{"id":10732,"date":"2019-02-27T10:07:06","date_gmt":"2019-02-27T09:07:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/?p=10732"},"modified":"2023-08-07T13:29:48","modified_gmt":"2023-08-07T11:29:48","slug":"are-selves-cultural-attractors","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/blogs\/stefaan-blancke\/are-selves-cultural-attractors\/","title":{"rendered":"Are selves cultural attractors?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I have just finished reading Nick Chater\u2019s The mind is flat: The illusion of mental depth and the improvised mind<\/em> (Chater 2017), <\/em>which\n I think is an intriguing book. In contrast to popular opinion and much \nof modern psychology, it argues that our minds do not harbour a \nsubconscious or unconscious that forms the source of our \u2018true\u2019 beliefs,\n emotions, motives and so forth. Instead, we spin stories on the spot to\n account for the way that we think, behave and feel. The coherence that \nemerges from these strings of justifications does not reveal our \npersonal identity lying hidden in our mental depths. It derives from the\n fact that when we invent a new story about ourselves, we tend to take \nthe stories that we created previously into account. Furthermore, we \nadjust our behaviour and thoughts in accordance with these stories, \nhence further contributing to the impression of coherence. As Chater \nnicely puts it, we are \u201cshaped by stories\u201d (p. 116), so that each \nindividual constitutes a \u201ctradition\u201d (p. 202).<\/p>\n\n\n

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An important reason why we spin these\nstories and why we strive to maintain at least some level of coherence is that\nwe have to be able to justify ourselves. Indeed, as Mercier and Sperber (2017) pointed out, <\/em>we present\nbeliefs and emotions as motivations to account for our behaviour. These reasons\nare not intended as accurate descriptions of how things are, but they are\n\u201ctools for social interaction\u201d. By providing reasons, I do not only aim to\njustify myself but I also make a commitment. People now know which reasons I\nregard as acceptable motivations and will thus probably guide my behaviour in\nthe future. By being coherent in words and deeds, one creates a reputation.\nHowever, if I am whimsical, people have no idea what to expect from me, and perhaps\nstart to avoid me, which can have detrimental consequences for my well-being. In\na social species such as ours, coherence pays off.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But where do the stories that we tell about\nourselves come from? Chater doesn\u2019t pay much attention to this question. He\nrepeatedly says that the stories are of our own creation, but certainly he\ndoesn\u2019t mean that they are entirely idiosyncratic. If that would be the case,\nthen nobody would be able to understand what we are talking about. Hence, the explanations\nthat we bring in to account for our experience and behaviour are shared\nsocially. We pick up reasons through interaction with other people, learning\nwhat thoughts and emotions they invoke in relation to particular situations,\nwho in their turn acquired these accounts from others and so on. In other words,\nthe stories that we invoke to make sense of ourselves result from and become\ndistributed through cognitive causal chains: they are cultural (Sperber 2001, Scott-Phillips, Blancke, and Heintz\n2018).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

However, this raises another question: why\nare these reasons available and not others? In order to get a scientific handle\non this question, we can introduce the concept of cultural attractor. An\nattractor is a hypothesized point in the space of possible representations\ntowards which representations tend to converge. In other words, it provide a\nhandy description of what needs to be explained, namely a particular\ndistribution of representations. In the case at hand, the justifications that people\ninvoke to account for themselves. In other words, some reasons will be more\nwidely available than others, so the type that they resemble we label as\ncultural attractor. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mercier and Sperber  (2017, p. 126) provide some indication of what\ntypes of reason can be expected to become cultural attractors. One restraint is\nthat reasons describing our inner states cannot be entirely of the mark.  As they put it, \u201creasons are typically\nconstructed out of bits of psychological insight\u201d (p. 126). For example, when I\nexperience my body being in a state of arousal, this can either mean that I am\nangry, scared or horny. Depending on the context I will make sense of this\narousal (to myself and others) in terms of one of these emotions. If I would\nsay, \u201cI shouted at the person because I was angry at him for jumping the cue\u201d,\nthis reason however does not provide a causal account of my behaviour (I have\nno experience of the mechanisms causing the arousal). However, my reason is\nbased upon a psychological state (I label the feeling of arousal as \u2018anger\u2019)\nthat is sufficiently recognizable by others so that they can understand it as a\nreason for my behaviour. As Daniel Dennett (2017, 344) notes, we came to use these reasons as \u201ca system of user-illusions\nthat rendered versions of our cognitive processes \u2013 otherwise as imperceptible\nas our metabolic processes \u2013 accessible to us for purposes of communication.\u201d A\nsecond strategy of successful reasons is to be objective. Explaining my\nbehaviour in terms of my subjective preferences will have only local success,\nif any. But reasons that do not express or serve a personal position, can, of\ncourse, be employed by a lot more people and thus stand a greater chance of\nbecoming widely distributed (people will not accept that I take a share of the\ngoods simply because I want it, but they will allow me to take a share that is\nsomewhat proportional to my contribution in generating or acquiring the goods,\nsee Baumard, Andr\u00e9, and Sperber 2013). To sum up in the words of Mercier\nand Sperber (2017), reasons need to have \u201csome degree of both psychological and\nsocial reality\u201d (p. 126). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

