Difference between revisions of "Tem"

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==November 16, 2010==
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==11: OCT 6==
  
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===Barrett, CSR===
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===Assigned===
  
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:*"Cognitive science of religion (CSR) brings theories from the cognitive sciencesto bear on why religious thought and action is so common in humans and whyreligious phenomena take on the features that they do."
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:*Haidt, Chapter 5, "Beyond WEIRD Morality" (17)
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:*Writing exercise: How WEIRD is Morality?
  
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:*-piecemeal, interdisciplinary, 15 years of research, method. pluralist. 
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===Brief Survey on Student Engagement in Hybrid course delivery===
  
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:*-2: cognitive structures such as "domain-specific inferences systems / Mental tools
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:*Please take the following anonymous [https://gonzaga.az1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_3I98g1ecsTe59ZP survey].
  
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:*-Theological Correctness -- on-line vs. off-line tasks show switching bet correctness/incorrectness
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===Final Stage of Sapolsky Writing Assignment===
  
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:*-Minimal Counterintuitiveness -- in online env only minimally counterintuitive concepts will take off.
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:*'''Stage 4''': Back-evaluation: After you receive your peer comments and my evaluation, take a few minutes to fill out this quick "back evaluation" rating form: [https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSdgKCYITDTSOOHcvC3TAVNK-EZDsP4jiiyPj-7jdpRoNUsLPA/viewform?usp=sf_link].  '''Fill out the form for each reviewer, but not Alfino.'''  Up to 10 points, in Points.
  
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:*-Sperber: "epidemiology of representations"
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::*Back evaluations are due '''Thursday, October 8, 11:59pm'''.
  
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:*-God -- df.  - a counterintuitive agent that motivates actions, provided it is believed in.
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===Some samples from Henrich's, "The Weirdest People on Earth"===
  
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:*-old work:  Guthrie, Faces in the Clouds, anthropomorphism.  Newer work on HADD
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:*p. 25: "Who Am I?" task. Show charts
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:*p. 28: sociocentric vs. individualistic
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:*p. 34: guilt vs. shame
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:*p. 44: impersonal honesty research (recall Ariely).   
  
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:*-HADD -- hypersensitive agency detection device --  (evolution may have favored overdetection).  religious concepts help make sense of HADD experiences. 
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===Haidt, Chapter 5, "Beyond WEIRD Morality"===
  
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:*-"natural born dualists"  (also Bloom's work should be included here, Descartes Baby)
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====WEIRD Morality====
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:*WEIRD morality is the morality of Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic cultures
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::*just as likely to be bothered by taboo violations, but more likely to set aside feelings of disgust and allow violations
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::*only group with majority allowing chicken story violation.
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::*"the weirder you are the more likely you are to see the world in terms of separate objects, rather than relationships"  "sociocentric" moralities vs. individualistic moralities; Enlightenment moralities of Kant and Mill are rationalist, individualist, and universalist.  
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::*survey data on East/West differences in sentence completion: "I am..."
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::*framed-line task 97
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:*Kantian and Millian ethical thought is rationalist, rule based, and universalist.  Just the ethical theory you would expect from the culture. 
  
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:*-Actions:  ritual, prayer, spirit possession.
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====A 3 channel moral matrix====
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:*Schweder's anthropology: ethics of autonomy, community, divinity 99-100 - gloss each...
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::*claims Schweder's theory predicts responses on taboo violation tests, is descriptively accurate.
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::*ethic of divinity: body as temple vs. playground
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::*vertical dimension to values. explains reactions to flag desecration, piss Christ, thought exp: desecration of liberal icons.  (Note connection to contemporary conflicts, such as the Charlie Hebdot massacre.)
  
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:*-Whitehouse's theory of "imagistic" and "doctrinal modes"  
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====Making Sense of Moral/Cultural Difference====
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:*'''Haidt's Bhubaneswar experience''': diverse (intense) continua of moral values related to purity. (opposite of disgust). Confusing at first, but notice that he started to like his hosts (elephant) and then started to think about how their values might work.  Stop and think about how a mind might create this.  Detail about airline passenger.
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:*Theorizing with Paul Rozin on the right model for thinking about moral foundations: "Our theory, in brief" (103)
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:*American politics often about sense of "sacrilege", not just about defining rights (autonomy).  Not just harm, but types of moral disgust.
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:*'''Stepping out of the Matrix''':  H's metaphor for seeing his own cultural moral values as more "contingent" than before, when it felt like the natural advocacy of what seem true and right.  Reports growing self awareness of liberal orientation of intellectual culture in relation to Shweder's view.  Social conservatives made more sense to him after studying in India.
  
