Abstract: Bayesian decision theory is a mathematical framework that models reasoning and decision-making under uncertain conditions. The Bayesian paradigm originated as a theory of how people should operate, not a theory of how they actually operate. Nevertheless, cognitive scientists increasingly use it to describe the actual workings of the human mind. Over the past few decades, cognitive science has produced impressive Bayesian models of mental activity. The models postulate that certain mental processes conform, or approximately conform, to Bayesian norms. Bayesian models offered within cognitive science have illuminated numerous mental phenomena, such as perception, motor control, and navigation. This Element provides a self-contained introduction to the foundations of Bayesian cognitive science. It then explores what we can learn about the mind from Bayesian models offered by cognitive scientists.
Abstract: This Element surveys contemporary philosophical and psychological work on various forms of irrationality: akrasia, strange beliefs, and implicit bias. It takes up several questions in an effort to better illuminate these more maligned aspects of human behaviour and cognition: what is rationality? Why is it irrational to act against one’s better judgement? Could it ever be rational to do so? What’s going wrong with beliefs in conspiracy theories, those arising from self-deception, or those which are classed as delusional? Might some of them in fact be appropriate responses to evidence? Are implicit biases irrational when they conflict with our avowed beliefs? Or might they be rational insofar as they track social realities?
What’s astonishing is the gulf between what we expect to find and what we find when we actually look.
A friend of mine, the philosopher and magician David Abram, used to be the house magician at Alice’ s Restaurant in Massachusetts (made famous by the Arlo Guthrie song). Every night he passed around the tables; coins walked through his fingers, reappeared exactly where they shouldn’t, disappeared again, divided in two, vanished into nothing. One evening, two customers returned to the restaurant shortly after leaving and pulled David aside, looking troubled. When they left the restaurant, they said, the sky had appeared shockingly blue and the clouds large and vivid. Had he put something in their drinks? As the weeks went by, it continued to happen — customers returned to say the traffic had seemed louder than it was before, the streetlights brighter, the patterns on the sidewalk more fascinating, the rain more refreshing. The magic tricks were changing the way people experienced the world.
David explained to me why he thought this happened. Our perceptions work in large part by expectation. It takes less cognitive effort to make sense of the world using preconceived images updated with a small amount of new sensory information than to constantly form entirely new perceptions from scratch. It is our preconceptions that create the blind spots in which magicians do their work. By attrition, coin tricks loosen the grip of our expectations about the way hands and coins work. Eventually, they loosen the grip of our expectations on our perceptions more generally. On leaving the restaurant, the sky looked different because the diners saw the sky as it was there and then, rather than as they expected it to be. Tricked out of our expectations, we fall back on our senses. What’s astonishing is the gulf between what we expect to find and what we find when we actually look.
The universality of religion across human society points to a deep evolutionary past.
The universality of religion across human society points to a deep evolutionary past. However, specific traits of nascent religiosity, and the sequence in which they emerged, have remained unknown. Here we reconstruct the evolution of religious beliefs and behaviors in early modern humans . . . . (Peoples, Duda, Marlowe, 261)
Of interest to most of us is the question of God. Belief in a high god, we will see, does not “come naturally”. We can conclude (and as I will further show in future posts) that belief in God is associated with the development of complex societies. (More specifically this post addresses “traits of religion” since “religion” as an abstract concept was alien to many ancient cultures, with what we would consider to be religious beliefs and practices being, to the ancients, a natural part of everyday life.)
We began our evolutionary journey with a study of hunter gatherers since it is reasonable to infer they represent or earliest way of living.
Locations of the 33 hunter-gatherer societies studied (p. 265)
There are many traits of religion and seven were looked for and studied:
Animism is inevitably with us.“The most striking animist is … Charles Dickens. Both as narrator and through his leading characters, Dickens finds animal form, motion, and volition everywhere. Among artifacts, he most animates houses, furniture, clothing, and portraits…”(Guthrie, 58) Surely since Dickens Walt Disney would be a serious contender to be “the most striking animist”. Of should that title go to the modern advertising industry?
1. Animism
We define animism as the belief that all “natural” things, such as plants, animals, and even such phenomena as thunder, have intentionality (or a vital force) and can have influence on human lives. (266 — some will baulk at classifying animism as a religion but it is undeniably a “trait of religion”, “the oldest trait of religion” and “fundamental to religion”.)
