Difference between revisions of "Tem"

From Alfino
Jump to navigationJump to search
Line 1: Line 1:
−
==November 16, 2010==
+
==December 1, 2010==
  
−
===Barrett, CSR===
+
===Wilson, "Introspection and Self-Narratives"===
  
−
:*"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."
+
:*Introspection -- flashlight metaphor -- Freud's metaphor: archaeology
  
−
:*-piecemeal, interdisciplinary, 15 years of research, method. pluralist. 
+
:*Wilson doesn't support these metaphors, seems sceptical that we get such clarity, thinks evidence supports a different view:
  
−
:*-2:  cognitive structures such as "domain-specific inferences systems /  Mental tools
+
::*"Introspection is more like literary criticism in which we are the text to be understood. Just as there is no single truth that lies within a literary text, but many truths, so are there many truths about a person that can be constructed." 162
  
−
:*-Theological Correctness -- on-line vs. off-line tasks show switching bet correctness/incorrectness
+
:*Do we introspect too much? 
  
−
:*-Minimal Counterintuitiveness -- in online env only minimally counterintuitive concepts will take off.
+
::*Real Estate story -- Do we know or show what we want? 
 +
::*Analytic methods vs. Intuitive or behavioral
  
−
:*-Sperber: "epidemiology of representations"
+
:*People are "too good" at giving reasons for their feelings, but not necessary accurate when they do. They rarely say, "I don't know why I feel this way..."
  
−
:*-God -- df.  - a counterintuitive agent that motivates actions, provided it is believed in.
+
:*Major Claim -- Somtimes we use faulty information to decide what our reasons for our feelings are.  Then, using faulty reasons, we actually may alter our feelings.
  
−
:*-old work: Guthrie, Faces in the Clouds, anthropomorphism.  Newer work on HADD
+
::*Study in which subjects in one condition analyze their relationships and in a control condition others don't. Analyzed condition showed greater change in feeling.   
  
−
:*-HADD -- hypersensitive agency detection device -- (evolution may have favored overdetection). religious concepts help make sense of HADD experiences.   
+
:*Which is the real you? The analyzed or unanalyzed? Wilson is saying that you shouldn't assume the analyzed is.   
  
−
:*-"natural born dualists"  (also Bloom's work should be included here, Descartes Baby)
+
::*Poster satisfaction study
  
−
:*-Actions: ritual, prayer, spirit possession.
+
:*Wilson's advice isn't to act on impulse, but to delay rational analysis, in some situations, let yourself say "Not sure how I feel"  -- gather external information and perceptions. Those in the poster study who knew a lot about art didn't experience a change in satisfaction.
  
−
:*-Whitehouse's theory of "imagistic" and "doctrinal modes"
+
::*"The trick is to gather enough information to develop an informed gutfeeling and then not analyze that feeling too much." 172
  
−
:*-Boyer - costly signal theory.
+
:*Wilson's advice: try to become aware of implicit feelings.
  
−
===Atran, in Gods we Trust reading===
+
::*Schultheiss and Brunstein study -- determined implicit feelings (such as need for power or affiliation) and then asked subject to predict their happiness in being in a situation that is geared to stimulate those needs.  Subjects don't accurately predict impact of the experience (they are strangers to themselves). "Consistent with many studies that find that people are not very aware of their implicit motives, people who were high in the need for affiliation and power did not anticipate that the counseling session would make them any happier or feel more engaged than other participants." 174  But "goal imager" and "prefeeling" changed that.
  
−
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.
+
:*Rumination -- definition 175 -- increases depression in depressed.
−
<br>
 
−
<br>
 
−
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.
 
−
[[User:Skolmes|Skolmes]] 18:31, 16 November 2010 (UTC)
 
  
−
===Boyer, Pascal What is the Origin?===
+
::*Pennebaker Study -- subjects write about negative experiences from their lives and it makes them happy?  How to explain this?  How is it different from rumination?   -- Wilson claims that it's because writing involves construction of a meaningful narrative. 
  
−
:*Chapter 1: What is the Origin?
+
:*[One lesson from the chapter:  Be careful of the reasons and stories you use to narrate your experience.  You might actually conform your experience (feelings) to the narrative. But the positive side of that . . . ? Could you prime someone to write a wise narrative?]
−
 
 
−
:*Why do people have religious thought?
 
−
 
 
−
:*ref to mysteries/ problems (Chomsky?) -- explaining religion has gone from a mystery to a problem.
 
−
 
 
−
:*-explanation of religion lies in the way the brain works.
 
−
 
 
−
:*How can we explain the diversity of religion in terms of a brain which is the same everywhere?
 
−
 
 
−
:*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)  
 
−
 
 
−
:*Review of various theses explaining the origin of religion. 
 
−
 
 
−
:*-Claims that religion provides explanations, comform social order, or is a cognitive illusion. 
 
−
 
 
−
:*-6ff:  diversity of religious belief, diffculties of classification (ex. animism?)  Congo might be christian, but they may still worship ancestors.
 
