychological function. The function seems to be realized by a number of regions of the brain working together in a mind-reading network (Adolphs, 2003; Zimmer, 2003). But this function has long been available in the manifest image, in both folk psychology and philosophy, by explanations of action in terms of the desires, beliefs and practical reason of the agent; hence the term “belief-desire” explanations. The terms “belief” and “desire” refer to intentional states of the agent. That is, they are attitudes to representation which are ‘about’ something in the world; they express a desire for and belief about what is represented. “Intention”, in the everyday sense of the word, is also intentional in this philosophical sense. So when an agent sets out to do something as a means to a goal, “intends it” in ordinary parlance, they are at the same time representing in their minds that desired goal, and the beliefs which practical reason uses to calculate how to bring it about. Within behaviour in general, it is clear that the communication of a message is also intentional in the same way. What speakers mean involves layers of intentionality. One talks of what one “meant” as what one intended to convey. This is true irrespective of whether communication employs an utterance, an action, or an artefact. Explaining people this way, attributing minds to each other, amounts to treating people as intentional entities. This folk psychology is part of our humanity, part of our manifest image. Daniel Dennett (1987; 1996) calls this position “the intentional stance”. We shall return to this in Chapter 2. It is the job of cognitive psychology to provide a scientific theory which accounts for the success of this manifest, folk psychology. Sperber and Wilson’s (1995, 2004) relevance theory, which will be explained in detail in Chapter 2, attempts to cast these insights in the scientific image. It provides a cognitive theory of mind-reading. It explains how people comprehend intentional action in general and intentional communication in particular. Mind-reading has a special sub-module dedicated to communication which follows its own relevance principle and has its own mechanisms (Sperber, 2000a; Sperber and Wilson, 2002: 3–23). One of the most complete theories of mind-reading is that of Nichols and Stich (2003 – also see Carruthers, 2006: 174–186). Although I employ relevance theory below, a few issues discussed by Nichols and Stich and by Carruthers are important to the story. Consisting of a concert of interacting sub-modules, the mind-reading system begins with perceptual input from mechanisms that detect information; the tell-tale signs of intentionality in the perception of other organisms. It is at this point of perception that various of the other specialist cognitive capacities that research has proposed must

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also potentially be involved: animacy detection, the automatic assignment of agency, maybe predator detection and the array of skills that make up social intelligence – face-recognition, status assessment and so on – with the connections to normative systems. To summarize: perceptual input is examined for evidence of a belief that differs from the mind’s own beliefs, and if that is discovered, a ‘possible worlds’ sub-module performs suppositional – hypothetical-conditional – reasoning that assigns a belief to the agent. When this belief is conjoined with an imputed desire, the other’s practical reason would lead them to behave in the observed way, and hence the behaviour is understood. This mind-reading ability must be closely aligned with the mind’s own belief and desire formation and perhaps shares the same practical reasoning sub-module. What is the relation between mind-reading and self-understanding – the psychology module? Carruthers (2006: 176–186) argues persuasively that this module, the way a mind/brain attributes mental states to itself, is through the application of mind-reading to itself. Although not everyone agrees with this view, I will assume with Carruthers that we attribute mental states to ourselves using the same capacity in which we mind-read others. He calls this the mind-reading model of self interpretation. There is also a second ‘semiimmediate and recognitional’ knowledge of one’s own experiences, which I would call a phenomenological capacity. Carruthers (2006: 184) points out that there is little evidence that the mind has a separate faculty for routine self-monitoring of its mental states – for example its practical reasoning – in order to troubleshoot and correct them. This position will be of significance for proposals I will make in Chapter 2, about an inhibition mechanism that comes into play if the mind/brain recognizes a surprising violation in its own action system. The meta-representational module: how is it related to language? The human mind/brain has the ability not only to represent the world, but to represent other representations. As Sperber (2000a: 3) points out, the idea is very old, although the term only gained currency in the 1980s in the cognitivist literature. A meta-representation is a representation of a representation. Within a higher-level representation, the mind has the capacity to represent a lower-level representation; for example, to think (the higher level) that John said that it will rain (the lower level). We can also get, through recursion, a hierarchy of representations, each at a ‘higher order’. I can say that I think that John said that it will rain or I can even think that I said that I think that John said that it will rain. Barrett et al. (2000: 297) in discussing depth of mind-reading, point out that even a task which is culturally familiar, writing a novel about a triangular

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relationship, ‘depends on fifth order intentionality’, while reading it depends on one level less. It is also this ability that makes possible the attribution of propositional attitudes like desire, belief, intention, hope, etc. and modalities like doubt, obligation and permission to self and others; for example, the thought that I must obey the commandment to honour my father and mother. Sperber (2000a: 3) enumerates four main categories of meta-representation, some private, some public: ‘Mental representations of mental representations (e.g., the thought, “John believes that it will rain”), mental representations of public representations (e.g. “John said that it will rain”), public representations of mental representations (e.g. the utterance “John believes that it will rain”) and public representations of public representations (e.g. the utterance, “John said that it will rain”).’ This suggests how meta-representation may fit into the structure of the mind. It seems clear upon reflection that metarepresentational structures are presupposed both by mind-reading in general and communication in particular. Just as in understanding action, when a hearer assigns beliefs to a speaker by virtue of the speaker’s words, they metarepresent the speaker’s thoughts and intentions. Communication is essentially the intentional manipulation of what arises in the mind of the other. It presupposes meta-representation. Sperber (1996: 147) identifies mindreading with meta-representation. He writes that it is highly plausible that ‘the function of the ability to form and process meta-representations is to provide humans with a naı¨ve psychology . . . a “theory of mind” module.’ We are dealing with representations of representations. Thus, if there is a specialized meta-representational (mind-reading) mental function, it must be able to manipulate lower-order representations from various sources. It receives and manipulates information, for example, from utterances, or from perceived behaviours, or from background information in memories/ data-bases etc. It is what makes a human being a higher-order intentional entity, one that doesn’t just behave automatically following a first-order behaviour programme, but instead is capable of reflection and cultural beliefs. The cognitive archaeologist, Steven Mithen (1996: 214–216), proposes that meta-representation itself is the definitive ability of the modern human mind and the means of inter-modular conceptual integration. He suggests that in the pre-modern human hominid mind, representations of modular intelligences were trapped each inside its own module, separated from all the others. But, with the emergence of meta-representation, information from one module could interact with information from another. This new found cognitive fluidity between modules – for example, the invasion of modular social information by information from other modules – accounts for the burst of creativity that marks the beginnings of culture, in particular art and religion, at the start of the Upper Paleolithic, between 60,000 and 30,000 years ago.

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What could be the mechanism by which this integration is accomplished? I think it can be accounted for by Carruther’s ‘mind-reading model of self interpretation’, discussed above, in which the mind reflexively metarepresents information from various modular sources within itself. Using analogical reasoning, this creates innovative inter-modular concepts, which I illustrated with the concept PRICE. But that alone can’t account for culture, or its particular creativity, because to be cultural means to be widely disseminated over many minds (and be conscious, I suspect). We re-consider the nature of creativity in Chapter 6. But to be cultural, thought requires public dissemination. In Mithen’s proposal, inter-modular integration remains trapped inside the individual mind/brain. We need to think more about the role of linguistic communication in cognitive fluidity and conceptual integration. To generate cultural concepts, ‘self-mind-reading’ must be co-ordinated with ‘other-mind-reading’ in a flexible collective response to environmental opportunities, integrating information from different modules, within a network of communicating mind/brains. I will now provide a speculative account of how this works and how it might enable inter-modular cultural concepts. Consider the fact that the principles that build the meta-representational conceptual structures used in mind-reading and the linguistic structures required for making thought public, must both be compositional and recursive. Put simply, thoughts are composed from concepts while sentences are composed from lexical items. In both cases, some device or principle generates a hierarchical structure of constituents in which the respective items, concepts or words, are combined, with the possibility of recursion. This fact is illustrated by Sperber’s typology of meta-representation which includes both concepts and utterances. That both concepts and words can be compositionally assembled in new ways relevant to new contexts in these structures explains human innovation and flexibility. We can ask: are the principles that build these differing recursive structures shared or duplicated between the logical-conceptual structures used for inference, including mind-reading, and the sentence structures that make these public? Both sharing and duplicating strategies are common in evolution. In developmental evolutionary theory, the instructions coded in genes lead to a timed recursive copying of the same form, duplicated with slight adaptive variation each time. This is a basic principle – just consider the spinal chord, rib cage, the structure of bronchia and lung. Conceptual and linguistic meta-representation may be the respective outcomes of an array of different recursive devices adapted for linguistic or logical functions or by a single shared device, producing structures tweaked for different tasks. For the sake of argument, let’s say that logical form, the interface containing the linguistic information necessary for conceptual interpretation with its

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subsequent inferential processing, is the result of structure building principles shared between language and concepts. Since to process inferentially is to reason using structures containing concepts, this interface is where thought gets and receives its public, linguistic face. As the word “interface” suggests, logical forms face two ways: inwards towards the unconscious inferential processes of thinking; and outwards towards the conscious language through which it is expressed and communicated. Because this interface knits language and thought together, logical form is the gateway for inputs and outputs of content from thinking. The thousands of concepts that organize information in the mind/brain’s various data-bases/memories are the constituents of logical forms; they are the contents of thinking. We saw above how cultural concepts, like PRICE and SPIRIT TRAVEL, were the result of creatively bringing together information from various modular sources. This conceptual information is not only accessed for thought, it can be meta-represented in speech – a thought made public in a mind, one’s own and someone else’s through communication. Within a concept’s structure, the thought and language interface is between PRICE, all the information assembled and stored in the concept, and the actual word “price”. Now imagine a very simple switch within the representational structure of a concept connecting these two things; access to the nonlinguistic information and the word “price”. It can be turned on or off. Now here is an amazing thing! When the switch is on, the concept becomes public – the concept is a part of a logical form which the language faculty will put into words. I would argue that when a concept is put into words, it becomes conscious. Conversely, when the switch is off, reasoning with mental representations employing that concept remains unconscious. So when the lexical switch is turned on and concepts become constituents in logical form within the language modular system, they are automatically mapped onto spoken linguistic forms and that makes possible conscious thinking. A concept like PRICE in its public, lexical guise as “price”, makes thinking perceptually available in two ways: in conscious inner speech or in outer communicative dialogue with other minds. Now public, this is broadcast, not only potentially to other minds in society, but to other conceptual modules within the mind. The workspace of consciousness (Baars, 1997) faces two ways; outwards to the social world and inwards to unconscious processing. (We will look at altered states of consciousness in Chapter 6.) Consciousness is the arena where inner and outer meet, the place of current attention, where the loudest, most relevant problems and opportunities which require new concepts and inter-modular integration are worked on using language, providing new input and output to unconscious inferences. The development of reflective cultural belief requires the interpretation of one’s own words as well as those of others, needs both inner and outer dialogue, in the public linguistic space

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of phenomenal consciousness. Here, analogies can be perceived and mental rehearsals of speech as well as action conducted (Carruthers, 2006). As we shall see in Chapter 3, the creation of new concepts is automatic and continuous in comprehension. Arguably, that is true whether it is the selfinterpretation of one’s own inner speech (self-mind-reading) or the thoughts of others (other-mind-reading). (These two have to be co-ordinated enough to ensure the reliable mutuality of intended meanings in context, at least to the extent required to also co-ordinate behaviour.) Conceptual change occurs because speech provides input which under-determines its interpretation. Words are relatively unspecified and vague, so the mind/brain must interpret them in context. So each concept and thought is grasped in subtly innovative ways every time it is expressed in a new context. Arguably, this is also true when the mind interprets its own inner speech; each conscious thought being an interpretative response of one kind or another to the previous thought in context. The inferential work in context between unconscious conceptual structures and conscious speech is where the potential creativity provided by compositionality is mobilized, both within individuals and collectively in communication. As we illustrated with the word “price”, language production and comprehension with their use of meta-representation have made available the intermodular connections needed for massively modular minds to exploit the world in a relatively consistent, integrated way. In fact, this is a better model than that of ‘central processes’ because it predicts that coherent integration will be a tricky business, with constraints, piecemeal, depending on interpretation and producing concepts which are mysteries. Developing stable collective cultural concepts for which we have public words requires co-operation – the co-ordinations of convention – within a communicating group: bringing together the reflections of inner speech and self-mind-reading with social dialogue and other-mind-reading in a creative dialectic in public registers designed for inquiry. In the movement between inner and outer, the information within concepts is constantly revised and new concepts are created through interpreting utterances, both within and between mind/brains. Two other proposed functions of meta-representation fit into this picture. Cosmides and Tooby (2000: 53–117) talk of its function in reflectively managing the information in our mental data-bases and its availability for use in drawing inferences. The constant input of new information which needs to be assessed is very large, much of it cultural and received through communication. They suggest that meta-representation is machinery adapted for doing this. It is used to de-couple many contingent, uncertain representations from semantic memory, from the set of beliefs that are treated as true for immediate use. This can be re-phrased in terms of Sperber’s categories of intuitive and reflective belief. Meta-representation de-couples problematic

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information from the data-base of intuitive beliefs. The information then can be reflectively considered as outlined above, in a register which promotes conceptual innovation within culture. Sperber (2000c: 133–137) suggests yet another adaptation, a logic sub-module, which specializes in the ‘manipulation of abstract meta-representations’. Its purpose would be the evaluation of arguments both as a defence against being manipulated and for exploiting the opportunities made available in communication. Such logical machinery has to be designed in such a way as to deal with information from different modules’ proper domains. Normativity There has been a burst of creative ideas in various disciplines proposing that human minds have an evolved set of cognitive capacities that internalize attitudes of permission or obligation towards contents by virtue of which they become norms. Expressed in language, this is the attitude of deontic possibility and necessity, of “may” and “must” respectively. Carruthers (2006: 203–204) points out that there is an intrinsic motivation to conform to norms, not just or only instrumental motives. This is phenomenally experienced as a ‘to be doneness’. The capacity to acquire norms and exercise normative judgement is a human universal; manifesting itself in everything from the social meaning of customs – even ways of speaking – to politeness, to moral and legal rules. There are three aspects relevant to religion: first, various sub-modules of the normative system; secondly, the adaptive underpinnings of the system; and thirdly, its relationship to the concept of morality and moral law. I will postpone this last until we discuss religious normativity in Section 1.3. Sripada and Stich (2006) have developed a framework for the psychology of norms. Their proposed normative system involves a specialized mechanism for norm acquisition which can receive perceptual cues from which it can both recognize behaviour which conforms to norms and infer normative rules. Thus the norm module has a specialized ‘mode of construal’ of input: for example, linguistic norms governing standard language versus dialect/accent and conscious notions of correctness. Norms involve recognition of what the group stipulates and enforces. It presupposes variability for the scope of the norm, for if there is no alternative way of behaving, there could be no norms. (This will become especially significant when we consider the concept of moral law.) In Sripada and Stich’s model, there is also a data-base of these acquired norms and a specialized rule-related reasoning capacity, connected to action. Of particular significance is the connection to the affectivemotivational system, normative motivations to comply and punish defectors. As Carruthers (2006: 208) points out, since a norm can both be expressed

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as a belief in a deontically modalized declarative and generates the desire to conform to it, ‘the norms module straddles the belief/desire divide’ (his italics). The universality of individual norm acquisition and enforcement within human groups is strong evidence for its evolutionary basis. The adaptive function would be that of enabling co-operation within groups through internalization of what the group expects within its particular culture, how to discover it, and the disposition to both enact and enforce it. So we need to look at that aspect of evolutionary biology that studies co-operation (see Dawkins, 1976: 202–233; Dennett, 2004: esp. chapter 7; Ridley, 1997; Sober and Wilson, 1998; DeWaal, 1997). Co-operation is an evolutionary advantage for a social animal because it creates a collectively adaptive context in which each individual’s genes are more likely to survive. It is in our individual biological interest to co-operate, indeed to be altruistic on occasion. Of course, this picture is not strictly a moral one, since the motivation for doing the right thing with respect to co-operation or altruism is ultimately self-interested. Dennett calls this kind of motivation “benselfishness”. But, as we shall see later, this can provide input to other interpretations of the logic of moral obligation within religion. The first and most obvious explanation of altruism and co-operation is kin altruism; the notion that when we behave in the interests of our genetic relatives we are in fact disseminating our own genes (Hamilton, 1964). This is widespread among organisms. It requires an assessment of genetic relatedness between individuals. And, of course, to the degree that religion constitutes an in-group identity among people who are not genetically related – by creating faux-kin – it taps into kin altruism as an instinctive motivation for normativity within the in-group. A second more interesting explanation of adaptive altruism and co-operation involves explaining how it could evolve. The fundamental problem is that of defection in co-operation; sometimes called the issue of “the freeloader”. Reliable compliance with norms is the form that co-operation is expected to take within a human group. Prima facie if an organism can successfully cheat – make that self-interested choice – while still benefiting from cooperation – it is more likely to pass on its genes. A tendency to cheat would thus tend to evolve, and one would get a gradually increasing population of non-co-operative freeloaders who would regularly violate norms. These would live off co-operators until the latter became rare; then they in turn would decline, until the co-operators recovered again. For co-operation to evolve there must be some way that this cycle is prevented from happening. Much of the literature attempts to develop accounts of how this happens. Most of this work is highly technical, using game-theoretic models to test various evolutionary scenarios. It isn’t necessary to go into too much detail

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here. Trivers (1971) showed that reciprocal altruism could only evolve if individuals interact repeatedly over time. They develop a memory of the reliability of each other. Hence, using ‘iterated’ prisoner’s dilemma games – where co-operation based on trust yields the best outcome for both prisoners – Axelrod (1984) and Axelrod and Hamilton (1981) showed that the optimal evolutionary stable strategy was forgiving tit-for-tat. Briefly, you begin by co-operating, then simply do in your next turn whatever the other player did previously. If they co-operate, you co-operate; if they defect, you defect. But only once in the subsequent turn. If they then, after the retaliation, start to co-operate again, you forgive them, and renew your own co-operation. Thus, a species could evolve innate tendencies such that between individuals there would be a desire for co-operation, an instinct for retaliation (punishment of defectors) and a means to prevent defection turning into an iterative feud, destructive for both. In this way the normative system could evolve. All this clearly depends on a mechanism for cheater-detection, a defence against potential Machiavellis. Tooby and Cosmides and others have searched for such a capacity. We saw Sperber’s meta-representational ‘logical submodule’ evaluating arguments as a defence against manipulation. Another outcome is the urge to be well thought of, to be identified as a co-operator, within one’s social network. This accounts for why such networks are powerful norm enforcement mechanisms, and why among their norms are pure signals of common identity, such as accents and religions. Dennett (2004: 214, citing Frank, 1988: 90) points out that actually being good is the best strategy for demonstrating reliability, and gaining a reputation for co-operation with respect to norms. In this context, the evolutionary psychology of religion tends to explain religion both as a threat of supernatural defection-detection and divine punishment (Boyer, 2001), as a cultural mechanism for self manipulation – to generate the requisite good behaviour by resisting temptation (Dennett, 2004) and as a costly display to others which conclusively demonstrates that one is a reliable co-operator in the required sense (Atran, 2002). It also provides social mechanisms, not only for retribution, but for reconciliation – the forgiving part of the tit-for-tat co-operative strategy. But remember, we are not explaining religion just in functional terms – it can have many functions beneficent or otherwise – any more than we would explain language solely in terms of its function as a sign of group identity. That said, we will argue in Chapter 2 for another way in which religion may figure in behaviour according to norms. The idea of the transcendent The species-mind has a rich and articulated a priori modular-based knowledge on which is based its capacity to process information. This is thus a necessary element of any experience. It creates the possibility that there may

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be information about realities beyond these capacities which the species-mind therefore cannot process. This is the idea that there are realities which transcend possible experiences. Nevertheless, religion informs us also that the modular species-mind naturally forms concepts and thoughts and draws inferences about purportedly transcendent realities, motivated by attempts to resolve the inconsistencies and mysteries that arise from modular-based experience and its forms of life. So the transcendental is a crucial idea for any investigation of religion, for without it one can’t conceptually entertain the realities that religion claims to represent and religion is eliminatively reduced. The idea of something that transcends, implicit in the rationalist interpretation of cognition we are using, is methodologically required for a neutral scientific investigation that takes religion seriously. Whether the inquirer believes there is any such thing is irrelevant. The family of terms, “transcend”, “transcendent”, “transcendental”, etc. (from Latin, “climb over or beyond”) have been used in many different ways in different contexts, some loose and some more precise. They have possible interpretations in Kant’s philosophy. Pre-Kant, the term was often used more or less synonymously with “metaphysics”, and is popularly used today to loosely refer to God, divinities, absolute reality, and so on. Metaphysical concepts are foci for philosophical problems and hence tools for reflection; for example, on the distinction between what can be perceived and what can be penetrated by thought. This distinction in Plato has great religious significance from the very beginning. What is sensibly experienced is but the shadowy appearances of what is real, of the ‘world of forms’, partially accessible only through the intellect. The ultimate ground of reality is the ‘form of forms’, the ‘idea of the good’. In Kant, the transcendent is that which cannot be an object of experience, because it doesn’t satisfy the categorical conditions constitutive of any possible experience. One can read Sperber as making a roughly similar distinction between intuitive and reflective beliefs mentioned earlier (Sperber, 1996: 85–97; 1997). Intuitive beliefs are a class of representations determined by their direct inclusion in a data-base, which the organism treats as unproblematically available for processing. They are epistemically reliable. These are constructed from biologically based concepts, perceptions and inferences drawn from them. ‘Intuitive beliefs owe their rationality to essentially innate, hence universal perceptual and inferential mechanisms . . .’ In Kantian terms, these have a basis in possible experience constituted by a priori categories. Reflective beliefs are more diverse and include a major class of relevant mysteries. These can never be fully interpreted. They never become clear enough to be settled by reason and experience in the form of the intuitive data-base and be directly represented in it. Religious beliefs are Sperber’s example of this type. In Kantian terms, ideas of pure reason are generated by

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reason’s compulsion to represent what can’t be known, what is transcendent. Even though such realities can’t be represented, as Peter Berger suggests, perhaps within experience itself there are ‘signals of transcendence’ that point beyond nature (Berger, 1971: 70). In Wittgenstein, the ultimate basis of a language game also escapes representation, cannot be said, but only shown through what people do (Wittgenstein, 1979: On Certainty, } 618). And there is what is made manifest by aesthetic ideas in Kant. By this term he means, ‘that representation of the imagination that occasions much thinking without it being possible for any determinate thought, i.e. concept, to be adequate to it, and consequently no language fully attains or can make intelligible’ and which symbolizes the objects of the ideas of pure reason (Kant, 1793/2000: 192). In Chapter 4, I shall introduce another term – “rational-aesthetic concept” – for a type of cultural concept related to these Kantian ideas.

1.3

The four features of the religion ensemble

This part relates the modular systems to religion as a cultural ensemble. I will examine the four main inter-twined dimensions that characterize religious thinking: the supernatural, religious normativity, rationalization and the affective-motivational. For example, the general statement ‘God wants me to forgive all those that trespass against me’ and the desire to do this, is an inter-modular cultural elaboration exhibiting the four features.

The supernatural and the personal The supernatural The hypothesis is that representations of the supernatural are cultural developments of the mind-reading system. The supernatural can be more or less personal and more or less abstract and, when abstract, we refer to it as “speculative metaphysics”. The hypothesis will be fully worked out in Chapter 2 but here we set the stage. The “supernatural” is actually hard to define. Its content is not ‘natural’ by virtue of the elevating prefix. The Oxford English Dictionary says, ‘manifesting some agency above the forces of nature’. It is thus by definition a supervening violation of whatever nature refers to in common sense, in cultural history or in contemporary science. This last takes nature to be the object of its theories, usually interpreted by a system of laws, formulable in mathematics, that predict our perceptions of sensible input and which can be interpreted by causal and other analogy-based models of what is going on. The term “nature” actually equivocates between the perceptible input and the laws that explain it. This picture of nature exhausts reality for mainstream secular thought. Whereas science is often counter-intuitive, it is still

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naturalistic, while the supernatural violates nature, that which can be predicted and explained according to the laws of nature in the above sense. Another strategy is definition by clear cases. Such clear cases of supernatural entities are the God of the related monotheisms – Jewish, Christian or Islamic – the gods of the various polytheisms, other spiritual entities, good, malign or both, and human spirits; for example, our own immortal souls or the spirits of the ancestors. Once these supernatural individuals are postulated, it follows that there are supernatural places where they dwell and supernatural forces they exert or powers they make manifest. These are believed to interact with our world, to be relevant to the natural world in many ways. So being supernatural does not mean that the entity or its activities can’t be perceived or embodied or have causal efficacy. The supernatural–nature divide is not impermeable or the boundary clear in folk religion. Supernaturalism is a kind of naı¨ve dualism, a folk Platonism, which divides being, all that is, in a binary way. It posits two interacting modes of being in its fundamental ontology. On the one side is the actuality of everyday life; on the other side, metaphorically ‘above’ this, surpassing it, is the reality of the supernatural world. There is a network of related terms which draw similar binary distinctions but which come from different philosophical or religious contexts. Besides “the supernatural” there are, at least, “the spiritual”, “the transcendent” or “transcendental”, “the super-sensible”, “the metaphysical”, “the ideal” or “the abstract”. Each of these postulate entities or principles metaphorically ‘above’ nature and to which we can accord different kinds of reality and seriousness according to context. Thus, an abstract entity, such as a mind or a mathematical object, is one that is by definition non-physical and yet is realized within and is a part of nature as defined above. However, if one granted such abstractions an independent reality, a distinct mode of being or kind of substance – for example, as within Platonism or Cartesian dualism – then one admits a kind of thinking logically compatible with supernaturalism. This would be true if such entities or principles couldn’t be reduced to emergent properties of the physical world without loss. But that involves many other difficult philosophical problems, mysteries perhaps forever intractable. Supernaturalism is a cultural universal. At the very beginning of anthropological studies of religion, Tyler (1871) makes ‘animism’ its key criteria. This is the regular use of mind-reading throughout nature and everyday life. Of course, such perceptions are still with us, segregated now in the realm of art and the symbolic or metaphorical. A feature of Romanticism, for example in Wordsworth’s poetry, is its use of ‘animating imagery’. The difference between religion and art is a matter of propositional attitude and how representations are interpreted and used (more on this in Chapter 6). The view that animism is humanity’s primordial stance, as self-consciousness emerged, has been widely held, if we consider anthropomorphism a kind of

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animism. For example, in Sellars’ contrast between the manifest and scientific images of humanity, the manifest image is ‘the framework in terms of which man encountered himself’ as the species emerged out of ‘pre-conceptual patterns of behaviour to conceptual thinking’ (Sellars, 1963: 6). He goes on to envisage this perennial philosophy as ‘the Platonic tradition cluster . . . simply the manifest image endorsed as real’ of which all Western philosophy is a critical refinement. Within the manifest image, Sellars also distinguishes ‘an original image’, human self-conception in its very first phase, before it developed a critical stance towards itself. He writes that, ‘the primary objects of the manifest system are persons. Perhaps the best way to make the point is to refer back to the construct which we called the “original image”. . . and characterize it as a framework in which all the “objects” are persons . . . the refinement of the “original” image into the manifest image is the gradual “de-personalization” of objects other than persons’ (Sellars, 1963: 10–11). He views this pervasiveness of the personal, not as the transfer of features of personhood onto (scientifically) inappropriate objects, but rather that categorically, any object, for example, a tree, was a ‘way of being a person’ (just as being a child is a way of being a person). Similarly, the pre-philosophical idea of a spirit was as a ghostly person – something analogous to flesh and blood persons – who somehow inhabits and animates us as biological and physical entities and makes us what we are. It is a ‘development within the framework of persons’. This makes mind-reading the pre-eminent categorizing module within the conscious manifest image, mapping onto input from the other modular representations. This account of animism is compatible with Mithen’s notion of the emergence of a cognitive fluidity in which personalization floods into the other intuitive domains. Explanations of the supernatural within cognitive anthropology circulate around the idea that it is generated by susceptibilities within the modular structure of the evolved mind/brain, especially with respect to ways in which supernatural concepts are generated by perceptual input aspects of the mindreading systems. (For example, Atran, 2002; Atran and Norenzayan, 2004; Barrett, 2004; Boyer, 1993, 1994, 2001; Guthrie, 1993, 2001; Lawson, 2001 and many more.) It is impossible here to more than mention some important ideas adjacent to our account of the supernatural in Chapter 2. Justin Barrett (2000) proposes that the susceptibility which produces the promiscuous attribution of agency in nature is a predator detection capacity. Anyone who has walked in the wilderness will know how attuned perception is to any sudden flash of movement, any crack of sound and so forth. A good evolutionary account could be given for a bias to over-interpretation with respect to the detection of agency in a selecting environment where humans were prey, as well as predators, a hyperactive agent detection device. But this

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only gets us as far as a perceptual susceptibility, and would imply largely negative desires in our relationship with supernatural entities. Scott Atran’s (2002) theory of the supernatural focuses heavily on the evolutionary psychology of agency. He marshals convincing evidence that the attribution of agency is the default strategy, a deep psychological bias, in accounting for complex and poorly understood situations, a position he shares with Guthrie and Lawson. In a chapter entitled ‘The evolutionary origins of the supernatural’, he proposes that within the intuitive domain of modular folk-psychology are sensitive perceptual triggers for detecting agency. Agency is an ‘innate releasing mechanism’, designed by evolution ‘to deal rapidly and economically with stimulus situations involving people and animals as predators, protectors and prey’ (Atran, 2002: 78). This readily lends itself to the supernatural interpretation of what is uncertain. Souls and spirits, on the other hand, gain their epidemiological currency through being counter-intuitive, violating ‘innate and modularized expectations about object movements (folkmechanics), essential kinds (folkbiology), and the intentional nature of agents (folkpsychology)’. To such entities, contents of a religious nature can be attached: ‘Within this framework of systematically violated innate expectations, any beliefs so structured will be inherently attentionarresting, memorable, and everywhere culturally transmissible’ (Atran, 2002: 79). This view of the mind’s susceptibility to the supernatural, and hence its dissemination to cultural levels, is based on Sperber’s (1994, 1996) theory of the epidemiology of representations (see below). Concepts that are counterintuitive, in Sperber’s technical sense, ‘that violate head-on module based expectations (e.g. beliefs in supernatural beings capable of action at a distance, ubiquity, metamorphosis, etc.) . . . gain a salience and relevance that contribute to their cultural robustness’ (Sperber, 1994: 55). The general thrust of Pascal Boyer’s (2001) ideas are similar. In accounting for supernatural entities, Boyer draws on the research of Keil (1979). He proposes that there is a very small set of ‘basic ontological categories’, universal mini-theories each of which also activate their own set of default inference systems. For example, the basic ontological category, ANIMAL, activates our intuitive physics, our intuitive biology and intuitive goaldetection (the dog was trying to catch the cat). These are inferences about agency, but short of the complexity of those in intuitive psychology, i.e. mind-reading. If these are added, then we activate the basic ontological category of PERSON. Other basic categories are TOOL (artefacts), PLANTS and NATURAL OBJECTS, such as rivers, mountains and so on. Notice that these categories themselves don’t have a modular basis, but are already inter-modular concepts combining intuitively given properties and inference mechanisms derived from various modules. As to where these basic categories come from, Boyer (1994: 401), citing Keil, seems to suggest that

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they are formed in the process of early development; ‘even young children make surprisingly fine grained ontological distinctions between, for instance, living things and artefacts’. Furthermore, he claims that it is best to view such early templates for ontological kinds, not as innate, but as melded together from more primitive, perhaps neuro-physiological functions – like animacy detection – to become an acquired skill – as ‘a set of switch settings activating or inactivating this or that inference system’ (Boyer, 2001: 113). Thus, when recognizing something as ANIMAL, the child would already have many expectations, know a great deal about it and how to predict its behaviour. (That is what is meant by an inference system.) Applying this to religion, however, Boyer must treat his ontological categories as a (developmental) universal, though not innate, with a learning theory like that of Karmiloff-Smith (1992). There are two aspects of Boyer’s theory of the supernatural. First, a supernatural template arises whenever an ontological category is specified; for example, the PERSON category, but tagged with a violation of expectations. Here, some aspect of its intuitive physics is violated. However, all the other usual background information we have about persons also becomes accessible. Thus a ghost is a PERSON who breaches intuitive physics; for example, who can move through walls. But, because the other aspects of the category remain undisturbed, we can make a lot of factual assumptions about the ghostly person as a person and easily use the concept in context. The second aspect is Sperber’s epidemiological theory, cited above. The surprising violation makes the religious concept relevant enough to mind and context to spread to cultural levels of distribution. The number of these culturally widespread supernatural templates is constrained. This is because there are probably only five ontological categories and only certain violations preserve expectations in the required way. Boyer writes, Persons can be represented as having counter-intuitive physical properties (e.g. ghosts or gods), counterintuitive biology (many gods who neither grow nor die) or counterintuitive psychological properties (unblocked perception or prescience). Animals too can have all these properties. Tools and other artefacts can be represented as having biological properties (some statues bleed) or psychological ones (they hear what you say). Browsing through volumes of mythology, fantastic tales, anecdotes, cartoons, religious writings and science fiction, you will get an extraordinary variety of different concepts, but you will find also that the number of templates is very limited and in fact contained in the short list given above. (Boyer, 2001: 78–79)

This is not dissimilar to feature theories of metaphor, which consist of the violation, within the tenor, of the feature makeup of the vehicle. Consider ‘The statue wept.’ To weep (the tenor) is a property of a person, while the statue (the vehicle) is an inanimate object. The violation of the semantic

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features of the statue generates a feature transfer or pragmatic construal from the features of weeping, in particular, the fact that persons weep as a result of psychological states, hence the statue gains psychological personhood to that degree. Weeping is not a literal feature or property of a statue, either denotatively or connotatively. There is a literal frame (the statue) and a metaphorical focus (the tears and what they mean). So Boyer is making the standard claim that religious language is metaphorical, or at least figurative. A theory that involves a literal vehicle and its metaphorical violation is open to the suspicion that the literal frame is set up merely to account for the metaphorical violation, and is otherwise unmotivated. In the Keil/Boyer case, we have to accept that the five basic ontological categories are not an artefact of the theory. After all, they are not simple categories. They have inner complexity. Nor do they arise from any one established module and are therefore not basic concepts which contribute for that reason to intuitive beliefs in Sperber’s sense of the term. Nor are they identifiable with any one neuro-physiological feature of mind-reading such as agency detection. The theory reduces to tautology. ‘Super-nature’ is simply a violation of what the mind/brain has evolved to consider ontologically basic in ‘nature’. Instead, it is a deeper by-product of mind-reading and not just the violation of expectations about personhood that makes the mind susceptible to the supernatural (see Chapter 2). But now consider the human person as a cultural category, the model for the supernatural person with which it interacts. Persons, selves and their bodies There is a large multi-disciplinary literature on personhood and many different approaches: from social psychology, Mead (1934), from philosophy, Strawson (1959), A. Rorty (1976), Harre´ (1983), Parfit (1984), Glover (1988) and recent cognitive work in consciousness theory, Baars (1988, 1997). Theories are united in treating persons as mental and intentional. Therefore, we can find persons in the domain of the mind-reading system and its relation to other modular systems. The issue also arises of how this set of personal properties relates to bodies and the phenomenal self. I will argue that personhood is an inter-modular cultural concept. I will use the concept SELF to refer to how being a person is ‘self-consciously’ experienced from the inside. If the phenomenology of self – the user of the first person “I” – has a separate innate basis as part of the mind-reading system, then personhood is its cultural elaboration. The consciousness of self may provide a unity within the “I” yet struggle to conceptually integrate its history and its culturally developed, personal characteristics; its honesty, its status, its gender etc. We will consider selfhood in a later chapter and here concentrate on the person.

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Human personhood involves a complex of features such as the attribution to an object of phenomenal self-consciousness, of agency, of rationality, of moral accountability, being gendered, possessing sexuality, having social and legal identity, presenting a social face, etc. There is the pragmatic person, the bearer of the intentionality required for communication. Persons are basically social, inter-personal; as Goffman (1955) says of face, ‘lodged in mutual appraisal’. But, like religion itself, this cultural concept is universal (this is why Boyer called it ontological). As I earlier proposed for religion, personhood is an example of a metacultural mechanism. Tooby and Cosmides (1992: 121) write that these are ‘Mechanisms functionally organized to use cross-cultural regularities in the social and non-social environment to give rise to panhuman mental contents and organization.’ Variations are tolerated. We can have kinds of persons: on the most general level, the child, the elder. Persons also illustrate evoked culture, where there are local circumstances leading to variation. For example, some cultures will recognize homosexuality in one way, and some in another. Types of persons then become concepts of epidemiological culture; e.g. the celebrity, the shaman, the witch, the convict etc. Within the cultural concept of personhood are its modular basic concepts and these are at least fourfold. First, there is mind-reading, with the cognitive capacities it presupposes. In cases where rational agency is disabled, for example, in dementias such as Alzheimer’s disease, there are problems with the other aspects of personhood. Second, personhood also entails normativity and with it, accountability and moral responsibility. Thirdly is the range of modules underlying the ability to act and communicate in various modalities; the pragmatic person. Finally, because we process ourselves as experiencing our own bodies, we reflectively represent our personhood as normally connected to a particular body. Selves report bodily self-images. So they understand themselves as biological entities like other animate beings. As such they are also physical objects subject to causal-mechanical forces. But a human body isn’t necessarily a person. A corpse only remains a person in specialized legal ways. Conversely, personhood isn’t necessarily attributable only to a human body, if its mind and other attributes are believed to be manifest in some other way. It is easy to remove the ‘slash’ in mind/brain. My point is that the cognition of ourselves in bodily, spatial terms is different from the cognition of ourselves in intentional terms. Certainly, there are radically different grounds for knowledge of minds and bodies; they are epistemologically distinct. Conceptually, we can imagine both a zombie, an animated body which is mindless, and its converse, a spirit, a disembodied mind. And being embodied is experienced in a different way than having thoughts is experienced. There is a natural intuitive cleavage between these two modes of cognitions.

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There are pathologies in which a mind doesn’t recognize some part of its body as its own, dismorphia. Or, it still feels it has some body part, a phantom limb although it has been amputated. Conversely, brain lesions can lead to lack of awareness of a body part. Or, there is a condition, Capgras Syndrome, in which a patient thinks that the physical body of someone very familiar has been taken over by an imposter. Out-of-body experiences are well documented. This indirect evidence supports the view that on the neurophysiological level, the parts of the brain that deal with the location of the body in space are localized in a different area than those that deal with the higher functions associated with mind-reading. Jackendoff (1992: 77) makes a similar point. He writes, ‘a person will be represented twice in conceptual structure: in the spatial domain, which includes the physical appearance of the body – but also in the social domain, which encodes personhood’. He then speculates that ‘this formal conceptual dualism – the conceptualization of persons in both spatial and social domains – is the cognitive source for the widespread philosophical belief in mind-body dualism’. More recently, in the cognitive research of Jesse Bering (2006, 2008) and others, empirical evidence for an innate ‘mind-body disconnect’ in the structure of the mind/brain has rapidly increased. There is evidence that while they accurately recognize biological death, children simultaneously accept the concept of the psychological-continuity of the dead. Moreover, Bering proposes that it is a basic feature of self-consciousness that it cannot conceptualize ‘its own psychological inexistence’. The fact that it is possible to depersonalize people, treating them merely as bodies, is also quite natural because of the manifest contingency of the connection. Mind-reading ‘metaphorically’ places the self and its person ‘inside’ the body as the default case. Different cultures have placed the person in different locales – heart, stomach, brain – within the body. Folk Platonism and the reality of the abstract The folk Platonism of the manifest image of humanity rests on the tacit position that key aspects of personhood such as mind-reading do not logically necessitate material embodiment. Instead, the connection is contingent, in spite of the fact that it appears that embodiment is empirically necessary. Within the manifest image, philosophy of mind has debated this issue without a definitive, once for all, result, because it depends on metaphysical presuppositions – although it hardly needs saying that materialistic monism is paradigmatic in philosophy today. I define the abstract as what is non-physical. The problem of the reality of the abstract as a mode of being arises naturally from the modular structure of the mind/brain and how its deliverances to consciousness are represented. Mind-reading and the body are phenomenologically and linguistically

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distinct. So the mind/brain has to reconcile the intentional language of mindreading with that of biological and causal-mechanical explanation. When mind-reading is thought about reflectively, we necessarily utilize basic concepts which refer to abstract objects. The states of affairs to which these concepts refer – selves with goals, beliefs, desires, intentions – are not obviously natural kinds of physical object. Yet mind-reading automatically imputes them to fields of stimuli. And we do believe in ourselves and others – that, abstract or not, we really do exist and really are in these intentional states. The resultant commitment of the mind/brain to the reality of the abstract is common sense Platonism. The content of mind-reading, normativity, language and other modules presupposes basic metaphysical concepts when they are reflected upon; for example, the idea of truth, the moral law or universal justice. Abstract metaphysical concepts like truth or law don’t seem to belong to or originate in the individual human thinker. They appear to be discoveries, or revelations. If these abstractions are to be treated as somehow real, then it must be with respect to a reality which is also mind-like, but not our minds, something like Plato’s ideas or the mind of God. Thus, the folk Platonism which is the default position of the manifest image is another meta-cultural phenomenon which arises when rationalization of the very process of representation occurs; that is, at the birth of cultural reflection in theology and philosophy. It follows that if there are such things as supernatural minds, it becomes logically possible to communicate with them, to discover their thoughts and enter into inter-personal relationships with all the normative and affectivemotivational possibilities; trust, awe, fear, love, etc. Religious genres like prayer and sacrifice provide contexts where supernatural entities achieve relevance for human persons in this way. This means that the supernatural potentially affords the person and its self a moral and emotional relationship with reality otherwise unavailable and at the same time conceptually integrates inter-modular information in a personal way: there will be a relationship with reality within an unfolding narrative. Consider the Torah covenant with God or the correct relationship to reality embodied in Krishna in the Bhagavad-Gita. The objective reality of the abstract, the purely symbolic, can be defended, and this implies the objective reality of only contingently embodied, thus potentially disembodied, intentionality. Popper and Eccles (1977) propose not only the reality of ‘World 1’, the cosmos of matter and energy, physical objects and events, but the independent reality of states of consciousness, ‘World 2’, and also ‘World 3’, which consists of the objective knowledge attained and represented as a result of cultural activities. Furthermore, in struggling to interpret physics in terms of what kind of ‘ultimate reality’ it implies, some scientists are led to a new Platonism which defends the reality

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of the abstract, especially with respect to mathematics. This is illustrated by the reflections on the theories of the physicist John Wheeler in Barrow, Davies and Harper (2004). For example, Ellis (2004) proposes a hierarchy of worlds, in which ‘World 4’ is the ‘Platonic World of Abstract Realities’ to account for the ‘unreasonable power of mathematics’, while Tegmark (2004) speaks of a Platonic paradigm in which Level IV consists of parallel universes and other mathematical structures. Historically, the relation of the abstract to the domain of the causal-mechanical is conceived of as either realization (the real but abstract mode of being of mathematical laws make themselves manifest in matter) or emergence (abstract modes of being emerge from complex organizations of matter according to mathematical laws which merely describe that process). Arguments pro- or con- don’t compel consensus. If a metaphysical question is an intractable mystery, the community may have reached a boundary to its cognitive capacities. That doesn’t automatically mean that the concepts involved are nonsense: only that we can’t fully grasp them, yet they may still be central to a form of life. Furthermore, a metaphysical presupposition may never become relevant enough in a context for us to even try to make it fully explicit, and so even discover that it is a mystery. Since the object of a mind-reading system is abstract and only contingently connected to human bodies in logical terms, mind-reading will automatically apply in any context where to process a field of stimuli as caused by another mind is the most relevant way to take it. Such a response can be a pattern like the regular movement of the stars or the sudden appearance of regular flooding on a river. The imputed mind which intends to cause the pattern can be represented as either embodied in the stimuli itself, as in animism, or mysteriously behind or above it (see Chapter 2). Stewart Guthrie (1993), in the aptly named Faces in the Clouds, raises this question of why we would be biased towards perceiving in an anthropomorphic way. His answer focuses on visual perceptual stimuli. Roughly, he says that this happens because personal agents are more complex than other things we know. We seek to maximize relevance – wringing the most information we can from the environment for the least effort – and hence ‘see things’ as representing persons (faces in the clouds) because our intuitive understanding of persons is more complex than our understanding of other domains. We get more information, more bang for our buck, for our effort. A problem with this explanation is that a belief-desire explanation of action is itself no richer than a causal-mechanical or functional comprehension of a stimuli. In fact, the converse is possibly true. Dennett points out that the intentional stance is an interpretative short cut. The behaviour of a computer is much more easily comprehensible using mind-reading, than by giving a causal-mechanical account of its activities. There may be bias to

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anthropomorphism based on mind-reading because it has evolved as a short cut, requiring less effort, rather than because of the complexity of personal agents. But we can also interpret Guthrie’s position in this way: it is not the complexity of the person as such that is the source of the perceptual bias, but how the cultural category of the person integrates mind-reading to the other modules; how it plugs into normativity, to communication and the affectivemotivational. To be a person is complex only because it is the meta-cultural concept for uneasy inter-modular integration, par excellence. It is a cultural ensemble, like religion. We can ask: is it the same ensemble? Religious normativity As Max Weber puts it, the basic question of religion is ‘how to be and what to do’. The response is religion’s systematic normativity. In religion, there is the cultural development of the inter-modular concept of the human person that enters into the correct relationship with reality, the way it ought to be and what it ought to do. Because of the supernatural, mind-like nature of reality, persons ought to have the analogy of an inter-personal relationship with reality: mind-to-mind, even when the supernatural is a metaphysical abstraction. The human mind can even become united with, or itself become, that mind-like reality. Moreover, religion can introduce the whole gamut of the inter-personal into this relationship; to manipulate, placate, love, seek, comprehend, etc. In particular, the inter-personal generates obligations and it is these obligations that make a religion a binding form of life – how the relationship to reality ought ideally to be. This makes religion the means of salvation and affects the relevance of every representation involved in the relationship. Such normativity is overt in the various religions. In aboriginal thought it is implicit in the idea of ‘the traditional way of life’ which is binding. The Latin term, religio is thought to be derived from the verb religare, “to bind back”, from the root, lig-, “bind” or “tie”. The Sanskrit term yoga, which can be translated as “discipline”, is derived from the root, yuj, meaning “to yoke”. Buddhism is termed a disciplined “way” (the Noble Eightfold Way) or “path” (the Middle Path) formulated as dharma, both the teaching of the Buddha and the moral law. At the heart of Judaism is the law prescribed by God’s covenant with his people and constituting an obligatory way of relating to him, that of “righteousness”. In Christianity, the binding call is to have faith (interpreted as trust) in the redeeming activity of Christ through which is granted the perfect relation to the supernatural, salvation in ‘the kingdom of God’. Almost all religions, e.g. Stoicism and Confucianism, likewise prescribe a normative form of life in various social and historical contexts according to their metaphysical principles. Of course, there are many forms

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of normativity that are not religious: secular law itself or social customs, fashion, politeness and etiquette, the prescriptions of standardization in language, in fact any socially enforced rule or standard. On the level of mental representations, normativity will be in terms of the attitudes under which a representation is embedded. In language, the whole range of devices for signalling this will be engaged. One of these is modality. This may be either epistemic, concerned with the degree of commitment to the truth of the proposition expressed, or deontic, expressing the relationship of obligation or permission. A rule, law or commandment is a prototypical instance of the deontic; for example, the Shema, ‘Hear, O Israel: The LORD our God is one Lord and you shall love the LORD your God with all your heart, and with all your soul and with all your might.’ Or the modality is implicitly or explicitly embedded in a dialogue or a narration. In the Bhagavad-Gita, the supernatural entity Krishna, directs Arjuna – who is overwhelmed by the conflict between his duty to fight and the thought of the death of his kinsmen – to perform the discipline of action. ‘Why this cowardice in time of crisis, Arjuna? The coward is ignoble, shameful, foreign to the ways of heaven [epistemic]. Don’t yield to impotence!. . . Banish this weakness from your heart. Rise to the fight, Arjuna!’ [deontic] (Bhagavad-Gita, 2004, trans. B. S. Miller, II. The Second Teaching: 2, 3). The Gita confronts Arjuna’s moral crisis in a very complex philosophically rationalized way, relating his inner dilemma to metaphysical principles expressed in the person of Krishna, whose teaching binds Arjuna to how to be and what to do. Disinterested sacrificial action in war is Arjuna’s duty. It enacts his devotion to Krishna, who is God, the ground of reality. Krishna is a case of metaphysical principles manifested in the person of a supernatural entity, to which Arjuna must relate in the correct way. Religious normativity varies as to the degree of conscious epistemic commitment it requires. It can have diverse emphases in the balance of epistemic and deontic. For example, the degree of epistemic commitment – faith – may vary. The tradition may be very open and value rich and diverse interpretation and argument, as in Judaism or Buddhism, or emphasize dogma, as in Christianity. In the former case, we have modal possibility, and in the latter modal necessity. Both cases make presuppositions about the language of authoritative utterances and how it works. Accordingly, most early reflections on language and textual interpretation are in a religious or philosophical context. On the other hand, religious rules may be adhered to on a purely deontic basis, without reflection, simply on the authority of tradition. It is thus a misunderstanding to think of religion as simply coextensive with explanatory belief – as bad science. To do so is an epistemic obsession.

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The limiting case, such as the ideal of Islam as submission to Allah, would be where the religion of a society monopolizes its normativity; religion becomes simply another word for the collective ‘way of life’. The other pole would be societies with multiple norms, and normative conflict, such as a European society in the modern period. In these cases religious normativity, especially if there is more than one religion, is segregated within a pluralistic setting, which demands liberalism, hence toleration. In pluralistic cases – where we have religions in contact with each other or with secular norms – religion can be one among many vehicles for social conflict, as in Northern Ireland, Iraq, Lebanon, Israel-Palestine, etc. Conversely, religions in contact often generate epistemic and deontic syncretism depending on normative clarity and permeability. However, in both cases, religions form normative communities. They define peoples. Just as with respect to language, dialect and accent, social networks (solidarity) and social hierarchy (power) also serve in various configurations as norm enforcement mechanisms for religious varieties which are symbolic of social identity (Downes, 1998: 117–120, 196–203, 227–232). As cultural ensembles that constitute a way of life, religions and languages behave in a similar way socially, often symbolize each other, and share normative communities. I return to the question of religion and identity in Chapter 6. We can also distinguish between moral and other religious norms, although in practice normative communities don’t distinguish these clearly (Carruthers, 2006: 204). I propose that specifically moral norms are reflective developments of innate moral concepts, worked out and made available to reason as conscious linguistic commandments and moral laws. Therefore, moral principles are inter-modular and cultural. They are the result of the interaction of reason with innate norms (Greene, 2005; Nicols, 2005). We will develop this further in the next section and in Chapter 2. Examples would be the formalization of tit-for-tat in the religious/legal notion of retributive justice, or forgiving tit-for-tat in the cultural concept MERCY. Non-moral norms are as various as circumcision, dress codes, dietary rules, fasting and penitential practices, liturgical cycles, etc. The normative community also forms a fauxkin network: examples are the Islamic ummah, the Buddhist sangha or the Christian church. Non-moral cultural norms not only symbolize religious concepts, they are also acts of identity within the network and signals of co-operation and conformity to the group’s norms, the costly displays of commitment that Atran discusses (Atran, 2002: chapter 5). Following nonmoral religious norms are signs that the individual won’t defect. They are subject to the social network’s natural norm enforcement mechanisms. These non-moral normative displays promote co-operation so may suggest the gene-culture co-evolution of a disposition to acquire them, operating through group selection (Carruthers, 2006: 205).

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Rationalization I have borrowed this term from Max Weber who proposed that rationalization is a feature of religion (Weber, 1918/1991: 51; 343–359). This is the case in all the world religions and famously so in India. Here the ancient mythical, ritual and magical representations of the Vedic collections undergo abstract development first by the sages of the later Upanishads, later in the richness of the Indian philosophical tradition. As noted earlier, Burkert (1985: 305–337) traces a historical rationalization of religion within Greek antiquity. And it is possible to construe the Church Fathers, Scholasticism, etc. within Christianity, and Philo of Alexandria and Moses Maimonides within Judaism, as inheritors of that tradition. By rationalization, I mean that the self-and-other mind-reading system adopts a reflective, consciously articulated stance which meta-represents the conceptual contents of religious representations. This produces ever more inclusive abstract or idealized concepts which explain and integrate lower-level concepts. It is very relevant to do so since such abstract concepts may integrate conceptual material from various modules and create many new potential contexts for further reflection. The proper domain of meta-representation is other representations, beginning with first-level modular outputs, so its actual domain must be when meta-representation is applied to other meta-representations to build the vast tower of cultural contexts. Many primitive generalizations are analogies within narratives. For example, both The Rig Veda and the Old Testament represent the state before structure emerges as watery chaos. ‘Was there water, bottomlessly deep?. . . Darkness was hidden by darkness in the beginning; with no distinguishing sign, all this was water’ (Rig Veda 10.129: 1–3, Creation Hymn) and ‘darkness was upon the face of the deep; and the Spirit (wind/breath) of God was moving over the face of the waters’ (Gen.1: 2). Reflection ascends inferentially. Lower-level individuals or categories are deduced from higher-level speculative hypotheses that serve to integrate them into a higher unity. The higher-level concepts are more abstract or ideal, but developed using an underlying analogy or structural correspondence. Examples of systematized results of such processes are: the realm of the unconditioned; the Aristotelian system of virtues; the Platonic system of ideas; the God of the philosophers and the arguments for the existence of God; Kant’s concept of the moral law and the speculative metaphysics of the ‘ideas of pure reason’; in psychology (the soul or self); in cosmology (absolute unity of the conditions of appearance); and in theology (God); all concepts referring to the absolute such as absolute being, absolute truth, absolute justice, absolute love, absolute beauty, absolute good and so on. When religious normativity is rationalized, an inferential network of cultural categories emerges. Because conformity is never necessary, norms entail

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the possibility of their violation. The normative module may recognize a violation and report, ‘That’s not fair.’ But it is mind-reading that distinguishes whether a violation was intended or not. When a moral rule is formulated as a concept, it likewise entails a concept of defection. Therefore, a morally bad act intentionally violates the rule. Now the objectively binding nature of the norm, its abstract reality, is one rationale for the supernatural. It follows that the concept SIN, a defection with respect to the supernatural or metaphysical, derives from multiple sources in the mind/brain; normativity, mind-reading, and the rationalized concepts of morality put into language and made conscious. An act that is morally good conforms to the norm irrespective of the doer’s other desires. This leads then to further rational concepts: first the concept of tit-for-tat justice, then absolute justice which God or the metaphysical properties of reality will enforce. For the mind-reading system, the attribution of agency or intentionality doesn’t itself entail free choice because actions aren’t necessarily undetermined or uncaused. But with the cultural concept of morality, reason yields the reflective concept FREE WILL presupposed by moral defection. Because it is free, the choice is the undetermined cause of the act. This then leads to the concept of moral responsibility. So undetermined FREE WILL is a reflective cultural concept developed from agency and within the actual domain of mind-reading. It is an inter-modular concept developed from mind-reading, normativity (connected to desire), rationalization leading to the concept MORAL LAW and language, if choice is supposed to be conscious. Free will is an attribute of the inter-modular concept of a morally responsible person. The concept of the ‘undetermined choice of a free will’ is an analogue, a putative model which corresponds to ‘whatever it is in the mind/brain in context with respect to desire and action that makes it possible for an agent to be held responsible’ for what they do; for example, a violation of moral law. For philosophy, the analogy raises problems of consistency with respect to a third system, intuitive physics, with its attribution of mechanical-causal determinism in which there are no uncaused causes. Persons contain these inconsistencies at their cultural heart, ultimately the result of the massive modularity of mind and consciously available through the reflective use of language. These are also the problems at the heart of Kant, and they are still unresolved (for example, by Dennett, 2004). Arguably, they are mysteries, not problems (see Section 1.3). As mentioned above, Sperber (2000c) proposed a logic sub-module specializing in the ‘manipulation of abstract meta-representations’, one function of which was to detect manipulation and another to exploit communicative opportunities. The main way to achieve the first is to test for consistency in context. But seeking consistency within and between cultural concepts and thoughts is the same thing as developing conceptual integration between

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modules and the inter-modular concepts within the cultural superstructure on which so much action depends. This keeps driving rationalization. The fact that many cultural concepts, like PRICE or FREE WILL, rest on underlying analogies creates problems for consistency. This is because, first, any analogy between some properties of two domains also implies many dis-analogies and, second, analogies can be meant literally or figuratively. This possibility is what gives the inter-modular its metaphorical flavour. The concept of a unified person, the self-conception that we deeply believe in, is the intermodular locus of pervasive inconsistency. When rationalization interacts with a supernatural entity, it can be conceptualized as more or less personal, more or less an abstract metaphysical category. In the former case, the abstraction is conceptualized as the property of a supernatural mind by analogy. The laws of physics are the thoughts of God, in Stephen Hawking’s words. Alternatively, we can have free-standing abstractions as metaphysical realities or some blend of the two, as in ‘God is love’. In the Bhagavad Gita, Brahman (“The Absolute”) is conceptualized personally as Krishna. Learn that this is the womb/of all creatures;/I am the source of all the universe, /just as I am its dissolution, /Nothing is higher than I am;/ Arjuna, all that exists/is woven on me,/like a web of pearls on thread/. . . . Men without understanding think that I am/ unmanifest nature become manifest:/ they are ignorant of my higher existence,/my pure unchanging absolute being./Veiled in the magic of my discipline,/I elude most men;/this deluded world is not aware/that I am unborn and immutable./ I know all creatures/that have been/that now exist,/and that are yet to be;/but, Arjuna, no one knows me./ (trans. B. M. Miller, VII, the seventh teaching, 6–7; 24–26. pp. 74–76)

Consider Plato’s The Symposium. Diotima explains to Socrates the loving ascent to absolute beauty as the highest goal of human life. Through loving sensible beauty –‘his feeling of love for a boy’ – loving one beautiful person, the process of ascent begins. It is a movement through the abstractive and idealizing meta-representational process discussed above. Diotima says: The man who has been guided thus far in the mysteries of love, and who has directed his thoughts towards examples of beauty in due and orderly succession, will suddenly have revealed to him as he approaches the end of his initiation a beauty whose nature is marvellous indeed, the final goal, Socrates, of all his previous efforts. This beauty is first of all eternal; it neither comes into being nor passes away, neither waxes nor wanes; next, it is not beautiful in part and ugly in part, nor beautiful at one time and ugly at another, nor beautiful in this relation and ugly in that, nor beautiful here and ugly there, as varying according to its beholders; nor again will this beauty appear to him like the beauty of a face or hands or anything else corporeal, or like the beauty of a thought or a science, or like beauty which has its seat in something other than itself,

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be it a living thing or the earth or the sky or anything else whatever; he will see it as absolute, existing alone with itself, unique, eternal, and all beautiful things as partaking of it, yet in such a manner that, while they come into being and pass away, it neither undergoes any increase or diminution nor suffers any change . . . . This above all others, my dear Socrates . . . is the region where a man’s life should be spent, in the contemplation of absolute beauty . . . in that region alone where he sees beauty . . . will he be able to bring forth not mere reflected goodness but true goodness, because he will be in contact not with a reflection but with the truth. And having brought forth and nurtured true goodness he will have the privilege of being beloved of God, and becoming, if ever a man can, immortal himself. (Plato, The Symposium, trans. W. Hamilton, 1951: 93–95)

Either way, both the personalized and abstract representations of supernatural entities enable personal relations to the contents involved. Love of beauty in The Symposium, both the sensible beauty of the body and super-sensible in the philosophical contemplation of abstract beauty interpreted as a reality, is a personal relationship. The path to Krishna lies also through bhakti or devotion to his person.

Religious affect and motivation The fourth feature of religion is affectivity-motivation. I will divide this into two parts. There are desire-generating systems – aspects of the mind/brain that function to create motivations. Carruthers (2006: 113–120; 193–203) argues convincingly that animal minds have a multiplicity of these systems, from how animals select mates to their attachments to mothers. Social motivations are especially developed in primates. We saw above that the normative systems must be connected to motivation, creating the desire to conform to them, that sense of objective “to be doneness”. We will see how ‘oughtness’ is formulated as a conscious rational principle in Chapter 2 and in Chapter 3, I will argue that there is a distinct normative data base. The cultural intensification and conscious focusing of the desire/motivation to co-operate is one effect of the creation of rationalized moral norms within religion, the creating of a co-operative disposition or ‘good will’. Morality is a cultural elaboration of the innate principles that foster co-operation, such as norm acquisition, kin altruism and forgiving tit-for-tat. This accounts for why religions function to symbolize and enhance social structures, conformity, but also sometimes function as the basis for critique of the group, vehicles for dissent on moral grounds. Secondly, there are emotions: we can ask whether there are specialized religious emotions. I began a study of this type of ‘felt experience’ by analysing how religious feeling is linguistically expressed in Julian of Norwich’s Revelations of Divine Love (Downes, 2000). However, important

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as it is, the affective dimension of religion is not the topic of this book. So I will treat it briefly, even though this fourth dimension of the religion ensemble motivates and suffuses all the others; concepts, thought, affect and motivation interacting (Damasio, 1996). Emotions are extraordinary cognitive phenomena. I distinguish between emotions and feelings. Feelings are how emotions actually present themselves to consciousness as qualia of bodily arousal, when this is recognized as an emotion (as opposed to a pain etc.). Following Peirce (Savan, 1981), I take emotions to be representations (Downes, 2000: 101–104). An emotion is the concept of how a feeling represents the relationship between the bodily arousal and the context of situation that caused it. To say ‘I am feeling anger’ is affect-reading, the conscious conceptualization of the perceived effect of a bodily state put into language. The recognition of the emotion makes inchoate feeling caused by arousal more determinate. In Mandler’s (1984) theory, stimuli arouses the autonomic nervous system (ANS), which is discoursally comprehended. For Damasio (1996) bodily responses are massive, involving not only viscera but the motor system (skeleton and musculature), endrocrine and peptides (chemical signals) and neurotransmitters. Of course, emotional experiences are remembered and enter into dispositions that function to by-pass and always unconsciously guide thinking. Religious emotion is culturally important in building dispositions. For example, a religious disposition might by-pass thinking by feeling revulsion at a forbidden urge. The literature agrees that there is a small set of innate primary emotions; happiness, sadness, anger, fear, disgust – the products of the limbic system (Carruthers, 2006: 117; Damasio, 1996: 133). These form input into more specialized secondary emotions. For example, Carruthers (2006: 200) points out the varieties of disgust ‘at foods, at bodily fluids, sexual disgust, moral disgust and so on’ and wonders if there is a separate module for the last. The issue in the theory of religion is whether moral disgust is derived by analogy from the primary emotion of disgust when it is aroused in contexts where suffering is witnessed and reason is applied to the scene: the violation of moral norms is postulated as the cause. The inter-connectedness of the varieties of disgust is revealed in the history of religion. The connection of normativity and concepts of the clean and unclean, pure and impure, with respect to bodies, animals, objects and actions and with rituals of ‘purification’ can be accounted for in this way. Paul Ricoeur (1969) has suggested that the concept of uncleanness precedes that of evil. Carruthers (2006: 200) also points out how the more specific social emotions of shame, guilt and indignation attach as attitudes to normative violation in distinct ways. Secondary emotions are the actual domain of affective systems, built on the basic emotions. There are specifically religious secondary emotions achieved through interpreting the feelings produced by arousal in religious contexts.

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For example, the identity of a specifically religious emotion like devotion (bhakti) may arise through the linguistic interpretation of feelings aroused in the body by rituals or scriptures. Other examples are the Old Testament’s ‘fear of God’ and love and hate; e.g. ‘love your neighbour as yourself’, Lev. 19: 18; ‘Hate evil and love good’, Amos 5: 15. The feeling of something being holy is a response to the arousal caused by the supernatural concepts which are a mysterium tremendum et fascinans described by Rudolf Otto (1950). In Buddhism, there is compassion for the suffering (duhka) of beings, which is caused by craving (trsna), the clinging to appearances because of ignorance. Secondary emotions are a part of religion which shapes personal self-interpretation – how people culturally represent themselves and identify their felt experiences – dispositions that motivate behaviour. Such conceptualized feelings (emotions) can also be reflected upon by meta-representational manipulation becoming absolute love, absolute joy – beatitude, etc. A second class of religious felt experiences are mystical or ecstatic altered states of consciousness and a large literature on these religious experiences go back at least to William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902/ 1958). It includes studies of ecstatic religion, shamanism, prophecy, speaking in tongues and the use of sex and drugs. Recent proposals in neuroscience have suggested that rhythmic-repetitive action weakens and dissolves the everyday sense of self (Newberg and D’Aquili, 2001). Such a weakening through arousal may open the mind/brain to feeling and its religious interpretation. Saver and Rabin (1997) argue that the limbic system produces inter-mediate states neither fully cognitive nor fully affective which have a noetic quality. Although such states of consciousness have the qualia of feelings, James (1902/1958: 293) defines them as also experienced as ‘states of knowledge’ of ‘great significance’. For Saver and Rabin, this noetic quality is of a harmonious integration to which the brain attaches positive evaluation (nirvana, the kingdom of God, etc.). This sense of the significance of conceptual integration must arise from the inconsistencies of massive modularity when these have emerged through inter-modular culture and linguistic consciousness, the pre-requisite of mystery. Altered states of consciousness are often taken as revelation from the supernatural. This will be explored in Chapter 6. Meta-culture vs. epidemiological properties We saw above that the category of the person is perhaps meta-cultural. It is possible that the four main features of religion are also of this type. That said, specific religious concepts are also disseminated widely within societies in history. Thus, some religious representations must have epidemiological properties that promote their dissemination. As we saw, this notion comes

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from Sperber (1994, 1996) and will be considered more fully in Chapter 3. Briefly, a cultural representation disseminates widely under three conditions. First, the representation is relevant to modular-based intuitive beliefs, the deliverances of common sense. It can do this by violating ‘head on module-based expectations’ (Sperber, 1994: 55). Second, the representation is relevant in many contexts; it has ‘extreme relevance – that is the wealth of its contextual implications’ (Sperber, 1996: 96). Third, representations that are not fully understood disseminate widely. Sperber writes, ‘Half-understood or mysterious reflective beliefs are much more frequent and culturally important than scientific ones. Because they are only half understood and therefore open to re-interpretation, their consistency or inconsistency with other beliefs, intuitive or reflective, is never self evident, and does not provide a robust criterion for acceptance or rejection. Their content, because of its indeterminacy, cannot be sufficiently evidenced or argued for to warrant their rational acceptance’ (Sperber, 1996: 91). 1.4

Bafflement of phenomenal consciousness

The above four features together form the cultural ensemble called religion. A quorum of these features is sufficient for a cultural phenomenon to count as religious to some degree. Religion addresses human ‘bafflement, suffering and . . . intractable ethical paradox’ (Geertz, 1973: 100). These three experiences pre-suppose higher-level linguistic meta-representations of what it is like to have the mind of a modern human. To be baffled is to experience the deliverances of one’s mind/brain and realize that one doesn’t understand, and that perhaps no complete understanding is possible. Noam Chomsky (1976) and Colin McGinn (1993), drawing on a distinction made by Gabriel Marcel, but ultimately grounded in distinctions Kant makes with respect to the ideas of reason, argue that there are mysteries versus problems. These words are technical. Problems can at least be approached by science, and possibly solved. On the other hand, mysteries are incorrigibly baffling because of the very structure of our minds, although McGinn believes as I do that the mysteries have a naturalistic source. McGinn’s mysteries are personhood, consciousness and the brain, meaning – i.e. the relation of thought and object –, free will and the causal order, the a priori or ungrounded knowledge, and how we can know anything. These are also the domains in which religions normatively operate to give us ways of dealing with this bafflement. A possible naturalistic explanation of why these are mysteries to us may lie in the very massive modularity of our mind/brain, as it interacts using meta-representation, language and consciousness, and the fact that therefore it must develop inter-modular cultural representations in order to thrive within its selecting natural and social environment. Therefore,

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massive modularity accounts for the mysteries mentioned above and the intractable predicament of the human mind/brain in a way that Fodor’s picture of modularity cannot. The predicament generates abstract inter-modular concepts, which though relevant to reflections about how to act, can never be settled – concepts such as personal identity, freedom and morality. As Chomsky says, faced with this, the mind turns to stories and art. A person is a complex set of more or less integrated inter-modular representations with the irresolvable inner tensions this involves, which cannot be represented by modular-based intuitive beliefs. So as mentioned before, both personhood and the related concept of SELF have a non-literal flavour. For example, it depends on narrative. Not only is the body analogically conceived as a spatial container for the mind which inhabits it, but intentional states are said to cause actions, as if those states were physical objects. In development, personhood and a sense of self are ‘grown’ in the mind/brain. Once grown, the personal structure is module-like and we experience self as more or less integrated. Religion is exactly the same, a parallel structure. This is so because the religions are the normatively cultural means by which kinds of persons have been made. Religions have the same inter-modular cultural structure as the persons they produce. Therefore, religions are also in their deepest structure – meta-cultural in Tooby and Cosmides’ sense – a mirror of personhood. That is why the names of the religions are both names for ways of life and kinds of persons, each with the identity of the religion in question; a Muslim, a Buddhist, a Hindu etc. If person-making isn’t accomplished by a religion, it will be accomplished by a religion-like set of inter-modular cultural forms: for example, Enlightenment modernity in the West.