2. Belief in an afterlife
Belief in an afterlife is defined as belief in survival of the individual personality beyond death …. (266)
3. Shamanism
We define shamanism as the presence in a society of a “shaman” (male or female), a socially recognized part-time ritual intercessor, healer, and problem solver …. Shamans often use their power over spirit helpers during performances involving altered states of consciousness … to benefit individuals and the group as a whole …. We view shamans as a general category of individuals often found in hunter-gatherer societies who mediate between the earthly and spirit worlds to promote cohesion and physical and mental well-being in the society …. (266)
4. Ancestor worship
Ancestor worship is defined as belief that the spirits of dead kin remain active in another realm where they may influence the living, and can be influenced by the living …. (p. 266)
There are various types of ancestor worship:
spirits can be present but not necessarily active in human affairs;
they may or may not be influenced by humans through prayer and offerings.
5. High gods
… single, all-powerful creator deities who may be active in human affairs and supportive of human morality. (p. 266)
As with ancestor worship there are variants:
some high gods can be present but not interested in humans;
or they can be active in human affairs but not interested in moral conduct;
or they can be active in judging behaviour and punishing immorality.
6. Worship of active ancestors
7. Worship of active high gods
And here is their result. The graph illustrates how often the respective types of religious belief were found across the 33 societies:
Conclusions
Animism
Our results reflect [the] belief that animism was the earliest and most basic trait of religion because it enables humans to think in terms of supernatural beings or spirits. Animism is not a religion or philosophy, but a feature of human mentality, a byproduct of cognitive processes that enable social intelligence, among other capabilities. It is a widespread way of thinking among hunter-gatherers …. This innate cognitive trait allows us to attribute a vital force to animate and inanimate elements in the environment …. Once that vital force is assumed, attribution of other human characteristics will follow…. Animistic thinking would have been present in early hominins, certainly earlier than language (Coward 2015; Dunbar 2003).
It can be inferred from the analyses, or indeed from the universality of animism, that the presence of animistic belief predates the emergence of belief in an afterlife.
(Peoples, Duda, Marlowe, 274 — my bolding in all quotations)
Our basic psychology that makes it so easy for us to believe in spirit forces has been discussed in earlier posts:
The fundamental building blocks of religious thinking and behaviour are found in all human societies around the world – from small-scale indigenous communities to industrial conurbations and inner cities. For example, people everywhere imagine that bodies and minds can be separated, that features of the natural world have hidden essences and purposes and that we ought to please and placate the spirits of the dead. People everywhere are inclined to spread stories about miraculous events and special beings that contradict our intuitive expectations about the way the world works, giving rise to a plethora of beliefs in supernatural beings and forces of various kinds. People everywhere – even babies who have not yet learned to speak – experience feelings of awe and reverence when they encounter those who can channel otherworldly powers. (Whitehouse, 42f)
Animism would appear to be the fundamental human universal.
Our results indicate that the oldest trait of religion, shared by the most recent common ancestor of present-day hunter-gatherers, was animism. This supports longstanding beliefs about the antiquity and fundamental role of this component of human mentality, which enables people to attribute intent and lifelike qualities to inanimate objects and would have prompted belief in beings or forces in an unseen realm of spirits. (Peoples, Duda, Marlowe, 277)
The following traits of religion are contingent. Why some hunter gatherers embraced the following is a follow-up question. But animism is fundamental: animism is the precondition for all the other traits.
Afterlife
Many but not all groups acquire a belief in an afterlife or embrace shamanism.
Once animistic thought is prevalent in a society, interest in the whereabouts of spirits of the dead could reasonably lead to the concept of an unseen realm where the individual personality of the deceased lives on. The afterlife might be a rewarding continuation of life on earth, or a realm of eternal punishment for those who break social norms. Belief in an afterlife may have generated a sense of “being watched” by the spirits of the dead, prompting archaic forms of social norms … actualized in the role of the shaman. (Peoples, Duda, Marlowe, 274)
On the “naturalness” of believing in an afterlife:
While most wild religious beliefs were not selected for in the human evolutionary journey, they came about as a side effect of other, more adaptive psychological characteristics: for example, our intuitive psychology (including the way we anticipate how others will behave), our intuitive biology (such as the way we create taxonomies of the natural world), our tool-making brains (which make us think everything has a purpose) and our tendency to overdetect agency in the environment (particularly our early warning systems for detecting predators). These intuitions helped our ancestors to survive and pass on their genes, but they also make us naturally susceptible to believing in an afterlife; they make us treat certain objects or places as sacred; they lead us to think that the natural world was intelligently designed; and they convince us that invisible and dangerous spirits lurk in caves and forests.
