Maarten Boudry

How convenient! The epistemic rationale of self-validating belief systems

This paper offers an epistemological discussion of self-validating belief systems and the recurrence of “epistemic defense mechanisms” and “immunizing strategies” across widely different domains of knowledge. We challenge the idea that typical “weird” belief systems are inherently fragile, and we argue that, instead, they exhibit a surprising degree of resilience in the face of adverse evidence and criticism. Borrowing from the psychological research on belief perseverance, rationalization and motivated reasoning, we argue that the human mind is particularly susceptible to belief systems that are structurally self-validating. On this cognitive-psychological basis, we construct an epidemiology of beliefs, arguing that the apparent convenience of escape clauses and other defensive “tactics” used by believers may well derive not from conscious deliberation on their part, but from more subtle mechanisms of cultural selection.

Dealing with creationist challenges. What European biology teachers might expect in the classroom

Creationists are becoming more active in Europe. We expect that European biology teachers will be more frequently challenged by students who introduce creationist misconceptions of evolutionary theory into the classroom. Moreover, research suggests that not all teachers are equally prepared to deal with them. To make biology teachers aware of what they might be confronted with, we discuss three kinds of misconceptions that are common in creationist literature: misconstruing scientific methodology, making a straw man out of evolutionary theory, and demanding unreasonable evidence. We offer some suggestions as to how to deal with them, but we also note the importance of embedding this approach in a more comprehensive educational programme in which students learn to think critically and in which their moral concerns and worldview are taken into account. In addition, we invite biology teachers to reflect on their own knowledge and, if necessary, to refresh it by consulting accessible yet scientifically informed literature. Although our main concern lies with teachers in Europe, our approach might be valuable to biology teachers worldwide.

What makes weird beliefs thrive? The epidemiology of pseudoscience

What makes beliefs thrive? In this paper, we model the dissemination of bona fide science versus pseudoscience, making use of Dan Sperbers epidemiological model of representations. Drawing on cognitive research on the roots of irrational beliefs and the institutional arrangement of science, we explain the dissemination of beliefs in terms of their salience to human cognition and their ability to adapt to specific cultural ecologies. By contrasting the cultural development of science and pseudoscience along a number of dimensions (selective pressure, cumulative change, sources of stabilization, and types of attraction), we gain a better understanding of their underlying epistemic differences. Pseudoscience can achieve widespread acceptance by tapping into evolved cognitive mechanisms, thus sacrificing intellectual integrity for intuitive appeal. Science, by contrast, defies those deeply held intuitions precisely because it is institutionally arranged to track objective patterns in the world, and the world does not care much about our intuitions. In light of these differences, we discuss the degree of openness or resilience to conceptual change (evidence and reason), and the divergent ways in which science and pseudoscience can achieve cultural “success”.

In mysterious ways: on petitionary prayer and subtle forms of supernatural causation

The psychology of prayer and supernatural causation has received surprisingly little attention from empirical researchers. This paper discusses implicit belief patterns about the causal mechanisms by which God effects changes in the world. The authors offer a psychological account of belief in supernatural causation based on the existing empirical literature on petitionary prayer, incorporating mechanisms of psychological self-correction and rationalisation, confirmation bias and folk physics. They propose that religious believers ‘prefer’ modes of divine action that are subtle and indistinguishable from the natural course of events: given that the causal structure of our world is partly inscrutable, beliefs in subtle and unascertainable modes of supernatural causation will be compelling and cognitively appealing because they are more susceptible to occasional confirmation and less vulnerable to repeated disconfirmation. In other words, believers who request supernatural interventions that are subtle and indistinguishable from the natural course of events will have a better chance of finding themselves in a situation in which they can attribute the events in question to God answering their prayers. The authors argue that such individual psychological factors play a role in the cultural transmission of prayer practices as well, leading to culturally widespread beliefs in subtle forms of supernatural causation.

Disbelief in belief: On the cognitive status of supernatural beliefs

Abstract Religious people seem to believe things that range from the somewhat peculiar to the utterly bizarre. Or do they? According to a new paper by Neil Van Leeuwen, religious “credence” is nothing like mundane factual belief. It has, he claims, more in common with fictional imaginings. Religious folk do not really “believe”—in the ordinary sense of the word—what they profess to believe. Like fictional imaginings, but unlike factual beliefs, religious credences are activated only within specific settings. We argue that Van Leeuwen’s thesis contradicts a wealth of data on religiously motivated behavior. By and large, the faithful genuinely believe what they profess to believe. Although many religions openly embrace a sense of mystery, in general this does not prevent the attribution of beliefs to religious people. Many of the features of religious belief that Van Leeuwen alludes to, like invulnerability to refutation and incoherence, are characteristic of irrational beliefs in general and actually betray their being held as factual. We conclude with some remarks about the common failure of secular people to face the fact that some religious people really do believe wildly implausible things. Such incredulity, as evinced by Van Leeuwen and others, could be termed “disbelief in belief.”