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The supernatural and the uses of the intentional

2.1

The intentional stance and the manifest image

In Chapter 1, the supernatural arose because the mind-reading module could be satisfied by inputs behind which there was no obvious embodied agency, but which could nevertheless be understood as caused by some kind of mind. So supernatural entities arise spontaneously from the way mind-reading construes input. The aim of this chapter is to work out this idea and its implications for normativity and rationalization.

The manifest understanding of mind-reading Mind-reading is part of a scientific psychology. But it is revealing to first analyse this capacity within the manifest image of humanity. In the everyday scheme of things, mind-reading manifests itself in how we grasp and express our understanding of each other. This intentional language attributes to people mental states not directly perceptible by the senses. Our first step is to enlarge upon Daniel Dennett’s idea of the intentional stance and its context in philosophy (Dennett: 1976, 1978, 1987, 1996). This stance is the phenomenology of mind-reading. This is relevant, because religion too is a phenomenon of the conscious manifest image, however unconscious its underlying processes. But why the term “stance”? In the first instance, it denotes an explanatory strategy with respect to the prediction of the behaviour of some object – human beings are the prototypical instance. The strategy treats this behaviour as the result of rational agency. The object to be explained has three inner states attributed to it: desire – Dennett also uses such terms as “preferences”, “goals”, “interests” – plus beliefs and rationality. Its behaviour logically follows from the attributed desire in the context of certain beliefs. The desire and belief have normative consequences. The behaviour is what the object ought to have done, given that desire, those beliefs and the ability to reason. So we conclude that is why the behaviour was observed. I have found that examples are always useful in making these points clear – so imagine my 53

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colleague Clive carrying his suitcases and hurrying down the street towards the railway station. Given the context, I infer that he is heading to the station to catch a train. This shows that the intentional stance is the non-optional way we explain actions within the everyday discourse of the manifest image. Dennett describes this as ‘habitual and effortless’. We give the reasons why people, including ourselves, do what we do. Dennett (1987: 23) calls the class of objects for whom this explanatory strategy works, “intentional systems”. Although human beings are the prototypical intentional entities, the strategy works for a wide range of objects, from most animals to artefacts like a chess-playing computer or even a thermostat. Supernatural entities appear to be intentional systems, comprehended as if they were intentional. The intentional stance is important because the understander doesn’t have to know what physically caused the behaviour. Observing Clive walking to the station, we really have no idea of what brain mechanisms caused his actions or how our intentional discourse may relate to these. It is the same playing chess with a computer. Neither the bodily mechanisms used in walking nor the hardware or digital machine code corresponding to the intentional phrase ‘why the computer castled’, is information we either have or need. Just because the intentional stance works, that doesn’t entail that the system has conscious experience and a self. Of course, we attribute conscious mentality when we explain humans. I talked earlier of an analogical inner space in which selves appear to dwell, a place where conscious mental activity appears to be. It is problematical to what degree we can apply this image to other living systems. Can we take all apparent intentionality as seriously as our own? An entity for which the intentional stance worked but to which we refused the attribution of this inner space would be less person-like, though still intentional. Dennett (1976: 189) requires only intentional interpretability, although Carruthers (2006: 66–67) notes that some philosophers put very demanding conditions on the systems to which the stance can be legitimately applied; it only applies to conscious, language users who can give reasons. However, we commonly use belief–desire explanations for human and other agent-like beings when we have no reason to think that there is any consciousness of desires, beliefs or practical reasoning. What triggers mind-reading and the way it construes the world is the nature of the input. Why should this strategy, and the things it applies to, be called “intentional”? I pointed out that this is a technical term. For something to be intentional in this sense is to be about an object other than itself, which is its ‘content’. Representations have this property. For example, a photograph has the property of intentionality if it is a photograph of something. The object of intentional aboutness doesn’t in fact have to exist; it can be fictional, a hallucination or a mistake. Furthermore, the object of intentionality is characterized in a

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particular way but there will always be other ways to characterize the same object under different descriptions. That’s why intentional terms like “belief” or “desire” generate what are called opaque contexts. ‘Akhenaten believed that his father Aten created the world’ can be true, even if the proposition expressed in the subordinate clause is false. At the same time, it can be false that ‘Akhenaten believed that the star around which orbit the nine planets in the solar system created the world.’ The terms “desire” and “believe” and others describing practical reasoning are intentional and this includes the term “intention” in the everyday sense. Having a goal: teleology and functional explanation There is a connection between the intentional stance and the general form of teleological and functional explanation. An account is teleological if it makes essential reference to a goal. A behaviour or structure is explained teleologically if it occurs because it would produce a later outcome. Hence, the behaviour or structure relies on prediction. Consider Clive walking down the street towards the station. We readily see that the intentional stance provides a teleological form of explanation. The hypothesis of Clive’s desire for a future goal, plus his beliefs and reasoning, deliver a manifest understanding of his walking behaviour which depends on predictive intentionality. The manifest image also frequently employs functional explanations which are a sub-type of teleology. Dennett calls this “the design stance”. A functional explanation has the form: X is there because it does (results in) C in S, where C is a result of X being present or having a certain form in some system, S. This is X’s role in maintaining or operating the overall system (Wright, 1976; Downes, 1994; Nagel, 1979; Mackie, 1974). We can truly say that chlorophyll is there in order to enable plants to perform photosynthesis and thus maintain the organism, or that hearts serve as pumps with respect to the circulation of the blood as part of the overall functioning of the body. Functional explanation applies in biology, in social systems and with respect to artefacts. The ignition of fuel and compressed air in a jet engine functions to provide thrust, which then functions to propel the aircraft. A religion may function to develop group solidarity or strengthen moral norms. In biology, when a structure or behaviour is explained in such functional terms, it is termed an adaptation. Thus the lungs and breathing mechanisms of vertebrates function to exchange gases and thus sustain the organism – an adaptation to the composition of the atmosphere. Functioning behaviours or structures produce outcomes in one particular way, and there are always other ways of achieving the same outcome. This mirrors the way intentionality describes its object in a particular way. Thus a function can be accomplished in diverse ways. A function within its

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containing system is an abstraction, a solution to an engineering or design problem. Conversely, a given structure can serve multiple functions, lose functions and end up functionally redundant, or take on new functions, common in biological evolution. A function is a rational way to achieve a goal within a system, in order that the larger purpose (or telos) – the maintenance of the whole system – can be accomplished. Because apparently goal-oriented and rational, something manifested as a function invites interpreters to infer a mind, an agency of some kind which intended it. Wright (1976) notes that functional explanations can be strong or weak. The strongest is functional aetiology in which an object’s role within the system brought it about that it came into being. One might say that hearts came into being because of the need to pump blood in a circulatory system. A weaker form of explanation is simply the functional analysis of a system in terms of the operation of each of its parts with respect to the whole – systems analysis – but in which one doesn’t claim that its functional role brings the part into being. Functional aetiology is most obvious with respect to artefacts. They are bought into being by the intentional mind that designed them; made structure in order to achieve a function. When expressing our manifest understanding, we say a chimpanzee has used a stick as a tool to get food. We describe the function of the stick, offer an explanation in terms of purposes, and adopt the intentional stance towards the ape. Umberto Eco (1997), in his analysis of the semiotics of architecture, describes the denotation of an architectural sign as its function. Buildings, artefacts, indeed the whole of the built environment appears to speak to our understanding in the language of functions. To understand what the object communicates is to comprehend how to use it to achieve its purpose. Consider the messages communicated by an artefact like a flight of stairs. To understand stairs is to understand their function, how to use them, what they were designed for. Darwin transformed how we understand the aetiology of functions in biology. The structures and behaviours that perform biological functions are ‘brought into being’ by the purely causal process of natural selection: random variation and differential reproduction. Biological systems have been described as teleonomic. This names natural selection as an aetiology which evolves genetic programmes that are goal-directed and predictive. These in turn naturally produce structures and behaviours, which can be truly described in teleological/functional terms, as if designed. They are ‘designed by mother nature’. The natural processes that generate adaptations mimic a rational mind. According to Aristotle, teleology entails final causation in which the future outcome, the goal, causes the system’s structure or behaviour. This is contrasted with efficient causation in which antecedent conditions are jointly sufficient to cause the structure or behaviour according to general laws. In the

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former, the efficient temporal order of cause and effect appears reversed; the later outcome causes the prior behaviour. On this basis among others, modern science rejected final causes as explanations of nature, instead insisting on efficient causal explanation and so stripped away the manifest images’ intentional and design stances. In a modern scientific explanation, the temporal sequence of events is predicted by hypotheses in the form of general mathematical laws. These laws are interpreted and explained by causal models. In biology, Darwin’s reduction of functional aetiology to natural selection reconciles the two kinds of explanation and teleonomy restores the order of causation. Although the functional account is true and a presupposition of the evolutionary story – without a prior understanding of a function as a possible adaptation one wouldn’t know what to explain – the design is only apparent caused as it is through natural selection. In turn, the causal explanation itself reaches a limit at the randomness of mutations. In the conflict of these explanatory modes we see again the results of their origin in two different modular capacities and the pictures they manifestly deliver. Final causes appear in intentional mind-reading while efficient causes appear in intuitive physics. Hence, cultural innovations like tools and other artefacts are an inter-modular phenomenon. Tools are a category in-between folk psychology and folk physics, somewhat like non-human living things. We observe inter-modular figurativeness, the granting of human-like intentionality by courtesy, ‘as if’ intentionality, with respect to artefacts. And when employing the intentional stance with other organisms, it remains contentious just how literally or metaphorically we are to take mind-reading, crucially so with other primates (Dennett, 1996: 50ff.; Searle, 1980). This may even become so with complex machines like computers. Living things, including ourselves, are grasped in multiple ways; as physical objects, as biological entities, with mind-readings’ intentional stance. Along with the appropriate use of the intentional stance, always comes an analogy with the human. Our responses are first determined by whether an input satisfies the conditions of mind-reading. These conditions are met by biological entities, but are often mimicked by other input so that the universe appears pervaded with mindlikeness. How does teleology relate to intentionality? I said teleology applied to predictive systems. Intentionality explains how such predictive systems are possible. The intentional property of aboutness relates to something other than itself. If an intentional system’s aboutness at a given time can project into, refer to a possible state of affairs in the future, then the system is predictive. The temporal order of efficient causality is restored. This occurs when the system’s prior intentional state, which has as

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its object a future possibility, is part of the set of sufficient antecedent conditions that cause the subsequent state of affairs. Kant analyses teleology in his Critique of the Power of Judgement (1793/2000). For Kant, a teleological judgement is one that represents the functioning parts of a living organism as caused by the idea of the whole. The whole explains the parts that constitute it, ‘as if they were products of a cause whose causality could only be determined through a representation of the object’ (1793/2000: 34). In the explanation of action outlined above, the mental representations are intentional, and project into the future in the required sense. The intentional stance spells out the explanation of action within the manifest image, but, for this to meet the requirements of the scientific image, we also have to assume that the intentional account somehow corresponds to a sequence of causes. The intentional states must be reducible in such a way as to be alternative descriptions of whatever causes the effects they are ‘about’. Much of the modern literature on teleology cited above is about whether or not it can be reduced without loss to causality. There are intentional entities at each lower level of analysis, predictive within their containing systems. In the domain of artefacts, just consider screwdrivers (Rybczynski, 2000). The screwdriver’s tip engages the screw. Screw heads come in various types; the familiar slotted, the cross-shaped Phillips, the square Robinson, the six-sided star-shaped Torx, and so on. For the screwdriver to apply optimal torque to the screw, the tip must match the head. If intentionality is something that is about something, has ‘an object’ that it represents in a particular way, the tip has intentionality. It is in some sense, a representation. Of course, it is designed and used by human minds within larger and larger intentional contexts, and this intentionality can thus be derived from interpreting the screwdriver in terms of human goals, which we must do to understand it and use it ourselves. Biology is absolutely full of intentionality, which predicts in the required sense. For example, across a synapse, neurotransmitter molecules bind to and activate receptor molecules on the surface of the neuron that receives them. The former molecules are intentional in the same way as the screwdriver’s tip. They encode in their form the requisite information about, and hence predict, the possible state of affairs of binding with the receptors. Notice too how drugs can mimic this intentionality, and bind to neurons. The receptors have thus ‘made a mistake’ in terms of the proper functioning of the system. In fact, in either artefacts or biological systems, we can attribute this sort of intentional aboutness down to the most minute level with respect to the functioning of the part within the whole. The atomic structure of the actual molecules on the screwdriver’s tip have to be such that they interact, are about each other, in such a way that they produce a material strong enough and of the right shape to fulfil their function. Likewise, the on/off state of each

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electrical ‘switch’ on a computer’s chip can be made, by the program running on it, to have simple intentionality. It can be programmed to encode simple ‘predictive relations’ and function with respect to the other switches with which it interacts. Each state in a Turing machine predicts, is about the next, capturing this property. It is this that encodes the information. And that’s why the hardware is ‘designed’ with switches that function in this on/off way. (The individual switch – the lowest level – is the dumbest of all systems, as Dennett says.) Likewise, we can move downwards through lower levels of intentionality within organisms, right to the molecular level. Conversely, we can move upward through the levels of intentionality to successively larger functional wholes: moving from neurotransmitter molecules to the functioning nervous system to the functioning behaviours of the organism, each a part within an unimaginably complex system of systems of interacting ‘aboutness’ describable in intentional/teleological terms. There is a hierarchy of intentionality with the higher depending on the lower, and the lower functioning as part of a whole from which the higher emerges in mind/brains, artefacts and organisms. The ultimate source of mutual intentionality lies deeper still; it is in the self-organizing properties of physical systems not in equilibrium, which unpredictably but according to general principles, form new more complex structures, blindly probing possibility and finding new mutual aboutness. In summary, the family of teleological/functional interpretations which includes Dennett’s intentional and design stances, is intrinsic to the manifest image of humanity in three main domains. The first is human action and communication. So whenever the intentional stance is used of other objects, they take on mind-like properties by analogy. The second domain consists of artefacts where the intentionality is obviously derived from the first domain. The third domain is biology and its teleonomy. The second and third domains introduce the language of design, of being brought into being for a purpose. All three domains are suffused with potential mind-likeness. One could suggest that the intentional stance applied to all three levels can only be used if there is also intentionality at lower levels, all the way down to molecules. For example, we can only say that the thermostat ‘wants’ to keep the temperature at 20  C and ‘believing’ that the temperature has fallen below this, ‘decides’ to turn on the furnace, when we can also attribute a lower-level aboutness to the structures that (causally) realize these functions, the actual mechanism within the device that measures temperature and connects to a switch. The manifest image of communication: Grice’s philosophical pragmatics Clive walking to the station amply illustrates the intentional stance as the way in which we consciously understand and talk about human agency as opposed

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to things humans do in which they are not agents; for example, slipping on an icy pavement. Within agency, there are acts intended to communicate a message. And within these, there is the use of language to communicate an intended message. Now imagine that Clive, recognizing me on the other side of the street, waved to me from across the street, then gestured, urgently pointing in the direction of the station. I think he is making it obvious that he intends to communicate a message to me. Perhaps Clive means that he recognizes me, but is in too great a hurry to stop and talk. Alternatively, after waving to me, he might shout out across the busy street, ‘Must run.’ What do I understand in this latter case? I infer that it is necessary for him – he is the understood subject – to move rapidly with a particular gait. Furthermore, because of the context, I infer that this is towards the station and done for some reason. And therefore, I can also possibly conclude, because of his speed and hence urgency, that he wants to convey to me that he cannot stop and talk, although he would like to. That’s why he waved, gestured and shouted. Reflect on the richness of Clive’s communication both when he gestures and when he shouts ‘Must run.’ In both examples, my understanding is an application of the intentional stance. The philosopher H. P. Grice (1957, 1975, 1989) has analysed this sort of communication and how it is accomplished using language. The use of the word “mean”, as when I say, ‘my friend meant that p’ is what Grice terms “meaningnn” or “non-natural meaning”, also sometimes called “speaker meaning”. I won’t go into all the details of Grice’s formulations. Roughly, a speaker, S, meansnn something, M, in uttering, U, or doing A if and only if S has certain intentions. To understand just what a speaker meant in uttering or performing, the recipient of the message must understand just those intentions. But, furthermore, the recipient has to arrive at that understanding by virtue of also recognizing that the speaker intended them to do exactly that. That’s what makes the message an intentional communication. In order for communication to occur, the recipient must understand both levels of intention. This analysis requires meta-representation and the attribution of higher levels of intentionality and offers an account of both verbal and non-verbal communication. A consequence of Grice’s theory is that it is possible to mean more than we literally say because speaker meaning has been separated from word and sentence meaning. In Grice (1975, 1989) he explains how this is possible. Conversation is a matter of rational co-operation where participants are expected to make their ‘contributions such as is required . . . by the accepted purpose or direction of the talk exchange’. Within this mutual expectation, there are more specific maxims: to not provide more or less information than is strictly necessary; to not say what you believe is false; to be relevant to the context; and to be clear, avoiding ambiguity, prolixity, obscurity, etc.

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This describes a normative communicative situation where what speakers mean in a given context is conveyed in the most direct way possible. The maxims are treated as premises, which interact with the form and content of what speakers actually say and the context to yield inferences. Grice calls these “implicatures”. Conversational implicatures are context-dependent inferences that a speaker expects the hearer to draw. For example, when Clive shouted, ‘Must run’, I infer that it is he himself that must run and to the station, so contextually implicating, (I) must run (to the station). He implicates this, as opposed to simply saying it, by not specifying either the subject or the adverbial prepositional phrase, and so not providing either more or less information than is exactly required. These two pieces of information are obvious from the context. We also infer, by virtue of “run” (which makes the sentence anomalous: in fact, Clive doesn’t run) that he must now hurry to the station without stopping anywhere. If so, I might also infer that he intends me to infer that this is the reason why he can’t interact now. This in turn may lead me to other potential inferences. I might conclude that he would have liked to stop and chat, if only he was not hurrying to the train. Clearly, Grice has provided a philosophical analysis of the intentional stance when applied to communication within the manifest image. Moral normativity and intentionality These examples of the intentional stance and teleological explanation are the way that the mind-reading ability manifests itself to consciousness. This is how it is thought about and talked about. Because of its origin in intentional representation, all successful teleological explanations have a mind-full quality. In this discourse, the objects explained are either themselves rational agents or appear designed and hence the product of a rational mind. Another discourse that is a conscious manifestation of the cultural development of an innate capacity is that of moral evaluation. This has its origins in the normative module discussed in Chapter 1. The natural discourse of moral evaluation presupposes the intentional stance. Moral thinking evaluates the representations of the intentional stance using the deliverances of moral intelligence: what agents are obligated to do and what ought to be the case because it is right or good. It is thus also both inter-modular and meta-representational, connected with mind-reading. One applies moral evaluation to oneself and to other moral agents. As we saw in Chapter 1, there must be freedom to choose, a self that chooses and the ability to perform in the way obligated. The intentional stance as it interacts with moral rationality creates responsible persons. In other words, the everyday language of conscious moral evaluation forces us to apply these concepts, within the intentional stance, to describe

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morally responsible persons. But, as we might expect, because the ideas are inter-modular, there is perhaps something non-literal about such freedom. Of course, we don’t morally evaluate each act we perform nor could we. These are issues for Section 2.3. ‘Insights’ of teleology Teleological strategies such as the intentional stance yield insights into the behaviour of systems that can’t otherwise be obtained. But I use the word ‘insight’ advisedly. The intentional stance adopts a position as if ‘seeing into’ a mind. Teleological inferential strategies are so central to interpretation that they are not optional for the human mind within the manifest image. First, teleological strategies treat as irrelevant causal patterns of which we are ignorant or which are of such complexity that they would overwhelm our thinking. For example, people ordinarily have no idea of brain and other physical mechanisms involved in the purposive activity of ‘walking to the station’. Second, the putative entities or properties of the intentional systems for which teleological strategies work may be ‘emergent’ features of some lower-level substrate. Some examples might be concepts like moral responsibility, the ordered structure of co-ordinated action in a game, a marriage, a conversation, a narrative. Examples with respect to artefacts might be the behaviour of a chess-playing computer when it makes a move like castling, the picture on a TV screen, a garden. To say that such states of affairs are emergent is to claim that the entities and properties actually only come into being at the higher level at which they have been represented. Third, the intentional systems are only manifestly intelligible under the higher-level description. This follows from the second feature. A causal description of the brain activities involved in the production of a higher-level intentional state is not intelligible as that higher state when physically observed. Benjamin Libet, a neurophysiologist with much experience in investigating brains, makes this point when he writes, ‘conscious mental phenomena are not reducible to or explicable by knowledge of nerve cell activities. You could look into the brain and see nerve cell interconnections and neural messages popping about in immense profusion. But you will not observe any conscious mental subjective phenomena.’ And again ‘subjective phenomena are not predictable by knowledge of neuronal function’ (Libet, 2004: 5). For example, the observation and description of a brain activity doesn’t tell us that it is the conscious subjective representation of a moral obligation. In fact, the relationship of revelation is the other way around. The higherlevel description of the emergent state, its manifest representation, is first required to identify and investigate tell-tale brain activity. We rely on a report

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of ‘awareness’ by the individual having the experience. Only then can the brain activity be ‘translated’ as somehow generating or corresponding to the higher level. Similarly, as noted above, without the functional identification of an object or behaviour as an adaptation, there is no idea of what natural selection needs to explain. The function of the object or behaviour within the system is an emergent property of the organization of the system taken as a whole. It can only be grasped teleologically in the first instance, as Kant recognized. Starting from the intentional stance in explaining human action, I will use the metaphors of ‘up’ for the intentional and ‘down’ for the causal. The upward direction is towards an intentional superstrate. There the state of affairs is understood as meant by an agent and brought into being in order to achieve the agent’s goal. If we conceive the limit of this upward direction, the final end of explanation with respect to agency is an omnipotent supernatural initiating power able to think and will anything within logical possibility and in doing so bring it into being through this act. The downward direction is a physical substrate, to which states of affairs either can be reduced or from which they are emergent. If we think this direction all the way down, we descend through successive explanatory levels whose objects obey causal laws. This strategy of explanation subdivides or ‘atomizes’ reality into ever smaller constituents. The end of analysis is where there are no smaller constituents. This strategy reaches a limit where we discover the wave function within logical possibility. At that limit, nature appears as immaterial as the supernatural and some physicists re-introduce the action of the mind. The picture is made more confusing because either mode, the intentional stance and causal-mechanical explanation, invades the territory of the other. Intentional/functional invades the home of the causal, as shown by the examples of adaptation and neuro-transmitters given above. Conversely, causal-mechanical thinking extends upwards. Causality is attributed to mental states such as desires, beliefs and intentions – the latter in the everyday sense of the word. A fully fledged supernatural world in which dwell supernatural beings is imagined by analogy with the mundane world; a heaven real but not existing in any way physically accessible from space-time. Whenever the two forms of thinking interact we get this kind of figurativeness. It has an analogical flavour to say that something as immaterial as a desire, a thought or a decision causes an action. Based as they are on the structure of the two different but interacting modular abilities, there are differences between the two directions of thinking. But the main difference is not that causalmechanical interpretation is either more rational or more in accord with commonsense. Both are inferences from input, only built upon different parts of the mind/brain.

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The supernatural in the manifest image We have shown how mind-reading is delivered to consciousness. It is delivered in a purposive, teleological language. This kind of thinking reveals truths about domains into which we have little or no causal insight, or which are pre-requisites to causal understanding, or which only emerge as realities at the intentional level. Conscious subjectivity, the transformation of the world into artefacts, the adaptations of living things, moral obligation with its conscious choices, freedom and responsibility are such domains. We can now better define the supernatural within the manifest image of humanity. From the interpreter’s point of view a supernatural entity is an abstract intentional system, posited with respect to the teleological interpretation of some input in context, towards which entity the interpreter has adopted the intentional stance. Therefore, the entity’s inner states are judged to have brought into being – are the aetiology of – the state of affairs represented by the interpreter, in order to achieve its purposes. Consider the thought that so-and-so survived a life-threatening accident because God, Fate or Destiny had some purpose for them. Such a representation is the outcome of the interaction of two modes of comprehension. The main clause is a categorical representation, whose truth or falsehood can be checked against empirical criteria. A causal account can be given of why the person survived; they had their seat belt done up, etc. On the other hand, the because-clause gives a teleological story for why the state of affairs came into being. The truth or falsity of this is obviously not the result of an empirical observation. It was only observed that the person survived; perhaps against the odds, while others didn’t. Such goal-directedness with its imputation of abstract agency is always an inference. But some representations are most relevant in some contexts if they are treated as goal-directed. Of course, the phenomenon can always also be accounted for in causal terms, although most often we are ignorant of the causal story. But that doesn’t mean the teleological is less basic. On the contrary, ignorance of the causal can make the teleological more relevant. Any categorical representation of a state of affairs, even if it is causally understood, can also be comprehended in terms of intentionality; for example, in terms of its function in a system. The two modes of comprehension, the intentional and the causal, originating in two different modules of mind, naturally interact within the manifest image of humanity. Religion has posited intentional systems within the manifest image to interpret a wide range of stimuli in order to gain insight into their seeming goal-directedness. For example, moral obligation may originate in God’s will or for his purposes. Biological functions within organisms in relation to the environment are understood as designs. And Grice’s theory explains how

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these phenomena could be interpreted as meantnn by a supernatural entity. Inspired sacred texts, prophetic utterances, events, dreams, even one’s own thoughts, can be interpreted as communications from a supernatural entity. Popular religion and superstition posit intentionality promiscuously. More rationalized religious reflection posits very high order intentionality, more or less personal, ranging over all human experience. What can a supernatural entity do? It is an abstract intentional system whose intended representations can bring into being the states of affairs that are its purposes within the limits of its power. Supernatural entities have always been connected with power. A supernatural power can be constrained or specialized, strong or weak on analogy with human power. Supernatural entities cannot always bring into being that which they represent. Gods in classical antiquity were sometimes specialized or limited. The entity may be required to intervene in a causal chain that limits what it can do, may have a specialized sphere, or face recalcitrant other powers. Some supernatural beings can bring into being the states of affairs that their intentionality is ‘about’ without any physical intervention; thinking or saying it can make it so. The God of monotheism has the power to create reality itself, which is identical to or the product of its thought or words. Kant calls such a mind an “intellectus archetypus”. Traditional postulated entities such as the immortal soul, the spirits of the ancestors or, more philosophically, the essential or authentic self, point to the fact that the self (“soul” or “spirit”) is a supernatural entity according to the above account. This follows from the hypothesis that the concept of a supernatural entity originates with the mind-reading module as it appears to consciousness in the intentional stance. In the manifest image, a human self with respect to its freely purposeful actions, its goal directedness within the limits of human power satisfies the above definition. The human conception of itself is indeed god-like, omnipotent and omniscient with respect to its inner world. It can think any possibility but is sharply limited with respect to extra-mental reality, which conceivable possibilities it can bring into being. (The human mind doesn’t even know if there are possibilities that its kind of mind can’t represent.) Even though language can generate representations over an infinite domain, ‘thinking a possibility cannot make it so’ except in limited ways. Caves can be transformed into domiciles and named “homes”. To this limited mind there is within the world a recalcitrance, an extrarepresentational resistance. This means that human representations, unless they are true or false by definition, appear to be either true or false. Thus many representations are contingent, assertible or deniable on some warrant. Not all caves make domiciles. The world that appears to us in our representations is not necessarily the world that is. There is a gap between the representation of reality as it appears to us and whatever it is that makes our

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representations truly assertible or not, a gap not found in God’s mind, the intellectus archetypus. Our minds and God’s mind are two distinct kinds of possible intentional entities, two different kinds of minds. Self-awareness in the manifest image shares a number of metaphysical features with the supernatural. Our ‘self’ cannot be observed, even by itself. It has a form of necessary existence. As a presupposition of a used, hence meta-represented, representational system, it cannot fail to exist as long as the representational system it meta-represents is used, the basis of Descartes’ cogito. This self cannot consciously represent its own present non-existence – utter, ‘I don’t exist’ – without pragmatic anomaly, nor conceive its future non-existence (Bering, 2006, 2008). Relative to the system of representation, its existence is necessary. Normatively, its free choices are what are evaluated. Both morally and practically, it conceives itself as possessing the initiating power of free will within possibility. Such is the manifest image of humanity. 2.2

Cognition and the scientific image

Section 2.1 examined the nature of mind-reading as it appears to awareness within the manifest image of humanity (Sellars, 1963: 6). Dennett’s intentional stance and Grice’s pragmatics provide philosophical developments of the way human beings manifestly understand the whole range of teleological phenomena; action, function and communication. In its presentation of the self as agent who freely chooses to act on the basis of desire and belief, this is also presupposed by morality as it appears in the manifest image. As Sellars says, this image is how humanity became aware of itself in the world and thus became fully human. It seems clear that religion is a part of the manifest image. Within this image supernatural entities – including human spirits – are posited agents who are understood using the intentional stance. Now we must relate this manifest picture to the scientific image. I will try to map the manifest picture onto cognitive science, to suggest how the manifestly represented supernatural entities, intentional action, moral evaluation and communication can be understood in this scientific context. Cognitive science is the project of psychological explanation that conceives the mind as a functionally organized system of representations and operations on them. The mind creates symbols and manipulates them. This is the essence of any cognitive process. As in a computer, the operations are determined solely by the form of the representations involved. They are computable functions for which procedures of symbol manipulation can in principle be devised. For example, ‘times 2’ is the computable function we can write as, _2¼_. Given the form of any input, the function ‘ 2’ determines an output: 22¼4; 62¼12. This can be turned into an explicit

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mechanical procedure. Similarly, in the scientific image of the mind, a mental process consists of some input representation, a function or computational procedure having a causal role in the operation of the mind, which automatically yields some output representation. Such processes serve hierarchies of functions within the overall system of the mind. Consider a cognitive psychology of vision, from the initial representation of intensities on the array of retinal cells to three-dimensional mental models or other final outputs. Virtually all cognitive functioning is unconscious. We don’t know how we see, any more than how we understand a sentence. These unconscious processes of sub-personal psychology underlie the behaviour we observe as well as the limited representations of which we become consciously aware and have qualitative experiences. The manifest image can now be re-stated. It is how objective and sub-personal processes present themselves to personal or subjective awareness in intentional terms – how they are talked about and reflected upon. This cognitive psychological level of explanation is not reducible to brain processes. As I said in Chapter 1, a cognitive system doesn’t have to be instantiated in a physical brain, although we assume that the human mind, as it appears in the manifest image, emerged from the human brain through natural selection. But cognition is basically information processing and this can be instantiated in any device that can perform the appropriate effective procedures for the kind of mind in question; e.g. a robot, an auto-pilot or a brain. Very important mental aspects of the concept of the human person can be lodged outside the body as stored information: for example, in a book. Indeed, persons are represented, and thus exist, in the minds and memories of other persons. Aspects of persons thus can be interacted with in disembodied form; for example, Jesus or the Buddha. That the mind is instantiated in and emerges from something material is basic to materialism: that each mental event corresponds to some brain tokening. But this is not the same as intertheory reducibility. In principle, there may be a real but abstract psychological function – which explains a mental phenomenon and generates conscious experiences – that at least appears to have no directly corresponding neural mechanism (Libet, 2004: 85f.). Cognitive theories are also more or less abstract. They range from Chomsky’s linguistics, a very abstract characterization of the universal ‘internal-language’ which makes possible the growth of language in a child, through computational psychology which proposes models of psychological processes which can be implemented, to cognitive neuroscience, experimental neurophysiology and the study of the brain. There has been an explosion of new techniques and new sources of evidence: from pathologies, blindsight, brain imaging, archaeology, primate research and so on. However abstract, cognitive theories aim to be scientific, offering testable hypotheses.

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Cognitive pragmatics It’s time to further develop Sperber and Wilson’s (1995, 2002, 2004) relevance theory and apply it to mind-reading in order to deepen our picture of supernatural entities. Relevance theory develops Grice’s pragmatics within the cognitive paradigm. It remains an abstract approach, but it also feeds into both Chomsky-style explanation and experimental pragmatics. The cognitive principle of relevance Relevance theory claims that all cognitive processing is governed by relevance. This is a property possessed by an external stimulus or an inner representation, such as a thought or an assumption. (An assumption is a mental representation which is treated as true or possibly true.) These stimuli or representations can be more or less relevant to individuals depending on whether they have more positive cognitive effects for less processing effort when compared to other stimuli or representations. The relevance of an input to an individual is a trade-off between degree of processing effort required to obtain effects and degree of positive impact of those effects on an individual’s representation of the world, making it a better representation in some way. The more positive cognitive effects something has, the greater its relevance. The more processing effort required to obtain those effects, the less its relevance. Comparatively speaking, the input that is maximally relevant to an individual is the case where the individual obtains the most positive effects for the least effort. There is a trade-off between effects and effort. I will illustrate this below, but first to clarify positive effects. An example of a positive cognitive effect is a contextual effect, a term used in an earlier version of the theory in referring to the relevance of an input to a context. In this case, relevance is a measure of contextual effects over and against processing effort. Any input or representation derived from it has an effect on a context, which is the set of assumptions currently being used to process it. It may add a new assumption, a piece of new information treated as true. It may strengthen a previously held assumption, being further evidence for it. Or it may lead to the deletion of a previously held assumption, if it is inconsistent with new input. These operations are the contextual effects that determine the degree of relevance, relative to the effort required to derive them. They are the way that the new stimulus or representation positively fits into what is already believed. A contextual implication, Grice’s conversational implicature, is a contextual effect. In deriving a conversational implicature, new information is derived from input processed within a context of old, previously held assumptions. With respect to relevance to an individual, the new information thus derived positively impacts on the individual’s representation of the world. Sperber and Wilson’s (1995: 260) cognitive

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principle of relevance is that human cognition is geared to maximize relevance in all its processes. There are evolutionary and efficiency arguments for this, that we can’t go into here. Ostensive-inferential communication Being also a pragmatic theory, relevance theory is specifically about communication. It is argued that within the mind-reading module, there is a specialized sub-module for communication (Sperber and Wilson, 2002). It is now time to explain and illustrate that process, termed ostensive-inferential communication. The first phase of communication is ostension, ‘the action of showing, exhibition, manifestation’. “Ostension” is a philosophical terms for an intentional action that has the purpose of ‘identification, or drawing attention to, by pointing’ (Lyons, 1977: 637; Lyons, 1995: 83–85). It depends on some prior understanding of that to which attention is likely to be drawn among all the stimuli in a context. ‘Drawing attention to’ is the most important part of the definition. With respect to the context, an ostensive act is intended; first, to draw attention to itself, and secondly, to whatever it is trying to achieve. Given that minds automatically maximize relevance, for any intended stimulus to draw attention to itself, it will have to be the unique stimuli among those available for processing that yields most effects for least effort. The stimulus that will most likely do this is one that makes it manifest that the agent is making available further relevant information. An act of ostension communicates that there are further positive cognitive effects that the observer can gain with minimal processing effort. It is a ‘promissory note’, as it were. Thus Sperber and Wilson (1995: 49) define ostension as ‘behaviour which makes manifest an intention to make something manifest’ and is a ‘tacit guarantee of relevance’. This is the automatic first step if one intends to communicate because it communicates that very intention. The communicative principle of relevance The agent’s ostensive act makes manifest an intention to make something manifest; that is, a communicative intent. It must also tacitly convey the expectation that it is relevant to the observer. This is the key to communication. Sperber and Wilson (1995: 271; Wilson and Sperber, 2004: 612) use the formulation, ‘Every ostensive stimulus conveys a presumption of its own optimal relevance.’ This is the Communicative Principle of Relevance. They write, ‘Use of an ostensive stimulus, then, creates a PRESUMPTION OF RELEVANCE. The notion of optimal relevance is meant to spell out what the audience of an act of ostensive communication is entitled to expect in terms of effort and effect. . . .’ This is not, like Grice’s version of the intentional stance, a matter of normative rationality, what one ought to do if one wants to communicate. Rather optimal relevance follows automatically from the ostensively conveyed communicative intent plus the cognitive principle of maximal relevance. What is the

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presumption of optimal relevance? It is that the stimulus is ‘relevant enough to be worth the audiences’ processing effort’ and ‘it is the most relevant one compatible with the communicator’s abilities and preferences’. This delivers the promise of the ostension. So now the perceiver can presume the stimulus needs to be further processed for its positive impact, since the precise presentation of the stimulus is the maximally relevant way that the communicator could have used to convey the new information that they intended the perceiver to calculate. What will the perceiver’s mind do now? It will start processing cognitive effects and automatically stop when this new information seems worthwhile enough, because those are precisely the effects that have been achieved with least effort, hence the ones maximally relevant. These in all likelihood are the effects that the agent meantnn to convey. The perceiver has thus calculated the communicator’s informative intent in producing the communicative stimulus. Sperber and Wilson (2003: 613) put this as a comprehension procedure. ‘First, employ least effort in computing cognitive effects and second, stop when you are satisfied.’ Precisely these cognitive effects are the informative intent. Non-verbal and verbal communication I have introduced quite a lot of technical language. Examples will make clearer the pay-off of Sperber and Wilson’s ostensive-inferential account of communication. Consider once more Clive walking to the station as an example of ostensive communication. First, consider non-verbal communication. Clive is walking down the street towards the railway station carrying his suitcases. I observe him from across the busy street and Clive simultaneously recognizes me. He turns his gaze towards me, smiles, slows down and only partially breaking his gait, exaggeratedly swings his bags in the direction of the station. How will my mind process this visual input? According to relevance theory, the stimulus Clive presents is ostensive; the smile of recognition, the partial turning and slowing, the act of swinging the bags. I can’t help but process it as by far the most relevant stimulus in my field of vision because his actions are designed to attract my attention. They are foregrounded against the background of the traffic, other people, shops, etc. because, being ostensive and intending to convey that he intends to inform me of further relevant information, they convey the presumption of optimal relevance. Therefore, my mind/brain expects the stimuli to be worth processing – to get this promised information – and to be the most relevant possible way to achieve this compatible with Clive’s abilities and preferences. Next, therefore, I expend some processing effort. I start from the premise that the station is at the bottom of the road; that Clive is heading in that direction and carrying bags, hence is going to the station. But that doesn’t

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satisfactorily account for the extra stimuli of the swung bags in a context in which he both recognized me and knew I observed him. So I continue my processing effort. That he swung his bags towards the station leads me to the further inference that people who are heading to stations carrying bags are going to catch trains. I conclude that he is on his way to catch a train. I could expend further effort and draw more inferences but if this conclusion satisfies me, I stop. I could conclude that Clive’s ‘informative intent’ was to get me to infer that he was going to the station to catch a train. However, I could have understood this without him also exaggeratedly swinging his suitcase and he must know that. I haven’t improved my cognitive state enough; the information isn’t worthwhile enough. My mind remains unsatisfied, so does some more work. With more effort, I might conclude that he was just making ‘small talk’ and had to use a gesture because the road separated us. Since he was informing me of something that was obvious, that we both would already assume was mutually manifest in our mutual cognitive environment, maybe he was simply doing no more than confirming this mutuality and our relationship. With this conclusion, I’m truly satisfied and I stop. I conclude that this was his ultimate informative intent. It is important to note that although I’m tediously translating it into English, all the processing is automatic and unconscious, involving sub-personal computations with mental representations. Language need not be involved. I may gain a phenomenological sense of what Clive ‘meant’, but not necessarily represented in English. That would involve useless extra processing effort. I might think some of the above words in ‘inner speech’ . . . ‘ah, he’s off to catch his train’, but that is not essential to my comprehension of his informative intent. Now let’s add the verbal communication. Consider the same scene again. This time upon recognizing me, Clive behaves exactly the same way, except that he does not swing his bags in the direction of the station. Instead, he shouts out, ‘Must run.’ This is another ostensive stimuli conveying communicative intent and hence a guarantee of optimal relevance. I begin processing. In this case, I conclude, not only that he is going to the station – already mutually manifest in the situation and so not that worthwhile – but that he is in a hurry to catch a train. I could stop there. I would, if I was satisfied. But if not yet satisfied, with some extra effort, it is possible to derive the implicature that being in a hurry makes it impossible for him to stop and engage further with me. If this follows, it also follows that he would have liked to stop. This is quite a rich message about our relationship, and satisfied, I stop. I conclude that this was his informative intent. I might have got the same message in the non-verbal case, but it would have required a lot more work because I didn’t know that he was in a hurry, now conveyed by the verb “run”. Linguistic input is a lot more structured than swinging suitcases

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in the direction of the station. In fact, its logical form requires special processing, to be considered in Chapter 3. Processing for relevance in mind-reading The question now is: how does relevance theory explain mind-reading more generally, not just with respect to communication? How does relevance theory process those phenomena that are philosophically analysed, using the intentional stance, as goal-directed, teleological behaviour? A relevance theory of action: production First, there is noncommunicative goal-directed action. I will analyse this with respect to: (i) the production of action by an agent; (ii) the interpretation of action by an observer; (iii) the interpretation of the function of artefacts. The cognitive principle of relevance states that there is a universal tendency to maximize relevance; to produce the most positive cognitive effects with the least effort. In producing a non-communicative action, the mind will automatically aim to do this. In a context, the positive cognitive effect will be the achievement of a future result that is most desirable to the agent. Let’s call this effect, the “goal” of the action, the desired effect that the agent intends to achieve. The effort is the mental effort involved in calculating what is required in order to achieve that intended effect. Before that, however, the choice of the goal itself will also be determined by maximal relevance. There will be competing goals coming from various parts of the cognitive system, along with prospective means of achieving them. The agent’s mind will construct a context and represent the goal that is maximally relevant. It will always unconsciously be weighing up which goal is most relevant – that most desirable with least effort – and acting on that. This goal may pop into mind, reaching consciousness. This process is similar to that proposed by Bernard Baar’s (1988, 1997) global workspace theory, in which the multiple unconscious processes of the mind/brain are always competing for the spotlight of consciousness. The one that shouts loudest, makes the largest demand for attention, becomes conscious. The cognitive principle of relevance motivates this dynamism. The weighing up process may involve consistency between short-term and long-term goals, the strength of external demands for action or role requirements, perceptual feedback concerning problems with the current goal, new internal demands of motivational systems and emotions, and so on. There are various ways that maximal relevance might be achieved through the trade-off between effect and effort. There are contexts where the goal becomes fixed, where what is desirable is pre-specified by a social role in context such as, ‘I have a job to do.’ Once the goal is fixed, the other aspect of maximal relevance, processing effort, is free to vary but will aim for least

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effort. Procedurally, the mind begins to process, working out what is necessary and sufficient to achieve the fixed goal, then stops when the goal is reached. In other contexts, the process could be quite flexible, a testing over time of effort and effect, without early fixing either of the goal or the actions. The meta-goal here is seeking a maximally relevant lower-order goal. In some cases, the ease of the effort will dominate, and in other cases the strength of the effect of the achievable goal. In some cases, a path of behaviour may be followed because it is so easy, without becoming aware of a goal. In this case, we can’t really talk of action in the usual way. Because half the equation is absent, the positive effect, there is no calculation of maximal relevance. This is exploratory action, with only the general meta-goal of trying to find out if there is a desirable goal at the end of this effort. There is opportunistic action. In this case, a possible action presents itself in a context, an opportunity. The agent calculates that with low effort, the action will produce a previously unintended desirable effect. It is as if one is invited to act. There is a favourable proportionality between the ease of the action and the desirability of its outcome. So the goal is fixed and the act performed. But the represented possibility of the action, the effort, came first, not the effect. Nevertheless, the act ends up goal-directed. (An example of this might be hopping on a fortuitously passing bus, instead of walking.) Sub-types are captured by colloquialisms, “trying it on” or “taste and see”. A possible action that costs little is performed to see if the effects it produces reach some imagined or promisingly desirable conclusion. The agent stops when either the desirable conclusion is reached or the efforts increase without much effect. Interpretively, this action would also appear to be goal-directed. The stable or chaotic nature of a life will depend on the mix of ways of determining action. There are a number of other factors that need to be built into this picture. First, processing will depend on the agent’s abilities – physical, background information, how much practice or experience one has had, etc. – and how much social or instinctive pre-programming there is in the genre or template of action; for example, the flight deck’s pre-flight check-list or natural exploratory behaviour. Second, I pointed out above that in teleological systems there are always alternative ways to achieve the same goal. These are what constitute different styles, variant ways of achieving the same thing. Thus, processing depends not only on the agent’s abilities, but on the agent’s preferences with respect to these variations. Least effort is relative to stylistic preference. Style becomes a secondary goal with respect to how the primary goal is achieved, so least effort is preserved. Agents may have a preference for certain goals, attained in a particular style that is part of their identity. Third, a final goal of any complexity will have many sub-goals forming a chain of goals, or intentions. As we saw earlier, teleology/intentionality can produce a chain of goals up or down to higher or lower levels. When an agent

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fixes a goal with respect to positive effects, it provides a ‘stop’ for processing effort. Finally, with respect to socially specified desirable outcomes, effort may be partially reduced by a pre-set routine. This lowers processing effort and adjusts the trade-off between effort and effect. One can get more effects for less cost, which is why the routine exists in the first place. Now consider designing or using an artefact. The production of any technology, an artefact, a tool or a bureaucratic routine, involves a higherorder goal which meta-represents a lower-order goal. The designer has a higher-order goal, which is to design an artefact or routine which achieves a lower-order goal. The designer’s higher-order goal is both externally embodied in the technology as its function, an intentional object, genre, script or set of regulations. And in a technology, the lower-order goal-directed intentional object is detachable from the higher-order intentional system which created it. But the artefact, tool or routine is itself the embodiment of the designer’s intentionality in making it. Any user of a technology takes over the designer’s goal, the function of the technology which the design achieves and which the designer aimed for, if the user is using the artefact as it was intended. Producing a technology has the same form as for any action. There is a fixed goal, the function of the design, what it is for, its intentionality. The technology is designed to achieve that goal with the least effort, in a context, subject to both the designer’s and the material’s ability (its availability, cost, etc.), with possible stylistic or free variation. Technologies are connected to each other to form larger technological systems in which any technology will ordinarily perform a small sub-function.

A relevance theory of action: interpretation The next question is: how does mind-reading interpret an action? It is reasonable to assume that the human cognitive system is adapted to treat any apparently intentional entity whose behaviour it processes as geared to maximize relevance, given its abilities and preferences (Wilson and Sperber, 2004: 610). There is evidence that the mind/brain has specialized ways of recognizing an input which appears to be intentional. In Chapter 1, I mentioned the recognition of animacy, that self-generated behaviour provides a special kind of stimuli. From a developmental point of view, there is a lot of evidence that even infants exhibit the ability to recognize intentional behaviour in both human and non-human agents (Johnson, 2005), biological motion, goals and intentions (Csibra, 2003). Intended movements differ from other kinds of perceived changes and this newness makes them informationally rich, comparatively speaking – even if not ostensive. So we assume that the mind is set to detect goal-directed action and some stimuli are most relevant when processed in this way. Hence, the principles of interpretation will be:

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A. The observed stimulus-action is most relevant if treated as goal-directed. B. The observed stimulus-action is the most relevant way to achieve the goal compatible with the abilities and preferences of the agent who produced the stimulus. The apparently intentional action is the most relevant way of achieving a goal for the agent. Thus, we can calculate the goal that would be achieved, given the observed action, with least effort. That will be the goal the agent intended. The comprehension procedure will be to begin processing the observed stimulusaction and stop when the first inferable goal is reached, compatible with assumptions about their abilities and preferences. That is what the agent intended. We saw that such goal-directed actions form chains of sub-goals. What governs the interpreter in their derivation of further goals in the chain? The answer is that this observed act is non-ostensive. It was not designed for the interpreter but for the agent’s own purposes. How deeply the interpreter needs to understand the observed agent’s goals depends not on the agent’s purposes, but on the interpreter’s. Hence the interpreter will maximize relevance and only stop interpreting when they are satisfied with the positive cognitive effects. That will determine how far the interpreter proceeds down the chain of goals. Remember what a cognitive theory is doing. It is giving an abstract psychological account of cognitive functions, which are instantiated and achieved through lower-level processes, ultimately physical. In these terms we are not saying that the interpreter of an action possesses a theory of the agent’s mind at the psychological level and is therefore rationally re-constructing the agent’s inferences. We are saying that the observer simply processes the input, the behaviour observed, for maximal relevance automatically following the cognitive principle of relevance, while assuming that the input is goal-directed on the basis of perceptual cues. We don’t have to impute any particular mental process to the agent, although action is ordinarily talked about this way in the manifest image. Likewise, although neuronal mirroring of action might be a cue that it is goal-directed, we are not simulating the agent’s mind. The assumptions used in processing the input are simply the same ones we ordinarily treat as true if we were performing the act ourselves, adding any extra assumptions we might have about the abilities or preferences of the agent. We simply process the input for maximal relevance, following the cognitive principle of relevance, on the assumption that the action is goal-directed. The mind/brain of the observer and that of the observed simply do the same thing because they are both naturally built the same way, geared to maximize relevance. In general, interpreting minds can safely assume as a default position that all behaviours of animate entities are goal-directed unless there is evidence to the contrary. The two obvious parameters for variation are: first, the abilities and preferences of the agent; and second, whether the stimulus is ostensive or not.

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Within cognitive science, there is considerable evidence for essentialism particularly with respect to folk biology (Hirschfield and Gelman, 1994; Pinker, 1997). This is the assignment of an unobservable inner essence to biological kinds. Among the features we would learn about such essential natures is the expectation of the type of mind/brain from which the entity’s goal-directedness originates. Each such type has its own nature, its own abilities and preferences. How do we interpret an artefact? As noted above, an artefact is an object embodying a goal-directed intentionality, which is its function. It is my own intentionality if I myself created or appropriated the object for my purposes. So, if I was the designer or appropriator, then my understanding of how to use it is in terms of my own intentions. Alternatively, I attribute the function of the object to another; how it was meant to be used by an unknown agent. If I use it in the way for which it was intended, the artefact is an expression of both my own and the designer’s intentionalities. If I use it for something for which it wasn’t intended, I am appropriating it for another purpose. The perceptual cue to interpreting any object as an artefact is that, like an action, it is most relevant if treated as goal-directed. This kind of perception will be the default position in the context where I am interpreting the object in order to use it. The process of interpreting an artefact would be the same as interpreting an action. Thus the interpreter expects that: A. The observed stimulus-object is most relevant if interpreted as goaldirected; that is, having a function. B. The observed stimulus-object is the most relevant way to achieve the goal, its function, compatible with the abilities and preferences of the agent who produced it. Objects such as these are imbued with the mind that created them, externalizing its intentionality. A and B show how we figure out how to use something. It is the reverse of how to design or appropriate something for a use, where the goal is fixed, and the mind calculates the most relevant way to achieve it. Even if there is no obvious, strongly manifest designing agent, agency is still more weakly manifested to the interpreting mind in the process of determining any object’s apparent goal-directedness. In the case of natural functions, the essence of the whole containing system appears to be a tacit agent determining the function of its parts. (For biological systems of course, this essence is instantiated in the intentional purposiveness encoded in the species DNA as it operates in the context of the whole organism within its environment.) To the naı¨ve observer of a natural system, what is observed appears to be produced by an unknown agency weakly manifesting itself; making the water of the river seek the sea or the plant turn to follow the sun.

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The crucial points about these principles for our purposes are: first, their structure essentially implies that some agency caused the action or artefact in order to produce a goal; and second, the principles are indifferent to the particular kind of intentional system which is the source of the goaldirectedness. It doesn’t matter to the human cognitive system what kind of entity the agent is, whether it is known or unknown, or even whether there is any real intentionality at all. The input only has to be such that it is most relevantly interpreted as being the result of the goal directedness of an intentional system. Therefore, the very process of understanding this kind of action or resulting artefact implies a conceptual structure with the semantic argument or participant role of AGENT, which is the cause or initiator of the PROCESS and its outcome. There is a large literature on such roles within semantics (see Halliday, 1994; Jackendoff, 1990). Teleological interpretation presupposes that something with intentionality, an animate instigator with volition, has instigated a process in order to bring about a goal. There is no reason to think, however, that during the automatic processing of stimuli, the AGENT argument need reach consciousness. Rather, if the agent is unknown or irrelevant, it would be merely a place-holder or at best subliminally available as a possibility because present in the semantic structure of the representation. The principles above will account for the interpretation of the actions of a known agent; for example, Clive’s action of walking to the station. The observed stimulus-action is perceived as most relevant if goal-directed. Then a context is constructed in order to infer, using the least processing effort, which goal he can bring about by walking in this way. This will be the first goal inferred, namely that he is going to the station. Exactly the same process is used for the interpretation of the action of any animate being, adjusted for their abilities and preferences. Now let us turn to three classes of goal-directed actions where there is an unknown agent in the representation. First, consider an artefact such as a tool; for example, the screwdriver mentioned earlier. This object is most relevant when viewed as goal-directed in the sense of having a function. If one didn’t know what the screwdriver was for, you would begin processing by constructing a context. The most accessible assumptions would be in terms of the exact match between the shape of the tip of the screwdriver and that of a class of screw-head, the torsion possibilities of the grip, etc. The first conclusion reached would be that the artefact was intended – by the agent that caused it to exist – in order to insert a screw with this type of head. Then you would stop. Next consider archaeology, where the central problem is to understand the minds of unknown agents. Here the very recognition that something is an artefact occurs when it is most relevant if treated as goal-directed. The way to comprehend how the object functioned is to construct a context to calculate

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the most relevant effect that it could produce, given suppositions about abilities and preferences. That would be its goal or function and the archaeologist can conclude that that is how the unknown agents used it. This is how flint implements are interpreted with respect to the nature of their cutting edges. Finally, consider the behaviour of plants and the functioning of their structures. The behaviour of plants is most relevantly understood as the performance of goal-directed actions. Thus the biologist constructs contexts in which the observed behaviour is the most relevant way, compatible with the plant’s abilities and preferences, in which the whole organism achieves some outcome crucial for its survival. That is the goal of the plant’s behaviour or the function of that part of the plant. If the plant is instead viewed as an artefact, then the observed behaviour or structure is viewed as the most relevant way that the goal of some unknown agent – the ‘spirit of the species’ or Mother Nature – has been achieved. We saw that goal-directedness was chained. If relevant to the observer, the same process of understanding can be continued with respect to the plant’s function in the ecology of its environment, a higher containing system, and so on, until one reaches the implied agent, the whole planet as one living system. The path up the hill So far we have shown that the relevance-theoretic account of the mindreading interpretation of key systems tacitly posits widespread agency, either unknown or attributable to a thing’s essential nature. The next important step is to realize that this kind of comprehension tacitly arises more generally in the mind/brain’s interaction with nature every time one approaches it with some desirable goal. I will use my own experience here as an example. In Algonquin Park in Canada there is a 5 km path, the Bat Lake trail, through the rugged bush of the rocky Canadian Shield. The trail begins in an alluvial sandy area with a covering of pine, balsam and spruce. It then rises through a hardwood forest, winding steeply up a large hill through a gradually narrowing defile within which a small creek gently tumbles. There are places where there are steep rocky cliffs on either side. Finally, after a slow climb you arrive at the top of the defile to find a pond, the source of the creek. Consider this ‘trail’ as an artefact, discovered by the agent that created it and marked it out. As a child interacting with the forest, I found many such routes up various local hills and ridges. The point is that the action of climbing is geared to maximal relevance. Given the represented goal of reaching the top, the maximally relevant route is calculated by maximizing positive cognitive effects – representations guiding the bodily movements that are literally the steps and handholds in achieving this – with least effort, given abilities and preferences. Now the

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surprising thing is: there actually is a maximally relevant route up the hill. It is the best route, given your abilities and preferences. You discover it. It is already there. Alternatively, say one was simply wandering in the forest, the action of following the route might be opportunistic or exploratory. In this case, scanning the scene with the most general goal of simply finding the easiest way to go next, and with no particular intention of ascending the hill, the maximally relevant route would appear as an ‘invitation’ or ‘opportunity’. It invites the wanderer to adopt the desirable goal of climbing up the hill, instead of heading some other way. Regarding the hill this way, in terms of human purposes, the human actor is simply discovering and appropriating what is already there; the natural handholds, usefully placed stones, narrow spots in creeks, just right for achieving the goal of getting up the hill – the maximally relevant stimuli. Since this is a discovery, it appears that having ‘a best way up’ is an intentional property of the hill with respect to the human body: a feature of the hill ‘about’ the body. Thus having a naturally occurring maximally relevant path up to the top is a functional aspect of the hill in the context of human goals – when the hill is processed in the context of the goal of climbing it. The existence of such a seemingly designed path tacitly implies an unknown agent that caused it, either in the hill’s essential nature or some other unknown agent, which brought into being the hill’s intentionality with respect to us; which so exquisitely fulfils our needs. This is our earlier definition of a supernatural entity. On the other hand, if a desirable goal that appears achievable is frustrated, the mind can calculate that some agency is resisting our desire, preventing the discovery of the maximally relevant path. Maybe the world is such that no path to the desired effect is worth the effort it would require, so many barriers have been put in our way. Such an implicit understanding arises automatically as a potential from the cognitive process of processing nature with respect to human goals. Cognition here is a feature of the whole body. (Any organism that couldn’t read nature in this way wouldn’t last long.) When processed by the human mind/brain with respect to potential bodily movement in pursuit of its goal, there really is a maximally relevant path up the hill. This is because of human adaptation to the natural environment. We are intentionally related to the hill as part of the environment to which we are adapted, a mutual aboutness. It is to us like the receptor is to the neurotransmitter, with the same mutual intentionality within the containing eco-system. The attribution of an unknown agent – or an essence to the hill – is a form of understanding human adaptation. My story of the path up the hill illustrates potential thoughts arising from the cognitive interaction of nature and human goals. Therefore, in principle the human cognitive system can generate representations of innumerable spirits of the essences of things or related supernatural entities in the myriad contexts in

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which we use the natural environment. We can conclude that the supernatural is simply predicted and explained by the interaction of the cognitive principle of relevance with the teleological structure of mind-reading in the context of human adaptation. Its figurativeness automatically arises from the intermodular interaction of this process with the presuppositions of naı¨ve physics. We now see why the intentional stance works. For every discoverable maximally relevant way to perform a goal-directed human action with respect to nature the processing mind/brain can discover the potential representation of a corresponding goal-directedness in nature with respect to that act. This natural goal-directedness implies that it was brought into being by an imperceptible agent or active inner essence, whose intentional states explain its behaviour. This is a supernatural entity as defined above. This is most obvious when the relation with nature is quite direct, as with weather, herds, crops, hunting, etc. We now have a stereoscopic vision of the relation of the manifest and the scientific image. In performing a goal-directed act with respect to nature, an agent need not be conscious of the apparent corresponding natural goal-directedness. If a goal is easily achieved without such awareness, it is not worth the extra processing effort required. This would be increasingly the case the more reliable and effective is the technology for imposing human goals on nature; the pervasiveness of the human world. Natural goal-directedness is most likely to be processed if something goes wrong or is against expectations, when nature has been misread, is tricky or risky, or appears to be frustrating human goals – in other words, in a state of stress. The role of religion is to mediate a ‘correct’ relationship with the imperceptible agency or active inner essences of things with respect to human goals. Communication with the supernatural In practical reasoning, agents process stimuli with respect to their goals. In these contexts, but especially if the goal might easily be frustrated, certain things will attract the most attention. They stand out just because they are most relevant to that human purpose; premises to the maximally relevant way to achieve the goal. Having your attention grabbed in this way with respect to further information and ostension are very close; both promise to reward further processing. This means that such a stimulus could quite naturally be treated as ostensive. If so, the communication sub-module will automatically kick in. The stimulus will seem to convey the presumption of its own optimal relevance. And this changes everything. The perceiver is transformed into a communicator receiving messages from supernatural entities. There are messages from the inner essences of things – the route actually was an invitation. The way opens for communication with the supernatural; input is

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transformed. Perceived this way, some stimuli appear to have a mind-like source with recognizably communicative and informative intents – which promise relevance, positive cognitive effects – however unclear. Such new inter-personally derived information may be more relevant with respect to the actual human goal in question in some contexts than that derived from more theoretical modes of processing. We saw above that mind is abstract and doesn’t have to be instantiated in a human body. Therefore, it can be attributed to the essential nature of the hill, the herd, the annual floods, or any unseen agency, any of the myriad supernatural entities. These relationships are analogous to those we have with human beings we have known, or public figures we know about, the dead, absent, or those residing in our memories. The dead or those absent whom we knew well or ‘feel close to’ are interacted with imaginatively. In a dialogue conducted in inner speech, we say to ourselves, ‘What would so and so have said in this context?’ and attribute our own answering thought to what they would have said. Exactly as is the case with living persons, so in the case of the supernatural: the precise nature of the attributed mind and its personality follows from the unique abilities and preferences assigned to it in processing its input, communicative or otherwise. So if we reflect upon the maximally relevant path up the hill, we can treat the process of its discovery, not as product of our own thinking, but as an actual communication from a supernatural entity. It can be comprehended as an ostensive stimuli arising within us from an unknown communicator that reveals the path to us. It is ‘inspired’, a message like a prophecy, divination or revelation. It seems to be an ostensive communication from the supernatural arising within our own mind. Communication with abstract supernatural personalities with respect to our human goals thus develops naturally with respect to external stimuli or our own thoughts, when these are taken as ostensive. To conclude, it is perhaps worthwhile to speculate about whether this potential for supernaturalism – consciousness of the apparent intentionality of nature with respect to human goals – might figure in human adaptation. (I will simply tip-toe into this mine-field.) The question is: is it only a necessary by-product of some adaptation or could this property, this potential, have been directly sensitive to selection pressures, when conjoined with other properties? At first, it looks like a Gould and Lewontin (1979) spandrel, a necessary by-product of some more fundamental design feature; i.e. the space between two arches which meet at right angles to support a dome, often exploited for art (see Dennett, 1995: 267–281). In this scenario, it is a necessary by-product of the adaptive design of the mind-reading system, not directly selected for. But this can’t be the whole story, since I think it is clear that a mind-reading system of some kind, involving meta-representation,

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is pre-human and shared with the great apes (DeWaal, 2005; Downes, 2006). I thus speculate that the potential for supernaturalism had to be made manifest through language, in consciousness, to be realized (and culturally developed). Could this intersection of a potential and language abilities itself be adaptive, and hence lead to a natural disposition to understand input this way? Is it possible that the capacity to read input of many kinds as if it was intentional with respect to human goals may have been sensitive to selection pressures in the context of the early human environment? With culturally disciplined causal explanation undeveloped, the intentional stance would give the first modern humans a conscious grasp of the species’ flexible, opportunistic relation to nature, by analogy with the inter-personal. Supernaturalism forms a basis for inter-modular cultural elaboration, which is adaptive; it creates the ‘symbolic’ human niche. Furthermore, when intersecting with inferential abilities, supernaturalism also functions to integrate the massively modular mind/brain; as we shall see, developing the conscious connection of mind-reading with moral normativity. And co-operation is adaptive to social animals. 2.3

The relevance of morality

We now have a relevance theory account of the production and comprehension of action. The next task is to ask how this cognitive psychology of action interacts with moral and other norms in the context of religion, in particular how both the supernatural and rationalization apply to normative matters. In the context of the manifest image of humanity, we saw that the evaluation of action with respect to moral responsibility presupposed the intentional stance. Moral reasoning and evaluation involves a narrative about a self that freely chooses to act, who intends to perform actions in order to bring about its goals. Let’s also be clear that what we are doing is not moral philosophy; this is not an argument about what is actually binding on human beings. I won’t rehearse again all the types of religious normativity or the background in evolutionary psychology. I argued before that although morality was reflectively developed by reason into a manifest system of laws or norms, it had a basis in innate normative and social intelligence. In particular, it originated in kin altruism and forgiving tit-for-tat as they interact with social dimensions of power and solidarity. We suggested that these are adaptive properties of the human genotype that evolved to generate cooperating populations in which each individual’s genes were more likely to survive. But these are instincts or dispositions, experienced as a sense of being obliged, and input to the other aspects of the affective-motivational. I am not claiming that agents are really or objectively bound by their moral instincts. An ‘ought’ is not derivable from the fact that there are such dispositions.

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But at some unconscious level of mental representations, these genotypical processes will be encoded. There will be a deontic process that places the input of conceptual representations of actions under the operators O (standing for ought to be done) or P (standing for permitted) with respect to how they benefit kin or figure in a tit-for-tat action sequence. (For the purposes of argument, I will assume from now on that this is a plausible account of innate normative intelligence as it impacts on morality.) I will call such representations, “obligations”. From these modalities, dispositions are derived about what an agent must do or not do in context, what is a desirable future state of affairs with respect to norms. There will also be a mechanism that attaches propositional attitudes consisting of various evaluative concepts (GOOD or BAD etc.) to representations of states of affairs and of agents with respect to these obligations and outcomes. From this, memory can construct entries for agents that log a rich evaluative dimension to narratives; their reputations as good or bad persons. It is clear that how these basic representations are phenotypically expressed, what one actually ought to do or not do, utterly depends on contexts. For example, an instinct to do good for kin or forgive after tit-for-tat will lead to an infinite number of various acts in different contexts. In this sense, terms like “good” or “bad” signify what Sperber and Wilson (1998: 108) usefully call pro-concepts on the analogy with pronouns. They are merely place-holders expressing a general positive evaluation, for other more specific representations – good or bad acts, outcomes, or agents – which must be inferred in each context. Likewise, whether an act will be conceived as a DEFECTION, another general proconcept, depends on specific expectations of what ought to have been done or not done in that context. All this is ongoing input to emotions and motives. On the model of the principles and parameters of Chomsky’s linguistics, the innate part of moral normativity will be very schematic. It is just the knowledge required to grow an adult sense of right and wrong, given adequate input. The principles of the faculty itself won’t tell the agent what is the right or wrong thing to do in particular contexts. That will have to be worked out. These basic moral concepts are the result of human adaptation to a specific environment; that constituted by other individuals in the evolutionary context of small groups of closely related kin and where each individual’s actions are not fully predictable. Each one can co-operate or defect in each context. This creates a real set of possibilities, which we can term “the logic of co-operation”. This logic is an extended phenotypical potential. It consists of all the possible ways the moral-norm genotype can be culturally expressed. This suggests that evaluative terms like “good” and “bad” are not just expressions of emotion (Ayer, 1936/1990). They are objective assessments of acts or strategies with respect to this logic of co-operation.