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:*-Boyer - costly signal theory.
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===Small Group Discussion===
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:*Discussion questions:
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===Atran, in Gods we Trust reading===
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::*Does it make sense to talk about "stepping out of a matrix"?  Is this a temporary thing?  What value might it have in your experience?
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::*Do you have a parallel story to Haidt's? (Mention travel experiences.)
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Atran basically describes how difficult and complicated understanding the evolution behind specific traits is, and why evolution creates things that are useful but also many traits that are not. He begins by explaining that traits like a panda's thumb, although it looks similar to a primate's thumb, come from an entirely different source and so are very different structurally and are for different uses. Between this and the trade-offs that species often make, such as smaller fingers for more tool use but less tree swinging in monkeys, it is hard to see what structure an adaptation comes from. Atran points out that if the evolutionary pressure on the animal no longer exists it would be very hard to see that it had caused the adaptation-- because the adaptation worked the pressure is no longer evident. The final complication is that some adaptations create 'by products' that have no use but came from other adaptations, which may later seem to have a certain use or even gain one. The chin was one of these, adapted by necessity because of our changing jaws, but later became a feature in sexual selection. He explains that our explanations for features on ourselves therefore can be very wrong and hard to prove, and that this problem increases exponentially as we get to more complicated features like the brain.
 
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Human brains are incredibly difficult to explain, for many of the reasons he describes earlier and also because it is hard to prove which other species have mental constructs like grammar or a sense of perspectives of others. Some monkeys appear to have these structures but the way we test them may be reading into behaviors that are entirely different. Atran outlines some hypothesis for societal structures like monogamy and explains that some of our emotional and social structures may be responses to evolutionary pressures that no longer exist-- he explains that a fear of snakes is no longer useful but is much more pronounced than our more useful fear of an atom bomb. Atran says that evolutionary psychology is difficult because it is so hard to see what a feature of our brains was useful for initially and what features of our brains were incidental, especially since higher thinking has yet to be mapped in a brain. He says he will try to explain the cognitive structures that support religion and how these would have been useful but this section seems to me to be more of a warning about easy answers than proof he is correct.
 
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[[User:Skolmes|Skolmes]] 18:31, 16 November 2010 (UTC)
 
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===Boyer, Pascal What is the Origin?===
 
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:*Chapter 1: What is the Origin?
 
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:*Why do people have religious thought?
 
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:*ref to mysteries/ problems (Chomsky?) -- explaining religion has gone from a mystery to a problem.
 
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:*-explanation of religion lies in the way the brain works.
 
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:*How can we explain the diversity of religion in terms of a brain which is the same everywhere?
 
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:*Natural selection vies us "particular mental predisposition" p. 3  nomral brains don't have to have religion (but they can realize it because of the kind of brain we have)  
 
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:*Review of various theses explaining the origin of religion. 
 
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:*-Claims that religion provides explanations, comform social order, or is a cognitive illusion. 
 
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:*-6ff:  diversity of religious belief, diffculties of classification (ex. animism?) Congo might be christian, but they may still worship ancestors.
 
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:*-diversity of supernatural agents:  abstract vs. down to earth, salvation not always the goal, official religion vs. unofficial, "relgion" not a word everywhere, not always about faith
 
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:*-example of Fang (African) -- how the thought of spirits; exemption for the white guy (good example of theological correctness). 
 
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:*-explanation origins assume 1) explanation is universal goal; 2) religious explanations not like ordinary ones.
 
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:*-interest in particular evils, not always generl prob ove evil.  '
 
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:*-p. 14: Shaman story (with the stauettes) -- different kind of explanation.
 
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:*-Sperber -- religion creates "relevant mysteries."  We need to ask, "What makes a mystery relevant?"
 
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:*-minds are not general explanation machines, but particular ones.  (16)  "inference systems"  rleigions do make use of inference systems.  in normal explaatnion we reserve bio explanations for biological events, etc.  not so in religion. 
 
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:*-religious thought involves distinct predictiabl inferencnormal (Categories are violated.)
 
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:*-positive thesis:  religious concepts are influence by a distinct inference system.
 
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:*-problem with "religion as comfort" explanation -- rituals might create the need they satisfy  (p. 20).  also, rleigions with reassuring explanations tend to come from wealthy environments. 
 
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:*-assurance about  mortality just isn't always an issue.
 
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:*-positive thesis: emotions -- our evolutionary heritage might explain how "emotional programs" affect religious concepts.
 
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:*-religion as social glue -- crit. p. 24  - religion not always in charge of the social order.  
 