We are surrounded by reasons, that is,\nbeliefs and emotions that culturally evolved as apt descriptions of people\u2019s\nexperiences and proper motivations for behaviour. From this range of reasons we\nconstantly make a personal selection in which we attempt to strike a balance\nbetween the ones we think of as matching with our personal experience, and\nothers that we think of as passable in the environment we live in (the both do\nnot necessarily overlap) (see also Dennett 2017). Given that we tend to experience situations and behave in similar\nways, and given the fact that we tend to make our current beliefs and emotions\ncohere with former ones, we end up with clusters of more or less similar\nthoughts and emotions that we label as our personal identity. Such identities\nor selves are, albeit small, cultural attractors. In other words, the study of\npersonal identities cannot be a matter of psychology alone, with the focus\nexclusively on the reasons that individuals invoke as Chater seems to suggest.\nIt also requires an anthropological study of the reasons that are culturally\navailable, and the interaction between the two. <\/p>\n\n\n

\n\n\n

References<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Baumard, Nicolas, Jean-Baptiste Andr\u00e9, and Dan Sperber. 2013. “A mutualistic approach to morality: The evolution of fairness by partner choice.”\u00a0 Behavioral and Brain Sciences<\/em> 36 (1):59-78.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Chater, Nick. 2017. The mind is flat: The illusion of mental depth and the improvised mind<\/em>.\nLondon: Allen Lane.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Dennett, Daniel C. 2017. From bacteria to Bach and back: The evolution of minds <\/em>New York:\nW.W. Norton.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mercier, Hugo, and Dan Sperber. 2017. The enigma of reason<\/em>. Cambridge: Harvard\nUniversity Press.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Scott-Phillips, Thom, Stefaan Blancke, and Christophe Heintz. 2018. “Four misunderstandings about cultural attraction.”\u00a0 Evolutionary Anthropology: Issues, News, and Reviews<\/em> 27 (4):162-173.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sperber, Dan. 2001. “Conceptual tools for\na natural science of society and culture (Radcliffe-Brown Lecture in Social Anthopology\n1999).”  Proceedings of the British Academy<\/em> 111:297-317.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I have just finished reading Nick Chater\u2019s The mind is flat: The illusion of mental depth and the improvised mind (Chater 2017), which I think is an intriguing book. In contrast to popular opinion and much of modern psychology, it argues that our minds do not harbour a subconscious or unconscious that forms the source […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1121,"featured_media":10733,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[291],"tags":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nAre selves cultural attractors? - International Cognition and Culture Institute<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"http:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/blogs\/stefaan-blancke\/are-selves-cultural-attractors\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Are selves cultural attractors?\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"I have just finished reading Nick Chater\u2019s The mind is flat: The illusion of mental depth and the improvised mind (Chater 2017), which I think is an intriguing book.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"http:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/blogs\/stefaan-blancke\/are-selves-cultural-attractors\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"International Cognition and Culture Institute\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2019-02-27T09:07:06+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2023-08-07T11:29:48+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/wp-content\/uploads\/The-Mind-is-Flat1-038e935.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"607\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"404\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\">\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Stefaan Blancke\">\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Estimated reading time\">\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"5 minutes\">\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/\",\"name\":\"International Cognition and Culture Institute\",\"description\":\"\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":\"https:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/?s={search_term_string}\",\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-GB\"},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/blogs\/stefaan-blancke\/are-selves-cultural-attractors\/#primaryimage\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-GB\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/wp-content\/uploads\/The-Mind-is-Flat1-038e935.jpg\",\"width\":607,\"height\":404},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"http:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/blogs\/stefaan-blancke\/are-selves-cultural-attractors\/#webpage\",\"url\":\"http:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/blogs\/stefaan-blancke\/are-selves-cultural-attractors\/\",\"name\":\"Are selves cultural attractors? 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