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But since obligations are merely normative, it is to be expected that there will be non-co-operation on the level of what actually happens. It is logically possible that in some contexts defection is empirically more probable than co-operation. If this were the case, an actual social order may be Hobbesian in spite of the intuitive basis of moral obligations. Obligations don’t refer to what is, but what ought to be. Normative teaching, with its endless injunctions, accusations and condemnations, is one of the main features of scriptures. There are evolutionary reasons why a disjunction between the norms delivered by moral intelligence and what actually happens might be expected. For a start, the original selecting environment was the small kin group, with its typical social order. The extension of obligations to larger differentiated populations of strangers must be by virtue of reflective beliefs, the rationalized elaborations of a culture. Secondly, there are many genuine motivations to defect, both within individuals and in the competitive dynamics within and between groups, which reflect the diverse pressures of the conflicted functions in the mind/brain and the complexity of social context. Evolution is indifferent with respect to certain levels of inter-personal and inter-group defection in co-operative social species, a tolerance that will vary according to the environmental context. The levels of inhibition demanded, or the ‘self-emptying’ and ‘universality’ of rationalized religion are ideals. Therefore, they are impossible to achieve, except very unevenly. But, as we shall suggest, a fully rationalized moral norm like universal human rights can still claim to be real and actually binding. As noted in Chapter 1, there are idealized game-theoretic models, like the Prisoner’s Dilemma, which allow us to study certain aspects of this logic. A fundamental problem is the misleading nature of such models. This is a place where Sellar’s stereoscopic vision of the two images of humanity, the manifest and the scientific, can again be invoked. The game-theoretic image of humanity is determined by the opportunity for mathematical modelling typical of science for this area of inquiry. But human beings are not just rational gamers motivated only by their own self-interest. They only behave this way in very special circumstances. Indeed, the scientific image’s ‘economic man’ has been challenged within economics itself. The genotype only specifies how to co-operate – an adaptation to others, selected because it favours individual reproductive success – not how this might be manifested in new cultural contexts. Within the manifest image, the basic representation of morality is a phenotypic expression of this adaptation but as it is conditioned by other cognitive capacities, by cognitive flexibility, and above all, by social context. I mentioned the problem of the stranger. The logic of co-operation changes when populations are such that individuals either do not repeatedly interact over time or cannot assess their degree of genetic

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relationship. This generates many new non-basic cultural concepts representing the stranger, anonymity, the crowd, human types, class and caste, the state, even slavery. There is a wonderful analysis of the emergence of a new public language describing ‘the crowd’ in Walter Benjamin’s thoughts on ‘the phantasmagoria of Parisian life’ during the modern emergence of vast cities during the nineteenth century (Benjamin, 1969/1973).

Faux-Kinship There are a number of general strategies available to the phenotype in these circumstances; faux-kinship, and others discussed in Chapter 1 such as norm enforcement, prevention of defection, retributive justice. If the family is a population structured in terms of actual socially accredited genetic kinship, co-operation within it has an instinctive basis in kin altruism. Faux-kin relations attempt to access that same altruism in cases where genetic relatedness is unknown. People can be members of tribes, clans or bands, be ethnically defined, or have legal citizenship. Clans or ethnic communities often have narratives of origin explaining faux-kinship on the basis of descent from an imagined heroic figure, historical or animal, whose essence symbolizes group identity. Indeed, any human grouping, even when fairly ad hoc, generates an affectively powerful extension of “I” into “we”, has normative expectations and motivates displays of co-operation as a condition of identity. Religions themselves also constitute aspects of the social identity of some human groups. This is religious normativity as it constitutes a person-making way of life. To the degree that religious norms simply express identities they are a faux-kin strategy. They function like accents, dialects or standard languages and enforce norms through identity in the same way. Any such identity function will motivate conformity to other religious norms as well.

The public lexicon As I noted in Chapter 1, many religions specialize in normativity, some more than others, and make it systematic. All normativity is about ‘how to be and what to do’, but moral issues involve specifically moral concepts applied to agents with respect to interpersonal behaviour. Religion reflectively elaborates moral thinking. It puts these developments into words, into the public lexicon (Sperber and Wilson, 1998). This makes representations of both deontic modality and evaluative attitudes to the representations involved manifest; that is, ‘perceptible or inferable’. In relevance theory, for conceptual cognition, a ‘fact is manifest to an individual at a given time if and only if he is capable at that time of representing it mentally and accepting its representation as true or

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probably true’. And a ‘cognitive environment of an individual is a set of facts that are manifest to him’ (Sperber and Wilson, 1995: 39). Manifestness is also a matter of degree: we can be more or less capable of the representation of the facts. Assumptions can also be more or less manifest. An assumption is a conceptual representation ‘treated by the individual as representations of the actual world’ (Sperber and Wilson, 1995: 2). In the case of a universal obligation, it is made manifest to the hearer or reader that the communicator is also communicating that they are committed to certain modal and evaluative attitudes to the content. The hearer constructs an assumption schema to the effect that the communicator thinks that everybody ought to treat these states of affairs as deontically obligatory or permitted and morally good or bad. The evaluations are made mutually manifest, become part of the participant’s mutual cognitive environment. The more authority attributed to the communicator the greater the force of the binding (this is a matter for Chapters 5 and 6). The more the evaluative representations are repeated or used, the more manifest and the more cognitively accessible they become. The denser the social network making it manifest that all participants share in a mutual cognitive environment, the more normative force they exert. Being part of the religious group is signalled by accepting these representations of attitude as a basis for inferential work, for reflection, action and responsibility. Reflective development of this public lexicon abounds in all the world religions. It is expressed in dicta or maxims, proverbs, law codes and regulations, stories, parables or narratives, as well as theories and an interpretative literature throughout the various written canons. Confucianism is highly oriented to the ethical – in the sense of how to live – and provides an example. As Smart (1969/1971: 198f) points out, Confucius’ teachings involve a number of key concepts. One example is the word, “li”, translated as “ceremonial”, a “propriety or reverence” which should govern all action. Another term is “tao”, usually translated as “The Way” and which for Confucius means the virtuous and harmonious form of life. There are normative goals for a cohesive social order adapted to nature. There is some codification in the Confucian tradition; for example, in the five key social relationships – father and son, older and younger brother, husband and wife, elder and younger, ruler and subject – and the attitudes to be adopted as appropriate for each. But in the Analects, Confucius’ teaching is much more particularistic, consisting of responses to situations, dicta, proverbs, etc. which display his wisdom. This public lexicon is meant to be added to the encyclopaedia and then interpreted in context and applied to living situations. Hoobler and Hoobler (1993: 75) write,

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The Analects has served as a guide to life for hundreds of millions, perhaps billions, of people in the twenty five hundred years since it was written. Generations of students memorized the entire book as the first stage of their education. They were not expected to understand it fully, but by committing it to memory, they would create in their minds a storehouse of thought that would deepen in significance as they grew older. They could spend the rest of their lives pondering its meaning and discovering how it applied in their own lives. According to the personal testimony of those who did this, the book takes on greater significance as one grows older and experiences life. Through young adulthood, middle age, and old age, one comes to understand Confucius’ words more fully and appreciate their importance.

Memorization of that which is not fully understood suggests that, like learning multiplication tables or spelling, one is not so much reading the text, as putting both concepts and attitudes to them into long-term memory or the encyclopaedia as tools for future use. The repetitive nature of religious input also points to the same conclusion. Much religious literature – for example, the Judeo-Christian Bible, the Koran, the Talmud of rabbinical Judaism, etc. are all used in a similar way. For example, in explaining the liturgical use of the Koran, Michael Cook (2000: 77) writes, ‘The Muslim worshipper does not read the Koran, but rather recites it.... This goes with the strong emphasis which the culture places on learning the Koran by heart.’ In Catholic schools children used to memorize the catechism. This public language provides cues for inferential work in situations, building up rich and accessible ‘files’ within concepts in the mental encyclopaedia. Much of this lexicalization is always very general or unspecified involving pro-concepts (where it does not involve exemplary narratives). For its application it will need inferential work in actual situations. Furthermore, as Sperber and Wilson (1998) argue, the public lexicon points to the construction of many further ad hoc concepts in context, forming thoughts for which we have no single word, but which can have conceptual identity and stability in spite of that. We have many more concepts than we have words for them (Sperber and Wilson, 1998: 121). Consider the Law of Moses, ‘Honour your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land which the Lord your God gives you’ (Ex.20: 12; Deut.5: 16). I have to work out what “honour” might mean, just as I have to work out how to apply Confucius’ “propriety” or “reverence”. What does to honour my parents require in particular contexts? For example, it may lead me to form an initially ad hoc, but later more stable concept HOW MY MOTHER FEELS IN THAT CARE HOME. I have no single word for this, nor is there an exact word in the English lexicon. Nevertheless, the concept figures in my thinking, then feeds to interpret my emotions and motivating desires. In religion, the public lexicon provides cues designed as tools for contextual thinking. That’s why it is helpful to internalize them even without understanding them fully. (Chapter 3 returns to these topics.)

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Golden rules When religious specialists develop their concepts through reflection, and put them into words, we enter the dimension of rationalization within a religious tradition. The universal input, of course, is provided by kin altruism and forgiving tit-for-tat. Before rationalization, there would be naı¨ve morality, akin to folk psychology, first manifested in Sellar’s original, primaeval image of humanity: a not very rationalized hodge-podge of traditions about the responsibilities of agents, modality and evaluation, expressed in dicta, maxims, proverbs, ritual formulae, magic and divination, mythico-historical narratives and poetry. Within literate cultures, there is increased potential for systematic rationalization. For example, Confucius built his highly rationalized ethical and political religion or ‘philosophy of life’ with the greatest respect for tradition as deposited in The Five Classics containing China’s oldest literature. The very earliest Vedic literature has the same role in India. Among hunter-gatherers, there is oral tradition memorized by specialists. The Golden Rule and related general formulae of obligation illustrate this historical process. These are reflections which rationalize aspects of the logic of co-operation. Formulations circulated long before the familiar first-century New Testament versions. Geza Vermes (2004: 98–99) cites the story of Rabbi Hillel. Late in the first century BCE when asked by a would-be Gentile convert to summarize the Torah in such a way that he could learn it while standing on one foot, he replied: ‘What is hateful to you, do not do to your fellow. . .. This is the whole Torah’ (Shabbat 31a). On the other side of the world, it is recorded that a disciple asked Confucius (551–479 BCE), ‘Is there one word which may serve as a rule of practice for all one’s life?’ He replied: ‘Is not reciprocity such a word! What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others’ (Smart, 1969: 201). Note that both these are in the form of dialogues, suggesting that the pedagogic process was originally oral. Vermes (2004: 98–99) cites five other formulations of the Golden Rule in the literature of Judaism. In the Christian Bible, it appears in Matthew’s Sermon on the Mount and in Luke’s Sermon on the Plain. Matthew writes: ‘So whatever you wish that men would do to you, do so to them; for this is the law and the prophets’ (Mt.7: 12). Confucius’ use of the pro-concept shu, translated as “reciprocity” or “fellow feeling” and a place-holder for all co-operative exchanges points towards ‘you shall love your neighbour as yourself ’ (Lev.19: 18). The law of love is inferentially connected as a summary of all the individual injunctions in the ten commandments (themselves an epitome of the law) and a reflective re-statement of the Golden Rule in different terms. Love of course is the object of a key New Testament pro-concept. Hence, Paul writes in Romans (Rom.13: 8-10), ‘The commandments . . . are summed up in this sentence, “You shall love your neighbour as

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yourself.” Love does no wrong to a neighbour; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law.’ From the intuitive moral normative base, in this obligation fauxkin-altruism has been stated using the vague pro-concept NEIGHBOUR and logically connected to co-operation through a loving identification of the self and other. The most abstractly rationalized statement of the moral obligation based on co-operation, from which all other rational statements of obligation are deducible, is Kant’s categorical imperative, formulated in Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals as: ‘Act only according to the maxim by which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law’ (Kant, 1789/1995). Abstract paths up abstract hills Can the reflective development of concepts be thought of as an abstract version of the path up the hill? When not free association or reverie, thinking has a goal-directed form on different levels. There is the overarching design goal of obtaining positive cognitive effects, having more true than false assumptions among the mind’s representations. More specifically, contextual effects achieve this by generating new assumptions that impact positively on the stock of beliefs. Moral normative intelligence also has parallel design goals fixed by its innate principles. In the first instance these are in pre-verbal concepts, which represent in the moral instincts our adaptation to each other and contain within themselves all the possibilities of the logic of co-operation. Given that these prescribe oughtness with respect to action, other goals follow. Since human action in context is always new, instinctive thoughts cannot alone specify exactly what is obligatory or permitted in each specific context. What to do or to avoid has to be inferred, so ways to do this are needed. Thus, general thoughts in the form of moral maxims and rules need to be created and stabilized. We can actually see this happening in the early religious literature. Second, the goal of achieving positive cognitive effects with respect to morality demands both communication about the application of moral principles and their reflective public elaboration. Both these require the development of a public lexicon. The Golden Rule and the myriad other laws which become maxims do this, guiding action in context and allowing us to talk about right and wrong. These are the means by which cultural forms figure in co-operative action and in which public moral debate is possible. Such goals reveal that this thinking is like a series of actions, steps to the discovery of the moral law. The path up the hill provides a physical model of this: there is never one unique path, but different ways to achieve the same function. This accounts for the variant formulations of the Golden Rule just described. The astonishing thing is that there really are maximally relevant

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paths to this final goal for each formulation of it, using non-demonstrative inferences, given by the possibilities of co-operation and kin altruism that represent our biological adaptations to each other. The Golden Rule is discovered. Once discovered, it is lexicalized into a sign-posted public ‘trail’. To tread a path or follow the way are the most common analogies for conformity to religious norms. One important path in thinking is via asking questions. Question–answer dialogue is the basis of much teaching in the synoptic gospels or the Talmud. We can’t go into the details here, but wh-questions specify incomplete propositions, and ask about them. In effect, these questions imply that a true answer would be the most relevant thing the hearer could supply (Sperber and Wilson, 1995: 252–253). This provides a context for the answer. The question sets a goal for the answerer. To derive the answer, premises are added to the context formed by the question, and the unknown information is deduced following the path of least effort. Suppose the question is: what am I morally bound to do in such and such a situation? The publicly available, lexicalized moral dicta figure in the answer. When we hear the answer in inner speech, we ask another question, and the process of thinking continues in the form of an interior dialogue. It is a common experience that such inner, private dialogues are made public, and that public dialogues can become inner. Now suppose the inner question is one concerning further rationalization of morality. How can a set of related representations be meta-represented as a single higher-order principle that can predict the obligations or permissions of the lower-order set? Then a hypothesis might be formed from which lowerorder maxims can be deduced in the most relevant way. An example of this is the way that the injunction to ‘love your neighbour as yourself’ unites fauxkin altruism and co-operation, logic and affectivity-motivation. Of course, all these general principles need to be applied in an infinite number of contexts. That is why Golden Rules use pro-concepts and are so very abstract. The analogy of the path, that there really is a maximally relevant route up the hill, leads the mind to conclude that the path is objectively there to be discovered. You ask yourself a real question about a human interaction. Then, given the context of the hard-wired morality expressive of human adaptation, a maximally relevant answer seems to appear, relative to abilities, preferences and with possible variations. Like the physical path with its handholds and stepping stones, the answer appears to have been brought into being by whatever supernatural entity – the spirit of morality – intended the answer. These are entities such as Confucius’ Way of Heaven (Smart, 1969: 202–204); Plato’s Idea of the Good; the Torah as revealed to Moses by God; or the Koran as revealed to Mohammed. The adaptation of each of us to the others that led to differential reproductive success within co-operating groups was discovered by natural selection, as it explored the logic within the

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possibilities of proto-humans. The abstract path expressing this intentionality of nature in progressively more general moral representations was likewise discovered within the manifest image. It is these rationally derived imperatives that convert the ‘is’ of instinct into the ‘ought’ of reason and make dispositions appear objectively binding. Relevance and moral judgement But there is a serious psychological problem concerning how all these moral maxims are used. In producing or interpreting an action or utterance (fixing goals, intending, etc.) how would normative assessment occur? How do we morally evaluate actions? We developed a relevance theory account of action above. But suppose that each and every action we produce or interpret was morally evaluated and this is mentally represented (tagged) in the attitudinal schema attached to conceptual, logical or propositional representations. This would involve a whole extra layer of cognitive effort above and beyond that effort of processing both content and other attitudes like belief. But would this effort be worthwhile? A revealing approach to this is the linguist Mark Jary’s (1998) analysis of the communication of politeness. There are well-known devices that appear to be strategies that can communicate a speaker’s assessment of their social relationship with the hearer: honorifics, the T (tu) and V (vous) pronouns in most European languages; levels of formality; hedges like ‘I suppose’, ‘rather’ or ‘sort of’; indirect speech acts like ‘Can you . . .?’ etc.. Brown and Levinson’s (1987) standard work on politeness develops a theory that suggests that these always communicate politeness through implicature. Invoking relevance theory, Jary points out that to communicate politeness would be redundant. The participants’ taken-for-granted relationship can usually be assumed to be already mutually manifest, so there is no need to communicate anything about it in the message. That would require effort for no effect and therefore be irrelevant, so politeness is not normally communicated. Attention is drawn to the relationship only if the speaker’s assumptions appear inconsistent with the hearers. If what a speaker says or does provides evidence that what the hearer had assumed about their relationship isn’t so, only then would this new information be relevant enough to be worth the hearer’s attention. Then the hearer must decide if the speaker intended to communicate this unexpected assessment of the relationship. This analysis reveals why we are ‘inattentive’ where politeness is concerned. We assume that everything is OK, unless there is a problem. I suggest that processing for the morality of action is also like this. We take for granted the normative probity of an observed act unless it becomes newly manifest to us that it is incompatible with our moral expectations. In evaluating others,

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we treat it as mutually manifest, part of the mutual cognitive environment, that we have the same moral norms. So we don’t go to the processing effort, for no effect, of morally assessing every action we perceive. Likewise, we don’t normally process our own actions for morality when they are within the range of what our group accepts as normal. Moral evaluation is irrelevant, unless there is a detection of some inconsistency with expectations that is relevant enough to be worth attending to. We are inattentive to the morality of everyday actions in situations of stable expectations. A religious groups’ normative environment is manifested and reputations kept secure when members publicly demonstrate their co-operative credentials in recurring interactions and costly displays. The automatic ‘defection detection’ capacity may point to automatic scanning for cues of inconsistency within these expectations. Libet’s ‘mind time’ We turn now to the promised mechanism for evaluating and controlling actions. The experimental neuro-physiologist, Benjamin Libet, has spent much of his career experimentally investigating the neural correlates of consciousness. Consciousness is ‘awareness per se . . . a unique phenomenon . . . associated with unique neuronal activities’ and distinguishable from its ‘contents’ (Libet, 2004: 13–14). A very striking and robust finding is that the brain activities which lead to a voluntary action precede the agent’s awareness that they intend to act. This contradicts the manifest image’s assumptions about freely chosen actions, initiated by a consciously willed intention to act. Libet found that, ‘the brain exhibited an initiating process beginning 550 msec before the freely voluntary act, but awareness of the conscious will to perform the act appeared only 150–200 msec before the act. The voluntary process is therefore initiated unconsciously, some 350 msec before the subject becomes aware of her will or intention to perform the act’ (Libet, 2004: 123–124). The actual act, according to the measurement of the suddenly activated muscle, began some 150 msec later. This is displayed in Figure 1. Readiness potential is a recordable electrical change in brain activity that precedes voluntary acts. READINESS POTENTAL I, at 1000 msec, occurs when there is rehearsal/pre-planning about when the act is to be performed. Alternatively, at 550 msec., READINESS POTENTIAL II occurs when the act is spontaneous. At 200 msec., AWARENESS, is the subjective report of the awareness of a wish to act. Finally, there is the actual MUSCLE ACTIVATION, the act itself. This work is recognized as significant for the analysis of free will (Blackmore, 2005: 82–90; Dennett, 2004: 227–242). Libet himself argues that conscious willing does not initiate voluntary acts, but instead acts as a

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pre-conscious to wish to act

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Figure 1 Action and consciousness (after Libet, B., ‘Conscious subjective experience and unconscious mental functions: a theory of the cerebral processes involved’, in R. Cotterill (ed.) (1990) Models of Brain Function, Cambridge University Press).

gate-keeper, inhibiting or permitting the performance. He terms the latter, ‘the conscious veto function’ as opposed to ‘allowing (or triggering) the act to occur’ (Libet, 2004: 143). This is where we can insert our idea that moral evaluation occurs only when an inconsistency arises in processing which makes such evaluation relevant. At READINESS POTENTIAL I or II the goal is fixed, depending on whether or not there is pre-planning. (In Libet’s words it ‘burbles up’. Its origin is in motivational function of the limbic system.) In relevance theory terms, this is the aimed-for effect. Second, processing occurs. In abstract terms, this is represented as non-demonstrative inference. This constructs a context from the most manifest assumptions drawn from perception and memory and deduces the act which will achieve the goal. The process is governed by least effort, so stops as soon as this is achieved. This is what occurs between READINESS POTENTIAL II and AWARENESS. The unconscious process takes roughly 400 msec (and is the practical reasoning function probably in the orbito-frontal cortex). This is the point of input to normative evaluation if inconsistency is detected. It leads to the presentation of a moral problem at AWARENESS.

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Because they share concepts or are inferentially related, representations used in inferring action are ‘cross-referenced’ to obligations stored in the normative data-base which the mind/brain has a standing desire to obey, discussed in Chapter 1. Furthermore, memories that have been morally evaluated previously have been ‘copied’ there. These moral-normative representations interact with the action system only if and when they detect an inconsistency during context construction in the current task and successfully broadcast it to consciousness. (Note how this accounts for the use of conceptual and linguistic euphemism and self-deception with respect to violations.) Detection is particularly likely: if the normative representations (a) are very manifest or very strong because part of our deepest self-conception, such as resistance to unnecessarily harming others within the group (Baars, 1988, chapter 9); (b) have a religious validating context and been strengthened by religious use within a normative community; (c) have been deliberately loaded by memorization and have been repeated, each repetition making them more and more manifest; (d) are richly connected with many and diverse conceptual entries in the encyclopaedia, as are general principles; and (e) if previous moral thinking has been a significant part of the agent’s cognitive environment. Neurologically, this cultural elaboration of normative sensitivity is a pseudo-module, an acquired skill. A certain kind of strong and dense mind/brain connectivity has been grown by culture to make a morally sensitive brain. A detected contradiction is a logical model of the inhibiting of a cognitive procedure. Two intentional structures simply don’t fit together as expected; the Turing machine can’t move to the next state. It abstractly characterizes how, in Libet’s terms, the act is vetoed (but without an act of will being involved). In our case, however, because of the relevance notions of the relative strength of assumptions and their degree of manifestness, there could be a ‘moral weighing up’. An act may proceed with reservations. Religious scrupulosity or a sense of sin occurs when the process is over-inhibiting. Conversely, poor impulse control is one factor in criminality. Another feature of consciousness discussed by Libet (2004: 107) is what he terms ‘Time-On Theory’. Based on experimental work on the consciousness of sensation, he supposes that conscious awareness in general only arises when there has been a substantial preceding period of unconscious processing, in the order of 500msec. Otherwise processing remains unconscious. In fact, most action is mostly unconscious. In my relevance analysis of inhibition, it is the detection of inconsistency that occupies some of the time before the agent becomes aware that there is a normative problem with respect to their intention. If there is no problem, acts are performed inattentively. Libet (2004: 106, 118) also notes that we might have ‘subliminal’ access to processing that does not quite reach the temporal threshold for awareness.

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This could account for moral unease, for ‘knowing and not knowing’, that occurs when moral norms have less strength than other more manifest norms. The evil of what is being done isn’t attended to because it isn’t processed long enough to fully reach consciousness. An inconsistency has been detected but it isn’t strong or manifest enough within the social group for consciousness or to inhibit the action. In Dennett’s (2004: 227–242) discussion of Libet’s work, he notes the artificiality of the experimental design. The subjects are being asked to ‘attend to’ their awareness of the wish to act with respect to the flexion of the wrist, an act that would normally be automatic. As we saw, goal-directed actions form hierarchical chains, operate in sequences over time and are often pre-specified routines. This means that the detection of incompatibility is likely to be at higher levels, the veto occurring long before particular muscle activations like flexing of the wrist or pulling the trigger, except in the case of bizarre impulses to act or last minute vetoes. Consciousness of incompatibility might interrupt a series of acts already begun. The inward referral of the inconsistency to Baar’s theatre of consciousness for private dialogue in inner speech – communication with oneself – or the outward referral to other people for public dialogue, creates new contexts in which action sequences, goal setting and plans can be evaluated in the future. Vetoes provide the contextual trigger for such referrals. Further processing of the inconsistency in the spotlight of consciousness constructs contexts using the very rich systems of normative assumptions discussed above. This strengthens them and increases their manifestness and accessibility. It could delete assumptions that led to the vetoed act, so it won’t happen again. In any case, it re-organizes the encyclopaedia. We can model the cultural mechanism of religious training with respect to moral norms. This training will have an automatic effect on pre-planning in future contexts, by deletions of assumptions, or by attitudinally tagging assumptions as having been involved in morally problematic acts. Training and experience develop conceptually based cultural dispositions to act in certain ways. 2.4

Strange entities

The intentional stance generates abstract entities through which it accounts for stimuli which can be most relevantly processed in this way. Some of these abstract entities are indeed strange and reflect different sorts of intentional systems. The person and its self and supernatural entities are classic cases. These are real, to the degree they have effects in the world because of the behaviour they produce, but they don’t exist as objects in space and time. An equally strange entity is the state, although we aren’t always aware of just how strange it is. The state ultimately originates in human reproductive

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success. Numbers get such that it becomes impossible to directly know and interact with everyone in the population. The problem of the stranger arises. States don’t consist of aggregates of individual human atoms. They are cultural manifestations of societies and groups within them. Groups are united by “us”-concepts, their criteria of identity, and patterns of norms, beliefs and behaviour. A society is a higher-order set of co-ordinated, interacting human groups through which disseminate those cultural representations that constitute the groups as members of that society. The historical state is one (or more) society, united under its legal and coercive guises, from which arises its authority. It has an institutional state apparatus. States ultimately consist of many human groupings – the genders and age cohorts are the limiting cases – with differing cultures. All of these can generate co-ordinated mass behaviours that can be attributed to abstract intentional entities, like strange persons. There are 192 states in the United Nations of a number of types. The concepts we use to think and talk about these entities adopt the intentional stance in a thoroughgoing way. People ask, ‘What does America want in Iraq?’ In fact, America doesn’t want anything, any more than a thermostat wants to turn on a furnace or a plant wants to grow towards the sun. America isn’t an animate being. It is a state and only exists in the minds, and hence behaviours, of those who believe in it. “Wants” applied to a state needs a lot of interpretation. When a bird flies across the Niagara River, it doesn’t know or care if it is in the United States or Canada. According to my definition above, states are supernatural entities within the manifest image, and hence the language used of them is characteristically figurative: usually personification and synecdoche. The philosopher Anthony O’Hear (1985) nicely discusses the reality of such abstractions. Individualists claim that only the human individuals are real. O’Hear comments that they are right to the degree that when the last individual member of the tribe dies, the tribe ceases to exist. ‘On the other hand’, he writes, ‘it is not the case that all statements about social wholes or indeed about human action are analysable into statements about individual behaviour and motivation that make no mention of social concepts or institutions . . . . States and armies are as real in their own way as the individuals that compose them, and survive as complex organizations, despite the passing of those individuals that compose them at any one time’ (O’Hear, 1985: 283). The state–individual relationship is like that between the mind and the brain, the intentional stance and cognitive psychology. The state emerges from and, although not reducible to, is realized by individual mind/brains. It is an intentional entity with its own peculiar properties: person-like but not personal, artefact-like but not an artefact, somewhat like an organism, but not alive. It has many peculiar properties. For one, the state behaves like the selfinterested individual of game theory.

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As an intentional entity, the state acts. However, since it is itself abstract, its acts can only be those of the individuals who instantiate it. Therefore, these acts are not wholly their own. Individuals perform, like actors in a drama, social roles within the state apparatus; a bureaucracy or an army. The actions of a regiment, a state instrument, all the individuals dressed identically, marching ‘in step’ in time and ‘as one’ through space, with stylized expressions, and carrying weapons and flags, formally represent this situation in its most extreme form. The term for considered state action is “policy”. The most basic role of any legitimate ruling elite is to develop and enact policy. This ruling group speaks for the state. The ruler symbolizes the state, their personhood taking on unique representational properties, even in democratic states. Then, using their power over the behaviour of all the other social groups and individuals in the jurisdiction, the apparatus implements the actions necessary to bring these goals about, within the overall goals which define the state as an expression of the society and its needs. This includes maintaining the conditions for its survival and for it to thrive. There is now the potential for conflict between the demands of the state and those of religions. Those of religion are usually cultural elaborations of normativity, and often include the general moral norms such as the Golden Rule. By contrast, state goals are those of an amoral entity. The state employs technical rationality. (The distinction I am making is rather like that between the “life world” and the “system”, drawn by the German philosopher, Jurgen Habermas 1984, 1989.) The state’s goals do not belong to the individuals enacting them, yet the state demands they be dutifully performed. If a conflict arises, the mechanism of conscious inhibition or veto can in principle form the basis for an individual’s critique of duty and policy. This will be referred to consciousness, first within individuals and then in public discourse, unless the state itself or the pressure of conformity censors this. The state can identify its interests with religious norms, e.g. my religious duty is identical with my duty to obey state and social norms, obey the law. But, if this demand violates moral intelligence or religious thought, then a religious critique of the state is imperative. Otherwise, the inhibitions of individual conscience are at risk of being corrupted or confused by normative conflict. We will return to this in the final chapter. Temporal pathways, narrative and authority From the earliest times, there has been a three-way relationship between the state as an expression of society, the ruler/priest with supporting elite, and the supernatural. There has been a tendency for these three abstract realities to merge and yet to remain separate. The concept of the sacred ruler with a special relation to the supernatural was a feature of the earliest states.

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The public persons of rulers conceptually merge with that of the state and their practical and symbolic actions become its actions. (It must indeed be psychologically strange to be this sort of impersonal person. We still find this merging in the personalization of politics in the news.) In Egypt, the king was considered as literally a kin of the gods, and some rulers are presented as having divine conception and birth. The royal ka, the essential spirit of the ruler, ‘seems to have been regarded as an immortal power that dwelt in the body of the king, rather as the ka of a deity was thought to dwell in a cult statue’ (Pinch, 2004: 73). In Mesopotamia, from the beginning, ‘The rulers of the region all considered themselves to be agents of the gods and an important part of their duties was the performance of ceremonies designed to ward off evil and gain the deities’ goodwill’ (Roaf, 1990: 74). Even when state and religious authorities became distinct, the ruler held authority only as a representative of the gods (e.g. the struggle over the divine right of kings in Europe). Perhaps this relationship can be best understood through an idealized analysis of state action. Policy is decided by the ruling elite, organized by the bureaucracy and enacted by the people. Imagine the organization of labour for irrigation work or negotiations with a rival state. Within the parameters of the general goals of any state, the ruler formulates a policy by fixing a specific goal, and sub-goals, and the behavioural means of bringing it about. Its achievement would count as a positive cognitive effect. The processing task is to infer, using the least effort, what the state must do to bring that goal into being – the maximally relevant actions. Alternatively, the ruler might behave opportunistically – or in an exploratory way – and balance the easiest actions against any discoverable desirable effects they could have and achieve relevance that way. Using non-demonstrative inference, the ruler is trying to discover the maximally relevant path to the goal, analogous to the ‘path up the hill’. It is an abstract inferential path, leading to ‘steps’ being taken to achieve the goals of state policy. Following through on the analogy, if the policy is achievable, the mind will operate as if there is a maximally relevant way to achieve the policy. This is the one that has the most positive cognitive effects with the least effort. It is not a spatial path, but a temporal one, stretching ahead. History has a narrative structure. From the point of view of the minds planning them, the ‘steps’ are a discovery of the best way forward. These behavioural steps, like hand-holds and stepping stones, appear intentional with respect to the proposed policy goals. They are ‘about’ the intended goal. They invite those particular actions. However, unlike a literal path up the hill, it is much more difficult to discover the path or predict the outcome of the story in the historical sphere. The goal is in the future, after all. Social action involves the discipline of masses of people, whose intentions won’t be wholly

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their own, and who need to be psychologically and practically managed. There is also the autonomous dynamics of social systems themselves. For one thing, although individuals are biologically adapted to deal interpersonally with each other, states are not, being artificial. Yet state action, and the relations between states, is determined using the same mind-reading cognitive capacities used between individual persons. But as we said, states aren’t morally intelligent. They don’t treat each other (or aliens within them) with faux-kin altruism. The legitimacy of authority ultimately depends on a claim that the ruler has some special insight into the intentionality of possibility with respect to what the state needs to do to survive and thrive. Most naturally, this would be a special relationship with supernatural entities (or something similar like fate, destiny, or the world-historical forces of history, or even the collective will). The fact is that things go wrong and what happens in history resists human purpose. The frustration of goals is understood in terms of the supernatural – the gods are weak or not favourable or perhaps evil is at work. For success, human and supernatural teleologies need to be the same; the intentionality of possibility needs to be correctly discerned. This possibility of error is why the supernatural is separable from the ruler. Conversely, it is also why there is a tendency towards merging religion and the state – the ruler’s job is to mediate the relationship between the state and the supernatural. Prophecy, this ability to mediate the supernatural, constitutes the authority of foundational political figures such as Moses or Mohammad. Chinese emperors had the ‘mandate of heaven’. Their ‘duty was to ensure that human affairs be kept in perfect harmony with the Will of Heaven’ which ‘controlled destiny’ (Hoobler and Hoobler, 1993: 87, 103). Plato placed a philosopher in power because philosophy was the way to grasp reality as he conceived it. Conversely, prophecy also provides authority for critiques of state power. This isn’t just an archaic feature of pre-modern states. Narratives have trajectories and after a story has been told, the end usually appears to be where it was heading all the time. A version of such teleology surfaces in historicism. This is the notion that there are intrinsic laws of historical development (Popper, 1957). This is another way to conceive of what used to be called “destiny”, the discerning of a temporal ‘path up the hill’. Secular teleology still shapes political thinking. Marxism is the classic example, as well as the nineteenth-century melange of social Darwinism, racialist thinking, and ultranationalism that was both central to the Nazi vision of German renewal and earlier used to rationalize imperialism and slavery. The Enlightenment viewed history as leading to the inevitable increase of knowledge and liberty, once the authoritarianism of the traditional order was gone and the individual became free. Most recently, world-historical concepts like the inevitable triumph of a globalized capitalism and liberal democracy at The End of

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History, the inevitable Clash of Civilizations, and the historical exceptionalism of the United States, shaped international relations. The scientific narrative has also been historicist; a social-institutional method of inquiry must inevitably lead to progress, to a real increase in knowledge about nature. Religious literature is full of narratives in which the supernatural orders history for its own purposes. In the Bhagavad Gita, the initiating issue is Arjuna’s personal or selfish moral veto of his caste duty. As a warrior, his obligation is to fight and kill his own kinsmen and his teacher. Krishna, who is God incarnate, intervenes. ‘For whenever the law of righteousness withers away and lawlessness arises, then I do generate myself (on earth). For the protection of the good, for the destruction of evil-doers, for the setting up of the law of righteousness I come into being age after age’ (Bhagavad-Gita 4.7–4.8; R.C. Zaehner’s translation, 1973). Arjuna is morally bound to do his duty – a sacrifice of himself – irrespective of who he kills. Paradoxically, there is no real choice, if one understands reality, which is the identity of one’s real self and God. In the narratives of the Old Testament, events are also shaped by God. In his book on biblical narrative, Robert Alter shows the artistry with which narrative techniques reveal, ‘God’s purposes in history and His requirements of humanity’ (Alter, 1981: 155). He shows how narrative yields knowledge of hidden teleology. For example, the covenant with King David is central to the history of Israel. In 2 Samuel, God promises that ‘Your house and your kingdom will be secure before you forever.’ Alter shows, in contrast with the straightforward narration of chapter 10, how chapter 11 brilliantly narrates David’s sexual selfishness and misuse of power in his adultery with the beautiful Bathsheba. And when she tells the king, ‘I am with child’, he arranges the murder of her husband, Uriah. ‘But the thing that David had done displeased the Lord’ is the last verse of chapter 11. Then, the consequences begin. There is the rebuke of the prophet Nathan and the death of Bathsheba’s infant. Commenting on the moral and psychological meanings of these portrayals, Alter (1981: 76) writes, ‘the king’s intimate moral biography . . . cannot be devoid of political and historical ramifications’. Ultimately, the house of David falls because the people turn away from God. Faced with defection, God hides his face, ‘and they will be devoured; and many evils . . . will come upon them’ (Deut.32: 17-18). These grand narratives led people to historically significant actions, just as secular narratives still shape policy today. 2.5

Rationalization and the supernatural

We discussed in Chapter 1 how the mind/brain is led to ever more abstract and ideal concepts. This is reflective development in the cultural domain of religion, which I have called rationalization. A richer stock of religious

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thought, more general and more interconnected, makes it more accessible in constructing contexts and thus more likely to make contributions to relevance or contribute to Libet-type vetoes. This, in turn, leads to more exemplary cases in memory, more rational elaboration and so on. We are growing connections in the religion pseudo-module. Rationalization works on two dimensions. There is the vertical construction of successively more general higher orders of representation in inferentially related series. There is the horizontal dimension, the discovery of potential analogies between representations from different modular areas. Analogical reasoning employs the representations of a source domain as the model or ground for representing a target domain and, blending the domains, governed by relevance principles, judges that certain representations true of the former are also true of the latter, selected according to how they contribute to relevance in the context. This ties together diverse areas of thought in new concepts – we illustrated this with PRICE in Chapter 1 – and is the source of innovation for new higher-level hypotheses for the vertical dimension. Both horizontal and vertical are inferential potentials of the meta-representational ability. We discover the inferential potential, the implications of what we already believe in such a way that judgements are organized in a coherent unity, inferentially tied into a web of belief. Kant’s (1787/1998) transcendental dialectic provides a model for the vertical construction. He bases the ascent on an inherent property of syllogistic deductive inference. He demonstrates that when inferential series are complete and thought reaches a representation not dependent on any further more general condition, the mind represents the ideas of reason, which he calls illusions of speculative metaphysics. For Kant, it is a fundamental principle of reason that such series terminate in a last, absolute member. In psychology, we find the soul, the unconditioned unity of the thinking subject, the supernatural entity that was an end of explanation in Section 2.1 above. In cosmology, there is the unconditioned unity of the conditions through which the world of space, time, substance and causation appears to us as something objective. Finally, in theology, the end of the series is God, a completed infinity and the most perfect entity. God contains the highest condition of the possibility of everything that can be thought; the foundation of what can be represented at all. Thus, from all the potential myriad of supernatural entities generated by human minds, reflective reason leads to the thought of a single most abstract and ideal being, the God of theology. Kant views these concepts as illusions in the special sense that they can’t be applied to or abstracted from possible experience. His position is that the system must use them ‘regulatively’, as if they represented realities. Their function is to unify representations – with the greatest unity and greatest breadth – so that the world is coherent and, with respect to the soul, a unified rational person and a moral agent.

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Although Kant describes this in terms of syllogistic inference, the construction of such series ought to be possible with other forms of inference. The construction of a series of successively higher-order representations, bringing unity and coherence to thoughts, is a potential of inference in general. In more contemporary terms, each new theory or set of axioms will fall out from even more abstract hypotheses or axioms as a special case, until at the end of the series, one ideally has a maximally general and simple ‘theory of everything’. The unity of science rests on such a concept. The impulse to unification in science has been recently illustrated by the physicist and expert on quantum computation, David Deutsch, who proposes a more general world view that attempts to integrate the four most important contemporary theories: ‘the quantum physics of the multiverse, Popperian epistemology, the Darwin-Dawkins theory of evolution and a strengthened version of Turing’s theory of universal computation’ (Deutsch, 1998: 366). But what drives this unifying process? Kant proposes a maxim of logic to the effect that, if you are to unify your thoughts, you must construct such a series. However, we can propose that the possibility of this type of conceptual integration of the modular mind within culture is a result of the interaction of the meta-representational cognitive capacity and the cognitive principle of relevance. The evolved tendency to maximize relevance, to produce the most positive effects for least effort, when applied in de-coupled reflection, will automatically generate higher-level meta-hypotheses that predict current assumptions – those used as premises in the deductions of current processing – with the least effort; which yields the principle of simplicity. This is yet another case of an abstract inferential ‘path up the hill’; the simplest way up the hill. It appears to the mind that there really is a maximally relevant way of constructing the abstract inferential chain and, at Kant’s boundary of pure reason, arriving at the soul, the objective world and God. But, unlike the physical path, there is no direct experiential input with which to test the path as it ascends towards its goal. Justice in the universe Within the manifest image of humanity, to be moral isn’t just to behave according to feelings about right and wrong. In reflective moral evaluation, the attribution of responsibility appears to presuppose the freedom to choose according to the rationalized representations of what a moral agent ‘ought’ to do – following norms, obeying commandments etc. – and, just as importantly, to have applied these generalizations in context as reasonably as possible. In the cognitive model outlined above, where freedom is inhibitive, the ‘veto’ is a test for consistency between representations. To this extent conscious moral choice crucially depends on reason – based on

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instinctive normativity to be sure – but actualized through society’s rational generalizations and internalized by virtuous individuals in their own thinking. It is not simply behaving in accord with what is given by innateness as input to normative development, but has a social and individual rational dimension which makes it a standard and provides the ‘ought’. Given this, it appears scandalous that whether one acts morally or immorally should have no corresponding good or bad consequences. This is a moral demand for justice in the universe. One reason it seems manifestly intolerable that people ‘get away with murder’, is that it is inconsistent with a lawful universe that a violation of a law determined by reason should not have ultimately undesirable consequences both for the agent and the co-operating group more widely. If the moral law represents a reality, albeit abstract, whose ought is really binding, it is an affront if the lawfulness of the universe is limited to the causal domain of inputs and does not obtain for action, as relevant to justice. This mystery finds its expression in the art of narrative exemplified above and in the book of Job. In the writings of Julian of Norwich (1998: 178), at the last judgement the answer, the reason why in spite of the necessity of sin ‘all shall be well’, will be finally revealed and, ‘we shall clearly see in God the mysteries which are now hidden’. The Kingdom of God is an ideal realm of perfect justice (Chilton, 1984; Sanders, 1993). The resurrection, overcoming death, is the narrative’s display of justice. In Greek antiquity, there is the analysis of the great tragedies, in which this inexorable working out of the consequences of inevitable defection of all kinds is displayed in all its terror and horror. The demand for justice is simply not satisfied in nature. Thus the mind generates a supernatural entity who will guarantee it. The just God is at the apex both of the inferential path leading to the moral law and the inferential path that guarantees justice in the universe. Since this supernatural entity is interested in morality, it must be like a person or at least sensitive to persons. Religions have concepts which are ways of guaranteeing justice. For example, a soul acquires a morally relevant Karma and gets the re-birth it deserves. Or souls survive death to be judged or appear in a final judgement. There are collective outcomes too in biblical narratives that relate events to the acts of a nation. In general, the demand for justice must generate a supernatural entity that has the power to know everybody’s inner moral life and to order consequences accordingly. It must have the power to do these things. It follows that the God of justice will be omniscient, omnipotent and concerned with moral agents, but will at least seem to impose limits on itself necessitated by human freedom and its consequences.

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Ultimate bafflement In the rational explanation of nature, there are boundaries which appear to be at the ends of inferential series. Singularities, as proposed for the Big Bang or black holes, show that a representational boundary has been reached. Inconsistencies within and between physical theories either signify incompleteness or signal that reality violates intuitive physics, perhaps in ways that reveal limits to human cognitive capacities and are therefore mysteries like those proposed in Chapter 1, but in science. Examples are: the relation of relativity and quantum theories, the uncertainty principle, wave–particle duality, nonlocality or quantum entanglement, and the superposition of states before measurement. These motivate a search for yet more general unifying theories. Then there is the broader meta-question: ‘Why are the laws of nature as they are?’ From the empirical viewpoint of science, the universe isn’t necessarily the way it is, but contingently so, and could have been otherwise. So, at the limits, scientific laws appear arbitrary, and can’t finally satisfy the thirst to know. A final theory, if there were such a thing, would have to interpret itself; in some sense be necessary. At that point, it would be impossible to propose any more general hypotheses from which the final theory could be deduced and the empirically accountable series, science, would be complete. There could be no further scientific questions; inquiry would end. If there is no such point, then we have another infinite series, and will remain baffled, unless the compulsion to terminate the series is satisfied, our bafflement named, by the concept of God. Today the ‘why’ question is posed as the anthropic problem. Why is the universe so incredibly fine-tuned for the evolution of life? (In fact, this seems to be the same issue as the apparent mutual intentionality of the mind/brain and reality.) One could leave this unanswered, a mystery. The universe is just the way it is, arbitrary, an accident. An alternative conjecture is the multiverse. This says that all possible universes are real. This originated in the Everitt–Wheeler interpretation of quantum theory, but has been generalized. It is claimed that the multiverse may have empirical consequences, so that the hypothesis could be testable (Tegmark, 2003; 2004). The anthropic problem dissolves. Since all possible universes are real, this one is simply one of an infinite ensemble and the laws of physics are the way they are because it is in this universe that we evolved to study them. Physicists can explore both the physics of this accessible universe and other real universes physically inaccessible to us. Nevertheless, ultimate bafflement with respect to the explanation of nature isn’t really dissolved either way. Either all possible worlds exist or there is only one universe that exists whose initial conditions are just arbitrary. Neither is a satisfying end of explanation. And we can again name this ineradicable bafflement, “God”. The physicist Stephen

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Hawking, in his 2003 Dirac Centennial Lecture, ‘Go¨del and the end of physics’, conjectured that the physical information required to complete Mtheory, the theory of everything, may not in principle be represented without inconsistency (Brooks, 2003: 34–35). If any of these alternatives is the case, the concept of a completed physical theory is only a regulative idea. Inquiry into nature must proceed as if there were no boundaries, no ultimate mysteries. Inquiry into nature is predictably geared to the cognitive principle of relevance. At each higher step in the hypothetico-deductive method, with each new conjecture, the goal is to achieve maximal relevance – the most contextual effects that improve our representations with the least effort – to resolve the problems of the previous context; maximal relevance demands inference to the best explanation. For each new conjecture, an experimental context is devised to test key deductions. Are they as predicted or not? Science is the history of this process. Using our analogy yet again, science is a cultural attempt to discover another abstract inferential path up the hill. Each conjecture, each experiment and new consensus – like stepping stones and handholds – reveals the ‘best’ explanatory path. It appears to us that there really is a maximally relevant path towards this ideal, the end of the series. And as we saw, each step towards the goal has the potential to appear to be both the discovery of an objective reality and generated by a corresponding intentionality. We can explain Sellar’s notion that the manifest image’s default philosophy is naı¨ve Platonism; that there is an underlying abstract reality for our minds to discover. The mental property of believing in a ‘best’ inferential path that leads to reality in the form of abstract laws of nature, and even its intentional origin, are another evolutionary by-product, like the supernaturalism discussed above, a necessary potential of the human mind/brain that arises from inferencing capacities governed by relevance principles which are themselves adaptations. This is the same for abstract moral imperatives, derived by reason from the logic of co-operation based on kin altruism and forgiving tit-for-tat and put into words. The resulting naı¨ve Platonism provides a context both for cultural development of science from common sense physics and for the development of cultural inhibitory dispositions which make viable the new environment of mass societies. To the mind, there appears to be mutual intentionality between itself and nature, just as there is between the screw and screw-driver, the receptor and the neuro-transmitter, so between mathematics and the structure of nature. But what if the path up the hill has no end which is consistent? The analogy would be that at some point in the ascent, one would step upwards and downwards and make no progress. A boundary would have been reached where no amount of effort has positive effects; no improvement is possible.

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This would signal the limits on what can be known, in spite of the apparent mutual intentionality of our adaptation and its selecting environment. In Hawking’s (cited in Brooks, 2003: 35) words: ‘We and our models are both parts of the Universe we are describing . . . We are not angels who view the Universe from outside.’ We find a mystery, not a problem. The theological strategy The search for maximal relevance relative to the goal of a completed knowledge compels the mind to try to complete the inferential series and formulate the final representation. Consider the properties of a mind in the final representational state. It is a theological concept. That mind’s representations yield infinite positive cognitive effects with no possibility of any effort yielding any more. It would ‘know’ everything that could be known. The process of reasoning ends because every possibility is perfectly comprehended in a state of omniscience. In a state where there could be no further relevant input, and no possible revision, there is no time. The final state represents reality as one set, complete, consistent and necessarily the way it is. All inconsistency must have been resolved and all possibility thought. This goal generates the concept of a corresponding supernatural mind, an intellectus archetypus, whose thought simply is the reality it represents. Since what it thinks is reality, it is also omnipotent. Since it is everything that is possible – by definition there is nothing else – it is necessarily the way it is, and not conditioned by anything else. It is reality so anything either possible or actual is the realization of its thought. Within philosophical theology, the ontological argument tries to demonstrate that there must be such a being. The strategy is to show that this very concept of God, necessitates God’s existence. Conversely, God’s non-existence is inconceivable. There is something uncannily compelling about these arguments. But all versions – Anselm’s, Descartes’, that of the pre-critical Kant, more recently Norman Malcolm’s, feel sophistical (Davies, 1993; Kant, 1762; Le Poidevin, 1996; Mackie, 1982; Malcolm, 1963). Can the ontological argument be framed in the context of cognitive psychology? I will base my suggestion on a reading of Kant’s pre-critical version of the argument (Kant, 1762/1979). (He later disowned the book.) Kant rests his argument on modal notions. A representational system, especially one that can represent freely chosen action or in which one can form and test scientific hypotheses, presupposes modality; judgements of the possibility or necessity of propositions. In such a system, it is impossible that there are no possibilities. That there are no possibilities is actually unthinkable. Rephrased positively, it is necessary that there is at least one possibility. That is, there must be at least one possible world, one consistent set of states of affairs.

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Since this necessary set of possibilities must be consistent, it also necessarily has an actual ground by virtue of which it is unified and lawful. This necessary ground of all possibilities is God, who therefore is a reality. However, this argument holds only relative to a representational system with this power. No representational system, no argument. So, the argument is not really a proof that God either exists or is metaphysically real. That he does is presupposed by the system. Only from within the system does the argument appear logically compelling. After all, representations need possibilities to represent. Thus, our mind/brains can conceive of the non-existence of arbitrary things, but neither its own non-existence or that there are no possibilities. The argument is logically compelling within the manifest image because our minds are representational systems with modality. The process of rationalizing our kind of cognitive system to the unconditioned end of its series, to find a maximally relevant representation, really does lead to the necessity of a ground for all possibilities. This inferential path makes it appear that our representations are the product of a supernatural intentionality which has ordered our reasoning in this unified and lawful way to lead to God. If evolution has produced a mind/brain of this type (in which there is only one conceptual scheme) the above rationalization of the necessity of God is implicit within and natural to the manifest image. But it doesn’t prove that God exists independently of our thinking him. It only shows it is a spandrel of the mind/brains’ rationalization capacity that it automatically leads to the concept of God. This theological ideal remains regulative. It unites in one supernatural entity the chains of moral and hypothetical inference to their unconditioned end-points. In our thinking about nature it appears that the path up the hill doesn’t ever lead to the top, but ends in inconsistent, strange moves, stepping up and down at the same time in one place, to illusory cul de sacs and blind canyons, cave systems, blank cliff faces, or simply stretches on in an infinitely receding way. A realist response might be that there cannot be, by definition, a hill without a highest point. The non-realist might respond that there can be such a hill: we are in fact on it – and it’s OK. The religious mind concludes there really is a maximally relevant path, but we can’t access it with human rationality. These either accept or express bafflement. The religious position posits that whatever really is at the necessary but rationally inaccessible summit, that generated and unites all the maximally relevant paths, can’t be fully represented by us. With respect to normativity, God’s inaccessibility is required for moral choice. If one knew God, freedom would be corrupted. The concept, God, may have a pragmatic warrant, and this is a main topic of Chapter 4. A pragmatic warrant in religion is when, faced with puzzlement, it is reasonable to adopt the concept that maximizes the richest positive consequences for guiding practical activities. If, as argued above,

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supernatural entities do indirectly represent biological adaptation, then this could give them practical efficacy. Spandrels are often very useful. Although a distinct notion, this has similarities to a regulative idea (or illusion) of reason that must guide the mind. Le Poidevin (1996: 122, 146) points out that non-realist theology – religion without belief as envisaged by Don Cuppitt (1980) and others – construes the concept, God, as a ‘useful fiction’. Pragmatic interpretation places the terms, “belief”, “knowledge”, “truth” in a new context with respect to action. The non-realist emphasis on consequences is somewhat like a pragmatic warrant, although a commitment to a concept one claims is fictional isn’t exactly the same thing as either a regulative idea or a pragmatic warrant. The concept of God as regulative invites us to act ‘as if’ there is an ultimate reality that is independent of human representations, that grounds the moral law and represents the hope and fear of ultimate justice. As such, the rationalized concept of God represents what we can’t know; mysteries, the demands of rationalization that lead to bafflement. It is a concept to which the attitudes of hope, trust and belief are appropriate, but only if one can properly have these attitudes to what one can’t understand. The fully rationalized God of theology/philosophy represents a supernatural entity that is outside or beyond what actually is, doesn’t exist in the world, because it is the ground of all possibility. This entity simply can’t be comprehended by definition. The question for the next chapter is just how human minds do represent and disseminate the un-representable.

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3.1

Concepts of culture

This chapter explores how and why mysterious religious concepts reach cultural levels of distribution. I will develop a version of Sperber’s epidemiological approach to this question. As a pre-requisite to that task, we will examine how utterances are actually processed. But dissemination is also affected by the medium of transmission, so I will first have something to say about scriptures, an important instrument in the epidemiology of the world religions.

Preliminaries: two cognitive theories of dissemination Within the general framework of a cognitive approach to culture, there are two important and competing approaches to cultural dissemination; how thoughts change in populations. The first theory is Darwinian. The evolutionary biologist, Richard Dawkins, (1976: 189–201) proposed the meme. This is the unit of selections in a process of cultural evolution, analogous to the gene in biological evolution. Dennett (1995: 344) provides a large sample of these replicating cultural units of many and diverse types: ‘arch, wheel, wearing clothes, vendetta, right triangle, alphabet, calendar, the Odyssey, calculus, chess, perspective drawing, evolution by natural selection, impressionism’. And he writes, ‘Intuitively we see these as more or less identifiable cultural units . . . the units are the smallest elements that replicate themselves with reliability and fecundity.’ The second theory is Sperber’s (1985, 1994, 1996) theory of the epidemiology of representations, introduced in Chapter 1. These two theories need to be carefully distinguished, pace Dennett (1995: 358) who, wrongly I think, claims that they are virtually indistinguishable. Sperber (1996: 3; 100–101) grants that both memetics and epidemiology are broadly cognitive theories of culture and both are about mechanisms that select what is to be disseminated and what is not. Even so, he sharply distinguishes his theory from Dawkins’ more Darwinian evolutionary approach and the debate continues. Another related but earlier and cruder approach is that of E. O. Wilson’s (1975) 109

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Sociobiology which attempts to explain cultural phenomena solely in terms of biological adaptation. This isn’t widely considered plausible. Both memetics and epidemiology are to be contrasted with the Standard Social Science Model. In this view, culture is acquired from experience through the process of socialization using a single general learning mechanism. Acquired this way, cultures vary widely and unpredictably according to their individual functional configurations and through socio-historical change (Tooby and Cosmides, 1992: 25–49). Under the generally empiricist assumptions which provided a comprehensive global framework to AngloAmerican thought for most of the twentieth century, socialization was the only way that cultural knowledge could be ‘learned’ from the environment. In the most extreme behaviourism, the sole learning mechanism is operant conditioning: incentive/seeking pleasure and disincentive/avoiding pain are the means of socialization and the ultimate explanation of how people learn everything. Behaviourism is the extreme opposite of sociobiology and is equally implausible. Dawkins and the meme I will briefly present my own interpretation of Dawkins’ (1976) hypothesis about cultural evolution. His basic insight is that Darwin’s notion of evolution is in essence a form of argument. Dennett (1995: 48, 343) calls it algorithmic. As such, it can be applied to any unit that satisfies its requirements and yields a theory of change and dissemination with respect to that unit. The form of the argument consists of: (i) The unit must replicate: more precisely, it must reproduce with a high degree of accuracy. (ii) There is some random variation within that replication. (iii) There is a principle of selection choosing between the variants in a selecting context, such that the replication of one is favoured more than the other, so that, (iv) this yields differential replication. Applied to units of culture – the meme as replicator – this has a deep consequence. Culture evolves. And it evolves separately from biology, an autonomous level of evolution. Culture appears on the planet once mind/ brains evolve their representational capacities to the degree that they can serve as hosts for memes (Dawkins, 1976: 192). This happens when there is sufficient mental flexibility for innovative representations to appear and be copied from mind/brain to mind/brain. When this happens, culture replicates and evolves within our minds independently of anything else; of biological functionality, social functionality, or our will. Taking a ‘meme’s eye view’,

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those memes that survive are simply those better able to replicate in larger numbers because they are better adapted (a) to each other and (b) to the mind/brain’s intrinsic structure. We are inhabited by them. But they evolve independently of us. (Dawkins speaks of minds infected with religion: cf. Dawkins’ 1993 article, ‘Viruses of the mind’.) There are criticisms of the meme approach to cultural evolution. They fall into three general types, summarized by the psychologist Susan Blackmore (1999, chapter 5). First, what exactly is the unit of selection? Dennett’s list seems to be a heap of different things. He calls them ‘complex ideas that form themselves into distinct memorable units’ (Dennett, 1995: 344). Dawkins (1993: 190) generalizes the units of evolution in terms of the replication of “information”. This would seem to include any representation, practice, or artefact – since these all bear information – that readily occurs in memory as a single unit. Second, there is obscurity as regards the mechanism for copying and storing units, their replication and transmission. Blackmore’s response is to limit the meme only to that which can be learned by imitation. She writes, ‘in Dawkins’ original formulation, memes are passed on only by imitation. I have described them as “instructions for carrying out behaviour, stored in brains (or other objects) and passed on by imitation”. . . . Imitation is a kind of replication, or copying, and that is what makes the meme a replicator and gives it its replicator power’ (Blackmore, 1999: 43). As a psychologist, she emphasizes the human ability to imitate. However, if communication – especially the public communication of thoughts – is the major means of cultural transmission, imitation is a very problematic characterization of what we do when we communicate. Third, there is the frequently voiced view that cultural transmission is a Lamarckian process. Although evolutionary, it is not Darwinian in form. This relates to problem two, the means of transmission. A Lamarckian process involves the ‘inheritance of acquired characteristics’. In this case, an organism’s inherited behavioural trait is transformed in response to the environment – within its lifetime it develops a new variant in response to some challenge. Then, after using this innovative behaviour to reproduce more effectively than a rival with the same inherited trait but without the new variant, it transmits the innovation to its offspring. This is a better model of cultural transmission than Darwin’s theory of random variation and selection through differential reproduction. A Lamarckian process leads to a very rapid transformation of characteristics. Dawkins’ biological analogy breaks down. Finally, Dawkins also seems to envisage no role for meta-representation in the critique or testing of cultural representations; for example, with respect to consistency or usefulness. Instead a picture is painted of the mind/brain as a medium only for autonomously replicating representations, irrespective of any rational factors, just as our bodies exist because they are vehicles for replicating genes.

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Sperber and epidemiology: a first remark Every public human representation, practice or artefact, no matter how complex, is generated by mind/brains. Ultimately, the unit of cultural transmission is human representations. And cultural transmission is a matter of inter-personal comprehension of action and other stimuli and intentional communication, as outlined in Chapter 2. The central problem with meme theory is that it lacks both these aspects. It has neither a theory of private mental representations nor of how these are publicly communicated from mind to mind. (For a discussion, see Sperber, 1996, 2000c.) Spreading from mind to mind is a matter of communication. So ostensiveinferential communication, not imitation, must be the central dissemination mechanism for culture. A moment’s reflection reveals that representations can’t literally ‘move’ or ‘be transmitted’ from brain to brain. Communication is not John Locke’s tele-mentation, the transfer of ideas from mind to mind, although this is how our common sense seems to conceive it. Michael Reddy (1979) calls this folk image ‘the conduit metaphor’, as if there was a conduit between minds through which ideas flowed. Instead, the private representations in the mind of a speaker are inferentially reconstructed in the private representations of the mind of their hearer on the basis of the clues that the speaker makes public, using language and other behaviour. The inferential reconstruction varies in how exact it is. According to Sperber (1996: 82–83), this inferential reconstruction almost always involves a degree of transformation. This can range ‘between two extremes: duplication and total loss of information. Only those representations which are repeatedly communicated and minimally transformed in the process will end up belonging to the culture’. Exact imitation or copying is a limiting case in which more or less exact duplication occurs. What then is the same representation? Culturally distributed representations will end up as a set of representations ‘similar enough to be called versions of one another’; for example, your conception of ‘Jesus is the Christ’ and my conception of ‘Jesus is the Christ’ and what that implies to each of us would be versions of the same representation. Epidemiologically widespread and hence cultural representations will be ‘strains or families, of concrete representations related both by causal relationships and similarity of content’ (Sperber, 1996: 83). I would add that different levels of representation will have different disseminations. Thus, the actual words “Jesus is the Christ” (and entailments such as ‘Jesus is The Messiah’) have a wider dissemination than other parts of the vast family of representations which include all extant or possible understandings of that phrase and its entailments. Behaviour may be duplicated while its understanding varies. But we still don’t know why some representations thrive, become entrenched and disseminate across many minds and reach cultural levels of

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distribution, while others do not. The epidemiological approach to this with respect to religion will be the subject of Section 3.3 below. Sperber notes that we can’t expect a single explanation of dissemination applicable to all kinds of representations in the same way. He writes, ‘The diffusion of a folk tale and that of a military skill, for instance, involves different cognitive abilities, different motivations and different environmental factors. An epidemiological approach, therefore, should not hope for one grand unitary theory. It should, rather, try to provide interesting questions and useful conceptual tools, and to develop the different models needed to explain the existence and fate of the various families of cultural representations’ (Sperber, 1996: 83). To understand dissemination within the world religions, we need to briefly mention the main media and the situations in which this takes place. There are many means of transmission of religious representations; for example, the preaching of sermons, the repetitions of prayers and rituals, teaching using catechisms. These genres are beyond our current scope. However, to exemplify cultural dissemination we need to understand one key technology: scripture. And this is explored in Section 3.2. 3.2

Lineages of transmission

To reach cultural levels of distribution thoughts have to be publicly communicated. This communicative phase might be called the media phase of dissemination. Technologies of transmission themselves effect how the minds of producers and consumers process acts of communication. They create new situations in which thoughts are publicly made manifest to wide populations over long periods of time with new potentials for reflective elaboration. It is a commonplace that today’s new technologies are constantly generating revolutionary changes in the media phase. Important as scripture is to the dissemination of religious concepts, the term comes with a health warning. In her discussion of the Qur’an, McAuliffe (2006: 1) notes, concerning the concept of scripture, that ‘Scholars of comparative religion have discovered that this category, a category conceived in the Jewish and Christian framework, does not translate easily or accurately into other religious traditions.’ Egyptian inscriptions, the Book of the Dead, the Epic of Gilgamesh, the code of Hammurabi, the Iliad and the Odyssey are not normally considered scriptures although have some scriptural properties. Since the English term “scripture” originated in the Judeo-Christian tradition, we can use the Bible as ‘a definition by example’. Things more or less like it can be called scriptures. Most scriptures are text collections, in diverse genres, but treated as a unity. They contain such genres as prophecy, mystical writing, prayers and liturgical formulae, historical/mythic narratives, birth stories and ancient biographies,

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poetry, proverbs, sayings and wisdom writing, legal codes and judgements, answers to questions, even letters, and so on. Halliday’s (1978) conception of ‘text as social process’ can be used to understand the nature of scripture as a ‘linguistic form of social interaction’ which fulfils culturally central social functions and relationships. Scriptures are used in many situations, including teaching, study, prayer, meditation and ritual. Being core to conceptual and normative schemes and connected to affectivity, their representations form cultural ‘sensibilities’ which manifest themselves in art, architecture and etiquette and also make them the grounds of rich interpretative traditions. A scripture is characteristically associated with secondary, but still normative writings; for example, the Mishnah and Talmuds with respect to the Torah – the five books of Moses – in Judaism. Scriptures have a number of basic features which I will briefly consider in relation to dissemination. In Downes (1998: 32–45), I discussed how language has historically undergone the social treatment that sometimes transforms it into a ‘standard language’, like standard written English. A scripture is likewise the result of a socio-historical process. A corpus of written texts becomes an authoritative mechanism for the public representation of religious thoughts and their transmission through space, time and populations. Indeed, being the vehicle appropriate for a scripture is one of the features of historic standard written languages. Writing The English “scripture” derives from Latin, scriptura, meaning ‘writing’. Such writings have a complicated relation to speech. The original medium of communication is oral, so before they are written down, widely disseminated religious thoughts depend on specialized oral techniques such as the disciplines of memorization and aids such as lists and formulae, public recitation and ritual for their reproduction and transmission. In non-literate cultures, these are the only ways that religious thoughts can be made public, preserved, elaborated and disseminated. As a new technology, writing of course transformed these four dimensions. Furthermore, literacy changes our consciousness of what language is. It encourages both whole ‘languages’ and individual texts to be regarded as ‘things’ rather than Hallidayan processes; obscuring their dynamic dialogic nature. But it also allows representations to be systematized, stored and used reflectively again and again. To write an interpretation for study and to publish it, is different from engaging in a spontaneous spoken dialogue about the same topic. It involves the mind/brain in a different way. Although I don’t want to exaggerate the contrast between speech and writing – there are many hybrids between the two modes, especially as

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technology has developed – differences in their potentials for dissemination are still striking. Speech occurs in time and is as evanescent as a vibrating column of air. Writing is spatial, an enduring horizontal and vertical mark in a lasting medium. Prototypically, speakers and hearers interact face-to-face, writers and readers are separated in time and space. Speech is acquired first and grows spontaneously, without being taught. Literacy is acquired second, taught and learned with varying degrees of success. Speech is a continuous stream primarily organized through units of intonation. Spontaneous speech is ungrammatical by written standards with semi-sentences, repetitions, ellipsis, re-phrasings and self-corrections, etc. Writing is constructed according to learned normative conventions concerning grammatical sentences, spelling, paragraphing, styles, etc. The skills involved in literacy and oral skills are different. Speech is more spontaneous. Its content is remembered, but not the details of its form. A written text enables detailed planning and revision in production, storage and copying, and a measured reflection and critical commentary in reception. Speech specializes in the inter-personal and practical and its characteristic cultural practices reveal this. It is oriented to communication, automatically processed for the speaker’s informative intent. Writing lends itself to more artificial interpretative reading practices which transcend the writer’s informative intentions. The written text itself can be a tool for creative, reflective thinking in the spotlight of consciousness. It enables a vast number of new cultural practices involving the external storage and manipulation of texts. This potential allows specialization in cultural reflection and elaboration. The skill of writing exhibits the features of culture rather than nature. Therefore, writing lies within the actual domain, not the proper domain, of the language faculty. Whenever it has emerged, the technique of writing has usually disseminated to cultural levels of distribution; indeed the technology is passed from one culture to another. Note also with respect to the contrast between memetics versus epidemiology, learning to write at school in the English ‘plain style’ and myriad other written registers, is in no sense just a simple process of imitation. Even each ‘hand’ is a personal transformation of the model scripts provided by the teacher. The history of writing allows us to reflect upon the factors that promote the dissemination of such a cultural technique. Alphabetic writing systems mimic linguistically salient phonetic input and output. In that way, they gain access to the modular phonological, syntactic and lexical core of the language faculty. Writing mimics language’s input–output features because it is a representation that is adapted to language – very like a parasite – in the sense of providing input cues which are sufficient for the language module to operate. It also appears that non-alphabetic iconic images, such as we find in hieroglyphics, can ‘plug into’ concepts directly, by-passing the phonetic input–output of language,

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while later taking on phonetic values. Like speech, writing is also functionally general-purpose, although each can do or favour things the other can’t. Being general purpose makes writing widely relevant in many contexts. Writing can directly blend speech, for example, in public recitation or texts especially written to be spoken, or in talking from notes or a PowerPoint display. Textual authority The ultimate source of authority in religion is supernatural. This authority can have its basis either in direct revelation to the mind or be indirectly transmitted. Scriptures are indirect transmissions which possess a derived textual authority. A contrasting unwritten source of authority is oral tradition. In both these indirect cases, written and oral, authority is believed to be traceable in a continuous causal chain to the tradition’s founder: Moses, the Prophet, Muhammad, Jesus Christ, the Buddha or Enlightened One, etc. and, mediated through them or inspired followers, to the supernatural source which ultimately guarantees the representations. The intentionality behind the ostensive-inferential communication instantiated in scriptures is ultimately that of the supernatural ground of the religion, if it has one. Or, if not, it is to the human source of insight in the case of Buddhism or philosophical-religious systems like neo-Platonism. This is the basis of their legitimacy and their ability to place adherents under obligations to believe and obey. In the case of Christian tradition, for example, oral tradition – ‘living transmission’ – is sometimes opposed to written scripture. Roman Catholic teaching establishes that both tradition and scripture rest on the common authority of Christ through ‘apostolic succession’. Within Protestant Christianity, the sources of authority are somewhat different and more variable. In theory at least, authority is more scripturally based, more relative to individual interpretation and experience, less mediated by non-textual authority or tradition. This explains the importance of ‘biblical inerrancy’ for Protestant fundamentalism. In rabbinic Judaism, there is both a written and an oral Torah, the oral law. Both are believed to be traceable to God’s revelation to Moses. The Torah can be conceived as God’s actual blueprint for creation. The traditional view is that the written Torah was revealed to Moses on Sinai. But it was accompanied by an orally transmitted Mosaic tradition. One view of the latter is that this oral law has been transmitted faithfully without alteration by successive generations of sages from the time of Moses. In another scenario, while some elements of the oral Torah were believed to have been directly revealed to Moses, other aspects have been logically derived through legitimate processes of debate, guided by God, by generations of sages and rabbis within the

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interpretative tradition, and adjudged normative on that basis. Moses’ authority is unique in that it ultimately derives directly from his relation to God. In Islam, for orthodox believers, the Qur’an wasn’t written by Muhammad (570–632 CE). Instead, it is a transcription of God’s Arabic utterances, revelations to Muhammad, received orally and then recited by him during and after intense prophetic experiences. The Arabic language itself is the medium of God, and his thoughts cannot be directly put into any other language. Gilliot (2006: 41) writes, ‘The Muslim theological position is that God is the speaker throughout the Qur’an, Muhammad the recipient, and the angel Gabriel the intermediary agent of the quar’anic revelations.’ There are generic markers in the Qur’an and other scriptures, which signal this supernatural textual authority. The Qur’an employs a technique similar to that of the Old Testament prophets. Sometimes it implies that God himself is the speaker. At other times the voice of the text fluctuates into that of the prophet Muhammad. Buddhist sutras often begin with ‘Thus I have heard . . .’, referring to a line of transmission reaching back to the foundation. Scripture guarantees the most entrenched and widely disseminated cultural representations of a population whose core cultural beliefs and norms are religious. We shall return to the issue of authority in Chapter 5. Prestige and the sacred There are many forms of prestige in language. Standard languages have overt prestige and other varieties are ranked with respect to this. Because of its authority and cultural centrality, scriptures evoke similar attitudes. But scriptural prestige is of a special sort based on the fact that the text is sacred, set apart from areas of life which are profane. The English word “sacred” describes an affective attitude towards something because it is a positive part of the religion complex described in Chapter 1, especially the relation to the supernatural. Its converse is the profane, outside it. Consider that which is shockingly precious and awesome, mingled with the aesthetic response that it is beautiful, set aside from pragmatic use, yet intensely meaningful. These are the complex affects that make up the sacred attitude which motivates respect behaviour. This affect has a supernatural rationale, backs up the normativity of the way of life, and can tag religious thoughts reinforcing belief. Conversely, anything negative with respect to the religion generates the opposite: it is an “abomination” or a “sacrilege”, a form of the disgust basic emotion. In Islam, these attitudes are demanded towards both quar’anic language and the books themselves. The Qur’an in Islamic orthodoxy is unique and inimitable in value and this is expressed in many ways. Ideally, it is to be memorized and publically recited. The text is not just treated intellectually.