. . . .
This ability to reason about the mental states of others [“theory of mind”] has profound consequences for our ideas about spirits and the afterlife. A good example of this is … an attempt to explain beliefs in the afterlife as a side effect of the way we naturally reason about minds. … The idea of a ghost or spirit of the dead results from the impossibility of imagining the elimination of certain mental states….
In other words, we imagine the spirits of the dead to remember things that happened during their lives, to have feelings, and to form judgements even if we know that their bodies (including their eyes and their ears) no longer function and may be incinerated or rotting in the ground. This theory is consistent with the very early development of such assumptions in children.
(Whitehouse, 53f)
Belief in afterlife is a precondition for shamanism and ancestor worship.
Shamanism
Shamanism significantly correlates with belief in an afterlife, which emerged first….
Although shamanism has been described as the universal religion of Paleolithic hunter-gatherers … it is not a religion per se, but a complex of beliefs and behaviors that focus on communication with the ancestral spirits, as well as the general world of spirits in the realm of the afterlife. Shamans are healers, ritual leaders, and influential members of society …. Communication with omniscient and perhaps judgmental spirits of known deceased, including ancestors, would have been a useful tool in the work of the shaman….
As humans migrated out of Africa more than 60 kya … the shaman’s curing skills and group rituals would have enhanced survival through physical and emotional healing, enforcement of group norms, and resource management. (Peoples, Duda, Marlowe, 274f)
Ancestor worship
Ancestor worship is not commonly found among hunter-gatherer societies. In future posts I will address research that points to a very strong association between ancestor worship and early agricultural societies.
Worship of dead kin is neither widespread among hunter-gatherers nor the oldest trait of religion. Fewer than half of the societies in our sample believe that dead kin can influence the living…. Greater likelihood of the presence of active ancestor worship [i.e. worship of ancestors actively interested in human affairs] has been linked to societies with unilineal descent where important decisions are made by the kin group…. Ancestor worship is an important source of social control that strengthens cohesion among kin and maintains lineal control of power and property … particularly in the more complex hunter-gatherer societies. In contrast, immediate-return hunter-gatherer societies … seldom recognize dead ancestors who may intervene in their lives. (Peoples, Duda, Marlowe, 275)
The latecomer in the evolution of human societies is “God” . . . .
High gods
Belief in a high god is an outlier in the study. Where it is found the researchers suspected it the belief was acquired from borrowing instead of being organically evolved in the group. (See the original article for a detailed explanation of the ways and extent to which the above religious traits are associated with one another, and the evidence that the belief in high gods is not associated with any other early attribute.)
Belief in high gods appears to be a rather “stand-alone” phenomenon in the evolution of hunter-gatherer religion. Prior studies have shown that among the four modes of subsistence (hunter-gatherers, pastoralists, horticulturalists, and agriculturalists) hunter-gatherers are least likely to adopt morally punishing active high gods, if any high gods at all (Botero et al. 2014; Norenzayan 2013; Peoples and Marlowe 2012; Swanson 1960)…. Early egalitarian hunter-gatherers would rarely have acknowledged an active high god (Norenzayan 2013; Peoples and Marlowe 2012) and would be the least likely to accept or benefit from the supernatural meddling and social constraints of deities who would be seen as “high rulers” (Peoples and Marlowe 2012). The leaders of complex hunter-gatherer societies whose subsistence relies on collective effort should be more likely to benefit from the coercive power of a punishing high god. Our analysis does not support the prevalence of either type of high god among ancestral hunter-gatherers, and the evolution of high gods does not correlate with any of the other traits of hunter-gatherer religion, including ancestor worship. (Peoples, Duda, Marlowe, 276)
God, we will see in more detail in coming posts, appears in certain kinds of socially complex societies:
If a society acquires belief in an omniscient and potentially morally punishing creator deity, it does so regardless of other aspects of its religion but more as a reflection of its social and political structure. (Peoples, Duda, Marlowe, 278)
Guthrie, Stewart. Faces in the Clouds: A New Theory of Religion. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.