Where the Design Argument Goes Wrong: Auxiliary Assumptions and Unification*

Sober has reconstructed the biological design argument in the framework of likelihoodism, purporting to demonstrate that it is defective for intrinsic reasons. We argue that Sober’s restriction on the introduction of auxiliary hypotheses is too restrictive, as it commits him to rejecting types of everyday reasoning that are clearly valid. Our account shows that the design argument fails, not because it is intrinsically untestable but because it clashes with the empirical evidence and fails to satisfy certain theoretical desiderata (in particular, unification). Likewise, Sober’s critique of the arguments from imperfections and from evil against design is off the mark.

IRREDUCIBLE INCOHERENCE AND INTELLIGENT DESIGN: A LOOK INTO THE CONCEPTUAL TOOLBOX OF A PSEUDOSCIENCE

The concept of Irreducible Complexity (IC) has played a pivotal role in the resurgence of the creationist movement over the past two decades. Evolutionary biologists and philosophers have unambiguously rejected the purported demonstration of “intelligent design” in nature, but there have been several, apparently contradictory, lines of criticism. We argue that this is in fact due to Michael Behes own incoherent definition and use of IC. This paper offers an analysis of several equivocations inherent in the concept of Irreducible Complexity and discusses the way in which advocates of the Intelligent Design Creationism (IDC) have conveniently turned IC into a moving target. An analysis of these rhetorical strategies helps us to understand why IC has gained such prominence in the IDC movement, and why, despite its complete lack of scientific merits, it has even convinced some knowledgeable persons of the impending demise of evolutionary theory.

Natural Selection Does Care about Truth

True beliefs are better guides to the world than false ones. This is the common-sense assumption that undergirds theorizing in evolutionary epistemology. According to Alvin Plantinga, however, evolution by natural selection does not care about truth: it cares only about fitness. If our cognitive faculties are the products of blind evolution, we have no reason to trust them, anytime or anywhere. Evolutionary naturalism, consequently, is a self-defeating position. Following up on earlier objections, we uncover three additional flaws in Plantingas latest formulation of his argument: a failure to appreciate adaptive path dependency, an incoherent conception of content ascription, and a conflation of common-sense and scientific beliefs, which we diagnose as the ‘foundationalist fallacy’. More fundamentally, Plantingas reductive formalism with respect to the issue of cognitive reliability is inadequate to deal with relevant empirical details.

Psychoanalytic Facts as Unintended Institutional Facts

We present an inference to the best explanation of the immense cultural success of Freudian psychoanalysis as a hermeneutic method. We argue that an account of psychoanalytic facts as products of unintended declarative speech acts explains this phenomenon. Our argument connects diverse, seemingly independent characteristics of psychoanalysis that have been independently confirmed, and applies key features of John Searle’s and Eerik Lagerspetz’s theory of institutional facts to the psychoanalytic edifice. We conclude with a brief defence of the institutional approach against more contentious social constructivist approaches to science and psychoanalysis.

Parasites of the Mind. Why Cultural Theorists Need the Meme’s Eye View

Are there any such things as mind parasites? By analogy with biological parasites, such cultural items are supposed to subvert or harm the interests of their host. The hypothesis of cultural parasitism has appeared in different guises in the burgeoning field of cultural evolution. To unpack the notion of mind parasites, we first clear some conceptual ground around the concept of cultural adaptation and its relation to human agency. We then formulate Millikan’s challenge: how can cultural items develop novel purposes of their own, cross-cutting or subverting our own personal purposes? If this central challenge is not met, talk of cultural ‘parasites’ or ‘selfish memes’ remains vacuous. First, we discuss why other attempts to answer Millikan’s challenge have failed. In particular, we put to rest the claims of panmemetics, a somewhat sinister worldview according to which human culture is nothing more than a swarm of selfish agents, plotting and scheming behind the scenes. Next, we reject a more reasonable, but still overly permissive approach to mind parasites, which equates them with biologically maladaptive culture. Finally, we present our own answer to Millikan’s challenge: certain systems of misbelief can be fruitfully treated as cultural parasites, which are designed by cultural evolution and which subvert the interests of their human hosts. As a proof of concept, we discuss witchcraft beliefs in early modern Europe, and show how the meme’s eye view promises to shed new light on a mystery that historians and social scientists have been wrestling with for decades.