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Its recitation is an experience of the sacred, both liturgical and aesthetic. Sacred texts, especially prophetic texts, commonly use poetic language. Adherents respond to this type of scriptural language as they would to poetry, not necessarily in the same way they comprehend verbal art, but aware of its potential rhetorical or poetic effects – including aesthetic judgements of its beauty. One thinks, for example, of Psalm 26. Canon-formation, lineages and traditions At first, the founders of the great traditions transmitted their innovations orally. The singular term “founder” should be used advisedly, since founders and their followers and opponents are embedded together in social contexts. A movement where thoughts disseminate to cultural levels cannot be the result of the activities of just one person. Both the ‘Jesus movement’ and its predecessor, the eschatological movement of John the Baptist, are general products of first-century Judaism. The gospels show ‘Jesus the Jew’ in historically typical situations, using various registers, engaging in religious debate. The Sira literature, writings about Muhammad by Muslim sages in the centuries immediately following the Prophet’s death in 632 CE, also show him embedded in the context of city, clan, family, companions and social and political conflict. Gautama is first presented as struggling experimentally with the multiplicity of ‘paths’ available to ‘seekers’ like himself, a religious mendicant typical of the context of Indian thought and practice. After his enlightenment, the Buddha gains followers, travels, actively spreads the message. Initial teaching is oral and face-to-face; direct spoken ostensiveinferential communication, one to one and one to many. This initial dissemination spreads through ever wider communication networks, ultimately gaining institutional expression. Remember that disseminating thoughts are never precisely identical. They are subject to Sperber’s transformative pressures as they are inferentially communicated from mind to mind. Thoughts come in families of related representations, although they may be triggered by input of the same uttered language. I suggest that one function of liturgy is to make the individual’s thoughts, which are inwardly different from those of others, appear the same in public. Each person manifestly performs in exactly the same way, in spite of the fact that each mind/brain is thinking differently. Memorization and scripture are other ways to stabilize and make apparently uniform the family of thoughts that come to form a long-term temporal tradition. We can use the Buddhist notion of a temporal lineage, from master to pupil, as the means by which traditions, whole families of related representations, are disseminated through time. A written scripture is a tool, not only for the public stabilization and preservation of these traditions as they become more

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remote from the founder, but also a way of introducing it to new minds, extending the lineage, ‘spreading the gospel’. There are always narratives about how the various written scriptures came into being which justify their authority. In each case a lineage is traced to the founder. Moses was believed to be the author of the written Torah, the Pentateuch or first five books of the Bible, as well as the source of an oral Torah accompanying it. According to the traditional Buddhist narrative, three months after his death there was a meeting to preserve the Buddha’s words and create a textual tradition. ‘At the town of Ra¯jagrha . . . in northern India 500 arhats took part in a “communal recitation”. . . individuals who had each realized direct and perfect knowledge of Dharma’ (Gethin, 1998: 39–40). The traditional account of the formation of the written Qur’an illustrates the transition of a scripture from its oral origin to writing. We saw that the text is viewed as fundamentally oral, a recitation from memory. It is sometimes referred to as a ‘book’, but this may refer to the real locus of the text in God’s mind. The tradition also says that, although parts of it were written down during the Prophet’s lifetime, it was not collected and ordered until after his death. It is said that the third caliph, Uthma¯n, ‘asked Zayd b. Tha¯bit – who had been one of Muhammad’s scribes . . . to lead an editorial team to prepare a complete, official text of the Qur’an. To do so he was to examine all known written collections and to interview all persons who had memorized parts of the text, and on this basis to prepare the complete written copy’ (Donner, 2006: 32). But, as Donner also says, the relation of the history of editorial redaction to ‘the revelations of Muhammad’s time and the Qur’an of today’ is not clear. The Enlightenment employed reason to challenge traditional authority. One aspect was the emergence in Germany of the historical-critical method, which has dominated biblical study until recently. It applies rational methodologies to achieve genuine historical insight into scriptural origins; the interpretative sciences of history, hermeneutics and philology. Scriptural texts can be broken down with respect to their varying formal and stylistic features looking for signs of their oral origin (form criticism), for signs of their sources in other texts (source criticism), or how redactors edited the scriptures into synthetic stylistic wholes for their own didactic or polemical purposes in their own historical contexts (redaction criticism). At heart, these constitute a method for reconstructing ostensive-inferential communication from contexts in the distant past. It historicizes scriptural narratives. It tries to find out what actually happened, what the words and actions actually meant to the original users. It seeks the facts of the ‘historical Jesus’. For example, a pericope is a textual fragment, repeated in various contexts, which is a symptom of oral origin and the context in which it originated. One example is a question about resurrection posed to Jesus by some Sadducees in Mk.12: 18-27;

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Mt.22: 23-33; Lk.20: 27-40. This is exactly the sort of dispute, a question and answer dialogue, which was characteristic of actual inter-actions among rabbis. Problems were posed and answered by teachers using proof texts. (There are dialogues of similar form in the Qur’an, which also suggest religious contestation.) It provides evidence about Sadducee, Pharisee and Jesus’ use of the concept RESURRECTION. Yet in each gospel narrative, the same dialogue has a purpose or role specific to that redactor. One settled result of historical criticism is that the Pentateuch – the first five books of the Old Testament – was not written by any one person. Instead, the text was creatively redacted from four separate sources. So it could hardly be a direct record of deliverances from God to Moses. Another robust finding is that the three synoptic gospels – Mark, Matthew and Luke – were redacted in relation to each other, to Q – an unknown source shared by the latter two books – and two further non-extant sources unique to Matthew and Luke. Each gospel also has its own distinct theology and must have been composed for a particular readership. Such research presents different problems with respect to the Qur’an. Research is much less advanced and has been mainly conducted by Western scholars. It is politically problematic for this reason alone. To a large degree, Muslim scriptural scholarship remains traditional. Scholarship has uncovered how scriptures have emerged in specific historical and political circumstances. This includes the phenomenon of canon formation. A body of texts, the canon, is constructed, treated as one unified thing and becomes officially authoritative. The regulation of scriptures – which varies from tradition to tradition – is usually endorsement and enforcement, sometimes bitterly contested, of what has become the consensus developed in specific historical conditions over many centuries. For example, a council of rabbis in 90 CE at Jamnia, after the destruction of the templebased religion by the Romans in 70 CE, secured Jewish scriptures for rabbinical Judaism. Penumbras of secondary texts To read a public text is to engage in ostensive-inferential communication. As mentioned earlier, whoever appears to author a scriptural text, the mind behind it is supposed to be not of this world. Thus, to comprehend scripture as intended is of supreme importance – it reveals God’s will. (For example, in Judaism there is an obligation to ‘study the Torah’.) To understand scriptural communications is the beginning of a process of dissemination and the continuation of a lineage, not only of the writings which serve as input, but of the thoughts communicated and how they were worked out. I emphasize again that thoughts communicated to a hearer are not, except as the limiting case, exact reproductions of the thoughts in the mind of the

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speaker. Rather the two thoughts are similar and, if communication is successful are both part of a closely related family. Successful ostensiveinferential communication occurs when the thoughts in the mind of the hearer, when they achieve optimal relevance, are similar enough to the speaker’s informative intent. (Effective communication is that in which there isn’t enough misunderstanding – mismatch of thoughts – for it to have relevant consequences. We understand each other, if not exactly, then well enough to carry on.) My term “lineage” refers both to the temporal history of a thought and the whole branching and criss-crossing set of related representations that constitute its ‘line’. The line is the family of related public and private representations that form the lineage of a thought as it passes from mind to mind, both throughout a population and over time. A bundle of lineages that are inferentially related and processed together form a tradition. This includes the intermediate steps, the lineages’ public forms, when major concepts forming a tradition are lexicalized in words. (There are also ad hoc concepts which no single lexical item can express.) And to the degree that it is input and output within different lineages, the ‘same’ public word forms part of the lexical manifestation of different but related mental representations. Members of a lineage are causally related within the mind/brains of communicators and interpreters. Scriptures are the media phase of this process. A line of representations is not only a matter of how thoughts are communicated from one mind/brain to another. Lineages also generate further public texts with layers and layers of interpretations of the original scripture. Sermons do this every day. So a scriptural tradition includes not only the canon itself, but also this penumbra of related interpretations and elaborations. Consider the vast public literature of Christianity based on the words and concepts found in the New Testament. This ranges from devotional pamphlets to the major works of the Christian theological tradition and the generation by scriptures of new lineages of interpretation never stops. The Cambridge Companion to Biblical Interpretation (Barton, 1998) illustrates this. The first article treats the historical-critical method discussed above as an attempt within ‘scientific’ history to discover the original meanings of the Bible. By contrast, the second article discusses the recent ‘postmodernist’ counter-approach: scripture is analysed using the same reading strategies that are used to interpret secular literature, with little interest in how the gospel was formed. We see feminist criticism, the analysis of power, the study of narrative technique, deconstruction and so on. There is overlap and interaction between the separate historical lineages of what are now considered separate traditions but which originated in re-interpretations and elaborations. Within the larger Abrahamic tradition, there are the separate, but related, lineages that have diverged into the Jewish, Christian and Muslim traditions. The New Testament canon defines itself as

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the fulfilment of the Old Testament, by which it is systematically related by interpretation. The Qur’an understands itself in a single line of revelation with both Judaism and Christianity with which many concepts are shared. Similarly, within the south Asian tradition, Buddhist doctrines are embedded in the prior concepts of the Hindu tradition. For example, the Buddhist doctrine of ‘no self’ (an-atman) depends on the concept of ‘self’ (atman). Buddhist meditation is a variation of Yoga. Public interpretative penumbras – bodies of commentary – are a feature of scripture explicable in terms of the pragmatics of understanding which automatically creates lineages of related representations. Given redaction histories and source analyses, such lineages reach back to utterances of first users, but even these must themselves have been founded in inherited contexts. Abraham understood God’s promises in some context. It is therefore useful to think of scriptures not as ‘books’, but of whole text systems. We must think of them not only as ‘words on the page’ which ‘cue’ each act of comprehension/ transmission, but also the whole body of mental representations historically involved in this communicative processing. Translation: ‘books essentially in exile’ When I first proposed this book, difficulties were raised. It would be impossible to study religious language without going back to the texts of the great religions in their original languages. This would demand biblical Hebrew, New Testament Greek, Sanskrit and Pali, the Arabic of the Qur’an, etc. Specialists in each tradition regard such expertise as a prerequisite to serious scholarship: translations are said to be inadequate. Thus, we need to reflect upon translation and how it relates to this issue. Firstly, all scriptures have originated in inter-lingual lineages of comprehension or interpretation. A lineage is a transmission history. It consists of a causally related series within a population of public linguistic and private mental representations resulting from acts of inferential comprehension over time that forms a family of related representations. We can label what is transmitted as the same, both because of the causal history and sufficient similarity. Sufficient similarity exists because of the constraint imposed by the principle of relevance in each communication in the series. For example, the concept in my mind of Jesus’ resurrection, lexicalized in my English as “The Resurrection”, is now the current end point of that particular lineage of successful communication in my memory, one among millions of end points in the family of that concept today, all different but related. The transmission history of a lineage can be intra-lingual, with the same language used in the series of communications. Or the transmission can be inter-lingual, in which different languages are used at some point in the public

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phase. For example, Jerome interpreted the public Greek text of the New Testament employing his private mental representations, then made them manifest in Latin in the Vulgate. The claim that one can only understand the Christian concept, THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS, if one studies the new testament Greek, needs to be evaluated with respect to the actual complexity of the situation of the scriptures and their comprehension. This is incorrigibly inter-lingual. Early Christianity is inter-lingual in Aramaic, Hebrew and Greek. Scholars infer that Jesus and his circle probably spoke Aramaic as their mother tongue, at that time the vernacular of most Palestinian Jews. Jesus wrote nothing and his preaching was very probably in this language. Yet his thoughts can be clearly traced to many and various lineages originating in other languages. For example, Jesus’ view of resurrection in the dialogue with the Sadducees is that of a Pharisee. He cites Moses in the Torah (Ex.3: 6). But what kind of competence did Jesus have in biblical Hebrew? We can only speculate. Let’s assume there was a kind of Diglossia (two varieties) among Palestinian Jews at that time, in which an elaborated High, Hebrew, was learned formally for reciting and expounding scripture, as opposed to a cognate Low, Aramaic, acquired at home, used in everyday situations. (A diglossic situation like this is attested in the Amoraic period. 200–500 CE: ‘scholars would address the general public . . . in Hebrew, while . . . disciples repeated his remarks in Aramaic . . . for the benefit of those ignorant of Hebrew’ Steinsaltz, 1976: 41.) We can infer that Jesus, as a male, had some Hebrew, but we have no idea of his competence. He is portrayed as an itinerant charismatic and healer who claims prophet-like authority – scandalizing some and amazing others – but not learned. He is not authoritative as a scribe/Pharisee is, nor had he attended the house of a great scholar like the theologically sophisticated Saul/Paul. Even at that time the general understanding of Hebrew was limited enough that in synagogue, readings were glossed in Aramaic, the Targum, in order to be intelligible to the congregation. My point is that Jesus’ own interpretation of religious concepts must be inter-lingual, based on some translation; to the degree that Hebrew and Aramaic are not mutually intelligible. To trace the depth of the inter-lingual lineages one step further back, Carroll and Prickett (1997: xxi) report that many of the thoughts of the Hebrew Bible are interpretations of ideas from adjacent middle-east cultures stretching into antiquity. To this degree, the Hebrew texts manifest ideas whose sources are translations, are inter-lingual. The Bible is already intertextual across languages from the start, generated by bilingual people and languages in contact. And of course, the first written manifestation of Jesus’ thoughts in the synoptic gospels are in yet another language, the low, demotic Greek that was the lingua franca of administration, trade and the RomanoHellenistic way of life. The point is that the transmission lineage of Jesus’

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own concepts must have already been translated by a bilingual somewhere. They are already inter-lingual when they are first written down in the New Testament. It is extremely unlikely that Jesus himself would have used Greek, if he had any, for religious topics. However, it is significant for the dissemination of Christianity to the gentiles that there were many urban communities of Jews that were Greek speaking and needing Jewish ideas put into that cosmopolitan language. As Carroll and Prickett (1997: xivi) write, ‘The Bible is apparently a holy book without an ur-text; instead there are only endless layers of appropriation.’ The same is true of other major scriptural traditions. The central concepts of the Qur’an are steeped in Jewish and Christian lineages which were at some stage inter-lingually translated; monotheism, the same creator God, the sharp line between believers and non-believers, the final Judgement. Buddhist lineages are transmitted and transformed inter-lingually from Sanskrit to Pali, from south-east Asia, to the Tibetan cultural area, to China and Japan (Robinson and Johnson, 1997). There are rich traditions telling of its introduction and translation into Chinese by bilingual monks, where it generates new genres like Chan (Zen in Japanese). Some ‘Sanskrit’ texts only survive in Chinese and Tibetan translation. The role of the scriptural, indeed any thinker or writer, is that of redactor, the synthesizing mind at the temporary intersection of many thousands of both intra- and inter-lingual lineages. Here and now in this new context, the writer’s mind/brain is synthesizing the end points of these lineages into a more or less unified new text with its own socio-historical communicative purposes, trying to externalize and control its unruly mental representations. Robert Alter (1981) analyses this brilliantly for biblical narrative. This process is why writing often appears ‘inspired’, originating like a dream from outside the conscious self and alien to its reflective intentions, as the myriad potentials for new concepts and their implications synthesized from diverse lineages are thought then written into a public phase. Secondly, our conception of translation depends on our concept of language. One reason that so much popular literary discussion of translation seems so futile is that it is based on folk concepts of language and communication. Instead, an understanding of translation is only as good as the linguistic and pragmatic theory in which it is embedded. Here we have been employing a thoroughly cognitivist and universalist Chomskyan picture of the form of language; its phonological, syntactic, lexical and semantic (logical) form as an input–output system for non-linguistic concepts, mental representations and operations of various types. Pragmatics provides a theory of how this system is used. The complex stylistic patterning – the linguistic choices made in making manifest one’s thoughts – and the very skeletal inferential directions provided by ‘the words on the page’ serve as evidential

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cues for inferring speaker meanings. As we shall see, the words on the page themselves have very limited inherent content, other than as input instructions. Combined with stylistic pattern, they are simply input to inferential work. Procedurally, once these cues are decoded, the inferential work is carried out on non-linguistic mental representations of the same form for every normal human mind/brain irrespective of their native tongue. This will be worked out in more detail in Section 3.3. It follows that there are no human thoughts not thinkable in principle by anyone to whom they are communicated. A thought may not currently be lexicalized in any given target language, but it can be periphrastically expressed or approximated, so that ‘sufficiently similar’ mental representations and cognitive effects are induced and the lineage of interpretation is preserved and becomes inter-lingual. We know this because of inter-lingually manifested concepts we use everyday. Translation always occurs in a bi-lingual mind/brain; for example, a Greek, Aramaic and Hebrew competent first-century urban Jew, who learned the former languages spontaneously and the Hebrew more formally and thus could freely code-switch between all three. (Saul/Paul probably exemplifies such a person.) Consider a bilingual translator’s first public rendering into Greek of Jesus’ thoughts communicated in spoken Aramaic. Governed by optimal relevance, our translator’s mind/brain infers Jesus’ informative intent on the basis of his Aramaic words as remembered/reported, ideally re-constructing Jesus’ teaching context, accessing the encyclopaedic Jewish background, etc., then metarepresentationally reflecting upon how Jesus’ communication was ‘brought off’ using the remembered Aramaic wording. (As noted earlier, people normally remember rough content, not wording.) Translation consists of making those ‘same’ thoughts manifest using the different lexical and formal-textual stylistic potential of the bilingual’s Greek target language, the rich but different cues it provides. The translator can inventively twist and distort the Greek, even coining new words, using old words as cues for new concepts. The translator is aware of the store of Greek encyclopaedic information and contexts; for example, concepts of the after-life already used by Greekspeaking Jews. (This is what ‘languages in contact’ really means and this is the normal sociolinguistic situation, pace the assumptions of most English speakers.) The thoughts have to be made manifest in Greek so that a monolingual Greek-speaking Jew of the diaspora, or a gentile audience, seeking to comprehend the translator through processing for optimal relevance will construct similar thoughts to those communicated by Jesus in Aramaic; at least sufficiently similar so that the lineage of related mental representations can be said to continue. The constraint that makes translation possible is the nature of ostensiveinferential communication governed by its automatic processing for optimal

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relevance. The problem is finding stylistic choices within Greek which will cue equivalent effects, relative to differences in background information. The translator is an ‘erased’ transmitter, not noticed by the reader of the Greek, standing in for Jesus. The whole process is made easier by the on-going dialogic nature in which inter-language contact is carried out. Ideas and experiences more and more approximate are found and translation improves. Encylopaedic melding or syncretism of concepts occurs. Alternatively, what counts as ‘similar’ – the ‘same idea’ – may stretch to breaking point, into ‘divergence’; but this must be a flexible notion. How similar really are the various Jewish, Christian and Muslim concepts lexicalized in English as “The Last Judgement”? Concepts like this become sites for conflict between various factions within a lineage. Now consider the implication of this for the translation of scriptures. Usually, a scriptural text is considered in one of two ways. One concept is that scripture consists of the actual words inscribed on the page in the given language of the original text, e.g. Arabic or Greek. The text is ‘object’, not ‘process’. This is the myth that the scripture is the inscription. If so, an inscription in a different language cannot ever be the scripture itself. This inscription view presupposes a code theory of communication. All the information that constitutes the scripture is inherently coded, ‘loaded into’ meaning-exhaustive linguistic forms, to be ‘got out’ only by someone who can decode it. Understanding is decoding. The text is like treasure. In translation, the target and source codes would have to be exactly paired by someone who fully ‘knew’ both codes. But simply because the languages differ formally this can never be done. There will be many mismatches. And there is no alternative inferential way to convey the concept. Indeed, linguistic relativism claims that the concepts encoded in one language simply can’t ever be matched with those in another language. In this case, strictly speaking, translation is impossible; but so would be learning a second language. The code view of communication implies a form of translationnihilism. It requires identity of translated thoughts instead of similarity. It says there are no truly valid inter-lingual lineages. It is refuted by the existence of the same problem of identity and similarity in intra-lingual communication. We illustrated in Chapter 2 that this is simply not how communication works. The tissue of stylistically organized written form is virtually ‘contentless’. As mere cue it requires inferential processing in ostensive-inferential communication. The myth of scripture as inscription fetishizes the words on the page. The inscription is treated with awe, decorated in gold leaf etc. By “fetishizes”, I mean that it transforms the original marks, in Arabic or Greek, into the sign of scripturality. The actual written words code the authority of the supernatural tout court. By implication, this authority is

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passed only to those who can claim the ability to decode the original text. One can easily see that this is an ideological strategy for the control of religious communication. Fundamentalism likely presupposes a code theory of communication. A second view is more realistic about communication, but insists that Jesus’ original informative intent, as made manifest in written Greek in the late first century, is the true scripture. The translated lineage of representations of Jesus’ original thoughts may have deviated over the centuries, finally arriving in seventeenth-century English via Latin, through the translating mind/brains of Jerome, Tyndal, the King James translation committee, etc. This view is based on a respect for the authority of the founder’s original communication. It is wisely cautionary about too much ‘literary’ freedom in translation. But if Jesus’ original intent is the authentic scripture, we can’t be sure today what he meant then. Or even if we do partially understand his message, it may be irrelevant today, without re-interpretation for our new context. All that is really available to us today is the inherited lineage and we have seen that it is incorrigibly inter-lingual. But even if no translation had occurred, as in the Qur’an, centuries of intra-lingual dissemination would still pose the problem of how my twenty-first-century CE idea of what Muhammad meant relates to what he originally meant in his own time. Nevertheless, people do lay claim to religious authority when they claim to know Jesus’ or other founders’ original informative intent. Now we are fetishizing the original message. In this case, the interpreter is standing in for the founder, speaking with their authority. Of course, those who claim this can say that there has been a transmitted tradition – as claimed by the Roman church – instructing them on how to correctly understand the founder’s intent. But this simply begs the further question of the reliability of this traditional interpretative lineage. Or they might say that the original intent is simply transparent to common sense, like an everyday communication. But this is transparently false. Or they might say that they are inspired so that they are guided to Jesus’ original message. This is plainly just the claim to be a surrogate for the founder. Any genuine authority concerning what was originally meant is only warranted by careful but re-constructive inter-lingual scholarship, which is always fallible. However, as we saw above, the relevance of a scriptural concept is the interpretative penumbra generated by actually using scripture in a way of life; the implications of the scripture in new contexts. New understandings inevitably transform the representation of the original intent, as the lineage is transmitted and develops over time. Our conclusion must be that a scripture is in fact the whole array of lineages derived from the text, all the disseminated transformations within and across languages and minds

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over time that make up the living religious tradition. Thus translation is presupposed by the very idea of scripture. As an array of lineages, scripture is dissemination in religion.

3.3

Understanding the actual words The nature of explicit content

Scriptures reproduce and spread thoughts from mind to mind over many centuries. To explain why some representations disseminate so readily through many minds and become so entrenched, we need first to understand how linguistic input itself is comprehended. One of the weaknesses of meme theory was that it assumed cultural representations were simply copied from mind to mind. In response, following Sperber’s (1994, 1996) epidemiological approach, we said that this wasn’t so. Epidemiology incorporates a theory of inferential communication that reveals why thoughts aren’t simply replicated when communicated. In Chapter 2, we introduced conversational implicature and saw that communicators’ intended meanings went far beyond the actual words. But we will see now that the way we understand even the content encoded in words is more complicated than simply decoding a fixed word meaning. And this is a key to understanding why some thoughts disseminate so widely. My account of the comprehension process follows that of relevance theory (Sperber and Wilson, 1995), including also some contributions of Robyn Carston (2000, 2002). Carston has specialized in analysing how pragmatic processes are involved in the explicit communication of semantic content. This is a big field and space constrains us, so I will just sketch the basics, ignoring details and controversies. Also, I will use Christian examples because I was raised in that tradition and its issues are second nature. My main illustration will be ‘The Resurrection’. Communication is successful when the hearer comes to understand the speaker’s informative intent, symbolized by I. To summarize the story so far: ostensive-inferential communication is governed by the presumption of optimal relevance. This means that the linguistic input uttered by the speaker is guaranteed to be the most relevant way, granted the speaker’s abilities and preferences, that they could convey I to the hearer. Thus, having recognized that the utterance is ostensive and conveys an intention to communicate, when the hearer processes the input for maximal relevance they will automatically arrive at I. Maximal relevance is achieved by deriving the largest number of positive cognitive effects with the least effort. In the actual comprehension procedure, the mind/brain processes for this and simply stops as soon as its

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expectations of relevance are satisfied. The representations that the hearer has derived at this point is I, that which the speaker intended. This processing proceeds in two parallel ways. First, there is whatever is explicitly communicated. This is the role of linguistic forms themselves in communicating I. We can think of this as explicit semantic content. Second, and contrasting with the first, is what is implicitly communicated, inferred in context in the ways we studied earlier. We are concerned in this part just with the first, with explicit content. Common sense has it that semantic content is wholly coded in the meaning of words. Such word meanings, when they are put together, yield the semantic content of sentences. By contrast, relevance theory proposes that what is explicitly communicated is not just coded in the words, any more than implicatures are. What is explicitly communicated by the words is also inferred in context on the basis of input which is quite skeletal. And this process of inference is likewise guided by optimal relevance. This is a radical challenge to the traditional and the common sense picture of semantics and it has implications for our understanding of religious thoughts. Word and sentence meaning is not what it was thought to be. Its contribution to I is as an evidential clue which is inferentially developed by a process of enrichment. Figure 2 traces this process. Five types of representation There are five types of representations involved in the processing of an utterance as displayed in Figure 2. These are: (1) (2) (3) (4) (5)

Utterances of Linguistic Forms. Logical Forms assigned to Linguistic Forms uttered. Semi-Propositional Forms, in process of inferential enrichment. Fully Propositional Forms or Explicatures, developed from logical form. Propositional Forms which are Implicatures, not developed from logical form.

We have already illustrated (5) and shown how speakers implicitly communicate their thoughts in context using two sources; the linguistic input and background assumptions which are either already in working memory or drawn from the mental encyclopaedia. I won’t say more about implicatures here. Communication can also be explicit. The fully propositional forms (4) of the utterance represent the truth-conditional semantic content ultimately inferred from the utterance. The semi-propositional forms (3), also developed in context by processes of inference, are the character of the uttered representation; the way that this semantic content is contextually determined. The fully developed propositional forms (4) are called explicatures, by analogy with implicatures, but unlike them, arise from the interaction of

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CONTEXTUAL INFERENCES

CONTEXT - DEPENDENT IMPLICIT COMMUNICATION

INTENDED PROPOSITIONAL FORMS NOT DEVELOPED FROM LOGICAL FORM OF UTTERANCE

Implicatures and explicatures derived in parallel

CONTEXT - DEPENDENT EXPLICIT COMMUNICATION

LANGUAGE CAPACITY

THOUGH INCOMPLETE, HAS SUFFICIENT LOGICAL CHARACTER TO WARRANT INFERENCES

CONTEXT INDEPENDENT

INTENDED FULLY PROPOSITIONAL FORM OF UTTERANCE

SEMI - PROPOSITIONAL FORM OF UTTERANCE

LOGICAL FORM OF UTTERANCE

INPUT PUBLIC PERFORMANCE

Utterance

Figure 2 The five stages of utterance comprehension.

explicit linguistic form and context. The explicatures of an utterance are those communicated propositions which are developed through the pragmatic enrichment of the coded content of the logical form (2) assigned to the actually uttered linguistic items; it is only in this sense they are ‘explicit’ or

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‘explications’. By contrast, the content of implicatures is not represented in any way by logical forms. I will now go through the types of representations, (1–5), say what they are and how they are related to each other, and then illustrate this. The utterance of linguistic forms (1) provides the initial input. (Remember that guided by optimal relevance, processing ultimately aims for I, informative intent.) Linguistic items uttered in any media expound lexical, syntactic and morphological form, more or less elided or otherwise stylistically shaped. Style is the shaping of the pattern of linguistic items in ways that effect processing and generate implicatures, without affecting truth-conditional meaning. Given this input, the language faculty automatically assigns logical form (2) to the input. The main job of the linguistic module is to connect input to logical form, sound to meaning. This is the first stage of processing. Logical forms are specialized conceptual representations, the well-formed formulae of a psychological object, representations used for deductive reasoning. The uttered input begins the first stage of being translated into the thoughts communicated. But logical forms don’t provide much of the content intended in context. They represent only the meaning ‘coded’ by the linguistic forms. So they are semantically incomplete with respect to the full contextually derived content which the speaker intended. Logical forms abstract away everything but the logical properties of conceptual representations; the role played when they are put into the mental device which draws deductive inferences. Logical forms thus represent the way that the utterance comes to figure in the reasoning required to derive new information, when it is joined as premises with information from memory to form a newly constructed context in which to determine I. The constituents of a logical form are concepts, to which deductive rules are sensitive. So we must interrupt the story in Figure 2 to return to the concept of concepts.

Concepts revisited Concepts are psychological objects which are the constituents of logical form. When concepts combine in a logical form, they compose the skeletal basis of a thought with respect to that thought’s logical properties. If basic, atomic concepts, they can be lexicalized or not – be expressed in natural language by single words: e.g. the concept ALIVE by the word “alive”. If concepts are non-atomic or composite and they have a linguistic expression, it will usually be a phrase or a morphologically complex word. For example, the composite concept RESURRECT in its technical religious sense, first attested in English in the thirteenth century, is lexicalized in “resurrection”, “resurrect” and related forms (from Latin resurgere, to resurge or revive).

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The concept RESURRECT, as a Judeo-Christian religious idea, is equivalent to the composite concept RISE (FROM THE DEAD), closer to the atomic level. The concept can be formulated as a deductive rule or meaning postulate such that if ‘someone’, a variable standing for any arbitrary individual, is RESURRECTED, then that person’s body was once ALIVE at time tn and that body became NOT-ALIVE at a certain time tn, and subsequently that same body BECOMES ALIVE again at a later time tþn. This is assigned to the logical form corresponding to the language, “Someone rose from the dead”, paraphrasing “Someone’s resurrection”. The related concept RAISE (FROM THE DEAD) adds that someone, another variable representing an AGENT, CAUSED the process RISE to occur. The concepts trigger the deductions formulated in the rule or postulate and capture the semantic content coded by the word. But, as pointed out in Chapter 2, we have concepts for which we have no words but which we can nevertheless make manifest in utterances. They are more or less effable, not totally ineffable. When new concepts, which are not lexicalized, are constructed in the course of deriving the propositional form of the utterance, they are called ad hoc concepts. I will mark these with a star*. Carston (2000: 36–37) gives a nice example of such a concept. A speaker asks whether a hearer wants to go to a particular party and gets the reply, ‘I’m tired.’ Carston points out that what is explicated is an ad hoc concept, much more specific than TIRED, which is ‘roughly paraphrasable as “tired to an extent that it makes going to the party undesirable”’. This is the concept TIRED*. Concepts are addresses in memory, which bring together three distinct types of information (Sperber and Wilson, 1995: 86). (1) The Logical Entry. (2) The Encyclopaedic Entry. (3) The Lexical Entry. First, there is the logical entry. These are the deductive rules that apply to the logical form if it contains that concept. They are standard rules of predicate logic made sensitive to conceptual content. Thus, a logical form containing RESURRECT triggers the above deductive rule or meaning postulate. Second, there is the encyclopaedic entry. This contains the directions required to access information in memory about the set of objects that the concept denotes: for example, everything we have stored in memory about its extension; all cases of resurrection including people’s claims about it. The information is of different kinds and organized accordingly. I’ll return to this below. Finally, there is the lexical entry. This provides information about the properties of the natural language words or phrases corresponding to the concept, if there are any.

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Fully propositional and semi-propositional forms The logical forms which the language module assigns to utterances are not, as they stand, capable of being either true or false. For example, if the language uttered is ambiguous, it will be assigned more than one logical form, and the one intended must be determined. Furthermore, unless the hearer can assign specific values to a logical form’s indexical expressions, such as pronouns or tenses, the representation can’t in principle be either true or false. The traditional concept of a proposition is that it represents that aspect of an uttered sentence which determines whether it is true or false. Therefore, logical forms as they stand aren’t propositions. The mind has more work to do. For example, with respect to a logical form containing the concept RESURRECT, variables, such as ‘someone’, have to be filled in with the individuals to which the speaker intended to refer and the intended times, tn, tn, tþn need to be specified. These are pre-requisites for the representation being either true or false. In philosophical terminology, the logical form is unsaturated, just a schema. It needs information filled in, to be saturated, to be capable of being true or false and fully propositional. The fully propositional form of an utterance (4) is a logical form which has been developed until it is semantically complete. According to Sperber and Wilson (1995: 72), to be semantically complete and thus fully propositional, a form must ‘represent a state of affairs, in a possible or actual world, whose existence would make it true’. It must be ‘capable of being true or false’. A fact is a state of affairs in the actual world by virtue of which a proposition is true. Within semantics, it is usually said that the meaning of a sentence is its truth conditions, composed from the semantic contribution of each smaller sub-sentential linguistic form to the whole. However, in our pragmatic view, the full, completed truth-conditional content triggered by the utterance of a linguistic item is relativized to context and must be derived by inferential work guided by the search for optimal relevance. If relevance is achieved before a fully propositional form is established, then processing will stop at that point. The content conveyed by an utterance doesn’t have to be fully comprehended, let alone truth-evaluated, to be relevant. This is one sense in which comprehension processes, and thus a speaker’s design of what they utter, are not guided by truth but by relevance and the search for informative intent. This highlights the significance of (3), a semi-propositional form of an utterance. This is a logical form which requires further inferential enrichment to be semantically complete – have fully determinate content capable of being true or false. Sperber and Wilson (1995: 73) exemplify this with a logical formula that still contains free variables. Thus, “She carried it in her hand”, contains the pronouns “she” and “it” that are unspecified, so the form can be

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neither true nor false. To be true or false, semi-propositional forms need further enrichment, further processing in the quest for relevance. However, semi-propositional forms still warrant inferences by virtue of their concepts. In “She was resurrected”, by virtue of RESURRECT we can infer that, for any resurrected individual referred to by “she”, at some unspecified time, t, that individual was dead at a time prior to it, tn, and then alive again at a time subsequent to it, tþn, and that some unspecified agency caused this change. These inferences are possible even though the logical form is not fully capable of being true or false without further development. So if the form contains any un-interpreted symbols, it is semi-propositional and understood only partially, just to that degree (cf. “she was resurrected”). The “she” who rose from the dead is un-interpreted. Therefore we don’t understand the representation just to that extent, although we do understand some things about it and can infer how it would partially tie up with the world if it were true. Needless to say, there is a lot else we don’t grasp about forms containing the concept, RESURRECT; for example, how one could be alive again after being dead. There are two further questions about the propositional forms of utterances. First, psychologically speaking, what are propositional forms? What psychological function is abstractly characterized by this term? What information is the mind/brain processing that corresponds to it? One view is that the mind/ brain is processing the information that is necessary and sufficient to perform the function of telling whether or not a possible state of affairs is satisfied in this context or not, whether or not the proposition is true or false. Only when this is decidable and the representation becomes truth-evaluable does the mind/brain fully grasp the propositional form. This appears necessary if the information represented is to be useable by perceptual, motivational and action systems to efficiently engage the world. These purposes constrain a psychological theory of semantic content as it is actually used in context. The information in a propositional form must be truth-evaluable – hence believable or not – on the basis of possible perception and practice. Stated abstractly, the mind/brain interprets, hence grasps, a propositional form in context by inferring its empirical consequences. A fully propositional form would be definitively truth-evaluable in these terms, containing no symbols in need of further interpretation for this to be accomplished. It would terminate in modular-based self-interpreting concepts; the constituents of intuitive beliefs. By contrast, semi-propositional forms contain un-interpreted symbols, incomplete content, and reveal partial understanding. But surely most actual propositional forms are not and need not be fully truth-evaluable. In the case of communication and practical action, a logical form only needs to be enriched enough to achieve the appropriate degree of

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relevance. A semi-propositional form can certainly achieve this in contexts in which a partial grasp of what the world would be like if it was true is sufficient for relevance. A limited grasp of the content, a sub-set of the possible inferences derivable, may achieve relevance in that context of communication or action. There are many ways of describing any truthyielding situation that are irrelevant to a particular task. Relevant propositional content need only be very indirectly or very partially about the world as it is perceivable and potentially acted upon, so semi-propositions are sufficient and this gives them an independent functional role crucial to the evolution of culture. The second question is whether there are propositions whose truth conditions are unknowable, thoughts whose truth conditional content cannot ever be fully grasped? There is a more than infinite number of possible propositional forms whose truth conditions are unknown. Consider different uses of “unknown”. There are an infinite number of propositions whose truth conditions I don’t know, but are known by others; individual vs. public knowledge. There are knowable propositions whose truth conditions nobody knows. There is a more than infinite set of merely possible propositions whose truth conditions are unknown, some subset of which our mind/brains, individually or collectively, may psychologically come to internally represent and actually come to grasp, partially, maybe fully. This is the source within logical possibility from which new thoughts emerge. However, the much deeper question still remains: is it logically possible that are there semi-propositional forms expressing thoughts whose truth conditions are fully ungraspable in principle – unknowables or mysteries? (I don’t mean by this a regress of interpretations that has no closure; that is, inexhaustibility of interpretative potential. By changing contexts, asking questions, such infinite interpretative chains are possible for any thought.) We mean semi-propositions that are grasped partially, sufficiently to achieve relevance in many contexts, but which nevertheless always remain partially understood. Forever containing some incompletely interpreted symbols in any context – unclear concepts – they are forever mysteries, at least from the point of view of the human mind. We can now treat the word “mystery” as a technical term, and this is very important in both linguistic semantics and the theory of religion. The way the mind/brain uses such mysteries is through semi-propositional forms from which it can draw inferences that contribute to the achievement of relevance. These semi-propositions are partially interpreted, therefore partially grasped; some of them forever in this state. The idea of partial truth conditions – with its corollary ‘truth evaluability to some degree’ – is at first glance, odd. It says that the mind/brain is able partially to evaluate whether a representation is true. The idea is that a mind can partially grasp truth conditions, part of the content of a representation,

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how it partially ties up with the world of perception and action. It does this by drawing the inferences that correspond to that partial understanding. The form has sufficient logical character to warrant these inferences. In the resurrection example, I can infer that whoever the resurrected ‘she’ refers to, she will have at least some properties of a person who was first alive, then dead, then again alive in that temporal sequence, and all that that may imply in this context. Further questions arise about whether such representations would have to be stored and used in a special way and what else we might be able to say about these useful mysteries. We shall return to this below. I will conclude this section by briefly examining an alternative psychological picture that also recognizes that there are uninterpreted mental representations that perform functional roles in the mind/brain. In his treatment of propositional attitudes, Fodor (1981: 177–203) claims that the objects of such attitudes as belief and desire are not propositions. Instead, they are the representations of an internal representational system, or IRS, language-like formulae in which the psychological operations of the mind/brain are formulated. By contrast, “proposition” is a term from logical semantics that specifies how these mental representations relate to things in the world. Fodor (1981: 200) writes that it is possible to formulate a semantics for mental representations by ‘saying . . . that some of its formulae express propositions’. And, ‘if we do say this, then we can make sense of the notion that propositional attitudes are relations to propositions – viz., they are mediated relations to propositions, with internal representations doing the mediating’. If this is the case, some tokens of attitudes like belief and desire, etc. will be to representations that do not express propositions, are un-interpreted in some way, yet function in the causal chains of psychological processing in the mind/brain. These formulae of the IRS will have the properties of Sperber and Wilson’s assumption schemas, introduced above (and see below). What is the problem with propositions? Fodor’s main objection to the hypothesis that ‘propositional attitudes are attitudes to propositions’, is that he doesn’t ‘understand it’, doesn’t ‘see how an organism can stand in an (interesting epistemic) relation to a proposition except by standing in a (causal/functional) relation to some token of a formula that expresses the proposition’ (Fodor, 1981: 201). As we defined it, “proposition” remains a term of art in philosophical logic invented to state semantic relationships between true ‘formulae’ and stipulated models or possible worlds in which objects and relations are postulated to satisfy them, so that they are therefore true in the model or world. But, as Fodor says, these are not psychological objects, so we haven’t explained how a naturalized epistemology can be formulated within psychology showing a functional and causal relationship between tokens in the IRS and the world of our experience, equivalent to the abstract truth conditional stipulation. When I tried above to say how a token

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of a ‘semantically complete fully propositional form with fully determinate truth conditions’ could actually relate to an extra-representational ‘fact’, so that in practice the mind/brain could assume that the token was true, I shifted to another term, “truth-evaluability”, without further explanation. This issue will occupy us in Chapter 4. The enrichment process exemplified So far the account has been abstract. I will now try to make the comprehension process diagrammed in Figure 2 clearer through an example. This is the pragmatic process of inferential enrichment, part of the comprehension of an ostensive-inferential communication. The aim is, by processing for optimal relevance, to derive the speaker’s informative intent. My example is the Christian concept, THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS. This purported event appears in various ways in different contexts in the New Testament. I will use part of Paul’s citation in Greek of a ‘creed’ in 1 Corinthians 15. This is among the earliest formulations of the concept in an explicitly Christian context applied to Jesus. It reproduces, probably translated from Aramaic, a formula which can be viewed, given its ‘language, authority, persons involved, as possibly stemming from the early Jerusalem community, at any rate from the time between 35 and 40 CE’ (Kung, 1977: 348). The clause I will use is in italics. ‘For I delivered to you as of first importance what I also received, that Christ died for our sins in accordance with the scriptures, that he was buried, that he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures, and that he appeared to C¸e¯phaˆs, then to the twelve’ (1 Cor.15: 3-5). The verses of the formula, v.6-8, continue with a sequence of further ‘appearances’ (Gk. O¯phthe¯) to circles within the primitive community, beginning with Simon/Peter, referred to in Aramaic, and concluding with Paul himself, v.9. I will trace the comprehension process of the clause step by step. The linguistic input to be analysed is, ‘that he was raised on the third day according to the scriptures’. Logical form The language module, set for English, on receiving this sensory input, automatically maps the linguistic form into a representation which contains all the information coded with respect to its logical properties. Being modular, the process is automatic, unconscious, rapid and does not involve any external information. I will concentrate on the core of the clause, “he was raised”. The logical form specifies two arguments, X and Y and the concept RAISE, expressed by its past participle lexicalization, “raised”. Whatever satisfies the argument X functions as the agent that raised the referent of the other argument, Y. The logical form does not encode the actual time of the event.

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Instead, the past tense, “was”, is indexical, placing the event prior to Paul’s point of speech. Since the clause is also in the passive voice, the agent, X, need not be overtly expressed. However, the logical form encodes that some unspecified agent caused Y to rise, accounting for this understanding. The argument Y is represented by the pronoun, “he”. This codes only that its intended referent is an individual male human. The only concept with semantic content so far is RAISE. (I will relate RAISE to RISE in a moment.) There are two adverbial logical structures derived from “on the third day” and “according to the scriptures” which each independently have scope over the event depicted in the main clause structure. There is not space to discuss these in detail. Inferential enrichment It is clear that this coded form is skeletal. I will now discuss the various kinds of enrichment, but without any implication that they are performed in a specific sequence. I illustrate them where possible from the example. Since all enrichment involves mental effort, it will only be done to the point where optimal relevance is achieved and processing stops. The pronoun “he” has an intended referent. But “he” isn’t used as an indexical expression – its referent is not determined by the situation. Instead, it is used anaphorically or having the same referent as a prior item in the text. Thus, the referent of the pronoun has to be determined in terms of an earlier co-referential expression. In this case, the intended referent of “he” is the referent of “Christ”. Even at this early date, his identification as the messiah has become an alternative way of referring to the individual Jesus of Nazareth. The interpreter who has heard this before will identify this individual and retrieve the concept JESUS from their encyclopaedia. To identify their intended referent, most referring expressions require inferential work. This is true of definite descriptions. Thus, “the scriptures” refer to specific proof texts in the Jewish bible familiar to Paul’s audience and “the twelve” has as its intended referent, Jesus’ inner circle. Although coded as prior to the utterance, the time of Christ’s raising would need to be inferred. In the narrative, it is in a sequence of events: he died, was buried, was raised, and appeared. It is most relevant to assume that the textual sequence is the temporal ordering. So he rose on the third day after burial, by first century Jewish reckoning; although some interpreters don’t take “three days” literally. The logical form contains the concept RAISE. We have identified Y, the one who was raised, as Jesus of Nazareth under the description, “Christ”. But how is RAISE to be comprehended? RAISE is an address in memory. What is filed at that address? First of all, RAISE shares a conceptual address with RISE, as the former concept includes the latter. Let’s call the single address, RISE. The concept RAISE is in a causative relation to RISE. Thus, the logical entry for the concept RISE contains the formula, ‘if X CAUSES Y to RISE, then X RAISES Y’. We can’t say, ‘Someone raised

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him but he didn’t rise’, without contradiction. But Y can RISE without an external CAUSE, because of some intrinsic property of Y, in which case it causes itself to RISE or RAISES itself as in ‘self-raising flour’. Since the logical form contains X RAISE Y (equals X CAUSES Y to RISE), it has a logical constituent X, which is a free variable. What is X? At this stage, the logical form is unsaturated, with the variable not filled in. Thus the form remains semi-propositional with respect to the identity of the AGENT. But one doesn’t have to fill in X to draw inferences from X CAUSE (Y CHRIST (Y RISE)). Only if it is relevant in order to achieve optimal relevance need the mind/brain fill the free variable. Paul takes it for granted that his readers know that X is GOD; so he doesn’t make it explicit. Conceptual enrichment and the encyclopaedia If one reflects on the concept RISE, then it is abundantly clear just how radically under-determined by the logical form are propositions conveyed by utterances containing that concept. Consider some examples of things which rise: the sun, water levels, temperatures, barometers, prices, wages, mortgage rates, dough, cakes, work pressures, international tensions, buildings, pylons, lift bridges, mountains or hills, people or animals from seated or prone positions or from sleep or death, etc. This is like the variety of ways in which the verb “cut” is used by John Searle (1980) to illustrate how context is a factor in determining even literal meaning. How does the mind/brain get from the contribution of the concept RISE in a logical form to such diverse intended propositions, each with different truth conditions? We don’t want to say that RISE is ambiguous in an indefinite number of ways, having a different sense in each case. The logical entry for RISE specifies the contributions which the concept makes to deductions. Let’s say that for RISE, the contribution is that some variable undergoes a CHANGE OF POSITION in the direction UP on some SCALE to which UP (HIGH) or DOWN (LOW) can be applied. Part of the encyclopaedic entry for RISE is also a prototype of rising, which is for a physical object to RISE in the VERTICAL DIMENSION of SPACE. The manner of the vertical movement varies with the thing that RISES. RISE is thus a basic modular concept within intuitive physics, probably universal, derived from the processing of movement with respect to the spatial orientation of the human body (see Johnson, 1987). From the logical entry, deductions can be made; for example, ‘if X rises at time tn then X is higher on some scale at time tnþ1’. Conversely, X was lower at the earlier time than at the later time. The logical entry of RISE is part of the logical form of the utterance, ready to be processed. During the history of the concept RISE, vast numbers of processes of ‘free enrichment’ of logical forms containing RISE have taken place (Carston, 2000, 2002). Ad hoc concepts, symbolized as RISE*, were inferentially

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developed from the logical form, in many contexts. The enrichment is called ‘free’, since it isn’t simply making explicit unexpressed constituents already present in the logical form (the way the agent is present in RAISE). Just as Carston proposed the narrowed or more specific ad hoc concept TIRED*, we can propose with respect to some of the above familiar uses of ‘rise’: RISE* as did water in the river after the rain; RISE* as did that lift bridge, which pivots at one end; RISE* in the way demands at work do, and so on. Now consider how an ad hoc concept RISE* might develop with respect to the content of resurrection. In “he was raised”, RISE* is RISE from the dead in the way that Jesus of Nazareth did. The inferencing is guided by optimal relevance, to calculate informative intent. In the context of “Christ died . . . buried”, the mind/brain using encyclopaedic information about the burial of the dead at that time made available by the addresses DIE and BURY, infers at least that his body is now higher than it was when buried. There has been a CHANGE OF POSITION and UP from the prone position of a corpse in a tomb. Perhaps, the corpse has been lifted up. But since the result of this movement would be an upright corpse and that isn’t what Paul wants to say and so doesn’t achieve relevance, the further inference is generated using a concept not already in the logical form; namely that, having been dead, Jesus is now again ALIVE* on some relevance sense. An alternative analysis to Carston’s is that the logical form is only enriched to yield CHANGE OF POSITION and UP. There is no ‘free enrichment’ of the concept RISE, yielding RISE*. Instead, the inference that Jesus has come back to life is an implicature. And yet, the utterance is specially formulated to communicate more than that Jesus is alive. Maybe he survived crucifixion. He could be alive in some purely spiritual or disembodied way, maybe an apparition. No, it is to communicate the ad hoc concept RISE* in which Jesus of Nazareth is alive in his bodily form, but not a revivified corpse. That’s why the word “raised” is used, to highlight the bodily dimension of the concept RISE*. If Paul had meant only that Jesus was alive, the most relevant way to communicate that is to write “alive”, not “raised”. Our analysis so far involves tedious mental effort, far removed from the speed and ease of comprehension. This is partly because RISE* isn’t a new concept for us, nor indeed was it for Jesus’ apostles. It is a development of the already available religious concept RESURRECTION. So when we process “he was raised”, it is most relevant to go directly to the encyclopaedic concept of RESURRECTION without any of the above processing, which is unnecessary effort and the source of that tedium. Indeed, RESURRECTION would be the concept most accessible from “was raised” because most frequently used in the processing of this phrase in this sort of context. Within first-century Judaism, the concept was a crucial point of differentiation of Pharisee and Sadducee. Developments of this conceptual family are be found in the

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lineages of Judaism, Christianity and Islam (Wright, 2003). So the religious concept RESURRECTION was already available as a conceptual address. It contains the concept RISE, and is thus connected to it. In calculating RISE* in the context of “Christ died . . .” an apostle would go straight to the logical entry RESURRECTION. What was unexpected and newly ad hoc is that the concept RESURRECTION referred to the general bodily rising of the dead for God’s judgement at the end of time and would not have been expected of the crucified Jesus of Nazareth. This would have yielded the new concept RESURRECTION* ¼ THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS, now lexicalized by Christians as, “The Resurrection”. The process of ad hoc concept construction makes intentional communication dynamic as concepts are altered in the process of enrichment. In our encyclopaedias, each mind understands slightly different things about resurrection in general and Jesus’ in particular. A concept continually develops as mind/brains repeatedly process it into new ad hoc forms as it disseminates, becoming relevant in many new contexts. These are Sperber’s subtle transformations, taking place within a communicative lineage. When the concept was newly applied to Jesus as RESURRECTION*, and then filed with GENERAL RESURRECTION with the * removed, its application to Jesus innovatively alters the original Pharisee concept and generates a potentially infinite number of very important new implicatures; for example, that the crucified Jesus of Nazareth had been uniquely vindicated by God, that he was the awaited Christ, that the Christ wasn’t what was expected, that the kingdom of God was imminent, etc. In saying all this we are tracing out the developing lineage of the concept of RESURRECTION in the contexts of Jesus’ crucifixion, eschatological expectations, and so on. However, when brought into cultural contact by Paul with a more Hellenistic encyclopaedia, the developing Jewish concept would have been strange indeed and would need explication. Paul is doing this in 1 Corinthians in reply to the report that ‘some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead’ (1Cor.15: 12). Many concepts that are enrichments of RISE have been generalized and then newly lexicalized: “inflation” (RISE price, wage, cost), “global warming” (RISE average global temperatures), “work intensification” (RISE pressure of demands at work). Fundamental intuitive concepts such as RISE thus serve inferentially to tie together and construct dense inferential pathways within conceptual structures, because they are constituents of new concepts. Concepts form an extraordinarily inter-woven but highly organized web of relationships. Encyclopaedic memories are not fixed local assemblages in mind/brains, although they function as a unity. They are dynamic and ever re-constructed. They offer potentials for new inferential relationships in perception and communication. But given their sheer number and the least effort dimension of relevance, the bulk of encyclopaedia information

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must remain settled and fairly conservative with its scaffolding of biologically based modes of construal; for example, containing concepts like RISE within intuitive physics. These cases illustrate the mechanism by which modular-based concepts, such as RISE, are developed into cultural concepts, a key point in Chapter 1. Furthermore, if the implicature that God has vindicated Jesus by raising him is added to the encyclopaedia entry for THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS, then the development of new inter-modular concepts is also illustrated, for VINDICATE ultimately derives from the normative faculty. There are further inferential connections. There is an analogy between moral meaning and physical process. For him to be vindicated, the full intentionality, the total person of Jesus, must have been raised. In Jewish thought, your body is an integral part of your personhood. This is why the concept of bodily resurrection is so important. After his bodily death, the concept of Jesus’ disembodied spiritual survival would neither vindicate him, nor restore his personhood. When the new concept THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS is absorbed into the concept of the final resurrection, he becomes the ‘first fruits of those who have fallen asleep’ 1Cor.15: 20. The good news follows: the coming age has begun. Encyclopaedia entries vary between individuals in the information they contain, depending on each mind/brain’s processing history; the situations in which we act and with whom we communicate. Encyclopaedic representations are accessed to construct the contexts required when processing input. Assumptions are stored in order of accessibility, which is a measure both of the strength with which the assumption is held (see below) which in turn depends on the frequency in which it is used in successfully calculating relevance. The RESURRECTION entry would contain representations of all the mind/ brain’s assumptions about both Jesus’ and the general resurrection. It would contain default representations of these in terms of a script, a schematic abstract of the events derived from the remembered input of all previous communicative, perceptual and reflective processing using the concept, the gospel narratives, input from sermons, Sunday school lessons, perhaps assumptions derived from theological study. Within an entry, information is often stored in analogue form as remembered images, like snap-shots, or narratively, like movie clips. In the case of the resurrection, information may be stored in analogue terms perhaps in memories of the paintings by Giotto, El Greco, and Rembrandt or the popular bible illustrations. My favourite images are Stanley Spencer’s Resurrection in Cookham and Graham Sutherland’s great tapestry of the risen Christ at Coventry cathedral. Fully propositional form? Has this enrichment process resulted in a propositional form? If it is true that Jesus of Nazareth is alive, having been

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dead, then whatever this implies is also true. But the logical form of the utterance “he was raised” doesn’t lead to fully determinate truth conditions. When conjoined to other things we believe about death and the other gospel accounts of the risen Jesus, it certainly leads to contradictions. Therefore, if it were relevant to reflect upon the content semantically (in fact, it isn’t) no human mind/brain could fully grasp what a consistent world would be like in which Jesus was raised. The mind struggles for consistency. Would this object merely be his resuscitated corpse – but then it shouldn’t mysteriously appear and disappear? Or, is this resurrected figure just a replica of Jesus, but not Jesus himself? The form stubbornly remains ‘semi-propositional’. Even so, when conjoined with the encyclopaedic information, it still can serve as a premise for the inferential calculation of optimal relevance in many contexts; e.g. the mind can draw the theologically relevant implicatures that God has vindicated Jesus, that Jesus has defeated death and therefore sin, etc. even though we don’t fully comprehend his resurrection. The crucial point is that a logical form need not become fully propositional to contribute to the achievement of relevance. Semi-propositional forms are sufficient. In communication, when optimal relevance is achieved, processing will automatically stop. This can occur long before logical form is fully explicated and fully determinate truth conditions understood and evaluable. So for participants in communication to achieve optimal relevance requires only a partial understanding of the semantic content of what they are talking about. The representation can still contain un-interpreted symbols. Nevertheless, to the exact degree that a representation is used in the achievement of relevance, it is also automatically not only grasped just to that degree, but it has been positively strengthened. It has been evaluated as true or possibly true just to that degree, by virtue of its past successes in processing actions and in successful communication with credible others. If it hadn’t been so used, it wouldn’t now be so accessible for processing. Thus the degree of truth assigned to a representation is a product of its past use in successful processing, guided by the principles of relevance. Since belief in the truth of representations is so central to religion, we need to return to the relation of relevance and truth. This is a topic for the next chapter. In many cultural contexts, it would only be relevant to try to calculate a semantically complete form if truth or falsity were actually at issue – as it is by the doubt raised by those who ‘say there is no resurrection of the dead’ in 1Cor.15. Then trying to grasp the content as conditions for possible truthevaluability becomes a matter of conscious reflection, aiming at the establishment of belief. Reflection can be private or become public, a question of discussion, or political-legal, philosophical or scientific dialogue within their specialized reflective situation types. To reflect upon its thoughts, the mind

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needs to ascend to a higher level and meta-represent them. The truth conditions of an utterance must be represented in a more perspicacious metalanguage. This is also an abstract philosophical equivalent to the psychology of grasping truth conditions. However, when we look at Paul’s interpretative meta-representation of the truth conditions of the semi-propositional form of the utterance “he was raised” – what would count as grasping it in semantic terms – we find that in fact his concepts BODY and ALIVE with respect to RISE* are not at all familiar concepts. The concepts are not more perspicacious than those of the object language, but less so. They have undergone semantic loosening. A resurrected BODY* like Jesus’ is ‘a spiritual body’ (1Cor.15: 44) or ‘like angels in heaven’ (Mt.22: 30) the ‘image of the man of heaven’, not ‘flesh and blood’ (1Cor.15: 49-50). ALIVE is also interpreted in a transformed way, as ALIVE*, a glorified, incorruptible and immortal state (expressed poetically in Rev.1: 12-16). But Paul’s meta-language is certainly not any better comprehended than the semi-propositional form itself. Indeed, it is less so. It offers a further comprehension of BODY* – as SPIRITUAL – and ALIVE* in that more implications are possible, but it is far from semantically complete. In fact, there is a regress of interpreting meta-languages. How do we grasp GLORIFIED by GOD or ANGELS in HEAVEN? It appears that this particular semi-propositional form can’t be fully developed. Therefore it can’t be fully grasped. A more perspicacious meta-language would be the innate concepts of a module’s mode of construal. This is because they are supposed to be selfinterpreting (Fodor, 1975). That’s what I meant in Chapter 1 by saying they were literally or intuitively understood. With such concepts, there can be no regress of interpretation. The mind/brain intuitively knows the contribution of innate concepts to the truth conditions of the propositions containing them, having evolved because of the consequences for relevance of those very contributions. Consider how basic spatial or biological concepts are applied in perception. The truth evaluation of representations containing them is direct, appearing to warrant direct realism. Physical concepts such as CHANGE POSITION in SPACE (equals MOVE) and UPWARD (equals RISE) or ALIVE (equals ANIMATE) can be interpretatively used to represent other concepts through narrowing, loosening or resemblance. We have seen this with RISE* and ALIVE*. The same is true of mind-reading concepts like SUBJECT, INTEND and BELIEVE. But the reverse is not the case. It is inconceivable that a non-innate composite concept could be ‘used interpretatively’ to represent an innate atomic concept with respect to its truth conditional contribution to a proposition. A literal thought like X (MOVE and UP) or X (ANIMATE) cannot be expressed by another thought whose resemblance to it is used to understand it. It can only be interpreted by thoughts

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which are identical to it. Such identical thoughts paraphrase it – produce conceptual analyticity – the way HAVE VITAL SPIRIT or HAVE INNER ESSENCE or LIVING BEING or ANIMATE paraphrase ALIVE. What metaphor could clarify the concept RISE? Although the manner of motion can be interpreted by a verb with a metaphorical origin – ‘she flew around the house’ – motion itself cannot. Basic concepts can only be pointed to: ‘look, that is now changing position in space, upwards’. They can’t be further interpreted because they are already self-interpreted. Nevertheless, innately intuitive concepts can be analysed. This is because what is innately grasped (self-interpreted) isn’t consciously understood in the reflective sense. Thus, within culture we have developed Newtonian physics, theories of life in biology, philosophies of causation and intentionality. Although innate concepts are intuitively grasped as modes of construal, they are mysterious upon conscious reflection. However, in attempting to grasp “he was raised”, we move ever further away from such self-interpreted concepts. Instead, Paul violates intuitive modular perspicacity with new concepts like RISE* and ALIVE* within elaborated culture. Assumptions in conceptual memory What does relevance theory say about how the mind/brain organizes and stores its thoughts? First, conceptual memory or the encyclopaedia contains assumptions. Sperber and Wilson (1995: 2) define an assumption as a thought ‘treated by an individual as representations of the actual world (as opposed to fictions, desires, or representations of representations)’. Assumptions are ‘treated as true’, even though they may be ‘dubious and false assumptions presented as factual’. But memory does not just contain assumptions that are fully developed propositional forms. It also contains assumption schemas. These are the incomplete logical forms which remain semi-propositional, which might be filled out by enrichment to have fully developed truth conditions. Semi-propositional, incomplete logical forms play an important role in ‘speculative thinking’, as we saw (Sperber and Wilson 1995: 73, note 4; Sperber, 1985). Meta-representation, the embedding of both assumptions and schemas under higher-order representations, provides one kind of structure to conceptual memory. An assumption can be represented in terms of how it was introduced into the mind; e.g. Paul writes that p, or everybody thinks p. Or it can be represented under a propositional attitude, such as desire, hope and so on. However, Sperber and Wilson (1995: 74f.) proposed that there is one special hard-wired kind of memory for assumptions. The attitude of belief is uniquely built into the mind/brain as a storage format. Sperber (1996: 86), borrowing a term from Stephen Schiffer, calls this format the ‘belief box’.

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The ‘box’ metaphor should not be taken literally – it is used merely to emphasize the unique functional role of the memory of assumptions – directly treated as true – in the cognitive model of the mind/brain. In it are just the representations of the world directly accessed in the spontaneous nondemonstrative inferences of everyday activity and ostensive-inferential communication. Among the assumptions in the belief box are Sperber’s intuitive beliefs, especially reliable because built by perception on an innate base. Sperber and Wilson (1995: 74) call the representations directly stored this way, factual assumptions, because the mind/brain treats them as true. As noted earlier, assumptions vary in strength or degree of epistemic commitment. Strength depends both on the credibility of an assumption’s origin and its processing history in successfully determining relevance. (Strength is not determined by a separate cognitive function specialized for inductively assigning probabilities of truth, Sperber and Wilson, 1995: 75–83.) A very strongly held assumption like an intuitive belief might be derived from perception and also have a history of frequent use in successful processing. This kind of assumption is at the heart of everyday reasoning. Strongly held assumptions are also highly accessible. Remember that in calculating relevance, representations were deployed in order of accessibility based on past use. So assumptions are organized in a hierarchy of strength and accessibility. But how do we store and use semi-propositional forms? The title of an article by Franc¸ois Recanati (1997), Can we believe what we do not understand?, states the issue. These are subtle ideas within cognitive psychology and philosophy of mind which we can’t discuss in detail. I will try to weave my way as we need them. Sperber’s contribution to this question has been developed over many years (Sperber, 1975, 1985, 1996, 1997; see especially Chapter 2 of 1985, ‘Apparently irrational beliefs’). Both Recanati and Sperber claim that we can’t directly admit semi-propositional forms containing un-interpreted symbols into the mind as if they were ordinary beliefs. These aren’t placed directly into the belief box. This is because it is possible that they might introduce inconsistency into processing, which might spread and corrupt everyday reasoning. Unqualified direct representation in the belief box is restricted to intuitive beliefs and beliefs inferentially derived from them. Instead, semi-propositional forms are insulated from factual assumptions by being put into the belief box via a higher-level factual assumption, a validating meta-representation which specifies the source of the representation. When this is conjoined with a second assumption about the credibility of the source, the mind is provided with a validating meta-belief for the semiunderstood content. As Recanati (1997: 88f.) puts it, there is acceptance of the representation into the mind on the basis of the credibility of its source,

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even though the accepting mind doesn’t grasp its semantic content. For Recanati, the semi-understood proposition isn’t a belief; it’s a quasi-belief. Its degree of credibility is that of its source. An authoritative source for a child is a parent. So one can normally quasi-believe what a parent says even if one doesn’t understand it. To adapt one of Sperber’s examples, the following are in the child’s belief box: A. Mum says that Uncle Harry is ‘dead’, whatever that means. B. What mum says is true. The scare quotes around ‘dead’ (glossed as, “whatever that means”) tell us that the child does not (fully) grasp the concept DEAD. Therefore, the representation that Uncle Harry is ‘dead’ contains an un-interpreted symbol and remains semi-propositional, an assumption schema. (I assume here that DEAD is not a self-interpreting innate biological concept, although the evidence is equivocal, Bering, 2008.) Nevertheless, such quasi-beliefs are extremely useful, not least because they provide both the opportunity and the impetus for subsequent development of the concept DEAD; thus its contribution to semantic content, truth conditions and their evaluation. In due course, through perception of dead things, such symbols can become fully interpreted. You can learn to tell when something is dead; e.g. a mouse in a trap. They can then contribute to full propositions and become assumptions promoted to the belief box. Propositions which contain the concept DEAD have determinate truth conditions with respect to this concept and become truth-evaluable to that degree. They are emancipated from the higher-level predicate, “Mum says”, which is discharged. The mental ‘scare quotes’ are removed. There is a promotion from quasi-belief to full belief within the belief box for propositions containing the concept.