Peoples, Hervey C., Pavel Duda, and Frank W. Marlowe. “Hunter-Gatherers and the Origins of Religion.” Human Nature : An Interdisciplinary Biosocial Perspective 27, no. 3 (September 2016): 261–82. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12110-016-9260-0.
I suppose I have always heard, read and assumed that the science of astronomy grew out of the pseudo-scientific practice of astrology. Well, maybe not so. I translate from a German study of the history of Mithraism first published in 1984.
The Stoic school, however, proceeded somewhat differently [from Plato’s proposal that the planets were self-willed and self-moving gods]: the logos (“thought”) governs the entire cosmos, within which there is harmony that regulates its parts. On Earth, the sun determines the alternation of the seasons, and the moon influences the female cycle; in the early 1st century BCE, the Stoic philosopher Posidonius of Apamea in Syria observed that the moon also caused the tides. Since the two great celestial bodies induced such effects, it was hypothesized that the planets Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn also influenced human existence. Observations were collected regarding the connection between zodiacal constellations and human fate, initially with the legitimate intention of verifying a scientific hypothesis based on observed facts (a false hypothesis, but this was not known a priori). This led to the development of a vast astrological system, within which analogies and coincidences continued to be considered as probative elements.
(Merkelbach, Mithras 65 — translation from the Italian edition and compared with the German original)
Put like that, the claims of astrology become an entirely reasonable hypothesis. At least it seems very reasonable given a pre-Newtonian understanding of the universe. Unfortunately the testing that verified it for many was and has remained circular.
Another assumption I have long kept within arms reach is that a precise knowledge of regular planetary movements long preceded the Stoics. It was, I understand, a child of Babylonia. According to my Merkebach text however, that is another erroneous assumption long since superseded. I hope anyone who has a more up to date knowledge of the scholarly research into this question can correct me if needed.
During Plato’s time, an important astronomical discovery occurred. The planets—the Greek word means “wandering stars”—had always been considered celestial bodies that, unlike the others, wandered aimlessly. But Philip of Opuntius, a member of the Platonic Academy, observed that the planets moved “around the Earth” with regular revolutions.* They were not “wandering stars” after all, and law and order reigned in the heavens. Why did the planets follow regular, albeit complex, trajectories, the understanding of which would await the discoveries of Kepler and Newton? An unprovable hypothesis was formulated, which nevertheless seemed convincing: the stars were animated and followed regular orbits by their own will and judgment, as they were “visible gods.”
* It is not clear whether the regularity of the revolution of the planets was observed first in Greece or in Babylon. It was once assumed that, since ancient times, the Babylonians had precise knowledge in this field, but this hypothesis has proven to be unfounded.
(Translation of Merkelbach 65)
Merkelbach, Reinhold. Mithras. Konigstein/Ts : Hain, 1984. http://archive.org/details/mithras0000merk.
Merkelbach, Reinhold. Mitra. Il Signore Delle Grotte. Translated by P. Massondo. 2nd ed. ECIG, 1998.
I have moved to a new residence and am thrilled to see that we still have magpies as company. I know we are not supposed to feed wildlife but, well, we are not supposed to eat much chocolate, either. Once in a while I was so taken by the magpies where we lived that I could not resist the occasional giving them a handout of a few crumbs. A few were so bold as to approach me within touching distance and when I held out my hand with some bread crumbs they looked at me “just to be sure I knew what I was doing” before crocking their heads sideways so that their beaks would pick up the crumbs with a sideways approach. Thus they avoided the risk of punching my hand with the sharp end of their beaks.
I was reminded how as a child I fed chooks and how they would just peck peck peck away into the palm of my hand without any thought of the punches they were inflicting.
Magpies? No, not like that at all. They would carefully turn their heads sideways to be sure that they lifted a crumb from my hand without any risk of their beak’s sharp end poking me. Magpies — humane, thoughtful, aware. Chooks — thoughtless, dumb.
