How We Believe_ Science and the Search for God - Michael Shermer [32]
Modern neuroscience has made it clear that the adult brain does contain functionally distinct circuits. As our understanding of the brain advances, however, we find that these circuits rarely map directly onto complex domains of human experience, such as ‘religion’ or ‘belief.’ Instead, we find circuits for more basic things, such as recognizing our location in space, predicting when something good is going to happen (e.g., when we will be rewarded), remembering events from our own lives, and keeping focused on our current goal. Complex aspects of behavior, like religious practices, arise from the interaction of these systems—not from any one module.
Most mental modules are thought of as quite specific, but some evolutionary psychologists argue for making a distinction between mental modules being “domain-specific” versus “domain-general.” Tooby, Cosmides, and Pinker, for example, reject the idea of a domain-general processor, whereas many psychologists accept the notion of a global intelligence, called g, that would most certainly be considered domain-general. Archaeologist Steven Mithen goes so far as to say that it was a domain-general processor that made us human: “The critical step in the evolution of the modern mind was the switch from a mind designed like a Swiss army knife to one with cognitive fluidity, from a specialized to a generalized type of mentality. This enabled people to design complex tools, to create art and believe in religious ideologies. Moreover, the potential for other types of thought which are critical to the modern world can be laid at the door of cognitive fluidity.”
Instead of the metaphor of a “module” to account for such cultural phenomena as religion, I would suggest that we evolved a more general Belief Engine, and that it is Janus-faced—that is, under certain conditions it leads to magical thinking while under different circumstances it leads to scientific thinking. We might think of the Belief Engine as a central processor that sits beneath more specific modules. How does this work?
Humans evolved to be skilled pattern-seeking creatures. Those who were best at finding patterns (standing upwind of game animals is bad for the hunt, cow manure is good for the crops) left behind the most offspring. We are their descendants. The problem in seeking and finding patterns is knowing which ones are meaningful and which ones are not. Unfortunately our brains are not always good at determining the difference. The reason is that discovering a meaningless pattern (painting animals on a cave wall before a hunt) usually does no harm and may even do some good in reducing anxiety in uncertain environments. So we are left with the legacy of two types of thinking errors: Type 1 Error: Believing a falsehood and Type 2 Error: Rejecting a truth. In some cases, neither of these errors will automatically get us killed, so we can live with them. And we do, on a daily basis—witness the aforementioned Gallup poll statistics of magical thinking. The Belief Engine is an evolved mechanism for helping us survive, because in addition to committing Type 1 and Type 2 errors, we also commit what we might call a Type 1 Hit: Not believing a falsehood and a Type 2 Hit: Believing a truth.
It seems reasonable to argue that the brain consists of both specific and general modules, and the Belief Engine is a domain-general processor. In fact, it is one of the most general of all modules since at its core it is the basis of all learning. After all, we have to believe something about our environment, and these beliefs are learned through experience. But the process of forming beliefs is genetically hardwired. To account for the fact that the Belief Engine is capable of both Type 1 and 2 Errors along with Type 1 and 2 Hits, we can consider two conditions under which it evolved:
1.
Natural Selection: The Belief Engine is a useful mechanism for survival, not just for learning about dangerous and potentially lethal environments (where Type 1 and 2 Hits help us survive), but in reducing anxiety about those environments;