Obligations I will conclude this section with two speculations and propose that there is at least one other storage format for memory that is hard-wired into the mind/ brain. Sperber and Wilson (1995: 74–75) have proposed that the attitude of belief towards a proposition is not separately or explicitly represented in the mind, but instead is simply a function of being stored as an assumption ready for the function of drawing spontaneous inferences. All other propositional attitudes are represented as higher predicates within assumption schemas, e.g. I hope that p. They suggest that only desire is a candidate for a treatment similar to belief, but don’t develop this. By contrast, Carruthers (2006: 120–131) suggests that there are multiple forms of memory.

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I suggest that an obligation might be treated on an analogy with an assumption. There is a normative data-base, as proposed by Carruthers, mentioned in Chapter 1. Continuing the ‘box’ metaphor, let’s call this the “ought box”. This would be an innate storage format for those propositions which the mind/brain doesn’t treat as true or probably true but as propositions it is objectively obliged to make true. It must be connected to practical reasoning, but functions in a different way than assumptions. It is directly accessible both to the inhibition function proposed in Chapter 2 which intervenes in practical reasoning to inhibit actions and, more generally, it is connected to both long-term and short-term motivation and the formulation of goals. With respect to the affective-motivational, it provides contents for a meta-desire – a good will – wanting to comply with your obligations, as well as being functionally linked to feelings produced by both compliance and defection. An obligation is not the same thing as a desire, although it also has a special functional connection to motivation. We often feel obliged to do something that runs counter to desire; for example, ignoring – bracketing as irrelevant – one’s own self-interest. Nor is an obligation a belief, although we have beliefs about our obligations. We often judge as contrary to a norm something we believe to be true and this independently of whether we desire it or not. Obligations would have degrees of binding strength; categorical imperatives are absolutely binding. The ought box integrates the basic concepts underlying moral intelligence like forgiving tit-for-tat with rational moral rules and normative cultural content. Training, often religious, fills the ought box using both language and other input, especially during childhood, the wherewithal of moral thinking. One could also speculate that propositions in memory definitive of ‘self’, deriving from both direct experiences and self-mind-reading and culturally elaborated into personhood, also have some sort of special status with respect to propositional attitudes when ‘I’ is the subject. Self is certainly functionally unique and has a special role in memory. This hard-wired attitude would be the special ‘self-consciousness’ that owns its personal identity. This would be closely related to both mind-reading and obligation with its meta-desire and the concomitant acceptance of responsibility. Its special format would place propositions within narrative frames, the moral history that constitutes the readily accessible self-conscious ‘self’ at the core of the inter-modular representation of personhood (Baars, 1988). This accounts for self-dramatization, selfdeception and so on. The underlying analogy is that the unique self is a substance. 3.4

Epidemiology

What causes some concepts and not others to readily disseminate throughout populations of mind/brains? Couched in epidemiological terms the question becomes: what in the mind/brain make it susceptible to those concepts that

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disseminate to cultural levels of distribution? In this part, I outline Sperber’s (1994, 1996) epidemiological analyses of the factors that favour the dissemination of some concepts in relation to susceptibilities of the human mind. I have broken down the factors into four. Conceptual representations disseminate when they are: Drawn by Attractors. Some concepts integrate well with attractors. These are the susceptibilities of the modular modes of construal, their basic concepts and proper domains, and the already established culture of the actual domain. These serve as selectors for new conceptual representations that are susceptible (Sperber, 1996: 106–118). Relevant. Concepts which disseminate are also intensely relevant in a wide variety of different contexts (Sperber, 1996: 96). Mysteries. Concepts disseminate which remain semi-propositional, halfunderstood, resisting final interpretation. Thus, relevant mysteries meet two of the criteria for dissemination (Sperber, 1996: 91). Violations of intuitive belief. The mind has a susceptibility to cultural representations that achieve relevance through the violation of intuitive beliefs and their basic concepts. Myths are cultural representations, held reflectively, insulated from the intuitive beliefs with which they are inconsistent (Sperber, 1975; 1994: 55; 1996: 95). (I will return to the idea of a religious myth in Chapter 6.) Although I have listed these separately, they are inter-connected. I will illustrate each in turn. Drawn by attractors The cultural technique of writing is the first example. The language module and visual perception together provide the susceptibilities. Language and the ability to perceive inscriptions are joint modular attractors for literacy, which becomes part of their actual domains. Like much culture, literacy is intermodular. It is attracted by the input–output modes of construal of language, which can function in media other than speech. In alphabetic systems, reading mimics spoken input while writing mimics spoken output. Writing in turn impacts on syntax, lexis, styles etc., not least through the historical innovation of written standard languages like Standard English. These in turn function politically and economically and so on in a hierarchy of functioning components, cultural elaboration upon cultural elaboration. Becoming literate isn’t a matter of copying. Literate people vary widely both in their skills and how they read and write. Although literacy is cultural, learning it physically changes the mind/brain and creates a module-like capacity. The peculiar syndromes of alexia and agraphia, in which patients lose the ability to read or to write – and the fact that these occur the one

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without the other and affect neither oral language nor visual perception in other ways – show that a cultural skill has changed the brains of literate people. With respect to cultural attractors, populations are susceptible to literacy only if there is an ecology in which a writing system supplements memory, achieving the same effect with less cost; for example, in recordkeeping as in the origins of cuneiform, or scripts for rituals and reflective uses. Once established and disseminated, literacy itself generates further technologies, like scriptures. These in turn open new possibilities for cultural concepts – responding to their own attractors – and subsequent interpretation and elaboration. Now consider supernatural entities. Chapter 2 demonstrated that its attributions of intentionality give mind-reading a deep susceptibility to concepts of the supernatural. Belief/desire reasoning is the modular attractor for supernatural entities. They arise automatically as a possible by-product because of the way the cognitive principle of relevance operates when the mind processes for goal-directedness. The input mimics stimuli having an intentional origin, as if the stimuli were put there by an intentional entity. A spirit, an intentional entity that has beneficently put in place or maliciously frustrated the unique maximally relevant inferential path to any given goal is potentially generated in every context processed in a goal directed way. Furthermore, the inferential path to the goal can be viewed as an ostensive-inferential communication from the spirit, if the stimulus is processed as ostensive. It is a possibility for the mind, on reflection, to conceptualize that there really is such a path, one that exactly fits our goals and was providentially intended to do so. This was illustrated by my story of the path up the hill. Furthermore, as we saw in Chapter 1, we are susceptible to the concept that mind and body are separable. The output of mind-reading isn’t necessarily tied to a physical body. THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS, originally ad-hoc, but now with its own entry, is our example of a supernatural action. God restores Jesus to life in a new sense, ALIVE*, where he is transformed. There are very many cultural attractors for these new concepts. God is the source of life. Indeed, death itself isn’t natural. It originated only in divine judgement when humanity, in the persons of Adam and Eve, perversely withdrew itself from the correct relationship to God. For Pharisees, bodily resurrection is not only possible, it is expected; every human body will be raised according to God’s plan for Israel. The nature of this resurrected body is physical, yet it is neither a re-animated corpse nor a disembodied spirit. Nor does it resume its ordinary life. It is utterly changed. This is especially relevant to Jesus because the content of his gospel was eschatological. So the processing context is that history was fulfilled and the expected kingdom of God was at hand. It follows that the final resurrection of the dead and the transformation of the living ‘in the twinkling of an eye’ was immanent (1Cor.15: 52).

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The other modular attractor is normativity with respect to those innate bases of morality which favour co-operation and which underlie the rationalized cultural attractors of the moral law, contexts for the RESURRECTION of JESUS. There is the concept of God’s ultimate justice, his ability to vindicate, and his promises to Israel. As Ku¨ng (1977: 382) writes, ‘The resurrection message . . . reveals the very thing that was not to be expected: that this crucified Jesus, despite everything, was right. God took the side of the one who had totally committed himself to him, who gave his life for the cause of God and men. . . .’ The concept of Jesus’ resurrection is thus both deeply attracted by modular concepts from both mind-reading and moral intelligence, and by the cultural ecology of the Jewish mind. There are the two crucial triggers: the testimonies of the empty tomb; and the apparitions, which initiate the new concept’s lineage (Wright, 2003). Mysteries So far the logical form of “he was raised” in its context remains stubbornly semi-propositional. At first it might appear that the logical form of “he was raised” could be developed into a proposition capable of having truth conditions. Wasn’t Jesus either still dead or restored to life three days after his execution? The fact could have been checked perceptually. If Jesus was seen alive, then the perceiver would form the appropriate intuitive belief and put it in the belief box as a factual assumption. Paul reports that a number of witnesses, himself included, did just that. Lots of other everyday spontaneous inferences could be made with this as a premise. Where exactly is Jesus now? Is he going to die again in old age? What physics did God use to resurrect him? However, in religious terms, the resurrected Christ is simply not talked of this way. Paul’s concept ALIVE* in JESUS (ALIVE*) is not to be alive as in factual assumptions. Paul develops his concept in the context of how RESURRECTION was understood in first-century Judaism. We saw that Paul’s concept could never be developed into a fully propositional form or be truth-evaluable (at least by a human being). If this is so, it is also the case for all other logical forms containing the concept THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS. God transforms his corpse into a spiritual body, incorruptible, immortal and glorified. Jesus “appears” and this is described using the same concept the Septuagint uses for theophanies, lexicalized by “o¯phthe¯ ”; such as when God speaks to Abraham (Gen.12: 7), Moses from the burning bush (Ex.3: 2-5), or appears to Isaiah (Isa.6: 1). Spong (1994: 54) emphasizes that the term actually has a supernatural sense, ‘to have one’s eyes opened to see dimensions beyond the physical’. As the lineage develops, the language changes. “Jesus of Nazareth” becomes “Jesus the Christ/Messiah”. Then layers of supernatural attributes of “Christ” develop: he becomes the Logos

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or creative ‘word’ of God from Genesis; the honorific title “Son of God” is re-interpreted to transform him into the second person of the Trinity, God himself. The semantic content of “he was raised” will always remain semipropositional because it will always contain the symbol ALIVE* that can’t be cashed out in truth conditional terms. In Recanati’s (1997) alternative terminology, the concept is accepted into the mind, embedded into a validating meta-representation by virtue of the credibility of its source – Paul himself and the apostolic witnesses – and quasi-believed. To-day the main validating meta-representation is the testimony of scripture. In Sperber’s view, semi-propositions like this cannot be directly represented in the belief box because they are not factual assumptions. Instead, they are represented as embedded in the validating meta-representation. This is roughly: I believe that Paul believes that GOD X JESUS Y (X RESURRECT Y) and therefore JESUS has the property ALIVE*. The mind/brain does not directly believe the semi-proposition but accepts it by virtue of the meta-belief. Because it doesn’t have its warrant in basic concepts and perception, it is not a factual assumption that can be used in practical spontaneous inference. In principle, this epistemological situation could change. In the child’s acquisition of the concept, DEAD, the representation embedded under “mum says” can be emancipated from its validating meta-representation. It becomes directly represented in the belief box as a factual assumption. As the child learns more and more about death, the ‘scare quotes’ are removed. Mum is discharged from her role as authority. But for the child or inquiring mind, to be credulous, to hold beliefs second-hand isn’t irrational. We all do this all the time. Our grasp of science, for example, depends on the expert knowledge of others. However, according to Sperber (1996: 97), in science and mathematics, authority can in principle always be discharged because the mind could with sufficient training come to accept the proposition it doesn’t understand on a purely rational basis. If a competent adult wants to know more about death from a technical point of view, they can consult an expert, a scientist or lawyer, and gain a rational grasp of the concept. By contrast, with thoughts containing mysteries the discharge of the validating authority cannot happen (Sperber, 1996: 91f.). The development of the logical form remains forever at the semi-propositional stage, without fully determinate truth conditions. This is because they contain symbols that cannot be definitively interpreted in terms of their contribution to truth conditions such as Paul’s concept of ALIVE* or RISE* in the sense of THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS. For religious thought, a key question is why this should be the case. According to Recanati (1997), Sperber believes that these mysterious semi-propositions are defective. This must be because Sperber also assumes, on evolutionary grounds, that the biological function of

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the enrichment of logical form is a fully propositional form with determinate truth conditions; evolved in order to grapple with the empirical environment. However, the fact is that there are an infinite number of contexts where inferences can be drawn using semi-propositions and in which relevance is achieved before full explication. This fact is a most important susceptibility. It makes possible the acquisition of both new partially grasped concepts that can be subsequently clarified and genuine mysteries with no ultimate clarification. In the religious domain, the notion of a mystery isn’t controversial. As Sperber says, theologians also view such things as mysteries and accept them on authority. For Sperber, these representations can only be reflective beliefs. I will quote at length. He writes (1996: 90–91) of someone whose mind contains a mysterious reflective belief, he may keep this belief and enrich it in many ways, but, if anything, its exact meaning will become more mysterious than it was at first. Here is a belief which, like most religious beliefs, does not lend itself to a final, clear interpretation, and which therefore will never become an intuitive belief. Part of the interest of religious beliefs for those who hold them comes precisely from this element of mystery, from the fact you are never through interpreting them . . . mysterious reflective beliefs are much more frequent and culturally important than scientific ones. Because they are only halfunderstood and therefore open to re-interpretation, their consistency or inconsistency with other beliefs, intuitive or reflective, is never self-evident, and does not provide a robust criterion for acceptance or rejection. Their content, because of its indeterminacy, cannot be sufficiently evidenced or argued for to warrant their rational acceptance.

He adds, ‘they are rationally held if there are rational grounds to trust the source of the belief’. That the representation of Jesus’ resurrection remains semi-propositional because it is a mystery in Sperber’s sense is very clear. This can be seen from the wide and inconclusive range of reflective interpretations offered by theology in the twentieth century. Faced with the Enlightenment rejection of miracles, the liberal response has been to interpret Jesus’ resurrection not as historical fact, but as existentially relevant. Rudolph Bultman viewed it as a ‘myth’ (cited by Macquarrie, 1955/1973: 174f.). Others, including Macquarrie himself, grant that something historical must have happened with respect to Jesus to account for the testimonies, clearly intended to report an actual phenomenon, which motivate the remarkable apostolic sense of vocation and inspired faith (Ku¨ng, 1977: 376–381). There have been numerous attempts to tell a naturalistic psychological story of the apostles’ conversion experiences: Festinger’s theory of cognitive dissonance (cited in Wright, 2003: 700); Spong’s (1994) reconstruction of Peter’s mental processes of grief, guilt and a midrashic explanation of Jesus; Schillebeeckx’s (1974/1979) account of how conversion combined with the cultic experiences of visiting the tomb led to a

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retroactive sense that Jesus had been raised and was alive in the sense of being actively present to the early believers. However, none of these explanations are what Paul, citing his list of witnesses, transparently intended to communicate in 1 Corinthians. At the conservative end of the spectrum, Wright’s massive study proposes that the best ‘historical explanation’ is that God somehow objectively intervened in history – as Ku¨ng says, making ‘what happened’ unavailable to historical science – and in some way raised Jesus, as a ‘person’ or as a ‘body’ (Wright, 2003: 720). Rowan Williams (2002: 110) writes, ‘It is frustrating . . . to end with such vagueness on the substantive point of “What Really Happened?”’. Karl Barth says that Jesus as the Christ as declared through his resurrection is ‘on the plane that lies beyond our comprehension . . . . understood only as Problem or Myth’ within human history (Barth, 1933/ 1968: 29–30). But that is exactly the point. It is a Sperber-mystery. However, all the commentators say two things: whether what happened was objective or subjective, the concept of Jesus’ resurrection is rich in ‘meaning’ and that either way it generates belief that also induces an obligation to act. Are mysteries defective or epistemologically indeterminate? We have two different contexts for the word “mystery”. At the end of Chapter 1, the word referred to the Chomsky–McGinn idea that some problems were beyond the reach of scientific inquiry because the formulation of theories in these areas was beyond our cognitive capacities. Now in Sperber, we find a mystery characterized as a representation that is partially grasped because it is defective with respect to its truth-conditional content and can only be accepted on authority. Mysteries are relevant semi-propositions. Religious mysteries present explanatory problems. Religious thinkers admit that they do not fully grasp the mysteries of their faith. However, they don’t say that this is because there is something wrong with the intended content. Instead, to religious minds the defectiveness is their own, in their finite understanding. The word “defective” suggests the mysterious representation must be itself to blame because it has indeterminate content. Its concepts are such that it could never be contextually enriched into a fully propositional form and this is the problem. But can the mind/brain structurally distinguish in advance between those semi-propositions that could ultimately gain a full rational warrant, such as those of science, and those that in principle could not, ever? Furthermore, can the mind/brain structurally represent to itself without contradiction that a trusted source has communicated a representation that can’t be true or false because it is defective? To users’ minds, it must be because they don’t understand the content that the semi-proposition needs a validating meta-belief, not that its content can’t be true. In fact, they have faith it is true.

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That the mind doesn’t consider mysteries defective in representing information is the role they play in life. In this respect, Sperber (1996: 90) suggests that their cognitive usefulness may be limited, although they can also be culturally widespread. But religious and other reflective beliefs do, as a matter of fact, pervasively shape practical actions, especially with respect to motivation and the ideals behind them, for good or ill. This is true of the philosophical mysteries of the type itemized by McGinn; free will, etc. Kant’s ‘ideas of reason’ have an ineliminable regulative role in behaviour and can’t be got rid of. Trust in the unknown truth of mysterious, partially grasped, contents affects the details of action. If you accept into your mind as a regulative principle that everybody is born equal, then this functions as a norm and accordingly may produce a disposition to act according to it. This makes you more likely to reason quite differently when acting, not only when reflecting. In another example, Hannah Arendt (1961: 128f.) points out the historical political significance of the Platonic concept of punishment in the afterlife. If all the interpretative effort trying to understand and use them could never have practical consequences for everyday action – for ‘life’ – what could motivate the expenditure of effort in calculating relevance using them? It isn’t good enough to say that endless interpretation is simply fascinating or ‘addictive’, as Sperber does (1996: 90). On the other hand, Sperber does claim elsewhere that such defective representations can be highly relevant and highly useful as an exploratory tool in reflective inference. Perhaps that rich relevance points the mind to the idea of the possible truth of the partially understood content, whatever it might be. By definition, achieving relevance improves the mind’s overall representation of the world. The key property of a mystery isn’t that it has no determinate content or is necessarily false, but that it has no closure; it is inexhaustible. At least, as far as we know! It is a device that leads the mind/brain on and on – trying per impossibile to fully grasp its content – using it to achieve relevance in new ways in new contexts within the unfolding horizon of experience. The concept’s encyclopaedia entry gets richer, with more and more links integrating it with other parts of the mind/brain, both directly modular and culturally elaborated, and growing stronger with each successful use in processing. Each interpretation gains more, yet partial, understanding, yet another implication of semi-understood content. The ultimate content appears to point towards something, rather than being definitively explicable. A mysterious semi-proposition is a tool or technology for normative thinking in new contexts and for inter-modular integration. These are two functions of religion. Whether or not there is a possible fully explicated content simply doesn’t matter in achieving positive cognitive effects. In Recanati’s (1997, 2000) alternative analysis, quasi-belief can have a determinate content, even though we don’t individually or even collectively know what it is. He posits that validating contexts such as, “Mum says that p”,

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involve the introduction of a deferential operator. This represents that some cognitive agent attaches a determinate content to the representation, the content I don’t know and have mentally put in ‘scare quotes’, but to whom I defer in accepting the representation into my mind. Furthermore, the deferential operator is interpreted to mean that there is a determinate content; ‘the content is determined deferentially via the content that another cognitive agent . . . attaches or would attach to (the representation) in the context’ (Recanati, 1997: 92). In this alternative, the representation isn’t defective. It is epistemologically indeterminate. In the case of mysteries, ‘the attempted deference fails . . . no user x has the cognitive resources for determining the content of the term to which the deferential operator applies . . . Such failure occurs whenever a term is used deferentially by everybody, in a mutual or circular manner’ (Recanati, 1997: 92). In fact, quasi-belief in Recanati’s sense may reveal another susceptibility to the supernatural in the structure of the mind. It represents the possibility that the relevant mysteries which play such an important role in culture do have a content that is perfectly understood, although not in this world. Assume that some concept is obviously a mystery; say it violates intuitive beliefs. The more relevant this mystery is – the more objective its efficacy appears in improving our representation of the world – the more the mind feels compelled to posit a supernatural reality to account for this. There is a compulsion to entertain the ‘realist’ thought that there really is a path up the inferential hill. The path leads to some fully determinate content, inaccessible to us, but transcendentally guaranteed. Is this the same compulsion that leads Kant to posit the transcendental in the case of regulative ideas of reason? If indeed quasi-beliefs are held only because they are ‘used deferentially by everybody, in a . . . circular manner’, we can’t explain why it is they should have any objective efficacy in improving representations of the world through achieving relevance. Of course, part of their success is because they are assumptions or obligations used in communication within a mutually deferential group. (This accounts for the ‘herd effect’.) But it is also partly because they do aid in achieving relevance in reasoning about, and motivating, objectively successful social practices. We return to this in Chapter 4. Recanati’s account explains this attitude by granting an epistemically problematical but non-defective content to the un-interpreted symbol – it contributes to unknown truth conditions and represents them only partially. Therefore the quasi-believing mind has a direct relation to a semi-proposition whose truth conditions it partially grasps but which in principle points to a fully propositional form, an unknowable truth. It’s not that the semiproposition has a defective relationship to possible states of affairs and is thus forever mediated only by the belief that the validating authority speaks the truth, as in Sperber’s view. Quotes remain around the representation,

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marking it non-intuitive and merely quasi-believed, but the validating authority that guarantees its content can be discharged. The mind has been first motivated by trust in the validating agent to try to discover the content, but also gains a direct attitude to it, which motivates its use in thinking. This appropriately explains the attitude of faith and acting on faith; trust in a discharged supernatural validating agent becomes quasi-belief in a partially grasped content used to achieve relevance in practical matters. Thus, in the context of religion, Recanati’s alternative is more explanatory than Sperber’s. The mind is structured so it has commitment to a content which is epistemologically indeterminate, that it can’t fully understand, but which is not defective. Religious thinkers are paradoxically trying to think some determinate true content which they can’t fully represent. This is the classic informative intent of mysticism. In religion, the discharged authorities of the deference operator are ultimately the inspired prophets and charismatic teachers, then the scriptures and institutional lineages that disseminate their mystical semi-propositions. But to the degree even they don’t understand the relevant mysteries they try to represent, it is definitive of religious thought that the cognitive agency to which the mind defers is passed upwards to a supernatural mind, one which knows the truth. This analysis accounts for the prophetic introduction of new cultural concepts that grope towards forming new thoughts, those for which there has never been representational resources or contexts. In religion, these remain semiunderstood, but expressed, as far as is possible, using current resources. Jesus’ resurrection is an example. It is partially understood by everybody in a circular manner, as Recanati says. The only mind that knows about the resurrection is God’s. The newly introduced semi-propositional form, if contributing usefully in processing input in new contexts according to the relevance principles, would get epistemically stronger and stronger, automatically triggering off its further use. Its use in calculating relevance would be a promise, an everreceding horizon, of ultimate truth. Even if it forever remains a mystery, it might also forever have this usefulness, a promise of some ultimate determinate content, unknown by any human mind, but guaranteed by the supernatural. The practical use of bracketed material in the belief box depends on trust. But, as Recanati says, it is risky to use in everyday life, as inconsistencies may proliferate. This motivated Sperber’s restriction of myth to reflective beliefs in the first place, so that it would be insulated from the assumptions used in the spontaneous non-demonstrative inferences of everyday life (Sperber and Wilson, 1995: 75). As a solution to this problem, I propose that the quasibelieved, semi-understood content is most safely employed in religion, neither directly nor only reflectively, but normatively. These representations are regulative and express ideals. Where semi-propositions aren’t directly introduced as obligations – as general dicta or commandments – they are most

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safely used as premises in reflectively inferring the obligations used for motivation and inhibition. Their relation to practical reasoning is indirect. The ought box function of the mind/brain asks: ‘what are the inferential consequences of the semi-understood material for the actions I must perform or inhibit?’ The results further enrich the ought box. In that indirect reflective way, these thoughts enter into action and communication. This accounts both for the characteristic normativity of religion and its role in a ‘way of life’ and why, on the whole, fundamentalists in every tradition act as rationally as anyone else with respect to factual assumptions. (This process probably applies to all semi-understood concepts central to a way of life, not just religious ones; for example, obligations inferred from secular versions of concepts of freedom or equality or even that unregulated markets optimize economic outcomes.) The deduction of obligations highlights the centrality of trust in authority. Deferential relationship, not perceptual input, is at the heart of the transmission of epidemiological culture – culture not as belief but as practice. The quasi-belief can be assessed for consistency – not only with the factual assumptions in the belief box – but with other obligations. If consistent, it is deployed for applicability in contexts. When conjoined with factual assumptions, it is assessed for practicability, for degree of obligation, for ‘how it is to be applied’ to make something true in a context. It is used in inhibition as described in Chapter 2. It stays partially insulated from the factual assumptions which are used to implement the obligations. It motivates practical action via the ought box. Although not understood fully, it obliges the agent to try to use it in processing and to act on it. Thus I am obliged ‘to love God and my neighbour with all my heart’, in ‘scare quotes’, and apply this practically. This is although I don’t fully understand the content – e.g. the concept LOVE – and have to work out how to apply the norm. I am obliged to try to ‘know God’s will and conform to it’, in ‘scare quotes’. The other mental format in which these representations must also figure, via the ought box, must be that of the freely acting narrative self, (perhaps, a ‘me box’); the part of personhood which takes responsibility for acting on obligations. Relevant mysteries Not all mysterious semi-propositions disseminate to cultural significance. When used as premises in calculating relevance, the semi-proposition has to produce a richness of contextual effects. Quasi-belief in Jesus’ resurrection led to an explosion of implications that are so rich that new ones are still being innovatively derived within the lineage. The Christology of Paul’s epistles, the gospel of John and the Gnostic writings illustrate the first stage. Consider a few of the traditional implications cited by Ku¨ng (1977: 381–396). Since Jesus of Nazareth has been supernaturally vindicated, his

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message that the Kingdom of God is at hand and already here is likewise vindicated. This leads to the working out of his Christological or eschatological significance. The resurrection both proves and initiates this new world, in which human alienation from God, and thus death – the price of this alienation – is overcome according to God’s redemptive plan. The narrative of Jesus’ life provides a model for the redeemed relationship with God for all human beings, who in this respect are equally under obligation and will be equally accountable. His absolute trust and commitment to his concept of God’s kingdom led to betrayal, abandonment and execution. It is also not clear how the man Jesus understood why he was being crucified – it was a mystery even to him – in the sense of how his death figured in God’s plan for the coming kingdom. This picture is still being newly re-interpreted. Rowan Williams (2002) has suggested that, as the only perfectly innocent victim of the manipulative violence that disfigures all human relationships, the crucified and resurrected Jesus shows us that we are not only victims of that same violence but also inevitably its perpetrators and his betrayers. Breaking bread with us, he forgives, and renews to us his call to follow him nevertheless. Interpretations like this fill in the narrative shape of the experience of self of a Christian as a type of person. Christ becomes the entity trusted and deferred to, the supernatural authority. These interpretations generate obligations to model one’s life on his, which inferentially fills the ought box with content. (This explains the use of the ‘conversion’ or ‘vocation’ to describe commitment to a religion.) There is the rapid scriptural development of the innovative concept of agape´, translated by changing the concept of LOVE into LOVE*, inferable from Jesus’ life and attributable to God himself. From this concept practical actions, which are obligatory for the believer, can be deduced in context. The consequences sharply contrast with the consequences both of the Platonic love of The Symposium, cited in Chapter 1, and the secular reflective concept (Barth: 1933/1968: 173–193; Dodd, 1932/1959: 203–208). With repeated relevant use these become habitual dispositions, changing the mind/brain in a modular-like way. A concept like LOVE* can undergo continuing development, leading to further obligations. For example, from it the concept of NONRESISTANCE, abstention from violence in political activity, can be derived which, as an obligation, can further control or inhibit practical behaviour. This can have further effects. Non-resistance encourages the oppressor to change inwardly – to have a genuine change of heart – whereas violent resistance can only induce superficial change in an oppressor’s motivations. Violation of intuitive beliefs Sperber (1996: 140) suggests that beliefs that violate ‘head on module-based expectations (e.g. as do beliefs in supernatural beings capable of action at a

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distance, ubiquity, metamorphoses, etc.) thereby gain a salience and relevance that contribute to their cultural robustness’. The violation draws attention to itself. It would have very many implications in many contexts if true, and for that reason is also easily memorable. Just imagine if death could be conquered. It is a presupposition of such violations that they are few and occur against a massive background of stable assumptions. The concept of the post-resurrection Jesus meets these criteria in more than one way, violating ‘head on’ modular-based expectations. People who know him do not recognize him, violating face recognition. He appears and disappears without warning, violating the properties of a physical object. Some properties that are attributed to him, for example, eating fish, are those of a normal human being. Representations of the post-resurrection Jesus are exactly counter-intuitive in Sperber’s sense. Jesus is one of Boyer’s supernatural entities. But there are problems with violation of the intuitive as a story of the attractiveness of religious concepts. Resurrection, if it existed, wouldn’t violate head-on a modular-based belief. Although the concept ALIVE or ANIMATE is surely innate, the concept DEAD isn’t usually considered to be so (with the caveat mentioned above). If it isn’t, children learn about death through communication with adults – the mum example – and through perceiving dead things. (The non-innate origin of DEAD is what may make dead things so uncanny. Our modular expectations imply the binary ANIMATE vs. INANIMATE, not the shocking transformation of what is animate into what is inanimate.) Because of their perceptual basis, beliefs containing DEAD are factual assumptions. But that dead bodies stay dead is a fact about death inductively established and communicated by the speech community, not intuitive for the individual mind/brain. Therefore, resurrection violates perceptual expectations, but not modular-based expectations, ‘head on’. It is possible, without inconsistency, to believe in resurrection at some future time on the basis of authority, as the Pharisees did. The world would behave very oddly if this occurred; and it would be a miracle. But what violates apostolic expectations is Jesus’ unexpected resurrection now. We tend to think of the violation of modular expectations in terms of input processed by intuitive physics or biology. Indeed, supernatural entities are the usual example. But consider the normative system, which provides the modular basis of co-operation and includes defection detection. In this case, head-on violations would be of modular-based normative expectations. As we saw, it is in the nature of norms to be occasionally violated. A true violation would be the repudiation of co-operation itself. Although his writings are all too easy to take out of context and misinterpret, some passages in Nietzsche appear to violate ‘head on’ modular expectations about co-operation. In On the Genealogy of Morals (Nietzsche, 1887/ 1968: 481), he claims that it is only the influence of language on the ‘popular

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mind’ that posits a subject that is free to choose with respect to values. Driven by vengefulness and hatred, the popular mind mistakenly believes that ‘the strong man is free to be weak and the bird of prey to be a lamb – and thus they (i.e. the weak) gain the right to make the bird of prey accountable for being a bird of prey’ (original italics). Nietzsche’s words violate modular expectations just as directly as any representations of the supernatural. His conclusion would be extraordinarily relevant if true. Should the utterance of religious or literary-philosophical violations be figuratively construed? Both the post-mortem apparitions of Jesus and the innate inability of ‘the strong’ to choose to co-operate might be meant as metaphors. There is certainly a tradition in theology of viewing religious language as metaphorical. We shall return to this in Chapter 6. But it is clear from the context that both Paul and Nietzsche do not intend their utterances metaphorically. As argued in Chapter 1, the reason that the utterances appear figurative is that they are inter-modular. Both Paul and Nietzsche are struggling to resolve inter-modular inconsistency between two modes of construal – normative/moral and dominance hierarchy – in the context of the physical and biological world and the history of cultural beliefs about death and justice. Nietzsche’s position implies that the innate motivation to co-operate in norms does not exist for the naturally dominant and the real origin of moral normativity is the attempt by the group to control their nature. Inconsistency is resolved in favour of the primate social order of dominance and submission; it is the dominant who revalue values. In Nietzsche’s case, what I have analysed as intuitive morality is taken as really a figurative account of power relations. He speculates that moral judgements must be interpreted as covertly expressing the desires and wills of strong and weak individuals – their ideologies. Thus, there has been a ‘battleground of opposed values’ in the way human ideals have been constructed (Nietzsche, 1887/1968: 448–449). In the concept of Jesus’ resurrection, the same inter-modular inconsistency is also at stake. His crucifixion was a communication from those in power motivated by Jesus’ prophetic challenge to the dominance hierarchy. At the same time, his execution is a head-on violation of modular-based expectations with respect to intuitive morality: ‘It’s not fair.’ For the original Jewish audiences of the narrative, the modular expectations of ‘faux-kin altruism’ were violated by two betrayals. A prophet was betrayed socially by the elite of his own people and personally by his own apostles. He was turned over to the Romans by the Jewish leadership. Secondly, the modular expectations of ‘tit for tat’ were violated by the cruelty of the Romans, routine politics for them. In Pilate’s thinking, Jesus summary crucifixion was a political symbol. But it is surely intuitively disproportionate, in terms of ‘tit for tat’, to any actual threat that Jesus’ proclamation of the Kingdom of God posed either to temple religion or Roman rule. Instead, Jesus’ crucifixion was a cultural representation,

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a calculated display of dominance originating in the physical, biological and social realm of factual assumptions. (Primates are very interested in dominance hierarchies, hence the intuitive nature of Machiavellian reasoning and assumptions about power and solidarity.) Nevertheless, it also violated perceptions based on modular-based norms. The resurrection overturns this violation. It resolves the inter-modular inconsistency in favour of what ought to be. That’s what makes it ‘religious’. Justice is restored by the sudden irruption of God’s rule. The intuitive physical and biological realm is violated ‘head on’ in its turn, and the dominant are shown to be powerless against God. As Peter makes absolutely explicit, it is a judgement on those who condemned him (Acts 2: 36). This violation is either metaphor or miracle. If taken as metaphor, as Bockmuehl (2001: 117) says, the resurrection is ‘upside down’. Metaphors are usually violations of factual assumptions about the concrete. So their content cannot be taken as literally true. This violation triggers their metaphorical use to convey an abstraction, otherwise hard to cognize or put into words. By contrast, only if taken literally, as a physical event, does the resurrection implicate that violated justice has been put right. God’s justice actually transforms the physical world in a way that can’t be fully grasped. Jesus’ dead body is raised, to accord with the abstract reality of God’s kingdom. God communicates that physical, biological reality isn’t at all like we intuitively think it is in our factual assumptions. This reversive violation of the expectations of physics, biology and society – a miracle from those modular points of view – communicates the reality of an absolute justice inferentially derived from intuitive morality. In this alternative, inter-modular inconsistency is resolved super-sensibly in the narrative of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection. This is the same strategy rationalized by Kant’s philosophy in which morality is warranted super-sensibly, not empirically. In the Nietszchean and Christian/Kantian positions, we have two contrasting violations of modular-based intuitive beliefs. In Sperber’s terms, this is a factor that explains their wide disseminations. But these violations are not just trivially engaging, like a puzzle. They are about the idea of justice. They are therefore intensely relevant, revealing as they do the inconsistencies in the structure of the human mind/brain from which these mysteries arise, described in Chapter 1. We now have an account of why some religious representations are so epidemiologically successful and why their semi-propositional forms so compelling. The next questions are: given the epistemological indeterminacy of semi-propositions within our naturalistic theory of the mind/brain, is there any rational warrant for quasi-believing religious mysteries? Then, depending on our answer to the first epistemological question, what is the nature of genuine authority in religion? These are the topics of Chapters 4 and 5, respectively.

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Pragmatics and pragmatism

4.1

Naturalizing pragmatism A naturalizing move

The question for this chapter is what kind of rational warrant the mind/brain might have for believing mysteries, for that which it can never fully understand. In the tradition of Chomsky’s linguistics and in conformity to how relevance theory conceives of itself, both linguistics and pragmatics are parts of cognitive psychology. However, in our accounts of semantic content, we are dependent on philosophy, on the manifest image. Psychological theories of representation are not extricable from philosophical analyses of key concepts. Conversely, both philosophical psychology and epistemology, to the degree they construct theories, should be consistent with the results of science, however distinct the method of inquiry. In fact, inextricability is obvious from the histories of both behaviourism and cognitive science. To naturalize an area of inquiry is to investigate it using the methods of natural science. Chomsky proposes that naturalization be without any metaphysical connotations (Chomsky, 2000: 76). Citing Baldwin (1993), he notes that this differs from Dennett’s ‘metaphysical naturalism’ in which certain metaphysical assumptions, for example, forms of Platonism, are excluded as not consistent with his view of natural science. To the degree that naturalization is successful, the domain is transformed from that of common sense as elaborated and clarified by philosophical inquiry and becomes part of Sellar’s scientific image of humanity. In psychology, naturalization has consisted of transforming folk psychology and its terminology, through philosophical psychology, to psychology as a special science. Such progression is normal in the history of science. Relevance theory and Sperber/ Recanati epidemiology are part of psychology and anthropology. I will be making a different move in this chapter in two respects. Preparatory to my study of authority, I will be attempting to naturalize philosophical pragmatism, by integrating it into the above theories where relevant. And in doing this, I will need to extend the analysis beyond the representational and 163

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computational properties of any one mind – the methodological individualism usual in studies of the mind/brain – and consider the resulting output when communicating minds function as one thing, as a community of inquirers. Chomsky has proposed, not altogether seriously, that there is a human ‘science-forming capacity’. Surely he does not intend us to take this literally as a separate faculty like language? The highly disciplined methods of modern natural science must be the epitome of culture: a reflectively developed, de-coupled, rational inquiry only ultimately answerable to directly intuitive beliefs. The historical capacity to do science, although certainly built upon modular modes of construal, is only actually manifested in history as a cultural complex transmitted through communication. The use of mathematics, precise predictions within ingenious experimentation, explanatory models, the collective nature and competitive written publication of results, are a cultural assemblage, originating in its current form within the European Enlightenment and having specific historical causes. One could propose that science is, like religion, inter-modular; built in part upon intuitive physics, biology and meta-representation – with its ability to de-couple representations from action and entertain doubt. Culture developed mathematics based on innate abilities to calculate number, time and rate which are widespread in nature (Carruthers, 2006: 99–102). Scientific training generates a quasi-modular ‘specialist effect’ and discovers remarkable individuals whose gifts diverge from the average, just as one would expect in a culturally elaborated area. It suppresses the spontaneous use of teleological explanation in physics and biology (with issues about functional explanation in the latter) and has also ruled out until recently, the intentional stance as having any input to the science of intelligent behaviour. Neither can we tell a priori the limits of scientific explanation. The methods of natural science can be further elaborated from philosophy and developed into new domains. We see this in Chomsky’s linguistics, in computational cognitive science itself, in pragmatics, and in more social domains such as economics and sociology, although these latter have proved most difficult of all. In these areas what counts as scientific method is itself problematic. So the naturalization of the manifest image that emerged in the standard social science model or in behaviourism is bad science according to Tooby and Cosmides (1992) and Chomsky (1959, 2000, and many other writings). We don’t know in advance to what degree either common sense or philosophical theories can be naturalized. That depends on developments in our concept of scientific method itself and the viability of the folk and philosophical theories. It is legitimate to attempt to naturalize the manifest images’ philosophical concepts and seek in them hypotheses to extend the range and depth of a naturalistic theory of religion. Concepts such as representation, truth, reality, and moral terms, are needed for a naturalistic theory of religion because

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religion, taken seriously, claims to be about how humans relate to what is ultimately real. The world religions claim to lift the veil of illusion and represent the truth and what is really binding on agents. This means that a naturalistic theory of religion has to take cognizance of the above terms and explore how they can be naturalistically understood. My contention in this chapter is that these concepts can be given a powerful interpretation by naturalizing philosophical pragmatism within cognitive science. In the current scientific image of humanity, cognitive theories select certain general philosophical positions for naturalization. For example, Chomsky has emphasized that linguistics as a science is part of a naturalized rationalist theory of mind and knowledge, so that the term “Cartesian linguistics” is apt. Chomsky’s linguistics is a rationalist analysis of language, naturalized. Linguistic theory makes the philosophical stance both more precise with respect to empirical content, with implications for experimental psychology, and provides new deeper material for philosophical analysis, while philosophy in turn deepens the psychology by analysing its limits and developing its interpretation. In the area of the interface between language, meaning and use, the distinctions have to be re-drawn between philosophy, linguistics and psychology. To recapitulate, the mind/brain has an innate biological endowment which is richly specialized in such a way that it makes possible the acquisition of language and other cognitive abilities. In our study so far, assumptions contain basic concepts concerning causation, physical objects, inner essences, intentionality, freedom, etc. which are known a priori in this rationalist sense. When combined with perceptual input, these generate intuitive beliefs. Presumably, these concepts have been causally connected to extra-representational reality through evolutionary adaptation. With unanalysed atomic concepts – such as MOVE and UP within intuitive physics – the contents of a universal conceptual scheme become ever more specific. Such concepts are supposed to be selfinterpreting. Upon innate intuitive concepts, and their inferential consequences, truly vast structures of cultural representation are inferentially developed, as we illustrated with the concept RESURRECTION. But to say that the atomic concepts proposed in the psychological theory are self-interpreting doesn’t mean we actually understand them within the manifest image. When a priori concepts like causation become subjects of conscious reflection, their interpretation isn’t apparent. Indeed, they appear classic Chomsky–McGinn mysteries, whose explanation is beyond our cognitive capacities, as noted at the end of Chapter 1. Yet these ideas are not ‘defective’ because of that. Consider problematic intuitive ideas such as time, possibility and necessity, intentionality, moral obligation and free choice, truth and falsehood, good and evil, and so on. These are self-interpreted, known in the strange but everyday sense that we incorrigibly apply them in automatic

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comprehension. They are practically indubitable but theoretically mysterious. They can be clarified, but not fully grasped. (A point St Augustine famously made about ‘time’.) We ordinarily truth-evaluate propositions using them but are unable to develop consensual reflective theories for these concepts. Within cognitive pragmatics, we have seen that relevance theory explains how the above conceptual framework interacts with input and output with respect to perception, action and communication. My argument is this: just as the Chomsky/Fodor theory broadly selects philosophical rationalism, so the pragmatic use of this innate conceptual framework broadly selects philosophical pragmatism. Within an overall picture of language and its use, these two philosophical stances need somehow to interact consistently. This can be accomplished by naturalizing aspects of Kant’s philosophical rationalism and Peirce’s philosophical pragmatism. Peirce was a philosopherscientist and his pragmatism, unlike William James’ (1896/1956, 1978), always attempts to be consistent with science although in the broadest possible human context. And he also shows less prejudice against metaphysical theorizing than became common in analytic empiricism after the turn of the twentieth century; for example, in Moore, Russell or Wittgenstein. The similarity of the terms “linguistic pragmatics” and “philosophical pragmatism”, although not suggesting any previous intimacy between the linguistic and philosophical theories, reflects the fact that they both derive from the Greek term, pragmatiko´s, suggesting action with a rational human purpose (Peirce, 1905/1958: 184). Pragmatism is a strand of philosophical thought – a group of philosophical doctrines about meaning, belief and action – originating with Peirce and developed in diverse ways by William James, John Dewey and George Herbert Mead and others (Peirce, 1958, Wiener’s Introduction: xviii–xix). There is a continuous line of influence reaching to such recent philosophers as Quine, Davidson, Putnam, Rorty and Habermas (Scheffler, 1986; Putnam, 1995). Thus, we have two related theories within scientific psychology, Chomskyan linguistics/modularity and linguistic pragmatics/relevance theory. These factor the structure and operation of the mind/brain with respect to language and action/ communication, respectively. Correspondingly, I propose that the two distinct philosophical stances are naturalized by the two theories. In this section I will work out some general ways that relevance theory implies pragmatism, and the consequences of this for basic concepts relevant to religion such as belief and truth. In explicating this stance, I will employ Peirce’s original views which I think are both the most appropriate and most profound and weave my own version of philosophical pragmatism that I believe can be viewed as naturalized by linguistic pragmatics. This, in turn, provides hypotheses that help science explain the role of religious representations in mind and society.

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Pierce’s own view was that his pragmatic philosophy was a form of Kantianism, with one key exception, which I will discuss later. One way that Peirce’s pragmatism and Kant’s philosophy are the same is that they both use the Kantian critical method rather than that of science. This is why Peirce insists that he is doing logic, not psychology. They both attempt to deduce the conditions for something. Peirce’s question is how anything can be a representation of anything else. (He calls it “semiotics”.) This transforms Kantianism and is the basic question underlying cognitive science. Questions of rationality and inference, truth and reality, fall out of this project, as their answers fall out of the best analysis of human representation. I would say that the Peircean programme, like Kant’s, formulates general constraints on hypotheses in the scientific psychologies of their related domains. We can see this in the comparison of pragmatics and Peircean pragmatism. 4.2

Key features of philosophical pragmatism Peirce’s inferential theory of representation

Peirce’s theory of the sign is, in fact, a general inferential theory of representation, or a general semiotics (Peirce, 1958; Fann, 1970; Gallie, 1966; Misiak, 1991; Ketner et al. 1981). For Peirce, to represent is to be constituted within a triadic relationship. The physical sign itself is what relevance theory calls an input or stimulus. For Pierce, it is ‘a first’, that is, an experienced ‘particular suchness’ or ‘felt quality’. This becomes a sign – represents something – only if it enters into two relationships in the mind of an interpreter. It must stand in relationship to its ‘second’, its object, such that this relationship weakly determines its ‘third’, its interpretant, which stands in the same relationship to the object as does the sign itself. Objects resist our will. An object is the way it is whether or not anyone ever represents it. Its relation to its sign is that it ‘evokes’ or ‘delimits’ it, or ‘requires an answer’ from it. The third, or interpretant, abstractly relates the sign and its object through a further sign or representation in the mind of an interpreter. Peirce develops elaborate typologies of all three constituents of the sign relationship. The relationships that constitute the sign can be stated in terms of types of inference. The relation of the interpretant to the sign is sometimes referred to as hypothesis or abduction (alternatively called, conjecture, retroduction). It has two phases. First, it takes the form of a hypothetical conditional – if O, then D – where O is the object, and D, the observed sign. The interpretant is a hypothetical generalization about the relation between object and sign in the mind of the interpreter. If the sign, D, is observed, that occurrence follows by hypothesis in the normal course of events from the object O. If there is a fire, O, then there will probably be smoke, D, which is a sign of the fire.

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The second phase is a deduction. The triadic relationship can be set out as a deductive argument. One premise is the interpretant hypothetical; If A, the grounded relation of sign and object, then D occurs as a matter of course. The second premise is the actual observation of D. The conclusion is that the occurrence of D is a token of the sign, conveying the relation of sign and object. This constitutes the ‘grasping’ of the sign. The ‘representing’ relation between O and D expressed by the interpretant rests on the ground of the sign. In the case of symbols, the relation is one of definition or habitual association. For example, a meaning postulate or semantic rule constitutes a sign as a symbol. Indexical and iconical signs are grounded in terms of causality and analogy, respectively. Since the interpretant of each sign is also an interpreting sign, the process of interpretative understanding or ‘thought’, as Pierce puts it, is open ended, with respect to further interpretative understanding – in a sort of ‘dialogic movement’. And every successful understanding of a sign inductively strengthens its interpretant-hypothesis for subsequent use. The interpretants used in the process of grasping in the mind the relation of sign and object of signs are also signs. “Fire” and “smoke” are also signs. Thus, interpretants function as a meta-language stating the probable relation of sign and object. But the meaning of this interpretant is not in itself transparent, not understood by definition as in formal semantics, nor self-interpreted in the manner of Fodor’s language of thought (although some beliefs are instinctive). For Peirce, the sign used to interpret is simply another sign from the array of sign systems; mental representations or thoughts, images, languages, gestures like dance, etc. Since an interpretant is itself a sign, it in turn demands further interpretation, in the actual on-going dynamic process of successive sign interpretation which constitutes the essence of the ‘the mind’ or ‘personhood’. The ‘final interpretant’ is not reached till the process of thinking ends, and as we shall see, this is ultimately a transcendental notion. This absence of an interpreted meta-language in semantics makes the psychological claim that the total set of our collective representations are never definitively grasped while rational thought continues. Individual minds ascend in the process of infinite semiosis, in a potential regression of interpretations, which stops for practical reasons. This seems to me psychologically correct. Any given case which appears settled, is fallible and can be re-opened; this is Peirce’s doctrine of fallibilism. The real advantage of the assumption of a definitively interpreted meta-language, is to discharge truth conditions without making any further assumptions, so attention can then be concentrated on the relation of logical form to syntax. A Peircean theory of ‘real semantics’ is more psychologically realistic with respect to how representations of different types are actually grasped, as this is evidenced in behaviour. With respect to

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self-interpreted atomic concepts, we saw above that even these, Peirce’s ‘instinctive ideas’, although they may be indubitable when taken for granted in use, lead only to Chomsky–McGinn mysteries. But this doesn’t affect their practical use with respect to perception, action or communication – we can’t behave without these framework beliefs. Peirce’s semiotic is a logical analysis of non-demonstrative inference, abduction in Peirce’s sense, which relevance theory explains in cognitive psychological terms. Peirce’s sign or significans is the input stimulus. His interpretant is the set of assumptions accessed as premises in context construction, a case of abduction. The deductive device is the deductive relationship by which the latter interprets the former, through explication and contextual implication. The relation of sign and object in Peirce’s triad is surely the truth conditions which constitute the meaning of a propositional form as far as it is grasped, with respect to the states of affairs it denotes. Pierce was extremely clear that ‘the mind is a sign developing according to the laws of inference’ and ‘is the man himself’ (Peirce, 1868/1958: 70–71). (This leads him elsewhere to the view that emotions are also signs, Downes, 2000.) Relevance theory shows how this same logical structure models the psychology of diverse forms of inferential processing which are tightly constrained in operation by mental architecture and the various principles of relevance and other factors. We saw above how it works in mind-reading, action and communication. Sperber and Wilson (1995: 75) point out the distinction between such largely unconscious spontaneous inferences of ‘most ordinary thinking and . . . ordinary verbal comprehension’ and the consciously reflective contexts of science, religion, literary criticism and ‘speculatively held opinions’. Peirce (1908/1958: 371) supposes that ‘the spontaneous conjectures of instinctive reason’ is as natural to humans as ‘flying and nestbuilding’ is for birds. But Peirce himself was a scientist. His theory of the sign is a tool for a philosophy of science, as the preferred mode of conscious rational inquiry into the truth. For Peirce, the term “logic” refers to the theory of inquiry. The general type of the practical thinker in everyday life was the experimentalist, and among the culturally contingent methods of fixing belief the one that ultimately leads to truth is science. (Other methods of fixing belief will follow.) But there is a deep equivocation in his use of the term “inquiry”. This is because the above analysis of signs makes it clear that Pierce views scientific method as simply the most ‘reflective’ form of the same spontaneous rationality that underlies everyday practical action; as ‘natural as nest-building’. When everyday action is faced by the ‘irritation of doubt’, this leads to ‘the spontaneous conjectures of instinctive reason’. The scientist is Everyman in this respect. This is evident from his examples of genuine doubt and belief fixation in everyday action. He gives the example: ‘how to pay for a ticket in a horse-car’. It is also clear from Peirce’s very

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identification of the mind, the person and the sign. Signification is the proper function of the person. Therefore, Peirce’s term “inquiry” has a dual role. It describes the general process of fixing beliefs in order to settle genuine doubt, in both practical matters and science. But he doesn’t distinguish, as we have done, the two domains very clearly. Relevance theory also claims that cognitive processes are geared to improve cognitive representations, not least to achieve mutuality of cognitive environments through communication. We saw above how spontaneous inquiry was eventually disciplined into the science on which Peirce focuses. William James’ (1978; 1896/1956) pragmatism is far more overtly oriented to the psychology of everyday practical doings, to general human experience. Vagueness and generality in Peirce I have emphasized the role of semi-propositional forms, without fully determinate truth conditions and only partially grasped. We showed above that you don’t need fully propositional forms to achieve relevance. It is possible to accept semi-propositional representations; to use them in inferencing to achieve relevance and act upon them. This is probably the default position with respect to most of the thinking in everyday life. We commonly only understand just the minimum, those few implications of the representations involved in what we are doing, sufficient to achieve relevance. For example, in Minsky’s (1975) theory of frames, the highest-level default representation of a concept is a stereotype. This will only be developed if needs be, in our terms, to achieve relevance. The same is true of categorization in general; for example, in theories using prototypes (Rosch, 1973). The dream of precision is illusory: the notion that every representation is or can be processed into a fully developed propositional form, one whose truth conditions are complete and determinate in all respects, and therefore in principle fully truth-evaluable. Even in the most solidly empirical areas where it might appear there are fully determinate and evaluable truth-conditions, in the absence of a completely understood meta-language, there can always be a regress of further questions concerning un-determined properties of the situation and their criteria, and so on. These will never get raised, because they are irrelevant to day-to-day processing. In many practical situations, propositions appear to be fully determinate, adequate for the processing at hand. But if the representation was to be ‘fully precise’, a regress would arise, lead us into an infinite interpretative ascent; Peirce’s infinite semiosis. People actually process daily life using ‘not fully grasped’ semi-propositional forms, just adequate for relevance, efficient for practical purposes. It is the requirements of the principles of relevance that halt the regress and make thought appear clearer than it is; make the representation appear a fully propositional form.

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Peirce gives the fullest treatment of his concepts of vagueness and generality in his article ‘Issues of pragmatism’ (Peirce, 1905a/1958: 210–214). Certain characters of the object represented by a sign under an interpretation may be determinate. The object will be specified positively or negatively with respect to these particular properties. But the object of the sign remains indeterminate with respect to all other possible properties. A sign whose object is undetermined by the sign itself is objectively general, in Peirce’s sense, ‘in so far as it extends to the interpreter the privilege of carrying its determination further’. This is the enrichment of general concepts. It is objectively vague, ‘in so far as it reserves further determination to be made in some other conceivable sign, or at least does not appoint the interpreter as its deputy in this office’ (Peirce, 1905a/1958: 210). This is a characterization of a semi-propositional form. As Peirce also says, a proposition is both true or false if and until its identity is fully determined. Whatever has produced the input stimulus leaves aspects of the state of affairs it designates unspecified because it wouldn’t be relevant to specify them and provide extraneous information. The logical forms which provide the skeletal base of linguistic input leave most aspects indeterminate, to be inferred, but only if relevant. I was recently asked, ‘Where did you go this afternoon?’ I answered, ‘We paddled to the far shore of the lake.’ This conveys a vague thought in Pierce’s sense. Nevertheless, it was the optimally relevant reply to the question posed. My answer would be treated as ‘true’ by my questioner, for practical purposes in this context, ‘as far as it goes’. More precision or determination – a disquisition on what made it true that my trip counted as going ‘to the far shore’ in spite of not going anywhere near any shore would be irrelevant, or communicate something else. Maybe it would be relevant if the questioner went on to ask if we actually landed. This would have its own objective indeterminacies with respect to the concept LANDED. The forms I employed and the very concepts accessed – e.g. a FAR SHORE of MARY LAKE – could never itself convey an absolutely precise, fully propositional thought about some absolute reality in any context in the sense that no further question about some character of its objects relevant to its truth or falsity couldn’t conceivably be asked. The concepts are merely a set of addresses leading to an open set of other assumptions. Other semi-propositional thoughts involving the concepts, LANDED* and FAR SHORE* would be developed if we were talking about exactly what direction the intended shore was from where we were, its extent, the navigable creeks along it, or the character of the rockiness, marshes and beaches and how they might affect what counts as ‘landing’ under the wind conditions that day. The superposed sum of all possible states which might make my proposition true is infinite in yet another sense, because the location of the canoe on the lake relative to some far shore, or even what counts as paddling, actually rest on continua on

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the many dimensions which the partially understood propositions only roughly indicate. This is the question of soroties vagueness or ‘fuzzy boundaries’, as opposed to indeterminacies in the sense of the infinite set of unspecified properties. The mind/brain needs something to turn it off – collapse the superposed possibilities – otherwise the processing leading to the attempt to establish fully determinate propositions per impossibile would get in the way of what is practically required. The principles of relevance are a statement of this turning off. Thus, in actual practice, propositional forms really designate determinate truth conditions – determinate states of affairs that satisfy them – only to the degree needed to achieve relevance in the intended context at hand. Otherwise they remain vague in Peirce’s sense. Even scientific experiments are like this. Thus, the invariably semi-propositional form that first achieves relevance is what is conveyed in communication and used in perception and practical action. It is only grasped to the precise degree it needs to be grasped. This is what it means to say that achieving relevance resolves vagueness in a given context. The difference between thoughts is whether they lead in the process of inquiry to settled beliefs, or raise further genuine doubts. And this depends on the contexts in which they are used. So, with respect to signs like my thought containing the FAR SHORE of MARY LAKE, a fully propositional form containing them which has exhaustively complete truth conditions is a chimera. Thoughts are ad hoc moments in the train of thought, always leaving much of their object partially undetermined and therefore not truth-evaluable in that respect. What is undetermined is what has been treated as irrelevant in the context at hand. But it does mean that I don’t understand the state of affairs in question as if all its properties were fully determined in all respects. It is possible too that the objects of representation are themselves indeterminate; the states of affairs that make a proposition true or false. This is the metaphysical claim that vagueness is not epistemological but ontological. Peirce countenances this in his metaphysics, as reality unfolds in time with respect to mind. And as regards representation, he writes, ‘Perfect accuracy of thought is unattainable, theoretically unattainable, And undue striving for it worse than time wasted. It positively renders thought unclear’ (Peirce, 1953/ 1958: 381). Nevertheless, according to Peirce, this vagueness is not only pervasive but it is to be welcomed. It provides the logical space for the real psychological distress of genuine doubt about those representations really relevant to action and communication. It motivates inquiry. Peirce’s pragmatic maxim We saw above that Peirce viewed the process of thought, the mind, as essentially signs interpreted by other signs, interpretants, in a process of

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semiosis without closure. The Pragmatic Maxim formulates the way in which the interpreting mind can most clearly grasp the meaning – the purport or significance – of the sign. (He uses the word “concept”, and doesn’t clearly distinguish it from the thoughts of which it is a constituent. For ease of exposition I simplify likewise.) The maxim is fundamentally about how thoughts are understood. There are a large number of formulations and comments on this principle. The classic early formulation in ‘How to make our ideas clear’ (1878/1958) is restated in a slightly different version in ‘Issues of pragmatism’ (1905a/1958) thus: ‘Consider what effects that might conceivably have practical bearings you conceive the objects of your conception to have. Then, your conception of those effects is the whole of your conception of the object.’ The maxim is then immediately restated: ‘The entire intellectual purport of any symbol consists in the total of all general modes of rational conduct which conditionally upon all the possible different circumstances and desires, would ensure the acceptance of the symbol’ (Peirce, 1905a/1958: 204). In ‘What pragmatism is’, he writes, ‘a conception, that is, the rational purport of a word or other expression, lies exclusively in its conceivable bearing upon the conduct of life’ (Peirce, 1905/1958: 183). Since only that which has empirical consequences could conceivably have practical bearings, the conception of meaning is that of all the conceivable empirical consequences the representation could imply in all possible contexts. Empirical consequences are interpreted broadly enough, as in James, to include psychological effects: as Peirce’s editor, Philip Wiener (Peirce, 1958: 181) remarks, ‘in judging the meaning of self-reproach by its consequential improvement of the habit of self-control’. These formulations follow from the inferential nature of the Peircean sign. To interpret or grasp the sign is to make hypothetico-deductive predictions in using it – the practical bearings of the sign in all the contexts of life in which it could potentially be used. Grasping a representation thus points towards the future. The sum of all such possible inferences would ideally constitute a complete conception of the object of the interpretation and the consequent ability to use this conception in rational conduct or practical effects, whether in comprehension or bringing them into being. To grasp a concept in Peirce’s sense is not to be able to definitively know and evaluate its contribution to truth conditions. Instead, it is equivalent to the ability to use the representation containing it, thus, to calculate the relevance of an input or output stimulus in practical matters of perception, action and communication. Thus, the meaning, purport or interpretation of the representation is the sum total of all the possible roles it could play in the calculation of relevance in practical matters, in understanding or bringing about states of affairs. To grasp it is to be able to use it in the calculation of relevance, with respect to its total potential, and therefore playing an inferential role. In fact, in epidemiological terms, when

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each individual mind grasps the ‘same’ concept and uses it, it becomes slightly changed. So what is in fact being grasped is a token of a representation type, one that can be classed as a member of the same family. As Pierce says, we must ‘recognize the concept under every disguise’ (Peirce, 1908/ 1958: 375). Beliefs as habits of mind To gain the living comprehension of the meaning of a concept, an analyst has to determine the consequences of the mind’s belief in thoughts containing it. What would be the practical consequences of taking it as true? Peirce (1908/ 1958: 375) develops this relationship between the grasping of concepts, belief in them and the behaviour in which they are inferentially involved. Comprehension is not complete until we ‘discover and recognize just what general habits of conduct a belief in the truth of the concept . . . would reasonably develop; . . . . It is necessary to understand “conduct”, here, in the broadest sense. If, for example, the predication of a given concept were to lead to our admitting that a given form of reasoning concerning the subject of which it was affirmed was valid, when it would otherwise not be valid, the recognition of that effect in our reasoning would decidedly be a habit of conduct.’ So to have a belief is to have habits with respect to what counts as valid inference, and inevitably through this to practical actions. In other terms, the phrase ‘an organism having the propositional attitude of belief towards a formula in the language of thought’ is equivalent to the functional role of tokens of that internal representation – via its causal instantiation – with respect to its ultimate consequences for the organism’s behaviour. Peirce took the definition of belief as ‘that upon which a man is prepared to act’ from the nineteenth-century Scottish psychologist Alexander Bain (Scheffler, 1986: 58). Belief ‘that p’ is not just a simple propositional attitude for the believer. It is instead a mental disposition or habit of being willing to act on p. In other words, the Peirce–Bain concept of belief is much more like the relevance theory concept of an assumption, a denizen of Sperber’s belief box. Having a vast body of settled beliefs, Peircean ‘habits of mind’, which manifest themselves in processing, therefore ultimately in action, is the default condition for memory. This is in effect a naturalization of the concept of belief. Bain (1859) wrote, ‘to escape doubt and reach belief is . . . inherent in man; indeed, belief is our natural state, for we have an initial trust or belief in the continuation of the present state and the continued efficacy of our mode of behaviour’ (cited in Scheffler, 1986: 58). The concept of doubt depends on the concept of belief. A key tenet of Cartesianism as a philosophical method is to use doubt as an acid to dissolve this natural psychological default position. In this way, Descartes’

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methodological scepticism invented the key problematic of the modern age. How can belief be justified? Descartes’ answer lay in the development of the ‘new method’, depending on ‘clear and precise ideas’. The ideal is mathematics. But thoroughgoing scepticism, if it were taken seriously, would undermine what we have to believe in order to live, to support our forms of life. Pierce’s pragmatism is an anti-Cartesian move. His concept of vagueness is part of that attack. Now Peirce attacks the foundations of Cartesianism, arguing that ‘philosophical doubt’ is not genuine doubt, but merely ‘philosophical’. How significant in reality is that kind of move, when the great body of beliefs are indubitable and have pragmatic warrant? Although all beliefs are fallible, universal doubt is impossible. Radical scepticism about settled beliefs betrays itself in the impossibility of leading a radically sceptical practical life. In Scheffler’s (1986: 59) words, ‘The natural state is now held to be that of belief, with no possibility of wholesale and radical justification.’ Genuine doubt only arises in this context of settled beliefs. The ‘irritation of doubt’, in Peirce’s phrase, is a psychological state that occurs when a belief fails with respect to processing in practical terms, in ‘conduct’ in the broadest sense. Such genuine doubt is central to the ecology of mind, because it alone inhibits action and motivates inquiry leading to revisions of belief. The Peircean analysis can easily be fitted into an evolutionary picture and this is extremely well stated in Murphey (1961: 163, cited in Scheffler, 1986: 59). It is worth citing in full. By adopting Bain’s picture, Peirce is able to fit his whole theory of inquiry into an evolutionary frame of reference. Beliefs may be regarded as adjustive habits while failure of adjustment leads to doubt. And the superior adjustive power of an organism endowed with the capacity to correct its patterns of action by experience makes it possible to utilize an argument from natural selection to explain how we came to be so . . . This biological perspective . . . provides him with a new definition of the nature of a problem . . . . A problem situation exists whenever we find our established habits of conduct inadequate to attain a desired end, regardless of how the inadequacy comes about . . . . Accordingly, our objective is to find a rule that will always lead us to what we desire. So in the investigation of a real object, our objective is a knowledge of how to act respecting that object so as to attain our desired ends . . . . Thus, as pragmatism asserts, the concept of an object can mean nothing to us but all the habits it involves. The attainment of a stable belief – belief that will stand in the long run – is thus the goal of inquiry. Such belief we define as true, and its object as reality.

Peirce has already begun to naturalize the logical concept of belief. Using relevance theory we can carry this process further. An assumption is a fallible belief, which is treated by the mind as a representation of the actual world, as opposed to fictions, desires, obligations, etc. The strength and accessibility of an assumption is directly determined by its origin and its use in processing

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according to the principles of relevance. If it contributes to maximal or optimal relevance, an old assumption is strengthened. If it fails to do this, in the sense of being contradicted by a more credible new input, it is deleted. Processing for relevance is the mechanism that provides structural epistemic status for an assumption in memory. This is simply an automatic by-product of normal cognitive processes involved in the perception of stimuli, practical action in pursuit of desired goals, and ostensive-inferential communication. The whole design of the cognitive system is to produce positive cognitive effects; those that improve the overall representation of the world. Furthermore, successful communication leads over time to an increasing mutuality of cognitive environment between communicators. Successful comprehension of the actions of others leads to an increasing grasp of their thinking and motivations. Even if a representation remains semi-propositional, a quasibelief, it really must have exactly the strength appropriate to its processing history. If it has contributed positive effects over many contexts, it will be strongly held even though not fully understood. (For Peirce, this would be the usual situation.) Thus, the principles proposed by Sperber and Wilson (1995: 263–266) and by Peirce treat the cognitive system as an epistemic engine that has evolved to produce positive cognitive effects. Even though the individual cognitive system cannot know which representations it has stored are actually true and which are false, it has a record of what so far hasn’t unsettled the system. So it operates with a body of assumptions of varying degrees of strength, which it doesn’t so far doubt as an overall representation of the world. It treats them as true for the most part and to the degree they have been used in achieving relevance. Naturalizing truth: the pragmatic conception of truth In pragmatism, the key semantic notions emerge out of the way that representations are employed in the logical-inferential process of inquiry. The semantic concepts would be the same for any rational being with minds like ours. Peirce introduces the two correlative notions of truth and reality via the concept of belief, for to believe something is to think it true, whether or not it is actually so. It is necessary to the concept of belief that there can be mistaken, false beliefs; representations of what is not real – what is merely imagined or thought. Conversely, a true belief is one that represents what is objectively real, whether the mind is aware of that or not. To represent what is real is to represent what is true whatever you or I or any other arbitrary mind may think. This is because real states of affairs reveal their objectivity by being what and as they are irrespective of the subjectivity of individual representations: reality resists the mind and its desires.