After having posted sympathetically about the possibility of our lacking free will (so much so that I am not even sure I know what “thinking” entails at the most fundamental level) — I’m pleased to imagine that I am freely choosing to post a link to an argument for us having free will:
by Kevin Mitchell, a scholar of genetics and neuroscience at Trinity College Dublin.
The processes of cognition are thus mediated by the activities of neurons in the brain, but are not reducibleto those activities or driven by them in a mechanical way. What matters in settling how things go is what the patterns mean – the low-level details are often arbitrary and incidental. Organisms with these capacities are thereby doing things for reasons – reasons of the whole organism, not their parts.
and
A common claim of free will skeptics is that we, ourselves, had no hand in determining what that configuration is. It is simply a product of our evolved human nature, our individual genetic make-up and neurodevelopmental history, and the accumulated effects of all our experiences. Note, however, that this views our experiences as events thathave happened to us. It thus assumes the point it is trying to make – that we have no agency because we never have had any.
If, instead, we take a more active view of the way we interact with the world, we can see that many of our experiences were either directly chosen by us or indirectly result from the actions we ourselves have taken. Not only do we make choices about what to do at any moment, we manage our behaviour in sustained ways through time. We adopt long-term plans and commitments – goals that require sustained effort to attain and that thereby constrain behavior in the moment. We develop habits and heuristics based on past experience – efficiently offloading to subconscious processes decisions we’ve made dozens or hundreds of times before. And we devise policies and meta-policies – overarching principles that can guide behaviour in new situations. We thus absolutely do play an active role in the accumulation of the attitudes, dispositions, habits, projects, and policies that collectively comprise our character.
He also has a book titled Free Agents, subtitled How Evolution Gave Us Free Will.
The experience of one friend of mine many years ago still haunts me. He had enormous emotional, mental and behavioural problems, having come from a brutal family upbringing. There was one period when he seemed to have completely changed, to have become “whole” even, and positive. It turned out that he had had a good sleep and a healthy meal for once. I was religious at the time and could not help wondering how God would judge someone whose behaviour depended so critically on a healthy salad sandwich and 8 hours sleep.
ChatGPT (or any Artificial Intelligence) lacks consciousness of what it is doing and hence cannot be said to have the “free will” or “subjective impulses” to determine what direction its “thoughts” will take. (See critical comments on an earlier ChatGPT post).
A nagging question persists in the back of my mind, however. Do even humans have “free will” to guide the directions of their thoughts and conclusions? Every time I read a relatively recent work on human consciousness (e.g. Greenfield, Churchland) I am left with the disturbing notion that there may be a possibility that our consciousness of ourselves and what we are doing is an illusion. Although my inner gut resists that idea I do know that my inner gut does not have an infallible record of guiding me in the way of Truth. Ditto for my notion of “common sense”.
Aitchison, Laurence, and Máté Lengyel. “With or without You: Predictive Coding and Bayesian Inference in the Brain.” Current Opinion in Neurobiology 46 (October 2017): 219–27. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.conb.2017.08.010.
Dehaene, Stanislas. Consciousness and the Brain: Deciphering How the Brain Codes Our Thoughts. 2014.
Nørretranders, Tor. The User Illusion: Cutting Consciousness Down to Size. 1998.
Sacks, Oliver. An Anthropologist on Mars: Seven Paradoxical Tales. 1995.
———. Awakenings. 1987.
———. The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat: And Other Clinical Tales. 1985.
Schurger, Aaron, Jacobo Sitt, and Stanislas Dehaene. “An Accumulator Model for Spontaneous Neural Activity Prior to Self-Initiated Movement.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America 109 (August 6, 2012): E2904-13. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1210467109.
Wegner, Daniel M. The Illusion of Conscious Will. 2018, 2002
Wilson, Timothy D. Strangers to Ourselves. 2004.
Some concluding gems:
CARTESIAN, adj. Relating to Descartes, a famous philosopher, author of the celebrated dictum, Cogito ergo sum – whereby he was pleased to suppose he demonstrated the reality of human existence. The dictum might be improved, however, thus: Cogito cogito ergo cogito sum – “I think that I think, therefore I think that I am;” as close an approach to certainty as any philosopher has yet made. (The Devil’s Dictionary of Ambrose Bierce)
. . . .