−
 
 
−
:*-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
 
−
 
 
−
:*-example of Fang (African) -- how the thought of spirits; exemption for the white guy (good example of theological correctness). 
 
−
 
 
−
:*-explanation origins assume 1) explanation is universal goal; 2) religious explanations not like ordinary ones.
 
−
 
 
−
:*-interest in particular evils, not always generl prob ove evil.  '
 
−
 
 
−
:*-p. 14: Shaman story (with the stauettes) -- different kind of explanation.
 
−
 
 
−
:*-Sperber -- religion creates "relevant mysteries."  We need to ask, "What makes a mystery relevant?"
 
−
 
 
−
:*-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. 
 
−
 
 
−
:*-religious thought involves distinct predictiabl inferencnormal (Categories are violated.)
 
−
 
 
−
:*-positive thesis: religious concepts are influence by a distinct inference system.
 
−
 
 
−
:*-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. 
 
−
 
 
−
:*-assurance about  mortality just isn't always an issue.
 
−
 
 
−
:*-positive thesis: emotions -- our evolutionary heritage might explain how "emotional programs" affect religious concepts.
 
−
 
 
−
:*-religion as social glue -- crit. p. 24  - religion not always in charge of the social order. 
 
−
 
 
−
:*-functionalism --- out in anthropology since 60s --- problem:  some institutions have no clear function, explanations seemed increasingly ad hoc, social not a "whole", necessarily.
 
−
 
 
−
:*-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).
 
−
 
 
−
:*Religion as an illusion -- sleep of reason -- criticism:  need to explain specific contours of religious concepts. What do people accept these concepts over others?
 
−
 
 
−
:*32:  Turning question around:  religoius concepts we observe are relatively successfull.  We should see religion as a "reduction of concepts"
 
−
 
 
−
:*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." 
 
−
 
 
−
:*memes -- problems with memes
 
−
 
 
−
:*example of the fate of two memes:  "meme" and "selfish gene" 
 
−
 
 
−
:*our minds select and work on membes not just transmission. 
 
−
 
 
−
:*-concepts and templates.
 
−
 
 
−
 
 
−
 
 
−
===More readings if anyone is interested form Evolutionary Religious Studies===
 
−
 
 
−
[http://evolution.binghamton.edu/religion/resources/guide/ beginner readings]
 
−
[http://evolution.binghamton.edu/religion/resources/article/ Other books and articles]
 

Revision as of 18:20, 1 December 2010

December 1, 2010

Wilson, "Introspection and Self-Narratives"

  • Introspection -- flashlight metaphor -- Freud's metaphor: archaeology
  • Wilson doesn't support these metaphors, seems sceptical that we get such clarity, thinks evidence supports a different view:
  • "Introspection is more like literary criticism in which we are the text to be understood. Just as there is no single truth that lies within a literary text, but many truths, so are there many truths about a person that can be constructed." 162
  • Do we introspect too much?
  • Real Estate story -- Do we know or show what we want?
  • Analytic methods vs. Intuitive or behavioral
  • People are "too good" at giving reasons for their feelings, but not necessary accurate when they do. They rarely say, "I don't know why I feel this way..."
  • Major Claim -- Somtimes we use faulty information to decide what our reasons for our feelings are. Then, using faulty reasons, we actually may alter our feelings.
  • Study in which subjects in one condition analyze their relationships and in a control condition others don't. Analyzed condition showed greater change in feeling.
  • Which is the real you? The analyzed or unanalyzed? Wilson is saying that you shouldn't assume the analyzed is.
  • Poster satisfaction study
  • Wilson's advice isn't to act on impulse, but to delay rational analysis, in some situations, let yourself say "Not sure how I feel" -- gather external information and perceptions. Those in the poster study who knew a lot about art didn't experience a change in satisfaction.
  • "The trick is to gather enough information to develop an informed gutfeeling and then not analyze that feeling too much." 172
  • Wilson's advice: try to become aware of implicit feelings.
  • Schultheiss and Brunstein study -- determined implicit feelings (such as need for power or affiliation) and then asked subject to predict their happiness in being in a situation that is geared to stimulate those needs. Subjects don't accurately predict impact of the experience (they are strangers to themselves). "Consistent with many studies that find that people are not very aware of their implicit motives, people who were high in the need for affiliation and power did not anticipate that the counseling session would make them any happier or feel more engaged than other participants." 174 But "goal imager" and "prefeeling" changed that.
  • Rumination -- definition 175 -- increases depression in depressed.
  • Pennebaker Study -- subjects write about negative experiences from their lives and it makes them happy? How to explain this? How is it different from rumination? -- Wilson claims that it's because writing involves construction of a meaningful narrative.
  • [One lesson from the chapter: Be careful of the reasons and stories you use to narrate your experience. You might actually conform your experience (feelings) to the narrative. But the positive side of that . . . ? Could you prime someone to write a wise narrative?]
Retrieved from "http://wiki.gonzaga.edu/alfino/index.php?title=Tem&oldid=10085"