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Given this, the best access to reality that sign users can ever achieve, is not through the inquiry of any one mind, but only through the public exercise of a community of minds. The reasoning of a community of inquirers is led by the very process of investigation, if there is a discoverable reality, to converge towards a final consensus that cannot be avoided. This final consensus means that the representation ‘is true’, as far as the word can mean anything to us. In ‘How to make our ideas clear’ (1878/1958: 133), Peirce states, ‘The opinion which is fated to be ultimately agreed to by all who investigate is what we mean by the truth, and the object represented by that opinion is the real.’ It follows that whatever is universally indubitable, if there really is anything such, represents the real. Elsewhere, Peirce (1868/1958: 89) emphasizes the communal nature of this conception of reality. ‘The real, then, is that which sooner or later, information and reasoning would finally result in, and which is therefore independent of the vagaries of me and you. Thus, this very origin of the conception of reality shows that this conception essentially involves the notion of a COMMUNITY, without definite limits, and capable of a definite increase of knowledge.’ Peirce is trying to formulate a way of thinking of the object of our concept REALITY, in which ‘that which is real’ is relative to representation and at the same time ‘real’ independent of representation and so objective. Cast in the terms of Chapter 2, ‘that which is real’ is whatever it is that is represented by the unique set of all maximally relevant inferential paths up any hill – the final answers to all possible questions – constructed by all possible cognitive systems which are like ours enough to reason in ways we could find intelligible. Because it is mind dependent, but not dependent on any arbitrary mind, it is both dependent on and independent of representation. Peirce (1878/1958: 133) writes, ‘it may be said that this view is directly opposed to the abstract definition of reality, in as much as it makes the character of the real depend on what is ultimately thought about them. But the answer to this is that, on the one hand, reality is independent, not necessarily of thought in general, but only of what you or I or any finite number of men may think about it; and that, on the other hand, though the object of the final opinion depends on what that opinion is, yet what that opinion is does not depend on what you or I or any man thinks.’ Or again, ‘there is no thing that is in-itself in the sense of not being relative to the mind, though things which are relative to the mind doubtless are, apart from that relation’ (1868/1958: 68–69). To evaluate Peirce’s pragmatic concept of truth, with its consequential notion of reality, would lead us deep into the philosophies of language and logic (e.g. Haack, 1978; Platts, 1997; Read, 1995). This is beyond the remit of this book. However, there are two possible positions that Peirce rejects that must be mentioned, because they are relevant to how we will analyse interpretations of religious representations. Both these positions posit

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metaphysical realities which are mind transcendent. The first is logical metaphysical realism. This is the view that to be true is a property of propositions by virtue of their objective relationship to real states of affairs, relationships that obtain independently of any mind that might assert or deny them. The truth of the representational relationship of sign and object, proposition and fact, is absolute and divorced from use. The problem is how we might guarantee that there are any such relationships. Since assuming metaphysical realism in interpreting mathematics leads to paradoxes, we are faced with the threat that there isn’t any consistent set of states of affairs that corresponds to the set of true representations. Hence no realistic interpretation is possible. A yet stronger kind of realism is what I will call absolute metaphysical realism. This is the notion that there are in principle realities which escape the net of representation altogether and which would therefore be incognizable by any representational system, including our minds (see below). In ‘What pragmatism is’, Peirce (1905/1958: 189) rejects any such mind-transcendent objects as meaningless for us, You only puzzle yourself by talking of this metaphysical “truth” and metaphysical “falsity” that you know nothing about. All you have dealings with are your doubts and beliefs with the course of life that forces new beliefs upon you and gives you power to doubt old beliefs. If your terms “truth” and “falsity” are taken in such senses as to be definable in terms of doubt and belief and the course of experience (as for example they would be if you were to define the “truth” as that to which belief would tend if it were to tend indefinitely towards absolute fixity), well and good . . . . But if by truth and falsity you mean something not definable in terms of doubt and belief in this way, then you are talking of entities of whose existence you can know nothing. . . .

Because his semantic terms are defined in terms of their role in the practical use of representational systems like ours, Peirce has in effect opened the way to naturalizing these concepts within a scientific psychology, a transition into the scientific image of humanity. The question then reduces into the role of truth and its concomitants, if any, within a psychological theory like relevance theory. When investigating religious representations, what do people find most crucial? Surely it is whether the representations could be true, and thus whether the norms they live by are binding, whether the religious way of life has a rational warrant, etc. Even if the terms, “true” and “reality” are redundant, adding nothing to a psychological theory, to understand the psychological correlates of the functions of these terms for believers is a pre-requisite to addressing this question. By naturalizing Peircean pragmatism in terms of cognitive pragmatics, I am attempting to provide a naturalistic account of what constitutes a rational warrant for a mind like ours. In pragmatism, it is a community’s continuing successful use of representations in perception, action

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and communication, without the genuine doubt that produces reflection and revision, that fixes belief and warrants its rationality. Naturalizing Peircean pragmatism provides an analysis of this warrant within the scientific image and hence allows us to see how it works with respect to religion. Naturalizing truth: relevance and truth As we have seen, the relevance theory account of the mind shows that, founded on modular-based schemes, it is an epistemic engine evolved to generate positive cognitive effects from input, to create the most reliable representation of the world possible for perception, action and communication; i.e. the maximally relevant path up the hill. Its encyclopaedia consists of conceptual entries containing factual assumptions treated as true as well as successful quasi-beliefs. Given external or internal input, perceptual stimuli or goals from the motivational systems, assumptions are accessed to create the contexts for every act of processing. Given the conceptual shape of the input – a logical form for example – the assumptions are accessed to form the context that will yield the most new information for least effort on purely syntactic grounds. But the most accessible and the strongest assumptions are accessed first. And accessibility and strength are really measures of past processing success. These are structures that the cognitive system ‘believes’. They relate it to its world of input and output in such a way as to maximize relevance. (As the Peirce–Bain position puts it, these are the representations that the system is willing to act upon.) In processing, the system is structured to contextually ‘explicate’ its input. Therefore, it appears that the mind/brain is designed by evolution to try to construct a representation with determinate truthconditions, which it can grasp. It seems to seek what it can evaluate as true or false, but this is only a by-product of processing. It only processes insofar as is necessary to achieve maximal or optimal relevance. However, to perceive, act, or communicate, the organism really needs to approximate to what is objectively true, to represent the real, otherwise it is likely to fail. To process new input on the basis of what is false would be disastrous for the community of organisms, over the long run. So failure, in the form of the detection of inconsistency, automatically deletes weaker representations (unless they are obligations). At the same time, it strengthens those representations the use of which has allowed it to achieve maximal relevance. Therefore, the pragmatic concept of truth is built into the very structure of cognition. It provides a spontaneous natural warrant for the mind/brain holding something true, i.e. an assumption, and does so unconsciously. This is the source of what is indubitable, to the degree that it isn’t provided by basic concepts. We can call this spontaneous structural truth. Furthermore,

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conscious doubt and de-coupled reflective inquiry – which constantly explore this truth – are features of the meta-representational ability which are subject to cultural development in history. Spontaneous non-demonstrative inference can be culturally tamed and consciously deployed under special conditions; for example in law, science, engineering, etc. (Sperber and Wilson, 1995: 67). Collective mind and the ends of inquiry Cognitive science treats a mind as essentially individual. It is structured to manipulate signs on the basis of form alone, not content. This solipsism is overcome by its causal relations to the world. Not only was it selected by evolution, given input, the mind is an epistemic engine governed by relevance. These two things lead it to tend towards what I termed “structural truth”. However, by introducing Peircean pragmatism, we further characterize the causal connection not only in terms of what is observed, but in terms of successful action and communication with other minds. The causal link is mediated in two crucial ways. It is not just a matter of individual perception, as in classical empiricism. It is mediated by action in practical matters and by communication within a community of inquirers. It seems to me that this is psychologically plausible. It is these processing links with the objective world of experience that give representations their truth-conditional content for users, to the degree necessary to conform to the principles of relevance. Relevance often does not need fully determinate content, even in the calculations required for practical action; a great deal of irrelevant information can be left undetermined. If I was told, ‘I handed it in Tuesday’, I don’t need to assume anything about how the concept HAND IN was practically accomplished, if it was. I grasp HAND IN*, just to the degree I need to. In some contexts, relevance demands a high degree of detailed truth-evaluability. In other contexts it is content to utilize various degrees of semi-propositionality. By making the objective efficacy of truth-evaluation and thus the determination of reality independent of what any one mind may think, Peircean pragmatism has made the concepts of truth and reality dependent on all minds working as one. ‘Those two series of cognitions – the real and the unreal – consist of those which, at a time sufficiently future, the community will always continue to re-affirm; and of those which, under the same conditions, will ever after be denied’ (Peirce, 1868/1958: 69). The individual mind is an epistemic engine which aims at improving its representation of the world by increasing its store of structural truths. It must sometimes achieve this. But barring a catastrophic failure in action or communication, it can’t exactly know when. This raises the ‘social question in epistemology’ and directs our inquiry to dialogue, to conscious communications within the collective mind,

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because that will determine the consensual public determination of truth and reality. (That’s the sort of reality and its warrant we are concerned with in the analysis of religion.) In the Peircean picture, the phenomenal consequences of mental representation and its on-going processing is the essence of being a conscious person. Since the content of this processing, as far as it isn’t intuitive, derives from communication – “external signs” he terms it – ‘the man and the external sign are identical, in the sense in which the words homo and man are identical. Thus my language is the sum total of myself; for the man is the thought’ (Peirce, 1868/1958: 71). There are two forms of dialogue for this conscious ‘person-as-representation’. The first is that in consciousness we are engaged in an on-going dialogue with ourselves. This is actually the home of doubt. Things enter the workspace of consciousness when they require attention. When some input causes some assumption to leave the realm of indubitable structural truth and be doubted, it is then that conscious reflection occurs. It is in this internal dialogue that the mind becomes aware of what it doesn’t comprehend, not only about the world, but of its own thoughts. This motivates communication; to get help with the doubt or explicate the thought. Peirce (1905/1958: 191) writes that ‘a person is not absolutely an individual’ in the flow of time. They must interpret their own internalized representation, argue with their ‘critical self’ about the interpretants of their own thoughts, which, after all, if they originated communally are couched in public external signs. Elsewhere, Peirce (1868/1958: 71) remarks that ‘life is a train of thought’. I suspect that the stream of consciousness, when not attending to new external input, does one of two things. Either it accesses from memory just those assumptions that yield maximal relevance in the context of the immediately preceding thought, or it is calculating optimal relevance with respect to the perceived inner speech of its own internal personae; e.g. either the critical self or the words of an imagined other. This is the first dialogue. The second dialogue is with others. The more strongly assumed and the more widely distributed across many minds an assumption becomes, the more it will have rational warrant within that community. It is the closest approximation to the truth that would result if inquiry had reached its final conclusion. In the theory of epidemiology, we find a naturalistic mechanism which accounts for this. Those representations which are epidemiologically most robust are those most integrated into the modular framework of the mind (which is treated as true a priori) and at the same time most intensely relevant in most contexts. This contribution to the achievement of relevance – positive cognitive effects – across many minds in many contexts is what generates Peirce’s pragmatic warrant for belief. It is what hooks the representation to the world, and no matter how abstract, is grounded in the processing of many minds, inter-communicating cognitive systems functioning successfully

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in parallel. This success points, fallibly to be sure, to their approximation to the truth at this time. They are strongly assumed, treated as true on the basis of processing success, and have to that degree a rational warrant. (This is why we can process for relevance, not truth.) Crucially, these must include the quasi-believed cultural assumptions required to live within the community’s form of life. It must apply to semi-propositions as well as full propositions to the degree they also meet the pragmatic test of success in perception, action and communication between minds. Partially grasped cultural semipropositions are part of this on-going collective project as it drifts towards consensus, the truth at the end of inquiry. The structure of mysteries, because most contain what I will call “rational-aesthetic concepts” (see below), is that we can’t envisage a possible end of inquiry. There are two further issues raised by this Peircean picture. First, outside the institution of science from which it derives, one could say that Peirce’s views are full of panglossian nineteenth-century optimism. Today we are much more sceptical, immersed in doubts about progress and the hermeneutics of suspicion. Peirce recognizes the problem and in ‘The Fixation of Belief’ (1877/1958) discusses factors which commit the great sin; they block inquiry. Some kinds of church authority are an example. Chapter 5 addresses this ‘elephant in the room’. Everyday reasoning is the spontaneous inquiry from which the disciplined inquiry of science developed; but if Peirce is right, the community of human minds – those natural epistemic engines – is approximating to truth in both the scientific and the manifest images, but at different rates and in different domains. Obligations will behave very differently than assumptions. It is expected that people will defect, and fail to conform to obligations, otherwise the norm has no point. So the collective experience of normative failure does not affect an obligation the same way it does an assumption. Nevertheless, doubts about norms do arise, ethical inquiry in the form of debate and campaigning proceeds, and we can be released from obligations or have new consensual obligations imposed; e.g. the abolition of slavery, the stigmatization of racism, concern over nationalist xenophobia. The second issue is the vast diversity of kinds of ‘ends of inquiry’. Certainly, for an infinite number of everyday assumptions about practical matters, if doubts arise and rational inquiry begins, a consensual resolution is readily at hand, to the degree required by relevance. But much inquiry could only finally be ended at a transcendental point outside time. For any representation entertained within this world, it is always possible that a new context will raise new doubts, the question will be re-opened and assumptions revised. Meantime, the community can treat the representation as true ‘for now’. The final end of all inquiry is an ideal; therefore, not possible. This is the source of the inexhaustibility of many representations. This means

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that whatever is communally taken to be true now is always a progressive approximation towards an ultimate consensus with respect to all possible representations for minds like ours, impossible to reach. We can’t know which beliefs will always remain stable: we can only know those that have remained stable so far. Robust historical survivability in new contexts is however the best indicator we have of a probable truth. This points to the promise of ‘structural realism’ (see below). More on mysteries: things-in-themselves This final interpretation of Peirce’s ‘end of inquiry’ lifts us out of a naturalizing move as that is commonly understood, away from pragmatics and psychology and further into metaphysics. There are two reasons for this excursus. I need it to examine how religious thoughts are taken as representing something real; perhaps the most significant part of the psychology of religious representations. So I ask the reader to bear with me. For Peirce (1868/1958: 69) ‘a realist is simply one who knows no more recondite reality that that which is represented in a true representation’. The objection, originating with William of Ockham, that ‘there can be no real distinction which is not in re, in the thing-in-itself . . . begs the question, for it is based only on the notion that reality is something independent of the representative relation’. But the mind gains its only access to what is real through this very relationship, so the mind can conceive of nothing at all, real or unreal, apart from it. From Peirce’s position, it follows that there can be no reality that cannot be represented to some degree. In the opposing position, there might be real things-in-themselves, independent of the representational relationship and to which the mind cannot gain any representational access. These would lie ‘beyond’ reality as it appears to us. It is a natural thought that the very idea of a representational system creates the possibility that there are realities it cannot represent. By contrast, it follows from Peirce’s position that ‘We have no conception of the absolutely incognizable’ or ‘the absolutely incognizable is absolutely inconceivable’ (Peirce, 1868/1958: 41,68). Consider the expression, “the absolutely incognizable”. This claims that there are real states of affairs for which there can be no signs. Peirce states that just to represent that there is such an object is already to postulate a sign (“the absolutely incognizable”) and interpret it as determining just that un-representable object, which is contradictory. Peirce (1868/1958: 68) writes, ‘since the meaning of a word is the conception it conveys, “the absolutely incognizable” has no meaning because no conception attaches to it, without contradiction. It is therefore a meaningless word; and consequently, whatever is meant by the term “the real” is cognizable to some degree. . . .’ Elsewhere, he writes, ‘not-cognizable, if a concept, is a concept

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of the form “A, not-A”, and is at least self-contradictory. . . . Over and against any cognition, there is an unknown but knowable reality; but over against all possible cognition, there is only the self-contradictory. In short, cognizability (in its widest sense) and being are not merely metaphysically the same, but are synonymous terms.’ Peirce’s ‘question of the cognizability of reality’ arises out of Kant’s famous distinction between ‘appearances’ – ‘things-for-us’ – as opposed to ‘things-in-themselves’. Within Kant scholarship, the interpretation of these terms remains problematic and related to two parallel distinctions, phenomena and noumena, empirical object and transcendental object, respectively. It seems to me that these distinctions are among the most important philosophical problems (or mysteries) inherited from the Enlightenment out of which no consensus has emerged. For our purposes, there are two interpretations of the first distinction. Firstly, ‘things-in-themselves’ may be whatever it is that causally generates ‘appearances’ when interacting with our minds, as it is ‘in itself’ independently of that relation. Or, secondly, they may be whatever is real but absolutely incognizable – a reality that is, but which we can’t represent and therefore can’t ever know. Let’s call this M to stand for ‘mysterious reality’. Given the problems, it requires care to grasp what Peirce is denying when he says that his pragmatism is in essence Kantianism that eschews the ‘thing-in-itself’. He writes (1958: 426), ‘It is perfectly true that we can never attain a knowledge of things as they are. We can only know their human aspect. But that is all the universe is for us.’ But he also claims, with regard to his view that what is real is what is generally agreed at that ideal moment at the end of inquiry, that, ‘This theory of reality is instantly fatal to the idea of the thing in itself – a thing existing independently of all relation to the mind’s conception of it’ (Peirce, 1871/1958: 82). He affirms the first interpretation of ‘things-in-themselves’, but denies the very possibility of the second, ‘the unknowable cause of sensation’. For Pierce, noumena are intelligible conceptions which are the outer limits of what can be inferred from possible sensations. There are no unknowable causes ‘behind’ that. He denies that there is M. There is nothing that is not cognizable ‘to some degree’, no matter how partially. These degrees of cognizability we have naturalized as pragmatically successful mysteries, semi-propositional forms which we quasibelieve, but which are believed propositionally complete to some other minds, in religion, to a supernatural mind. At Peirce’s ideal, transcendental end of inquiry, the species-mind would finally reach consensus concerning the truth or falsehood of all of Sperber’s relevant mysteries and finally know reality, tout court. But let’s take up the other side of ‘the question of cognizability’ and ask ourselves: why is this notion of the unrepresentable thing-in-itself so

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compelling, when for Peirce it is self-contradictory? We need to place ourselves outside the human representational system and adopt a God’s eye view. One way that we can do this without meta-representing our own representational capacities to ourselves employing a natural language like English as a meta-language, is to compare our minds to other members of the class of biologically evolved representational systems. These are the naturally occurring brains which provide ample evidence that they ‘think’, which makes them mind/brains. For example, primatology reveals that great apes have phenomenal consciousness and self-recognition. (For the richness of non-human mind/brains see, Carruthers, 2006: Chapter 2.) Consider any random set of non-human brains: fruit flies, bees, frogs, birds, squirrels, elephants, the great apes, and so on. In each case, it is clear that there are realities which that type of brain simply cannot represent. For all the wonder of life, a bee cannot grasp a human utterance nor can a great ape comprehend Kant. On the other hand, the navigational capacities of migratory birds are beyond un-assisted human capacities. All brains have horizons. Evolution has learned to represent different things in different kinds of brains. This must yield real things-in-themselves which are M, realities absolutely incognizable from input for each type of brain. On another dimension of comparison, human developmental and clinical psychology reveals that the immature or pathological human mind/brain differs with respect to its capacities relative to the mature and healthy mind/ brain. Finally, a more abstract strategy is to compare artificially constructed systems, such as axiomatic systems or techniques of visual representation. Techniques of drawing using the rules of perspective can represent things not possible without using these rules. Axiomatic systems differ with respect to what they can represent. Within the overall class of computable systems of symbols, as defined by a Turing machine, there is a hierarchy of expressive power with respect to what can be represented. Chomsky proposed a ‘hierarchy of grammars’ each one with more power to assign structure and represent properties than the one that preceded it. Mathematics with vectors or trans-finite numbers can represent things not otherwise representable. Since there are clear hierarchies in both naturally evolved and artificial systems of representation and the human mind/brain is a member of the first hierarchy, there is no reason to think that the series couldn’t continue in principle and there aren’t realities, M, that can’t be represented by the human mind. This could be stated as an analogy; just as MB is absolutely incognizable by a bird’s brain, so MH is absolutely incognizable by the ‘communion of minds to which we belong’. Or it could be stated as a generalization about naturally evolved representational systems. So we have an inconsistency. On the one hand, according to Peirce, for minds like ours it is contradictory that there be anything that they cannot in

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principle represent, hence there is no ‘thing-in-itself’ in the sense of MH, although there is in the first sense of the term. We can even represent the physical boundary with respect to this universe in singularities. On the other hand, reflection upon other representational systems leads to the conclusion that it is possible that there are things-in-themselves, an M for any type of system, including ‘the communion of minds to which we belong’, so there is a possible MH. Is there anything at stake in this situation? If there is no MH, there is nothing absolutely incognizable in principle for the human species-mind. On the other hand, there is M for all other naturally evolved representational systems that we know of. So what is at stake is whether there is but one exception to this generalization about evolved systems and the series terminates with us, or nature is uniform and we are not exceptional. It is possible there are or could be representational systems that can know things we in principle cannot. Science assumes that we are an ordinary part of nature. So there is something significant at stake in this inconsistency. And there is a further uncomfortable conclusion. If there is nothing that can’t be represented in principle by the human mind, taken collectively, then the human speciesmind is not only an exception, terminating the series of minds, but it is possible that it could be omniscient, and ‘being’ and ‘human representational capacities’ are the same thing as Pierce says. This would be the case at the ideal end of inquiry. Now that’s the real dream of a final theory. Is there a way out of this impasse? In spite of Peirce’s argument, for myself I honestly don’t know whether or not it is possible for there to be realities which can’t in principle be represented by human minds. Maybe human minds/brains must necessarily terminate the series of possible representational systems (maybe because of their power to meta-represent and develop new tools for thinking). I don’t know whether a more powerful system is possible. (Un-representable realities might be so un-representable they may not even be in the form of ‘states of affairs’.) The standard strategy is to meta-represent how a system represents in a higher-order meta-language. Let cognizability equal representability. Then, I can create a higher-order language L1 in which I represent the possible existence of these realities, ML ¼ ‘things in themselves’ for L, absolutely unrepresentable in that lower-level language. In the absence of any other possibility, I must use a part of English as my meta-language: it is as if I am viewing what is incognizable for L from the point of view of a more powerful mind that knows at least that it is possible that ML could exist. (Could it know whether ML exists and yet know nothing of the contents of ML?) A meta-language is really only a useful tool in which I can give a more revealing explanation/interpretation of what is being represented in the object language and its mechanisms of representation. Normally, I can use a part of

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the object language as meta-language to do this, but here this appears to be ruled out. This is because of who I am. The object language is the class of all human representational systems and that surely must include its metarepresentational sub-languages and any artificial languages constructed by humans. So using English or any other natural language or even an artificial formalism devised by humans as my meta-language, I can’t by definition represent what can’t be represented in the class of object languages, which is the same set. This is Peirce’s point. I can’t even conceive whether it is possible or impossible for there to be realities that any human representational system absolutely cannot represent. In that case, the contradiction gets passed up to the meta-language making it useless for formulating a theory about L with respect to what realities it cannot represent, if anything. I don’t know if there could be such things. Well, say I do persist in meta-representing ML in the meta-language L1, on the naturalistic basis that its possibility can be hypothesized by the analogy between our representational system and other evolved systems. Since L1 is also part of the human representational capacity, it would then be possible for there to be ‘things in themselves’ with respect to it, mysteries which it can’t represent ML1. This would need yet another more powerful meta-language, L2, and so on in an infinite regress. There would be a reality black hole of ‘things-in-themselves’ for human thought that would get passed upwards in a regress of meta-languages of increasing power. And using any human representation, I can’t get out of that. I simply can’t know if it is possible that there are things I can’t in principle know, if inquiry were to continue long enough. The only way to get outside our human representational systems is to ‘complete the series’, in Kant’s terminology. We postulate a mind not like ours, but a higher-order and more powerful mind. This is an analogy with our minds observing non-human minds. In the first instance, this higher-order mind could represent what are things-in-themselves for our minds. But to completely terminate the regress for all the infinite number of possible kinds of minds more powerful than ours, we are led to postulate a final mind for which there is absolutely nothing that is incognizable. And furthermore, to this mind the truth is perfectly and completely known and there are no mysteries. Structurally, using a metaphor, this mind is the ultimate container, containing everything and not contained in anything, by definition. Of course, this is the traditional concept of an infinite and omniscient God. This is one of the meta-representational ascents to an ideal limit, which I proposed were a basic possible feature of rationalized religious representations in Chapter 1. It resolves the above contradiction. (In doing this, it appears to be what Dennett calls a “sky-hook”.) Yet it is possible that there are representational systems more powerful than ours, that could represent the existence and contents of what must remain mysteries to the

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community of minds like ours. If this step is taken, it is possible that we are both a part of the natural series in that there is a possible incognizable, M, for minds like ours, as Chomsky and McGinn assert, just as there is for every other kind of mind we observe. At the same time, in the act of postulating the concept, GOD, we in fact dimly cognize God, however little we grasp the concept. This resolution is possible because, the concept GOD by definition must be a mind that perfectly represents what is incorrigibly M to us as natural creatures – so there could be ‘things in themselves’ for us. At the same time, as Pierce says, there is nothing ‘absolutely’ incognizable for us, since we have in fact postulated the concept GOD and grasp at least that it is a mind that knows M, which gives us some idea of M. It is everything that God knows that we can’t. This concept GOD is derivable from reasoning conjoined with the observation of other evolved minds. We know that we can partially grasp it, since the concept of God has a role in inference and hence pragmatic effects in practical matters; for example, fear of an omniscient and just God. Reality gains its objectivity. There is an objective metaphysical reality because things are the way they are to God’s mind irrespective of how we or anyone else represents it. Yet we gain access to this only from a collective human perspective. Its objectivity reveals itself to us in the fact that what is real is so in spite of what any individual mind thinks. Yet what is real to us is still relative to our representations, those that have a pragmatic warrant, both in collective spontaneous non-demonstrative inference and disciplined into science. Rational-aesthetic concepts I shall call such synthesizing representations, “rational-aesthetic concepts”. (For ease of exposition I’ll often shorten this to “aesthetic concepts”.) These are used by a representational system to resolve inconsistencies and ‘contain’ regressions. From our perspective, while such concepts can be proposed, they remain opaque. We cannot see into them. By definition, our minds cannot penetrate how they could resolve these inconsistencies or terminate these series. They have syntactic roles and enough graspable content to contribute to relevance. So to the degree they are grasped, they play their roles in semipropositional forms as relevant mysteries. They are an ideal, ‘the limit to which the possible cannot attain’ (Peirce, 1868/1958: 68, fn.6). Thus, they are empirical impossibilia. The objects of such concepts cannot exist in space and time. Nevertheless, their practical use, if taken seriously, presupposes a realm that transcends all possible states of the natural world, and therefore points to an abstract non-physical realm, in which it is possible that what are mysteries to minds like ours can be finally resolved. At the boundaries of our cognitive capacities, they are thus signals of transcendence. Although their

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objects can’t exist, to the cognitive system they may represent realities. These would be realities represented by Peirce’s final interpretant, representing what would be agreed by all rational inquirers at that ideal final consensus, outside of space-time, the finally true and real. Aesthetic concepts represent boundaries. Therefore, one can suggest that a singularity is such an idea. It is a postulated point at which the mathematical representation of the order of nature breaks down. As the term suggests, rational-aesthetic concepts have two sides. On the one hand, they are abstract enough to play their cognitive role, resolving inconsistencies and containing infinities. Therefore they can be highly rationalized as discussed in Chapter 1. On the other hand, the aesthetic aspect manifests itself in how they conceptualize sensory input in ways that resolve inconsistencies. RESURRECTION is a case in point. It conceptually transforms reported perceptions – the death, empty tomb, “appearances” – and so implies the reality of ultimate justice, among other things. The providential interpretation of history, discussed in Chapter 2, is another example. Note that these are not symbols of the reality of ultimate justice but are conceived to existentially expound it. As we shall see, the concept of the phenomenal SELF synthesizes and contains the inconsistencies and the interpretative regress deriving from its body and behaviour. The other sense of “aesthetic” manifests itself in that such mysteries, when reflected upon, are poetic (in a sense to be described later). This induces the feeling of unlimited meaningfulness that is beauty in the realm of semantics. However, the concepts are also deployed, not in art, but with determinate informative intent. The word “God” represents the most inclusive and hence most abstract of all aesthetic concepts in the Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition. It unifies other aesthetic concepts. It is the intentionality that appears to structure the world with respect to our minds so that there are maximally relevant inferential paths through which we can achieve many of our goals. With respect to moral norms, aesthetic concepts of God’s good and loving will join with the creatively knowing aspect of his mind. It then contains within itself the resolution to the problem of universal justice in the light of violations of moral law which are irresolvable within the world: “God’s judgement” is tempered by “God’s mercy”. With respect to natural evil, God’s goodness also guarantees ultimate justice with respect to the mystery of undeserved suffering. Semi-propositions containing these aesthetic concepts generate inferences which can figure in action. Obviously, fear of retribution can be inhibitory. But more subtly, the mind/brain can be motivated by ideals formulated using these aesthetic concepts, and affectively moved, attempt to infer God’s will in context and act upon it – aiming for righteousness or the correct relation to the environment conceived of in terms of a personal obligation in the most profound sense.

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To me it feels quite strongly that the above metaphysical sections have about them an air of sophistry. They are bound to do so. Containing aesthetic concepts, they are the mind/brain’s vehicle for containing intractable logical problems which arise from relevant mysteries. When reflected upon, the mind/brain’s self-conception is a similar fundamental problem. Person and self as aesthetic concepts We human beings are aesthetic concepts in the way we conceptualize ourselves and each other. At the end of Chapter 1, I introduced the abstract nature of the posited subject of intentional states, claiming a person is a ‘complex set of more or less integrated inter-modular representations’. We can now develop this idea. The first step is to make some distinctions. The most inclusive term is human being. Within this, we can distinguish the person from the self. I define the self as the locus of phenomenal consciousness; the subject of ‘what it is like to be me’. By contrast, I will use the term “person” for more objective, public properties of being human. If there is a hard-wired storage format, a ‘me box’, then these two functions and their properties are what would distinguish it. If not, these would just be ordinary reflective assumptions; quasi-believed, but on whose authority? A living person is embodied, a biological object which is the physical side of the aesthetic concept. But persons are either living or dead; or indeed fictional. Although a dead person’s body is transformed into a corpse and disappears in time, its personhood can still exist in history or memory. A self is attributed to each person, contained within its body, phenomenally available when the person is conscious. Its choosing self makes a person the locus of public responsibility for its behaviour. Persons are the socio-historical products of communities; they have both personal and social being. Personhood consists of a bundle of properties that constitutes a public identity which creates contexts of expectation for public behaviour. A person is the public medium in which both universal and epidemiological culture is manifested. The aesthetic concept of the individual person contains and synthesizes all the various aspects of their personhood. As a unique individual token of a type, each person is conceived of as a single unified thing. The category of person can be relatively well organized and consistent, but it need not be. According to both personal circumstances and the rate of historical change, social conflict and public confusion, personal identity also manifests inconsistency, conflict or confusion. Thus it can be a struggle for a self to understand what sort of person it is. The phenomenal self is different. As Peirce suggests, self-consciousness consists of a stream of thoughts. This stream originates both within and without the body. Objects of consciousness can be viewed as ‘within me’ or

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‘without me’, my own inner states or from an external source. In an uninterrupted stream of consciousness, each successive thought will be maximally relevant either to the context formed by the preceding thought, interpreting it, or to that aspect of the mind/brain which shouts the loudest; that could have the largest positive cognitive effects for the whole system. Selves thus consciously meta-represent themselves in the conscious flow, if that achieves maximal relevance: ‘what was that I just found myself thinking?’ or engage in dialogue with differing guises of itself. The number of self-interpretations contained and struggling for consistency within the concept MYSELF is potentially infinite. Given what we said above, what the mind takes as objectively real will always be relative to how the community represents it, and this is also true of what presents itself as ‘within’. The self’s experience of objectivity is guaranteed by the collective inter-personal use of representations, which depends on their prior successful use in communication, perception and action. I represent myself and other within the common language. So the cultural content of ‘what it is like to be my self’ originates in communication – interiorized public concepts – making objective the private self in terms of the public person. Therefore, inconsistency in the public concept of a type of person introduces inconsistencies into self-consciousness. There are various ways the phenomenal self can conceptualize or meta-represent itself. But as soon as it has done so, it splits into two, and thinks about itself. It can also ascend to higher levels, and assess what it thinks of itself, containing and synthesizing what it finds puzzling. The conscious self has experiences of the aspects of its own personhood – for example, its social identity or the social unacceptability of an impulse – unified under the concept MYSELF and represented as properties of the argument ‘I’. This aesthetic concept is what contains its diversity into a single abstract entity over time. Consciousness experiences itself as contained within its body; looking out, acting and speaking from an inner ‘space’. But there are other spaces it can be conscious of, dreamed or imagined settings and social events; fantasies, rehearsals, plans, daydreams, anticipations, visions, etc. It can be separated from its body, as in shamanistic ‘spirit travel’ or ‘out of body’ experiences. It can observe its body acting involuntarily or it can attribute its behaviour and experience consciousness as that of another self inhabiting its body in ‘possession’. There are altered states of consciousness that effect spatial experience. The self’s experience is constituted by temporality. Consciousness as an experiencing self is the evanescent moving point between memory and anticipation. The future consists solely of predictions within possibility. The past consists wholly of personal memory and unremembered public representations. The present moment simply is the phenomenal self under a temporal description. The past and future are not perceptually available. They

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present themselves to the self in different ways. The immediate past is now accessible context. The immediate future is the predictions required for intentional behaviour. The strength and accessibility of assumptions is the automatic result of their use in the process which is the transition of past into future. Because of this role in temporality, its beliefs present to the self an experience of reality as stable. The concept, NOW, is because the process which transitions ‘past into future’ has duration, takes some micro-seconds, those where inhibition can occur. Generally speaking, human action in the world, its selecting environment, is large scale and stable enough in the transition from memory to prediction to generate a sense of ‘duration’ in the self’s representation of its experiences. Since any intentional behaviour essentially involves prediction, and is future-making, it can be governed not only by desires, but by obligations and norms. It is thus possible for the self when acting, to both inhibit and to judge, meta-representing itself with respect to its intentions and predictions and in memory with respect to obligations. The self explains itself and gives reasons for what it does. Thus the self is essentially narrative. The conscious self is the first person of stories about the past pivoting around the evanescent transition and projected into the future. The meta-represented ‘I’ of these stories is the remembered self, as historically explained. There are as many tokens of MYSELF* as there are stories in which I figure, ad hoc concepts. For the phenomenal self to consider itself as a single unified entity, it has to struggle to achieve consistency in representing itself to itself. It is a lineage, a family of representations. It may ‘slenderly know itself’ and not understand what it is doing. If my self is too inconsistent, my memories too falsified, my dreams too Mittyish, my reasons for what I do too weak, my narratives may be so inconsistent that I experience a sense of unreality with respect to who I am. The key point is that the represented narrative self finds itself constantly involved in inconsistencies. It is embodied. So perceptions and other representations originating in intuitive physics, biology or mind-reading can constantly surprise it and do things it rejects. It is aging, ill or dying, in spite of itself. It has been betrayed. Its sub-personal psychology may surprise consciousness, be a problem for itself; e.g. it finds it has a tendency to dependency, to depression etc. It can deceive itself about its social attributes, or how it is represented by others. Since widely disseminated public representations, many quasi-believed, are the source of the conceptualization of the self’s experiences and taken as one’s own, the reality of the self’s situation may also be ideologically misconstrued (see below) or deeply flawed. And as we said above, the more fragmented and contradictory is the historical public order and its persons, the more inconsistent and unreal the phenomenal selves. The conscious self may come to genuinely doubt its self-conception, its own narrative. Or it may catastrophically break down.

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Therefore it is clear that MYSELF, like the person, is another aesthetic concept. It is conceptualized as a unified entity. But it inevitably contains so many inconsistencies that it cannot really exist in the world of space-time. It is an ideal impossibilia. There is also a regression of representing selves, not only meta-representationally, but even more so over time, within memory. (‘I’ remember ‘myself’ as ‘I’ was.) The container concept stops the regression and attempts to resolve the inconsistencies in such a way that it can act consistently, take responsibility and process inputs that produce positive consistent cognitive effects, thus creating itself as a coherent reality. We said in Chapter 1 that religions create types of persons with characteristic self-conceptions. Therefore it completes the series and frames coherent narratives in various ways with respect to the ultimate nature of the self. There is another aesthetic concept – the REAL SELF – an ultimate point of authentic identity behind all the inconsistent and multi-dimensional represented selves, which are merely contingent. In this concept, the phenomenal self is a distortion of an authentic self that must be discovered or an ideal self that must be striven for. There are different religious developments of the notion of self. And each one inter-connects the postulated authentic self with the concept of God, the most inclusive of all aesthetic concepts. Earlier we analysed the concept of God in terms of being and knowledge, but it also completes the series with respect to the good. The self is the entity that is the free subject of categorical imperatives determined solely by its own reason. This is conceptualized as the Kantian transcendental self, which resolves the antinomy with respect to freedom. The resulting logical demand for universal justice provides the moral argument for the existence of God, not only as the omniscient ground of all possibility, but the judge and implementer of justice in the context of compassion. God’s being also completes the ideal of interpersonal relationships: for example, ‘God is love, and he who abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him’ 1.John, 4:16b. From this ideal is the imperative to reciprocate; that the purpose of the real self is to love God in a self-emptying perfect love. The self, or its denial, is particularly at the centre of Hindu and Buddhist thought respectively. In Buddhism, the doctrine of an-a¯tman, or no-self, analyses the aesthetic concept SELF as an illusion that cannot exist. On the other hand, in Hinduism there is an aesthetic concept which describes an ultimate self which alone is real, a¯tman, which contrasts with the illusory nature of all the other inconsistent phenomenal selves and conflicts of worldly personhood. Growing from its beginnings in the Vedas, this leads to the development in the Upanishads of the absolute identification of the individual self of each of us with Brahman – Being itself – in a total unity, which it is the goal of our cognition to realize. Zaehner (1966: 49) writes, ‘So far as it is possible to summarize the teachings of the Upanishads we should say they

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identify the deepest level of the subjective “I” with the ground of the objective ¯ tman. . . .’ universe; either can be referred to as Brahman or A Therefore, the concept of God completes each series to their ideal limits on a number of dimensions simultaneously. As Anselm says, God is ‘that than which nothing greater can be conceived’. The concept GOD is the ideal limit with respect to knowledge, with respect to disinterested compassion, with respect to justice, and with respect to being, both as consciousness and as the abstract ground of all possibility. One immediately sees that this rational aesthetic concept synthesizes all inconsistencies into a single simplicity; for example, mercy and justice. The concept GOD is the most general concept of all. But, as Pierce says, generals are possibly real, and can have efficient effects, although this is not the same thing as existing. The religious life is one that is lived in conformity to these realities. They define a self that is holy, a person who is righteous, in relationship with God (Peirce, 1868/1958: 69; 1905/1958: 198). Religious aesthetic concepts give a shape to the possible narratives of a life and interpret and regulate it for the self. For example, teaching in narrative forms such as the lives of Jesus, The Prophet or The Buddha are exemplary models for self-understanding with respect to what sort of self one ought to be in order to be saved.

5

Authority

Epistemology, the theory of valid grounds for belief, presupposes some picture of how the mind/brain represents anything. In Chapter 4 we naturalized pragmatism as an explanation for the rationality of belief and so proposed a cognitive epistemology. In the context of this pragmatism, we will ask whether there is a legitimate epistemological role for authority in religious and other representations with a cultural origin. In Sperber, Recanati and Peirce, acceptance into the mind of partially grasped semi-propositional form involves authority, although differently in each case. The need to analyse the nature and legitimacy of authority is a neglected task within epistemology. The view I develop is a Peircean version of Recanati’s claim that semi-propositional forms don’t contain defective content. Instead, the mind/brain, treating the content as grasped elsewhere, by some other mind, deferentially accepts the representation. To summarize, in the Sperber–Recanati analysis, representations of various types are accepted into the cognitive system but held differently, in ways which reflect their origin and epistemic status. Intuitive beliefs do not involve authority. Instead, they are built of pre-formed basic concepts and/or perceptual inputs – including perceptions of inner states. They are directly included in the belief box, the set of assumptions cognitively accessible with respect to perception, action and communication. In this format, the mind/brain treats them as true, assumptions held with a degree of epistemic strength corresponding to successful past use. A much more diverse set of representations derive from communication. These are held only at second hand, metarepresented, embedded in intuitive beliefs about the epistemic reliability of the source, their validating context. If they are accepted, it is deferentially, by virtue of the source’s credibility. Although held this second hand way, they nevertheless generate belief behaviour. Sperber (1996: 89) classifies this disparate group of representations. First, there are semi-propositional forms, semi-understood, but jumping-off points for future learning and ultimately capable of becoming fully grasped. (Peirce argues that this is a crucial role of vagueness.) Secondly, through this process some representations become fully propositional, promoted into beliefs. But, thirdly, there are ‘relevant 195

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mysteries’, those which can’t ever be developed into full propositions. Processing based on what is forever a mystery has its ground in the authority of the validating context. The manner in which mysteries are stored – in quotation marks as it were – insulate such representations from disseminating inconsistency throughout the belief box. I noted above that being stored directly as a norm also insulates a representation. As I have interpreted it, Peirce’s pragmatism differs from this picture. In his view, the content of all thoughts are indeterminate to some degree. Hence contents are never fully propositional forms, having fully determinate truth conditions. But even so, such thoughts are propositional enough, have sufficient logical character, to be developed and grasped more than adequately for the inferences involved in practical action. In the Peircean approach, semi-propositional forms are generally sufficient, when combined with other premises, to achieve maximal relevance with respect to the sensory input and output involved in practical action and ordinary communication; as FAR SHORE was in our example. If Peirce is correct, adequate degrees of relevance are generally achieved before full ‘explication’ of the truth conditions of the input or its truth-evaluation. In most practical matters the distinction between fully propositional and semi-propositional collapses into ‘adequate to achieve relevance in the context’. Indeed, Pierce’s view is congruent with the notion that the default ‘character’ for concepts, the logical entry, consists of stereotypes or prototypes combined with general handwaving. We operate our everyday lives more or less successfully in this workable fog of semi-understanding. By contrast, the set of fully propositional forms is a rational ideal within formal semantics, of how the content of each non-defective thought, if it could be developed, is a function to a determinate state of affairs, which it represents; perhaps to the degree necessary and sufficient for truth-evaluation. In order for there to be this full development of a semi-proposition, there must also be the possibility of inferential relationship to all the other fully propositional forms and states of affairs which enrichment needs for full determination in every context. Surely, the idea of a defective propositional form emerges as a divergence from this formal ideal. It is only in situations of decoupled inquiry that a community of minds really seeks propositions suitable for definitive truth-evaluability, perhaps even for its own sake, and is willing to pay both socio-economic and processing costs for this kind of co-ordinated effort. Meantime, most thoughts gain their believability solely from their successful inferential role in Peircean belief behaviour – in spontaneous nondemonstrative inference – which if undisturbed, leaves those thoughts among the vast Peircean mass of indubitable beliefs – in spite of never being fully grasped, but just grasped enough. How many of us actually have in our encyclopaedia the underlying criteria even of the most common natural kinds?

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To discover inconsistencies through unsuccessful processing in action and communication is the sole means by which arises genuine doubt about a representation. On the whole, tolerable inconsistencies that are too costly to inquire into might be largely insulated from causing widespread disruption by being included inside a single conceptual entry and not accessed at the same time. In Peirce’s theory, the settlement of doubt is surely not solely up to the individual mind, its basic concepts and its sense perception. It is collectively established by the community of inquirers. (For example, a doubting mind/ brain might seek the opinion of experts, take a course, consult a definitive reference book, etc.) This radically changes how we might look for legitimate authority. One reason that deference to authority in communication requires analysis in cognitive epistemology is because it is the sole way that cultural assumptions enter the mind/brain. What does it mean to defer to authority? Can we distinguish legitimate and illegitimate authority, warranted and unwarranted deference? The aim is to understand how and why an adult mind defers with respect to mysterious cultural representations in religion and other cultural domains. There is a significant modern literature in philosophy, politics and law on the nature of authority. For example, there is a distinction between authority by virtue of social role or status and authority by virtue of personal attributes. But I’ll begin with a more general theory. 5.1

What is authority?

In her 1961 essay, ‘What is authority?’, Hannah Arendt provides a subtle account of the concept. Although she treats the political concept, we can use her distinctions to approach the authority to which we defer when accepting representations into the mind as assumptions. She assumes that, by definition, authority ‘always demands obedience’. Granting the truth of a representation communicated from another mind, and accepting it as an assumption solely on that basis, is to respond to that demand. The examples used by Sperber are a parent or a teacher with respect to a child. Arendt (1961: 92–93) then adds that because of this demand, authority ‘is commonly mistaken for some form of power or violence. Yet authority precludes the use of external means of coercion; where force is used, authority has failed.’ Conversely, to accept a representation on authority is also incompatible with being persuaded by argumentation from an epistemic equal. These distinctions isolate a unique means, that of authority, by which a communicated representation demands acceptance. It follows that thinkers who claim that all knowledge is infected by power are wrong in this respect. Arendt’s authority is not so affected by power. If one considers the example of a child accepting a parent’s representation on authority, then Arendt is surely correct. If the child’s mind accepts a

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parental representation only because of the fear of coercion or the persuasive effects of parental arguments, and not because of the premise ‘what mum says is true’, then the child’s mind does not actually accept the representation as true on the basis of parental authority, but for these other reasons. Coercion and persuasion are both symptoms of the failure of authority. The concept DEATH might be introduced into the child’s mind in a representation that remains semi-propositional because the inexperienced mind does not grasp death. It is accepted only because mother says that ‘X is dead’ and this must be true only for that reason. The child’s conceptual entry subsequently develops a richer history, used in many other contexts. Its grasp of the concept grows and changes. At some stage the full stereotype of death and enough key facts about death are added, sufficient for most contexts. However, in principle, a concept like DEATH never stops developing and changing. And authority is not merely a matter of its first introduction. In some new contexts, the concept may be part of a new semi-propositional form which requires deference to a further authority – a doctor, a biologist, or a village elder – because it is not adequately grasped to achieve relevance without more specialized information, contrasts or definitions. This new authoritative communication about death is treated as true without coercion or argumentation. A legal definition of death may be added to the entry as a piece of factual information. New contents may be developed by new inputs like ‘persistent vegetative state is a form of cortical brain-death’, or ‘You will rise from the dead on the last day’; each adding a new member of the family of representations which constitute the conceptual entry. One learns more and more about death, and grasps it more fully from context to context, until one dies oneself. In scientific, philosophical or religious contexts new semi-understood members of the representational family that constitutes the concept are accepted on authority throughout life and tested both against each other and intuitive beliefs. Authority is about contextual validation. Does Arendt authority provide reliable contextual validation, and, if so, what are the grounds of this reliability? What role does authority have in epistemology? The conventional view is that arguments from authority inhibit genuine inquiry. The first step is to note that the concept of authority rests on time. Temporality is a presupposition of processing. Mental processing is a function from a prior to a subsequent state, which the self experiences as the evanescent present, as we saw earlier. As Peirce describes it, the present is ‘this inscrutable state’. Reality becomes (his capitals), ‘that Nascent State between the Determinate and the Indeterminate’ (Peirce, 1905a/1958: 221). Thus a perception, action or communication is a function from past to future. In Peirce’s terms, to act intentionally is to form a hypothetical conditional, in which past experience is the basis for determining what must be done in order that a goal is brought about in the

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future. The hypothetical conditional is a prediction. The past is settled, hence determinate. The future, to the degree that we can act freely in order to achieve our goal, is merely possible, hence indeterminate from our present point of view. Processing is the transition from former to latter. The past, in cognitive processing, consists of the most accessible and strongest assumptions in memory, accessed to create the context which yields maximal relevance for the input at hand. Subjectively, the act of processing is this transition consciously experienced as the present. It has the mode of being of actuality, of being now. The important point is that the strength and accessibility of assumptions automatically encode their past history of processing success in how they are stored, without having to remember how they were used. The notion of the degree of manifestness of an assumption – its assessment as true and available for processing – and its degree of mutual manifestness, measure its reliability for individuals and groups, respectively. The most reliable assumptions gain their credibility for the cognitive system from the past, recorded in the way they are stored in memory. The second step is to recall that for Peirce the objectivity of a representation is a property of the community of minds. Let’s try to re-state this. Under what conditions does R become a representation of an object, O, for a cognitive agent, A, in a context? (A cognitive agent in this sense can also be a function in a system, in which case, belief is equivalent to a design feature that fulfils the design goal of the function, as noted earlier. This applies to all technologies including social systems.) R probably represents O for some A – that is, A’s belief that R is probably true – if A uses R as a premise in the processing required to successfully achieve some desired goal involving O in contexts in the maximally relevant way AND any other agent to which the first A could communicate this success would achieve the same desired goal in the same contexts using R in the same way, where all the tokens of R used are members of the same family of representations and are co-extensive with respect to O for this reason. This characterization of the representation relationship gives us enough uniformity in attitudes of belief towards R within a speech community to allow the concept of truth to be used in a semantic analysis of the representations as a system. R necessarily represents O for any A at the final end of inquiry, when no more doubt or no more processing is possible. An objection might arise where R does not represent O, yet universal success occurs in the above process generating no real doubt with respect to R until the end of time. The success has been achieved in some other way, unrecognized by A. The reply is that this case and those like it can make no practical difference, can generate no genuine doubt, thus can have no meaning for A. They formulate a purely philosophical doubt. Such a doubt would require for its resolution a God’s eye view, one that knows the ‘real’ correspondence between R and O from outside the representational system.

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Such objections can be safely ignored from the point of view of inquiry. Indeed, such an objection would ‘block inquiry’. This is because it would introduce a universal and playfully irresolvable scepticism about representation in general, which has no practical consequences in what people did. But such universal scepticism would make it more difficult to recognize those genuine doubts that might arise in particular cases about the belief that R represents O in context, or that A’s interpretation of R is correct. If we combine steps one and two, it is clear that the probability that a representation is true is a function of two factors. It is a function of time, how long it has successfully survived the refutation of experience – individual and collective experimentation within a form of life – and how many minds like one’s own have accepted it as an assumption, how widely distributed it has become over that time. This provides a rational warrant for accepting such representations as assumptions via communication on the basis of authority. We also need to be able to assume that communicators in general use only those of their assumptions necessary to achieve optimal relevance in communication, without ulterior motives, and maximal relevance in their public actions. Given this, the warrant for credibility increases both vertically through time and horizontally by dissemination. The problem of detecting deception is also solved. We don’t have to believe any one person. We can check with others if we are suspicious. This is because reliability is correlative to what is made manifest by many communicators and actors, and all this is automatically recorded. These collectively warranted assumptions have a credibility which reflects the mind’s intrinsic situation, although an awareness of this need not be conscious. The individual mind simply can’t do the epistemological job – can’t actually assess the truth-value of every representation admitted as an assumption – without the community’s assistance. It follows that it is rational to believe that it is relatively safe to accept an assumption on authority exactly to the degree that it satisfies both criteria. These criteria actually define authority in Arendt’s sense, involving neither persuasion nor power. In fact, the response to Arendt authority is trust, more or less guarded, and if the representation appears to be intrinsically semi-propositional, faith in the face of conscious personal doubt. So the vertical and horizontal lineages, the family of any given R, is crucial to its authoritativeness and the corresponding degree of credulousness it warrants for the individual mind. But, as we shall see, all this is embedded in social structure. And this is the elephant in the room. For an individual mind, the degree of manifestness – the strength and accessibility of a cultural assumption – is a measure of the above two dimensions and signals reliability. It records the assumption’s history since its introduction through communication. Frequent use in successful communication with many different minds attaches more strength and accessibility to an

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assumption. It is more manifest, and mutually manifest within the interacting community. It forms a part of their shared cognitive environment. Frequent successful use in non-communicative processing, interacting with intuitive beliefs in perception and action, further strengthens the same assumptions for the individual. This is an interpretation of Peirce’s concept of habit. But this habit, this recorded information, is purely a result of the way the principles of relevance operate with respect to memory. It is possible that the individual mind is adapted to be credulous in proportion to the frequency of an assumption’s use. The reliability of the frequently successful, when combined with efficiency of cognitive effort and principles of inference, would form part of the selecting environment for the cognitive principle of relevance itself, as a basic structural principle for information processing. Prima facie, credulousness with respect to the horizontally and vertically widespread ought to be adaptive in face-to-face bands, in building a mutually manifest encyclopaedia, a storehouse of shared experience. (This would have a different effect in larger populations.) What we have described is independent of any higher-order social evaluations or normative factors that affect credibility. An instance of this credulousness is perhaps its age-relatedness. It is automatic that in general, the older the mind, the more and wider processing it has done, and the more reliable the information its assumptions code, not only with respect to depth of personal experience, but communicatively with the even older cohorts within the population – now dead – and so on, in temporal lineages or tradition. This exactly corresponds to the relative lack of experience for younger cohorts, until one reaches the child who hasn’t, initially, any cultural information or norms at all. In traditional societies, elders and specialists in tradition gain their authority through the way they manage this temporal transmission. Religion, authority and tradition Arendt (1961: 120ff.) derives the notion of a spiritual tradition and its authority with respect to ‘matters of thought and ideas’ from the political realm. Although she describes the political pattern she discusses as peculiarly Roman, I would suggest that it is a universal model for understanding the authority of religious traditions. There is a ‘sacredness of foundation, in the sense that once something has been founded it remains binding for all future generations’. The representational lineages which tie us in obligation to the past, going right back to the person or event which purportedly founded the lineage, are sacred in the sense of Chapter 3. The sacred is indeed the ultimate expression of this obligation. Indeed, as she points out, in the Roman sense of religion, ‘to be religious meant to be tied to the past’, the ‘binding

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power of the foundation itself was religious’ (my italics). She writes, ‘It is in this context that word and concept of authority originally appeared.’ We have shown how credulousness, the acceptance into the mind of representations as assumptions on the basis of authority, can be rationally justified. It is possible to suggest that Arendt’s description of the sacred, as the religious sense of being bound by obligation, is how this structural warrant for credulousness appears to consciousness. The mind is credulous in the face of legitimate authority, and the sense of the sacred is how that is experienced. This explains Durkheim’s (1915) concept of ‘the sacred’; how the unrecognized normative force of a culture as a social fact presents itself. Authority thus necessitates a three way inter-dependence between religion, authority and tradition (Arendt, 1961: 128). It is clear that scriptures and related texts, discussed above, make manifest the collective memory of a particular culture’s religious assumptions in the form of a tradition with textual authority. A scriptural tradition makes manifest, purportedly from their foundation, the key representational lineages or families in successively interpreted layers over time. In fact, it makes manifest the lineages back to the very beginnings of modern human oral transmission and hence culture itself, since even new concepts (e.g. about the resurrection of the dead) branch from previous thought. It includes a penumbra of interpretative texts. These have contextually developed, in Peirce’s phrase, ‘the potential purport’ of concepts – the ways that assumptions containing them can contribute to the achievement of relevance – in the many new contexts that the demands of history have evoked. This was our interpretation of Peirce’s pragmatic principle. The tradition branches and generates new sub-lineages. It cross-refers. It originates and transmits new conceptual lines from within the tradition. Scripture possesses authority in Arendt’s sense. This is actually based on the cognitive epistemological depth of reliably transmitted representations and their wide distribution throughout a community of mind/brains that use them to achieve relevance in culturally central ways. Previously, I have used Wittgenstein’s philosophical term “form of life”; a concept used widely in thinking about religion. We can explicate this in naturalistic terms. It is precisely those constructed contexts where cultural assumptions accepted on authority are used in processing for maximal relevance in action and communication in order to accomplish the practical actions of members of a communicating group in the way that is peculiar to them; the normative habits of their culture. These same cultural assumptions are accepted into the mind on authority because they have been practically tested – via the intuitive beliefs that enact them in this practical activity – by myriads of minds over time living in that way; in Wittgenstein’s words, playing those ‘language games’.

5.2 Elephants in the room

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Elephants in the room

Inquiry ought to produce progress. Given the above principle – that the overall results of collective inquiry in response to the history of genuine doubts, in everyday life as in science, are the best access to what is probably true in objective terms – one would predict that the representations assumed by a human community would now have, overall and in the main, a higher degree of reliability than they had in the past. Put in terms of relevance theory, if the principles of relevance are geared to produce positive cognitive effects with less effort, there should at least be a tendency towards truth in longlasting, mutual cognitive environments. This ought to be the case also for cultural beliefs – particularly those believed by everyone in a circular fashion – as well as the intuitive beliefs which enact them and with which they are intertwined; although perhaps to different degrees and at a different rate depending on the kind of belief. We should see some evidence of such improvement within the history of communities, but also in the human species in general. Such progress would simply be a by-product: the mechanical result of processing by minds like ours. We are a species that has specialized in being generalist, selected for developmental plasticity and creativity with its socio-communicative capacities, perhaps by adapting to rapid changes in the environmental conditions of the East African environment. Long-lasting and widely disseminated cultural elaboration within each mind/brain is the phenotypical expression of these features. The phenotype has become extraordinarily extended, constantly remaking its environment into various forms of life. The adaptation has done its job for the species. Populations living this way have had huge reproductive success. This supports the supposition that many of the assumptions of these forms of life contain at least enough objective truths to support this biological success.

But, there is more than one elephant in the room First, do the principles that warrant authority with respect to belief also apply to norms? It is one thing to develop consensus over representations with an evidential base, habitual beliefs based on generations of successful practice. It is another to develop consensus on cultural principles ultimately deriving from normative intelligence. For example, can authority really provide a rational warrant for such norms as found in the Old Testament with respect to the Canaanites, slavery, dietary laws, etc. on the grounds of long tradition and epidemiological success? Normative aspects of culture appear to gain reliability through tradition. Also, norms can be embedded within assumptions, and therefore there can be a higher-level belief that they are binding. If the norm is

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traditional, then it will ‘have stood the test of time’ within the form of life and the associated belief will have the warrant of custom. On the other hand, remember that epidemiologically successful norms are only cultural elaborations of innate templates. They are subject to revision, can be abandoned if they come to be viewed as wrong. So the answer to our question is ‘no’, because we are talking about judgements of right and wrong. That which actually has occurred and worked collectively over a long period of time is not necessarily morally right. In spite of being traditional, it can be judged wrong by the individual mind. So the relation of individual moral judgement to Arendt authority is indeed problematic – take her Roman example, a slave society of notorious brutality. However, since the obligation induced by genuine authority involves neither coercion nor persuasion, the conscience of an individual remains free in spite of whatever the guardians of tradition might do or say. If an individual adjudges a norm as misguided on the basis of alternative tradition or moral reasoning, the old norm therefore lacks authority in Arendt’s sense, no matter how epidemiologically successful it has been. Conscience is bound to judge it wrong. Examples abound, from Martin Luther King to the feminist movement. Second, if cognitive processing is in general geared to the improvement of representations through inquiry, why hasn’t there been more evidence of progress in human history? To take an obvious example, why have the assumptions we group together under the word “racism” been so epidemiologically successful? Cultural representations about the purported existence of race – the range of concepts and thoughts purportedly representing it – must surely have satisfied conditions for epidemiological success over centuries, and conformed to the main factors favouring dissemination, although they contain manifestly false assumptions about human types, and generate moral defection with respect to other human beings as free moral agents. Indeed, the surprising counter-intuitiveness of the assumptions of racism – all human beings manifestly have human bodies and behave in the same way with respect to mindreading and other cognitive capacities – might favour its spread, as we saw. Unfortunately, treating members of other groups as not fully human and therefore with different ‘inner essences’ has provided standard cultural quasibeliefs. This is one kind of ‘bad’ rational-aesthetic concept which opaquely and mysteriously resolves, although this is impossible, the inconsistencies involved in the dehumanizing treatment of one moral agent by another. Such epidemiologically successful cultural assumptions have rationalized slavery, imperialism, ethnic cleansing and genocide throughout history and thus made them mentally meaningful, even poetic. So an assumption can be epidemiologically successful long term and an indubitable aspect of a form of life, yet be both irrational and untrue. This is in spite of our formulation of the Peircean notion that that which is most widely

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believed over most time most probably approximates to the truth. We can thus say that although in general those cultural representations that are most epidemiologically successful over time are probably true, there is a risk that a historically robust and epidemiologically successful cultural representation isn’t true. Nobody could know definitively which are which until the final end of inquiry. This puts a ‘health warning’ on any deference to authority in Arendt’s sense, deference which is uncritical. So a critical stance towards authority also has a warrant, not only in terms of moral norms, but also in terms of truth. But this contradicts the very notion of Arendt authority. I have used racism as an example, but similar phenomena are endemic. Mandelbrot and Hudson’s (2005) book, The (Mis)Behaviour of Markets, shows how orthodoxy has misunderstood the nature of risk in financial markets; fluctuations in prices simply don’t conform to the probability distributions of the Bell curve but have a wild randomness. This mistake has had dangerous consequences. Research into the human proclivity to false assessments of risk and its political exploitation is summarized in Dan Gardner’s Risk: The Science and Politics of Fear (2007). Peirce also recognized a general proclivity to unwarranted optimism (Peirce, 1877/1958: 96). In his important book, Collapse (2005), Jared Diamond analyses both the processes of collective epistemic and pragmatic failure in history and the differences between societies in this respect due to accidents of context. The research of Zimbardo and others shows that the mind/brain can lose much of its effectiveness in inhibiting the normative pressure of social role when society demands, hence condones, moral violations (Zimbardo, 2008). But responses to moral failure and the viciousness that typifies groups when acting collectively have always been one key way by which is generated the doubt that motivates inquiry. We shall return to the surprising role of moral criticism in Chapter 6. But suppose we bracket out the question of moral progress on the basis that since moral choice is a matter for individuals, each generation must face its own tests in these matters, and we should expect no particular progress over time and no collective trends. We still have the problem. The nature of processing ought to lead overall to epistemic improvements, but it is not clear that there are such improvements. The collective mind/brain of the species, although breathtakingly good at reproducing its gene-carrying bodies, is arguably as riddled with false assumptions as ever. Peirce speculates that although, ‘logicality in respect to practical matters is the most useful quality an animal can possess, and might therefore result from natural selection . . . outside of these it is probably of more advantage to the animal to have his mind filled with pleasing and encouraging visions, independently of their truth; and thus, upon unpractical subjects, natural selection might occasion a fallacious tendency of thought’ (Peirce, 1877/1958: 96). So Peirce was aware of this problem, although he

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didn’t investigate it in a very sophisticated way. Like Sperber (1996: 70) and the general anthropological tradition, Peirce believed that human beings were ‘logical animals’, but ‘not perfectly so’. In ‘The fixation of belief’, he suggests various ways that ‘the settlement of opinion’ is arrived at in which the irritation of genuine doubt is evaded or suppressed. These in effect block inquiry. The ways are both psychological and social. The former includes the method of tenaciously holding a self-serving belief and that of rationalizing away genuine doubts about collective assumptions, ignoring the evidence of its practical effects. He calls this the a priori method of belief fixation: an example is, ‘the doctrine that man only acts selfishly . . . This rests on no fact in the world, but it has had wide acceptance as being the only reasonable theory’ (Peirce 1877/1958: 106). Both methods are examples of ideology; assumptions which block or distort doubt and inquiry to serve unconscious self-interest. The most overt method is that of coercion, which Peirce, subscribing to the common confusion of authority and power, terms the “method of authority”. 5.3

Conservatism, liberalism and crises of authority

I have been talking about the human species as one collective processing communication network with a historically evolving and self-correcting encyclopaedia of mutually manifest assumptions: a species-mind. At any given moment, the species-mind is growing in terms of the probable truths it contains along with its many untruths, some catastrophically false. It is replete with the histories of all human cultures and their experiences, with many twists and turns, false starts, catastrophic failures, natural experiments, periods of renewal using innovative new techniques of inquiry and media of dissemination. I pose the question: what can block or distort the doubt and consequent inquiry that powers the self-correction of this ongoing collective of billions of mind/brains? Without such distortions, it ought to tend over its huge diversity, in changing circumstances, and in the long term, towards consensus, a mutual cognitive environment that better facilitates both practical activity and affective and normative development. Its assumptions may be true, although fallibly so, open to revision in the light of experience until the end of inquiry. The distinction between liberalism and conservatism represents two stances towards this process. It has its origins within Western modernity and represents the struggle between the eighteenth-century Enlightenment’s epistemological emphasis on the free exercise of individual reason as the reliable basis for both theory and action over and against belief in corporate representations and their legitimate authority. Arendt (1961: 100–101) writes of this struggle in the first half of the twentieth century:

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Liberalism . . . measures a process of receding freedom, and conservatism measures a process of receding authority; both call the expected end-result totalitarianism and see totalitarian trends wherever either one or the other is present . . . they are tied to-gether, not only because each would lose its very substance without the presence of its opponent in the field of theory and ideology, but because both are primarily concerned with restoration, with restoring either freedom or authority . . . . It is in this sense that they form two sides of the same coin, just as their two progress-or-doom ideologies correspond to the two possible directions of the historical process . . . .

To simplify, I will distinguish collective epistemological conservatism and liberalism with respect to the fixation of belief from specific concepts in the political, social and religious domains, although they are related. (Also, in practice, any arbitrary individual mind/brain mixes conservative and liberal stances in its unique way and lives with the contradictions; how much is public and how much private depends on the social order.)

Epistemological conservatism and liberalism At first, the analysis seems to favour conservatism. We saw how to naturalize Arendt’s notion of authority, in which the individual mind is compelled within itself to defer – without being coerced or persuaded – to the demand for obedience arising from a tradition. Deference is based on the legitimacy of the epidemiologically successful, of tradition, and the religio attitude. When mind/brains defer to Arendt authority, then they aren’t free with respect to what to accept as assumptions. When genuine authority inwardly compels us, we eschew argument about just those assumptions or norms. This epistemological stance is formulated within the conservative tradition by Edmund Burke in his Reflections on the Revolution in France (1790) with its recommendation of the collective, historical wisdom of tradition (custom, opinion, prejudice, habit) and by Richard Hooker in Of the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity (1964–1965/1553–1600). Even if the principle of the probable truth of the mass of epidemiologically successful indubitable beliefs is correct, there are obvious dangers in ‘what everybody knows’. As we saw, it is equally probable that there are many falsehoods in the belief box, although it is hard to tell which are which, and which falsehoods might have serious consequences. Beliefs about the financial derivatives that caused the early twenty-first-century global economic crisis are a case in point. An attitude of credulity in deference to authority cripples error detection. Those mind/brains in groups whose assumptions have in some way made them so far practically successful form communication networks where there is, by definition, little motivation for genuine doubt of fundamental cultural assumptions, including their relevant mysteries. Successful mutual cognitive environments – awash with positive cognitive

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effects – accomplish desires, motivations and goals. Communication would then generate the circular, mutual deference to which Recanati (1997: 92) pointed, mutually strengthening and making most accessible the same assumptions over and over, de-motivating any ‘de-coupled’ analysis. The problem is that ideology represses genuine doubts either from the objections of outsiders or from practical failures. Epistemological conservatism thus corrupts corrective inquiry, and instead fosters deceptive rationalization. Faced with failure, the minds in such a mutually deferring community would not easily be able to respond to challenges without incurring large processing costs. Because of this, representations which are inconsistent with its assumptions can’t readily achieve relevance in a mind within a community with a philosophically conservative stance. Alternative assumptions might even be hard to grasp, or if grasped, quickly rationalized. Inquiry is effectively blocked. Change in a conservative mind is most likely when some accumulating set of failures in collective behaviour causes stress and slowly de-legitimates the authority underlying the tradition, which one day catastrophically displays its crisis of belief. This clearly happened with the collapse of the nineteenth-century world order after 1918, of European communism, of Apartheid, or in the Protestant Reformation. Faced with costs, the conservative mind of an ancien re´gime, when it doesn’t ignore or dismiss it, is more likely to respond coercively to criticism, even when these point to falsehoods and inconsistencies which are causing its present practical failures. But that coercion destroys, by definition, its genuine authority in Arendt’s sense. Coercion generates inner exile and public pretence. It blocks the inquiry necessary to revise belief in the face of the threatening inconsistency. The preservation of genuine authority actually depends on this. Thus, to remain legitimate, there must be many liberal moments within a conservative stance based on genuine authority. A strong conservative stance best suits a social order which consists of a single dense social network, as in the small hunter-gatherer groups from which modern humans first evolved. But such primate groups are also vulnerable to changes in their environment; and selected for liberal innovativeness in individual mind/brains. Conservatism fares badly in a large plural society where the mutuality of a cognitive environment between members of different groups is weak. Philosophical conservatism within the groups of stratified mass societies generates the potential for either authoritarianism or internal conflict and paralysis which block inquiry. On the other hand, epistemological liberalism is the stance in which the individual mind/brain inquires into what it genuinely doubts – ‘to think for yourself’ instead of ‘what everybody thinks’. To experience genuine doubt, and then conceptually innovate, is only possible for the individual mind. And one can’t tell which minds in advance. Therefore, all minds need to be free.