And as Isaac Bashevis Singer liked to quip: “We must believe in free will. We have no choice.”
. . . .
. . . exactly what am I?
A rational maximizer? A child of God? A lizard that thinks it knows what it’s doing?
Does the main difference between our thinking and that of AI come down to AI having fewer hidden biases and parameters than the human brain?
It’s a fearful notion. That lizard would have no option but to resist it.
Technological advances have opened up new plausible explanations for the Nazca lines (“geoglyphs” for the scientifically minded). — Excuse me if you knew all of this long ago and I am late to the party, but here are a few of the fascinating (for me) things I learned from that lazy moment of watching a bit of TV: The Mystery of the Nazca Lines. I braced myself to turn it off assuming it would regale me with “mysteries” and “space aliens” but I got hooked. Here’s why:
The spiral
The hummingbird
The spider
Were the lines pointing to key astronomical points? That was the theory of mathematician Maria Reiche who first visited the region in the mid 1930s. But no. Yes, if one selects some lines to study they may align with a solstice, but such a theory breaks down when one learns that there are so many more lines to take into account.
Space aliens? That was Erich von Daniken’s theory about alien visitors from another galaxy. But I was never quite convinced that he had the final answer
Science can now determine where people walked over a thousand years ago! A “magnetometry survey” is conducted to establish the likelihood that the lines were tracks for processions. The density of the land beneath the lines that have been cleared of stones (the dry, windless climate preserves the region over centuries), measured by variations in the magnetic field, “prove that the insides of the lines have been pressed down by multiple shocks — as if trampled on many times”. The geoglyphs were paths that people walked — or marched or danced — upon.
It was after this detail had been established that another feature was noticed: each figure is composed of a single line, as if there is an entrance and an exit. Even the circular lines are actually a single pathway. Those spirals have a turnaround in the middle that directs that single line to an exit.
Result: we can imagine people walking / marching / dancing single file through the figure, “experiencing the figure”. Sacred marches to communicate with the gods?
Then we have modern photogrammetry that can enable the production of very detailed 3-D images of vast areas. From these we learn that there are about 50,000 geoglyphs out there. Artificial intelligence helps humans find many of these by alerting humans to hitherto unnoticed patterns.
Related to the trapezoid lines are platform mounds that were determined to be altars for religious offerings, not only offerings of food but also of the spondylus shell imported from the far north.
The images depicted by these lines are all associated with water, we are told. All of the creatures are linked to water habitats, even the monkey and humming bird and spider. The ceremonies were related to the gift of water and fertility.
Underground tunnels were constructed to exploit the underground water through connected wells, some of which are still used today.
But how were the spirals created so perfectly? Not space aliens, as it turns out, but by the simplest technology of a stick and a rope. A people so smart will one day make it to the moon!
In the 1980s they discovered the “city” of Cahuachi but it lacks any evidence of a “normal population” (kitchens, cooking places, etc) indicating that it was, therefore, not a city but a vast ceremonial site. Continue reading “The Nazca Lines”
I used to think the lungfish was the halfway species between sea and land animals but I was not aware of the epaulette shark until the possible discovery of a new species of them made the news: Here is a five year old video:
According to the ABC news report they can stay out of water for up to two hours.
I can believe the part where they are said to survive on land by shutting down several of their brain functions. Now that might explain a lot about another, more familiar, two-legged creature that has become a land-dweller!
Drew Berry is a cell biologist and biomedical animator who creates beautiful, accurate visualizations of the dramatic cellular and molecular action that is going on inside our bodies. Since 1995 he has led biomedical animation within WEHI, Australia. His has exhibited at the Guggenheim Museum, MoMA, the Royal Institute of Great Britain and the University of Geneva.
WEHI.TV explains discoveries at the frontier of medical research through accurate and entertaining 3D animations. It answers the ever-growing demand for meaningful and engaging information on complex bodily topics.
….. developments in physics suggest the non-existence of time is an open possibility, and one that we should take seriously.
How can that be, and what would it mean? It’ll take a little while to explain, but don’t worry: even if time doesn’t exist, our lives will go on as usual.
and it gets somewhat philosophical….