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:*-functionalism --- out in anthropology since 60s --- problem:  some institutions have no clear function, explanations seemed increasingly ad hoc, social not a "whole", necessarily.
 
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:*-yet, wants to bring back some notion of functionalism  -- claims that the discovery of the "social mind" helps explain how we choose representations that promote social cohesion (27).
 
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:*Religion as an illusion -- sleep of reason -- criticism:  need to explain specific contours of religious concepts.  What do people accept these concepts over others? 
 
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:*32:  Turning question around:  religoius concepts we observe are relatively successfull.  We should see religion as a "reduction of concepts"
 
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:*33:  "Does this mean that at some point in history people had lots of possible versions of religion and that somehow one of them proved more successfiil? Not at all. What it means is that, at all times and all the time, indefinitely many variants of religious notions were and are created inside individual minds. Not all these variants are equally successful in cultural transmission. What we call a cultural phenomenon is the result of a selection that is taking place all the time and everywhere." 
 
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:*memes -- problems with memes
 
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:*example of the fate of two memes:  "meme" and "selfish gene" 
 
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:*our minds select and work on membes not just transmission. 
 
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:*-concepts and templates.
 
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===More readings if anyone is interested form Evolutionary Religious Studies===
 
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[http://evolution.binghamton.edu/religion/resources/guide/ beginner readings]
 
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[http://evolution.binghamton.edu/religion/resources/article/ Other books and articles]
 

Latest revision as of 19:51, 6 October 2020

11: OCT 6

Assigned

  • Haidt, Chapter 5, "Beyond WEIRD Morality" (17)
  • Writing exercise: How WEIRD is Morality?

Brief Survey on Student Engagement in Hybrid course delivery

  • Please take the following anonymous survey.

Final Stage of Sapolsky Writing Assignment

  • Stage 4: Back-evaluation: After you receive your peer comments and my evaluation, take a few minutes to fill out this quick "back evaluation" rating form: [1]. Fill out the form for each reviewer, but not Alfino. Up to 10 points, in Points.
  • Back evaluations are due Thursday, October 8, 11:59pm.

Some samples from Henrich's, "The Weirdest People on Earth"

  • p. 25: "Who Am I?" task. Show charts
  • p. 28: sociocentric vs. individualistic
  • p. 34: guilt vs. shame
  • p. 44: impersonal honesty research (recall Ariely).

Haidt, Chapter 5, "Beyond WEIRD Morality"

WEIRD Morality

  • WEIRD morality is the morality of Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic cultures
  • just as likely to be bothered by taboo violations, but more likely to set aside feelings of disgust and allow violations
  • only group with majority allowing chicken story violation.
  • "the weirder you are the more likely you are to see the world in terms of separate objects, rather than relationships" "sociocentric" moralities vs. individualistic moralities; Enlightenment moralities of Kant and Mill are rationalist, individualist, and universalist.
  • survey data on East/West differences in sentence completion: "I am..."
  • framed-line task 97
  • Kantian and Millian ethical thought is rationalist, rule based, and universalist. Just the ethical theory you would expect from the culture.

A 3 channel moral matrix

  • Schweder's anthropology: ethics of autonomy, community, divinity 99-100 - gloss each...
  • claims Schweder's theory predicts responses on taboo violation tests, is descriptively accurate.
  • ethic of divinity: body as temple vs. playground
  • vertical dimension to values. explains reactions to flag desecration, piss Christ, thought exp: desecration of liberal icons. (Note connection to contemporary conflicts, such as the Charlie Hebdot massacre.)

Making Sense of Moral/Cultural Difference

  • Haidt's Bhubaneswar experience: diverse (intense) continua of moral values related to purity. (opposite of disgust). Confusing at first, but notice that he started to like his hosts (elephant) and then started to think about how their values might work. Stop and think about how a mind might create this. Detail about airline passenger.
  • Theorizing with Paul Rozin on the right model for thinking about moral foundations: "Our theory, in brief" (103)
  • American politics often about sense of "sacrilege", not just about defining rights (autonomy). Not just harm, but types of moral disgust.
  • Stepping out of the Matrix: H's metaphor for seeing his own cultural moral values as more "contingent" than before, when it felt like the natural advocacy of what seem true and right. Reports growing self awareness of liberal orientation of intellectual culture in relation to Shweder's view. Social conservatives made more sense to him after studying in India.

Small Group Discussion

  • Discussion questions:
  • Does it make sense to talk about "stepping out of a matrix"? Is this a temporary thing? What value might it have in your experience?
  • Do you have a parallel story to Haidt's? (Mention travel experiences.)
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