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But since it is in the community of inquirers that truth resides, freedom to communicate, to persuade the public to revise tradition is also required. It is therefore necessary to have liberal social arrangements, an ‘open society’ which doesn’t block inquiry, the doubt which generates it or the dialogue that disseminates it. Paradoxically, this liberal stance must be a genuine possibility within the epistemological conservative stance, if a community of minds is to be able to ‘learn’. (In the individual, there is the same requirement: an ‘open society’ presupposes a collective of innovative ‘open minds’.) Nevertheless, in the Peircean picture, individual minds are relatively helpless with respect to discovering truth. If truth is a collective matter, it would be a mistake for the liberal mind to doubt ‘artificially’ – in a Cartesian fashion – the habitual consensual assumptions of the tradition, including its relevant mysteries. In the absence of genuine doubt, these habits are probably true enough overall to work especially with respect to practical matters. They provide the indubitable background encyclopaedia for critical reasoning with respect to those assumptions identified as suspect. Therefore, also paradoxically, epistemological liberalism presupposes a basically conservative background. Although conservatism and liberalism are thought of as opposed, both strategies are implicit in the adapted design of mind/brains in a collective environment. What could be more conservative than an evolutionarily selected for module, or more liberal than the ability to infer new information from input that yields positive cognitive effects. For rational inquiry, liberalism, like conservatism, requires the absence of coercion as fully as does genuine authority.

Collapse of genuine authority There is no doubt whatever of the crisis of authority throughout Western culture: beginning largely as a critique of religious authority. This change in the manifest image of humanity is one of the great phenomena of modernity. What happens when a mind becomes incapable of accepting assumptions on the basis of authority in Arendt’s sense? The new norm is that beliefs must have a rational warrant; and this includes cultural assumptions and relevant mysteries. The collective authority of tradition is replaced by the ultimate authority over itself of each individual mind. The default position with respect to tradition becomes sceptical, conditional on rational argument. Belief behaviour should depend on assumptions which, in principle if not in practice, are accepted into the mind on the basis of the evidence of perception and reason or to which it would be compelled to assent by its own reasoning if it came to understand the content. This is deeply corrosive of institutional religion, in which the default position is credulousness.

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For example, in the writing of Sperber (1996: 91), we see the Enlightenment norm in epistemology in favour of intuitive beliefs and rational argument. Although ‘much more frequent and culturally important’ than scientific beliefs, mysteries and other semi-understood beliefs, because they don’t have fully determinate content, ‘cannot be sufficiently evidenced or argued for to warrant their rational acceptance’. But the Enlightenment norm is preserved by saying that it is not irrational to accept these ‘half understood or mysterious reflective beliefs’, but this depends on their being ‘rational grounds to trust the source of the belief’. We have shown that there are such grounds. If my analysis of cognitive epistemology is right, the individual mind/brain has been designed by evolution to trust the authority of tradition, based on its collective rationality, but is not aware of this. However, if this deference is consciously rejected, each individual mind/brain would either have to be persuaded by rational argument to directly accept each mystery, which is contradictory, or it must be rationally persuaded of the reliability of the source of the belief. But that also implies contradiction or regression, if what is meant that some individual source believes a mystery on the grounds of perception and rational argument. For, in the case of a mystery, no individual source could fully understand it to be reliable on those grounds. Consider Sperber’s example, the mysterious political belief that ‘all men are born equal’. In practice, millions of minds do accept this on the authority of tradition in Arendt’s sense, on faith, without a rational warrant based on argument or evidence, and this has huge behavioural consequences; for example, in law. However, the Enlightenment’s epistemology of individual reason can be seen in the history of philosophy and science in domain after domain. The individual mind/brain appears cast adrift on the raft of its own rationality, to decide what it wants and thinks. This is a normative ideal, an ‘ought’ not a ‘fact’, and normatively it is as person-making as any religion. Although modernist secular rationalism is normative, thus possessing one of the properties of a religion, it excludes authority in Arendt’s sense. Persuasion through argument and evidence is the single lever by which anything, a mystery even, can be legitimately warranted for the mind/brain. The rejection of the warrant of legitimate authority leaves the isolated individual mind in a state open to ideological self-deception or impersonal manipulation by the state or economic system. This is because the individual mind is relatively helpless with respect to inquiry on its own and as likely as not to be wrong. As authority dissolves, Arendt (1961: 128) comments that if one of the elements, ‘religion, or authority, or tradition was doubted or eliminated, the remaining two were no longer secure. Thus, it was Luther’s error to think that his challenge to the temporal authority of the Church and his appeal to unguided individual judgement would leave religion and tradition intact. So it was the error of Hobbes and the political theorists of the seventeenth

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century to hope that authority could be saved without tradition. So, too, was it finally the error of the humanists to think it would be possible to remain within an unbroken tradition of Western civilization without religion and without authority.’ Without religion, epidemiologically successful representations endorsed by past populations lose the sense of the sacred which gave a non-rational warrant to assumptions on the grounds of authority. For many modern minds, it is impossible to even ‘quasi-believe’ representations from the tradition, in the Peirce–Bain sense of being willing to act on them. This reveals that they are being treated as fictions. As Arendt (1961: 94) remarks, this means that there is a loss of the past. ‘We are in danger of forgetting, and such an oblivion – quite apart from the contents themselves that could be lost – would mean that, humanly speaking, we would deprive ourselves of one dimension, the dimension of depth in human existence. For memory and depth are the same . . . .’ The collective memory of the horizontally and vertically epidemiologically successful, and therefore, what was once considered probably true by minds just like ours – one part of the single collective species-mind – is lost. As Arendt (1961: 94) also points out, modernity generates doubts about religious truth, as it is ‘ridden by paradoxes and absurdity’. From the point of view of individual rational analysis, aesthetic concepts become a problem even for believers, in a way that they were not earlier. She cites Pascal and Kierkegaard, but consider also the history of attitudes to such concepts from Kant to those of non-realist Christians such as Don Cupitt in Taking Leave of God (1980) and other ‘death of God’ theologians (see Macquarrie, 2001: 425–446). Arendt (1961: 94) proposes that individual faith might survive the collapse of the authority of institutional religion. If so, its legitimacy could best be grounded in the rationality of the source, the collective pragmatism of the species-mind, naturalized above. Barring this, it becomes extremely difficult for individual minds to find any rationally acceptable higher-level propositional attitude to assumptions that contain rational-aesthetic concepts, in any domain. If the self is such a concept, what are we to reflectively make of the reality of ourselves? This quandary appears in what Charles Taylor in his Massey Lectures, The Malaise of Modernity, calls ‘expressive individualism’. The collective good has become individualized in the notion of personal authenticity as a moral ideal (Taylor, 1991: 28–29). This is the discovery and free selfexpression of what is unique to each individual, an original way of being – a mysterious reflective belief if ever there was one. In such a search, the collapse of traditional authority leaves the individual open to ideological selfdeception and manipulation with respect, now not only to beliefs, but also to what they are as a unique being. What rational warrant could the individual as individual develop with respect to self-understanding – to believe that they

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reliably comprehend the mystery of the rational-aesthetic concept MYSELF, as a basis for actions to express it? Individual self-expression can be an excuse for the wilful satisfaction of desires, no more than ideological selfinterest. The ultimate good is ‘what I believe I genuinely want to be and do’. Consumerism as self-expression is one manifestation. There is a parallel loss of the past and of community with respect to the affective and motivational. The social project, to the degree that it is modern, has to be the optimization of the opportunities for each individual rational agent to satisfy their freely chosen desires and the motives they generate. This individualism of the modern yields a normative concept of social life as thoroughly rationalized. The social order becomes an impersonal system of methods calculated – in theory – to optimize the satisfaction of individual desire and the fixation of beliefs instrumental to that end (scientific research, the market mechanism and technology) and the solution of co-ordination problems between purportedly rational individuals (bureaucracy, education, media).

Modernity’s dual crisis Since Arendt wrote in 1958/1961, there has emerged a dual crisis in the West affecting attitudes to both authority and reason. Not only has genuine authority been dissolving over the last few centuries, but the free exercise of individual rationality is now taken as so potentially unreliable that all that remains for this stance is the irritation of genuine and universal doubt and the imperatives of an impersonal social system which constitutes the very desires it fulfils, so that supposedly rational individuals are unwittingly unfree. The concept of post-modernism has consequences, both collective and for individuals, for belief, norms and personal identity. However, from the perspective of the species-mind, this epistemological crisis is only one historical moment in parts of Western society. The historical processes named by “modernity” and “post-modernity” are cultural mysteries, doctrines about phases of history of thought with wide dissemination. But they don’t mark the end of inquiry. Interestingly, post-modernity was both self-refuting and blocked inquiry. It tried to articulate the final reliable thought: there are no reliable thoughts. This dual crisis is merely one of the turns and twists in which the collective species-mind has found itself, parochially here and now. There is also much variation in attitudes to representation in the West. For example, there is an international scientific community committed to rationality as practised in science. But after Quine’s analysis of the under-determination of theory by data and Kuhn’s notion of the paradigm, all is again to play for in philosophical reflections on science. The scientific image is to some extent re-absorbed into the manifest image of humanity.

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Recapturing authority: the species-mind Authority of the species-mind

The task now is to re-evaluate our naturalized concept of authority and its relationship to rational warrant in the light of this crisis. The species-mind is the set of all human representations over all time and within all populations. We have a record of only fragments of this, but what survives is probably what was most epidemiologically successful and most relevant in many contexts. The more relevant, the more copies made, the more durable the inscriptions, the more chances that some will survive. Archaeology also carefully retrieves artefacts and treats them as the products of thought. Our example, the main scriptural traditions, has great temporal depth and wide distribution over the populations of minds that have ever existed. For my philosophical pragmatism, the past is important since inquiry demands respect for traditions that have proved successful in forms of life. It doesn’t matter how remote they are from the thinker’s context in historical or cultural distance. In their own contexts, people were willing to act upon them. This is the strategy I have followed in writing this book, the way I have utilized Kant and Peirce. With respect to even greater cultural distance, King (1999) in his study of Indian philosophy, points out that many of those trained in drawing an absolute Western distinction between philosophy and religion are incapable of taking seriously the continuing Buddhist and Hindu philosophical traditions. Many Indian traditions have assumed for millennia that meditative or yogic techniques are real heuristics that yield metaphysical insights – aesthetic concepts such as sunyata, or “emptiness”. Ch’an Buddhism with its technique of meditation on riddling koan texts and zazen – ‘just sitting’ meditation – are examples from East Asia. The species-mind has invented many techniques to induce trance and other ecstatic or contemplative states, sometimes in an inter-play with speculative but rational argumentation; for example, Neo-Platonism or contemplative prayer. With respect to Indian philosophy, Hamilton (2001: 10) writes, ‘From the perspective of the Indian worldview . . . the possibility of changing one’s cognitive perception is something to be regarded as systematically possible by means of regular disciplinary exercises in a manner not all that different from systematically acquiring the ability to play a musical instrument . . .. There is nothing magical about either – both are regarded as skills.’ The sheer epidemiological success of mysterious concepts like these, in so many contexts over history within the species-mind, should lead our individual minds to consider if the habitual bulk of the assumptions and norms involved in successful alien traditions may be objectively true or binding to some degree. They have a pragmatic warrant, although not necessarily for the reasons given by the

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tradition. Because so many mind/brains evolutionarily exactly like ours – with inevitably similar intuitive beliefs – have acted on them, it is not irrational to take them seriously. However, all authoritative traditions contain dysfunctional errors and immoral norms with their horrors: an inquirer must revise or replace these and learn from the cost of doing that. In other words, scriptural or scripture-like traditions ought to be treated as authoritative, but with great caution. This is also true of artefacts that reveal assumptions that were clearly very relevant because they were so costly to construct: mediaeval cathedrals, the monuments of Egypt, Meso-America and Asia, Stonehenge and other megaliths, cave paintings, and so on. These are ‘awe-inspiring’ – an attitude of respect for the species-mind. These display concepts that had authority for fellow human beings, concepts that were therefore probably true or binding from within their form of life, with the usual health warning. These are all facets of ‘true for the species-mind’. It is thus possible that the type of thoughts we reconstruct for them would be pragmatically true for anybody living in that form of life, including us, and the insights yielded by this may have positive cognitive effects today understood in a new context. The authority of the species-mind provides a rational basis for an assumption, if doing so achieves maximal relevance in one’s own form of life with respect to inquiry into beliefs and obligations. In any particular inquiry, context construction can use assumptions widely manifested and accessible within inter-cultural, historical conceptual lineages; for example, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Retrieving rational warrant within the species-mind Within naturalized pragmatism, there is more than one way in which a mind might accept an assumption with confidence, to reasonably hold it true or probably true. We have examined the warrant that arises from within a collective tradition and given a higher-order account for why it is rational to accept assumptions on authority, with the added requirement that it be subject to criticism in order to detect inevitable error. It entails a cost to deal with doubt. It poses questions which de-legitimate the authority of habit. It leads to conscious de-coupling – a change of status within the belief box – meta-representational analysis in inner speech and public dialogue. Peirce’s ‘irritation of doubt’ is only calmed when reasons can be given and inconsistency dealt with; reflectively revising or replacing assumptions. For the individual mind/brain, the private context for de-coupled thinking must be the workspace of imagination, including inner speech. Since assumptions gain strength and accessibility the more often they are successfully used to achieve relevance, is it possible that within imagination, in

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thought experiments, epistemic strength can be gained? Faced with genuine doubt, perhaps this sort of private reflection provides a mental form for rationality. However, the pragmatic ideal is public consensus of the community of inquirers based on dialogue, and there is no one way to achieve this. As with authority, rationality, whether public or private, comes with a health warning. We should expect factual mistakes, inappropriate reliance on stereotypes, distortions of ideology which produce Peirce’s methods of ‘tenacity’ and ‘authority’, the unwillingness to pay processing costs, and inconsistencies among desires and motivations. As we saw, the mind/brain does not automatically monitor the validity of its arguments and is bad at assessing chains of deduction. I suspect that assumptions and narratives in the ‘me box’ especially resist rational criticism, because of their relation to the affective-motivational aspect of identity. Different sorts of rational warrant depend on the nature of an assumption, how it was introduced into the mind, and the situations in which it is employed in processing. The rational warrant for an obligation differs from that of an assumption. From the point of view of the species-mind, no one type of positive cognitive effect is foundational. Modern science quickly warns us not to trust intuitive beliefs alone to reveal the deeper structure of physical reality. Indeed, physics is as counter-intuitive as religion in some ways, and has its own particular strands within the overall mesh of rationality. Different loci of doubt lead to distinct kinds of inquiry, whose results have differing warrants for rational acceptance, corresponding to the belief box and the ought box, to assumptions and obligations. I will use the term rational criticism for the mental process by which an inconsistency is made relevant to an individual. There is practical criticism, when an outcome is inconsistent with the intended goal of an action, or more generally, when unintended effects generate internal inconsistencies, where experience functions as a natural experiment. These might be termed policy criticism. I will use the term critique when the demonstrated inconsistency involves norms. Within this category, there is a distinction between moral critique and social critique, in which the violation of a non-moral social norm is exhibited. However, criticism and critique are usually inextricably inter-woven, as when the dysfunctional aspects of technology and bureaucracy are judged morally. Practical and moral criticism feature in everyday life. In contrast to assumptions, moral failure or defection from an obligation doesn’t rationally warrant changing the obligation. Rather consciousness of inconsistency is experienced as betrayal or as guilt. It is the content of accusation. However, when an obligation itself is genuinely doubted with respect to either unintended practical effects or moral inconsistency, then moral inquiry into what should be binding is itself warranted. Otherwise, the default position is the authority of tradition, its common law, which provides a rational pragmatic warrant for

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obligations as it does for assumptions. Religious norms to the degree they have rational warrant are likewise subject to critique. (The term critique originates in the Enlightenment. We shall develop this idea in Chapter 6.) Let’s now consider the major kinds of rational warrant, simplifying their complexity, as if they correspond to Sellar’s typology of images of humanity. There are warrants that are justifiable within the manifest image, within philosophical and other developments of the manifest image, and within the scientific image. Practical warrants in the manifest image of humanity The first is the practical, common sense warrant for accepting a representation as an assumption. Intuitive beliefs will be automatically unquestioned unless there is a reason for thinking one is perceptually deceived. Furthermore, as we showed, in everyday life it is rational to accept on authority that the vast mass of beliefs treated as indubitable within the community are probably true by virtue of that fact alone. I’m thinking of assumptions about the taken-forgranted facts that fill the encyclopaedia. Communication links minds into communication networks with mutual cognitive environments which are fragments of the entire species-mind, hence access its authority. With respect to intuitive beliefs, individual perceptions and actions are inextricably connected through reasoning with the cultural concepts of a tradition, including its religious mysteries, which have disseminated solely through communication. Culture normatively controls the desires and motivations behind perception and action. Even more crucially, it is cultural, reflective and not intuitive beliefs and obligations that provide the norms and framework assumptions for the institutions, situation types and practices that form the contexts for all perceptions, action and communication. (Think of a wedding, a bank loan, a scientific experiment or even a walk in the woods.) Within a culture, rational warrant is an explanation of how these assumptions function in the operation of institutions within the overall form of life. More informally, we can usually give reasons, if asked, for why we did what we did. It would be irrational not to accept these practical warrants as reliable for cultural assumptions, if there is no reason not to. Unnecessary processing cost would make unmotivated inquiry irrelevant. Reflective warrants in the manifest image of humanity Reflective warrant is provided by de-coupled inquiry which reflects on genuine doubts arising from relevant inconsistencies. Although it can be accomplished privately or just by conversation, public reflective inquiry – institutional public argument – has more impact because many mind/brains potentially control mistakes and irrationalities more effectively. One example is law. The assumptions resulting from police investigations, court judgements of all

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types, verdicts of trials by jury, yield results which have a rational warrant. Public reflective inquiry is also concerned with method. Methodologies specify what procedures ought to be followed to lead to rationally reliable outcomes. Because of this, criticism of procedural norms themselves is also relevant; for example, when blocks on inquiry are likely. Rational warrant and religions in contact Let’s consider inconsistencies that motivate a search for rational warrant with respect to religion. Modernity has produced inter-cultural contact on a global scale. This reveals inconsistencies between religious traditions. In principle, ‘religions in contact’ produce genuine doubt and a threat not only to the authority of particular traditions but also the general authority of religion. How can the doctrines of my tradition be rationally admitted on the warrant of traditional authority, when they are inconsistent with other equally authoritative traditions from the point of view of the species-mind? If religious thinking is not to be abandoned to prejudice, relations between inconsistent traditions need both toleration and rational reflection. Only in this way might some religious assumptions re-gain the authority of consensus with respect to beliefs; e.g. there might be a consensus that religions only have warrant relative to different forms of life. In fact, competition between ideas and subsequent rationalization is exactly the dialectic required by the species-mind as one collective epistemic engine. Specialized inquiry generated by inconsistencies within religion is the province of theology, the philosophy of religion, the history of religions and the social sciences within religious studies. Two logical poles of inquiry can be illustrated by contrasting the positions adopted in Aldous Huxley’s (1946/ 1974) The Perennial Philosophy, and that of the Oxford scholar of Eastern religions, R. C. Zaehner (Newell, 1981; Zaehner, 1957). Huxley views all religions as essentially one. He assumes that religious concepts in whatever tradition point to a single source, one divine reality, that can only be apprehended, and then imperfectly, through religious experience. Seemingly different accounts of this reality are accounts of the same thing ‘under a different description’ – the philosophia perennis. Different religions are only the imperfect symbolisms of this reality. Cognitive theories of religion are perhaps a secular version of the same universalism but with respect to the way the mind/brain produces religious concepts. In a vigorous reaction, Zaehner argues that in the world religions, there are different types of religious experience or mysticism. He argues that Huxley’s nature mysticism is quite different from theistic varieties. As Newell (1981: 20) points out, religions actually develop different concepts, which have different semantic contents. He writes, ‘Christianity centres around and builds up from a fulcrum of love; not so Buddhism . . . This is the nub of Zaehner’s thought. The religions are talking of different things.

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They have different contents. Compassion and Emptiness and Nirva˜na are not love in themselves.’ There are similarities, however. Zaehner points out that one religion’s orthodoxy is often another’s heterodoxy. There are also distinct types of religion, and he suspects there are some convergences over time. But it would be wrong to suggest that the rational-aesthetic concepts of the various religions are all ultimately interpretable in the same way, inferring with Huxley that they are all signs of the same object under different descriptions. Within the framework we have developed above, the properties of religious concepts that Zaehner points out can be explained in the following way. The concepts that make up the various authoritative religious traditions are generated within forms of life which they constitute – for example, being a Tibetan Buddhist today or a Pharisee in the first century. As they are mainly used in practical contexts, their own inconsistencies and new experiential input produce characteristic form of life problems in these historical contexts, particularly in situations of stress, opportunity or crisis. New aesthetic concepts then emerge unique to each tradition, to resolve particular problems. Jesus’ resurrection is precisely this sort of content. As Zaehner points out, in one tradition the problem of ‘sin’ is emphasized; in another it is the problem of ‘suffering’. Since the truth of the assumptions involved is relativized to the belief and the willingness to act of individuals, successful use of the respective concepts in practical contexts in daily life has an objective pragmatic warrant. This also leads to its epidemiological spread, and authority gained over time. The assumptions are those of this particular family of the species-mind and they are warranted in this particular historical context. This picture motivates toleration between traditions since they are partially doing different things with different concepts. Of course, this toleration is automatically conditioned by criticism. But as the source of new inconsistencies and syncretic solutions, inter-cultural contact is creative. For example, the theologian John Hick (1977/2007) uses concepts from heterodoxies and Asian religions in his treatments of evil and death, reflecting on problems within Christian thought. Whether the account of religious diversity I have just proposed itself has a rational warrant, depends on whether my overall naturalization of religion is persuasive. Reflective warrant in the scientific image of humanity Scientific inquiry produces one strand of rational warrant. It adopts the critical stance towards matters of fact, by institutionalizing, controlling and using doubt. Sellar’s scientific image of humanity emerges when human beings are explained with scientific warrant. What came to be named “science” is a contingent historical phenomenon, with, of course, precursors. The normative methods of scientific rationality are the cultural development of reasoning

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about facts in practical matters – reflective general intelligence – with its complex inter-modular basis. We can chart the growth of the method, its intellectual underpinnings, the lineages of individual scientists and finally the contemporary use of the word, “research”, an institutional system for beliefgeneration in factual matters. This cultural complex only blossomed in the nineteenth century, beginning in Germany. But it is most important to note that science is emphatically not a form of life. To live ‘scientifically’ in everyday matters would be absurd. For one thing, the method is intrinsically mind-blind, unsuitable for inter-personal use. Being a scientist qua scientist is a role segregated from life. Science provides one mode of rational warrant and the strongest. An important issue is how it relates to other modes and grew out of them. There is no space here to do real justice to scientific rationality and its impact on the species-mind. The intrinsic goal of the new method is to provide a set of techniques to intensify the strength of rational warrant for accepting representations as assumptions in factual matters. It does this by developing norms for reflective practices. Science develops a tradition with its own authority, underwritten by its strengthened rational warrant, in domains where the method yields factual assumptions that are epidemiologically attractive. These domains are what we think of as nature. A major task is to analyse science in the light of cognitive epistemology and the epidemiology of representations (see Carruthers, 2006). Scientific methodology constantly evolves and is adapted as successive domains are naturalized. What are the aspects of science that together intensify the strength of its rational warrant? Science demands explicitness. This means that, in principle, the mind/brain should be able to ‘explicate’ a scientific representation into a fully propositional form, with fully determinate truth conditions, with all the inferences it warrants in context potentially available, clear and distinct, so that it is part of a system of assumptions which are truth-evaluable where they touch experience. This is best done by formal systems. Mathematics is a formal system of reasoning about sets of individuals in an absolutely abstract and general way, a system that provides the most beautiful fit between reason and experience, and so yields factual assumptions about the relationships between quantifiable things with a vastly strengthened warrant. A fascinating problem for cognitive science is the relationship between thinking in mathematics (and other formal systems) and the role of language in thinking described above. (This may lie behind the problems with financial instruments like complex derivatives.) There has been in science an historic cultural pressure to think of natural language as a calculus, ideally capable of similar precision. So there is a demand that, when scientific thoughts are manifested in language and made public, words and the arguments must be capable of being fully explicated – with

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fully determinate truth conditions – with implicatures controlled and background assumptions transparent. Why is explicitness important to the method? It is because of its relation to testing and replicability. Hypotheses, no matter how abstract, if fully explicit, yield predictions from which perceptions can be deduced, segregated from other noisy linguistic background and this is true of any perceiver. Quantities make this event perception even more explicit because qualitative variation is irrelevant. Explicitness is motivated by a requirement that the system be answerable to experience in this special intensified way. It makes possible ingenious methods of experimental testing, refutation or confirmation of the theoretical edifice. Experiments invite contradiction, posing a narrow, artificial but genuine doubt, the institutionalization of criticism. All of this depends on the moral and social norms that regulate scientific method, the institutions and the situations in which it is practised. The development of scientific traditions requires a literature with a canon, not unlike a scriptural tradition, but with its authority distributed differently. The background assumption is that the natural tendency for the overall representation of the world to automatically improve in the quest for relevance can be harnessed; that there will be progress. It must also therefore mobilize critique to prevent ideological distortion and blocking of inquiry. What science does is vastly strengthen the rational warrant that has always been ordinarily, but more weakly, available within everyday life. Behind the scientific method, as behind all goal-directed thinking, is the assumption that there really is a maximally relevant path up the hill and that reason can discover it. This is the same faith we observed in Chapter 2. The regularity of the world has the appearance of intentionality because of its congruence with the structure and processes of a mind/brain in achieving its goals. In the case of scientific rationality, this unique path manifests itself in the beauty and simplicity of theories. The maximally relevant path for each domain is provided by the most general set of premises from which can be deduced the widest range of factual assumptions. This of course will also be the simplest and most beautiful because it captures the deepest law-likeness of the underlying order of nature. The great discovery of science was that this lawfulness is only formulable and discoverable through the use of mathematics because of its abstract generality and formal explicitness. It follows that scientific realism about the semantic content of scientific explanations – that such and such postulated individuals proposed in the interpretation of the theory really exist and the laws governing them are real – is as much a philosophical problem as it is in other abstract domains such as moral law. One important realist view, first postulated in Worrall (1989), is that what is real are the abstract mathematical and other structures that continue to make the simplest and most beautiful empirical predictions in

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the domain while surviving changes in the propositional content of explanations. It would be unreasonable if such abstractions worked so well in prediction and didn’t characterize what is real in some way. This form of structural realism assumes that things-in-themselves are cognizable but as abstractions. Abstract structure really is the maximally relevant path up the hill with respect to the goal of the explanation of nature. I’ll return to this in the next section. As Chomsky points out, what can be naturalized is not clear in advance. Science explores its limits. This is partly because what can gain scientific warrant depends on the further development of the method; for example, Chomsky’s own revolution in linguistics or Newton’s invention of the calculus. All scientific naturalization yields factual assumptions with the warrant of the technique, and the authority of its tradition. Technological applications demonstrate that the assumptions can be relied upon in practical matters (like going to the moon), and in turn, generate new ideas. But the limits of naturalization soon become visible with respect to relevant mysteries; especially in metaphysics and morality, which include many rational-aesthetic concepts. Yet these are culturally ineliminable. We can’t even conceive of the concepts of morality (or a social contract in politics) without such concepts as FREEDOM and PERSONHOOD. So the content returns to the manifest image, with its non-scientific pragmatic warrants and philosophical debate. Although scientific rationality might dissolve authoritative traditions from the species-mind when they are inconsistent with matters of fact, it can’t do so with respect to norms and mysteries which resist naturalization. Since the two are inextricable, in practice our vision must always be stereoscopic. This not only tells us an enormous amount about ourselves, but protects the epistemological authority of the historical traditions of the species-mind with their weaker rational warrant. This is abundantly clear in practical domains, like politics, where assumptions about matters of fact and normative obligations are inextricable. So scientific rationality reaches a crisis faced with cultural beliefs containing irresolvable mysteries. The most that scientific rationality can achieve is to account for how a naturally evolved mind can come to entertain such cultural concepts or how they function in the ecology of mind and society. It cannot, in principle, assess the truth or falsity of the assumptions containing them on scientific grounds for, mysteriously being forever semi-propositional, they never have fully determinate truth conditions. To remove the internal inconsistency and vagueness dissolves the concept itself. One sees this in positivism, where such concepts were viewed as nonsense. At the same time, it seems incredible that the conceptual constituents of mysteries don’t somehow represent reality. The species-mind has successfully employed these mysteries in its practical forms of life over its whole history.

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They have the authority of tradition within the manifest image. Is it not therefore reasonable that it be at least possible that such systems of mysterious cultural assumptions reflect what is real, made manifest in these thoughts that emerged within human mind/brains when they first engaged with the selecting environment? If so, then there are possible realities which are mysterious and will forever escape the science-forming capacity. If there are such and they aren’t part of nature – which science can explain – then, to the degree that cultural concepts representing them hint at something real but only partially comprehensible, some relevant mysteries are signs of transcendence. So we must live with relevant mysteries that emerge from our evolved modular nature in its relation to the environmental reality that selected us, and which might point to realities that are not in nature – don’t exist in spacetime – but are nevertheless real. In the consensual nature of many mysteries used in action and communication, we have a Peircean pragmatic warrant of practical and moral efficacy. In other words, quasi-belief, where everybody defers to everybody else, can be the rational warrant of a successful relevant mystery. It is another name for authority in Arendt’s sense. Within the overall history of the species-mind so far, the assumptions of scientific rationality have only had consensual epidemiological success in the realm of what we have come to call “nature”, partly for that reason. In the realm of mysteries, science-like explanations such as behaviourism or positivism have not been successful; cannot be lived. This is a potential “stereoscopic vision”, in Sellar’s words, between the warrants of the scientific and the manifest images of humanity. Structural realism Within the philosophy of science, structural realism is the position that science represents what is real only with respect to those formal mathematical or other structures that survive historical changes in the content of explanations. We are not committed to the reality of the contents of specific theories. Mathematical or logical structure represents reality, although entities probably do not. Thus, it is the mathematics of Newtonian mechanics, relativity and quantum theory, the logic of Darwinian explanation, maybe also principles of relevance – the formal aspects of science that can survive changes in contents ultimately caused by the under-determination of theory by observation – that warrant realistic interpretation (for arguments, see Worrall, 1989 and Ladyman, 1998). It is not clear if structural realism is epistemological or ontological. But this analysis is compatible with Peirce’s views, about the survivability of representations under inquiry, at least the partial cognizability of reality achieved at the end of inquiry, and the reality of generals. As

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Poincare´ put it, we only grasp the relationships of the otherwise incognizable things-in-themselves. Scientific comprehension is partial. Structural realism can figure in two ways in the present inquiry, with a huge caveat. The caveat is that such realism is the more plausible the more formal the structure and the more support there is with respect to predictive success. So it is extremely risky to talk of realism in the relatively non-formalized cognitive sciences like linguistics and psychology, let alone with respect to inquiry into religion. Nevertheless, here are two speculations. First, if anything is real about a theory of religion within the scientific image of humanity, it is likely to be the abstract structural principles that could survive changes within the discipline of psychology. To re-capitulate, these would be: (i) ‘Religion’ is a cultural phenomenon, a quasi-modular learned ensemble of diverse properties originating in different modules and functions of the mind-brain. (ii) One of these structural properties is the goal-directed reasoning of mindreading that automatically generates as a by-product the concept that the maximally relevant way to achieve a goal is in fact the discovery of something objective, the result of the intentional activity of some mind that ‘put it there’. This is the same principle we use in understanding the actions of others and intentional communication, so humans can develop the equivalent of an inter-personal relationship to the regularities of their environment with respect to human goals. This has many further implications. It leads to the thought that the order of nature is mind-like, and all that follows from that. (iii) Another property is the really binding nature of moral law, available to human practical reason requiring the postulation of a free self, and leading to the concept of justice; i.e. a formal ethical theory like Kant’s. This is a rationalization of the logical structure of co-operation itself. Related to this is the structural use of normative dicta to inhibit spontaneous action. (iv) A fourth property is the meta-representational generation of rationalaesthetic concepts; cultural universals, such as SELF or GOD, which purportedly resolve inconsistencies and terminate regressions within the confines of the concept. At the same time these have sufficient logical character to contribute to relevance. If the objects of these concepts are to be treated as other than convenient fictions, they presuppose the reality of the abstract, a transcendental realm outside space-time, a mode of being readily identified with the locus of the moral law and the mindlike intentionality described above. (v) Each religion as an integrated cultural complex has specific contents (gods, laws etc.) realizing the above principles. These are instrumental in

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regulating forms of life and creating types of persons. As we shall see in the next chapter, this variability of content also conveys the social and personal identity of these persons. (vi) The above properties, especially the orientation to reality as it demands certain kinds of inter-personal relations, lead to the cultural development of specifically religious emotions, motivations and dispositions. Secondly, one could propose that (i)–(vi) as an abstract religious structure also represent something objectively real. This might be so because the cultural assumptions of (i)–(vi) lead to adaptive social strategies given human physical and social environments. They create forms of life that cause aggregates of human individuals to thrive by turning them into communities. The alternative interpretation would be that (i)–(vi) are useful illusions that structurally recur within the human mind and achieve their effects simply by accident, or do not have beneficent effect and are actually dysfunctional for human well-being. To summarize the realist option: the assumptions and obligations religion generates in the mind are sufficient to organize and regulate human mental life and behaviour, private and public, in optimal ways for reproducing groups and individuals, although varying from historical context to context. If this is so, we can conjecture that a species disposition for individuals to acquire this quasi-modular cultural content may be an adaptation. The religion cultural complex would relate to what is real to exactly the same extent. The assumptions and obligations do this through the ‘making of persons’ that co-operate in forms of life in normative ways that are adaptive for group and hence individual success. The same abstract structure is also at least partially realized in other cultural forms we don’t call “religion” but share sufficient of the features of the complex to enable successful collective life. They express the disposition in alternative ways. With respect to the supernatural, structural realism relating to religion entails only that the mind quasi-believes the reality of the abstract; for example, the mind-like intentionality of the environment, really binding norms and some rational-aesthetic concepts. Taken in this way, religion is a kind of folk Platonism and philosophical Platonism is rationalized religion, and a denizen of the original/manifest image of humanity, as noted by Sellars. On a structural realist analysis, the content of any particular historical religion doesn’t represent what is real. Nor do its posited supernatural entities exist; e.g. Jupiter, the baals, Krishna, God, Allah, angels, devils, etc. That is why there are so many diverse religious entities and narratives. The cultural complex is under-determined in the sense that there are an open number of alternative systems of assumptions that can culturally realize the abstract structure. As we said, it can be partially satisfied by non-religious cultural

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complexes. Examples are the humanistic or existentialist SELF and the modern concept of the NATION. But for the abstract structure of religion to be instantiated or culturally developed, the possible reality pointed to by its mysterious assumptions must be quasi-believed. So I am proposing that it is not impossible that a non-scientific version of structural realism might hold, but much more weakly, in which the general structure of religion reveals something not only about the adapted mind/brain but about reality itself. Unlike the structural realism appropriate to science, the weaker rational warrant in this case is Peircean pragmatism. This is on the basis that it would be incredible if human beings could thrive individually or socially using relevant mysteries and these not reflect in some way the reality in which the species has found itself. Yet the exact form that the content takes in context is under-determined. The very abstract structures underlying the variable content reflect the reality of how human beings do relate and ideally ought to relate to their environment and each other in order for human groups to thrive. This pragmatic success is the basis of traditional authority. Religions provide a variety of alternative representations that represent this structural reality ‘under different descriptions’, in different respects relevant to different contexts. So conversely, the conclusion must be that although the particular traditional contents are dispensable, no matter how authoritative, their particular description may reveal things about how human beings do relate and ideally ought to relate to their environment that other descriptions do not, within an overall structurally realist framework. The contents of religious representations are under-determined by the huge number of alternative forms of life in which humans can collectively thrive, at least for an historical period, so there is much variation. A religious content dies out when the religious culture of its population is no longer functional for the group; the deepest failure would be that of reproduction but there are other levels of failure. When religious contents are inconsistent with modern science about matters of fact, this must be resolved in favour of science because of the deeper reliability of its method with respect to predictive success. But science in no way excludes the reality of abstract structure. On a Platonist concept of science, it can be said to assume it. This surrender of religion to science is a very exciting prospect for the species-mind. Scientific theory paints a picture which, if structurally real, is truly wonderful and astonishing. It is made even more astonishing by the limits of science, which it marks with its own rational-aesthetic concepts. De-mythologization, or other forms of rationalization, is only necessary where relevant. But where it is relevant the process will inevitably yield extraordinarily rich sets of implicatures. This is similar to the creativity of

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the inconsistencies that arise between religious authoritative traditions, and has been a productive challenge to religious systems with respect to scriptural traditions. But for those concepts in the species-mind’s authoritative traditions which scientific rationality simply cannot assess, cultural universality or epidemiological success, subject to rational criticism, provide the best rational warrant that is possible. It is rational to have faith in such concepts, duly subjected to the wariness of constant inquiry when doubt or moral inconsistency arises. This provides different kinds of rational warrant for assumptions. It thus presents an exciting vision of humanity, which is stereoscopic between scientific and manifest images.

6

Conceptual innovation and revelatory language

Spreading through minds, concepts that are epidemiologically successful originate somewhere. The aim of Chapter 6 is to suggest how conceptual change and innovation occurs, especially with respect to rational-aesthetic concepts at the core of religion. It ends by opening up a broader philosophical response to the general problems posed by religious representations. 6.1

Conceptual and language change

The epidemiology of representations is exciting because it provides the basis for a theory of conceptual change. In doing this, it contributes to the theory of language change with respect to word meaning. The theory of language change has been developing since the nineteenth century, especially with respect to sound and grammar; but much less so with respect to content (see Aitchison, 1991). In my 1998 book, Language and Society, I surveyed language change from a social perspective. Epidemiology of representations suggests new principles for innovation and change over time within a population with respect to semantic content – how word meanings, concepts and hence thoughts, systematically change. What is conceptual change? We need to distinguish conceptual change from other changes in language. Concepts are mental functions which are not per se linguistic. Lexical items are also mental functions but realized in abstract phonological schemas unique to each language. They are the conscious, public face of conceptual addresses, manifested as constituents of sentences uttered in inner speech or public communication. Within a conceptual address, the lexical entry functions as the input–output means in both inner and outer speech. It transmits a concept’s role in a proposition through the words used in a sentence. Because words are the public face of concepts, there will be a dynamic between conceptual and lexical change. For example, borrowing a word from another language, will introduce a new concept. A new concept may be lexicalized in 227

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a new coinage or by adding a new sense to an old word. While new ad hoc concepts and factual information at a conceptual address undergo on-going change, the lexical entry – the actual form of the word in a natural language – is likely to be more stable, although its pronunciation may change quite rapidly. A word’s main senses may also change and alter the logical entry. Although meaning and pronunciation may change with different degrees of rapidity, lexical form, grammatical class and function are more stable. So there are levels of stability with respect to change. Remember a concept is merely an address in memory. Its function is to assemble different kinds of information. For the analysis of conceptual change, changes in everything accessible at the conceptual address need to be considered. They will change in different ways and at different rates. The concept’s logical entry is the contribution that it makes to the construction of the logical form of the utterances in which it occurs. This is its context-independent input to the representation of truth conditions for each propositional form as it is inferentially developed in context. Its logical form is the criteria of identity of a concept. Traditionally, this contribution is what we think of as word-meaning, the sense of a word which at least partially determines its denotation. For the various semantic classes of words, this input has a different form; for example, in the case of natural kinds it is probably a stereotype which triggers merely probabilistic inferences believed, perhaps quite wrongly, to typify the kind. For other types it is a meaning postulate. A change in a concept’s logical entry is in effect semantic change with respect to word meaning as traditionally conceived. The concept’s encyclopaedic entry contains all the assumptions and information about the objects of the concept accessible at the address. Information of this kind changes with each use, constantly modifying the entry. This provides a changing input for new potential inferences from utterances containing the concept and the constant formation of new thoughts. In this special ‘factual assumption’ sense, constant change of information about a concept is its processing history. The entry must also include the memory of narrower or looser ad hoc concepts which form the family constructed in the processing history of the mother concept and expressed through the same superficial lexical item. Encyclopaedia entries are the least stable level with respect to change, as thinking constructs new contexts for action and communication. The encyclopaedia isn’t a place. It refers to this kind of memory – however it is instantiated in the brain. As life is lived, it constantly changes. Its stability is lodged in its innate structure and those non-basic concepts within its assumptions that are the strongest and most accessible, most often used to maximize relevance in action and communication. Large-scale conceptual change occurs when these are replaced or when they drift away through lack of use, their memory fading, a relic meaning.

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Conceptual change therefore is of at least four types arranged in a hierarchy of stability. First, there is the foreground of constant change just described. This turbulence is against a background of more stable belief, Peirce’s great mass of the indubitable. Second, we do find changes in more stable background beliefs. But assumptions at the core of an inferential system or web of belief would be most resistant to revision. Third, there are changes in logical entries; the identity of the concepts themselves. In effect, these third changes invent new non-ad hoc concepts, revisions of a parent concept so members of the same family. If the new concept is lexicalized by the same word, it is a ‘new sense’ of that word. Finally, a new concept can be introduced through learning. These levels of conceptual change clearly interact but I will concentrate below on the third kind of change. Analogies with sound change My claim is that there are relevant analogies between the dynamics of conceptual or semantic change and language change, particularly with respect to social factors. I can only sketch out the basic suggestion here (see Downes, 1998, Chapters 4–7 and references therein). In general, a sound change begins with variability between two or more variants of the same thing in a range of contexts. Change is the transition over time from the one to the other. The previous variant need not disappear. It may survive elsewhere in the language or as an archaism or relic. The innovative variant, destined to replace the original form, doesn’t occur randomly, but varies with the earlier form in a regular way within both linguistic contexts and in the population. For a language change to happen – the variation is not merely random fluctuation – a statistical preference for the new variant over the old must become regular, and take on a definite direction. The change progresses through contexts of use and the population in a wave of change. For some time, the two forms co-exist within individuals and groups. A change is complete if and when the old variant disappears. Translating this into concepts, the generation within a single conceptual address of propositional forms containing new ad hoc concepts, narrowed or loosened variant members of the same family of concepts, provides the variability: as pervasive a fluctuation as in the production of any sound. This serves as the pre-requisite for conceptual change. If a variant is epidemiologically successful – repeated in many minds and strengthened in each mind – this innovation can become coded in a logical entry and make specialized context-independent contributions to truth conditions. When this happens, it has effectively opened a new conceptual address, a descendant of the first. A logical entry is the meaning of a concept, not just a contingently held assumption about the world subject to revision. It can be lexicalized either by

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the same word with a new additional sense, or by a new word. Separate lexicalization gives the concept long-term access to consciousness and reflection within inner speech; a hinge on which to hang assumptions. Consider the concept THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS, arising ad hoc as a narrowing of the prior Jewish concept the GENERAL RESURRECTION. For Christians, the lexical item “resurrection” developed a new meaning, so the Christian community can talk about “The Resurrection” with the sense that it is Jesus who rose. Alternatively, a new coinage is the term “Christian” – first used among the Antioch “Greeks” – a revision of the parent “Jewish”; for example, “the Christian church is the new Israel”. This lexicalized conceptual change manifested a real, and bitter, historical rupture, evident from Paul’s letters and John’s gospel. There are two places where change can be traced: within the history of individual mind/brains and in lineages throughout a population. The iteration of inferential processes governed by relevance generates fractal-like tree structures. First, there are enormous numbers of ad hoc concepts, stored very short term. Under the right conditions, however, the use of one variant spikes, survives and becomes hugely strengthened and accessible because it is a constituent of assumptions repeatedly used in communication. Epidemiological success gives birth to a daughter concept, which spreads. A conceptual change has taken place. A new address with a logical entry has been born, which may become lexicalized. Imagine the multi-dimensional complexity when these processes occur simultaneously over stretches of time in many conceptual lineages in all the encyclopaedias in a population, with each concept potentially inferentially related to many others. No doubt, conceptual change, thus characterized, has a mathematical structure with its bubbles and collapses, changes in rates of change over different time spans, and so on, typical of complex systems. Science is a conscious cultural attempt to control the causes of conceptual change through its universal, because rational, critical method about matters of fact. Internal and external factors in conceptual change Factors explaining language change are both internal and external. Internally, language is a system, so a change in one part affects others. Externally, a language is embedded in a social system and this too affects change. Translating this into conceptual change, the factors include those studied in Chapter 3 that caused epidemiological success. A major internal factor is the degree of conceptual integration, the density of inferential connectedness of the innovation with already established concepts of other types. We saw how THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS was inferentially connected to modular concepts of justice, the pre-existing Pharisee notion of general resurrection,

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the cultural assumption that God’s judgement would vindicate the righteous at the end, Jesus’ eschatological proclamation of God’s kingdom and the widespread expectation of a redeeming messiah. Rational-aesthetic concepts have a function which provides another internal factor in the spread of this type of cultural concept. Unresolved inconsistency is a sign of falsehood within a representational system. So a device which neutralizes inconsistency will be indispensable to a system where these can’t be eliminated, enabling it to process effectively, especially actions. The function of aesthetic concepts is to mysteriously resolve inconsistencies. Therefore, assumptions stored within an aesthetic concept’s address need not be consistent with each other or, in these respects, with assumptions at other addresses. The mind/brain treats these inconsistencies as resolved within the super-ordinate abstract category. This validates assumptions for inferential use, but not contradictory ones in the same process at the same time. Furthermore, if the contributions of these concepts to the truth condition are assumed to be real, the further concept of a transcendental realm is generated in which all the inconsistencies are resolved. Social factors in linguistic and conceptual change If the analogy with sound change has any force, external social factors ought also to have a role in the dissemination of new concepts. In the epidemiology of representations, dissemination was promoted by the use of the new concept in the achievement of relevance in many contexts, introducing social factors. In Downes (1998: 176–232), I report on the interacting social factors which appear to determine linguistic variability. A variable form in which the occurrence of variants is explicable in terms of social factors is called a sociolinguistic variable. The frequency of one variant over another within a population systematically co-varies with a number of social factors. These are: geography, socio-economic class, gender, age, ethnicity, social network and a scale of formal–casual styles defined as the degree of care in selfmonitoring speech. These are the main factors in the social explanation of linguistic change, especially sound change. I will now consider a number of ways in which conceptual change, when involving quasi-beliefs accepted on authority, is equally sensitive to social factors. First, quasi-beliefs enter the mind through communication and are placed under the deferential operator. The source is deferred to because it has the prestige of its position in society. Deference to authority, of persons or of texts such as scriptures, is always normatively prescribed within a social order, including the sacred as the specialized form of religious prestige. Second, rational-aesthetic concepts, especially those at the heart of religion, are central to social identity; including religiously manufactured types of

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personhood. If concepts also convey a social meaning by virtue of where they originate in the social order, then accepting those concepts into the mind is an act of identity. What we assume and communicate doesn’t only convey content, it conveys who we are (Downes, 1998: 272–274). Third, communicative events express position in the social structure. Cultural quasi-beliefs, including mysteries, are used to calculate relevance with respect to these recurrent situations of a person’s form of life. (That’s why these beliefs also express identity.) Therefore these are accepted not because we first believe them, but we believe them under the normative pressure of the social system for uses typifying our group. This is why epidemiologically successful quasibeliefs are so relevant, irrespective of their content. Our social identity, with respect to belief, will in fact be especially expressed through cultural quasibeliefs and mysteries, not through the intuitive beliefs likely to be similar for any normal mind. It is the more variable cultural beliefs that are socially significant. Nevertheless, as we saw, the mind/brain treats mysteries containing rational-aesthetic concepts as pragmatic truths in Pierce’s sense, because of their success in calculating relevance in practical matters. This is especially so when they are used in the formulation of the content of obligations crucial to the form of life which expresses social identity. For example, if someone says they “love” someone else and enter into a relationship on that basis, then certain inferences are warranted about expected behaviour, if the assumption is true. This is the truth, not of an intuitive belief, but of the reality of whatever it is guarantees practical actions of the highest personal importance. The quasi-believer doesn’t fully understand what love is, although they believe that its content consists of truths fully understood by someone. In religion, that someone is the supernatural entity, who is also the guardian of the norms and the dispenser of justice for those who submit to the traditional expectations appropriate to who they are. So personal identity within a form of life is the positive social mechanism by which religion transmits the norms which govern behaviour. A consistent, unspoiled identity is also a form of cultural capital, as we saw with respect to the evolution of moral intelligence. This amplifies the normative pressure that internally arises from the benefits of having a stable, integrated self that is unproblematic. People are like the people they communicate with most frequently. Density of communication leads each one to accommodate to the other’s beliefs, just as we accommodate to other’s speech patterns so that we unconsciously convey, very precisely, degrees of solidarity or distance/power (Downes, 1998: 267–272). Earlier on, we discussed ‘mutuality of cognitive environment’, where it is mutually manifest what assumptions are shared. (In fact, the very structure of communication increases mutuality.) If it is mutually manifest that people share their cognitive environments, especially with respect to

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cultural beliefs, this is part of their shared social identity. But people sometimes aspire to be like those socially different from themselves, who serve as their ‘reference group’. In that case, we get deference to prestige with respect to desired, imagined social identity and, it follows, to the content of the imagined assumptions of the prestigious group. This is the role of fame or celebrity in dissemination and change. I am suggesting that thoughts, like accent or dialect, also convey whatever prestige or stigma is attached to them, and this is related not only to their content, but to what they communicate about identity. Only some beliefs will be especially identity-sensitive, and these will be mysterious quasi-beliefs which can vary between groups. In this sense, to be a member of a social group is not only to speak like a member, but to quasi-believe mysteries like a member. Social class and social network Socio-economic class, as classically employed within sociolinguistics, generates normative pressure sanctioned by prestige or stigma which originates from social position. Class combines education, occupation and income into a scale which measures the place of individuals and groups within the stratification found in complex populations with this kind of differentiation. With respect to accent variation, the sociolinguist William Labov described normative pressure as ‘from above’; both a top down pressure from the upper middle class standard to the strata below them and in what society as a whole consciously considers prestigious, ‘the correct way to speak’ (Downes, 1998: 185–187). The term “correctness” with respect to pronunciation and spelling is the equivalent to “truth” with respect to the prestige of mysterious quasibeliefs. The norms of pronunciation of the upper middle classes in Labov’s sociolinguistic studies normally signal overt prestige for everyone in the society. There was good evidence that as speech became less spontaneous, scores for socially sensitive variables moved towards the norms of this prestige group. Pulling in the opposite direction was covert prestige. In spite of the upper middle class being the transparently prestigious reference group, with respect to correct pronunciation, there was also unconscious loyalty to a speaker’s local vernacular where this was different. The parallel would be covert prestige warranting the truth of the assumptions of sub-cultures, with their own authority, even if the belief was stigmatized by others; for example, ‘the word on the street’, the beliefs of teens or sects, as opposed to those of science, parents or teachers. Normative pressure is exerted via the prestige of beliefs. Cultural belief, especially with respect to those quasi-beliefs that are identity-sensitive, is not only a matter of authority, it is also an act of identity.

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Social class is only one perspective on social structure. Normative pressure is also forcefully transmitted by social network. Originating in sociology, the concept of a social network has been developed within sociolinguistics by Lesley and James Milroy (Milroy, L. 1987; Milroy and Milroy, 1978). Individuals have social networks. It is the set and kinds of transactions into which they enter. To study this provides a social map of the kinds of face-toface relationships that exist within a community and from which generalizations can be drawn. The investigator records with whom each individual interacts, face-to-face. This is the individual’s first-order zone. The further persons with whom all those in the first order interact is the individual’s second-order zone, termed “friends of friends”. If need be, higher-order zones can be established. There are two relevant properties of the networks established in this way. An individual’s network is dense to the degree that the persons in the network also independently interact with each other. A network is uniplex if the basis of the relationship is only on one dimension; e.g. they are all neighbours or in the same congregation. A network is multiplex if the network relationships have multiple bases; e.g. not only neighbourhood, but sport, religion, job, kinship. Milroy and Milroy (1992) describe a measure of network strength. Networks are strong if they are dense and multiplex; otherwise they are weak. Quantitative network scores can be determined, not only for individuals, but for groups. To the degree that a group’s social networks are strong, it consists of individuals who mutually interact on a large number of different dimensions. To the degree that a group is typified by weak social networks, individuals have wider sets of social relationships with people who don’t interact with each other, dealing with the others on a single dimension; e.g. at work, but not at church. It is obvious that there is a correlation between strong networks and strong norm enforcement, relatively resistant to outside pressure. Conversely, individuals in groups with weak networks will be more open to normative influences from outside their group. If it is correct that normative pressures affect belief via identity, individuals are subject to diverse pressure from different sources. There is super-ordinate pressure ‘from above’ that intersects with pressures which arise from the individual’s own face-to-face network. For example, pressure ‘from above’ is transmitted through the epistemic authority of a teacher or priest. Strong networks generate pressure ‘from below’, from family or peers. Milroy and Milroy (1992) correlated network strength and social class within a stratified modern society. They found that the traditional urban working class, communities such as those in Belfast – the city they studied – were typified by locally based and relatively high network strength. By contrast, the middle classes had relatively weak networks. Milroy and Milroy (1992: 19f.) also aligned network strength with differing ways of life. This result suggests that

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middle-class individuals would be much more susceptible to normative pressure from outside their group; for example, from the media or education. And they would also be in daily contact with a wider group of individuals, who are otherwise not in contact with each other, which might transmit both outside norms and new ideas. Acts of identity reflect the focusing of these diverse pressures and their manifestation. This is not only in the speech produced by a mind/brain, but in its beliefs, in cognitive epistemology. 6.2

Moral and social critique

We have now assembled a number of ways in which belief and inquiry can be blocked and distorted. This is not a matter of coercion. In any case, coercion mainly affects how belief is manifested in public. There are not only the wellknown frailties of reason, for example, assessing risk, but Carruthers (2006: 179–184) notes that there is little reason to believe the mind/brain has an automatic self-monitoring capacity ‘to monitor, troubleshoot, intervene in, and improve our own modular processes on-line’ or to consciously analyse mistakes in reasoning. Furthermore, citing reviews in Gazzaniga (1998) and Wilson (2002), he notes ‘that many of our beliefs about the thought processes that cause our own behaviour are actually confabulated’ because consciousness has a simplified view of the mind. Now, we can add to this that contents have social meanings originating in social structure, so that identity affects belief. Ideological contents are admitted to the mind by virtue of their social meaning. Within both society and the individual there are conflicting normative pressures from different sources. Some come from above in the society; the press, education, church. Some come from within one’s social network; the family and peer group. Therefore, almost all cultural concepts and reflective beliefs are potential sites of social conflict, as argued by Volishinov (1973). This potentiality for distortion emphasizes the importance of critique. Science has become the primary method by which belief is rationally disciplined with respect to facts of nature, including human nature. Moral and social critique is equivalent. It is the use of reason in order to discipline cultural beliefs, especially mysteries basic to forms of life. Moral and social criticism is inextricable. All moral judgements are about the cultural contents of social life and all judgements about what goes on in society evaluate what kind of norms motivate the action and communication. Here, I will discuss the critique of religions. But the same analysis also applies to all social critique. We have said that the inconsistency between the religious traditions in inter-cultural contact ought to generate rational doubt and lead to inquiry. In considering structural realism, I argued that the only defensible realityclaims that a religion can make are at the most abstract level. This is because

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all the religions are contextual variations of an adaptive structure that arises naturally within the human mind. If religions are to be realistically understood it is at this level. This means that the actual semantic contents of the historical religious beliefs are variables which express identities, somewhat like sociolinguistic variables. If contents are variables manifesting identity, under what condition is critique of religion triggered? It shouldn’t be triggered just by inconsistencies between religions. Debates that decide between between religious contents can’t be resolved. The only inconsistencies that could be resolved are those in which an assumption or obligation which purported to be religious was inconsistent with the very structure of religion. Within this set, the only inconsistencies that all minds are rationally obliged to criticize are assumptions or obligations that appear to violate universal moral principles which can be derived from the abstract structure of religion. Originating from modular-based moral intelligence, these rational principles are only consciously accessible through language. Social critique has the same basis. If there is no moral violation, the contents of norms are just variations expressing cultural identity and there is no basis for criticizing them, except in factual terms to do with practical efficiency. This means that minds are rationally obliged to resist within themselves the normative pressures of the social order if these are perceived to be moral violations – for example, of the Golden Rule. Blocks on inquiry whether due to claims of authority or coercion also violate morality because they block the freedom of thought necessary for understanding not only nature, but rationalized moral obligations and how to carry them out. The conclusion is that all criticism of a religion’s cultural content has its only valid basis in perceived violations of moral-normative intelligence and its rational elaborations. Therefore, critique is moral critique. This is the external application in the public sphere of the same process of moral inhibition we saw internally exercised within the individual mind at the end of Chapter 2. Of course, the ‘external’ application of de-coupled moral critique can be applied to one’s own actions, both retrospectively and in imagining scenarios during planning. There are three phases in critique. They apply to public representations or actions; for example, witnessing an act of bullying, reflecting upon it and critically intervening in an optimal way. (Or if one has ‘found oneself’ a bully, without realizing it, due to one’s social role.) (1) In the first phase, by analogy with politeness, we assume cognitive mutuality with the actor or communicator unless we perceive or infer an inconsistency with respect to some moral assumption/obligation. (2) In the second phase, we take this inconsistency as relevant to critique because it appears to be evidence of moral non-mutuality with the actor or communicator. We distance ourselves, cease to accommodate to the

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potential violator. The mind de-couples and reflects, constructing a context in which the relevance of the action or communication to moral principles, maxims, dicta, etc. is calculated. (3) The third phase is that of analysis. The critic calculates that the underlying reason for the perceived moral violation lies in some function that the violation serves and that explains it. The violation can be weighed or evaluated with respect to its function. Since violations are part of a perpetrator’s social role or identity, it is not obvious that violators consciously understand how their action or communication might relate to rationalized moral imperatives. If asked, they might assume that ‘It’s right because everybody’s doing it’ or ‘I was just doing what I was told’ or weighing the violation against the function, they may claim that it is ‘a necessary evil’ warranted as a means to a good end. They may slide into violation by being obedient to authority in Arendt’s sense. To positively embrace what one’s own mind judges a serious moral violation involves selfconsciousness in contradiction. Although there may be some sense of ‘knowing and not knowing’, there is an effort to keep violations irrelevant in public and private reflection. Ideology, covering over violation or rationalizing it, serves this function. The violating content is hidden. In public language, violations are often made manifest indirectly, through style, the way the representation is worded; e.g. a style which de-personalizes others or controls the other through definitional aggression. Hence, violation is deniable. Bullies, for example, don’t admit to it. (Bullying is usually both unconscious and stylistically elaborated.) Habermas (1970) suggests that ‘systematically distorted communication’ has characteristic symptoms and critical discourse analysts have attempted to make manifest the unconscious ideological function of stylistic choices (Downes, 1998: 412–414 and references). In Habermas’ later work, the bureaucratic imperatives that follow from purposive rationality invade the ‘life world’ with its normative ideal, originating in Peirce’s thought, of non-coercive dialogue between rational communicators leading to consensus (Habermas, 1984, 1989). Such criticism is emancipatory. It defuses the cognitive effects of coercion or illegitimate authority. The religious contents that survive such on-going critique must be those that can be interpreted as making manifest the underlying structure of religion discussed above, if it is to be realistically understood at all. If critique is public, then there is the potential for dialogue about the lack of mutuality perceived by the critic and the reasons that might explain it, its covert function. The violation is brought to public consciousness. Perhaps consensus will be reached. After all, the substrate of moral and general intelligence, that is, reason, is identical for all inquirers, barring psycho-pathology. If, as is usual, critical inquiry is blocked – because the critique is taken as a challenge to the

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violator’s very identity – the rationale for the violation is still defused in the critic’s mind and in the public sphere: doubt is sown. This critical process is the only way that moral inconsistencies between historic religious traditions can be decided – where anything significant is at stake between the contents of the traditions. That religions are inconsistent, far from being a bad thing, is the key trigger to this critical judgement. As we saw in Chapter 2, it inhibits one’s own potential violations, if moral disposition is strong enough. And, now we see the same disposition in the political sphere in the form of critique. Moral training, in strengthening obligations and the more or less rationalized assumptions of the moral law, creates a more accessible context for moral evaluation, less easily overcome by desire, less susceptible to self-deception. Moral training and education within religion, or its humanistic equivalents, create contexts which repeatedly strengthen dispositions, through reflective beliefs and their use in moral reasoning; dicta like the Golden Rule, the Buddha’s Four Noble Truths, The 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, narratives like the Good Samaritan or the crucifixion-resurrection, discussions of today’s moral problems within a Saturday afternoon Talmud study group, etc. I end this part with a speculation on how moral and social critique might put factual assumptions about human beings to the test, even though it is science, not critique, which disciplines beliefs about matters of fact. If universal moral law determinable by reason represents something real, then a proposed social or other fact that disables any rational moral agent from determining or acting upon their duty or causes them to suffer a moral violation, ought not to be true, on pain of contradiction. To the degree that fact is a social fact, then moral agents are obliged to try to change it – in other words social science is dynamic, the facts which are its object subject to change. However, if the fact in question is biological or psychological, and it has the above effects, it contradicts rationalized moral law manifested in critical reflection. If moral and scientific laws both represent reality, one or the other must be false. (Examples might be the scientific hypotheses that moral freedom is illusory or which rationalize racism.) In this light, science has grounds to be suspicious of any purported fact that ought not to be true because of its implications for universal moral law. One or the other must be ideology. Conversely, the long retreat of religion with respect to science is wholly beneficent when it disciplines religion to facts which lead to the discovery of what could be structurally real or pragmatically true in religion – so it might confront what is real in the human condition with faith which has, as far as is possible, a rational consistency with what can be naturalized. This project could clarify more exactly the leap of faith, for example, with respect to relevant mysteries like HUMAN RIGHTS, FREE WILL, or MORAL LAW.

6.3 Conceptual innovators and early adopters

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Conceptual innovators and early adopters

Conceptual content is always full of unpredictable fluctuation as ad hoc concepts are constructed. This is the equivalent on the level of meaning to the variation that is the pre-requisite of sound change. But variation does not itself constitute conceptual change. In the words of founders of modern dialectology, Weinreich, Labov and Herzog (1968: 187), ‘Linguistic change is not to be identified with random drift proceeding from inherent variation . . . change begins when the generalization of a particular alteration in a given subgroup of the speech community assumes direction and takes on the character of orderly differentiation.’ Under what conditions does this arise? A key external condition with respect to sound change is stress on social identity. Labov (1972: 178) emphasizes that to the degree that they are susceptible to social explanation, socially sensitive linguistic variables assume an orderly character, identifiable as a change, faced with a challenge to social identity. How does this relate to conceptual change? Accent or dialect variation doesn’t directly impact on conceptual content, but is connected. A challenge to beliefs – from their relative failure or from another social group or demographic change – also challenges social identity. Beliefs, like accents, dialects and standard languages, are also markers of identity. Thus, the things that challenge social identity and motivate sound changes are challenges to the way of life associated with the identity and hence its assumptions. On the conceptual level, the irritation of doubt is the form stress takes and doubt arises in various ways. Change in assumptions in response to doubt imply change in practices and communication, ways of life, in a way that sound changes do not, so challenge dense and multiplex social networks and put innovative individuals at risk. Yet a social order needs these individuals. Conceptual change is riskier than phonetic change. Perhaps critique of concepts and the practices that they warrant is the greatest stress of all, morally challenging both conceptual contents and the social identity of those criticized. There has been controversy within sociolinguistics over the social characteristics of individuals who are the source of innovation with respect to sound change. I ask the same question with respect to conceptual innovation, especially in religion. Who are the innovators who initiate conceptual change? Milroy and Milroy (1985) and James Milroy (1992) have developed a theory of innovation with respect to language change (see Downes, 1998: Chapter 7, esp. 253–257). One insight is that weak social network ties foster innovation. They are the conduits by which cultural influences move between more tightly knit groups. This dovetails with William Labov’s claim that innovations originate, not from the highest and lowest tiers of society, but

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from its middle strata. The middle class has weaker network strength. By contrast, stronger network ties foster conservatism and resistance to outside influences: ‘no strong tie can be a bridge’ (Milroy and Milroy, 1985: 365). In conceptual terms, strong network ties are better transmitters of authority. An innovator is likely to be less tightly integrated. This is an individual who has a multiplicity of one-dimensional relationships of distinct kinds with a diversity of people who themselves don’t interact with each other. Such individuals, subject to less face-to-face normative pressure than those more socially integrated, are more open to new ideas. They are less integrated because they participate in contexts involving a wider diversity of information sources from outside their core group. One can see how those who were brought up in trading circles might fit the bill as innovators in a society under stress with respect to identity; for example, the orphan Muhummad raised by his uncle and brought into contact with Jewish and Christian concepts. But how could innovations introduced by less integrated individuals be accepted into the minds of those with high network strength, the core of tight-knit communities? James Milroy’s solution is to separate innovators from early adopters. Although innovators initiate the change, perhaps introducing a variant from outside, the innovation is taken up by more tightly integrated early adopters, after it percolates around on the margins of the adopting group and becomes familiar. The early adopters in turn disseminate the innovation through their strong networks. James Milroy (1992: 182) notes that such innovations will only be taken up by early adopters if it is in their interest to do so. With respect to concepts, new beliefs containing the innovation will be accepted if they have those features which contribute to epidemiological success. But we can now add an extra reason for the relevance of the new conceptual variant. It is also a revision of identity in response to stress. It is clear that the founders represented in the scriptural traditions of the great world religions can be historically interpreted in terms of this analysis of conceptual innovation. This is true where we know the historical founders: Jesus of Nazareth, Paul of Tarsus, Muhammad, Joseph Smith, Siddha¯rtha Gautama – the Buddha. It is also true where biographies are less reliable: Moses and the Old Testament prophets like Hosea, or the forest Sages who were foundational for the Upanishadic tradition in Hinduism. In each case, there is evidence that the social order and identity were under particular stress. The innovation is also often motivated by prophetic moral critique of the responses to the conceptual crisis of identity. I will focus on facts that are widely accepted as genuinely historical. Jesus was initially active in rural Galilee, where he was from, not the Jewish heartland of Judea and Jerusalem. He is first identified in the context of John the Baptist, an itinerant charismatic who operated at the geographical margins of mainstream Judaism, ‘a voice crying in the wilderness’. The Baptist’s

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prophetic message was eschatological and so is Jesus’ preaching. This eschatological message is shared with the Essenes, and both groups are marginal to the mainstream Pharisees and Sadducees. Jesus was also an itinerant charismatic and a healer, purposely always on the move. He scandalized the orthodox by associating with tax collectors and sinners. He was rejected by the Nazareth synagogue and appears alienated from his family who are at first concerned for his sanity. He later explicitly rejects his own and all family ties. In short, the gospels portray the mainstream groups of Judaism as Jesus’ enemies. Among the early adopters, it is Paul of Tarsus who is the greatest disseminator. Trained in Pharisee theology in Jerusalem at the school of Gam, he is both a devout Jew of the diaspora and a Roman citizen. His mission successfully elaborates and adapts the new concepts which interpret the meaning of Jesus’ life in a way that promotes wide dissemination. And he does so outside Palestine, through the diaspora synagogues of the Hellenistic world beginning in Antioch, among other Hellenized Jews and proselytes, gentiles in the process of converting to Judaism. In terms of social identity, Paul’s assumptions are very much in the interests of the latter. He offers gentiles full access to a Judaism transformed and without its ethnic, ritual demands. It is in Antioch we see this new conceptual identity first lexicalized as “Christian”. Paul’s relation to ritually impure gentiles is the source of his conflict with the Jerusalem early adopters, whose dissemination within the home group is comparatively unsuccessful. The basic controversy is about the socio-historical identity of those who embrace the innovations. Are they Jews? I needn’t stress here the other ferocious pressures on Jewish identity in first-century Palestine, threatened by a Hellenism that had long co-opted the urban elite, now combined with Roman rule. These challenges to ‘who one is’, evoked extreme, violent zealotry. This historical scenario almost exactly matches the social network model of innovation and early adoption. How do such innovators relate to genuine traditional authority? If they defer to the tradition, innovators usually claim that its meaning has been corrupted. They are engaged in moral critique which sees the problems of the tradition as the prime cause of the crisis of identity. They take personal responsibility for innovative assumptions in the new, stressed context in which the tradition must be applied. Since the new assumptions are mysterious to the innovator’s mind, they must be embedded somehow under the deferential operator. But since they arise, not from the usual authorities, but within the innovator’s own mind, to whom is deference owed? How can the deferential operator be discharged? The inner conviction must be that they are a revelation from a supernatural entity, or at the very least an insight emerging from the intentional structure behind reality.

