This epistemic perspective<\/a> starts from the assumption that cognitive system, on the whole, evolved to build useful and truthful representations of the environment. It then argues that occasional useless beliefs pose no great threat to that main epistemic function.<\/p>\n A non-epistemic perspective – communication for alignment<\/p>\n But we could take another perspective, one I would call strategic.<\/p>\n In this view one can distinguish between two (partly overlapping) categories of communication events (to simplify, I am only considering situations where some person A conveys to B that x is the case):<\/p>\n 1. Fitness-from-facts comunication events. Here people provide and seek information that may provide benefits to self or others. Communication makes it possible to pool information and experience for mutual benefits – and occasionally for exploitation as well.<\/p>\n 2. Fitness-from-coalitional-knowledge events. Here people spread or seek information whose accuracy may be fitness-neutral, but such that knowing people\u2019s attitude to it (they believe it, they deny it, they are indifferent, skeptical, mocking, etc.) provides information about their coalitional alignment vis-a-vis the speaker.<\/p>\n Rumors like the ones mentioned at the beginning of this post (the CIA created AIDS, clothes stores in Orleans are a cover for white-slavery, etc.) provide a good example of this information-for-alignment situation. To simplify a great deal, when people tell me that crack cocaine was designed by the government to kill blacks, [a] they are saying nothing of great direct fitness value to us (we both knew crack was bad beforehand, we were not tempted to try – nothing has changed), but they are also receiving information about our coalitional alignment. If I scoff at the idea or call it an urban legend, I am definitely \u201cout\u201d. If I say that it is indeed terrible and scary, I am in some sense aligning myself with the speaker\u2019s coalition (not that I or she necessarily know what specific coalition is at stake here).<\/p>\n Gossip is a bit more complicated, as it may combine both (1) and (2) processes. If you tell me that the boss is having an affair with her assistant, this may be directly fiteness-relevant knowledge (I have better information about someone who may help\/hurt me). This may also reveal that you and I are in the same clique inside the organization.<\/p>\n So here is the general proposal: In many contexts, humans seek and spread information that reveals or triggers coalitional alignment. They detect that some information is, as politicians would put it, \u201cpolarizing\u201d. They orient to that information, they spread it, they seek other people\u2019s reactions to it.<\/p>\n If this is true, the adaptive value of the process is non-epistemic, so to speak. It does not lie in the referential accuracy of the statements communicated, but in the indirect clues it provides concerning other people\u2019s attitudes.<\/p>\n (Some versions of this were proposed by others, including Tocqueville, Robert Kurzban [2], Dan Sperber<\/a>, and, inevitably, John Tooby and Leda Cosmides<\/a>).<\/p>\n Explaining motivation<\/p>\n The main advantage of the strategic view, as a complement to the traditional epistemic perspective, is that it could account for the obvious and important motivational aspects of these forms of communication. People who believe that crack cocaine is a conspiracy don\u2019t just hold that belief. They want to share it, they want to tell many people but specially their friends and acquaintances. Also, people are highly interested in other people\u2019s reactions. They are easily angered by skepticism, and often find that co-believers are sound, good people.<\/p>\n Social scientists have often pointed out that some issues are \u201cpolarizing\u201d. But the standard assumption is that [a] people have the beliefs and when they communicate their beliefs, conflict occurs because others have just as strongly held contrary beliefs. The present proposal is that, to some extent, people express these beliefs (and to some extent hold them) because they will have that effect.<\/p>\n Thanks to Coralie Chevallier and Nicolas Baumard, who helped me frame these ideas and to John Christner for ongoing conversations on the topic.<\/p>\n[1] Mnookin, S. (2011). The panic virus: a true story of medicine, science, and fear. Simon and Schuster.<\/p>\n[2] Kurzban, R. (2007). Representational Epidemiology. The evolution of mind: Fundamental questions and controversies, 357.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" We have all enjoyed, if that is the right word, conversations with people who seem to have no great regard for the niceties of argument and evidence – people who tell you that homeopathy does work because it cured them of a common cold, in a few days\u2026 Or that the FBI (or other such […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":714,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n![\"\"](\"http:\/\/cognitionandculture.local\/wp-content\/uploads\/942px-Caran-d-ache-dreyfus-supper.jpg\")
<\/a>This Caran d\u2019Ache cartoon about the Dreyfus affair, A family dinner, is famous in France.
\nTop panel: \u201cAbove all, let\u2019s not talk about the Affair\u201d.
\nBottom panel: \u201cThey did talk about it\u2026\u201d.
\nSource: Wikimedia Commons<\/h6>\n
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