…. we know we need a new physical theory to explain the universe, and that this theory might not feature time.
Suppose such a theory turns out to be correct. Would it follow that time does not exist?
It’s complicated, and it depends what we mean by exist.
and then….
There is a way out of the mess.
While physics might eliminate time, it seems to leave causation intact: the sense in which one thing can bring about another.
Perhaps what physics is telling us, then, is that causation and not time is the basic feature of our universe.
So Jesus has already come and if someone says I’m late I can reply on the grounds of a good physics hypothesis that I am not and if someone wants to book me for parking over-time I will tell the judge….
In a comment to the previous post, Russell Gmirkin took issue with my explanation of Kuhn’s definition of a paradigm and my conclusion that fields of study outside of natural sciences don’t have Kuhnian paradigms, and hence no “paradigm shifts.”
He quoted from his forthcoming book, as follows:
One may define an academic paradigm as an implicit or explicit theoretical and factual framework that is agreed upon by consensus by a body of professionals within a discipline. (Gmirkin 2022)
As I’ve said before, if you want to propose your own definition of a paradigm, I have no quarrel with it. However, having done so, you will have left the Kuhnian universe of ideas. And once again, I protest not because Kuhn was right in all things, but simply because he had a particular structure in mind, and to appropriate his conclusions based on terminology antithetical to that structure is wrong.
Unright
I apparently must now apologize for calling someone or something wrong, since Mr. Dabrowski has informed me that I am displaying “animus.” Let us say instead that it is unright. Perhaps even double-plus unright.
Gmirkin continues:
Paradigms are typically perpetuated within academic institutions of learning in preparation for professional life within that field. As an axiomatic intellectual framework enforced by revered teachers and respected peers, paradigms tend to be conservatively preserved and are difficult to change except in the face of both deconstruction by new facts that run counter to the accepted paradigm and the construction of a competing paradigm with greater explanatory power (Kuhn 1996) (Gmirkin 2022)
I understand his point. As we discussed in previous posts, anomalies arise when new data arrives that calls the entire prevailing framework into question. The resulting crisis can engender a great deal of backlash. For example, the discovery of X-rays sent shock waves through the scientific community. One might wonder why this should be so, since the prevailing paradigm didn’t exclude the possibility of their existence. Continue reading “Paradigm Shifts in Religious Studies (Part 3)”
The previous post generated some interesting discussion. Eventually, I would like to take the time to address the comments in a deliberate, serious manner; however, at the moment I want to take us back around to some fundamental questions.
What did Thomas Kuhn mean by paradigm?
Did Kuhn think his paradigmatic structure applied to the social sciences, arts, and humanities?
Can we legitimately apply the concept of Kuhnian paradigm shifts to theology and biblical studies?
As you probably already know, Kuhn’s magnum opus, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, spawned a great deal of controversy. Undeniably, he unleashed a generation of self-absorbed loud-talkers at parties who used the word incessantly. His detractors almost immediately jumped upon the fact that Kuhn used the word “paradigm” in several different senses of the word. How do we know what he meant by the term paradigm shift if we can’t be certain, from one page to the next, what exactly he meant by paradigm?
In the preface to more recent editions of Structure, Ian Hacking cites “an often-cited but seldom-read essay” by Margaret Masterman — who may be the first person to have counted the 21 ways Kuhn used the word. Having recently read the paper, “The Nature of a Paradigm,” I think Masterman’s criticism came out of sincere respect and the desire to clarify Kuhn’s muddy waters. She rightly notes the sense in which a group of scientists latch onto a paradigm before they can articulate a theory. It starts with some achievement that draws like-minded people together into a social relationship.
[F]or Kuhn, something sociologically describable, and above all, concrete, already exists in actual science, at the early stages, when the theory is not there.
It is worth remarking also that, whatever synonym-patterns Kuhn may get trapped into establishing in the heat of his arguments, he never, in fact, equates ‘paradigm’, in any of its main senses, with ‘scientific theory’. For his metaparadigm* is something far wider than, and ideologically prior to, theory: i.e. a whole Weltanschauung. His sociological paradigm, as we have seen, is also prior to theory, and other than theory, since it is something concrete and observable: i.e. a set of habits. And his construct-paradigm is less than a theory, since it can be something as little theoretic as a single piece of apparatus: i.e. anything which can cause actual puzzle-solving to occur. (Masterman 1977, p. 66-67, emphasis mine)
[*By “metaparadigm,” Masterman is referring to the sense in which Kuhn refers to an all-encompassing way of thinking about the world and not merely to a localized pattern, set of habits, or framework for puzzle-solving.]