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This is the basis for individual as opposed to institutional or traditional authority in religion. It is what Weber calls charismatic authority. He writes: Charisma knows only inner determination and inner restraint. The holder of charisma seizes the task that is adequate for him and demands obedience and a following by virtue of his mission. His success determines whether he finds them. His charismatic claim breaks down if his mission is not recognized by those to whom he feels he has been sent. If they recognize him, he is their master – so long as he knows how to maintain recognition by ‘proving’ himself. But he does not derive his ‘right’ from their will, in the manner of an election. Rather, the reverse holds: it is the duty of those to whom he addresses his mission to recognize him as their charismatically qualified leader. (Weber, 1918/1991: 246–247)

Religious charisma does not occur in a vacuum. One very striking thing is how charismatic innovation emerges from a narrative, the life of the charismatic as their mind struggles both with their conceptual response to the stressed social context and acts of leadership required to initiate dissemination to early adopters. Often the innovative mind resists the prophetic role that appears communicated by external events or inner thoughts, the ‘call’ within their life story. Charismatic authority is itself acted out within historical context. Thus Jesus’ call and innovations stem from within his Jewish tradition – the kingdom of God is at hand – but what he does and what happens to him is also revelatory. As a charismatic, he speaks with personal authority, not the authority of training or learning: ‘and immediately on the sabbath he entered the synagogue and taught. And they were astonished at his teaching, for he taught as one who had authority, and not as the scribes’ (Mk.1: 21b-22). But he is very careful when challenged by the established custodians of the tradition, ‘the chief priests and the scribes with the elders’: ‘Tell us by what authority you do these things, or who it is that gave you that authority?’ (Lk. 20: 1b-2; Mt.21: 23-27; Mk.11: 27-33). He claims the same ultimate authority as the Baptist: that is, the historical institution of prophecy. After the resurrection, Jesus’ authority changes – it is no longer prophetic charisma. The representation of his person becomes supernatural. He is transformed into the Christ, and the eternal Logos, or ‘word’ of God. Muhummad is The Prophet. As Rahman (1979: 50–53) says, Muhummad’s authority is viewed as the final culmination of the whole lineage of JudeoChristian prophecy. It is validated by the utterances of God; re-establishing anew the authority of revelatory tradition. The Prophet himself distinguished Qur’anic pronouncements, of whose words he was only the transmitter, from his own contextual decisions. Nevertheless, the Qur’an grew in response to events in The Prophet’s life, and for the immediate “Companions of The Prophet”, his biography clearly had the force of authority, as his life still does for Muslims.

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Authority in South Asia is different, because the ancient lineages of religious insight are different. From the earliest times there were sages, rishis, to whom the truths, shruti, were revealed, recorded in the Vedic scriptures and the Upanishads; the respective bases of sacrificial Brahminism and explicatory, philosophical concepts. There is the parallel tradition of yoga, of withdrawal and meditation, the holy form of life of those who strive. It consists of disciplined techniques of mental control with the sole goal of developing liberating insight, ‘wisdom’, through one’s own efforts, guided by a guru (Eliade, 1964). In the heavily mythologized biography of the Buddha, he leaves society and becomes one who strives. Famously, under the Bodhi Tree, he achieves ‘enlightenment’ or ‘awakening’, bodhi. It is nirva¯na – actual transformation by insight into the real goal of life. Gautama becomes The Buddha, the Enlightened One, founding his charismatic authority. Later, the notion of Buddha-hood becomes a ‘type of supernatural saviour’ whose sole goal is to help suffering others to likewise awaken. 6.4

Innovation and revelation Prophecy and intermediation

The personal authority of actual world-religious innovators lies in a role originating in ancient traditions with recognized contexts for religious innovation. Yoga with its forest-dwelling seeker/sage may originate in the preAryan Indus valley civilization, pre-dating Vedic religion. In the Western Judeo-Christian-Islamic tradition, we find revelatory prophecy, an ecstatic state which is one way the supernatural communicates with humanity. Although the patriarchs of the Torah are in constant contact with God, the first reference to an institution of prophecy in the Old Testament is in 1 Samuel 10. Samuel anoints Saul as the first King of Israel and reveals to him three signs ‘that the LORD has anointed you to be prince over his heritage’. Of the signs, the third is said to be that, ‘you will meet a band of prophets (nabi’im) coming down from the high place with harp, tambourine, flute and lyre before them, prophesying. Then the spirit of the Lord will come mightily upon you, and you shall prophesy with them and be turned into another man.’ Jesus’ prophetic selection falls within this tradition, an ecstatic experience at his baptism by John: ‘And when he came up out of the water, immediately he saw the heavens opened and the Spirit descending upon him like a dove’ (Mk.1: 10). The Spirit then drives him into the wilderness, to fast and be tested in preparation for his mission. Given the antiquity and ubiquity of prophetic traditions, it has been widely suggested that there is historical continuity between the shaman of the primal religions, the forms of life of hunter-gathers, and the founders of the prophetic

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world religions that emerged with larger scale social organization (Thrower, 1999: 14). Robert Wilson, surveying anthropological literature on prophetic figures in Prophecy and Society in Ancient Israel (1980: 28), concludes: ‘Because the prophet, shaman, medium and diviner are all characterized by the fact that in some way they serve as intermediaries between the human and divine worlds, we will use the term “intermediary” to refer collectively to all of them.’ He excludes mystics from the category, because their private experience lacks widespread public effect. Presumably one can likewise exclude vision quests once undertaken by aboriginal youths as a personal rite of passage under shamanistic guidance. Although intermediaries often have a susceptibility to enter and the ability to control trance and come to exhibit stereotyped action routines that culturally convey involvement with the supernatural, they are not mentally ill. In fact in central possession cults they are usually well-adjusted people of above average intelligence. Intermediaries often originate in peripheral parts of society, or are peripheral individuals. The ecstatic roots of biblical prophecy, as ‘basically uncontrolled and perhaps unconscious revelatory experience’, was first proposed by the German scholar Gustav Ho¨lscher (Wilson, 1998: 218). Wilson (1980: 28–32) points out, first, that for intermediation to occur there are four social presuppositions: first, that society must believe in supernatural powers; second, that ‘those powers can influence earthly affairs and can in turn be directly influenced by human agents’; third, that intermediation is ‘viewed positively and . . . their specific actions are encouraged or at least tolerated’; and, finally, that social conditions call for intermediation. Intermediation is needed to conserve social stability by enabling the groups within the social order to deal with their individual and collective stresses. In societies that meet these conditions and where mediation has this positive role, there are traditions of selection and training. Thrower (1999: 15) notes that shamans are trained to induce trance, see and interpret visions and cure illness – a transmission of the authority of tradition. These techniques can be complex and the apprenticeship lengthy. Even though they are peripheral, successful intermediaries must have a support group that believes in them, no matter how small. ‘There can be no socially isolated intermediaries’ (Wilson, 1980: 30). Presumably, that’s why Saul encountered a ‘band of prophets’, why Jesus sought support from his twelve core apostles, later extended to a wider group of disciples, why the core ‘Companions of The Prophet’, then the growing umma of believers. There are two standard strategies by which the altered mental state implementing the process of intermediation is culturally interpreted. There is possession in which the supernatural is in contact with or actually penetrates the intermediary’s mind, and spirit travel, in which the mind leaves the body and enters the supernatural realm; sometimes assisted by a spirit guide. With

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respect to the latter, here are the words of an aboriginal shaman, holy woman and healer, Marı´a Sabina, a Mazatec from the village of Huautla de Jime´nez in Mexico, who is cited in Joan Halifax’s (1979) survey of visionary narratives, Shamanic Voices. Marı´a Sabina employs the traditional sacred mushroom, her companion, as access to the other world. She describes the supernatural world, then spirit travel with the aid of spiritual guides. There is a world beyond ours, a world that is far away, nearby, and invisible. And that is where God lives, where the dead live, the spirits and the saints, a world where everything has already happened and everything is known. That world talks. It has a language of its own. I report what it says . . . .The sacred mushroom takes me by the hand and brings me to the world where everything is known. It is they, the sacred mushrooms, that speak in a way I can understand. I ask them, and they answer me. When I return from the trip I have taken with them, I tell what they have told me and what they have shown me. (Halifax, 1979: 131)

Creativity and innovation in religious imagination Innovative concepts and thoughts involving them exhibit creativity. Technically speaking, “creativity” applied to the human mind/brain describes the generation of an infinite output of representations from finite but recursive systems. It then includes the use of these to create a potentially infinite number of contexts in which maximal relevance can be achieved in processing inputs, but in new ways not obviously or transparently predictable from past experience. Furthermore, Carruthers (2006: 277) defines creative reasoning as ‘constituted (at least in part) by a capacity to combine ideas in novel ways in abstraction from any immediate environmental stimulation’. His theory of creativity envisages it as an adult development of childhood pretend play. What is created and rehearsed are novel action schemata (Carruthers, 2006: 304–305; for a full discussion of cognition and creativity see his Chapter 5). I suggest that the practical creativity of a system should be looked for in its context construction in the face of new input, either from outside or inside the system. New input is processed by constructing a new context – one that yields maximal relevance – from representations already in the system, manifest and accessible according to their degree of strength based on past use. Novel representations will be those created ad hoc from mere logical possibility, developed, as we saw, by altering the most accessible representations in the data-base in order to achieve relevance. The development of an ad hoc conceptual variant enters into interpretation under the pressure of processing for maximal relevance; variously achieved by narrowing, loosening and abstraction, resemblance and analogy, and the synthesis of what is inconsistent. So the search for maximum relevance is the mechanism that

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causes innovation, as we saw in the example of THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS. Creativity thus pervades human processing. Ad hoc representations provide the variability which is the basis of conceptual change, as discussed in Section 6.1. But this only becomes creative culturally, when it disseminates and become a conceptual change. I would propose that the most creative new representations in a culture, at whatever level of abstraction, will be those in response to new internal or external input which is stressful; just as we saw in the case of sound change. This is because it involves rehearsing how to achieve a problematic or frustrated goal, invokes a mystery containing internal inconsistencies, or is problematically inconsistent with obligations, representations of self or person or factual assumptions. Conscious creativity will be experienced in response to problem contexts when, naturally or culturally, they become acute or relevant enough to ‘shout loudest’ for attention, but it is possible that creative processing in action schemata is also unconscious. Novel action schemata are constructed with input from the visual and other sensory systems, in ways detached from immediate experience, as maximally relevant responses to such problems. This processing must be in accord with the cognitive principle of relevance. Imagined ad hoc schemata are a form of creative context construction which can represent problems in sensory terms; mirroring experience with all its affective/ motivational and normative complexity. These imaginings in response to stress can be called “speculative contexts”. Consider imagining oneself as becoming, or confronting, a satyr-like creature, part human part non-human, within the context of an action schemata, the ad hoc sensory imagining of some problem of human animality processed for maximal relevance. What ad hoc concepts, developed by altering what is already assumed about this problem, will grasp this image? Or, reflect on the amazing, communal, speculative contexts created by imagining The Bacchae by Euripides. This makes manifest the consequences – dismemberment by the frenzied women of your own community – for those who violate the norms of the correct relationship to reality as manifested in the demands of a rational-aesthetic concept, imagined as the hypnotic, androgynous, horned DIONYSOS. Even today, these images and words call forth further innovative ad hoc cultural concepts which address highly relevant inter-modular mysteries arising from the interaction of nature, gender, affectivity, morality and rationality in social contexts. Following Carruthers (2006: 304–312), a basic type of speculative context in which creativity occurs involves inner speech. Language makes manifest in the utterances of inner speech the concepts evoked by the imagined scenarios, and further develops them, because it consciously unites inter-modular information. This seems natural in considering the above examples. But I suggest

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‘imagination’ can also be solely linguistic, an arena of words. For example, my reflection on the metaphysical problem of ‘things-in-themselves’ was conducted in a speculative language context in which rational-aesthetic concepts could be entertained in imagination and developed in an ad hoc way. Applying this view of creativity to religious imagination more generally, speculative context is provided by the infinite potential for the mind/brain to generate, with respect to each of its goals, corresponding supernatural entities or powers which appear to intend the maximally relevant paths to those human goals, as proposed in Chapter 2. The door opens to an imagined ‘other world’ in which the religious mind attempts to grasp those powers and the reality only they know; which, as we saw in Chapter 3, is mysterious to the human mind/brain. The self interacts and engages in dialogue with those intentional entities and attempts in imagined action schemata, speculative contexts, to work out maximally relevant ‘paths up the hill’ – no matter how abstract or rationalized – resolving inconsistencies and regressions through questions and answers, envisaging possible revisions to goals, explaining the past, seeing ways forward, predicting. This is creative ad hoc content interpreted as revelation and we can now understand this as a technical term. Experiences of possession and spirit travel, such as those described by Marı´a Sabina, as well as dreams and absorbed imaginative states, provide the context for interaction, which is then subject to systems of interpretative reflection. As we said above, the interactions, no matter how strange, will be governed by both the cognitive and communicative relevance principles and, like any interaction, have affective/motivational impact, but much heightened by the status of the supernatural powers. The novel ad hoc concepts and thoughts can be made manifest linguistically within imagined speech, developed into mysterious semi-propositions containing innovative rational-aesthetic concepts with indeterminate or contradictory truth conditions only fully comprehensible to supernatural minds. Such mysterious semipropositions could only be satisfied by realities within an abstract realm or mode of being. If they are taken realistically by a community of imaginative inquirers, then a supernatural realm, or some future actuality, is necessarily presupposed in which they are true. There is a great diversity of what are called in the literature, altered states of consciousness (ASCs), experiences that are not those of ‘an adult normally awake’. These are all a form of de-coupling from actuality, the world of everyday experience, intuitive beliefs and factual assumptions (for a survey, see Blackmore (2005: 99–115). She writes, ‘we all know that it feels different from normal to be drunk or delirious with fever, and we may guess . . . that it feels different again to be high on drugs, or to be in a mystical state’. Of course, to dream, to pretend play, and to fantasize action schemata are the most familiar ASCs, perhaps because they are innate and universal. There

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are other more cultural states of consciousness which are not those of an adult normally awake; hypnosis, meditation, absorption in virtual worlds or games, and even ‘brainstorming sessions’ in research. Religious ASCs are intended to be taken seriously, as communicating revelations. For example, Burkert (1985: 161–162) remarks that Dionysian intoxication or religious madness – mania – is interpreted as the ‘irruption of something divine’ and ‘denotes frenzy, not as the ravings of delusion, but . . . as an experience of intensified mental power’. A somewhat similar altered state or ‘mood’ is described by Paul Vale´ry (1961: 57–60) in his essay ‘Poetry and abstract thought’ in which he writes that in poetic states he found himself ‘jolted out of my habitual states of mind’ and in a state akin to dreaming, in which concepts of ordinary things, external and internal, are musicalized, as he puts it, into new relationships by ‘general sensibility uncontrolled . . . by our specialized senses’. In Western antiquity, of course, poetic states are interpreted as a gift of the Muses. In religious contexts, as opposed to literary, the visions aren’t taken as fictions. Shamans are not insincere, although descriptions of them sometimes reveal something of child-likeness or charlatanism. Their intensified mental powers reveal mysteries urgently relevant to community and action in a quite literal way – like Paul on the road to Damascus. The study of poetic, religious and other altered states and their relation to what has been traditionally called “imagination” is comparatively undeveloped, although cognitive science creates new opportunities for understanding this aspect of the mind/brain’s creativity. However, one cognitive theory that recognizes alternative forms of consciousness is Colin Martindale’s (1981) Cognition and Consciousness. Martindale (1981: 296f.) distinguishes a continuum of types of conscious thinking with two poles: primary process thinking and secondary process thinking. The secondary pole is the ‘logical, realistic thought of adult wakefulness’ which ‘takes external evidence into account’ and ‘makes correct logical inferences’. This is the kind of thought we have considered in this book; science its most disciplined form. By contrast, primary processes do not take external reality into account, nor use conventional logic. Dreams illustrate this pole. He arranges states of consciousness on a scale from waking problem oriented thought (whose output feeds into the goal-directed hierarchical organized action system) all the way to dreaming. They can be thought of as stages in the process of falling asleep: waking normality, realistic fantasy, autistic fantasy, reverie, hypnogogic states, and dreaming. Falling asleep is a passage from secondary to primary modes of thought. Realistic fantasy, like play, involves day-dream-like thought, with scenarios connected to reality (clearly in the arena of imagined action schemata). Autistic fantasies are those with less connection to reality. In reverie, we get free association with little narrative structure. Hypnogogic

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hallucinations are moments when it is unclear whether an image is real or not. We could add to Martindale’s list, epideictic images like a child’s imaginary friends, or within post-traumatic states, out-of-body experiences and so on. Martindale (1981: 296–325) goes on to develop a theory of how primary and secondary processes differ, the properties of primary processes and their representations, and how they are commonly induced. Relevance theory is in essence a theory of attention. Normal secondary processes are those where conscious attention is focused using short-term memory. In our terms, relevance is maximized in the processing required to achieve higher-level goals: for example, practical reasoning or comprehending a communication or sensory stimuli. We have described this abstractly in terms of rational inference. In secondary processes, one or two parts of the cognitive system seize attention and this inhibits the other parts. By contrast, according to Martindale, in primary processes attention becomes unfocused and there is detachment from higher-level goals and the action system. Perception also gets detached from both goals and external sensory input and ‘cognitive units are more equally activated . . . relatively equal activation of cognitive units and low levels of lateral inhibition account for the characteristics of primary process thinking’. Eventually, one might get complete equalization of cognitive activity. Lowering of lateral inhibition is produced either by low levels of arousal, as in meditation, or very high arousal, as in ecstatic frenzy. There are many techniques that induce primary processes. One is to restrict the sensory environment. Normal subjects, isolated in sound-proof, dark, conditions, report hallucinations in a few hours. They also experience what Martindale calls ‘stimulus hunger’: they crave and focus on even the smallest and most trivial stimulus. Another is through adapting or ‘fatiguing’ cognitive units through prolonged or repetitive or intense stimulation; or through simultaneously activating incompatible units. It is easy to see how each of these can be accounted for by relevance theory. For example, repetition of the same input in the same context over and over to the exclusion of all else would rapidly lead to its loss of relevance. Without any new impact on the cognitive environment, the processing would lose its point. How could ASCs – now understood as primary processes of thought – lead to the creative formation of new religious concepts? My suggestion is that in breaking the link with external reality and in the equalization of activity across modules, the conditions are created where stressful inconsistencies can be meta-represented using ad hoc ‘resolving’ analogies and aesthetic concepts within imagined action schemata and inner speech. ASCs help lower the barriers provided by everyday rationality in the workspace of consciousness between information from different modules. Inconsistencies are either inter-modular or they are the perception of dissonances introduced by input which generate stress and reveal a lack of conceptual integration.

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For example, in the literally construed analogue of physical resurrection, moral inconsistencies are resolved. We analysed the context of innovation and inter-modular integration in Chapter 1. In creative religious imagination, experiences of primary thinking are ‘self-mind-read’ from mental imagery and its inner speech in which new ad hoc rational-aesthetic and analogical concepts have been ‘created and rehearsed’. Images of and dialogue with imagined supernatural powers – mediated by the prophet/shaman – resolve inconsistencies in a validating context unconstrained by the actual world. Furthermore, conscious interaction with supernatural powers which have intentional purposes with respect to our goals and their context, as described by the myth of the path in Chapter 2, enables the intermediary to respond creatively to actual socio-historical situations and be relevant to practical reasoning. THE RESURRECTION OF JESUS is an example of this. Most new concepts are retrospective with respect to the initial ASC. When the primary thinking is reflected upon, beliefs rationalizing its concepts are developed in secondary thinking. The whole process is culturally construed as revelation. There are clear records of visionary primary processes in religious activities: shamanism, Greek religion, the Hebrew prophets, Muhammad and the Buddha. 6.5

Poetry, mystery and living in uncertainty Is revelation ‘poetic’?

Is the imaginative language which makes manifest religious mysteries necessarily ‘poetic’, as is commonly thought? The fact that aesthetic concepts resolve logical inconsistencies, that religious ideas analogically combine concepts originating in different modules, and that a pervasive supernatural intentionality of the world results from the interaction of goal-directedness and relevance principles – ‘animating imagery’ – would seem to point to this. How could such language not be poetic? The prophetic books, psalms and other parts of the Bible consist of poetry. Greek religion was built on the written poetry of Homer and Hesiod, emerging from oral tradition. The utterances of shamans sometimes contain ‘great poetries’ (Halifax, 1979: Introduction). And a link is seen between poetic language and a religious or metaphysical/ontological grasp of reality, from Coleridge to Heidegger. Recently, James Carse, Professor Emeritus of Religion at New York University, in The Religious Case Against Belief (2008), claimed that ‘religion in its purest form is a vast work of poetry’. In this part, I will argue that religious texts are not necessarily poetic in the sense of verbal art. Religious utterance can’t be identified with the literature of a given language, which is necessarily oriented to verbal art. Nevertheless we can begin to clarify what is true about

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Carse’s claim. And this will lead us back to relevant mysteries and finally, to reflect upon the nature of uncertainty. The word “poetic” has multiple uses, so leads to confusion. It can refer to a property of texts, their poeticalness. This is a property of output/input with a particular stylistic design which can cause processing by the mind/brain that produces unique cognitive and affective/motivational effects in context, including aesthetic pleasure. To the degree that a text has the property of poeticalness and can have this effect, it is an object which is aesthetic in the medium of language. It displays verbal art (Jakobson, 1960). But the word “poetic”, as in “poetic thinking” or “poetic insight” can also by extension refer to a primary, imaginative mode of ad hoc concept formation just discussed in Section 6.4 and to the resulting rational-aesthetic and analogical concepts and their associated sensuous imagery. The term is apt because poetic thinking occurs when we find ‘poeticalness’ as just defined, not at the linguistic levels directly manifested by output/input in a text, but at the level of mental representations/semantics. This happens when mental representations which are systemically contrastive within the mind/brain are synthesized, integrated into a new abstract structure. Confusion arises because such poetic thinking need not be made manifest textually either in poetic style or the production of the aesthetic or poetic effects mentioned above. Nevertheless, it is still appropriate to talk about “poetic thinking” – a poetic analysis and poetic synthesis – of what might later be rationalized as a problem in philosophy, and perhaps even naturalized in science. A nice example of this is provided by Burkert’s (1985: 125–131) account of the concept ZEUS and its complex, unstable, aesthetic-rational synthesis of sovereignty and power, the intentionality behind events, justice and fate. And there is a further source of confusion with the term “poetic”. We need to distinguish between the poetic in the above senses and its place in the social and historical institution called “Literature” in which texts are primarily oriented towards and valued for their ‘poeticalness’ and therefore their potential literary value – the genres and conventions of literature, including poetry itself. One trend in modernism is the categorization and specialization of knowledge and technique, segregating cultural domains and their institutional expression. Thus religion, which is not art, is separate from an art form such as literature (often today called “Creative Writing” or “Fiction”). Even though they may share poetic concept formation, they are institutionally distinct and their relations prove subtle. What does it mean to say that a text or utterance is experienced as “poetic”; evokes an aesthetic response in context? I interpret this to mean that it has an aesthetic cognitive effect on its consumers in context, irrespective of whether this is produced by the formal poeticalness of the text – although the poeticalness of a particular input is a powerful way to produce these effects. So what

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are these contextual aesthetic effects in cognitive terms? As a first step, we can identify this with Sperber and Wilson’s (1995) notion of poetic effects. (There are also aesthetic effects produced by analogies between form and meaning, or iconicity, which I won’t discuss.) There is a continuum between assumptions that are strongly or weakly implicated. An assumption is strongly implicated when it is clear to the hearer in the context that the speaker intended a single determinate message. However, there are communications in which no such message can be derived. What happens in such contexts is that the interpreter seeks relevance by deriving implicatures not fully attributable to the source. Implicatures derived this way are weakly implicated. Poetic effects occur when an input is intended so that the reader is induced to achieve optimal relevance through “a wide array of weak implicatures” (Sperber and Wilson, 1995: 217–224). Its richness in this respect establishes literary value (Pilkington, 1991; 2000). Stylistic choices can generate poetic effects in any kind of text. Advertising, political speeches, religion, even ordinary conversational narratives, may achieve some relevance through artful suggestiveness, intending to communicate weak implicatures. Literature is an institution where that effect is criterial for the texts in context. Within the institution of religion, some texts containing rational-aesthetic concepts can be intended to achieve relevance by producing poetic effects in some contexts; they also satisfy the criteria for inclusion in literature, as literary writing. (This is particularly true of the great poems and plays of Greek religion.) But, in my view, that is not fundamental to their being religious; although their poetic concepts are what make them mysteries. In achieving relevance, a religious text need not necessarily induce poetic effects and therefore need not have literary value. For example, I can utter, ‘The resurrection means that God vindicated Jesus’, to convey a single determinate message. There is nothing of verbal art about this statement. There is only one strong implicature: by raising him from the dead, God conveyed that Jesus’ message was true. And that’s all. Relevance is easily achieved and there are no other inferences needed to understand exactly what was intended. Another aspect of the common claim that religious language is ‘poetic’, is the notion that it is essentially metaphorical, and that since metaphors are ‘poetic’, so must be religion. To clarify this, we need to understand the relation of the literal, the metaphorical and poetic effects. When a speaker formulates an utterance, the language they use interprets their thoughts. In relevance theory, an utterance is literal rather than figurative if it has the same propositional form as the thought that the speaker is using it to convey. This is the case when the logical forms of both the thought and the utterance have the same logical properties. Thus, Paul’s utterance of the clause ‘that he was raised on the third day’ has identical logical properties – warrants the same

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inferences – as the thought it conveys; namely, the explicated semi-propositional form that GOD RAISED CHRIST FROM THE DEAD ON THE THIRD DAY AFTER CHRIST’S CRUCIFIXION, where the two occurrences of CHRIST designate the same individual. The form is semi-propositional because it does not obviously have fully determinate truth conditions. Nevertheless, that is the form that Paul intended. The two forms logically resemble each other as closely as makes no difference. So Paul literally meant what he said. He didn’t intend it as a metaphor or a symbol of something else. But the resemblance between the logical properties of the utterance and the thought it is used to interpret is a matter of degree. Therefore, an utterance can be used more or less literally. Often, the optimally relevant way of conveying a complex thought, the way that leads the hearer to draw the intended inferences with the least cognitive effort, is not the most literal interpretation of the thought. Speaking non-literally is often the optimally relevant way to convey a thought. In metaphor, the optimally relevant way for the speaker to convey an intended thought is to use an utterance that does not have the same logical properties as the thought. If I assert, ‘God is our father’, I convey that there are some properties inferable from the concept FATHER that I want you to infer are true of God, not that God has all the properties of a father. In metaphor, the reasoning that achieves relevance involves analogy between the properties that I attribute to the target concept and assumptions about the source in its conceptual entry. God is to us as a father is to his children but only in relevant respects; the rest is dis-analogy. But to use this metaphor in a religious context need not produce any poetic effects. Metaphors can be used to convey poetic effects, to achieve optimal relevance in context by inducing in the hearer’s mind a wide range of weak implicatures. But they need not be poetic. Metaphors are often standard, warranting a set of clearly intended implicatures. There is a scale between poetic and standard metaphors. It is the former richly evocative type that people associate with literary art. However, clearly intended metaphors expressing analogies in scientific modelling and in other forms of inquiry are richly creative, if not having poetic effects in contexts of communication. Utterances containing religious concepts can be intended poetic metaphors in this last sense in some contexts, but they don’t have to be. The fact that most key assumptions in religion are mysteries has led many to think that poetic metaphor was the key to understanding religious language. But being used metaphorically is not definitive for religious concepts, although religious concepts are often analogical in the way described in Chapter 1. Our interpretation of the resurrection makes this clear. Although it rests on a literal analogy between the physical and the moral, the resurrection is not intended merely as a metaphorical way of conveying that Jesus was vindicated, although it can implicate that. To claim that Paul’s utterance is metaphorical

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is simply to say that, given certain assumptions, Jesus couldn’t have risen, so Paul’s utterance must ‘mean’ something else; it must be re-contextualized and de-mythologized or read as literature. But this is to misread Paul’s intentional communication. We saw that aesthetic concepts manage mysteries by containing inconsistencies or regressions within themselves which they appear to resolve or contain. In religion especially, representations containing aesthetic concepts are quasi-believed, accepted on the authority of a supernatural mind that knows how the inconsistencies are resolved and the regressions terminated. Since they are quasi-believed, but cannot be satisfied in everyday actuality, the mind is led to infer that they must be resolved miraculously or transcendentally. This ‘poetic’ resolution is taken as real, as true in another mode of being, although a mystery to our minds. Religious propositions containing concepts like GOD are not metaphorical representations of the intended realities but are intended literally, although only partially grasped. If assumptions containing rational-aesthetic concepts are quasi-believed, they can be used for inferences with respect to the motivation of action. Although characteristic of religion, this type of concept is also essential in secular thought. The highest-level aesthetic concepts are perhaps metacultural universals automatically arising from human nature interacting with social environment (Tooby and Cosmides, 1992: 121): SELF, PERSON, ETHNICITY, NATION, FREE WILL, JUSTICE and so on. The particular assumptions stored at these addresses can, of course, vary culturally. My self or nation is different from yours. But the motivating power of the nation to a self is such that people regularly die and kill for it. If assumptions containing aesthetic concepts are employed not for action, but reflectively – meditated upon – the inconsistencies they contain make them inexhaustible sources of contextual implications. Consider the puzzle of self-understanding, and narratives of personal, ethnic and national identity. This is the point of similarity between the artistic intention to induce poetic effects characteristic of poeticalness in literature and its contexts, a situation in which a hearer takes most responsibility for interpretation, and the nature of the concepts made manifest in religious language and terminology. They are both inexhaustible in their potential for reflection and for application. In any one context of free reflection, in both literature and religion, there may be an indefinite number of implicatures for which the reader takes responsibility in their reflective meditation. Reading in this reflective way is definitive for literature, at least in our era, but such reflective use is only one practice among many others within religion. Thus, although religious representations have features which are similar to those of art, the two are quite different. ‘Literature’ necessarily generates poetic effects in order to create literary value. This is the mode of intention of a literary communication. Literary art produces a wide, indefinite range

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of implicatures for which the writer only takes partial responsibility, producing expressive suggestiveness. The writer ‘artfully’ designs ‘poetic’ structures – with the property of poeticalness – in order to induce ‘poetic effects’ within literary genres that have evolved for this specific purpose. In the situations of reading within literature in modernism, de-coupled from practical action, interpretation is largely turned over to the reader, who gains new reflective beliefs – into themselves and society – using the work of art. Note how this conception of literature is consistent with the value of ‘expressive individualism’ characteristic of romanticism in modernity. The writer’s stylistic choices express their unique individuality, while readers’ interpretive freedom makes manifest theirs. This liberal, democratic property explains why literature is a preferred institution in secular modernism. By contrast, religious communications are most often construed literally and taken realistically. Consider a mind faced with a difficult situation entertaining this assumption from the Old Testament prophet Isaiah: ‘Behold, God is my salvation, I will trust and will not be afraid; for the Lord God is my strength and my song’ (Is.12: 2). Although it contains aesthetic concepts, GOD and SALVATION, it will probably be construed quite literally, without poetic effects, except for the word “song”. In a context where this is used reflectively for guidance, the religious thinker needs to figure out how this help might be manifesting itself in the light of the particular difficulty. Isaiah’s assumption could implicate, ‘In the situation I am confronting there is a path in the intentional structure of possibilities that, if I try to understand it in a loving relation with God, I can trust that what to do or what things mean will become clear. I will not be afraid of what is going to happen.’ The thinker will then view the structure of the possibilities as intended by the supernatural, and determine under which option they are most likely to be conforming to God’s wishes. If they do so conform, they can be sure that ultimately, whatever happens, all will be well. This generates desire and motivation. For example, trying to conform to God’s will they might gain enough strength to abandon safety, and take risks to help others or resist an evil. Dietrich Bonhoeffer and Martin Luther King are models of this religious response at its very best. The novel application of religious assumptions is a form of creativity. In spite of the seeming poeticalness of Isaiah’s language, this is a different activity than responding to it as a work of art in terms of the free uptake of poetic effects, even when that serves to re-organize thought. However, the potential of a mysterious representation to elicit new interpretations in new contexts, of crisis or contemplation, is what leads to new religious thoughts. These are attempts to ‘grasp’ more deeply, through repeated interpretation, new explicatures and implicatures in new contexts in order to gain more understanding of the significance of its real but mysterious content. Because it is forever mysterious, it is also inexhaustible.

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If we admit Sperber and Wilson’s term “poetic effects” for this inexhaustible potential in achieving relevance, this is another sense in which religious representations are poetic – their inexhaustibility. The contrast and relationship between literary and religious texts is at its most interesting and subtle with respect to the property of fictionality in art. Religious representations are not usually intended as fictions; although fictions can be constructed around religious concepts; for example, The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis. In fiction, the entities referred to and presupposed by the apparatus of reference in a narrative are not intended to exist and the logical forms direct enrichment towards what both speaker and hearer believe is transparently false. In literary fiction further processing is required to achieve relevance, to determine what the author intended. Since the author’s thought is not identical to the propositional forms of the text, a fiction is like a metaphor, thus based on an underlying analogy. If, to achieve relevance, poetic effects are induced, a fiction is a poetic metaphor and has literary value. In other words, a fiction is processed in the same way as ordinary metaphor. But the poetic metaphor of a fiction is also intended to be true in some sense; weakly implicated arrays of potential underlying analogies with life are intended seriously. What normally contrasts as ‘either/or’ – the statement of a proposition is either true or false – in an art fiction is intended as a both/and – it is both false and true. To the degree that it is art, what is at the same time not intended to exist nor be transparently true, is also intended to induce inferences to ‘what exists and is the case’ in such a way that many diverse readers will find it as they calculate relevance; each in their own context. In this sense, fiction is a democratic form of art; not only can everyone make up and understand stories, as opposed to write a sonnet, but its interpretation rests with each reader’s quest for relevance. To read a religious text ‘as literature’ would be to read it this way in a literary context; as a fiction that leads a reader to some sort of truth which the reader inferentially determines in calculating its relevance. A representation construed in this ‘religious’ way is often termed a “myth”. Religions are taken as the primitive equivalent to literary fictions, with revelatory powers equivalent to art. Literary art has an indirect relation to action, through simulations and shaping of affect and motivation. Indeed, its very indirection is part of the aesthetic pleasure it produces. It follows that within secular assumptions which positively eschew religion, art – literature as myth – is a principal cultural form for dealing with those same incorrigible metaphysical and moral mysteries, such as the ‘self’. And this is precisely what we find in the poetry of secular modernity (Hamburger, 1972). Conversely, de-mythologization in theology, understanding religion as myth, is a way that whatever is relevant about religion can be processed by the mind but stripped of much of its

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epistemic and normative force on attitudes; the reader doesn’t have to be a believer. However, I have argued that religious revelations are not intended as myths in this sense, but rather literal representations of mysterious truths, which are imperfectly understood and quasi-believed, although fully grasped by some supernatural mind. This is a manifestation of the ‘supernatural’ criterion of the religion cultural complex proposed in Chapter 1. A religious tradition is the inexhaustible continuing attempt to understand and relate correctly to a transcendental reality in order to provide the normative and affective-motivational basis for practical action in social life. Nevertheless, there are important blends between religion and literature, especially when writers confront the mysteries of metaphysics and morals. It may be hard to tell whether they are constructing myths or unorthodox, personal, religions which they believe; for example, William Blake, W. B. Yeats, Walt Whitman, or even Vergil. Higher-level propositional attitudes to semi-understood assumption schema may express epistemic instability or indeterminacy. There are many possible reflective metaattitudes: blind faith, rationalized faith based on argument, the ‘suspension of disbelief that constitutes poetic faith’, ‘as if’ or ‘serious’ game-playing, believing and not believing, not knowing what one believes, simply ‘going along’ with or without reflection, or the denial of the very assumptions the mind/brain is actually using to act; for example, in performing a role, dutifully or under social pressure, and so on. Therefore reflective beliefs – giving ‘reasons’ to oneself or others – can become inconsistent with assumptions. (We saw that assumptions, or Peirce–Bain beliefs, are actually structures fulfilling a function with respect to action within the cognitive system.) Even so, these higher-level attitudes feed into the affective-motivational and in this way play some part in forming assumptions in the longer term, especially when behaviour is part of a reflected upon series of acts in a narrative context. This might even have been the case at the very founding of religious traditions. Furthermore, art written within a religious lineage can have the property of fictionality or the other generic stylistic features that intend to induce poetic effects. But that is the aesthetic, not the religious, dimension of those particular texts. Most important are the institutional religious or literary contexts that support and promote these two ways of grasping representations and how they are processed in ritual and prayer in contrast to the various ways that literary works are “read” and “criticized” – these words are significant – and their different effects on individual and collective affect-motivation and experienced normative force with the subsequent consequences for behaviour. Reflect on the contrast between the impact of prayer and ritual and reading King Lear or Leaves of Grass on a religiously trained or secularized mind/brain and the affective-motivational effects on behaviour.

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Carse’s view of the relation of belief and mystery Carse’s (2008) theory of religion is based on a distinction which he makes between belief and mystery and their respective relations to the idea of a tradition. By belief, he means those historical belief systems which, on ideological grounds, claim to fix for once and for all the interpretation of the representations which constitute a particular, unique, religious tradition. These beliefs are what we have termed above those semi-grasped quasibeliefs, which being ideological, could be shown by critique to be motivated by social interests in such a way as to involve violation: Carse shows how they function to create ‘others’, and thus divide humanity with respect to dogmas. So for him, such belief systems do not genuinely represent religion; what religion is fundamentally about. They are more akin to political ideologies. What properly constitutes a religion is simply the longevity of a tradition of representations which grapples with the fundamental mysteries, such as death or evil, which have always and everywhere confronted humanity. He calls these “poetries” because the mysteries they represent, each lineage in its own characteristic way, are inexhaustible with respect to interpretation. Each tradition is a history of disagreement. They simply cannot be ‘fixed’ into orthodoxies, which are nothing but historical phases in a debate within the lineage – this is ‘the religious case against belief’. The great traditions, taken in toto, have never agreed on their interpretation. In the course of our study, we have provided a more technical account congruent with this analysis. The longevity of the tradition, which makes it a religion, is accounted for by the ability of its aesthetic-rational representations of incorrigible mysteries to achieve relevance in new contexts; and we would add relevance, not only intellectually, but also with respect to normativity and affective-motivation, which constitutes how to live in the human condition. The longevity is evidence of the pragmatic success of the lineages’ manner of framing the metaphysical and moral mysteries. But religious concepts are not necessarily manifested in verbal art. They are not ‘great poetries’ in the literary sense. Although inexhaustible in principle, religious concepts that grapple with ‘forever’ mysteries are dynamic and are constantly changing, abandoned, replaced by new variants. As we saw in Section 6.1, conceptual change occurs when some representation becomes, in a socially systematic way, more and more irrelevant for processing in context. It drifts away, less and less used, perhaps surviving in sub-cultures. It can be replaced by the dissemination of newly relevant concepts within the tradition, a new understanding of the same metaphysical and moral domains. But, as Carse says, a tradition can be abandoned, no matter its longevity. A modern example has been the decay of the Western Christian tradition in Europe, challenged by an array of secular beliefs, providing a rich cultural

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medley of post-religious positions with regard to metaphysical and moral mysteries: for example, ‘my head hurts’ and ‘science has all the answers’ alternatives. The former is the populist assumption that individual reflective thought on intractable mysteries is always irrelevant to the processing necessary for leading a good or happy life. Being irrelevant – thus boring – such thoughts are not used to form contexts. The processing cost of reflection on even genuine mysteries of metaphysics or morals is not worthwhile in terms of cognitive benefits within the norms and affective-motivational life of modern consumer capitalism. The latter is the ‘tough-minded’ position that the only genuine mysteries are those practically susceptible to full scientific naturalization, and there is no other reliable knowledge, and therefore no point in entertaining religious representations. Apparently relevant religious mysteries are compelling or pleasurable illusions intrinsically generated by the nature of cognition and/or functionally explicable in evolutionary or social or emotional terms. The anti-Platonist assumption is also that the laws and principles discovered by scientific naturalization cannot be metaphysically interpreted, in a way consistent with science, as implying that what is ultimately real has any mind-like intentionality. The philosophy of uncertainty In religion there is a compulsion to realism in one of its many varieties; that revelatory representations point to something real ‘as if through a glass darkly’, including the really binding nature of obligations. There seems to be a focus on metaphysics, including ontology, and morality, which therefore includes politics. (Within metaphysics, I include a problematic boundary with physics.) I suggest that the concept REALITY is itself a mystery. There certainly has been no consensus about the contribution the concept makes to fully determinate truth conditions. The human species-mind is not agreed on what is real. To assert with confidence that there is an absolute or metaphysical reality is inconsistent because the species-mind can never ‘know’ if there is such a thing. If “reality” is simply the word for whatever is believed to be an object of knowledge relative to some system of beliefs plus theories about how representations work – contextual realism – its comprehension is indeterminate from the point of view of the species-mind. However, if the mind eschews the word “reality” altogether, because it is a mystery, all representations lose purchase and one can’t refer to whatever it is that warrants the species’ therefore solipsistic beliefs and practices. The species-mind seems compelled to some variety of realism, although it doesn’t agree what is ultimately real. On a foundation of naı¨ve consensus based on universals – knowledge involving intuitive basic concepts – inquiry begins with mysteries; representations

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which are semi-understood but relevant. As noted in the Introduction, there are different types of representation with different kinds of warrant, intuitive and reflective. There is a hierarchy of pragmatic warrants for belief – layers and layers of different reasons for the reliability of assumptions depending on the type of representation; from everyday life, through technical skills, to the edifice of science, to its philosophical interpretation. There is a distinction between a warrant that compels an individual mind/brain with its genetic and social history and training – necessary and sufficient for its practical purposes – and various communities of consensus and the species-mind itself, each inquiring and acting over time. As we saw, the species-mind can develop ‘problems’ from mysteries which are theoretically tractable using the methodologies of science. A problem has become susceptible to naturalized explanation. It becomes part of the scientific image of humanity. In the twentieth century, some representations as basic as the concepts of space and time were partially transformed into problems of science because they were integrated as central to a revised physical theory. Some mysteries remain forever irrelevant: they may have only trivial consequences or ‘cost’ too much to solve. Following Chomsky, McGinn, Sperber and now Carse, I have assumed that there is a large category of forever irresolvable mysteries which are nevertheless relevant to the life of the mind/brain. At the same time I question whether these are only compulsive merely because they are irresolvable mysteries and we have evolved as exploratory creatures. Instead, bafflements, concentrated in the crucial metaphysical/ ontological and moral/political domains, are relevant because they have deep effects on normativity and the affective-motivational and hence on action both personal and social. A central issue is that the species-mind can’t tell in advance what can be naturalized and what cannot, or even to what degree a conceptual domain containing mysteries can be clarified, philosophically or even poetically, over centuries of inquiry. The nineteenth- and twentieth-century ‘scientistic’ belief that all possible meaningful representations can in principle be ‘naturalized’, and all mysteries resolved in principle or treated as meaningless has many consequences, but there is no way of ever demonstrating its truth. Naturalization may have different statuses in different domains. For example, what is the status of beliefs about freedom? Might freedom and the values of liberal individualism which depend on it, not only be philosophically clarified in new ways, but be logically derivable from a naturalistic theory? Can we naturalize the notions of free choice, rational choice and rationality itself? Although current inquiry may be inconclusive, the species-mind may reach adequate consensus over what now appears to be a mystery at some time in an unforeseeable future, although we can never know this. We don’t know how fragile the cultural, socio-political, economic and environmental basis of rational inquiry may prove to be. Dark Ages are common. We don’t know

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the limits of techniques or the technical enhancement of inquiry or whether there are, have been, or will be other evolved or artificial rational beings with minds sufficiently like ours capable of inquiry. Not only are there incorrigible relevant mysteries in metaphysics and morals, but scientific inquiry is fallible and always open to revision, so ultimately inconclusive in this particular sense. Furthermore, even the most consensually settled theory potentially leads to an open-ended inferential regression of new questions and interpretations which are inexhaustible. In this case, scientific inquiry has no end. As we saw in the naturalized epistemology of Chapter 4, if there is an ultimate representable ‘fact of the matter’ about all possible states of affairs, it must be transcendental with respect to the species-mind. We can never know if there is such a final resolution. We can rationally believe things about this on the pragmatic grounds outlined in Chapters 4 and 5, but never know. Therefore, both aspects of the stereoscopic image of humanity lead to uncertainty about fundamentals based on the inexhaustibility of human representations. Therefore, what is required is a philosophy of uncertainty. This philosophy analyses the consequences of bafflement about ‘how to live’ in a correct relationship to reality in the face of uncertainty about what is real. This is both a practical and theoretical issue. There are a number of features of such a philosophical problematic. First, it does not claim that experience is necessarily absurd in the existential sense – the term “absurd” refers to a nihilistic emotional response to the trauma of uncertainty. The claim is rather that the human condition is one of uncertainty about particular ultimate issues with respect to both science and religion: to analyse why this appears to be the case, if it is, and to explore how it can be rationally mitigated or ‘lived with’, so that this infuses affective/motivational and normative responses to it and consequent behaviour. Second, uncertainty is not a variety of relativism: it admits both to the possibility of a determinate reality which can decide mysteries, and also to the possibility that there are realities, M, partially or even wholly inaccessible to minds like ours. On the other hand, it is also possible that there are no such determinate realities. The arguments (so far) prove inconclusive and it is uncertain whether rational inquiry can naturalize this question or clarify it in some other mode of inquiry. Third, uncertainty is not radical scepticism: it does accept the possibility of genuine knowledge, true beliefs with an adequate pragmatic warrant existing in many domains today, and its extension in the future. Fourth, there is the question of types of inquiry and what counts as rationality – in economics, in philosophical argument and science and our ability to evaluate our own rationality, what counts as consensus and how it develops, validity of techniques and use of technology, the role of education and social factors, etc. Fifth, there is the most important question of the role of irrationality and altered states of consciousness in generating concepts and imaginative speculative representations,

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the possibility of poetic analysis and synthesis, poetic grasping and its subsequent rationalization, which has deep epistemic significance for inquiry. How do such speculative concepts relate to both induction and hypotheticodeductive reasoning? This issue was discussed with respect to Indian philosophy and with the analysis of processing in Chapter 3. Sixth, there is also a distinction within uncertainty to be drawn between individual mind/brains, local communities of mind/brains, and the species-mind. Individual and local groups of mind/brains appear to develop in such a way that there are communal beliefs of which they are certain, that they can’t easily revise, even in the light of experience: change must be multi-generational. For individuals, warranted belief approaching knowledge is very difficult; not only are the disciplines of scientific inquiry, philosophical dialogue, poetic analysis, etc. hard to acquire, comprehend and exercise, with large costs, but there are the ever-present dangers of self-deception and ideological distortion. These same issues also apply to groups which are always culturally situated and under political or patronage pressures. It is only at the level of the species-mind that we can derive structural universals, witness genuine consensus or inconclusiveness over long periods of time, although individuals embody this. Seventh, the poles of belief and non-belief do not exhaust all appropriate reflective attitudes in religion. Given the multiplicity of warrants and ultimate uncertainty, there is a possible range of complex higher-level attitudes to religious semi-propositions as discussed above. Each attitude – for example, an ‘as if’ attitude – finds its own kind of reasons for the assumptions that process action, and this leads to a diversity of attitudes manifesting uncertainty within communities and even within the same mind, in spite of what people actually do. Finally, irresolvable uncertainty doesn’t de-motivate the inquiry implicit in processing outlined in Chapter 4. In both science and metaphysics and morals there is a regress of inexhaustible interpretation and mysterious concepts, in the technical senses developed in earlier chapters. With respect to mysteries, we don’t know which can be naturalized, ultimately become tractable problems, and which will forever remain mysteries and are therefore in the permanent domain of philosophy, religion and art. Science and these nonscientific domains constantly interpenetrate in calculating relevance in reflective contexts; for example, in sciences like economics, environmentalism, and so on. Even in physics, string theory is interpreted using a thrilling analogy from music (Greene, 2000: 135). Both domains constitute the necessary stereoscopic vision of humanity. Therefore, motivation remains because these semi-understood mysteries are fruitful as long as their concepts contribute to the achievement of relevance for mind/brains, especially with respect to problems in the motivation of action and practical reasoning and affectivemotivational responses to experience. This last point shows that a retreat into silence in the face of intractable semi-understanding, or the assumption that

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what is mysterious is merely a pathology or confusion of language (it might be, but that is a subject for inquiry), or that the mystery is simply a cultural ‘brute fact’, point to various forms of closure. In practice, the working out of forever new contextual implications of mysteries actually prevents such closure. As for religion, the universality of the religion complex and the sheer longevity of the main religious traditions point to this fruitfulness in achieving relevance for the species-mind. It would be incredible if this didn’t provide some rational pragmatic warrant for religion as a path that the human speciesmind can use in order for individuals in communities to live as correctly as possible in uncertainty: to culturally grasp something structurally real, or the possible reality of its situation with respect to what is unknowable, as far as it can be grasped by any known species-mind.

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Index

abstraction and the abstract, 39, 89, 95, 100, 101, 102, 105, 188, 191, 223, 247 aesthetic ideas in Kant, 32. See rational-aesthetic concepts affective-motivational, 15 and normative data-base, 148, 159 emotions primary vs. secondary, 49 emotions vs. feelings, 48 mystical states, 50 religious, 48, 158, 159, 224 altruism, 29–30. See also co-operation analogy, 18–20, 249, 253 and fictionality, 256 PRICE example, 20 Arendt, H., 155, 197, 198, 200, 201, 204, 205, 206, 208, 209, 212, 222, 237 artefacts, 72, 74, 76, 213, 214 Atran, S., 1, 30, 34, 44 authority, 7, 116, 126, 152, 162, 163, 182, 195, 197, 222, 231 charismatic, 242 conservatism vs. liberalism, 206 crisis of, 209, 241 deference/def. operator, 156, 158, 207, 210, 241 of indubitable beliefs, 216 of science, 219 of species-mind, 213 Barrett, J., 1, 34 belief–desire explanation, 22 beliefs, 145. See also mysteries, relevant mysteries ‘belief box’, 145, 157, 195 Carse’s theory vs. mystery, 258 cognitive epistemology, 195 cultural and truth, 203 intuitive, 13, 31, 146, 149, 164, 165, 216 violation of, 159 meta-beliefs, 146

Peirce–Bain theory, 174, 179 quasi-beliefs, 147, 152, 156, 157, 162, 182, 204, 211 reflective, 20, 31, 51, 143, 153, 216 role in social identity, 232, 239 Bhagavad-Gita, 43, 47 Bible, The, 87, 88, 113, 116, 119, 121, 123 Blackmore, S., 92, 111, 247 Boyer, P., 1, 30, 34, 35, 38, 160 Carruthers, P., 10, 20, 21, 22, 27, 28, 44, 48, 49, 54, 147, 164, 185, 219, 235, 245, 246 Carse, J., 250, 260. See also beliefs Carston, R., 128, 132, 139 Chomsky, N., 2, 3, 9, 51, 67, 83, 154, 163, 169, 185, 188, 221, 260 cognitive epistemology and authority, 195, 198 and science, 219, 261 cognitive pragmatics, 2–3, 68, 124 naturalizes philosophical pragmatism, 166 cognitive science, 1, 66, 163 abstraction of, 67 development from philosophy, 164 of religion, 1 communication, 69, 120, 125 and content explicitly conveyed, 128, 137 content of self, 191 with supernatural, 80, 243, 244, 247, 250 concepts, 2, 87, 131, 141. See also encyclopaedia; logical forms ad hoc concepts, 87, 121, 132, 139, 192, 228 and creativity, 245, 250 role in change, 228, 229, 239 basic, 13, 139, 141, 144, 165, 195, 259 effability, 132 entries at address in memory, 132, 227 lexical entry and consciousness, 26, 227 logical form and thought–language interface, 25–26 pro-concepts, 83, 87, 90

275

276

Index

conceptual change, 7, 159, 208, 227. See also creativity aesthetic concepts in, 231 analogies with sound change, 229, 239 and complexity, 230 and conceptual integration, 230 definition, 227 innovators and early adopters, 240 social factors in, 231 identity stress, 239 conceptual integration, see metarepresentation; relevance conceptual memory, see encyclopaedia, the Confucianism, 86, 88, 90 consciousness, 2, 26–27, 72, 190 altered states of, 247, 261 Martindale’s theory, 248 possession/spirit travel, 244 trance, 244 vs. unconscious processing, 67, 92 conservatism, 206 epistemological, 207 co-operation, 29, 83, 223. See also altruism Cosmides and Tooby, 10, 27 creativity, 245 and altered states of consciousness, 249 criticism, 7, 181, 205, 214 and science, 220, 238 blocking of inquiry, 182, 200, 206, 208, 212, 217, 235 critique of religions, 235 moral and social critique, 235 crisis of identity, 240, 241 stress of, 239 types of, 215 culture, see also epidemiology of representations; memetics behaviourism, 110, 163, 164 creativity and stress, 246 dissemination of, 109, 118, 124, 148–149, 203 kinds of, 13 science as, 164 sociobiology, 110 Sperber’s definition, 14 standard social science model, 110, 164 Dawkins, R., 2, 29, 102, 109 Dennett, D., 2, 22, 29, 30, 41, 46, 53, 57, 59, 66, 81, 92, 95, 109, 111, 163, 187 domains of modules proper vs. actual, cultural, 13

encyclopaedia, the, 87, 132, 139, 145, 196, 228 epidemiology of representations, 3, 7, 14, 50, 109, 112, 128, 163, 181, 227. See also culture; conceptual change lineages, 118, 120, 127, 141, 201 inter-lingual, 122, 123, 126 role in change, 230 risk of falsehood, 204 susceptibility and dissemination, 148, 230 epistemology, see cognitive epistemology faux-kinship, 85 fictionality, see poetic flexibility and plasticity, 12 Fodor, J., 3, 10, 17, 52, 136, 144, 166, 168 functional explanation, 55 aetiology vs. analysis, 56 God, 101, 102, 103, 104, 106, 187, 189, 193, 223, 254, 255 ontological argument, 106 pragmatic warrant, 107, 188 Golden Rules, 88, 89, 97, 236 Grice, H., 60, 64, 66, 68, 69 Huxley, A., 217 images of humanity, 5, 33–34, 80, 182, 216. See also stereoscopic requirement manifest, 5, 6, 53–66, 82, 84, 102, 105, 107, 163, 164, 165, 209, 212, 216, 221 original, 5, 88, 224 scientific, 5, 84, 163, 212, 223, 260 cognitive science, 66, 163, 165 imagination, 214, 246 and inner speech, 246 speculative contexts, 246 Indian philosophy, 213 intentional stance, 22, 53. See also functional explanation; mind-reading; teleological explanation and morality, 61, 82 vs. causal-mechanical explanation, 63 why it works, 80 intentionality, 22, 54, 57–59, 223 inter-modularity, 16, 57, 63, 155, 164 and analogy, 17–21, 161 in altered states of consciousness, 249 language and creativity, 246 Jary, M., 91 Kant, I., 6, 18, 31, 45, 46, 51, 58, 63, 65, 89, 101, 106, 155, 156, 162, 166, 167, 184, 185, 187, 211, 213, 223

Index Labov, W., 239 language, 2 and conscious perception, 26 and imagination, 246 and translation, 124 broad vs. narrow sense, 9 cluster of cognitive capacities, 11 key role in inter-modular integration, 20, 27 language complex, 9 module in narrow sense, 8 "price" example, 20, 26 recursive, 9, 25 utterances of linguistic forms, 129 language change, 227, 229, 239 liberalism, 206, 208, 260 epistemological, 207 Libet, B., 62, 67, 92, 93 logical forms, 25–26, 129, 137. See concepts and semantic change, 228 Marı´a Sabina, 245, 247 Martindale, C., 248 McGinn, C., 51, 154, 155, 165, 169, 188, 260 memetics, 109, 128 metaphor in religion, 252 metarepresentation, 11, 23–28, 186, 191 and conceptual integration, 24, 102 and de-coupling, 27, 214 and grasping truth conditions, 143–144 and recursion, 25 confabulations, 235 logic sub-module, 28 of self, 192, 193 validating, 146, 152 Milroy and Milroy, 239 Milroy, J., 239 mind time, 92 mind/brain, 8 mind-reading, 11, 21, 34. See also intentional stance; belief–desire explanation in manifest image, 53, 66 Nichols and Stich, 22 relevance theory of, 72 self-interpretation, 23, 25, 148 Mithen, S., 12, 24 modular system of systems, 10 modularity of mind, 3. See also modules; intermodularity Fodor-module, 10 massive modularity, 10 modules, 8–9. See mind-reading; metarepresentation; affectivemotivational; language; normativity cultural quasi-modules, 17, 164 folk psychology, 22, 163

277 genetic coding and learning, 12 intuitive biology, 12, 160 intuitive physics, 12, 160 poor self-monitoring, 235 social intelligence, 11 social Machiavellian, 12 vision, 9–10 morality, 48, 82, 204, 223 and critique, 215, 235 and free will, 46, 92–95, 223 and intentional stance, 61–62 and justice, 102, 189, 223 and relevance, 91, 93 as reflective development, 44, 82, 85 moral training, 238 mysteries, 103, 135, 151, 163, 182, 210. See also rational-aesthetic concepts and a priori/basic concepts, 165 as signals of transcendence, 222 as technical term, 135 bafflement, 51 definition, 51 Carse’s theory, 258 defective or indeterminate, 154, 195 illusions of speculative metaphysics, 101 rational warrant for, 222 relevant mysteries, 31, 51, 149, 155, 158, 184, 190, 195, 221, 259, 262 religious, 7, 17, 153, 197 science, 104 ‘thing-in-itself’, 184 vs. problems, 51, 106, 260 naturalization, 1, 4, 163, 181 and reduction, 4 eliminative vs. non-eliminative, 4 limits of, 221, 260 of philosophical pragmatism, 163, 165, 178 without metaphysical connotations, 4, 163, 261 Nietzsche, F., 160, 162 normative data-base, 147–148 and morality, 94 normativity, 15, 28–30, 82, 151. See also obligations and authority, 203, 231 class and network, 233 communities and identity, 44, 232 innate schema, 83 normative systems, 11 of secular rationalism, 210 religious, 42 violation of intuitive, 161–160

278

Index

obligations, 83, 86, 94, 147–148, 157, 182, 215, 232 ‘ought box’, 147–148, 158, 215 path up the hill, 78, 81, 89, 97, 102, 105, 107, 150, 156, 177, 179, 189, 221, 247, 250 science, beauty and simplicity, 220 Peirce on vagueness, 171, 195 Peirce, C. S., 6, 49, 166, 168, 172, 185, 188, 189, 190, 194, 197, 198, 201, 202, 205, 211, 213, 214, 222, 229, 237, 257 Peirce’s pragmatic concept of truth, 176 Peirce’s pragmatism, 167 Peirce’s theory of the sign, 167 persons, 37, 148, 158, 181. See also self and social identity, 231–232 inexhaustibility, 254 stress on, 239, 241 as aesthetic concept, 190 both evoked and metacultural, 38 Boyer’s theory as basic ontological category, 35 created by religions, 52, 193, 224 in original and manifest images, 34 pragmatic person, 38 relation to body, 38 vs. self, 37, 52, 190 phenomenology, 10 philosophy of uncertainty, 261 Plato, The Symposium, 47–48, 159 platonism, 33, 41, 90, 163, 213 anti-platonist concept of science, 259 folk, 33, 105, 224 and reality of abstract, 39 manifest image as real, 34 platonist concept of science, 225 rationalized religion, 224 poetic, 7, 189, 248, 250 and ‘literature’, 250, 251 and metaphor, 252 fictionality, 256 inexhaustibility of religion and literature, 254 poetic effects, 252 poetic metaphor, 253 poetic thinking, 251, 262 religion vs. literature, 254 taken as real/true, 254 verbal art/poeticalness, 250 pragmatic enrichment, 130, 137 pragmatics, see cognitive pragmatics pragmatics, philosophical, 59–61, 107. See also Grice, H.

pragmatism, philosophical, 7, 163, 166, 213. See also Peirce’s pragmatism; Peirce, C. S. naturalized by cognitive science/relevance theory, 165, 166 rational warrants within, 214, 260, 261 prophecy, 157, 243 critique/crisis of identity, 240 propositions (propositional forms), 129 Fodor, 136 fully propositional, 133, 196 semi- vs. fully-, 129, 134, 142 semi-propositional, 133, 145, 151, 182 assumption schemas, 145 Sperber and Recanati, 146, 152, 154, 195 truth-evaluability, 134, 137, 143, 196 public lexicon, 85, 89 Qur’an (Koran), The, 87, 90, 117, 119, 122, 124 rational warrant, kinds of, 216, 260 rational-aesthetic concepts, 32, 182, 188, 204, 211, 213, 218, 223, 225, 227, 231 in conceptual change, 231 in secular thought, 254 manage mysteries, 254 motivate action, 254 used reflectively inexhaustibility, 254 rationalization, 15, 44–45, 88, 100–102, 189, 216. See also abstraction/the abstract; metarepresentation Kant’s ideas of reason, 101, 187 of poetic thinking, 262 reality, 104, 106, 165, 176. See structural realism and cognizability, 183, 222 and poetic language, 250 and science, 220 as relevant mystery, 259 objectivity of, 188 of abstract, 39, 223 of justice, 103 of relevant mysteries, 221 of religion as structure, 224, 263 of self, 191 of the poetic, 254 of theory of religion, 223 real vs. exist, 95, 108, 189, 194, 222 Recanati, F., 146, 152, 155, 208 relevance and mind-reading, 72 and moral judgement, 91, 93 and truth, 179, 181, 203

Index cognitive integration and simplicity, 102 cognitive principle of, 68 and imagination, 246 and science, 105 explains supernatural, 80 communicative principle of, 69, 247 definition of, 68 maximal relevance, 68, 128, 246 optimal relevance, 70, 125, 128 relevance theory, 3, 22, 68, 163, 166 global workspace and consciousness, 72 of action, 72 of artefacts, 72, 76 of communication, 69, 128 religion, 80, 210 abstract structure summarized, 223 and creative imagination, 250 and literature, 254 and the state, 97 as cultural ensemble, 6, 32, 223 Carse’s theory, 258 critique of, 235 four contents, 14, 32–50 in manifest image, 66 inexhaustibility of, 257 non-modular, 13 person-making, 52, 193, 224 identity, 85, 231 possible adaptation, 224 pragmatic warrant for, 263 rationalization of, 100, 187 reflective attitudes to, 262 religions in contact, 217 resurrection, 103, 120, 122, 128, 131–132, 137, 150, 158, 161, 189, 246, 250 as example of conceptual change, 230 science, 163, 188, 235 and cognitive principle of relevance, 105 and critique, 238 and philosophy, religion and art, 262 as cultural complex, 164 boundaries of explanation, 104, 164, 186, 189, 221, 260, 262 fallibility/inexhaustibility, 261, 262 rational warrant for, 218 religious mysteries, 259 scriptures, 84, 113, 202, 213 self, 37, 52, 148, 158, 159, 254. See also persons as aesthetic concept, 189, 190, 211, 223 MYSELF, 212 as supernatural entity, 65–66 contrast with persons, 37, 190 expressive individualism, 211, 255

279 Sellars, W., 5, 34, 66, 163, 224. See also images of humanity social identity, see persons; self; religion; person-making species-mind, 184, 186, 206, 211, 212, 215, 221, 225, 259, 263 vs. individual minds, 262 Sperber and Wilson, 3, 20, 22, 68, 70, 83, 85, 87, 90, 128, 132, 133, 136, 145, 147, 157, 169, 176, 180, 252, 256 Sperber, D., 3, 10, 13, 20, 22, 23, 25, 27, 30, 31, 35, 36, 37, 46, 51, 109, 112, 118, 128, 141, 145, 149, 152, 156, 159, 162, 163, 184, 195, 197, 206, 210, 260 Sripada and Stich, 28–29 state, the as abstract entity, 95 as supernatural entity, 96 stereoscopic requirement, 5, 7, 80, 84, 221, 222, 226, 261 structural realism, 183, 221, 222 style, 73, 125, 237, 251 supernatural, 6, 14, 32–37, 53, 66, 224 and creative imagination, 247 and the state, 96 as adaptation, 81 Atran’s theory, 35 automatic by-product, 6 Barrett’s theory, 34 Boyer’s theory, 35 cognitive explanation of, 79 communication with, 80, 243, 244, 250 definition of, 32 guarantor of justice, 103 Guthrie’s theory, 41 in manifest image, 64–66 interacts with rationalization, 47 modular attractors, 150 self or soul as, 65 violates intuitive, 159 Talmud, The, 87, 90 Taylor, C., 211 teleological explanation, 55 insights of, 62 teleonomic, 56 theology, 2, 101, 106 thoughts, 2, 125 Tooby and Cosmides, 10, 13, 14, 30, 38, 52, 110, 164, 254 Torah, The, 40, 88, 90, 116, 119, 120, 123, 243 transcendent, 30–32, 188, 231, 257, 261 reality of, 31, 223, 254 signals of transcendence, 32, 188, 222 translation, 122

280

Index

truth, see also propositions and authority, 199 and relevance, 179, 203 as intuitive concept, 165 at end of inquiry, 177, 181, 184, 189, 199 growth in species-mind, 206 pragmatic concept of, 176 risk of falsehood, 207 spontaneous structural, 179, 180

uncertainty, 7, 251. See philosophy of uncertainty Vermes, G., 88 Weber, M., 42, 45 Wilson and Sperber, 69, 74 writing, 114, 149 Zaehner, R., 193, 217