While many critics (especially followers of Popper) scoffed at Kuhn’s work and claimed he had simply reworked some well-known and understood ideas, Masterman realized he was onto something important. And she recognized that this new way of looking at scientific progress — not as an accumulation of facts and a slow upward march, but as a kind of punctuated equilibrium — was attracting readers and adherents. Continue reading “Paradigm Shifts in Religious Studies (Part 2)”
Kuhn’s masterpiece is a rare thing: A groundbreaking work that’s easy to read. This short book contains an array of fascinating new ideas along with a structure for understanding the emergence of new paradigms. The term paradigm has become overused and overworked in everyday English. However, when we talk about the emergence of a new explanatory framework in science, history, literature, philosophy, etc., we can’t help but think of the term paradigm shift.
Shift Stages
Kuhn described the process of one paradigm displacing another, older one in successive stages.
Normal Science. What we do every day within the existing framework. Scientists perform experiments, examine the results, and decide how they fit in with the established model. They publish the results and debate about their ramifications. And then they design new experiments. The process repeats. Essentially, Kuhn said what scientists are engaged in is “puzzle-solving.”
Anomalies. From time to time, certain unexpected results occur. Puzzle-solvers are drawn to the anomalies as they endeavor to make them fit within the current paradigm.
Crisis. Once in a great while, certain serious anomalies cannot be accounted for or ignored. They show themselves as evidence that the current model is inadequate. The prevailing paradigm teeters on the brink.
Revolution. A competing paradigm emerges which accounts for the anomalies. New research tends to use the new framework to solve puzzles. The old paradigm fades away, along with its practitioners. Eventually, we return to a state of “normal science” under the new paradigm.
Stuck in the Paradigm
The power of Kuhn’s revolutionary structure hit home once again as I was reading Varieties of Jesus Mythicism, Did He Even Exist? For example, in the first essay by our friend David Fitzgerald, he writes:
The Historical Jesus question has the potential to be the biggest paradigm shift in the study of Christian origins. And the importance of Jesus Mythicism goes far beyond the Historical Jesus question itself. For instance, it highlights all the uniquely problematic elements plaguing biblical studies historically and currently, such as the pervasive bias affecting biblical studies—a remarkable condition different from any other field of history. (“Why Mythicism Matters,” Varieties, p. 37)
Here Fitzgerald hints at the reason we’re stuck in the current paradigm: namely, the insuperable barriers that prevent the people most qualified to tackle the question of Jesus’ historicity from even taking the notion seriously. If your entire worldview holds that the salvation of humankind depends on Jesus of Nazareth, then the very question is preposterous. Even for a non-Christian, if your job requires you to stay within the guardrails of biblical studies, the subject has to remain in the category of “not worthy of discussion.”
In the preface, Robert Price invokes Kuhn’s name, saying:
In fact, as Thomas S. Kuhn explains in his great book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, advances in science proceed at least as much by new paradigms for construing data as by the discovery of new data. New models, theories, and paradigms are suggestions for making new and better sense of the data we already had. These new notions must prove themselves by running the gauntlet of collegial criticism. (“New Testament Minimalism,” Varieties, p. 15, emphasis mine)
At first, I’m inclined to agree with his assessment, but something feels “off” here. According to Kuhn, the discovery of new data that doesn’t fit within the current paradigm eventually weakens trust in the prevailing model. Yes, Kuhn presents several examples of existing paradigms that gradually lost adherents to some new way of assembling and explaining the existing data. However, the actual shift to a radically different pattern of thought requires a set of anomalies that bedevil the old paradigm — anomalies that the new paradigm easily explains or, better yet, confidently predicts.
Rescorla, Michael. Bayesian Models of the Mind. Cambridge University Press, 2025. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108955973.
Sullivan-Bissett, Ema. Irrationality. Cambridge University Press, 2025. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009641883.
