Neural Buddhism & the psychology of religion

Many people are talking about David Brooks' new column, The Neural Buddhists. First, I think much respect should be given to Brooks for introducing science into his column; too much punditry today is informed by seat of the pants introspection & anecdote, as opposed to what scholars have uncovered thanks to the funding of the taxpayer. That being said, I think on the specifics there are problems with his interpretation of the literature in the area of neuroscience. Frontal Cortex, Island of Doubt and Evolution Blog have all hit the main points (though I tend to think that Jonah's reaction most closely reflects my own). I think the idea that neuroscience lends some weight to the validity of mysticism as such is about as plausible as the contention that cosmology buttresses the case for a Creator. These results are interpreted through a filter contingent upon your prior beliefs; for those looking for confirmation of their spirtual or metaphysical beliefs science will no doubt offer it because of the vast sample space of findings and the imperfect mapping of words to the phenomena being described.

But this dynamic is I think the most important point about Brooks' column; most people are just disclined toward being hard-core materialists who subscribe to a spare atheism. That's an empirical fact. I recently pointed out that even after two generations of state supported atheist materialism the majority of Chinese still avow some sort of supernatural belief; and if you listen to the news reports about the Chinese earthquake you will know that many are burning paper money which the dead might use in the afterlife. The banality and ubiquity of these sorts of behaviors in our species suggest to me that Brooks also has the disciplinary focus off in terms of relevance to public policy or modeling social phenomena; neurotheology and its fascination with mysticism focuses on atypical and extreme psychological states and individuals, cognitive psychology and the prosaic day to day function of religious practice and belief capture a much larger proportion of human experience and so are more useful for prediction of the bulk of the distribution of human behavior.

I suspect that these arguments for mysticism derived from science apply most to elites, the cultural creatives if you will. And it is among these same elites that you have the most vocal scientific materialists who would deny the reality of the numinous. Though I do believe that elites are very important, I think too often they forget that the vast majority of humanity is not, by definition, elite. Even within Buddhism there is a separation between the philosophical and mystical elite, often monks, and the religion of the vast majority which is much closer to devotional theism. Since Buddhism became popular among Western elites during the 19th century the philosophical and mystical dimension of practice has always been emphasized as the more authentic and pure variant, with the operationally theistic devotees of movements such as Pure Land being dismissed as "debased" or "corrupted," but at the end of the day I believe this is just reflecting a class bias (similarly, "folk Catholicism" as "syncretistic").

Nevertheless, one of the widely applicable results which the neuroscientists are uncovering is the powerful role that emotion plays in our cognition. Additionally, psychologists have long emphasized the importance of implicit cognition. This material reality is something I believe many scientific materialists do not adequately confront; genuine ratiocination is only a thin slice of human cognitive phenomena. It stands to reason then that arguments against religion or spirituality based upon its irrationality will generally fail, because yes, it is irrational, and people believe fundamentally because they are irrational. In fact, one might inject a bit of humility into the discourse and offer that scientific materialists themselves hold many irrational beliefs! (that is, beliefs they hold not through rational reflection, but because of emotional response or social conformity) Of course, I do believe on the margins a minority of humans are amenable to arguments against theism or metaphysical phenomena because of their own peculiar cognitive biases; but I think the route of argumentation from axioms and the coherency of inferences is always going to exhibit diminishing returns if you persist over time. I suspect that theist arguments for God based on innate psychology fall flat precisely because some individuals only weakly manifest the intuitions which are presupposed; but inversely, I also believe that some of the cognitive parameters which characterize convinced materialists are lacking in the majority of humans, so their arguments may seem strange & inhuman indeed. Ultimately, a great product does not sell itself without reference to the nature of the consumer.

Related: Ross Douthat, Daniel Larison and M. B. Dougherty respond to the column as well....

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A Buddhist physicist friend of mine was annoyed by this op-ed too, but I suggested he was missing the magic of David Brooks: the man functions as a zeitgeist indicator, and his incoherency is merely a reflection of the incoherency of the zeitgeist. As such, he propagates conceptual error quite efficiently.

i think that's a fair assessment. sometimes truth or falsity however you cut it is less important than what the majority happens to believe....

In fact, one might inject a bit of humility into the discourse and offer that scientific materialists themselves hold many irrational beliefs!

razib, what's with all of these defenses of the religious that you've been putting up recently? This is not a new argument. It's a tired old chestnut that relativists bring out every time rationalists point out the absurdity of a common belief. Why are you, of all people, mouthing it? And why now?

By Caledonian (not verified) on 14 May 2008 #permalink

razib, what's with all of these defenses of the religious that you've been putting up recently? This is not a new argument. It's a tired old chestnut that relativists bring out every time rationalists point out the absurdity of a common belief. Why are you, of all people, mouthing it? And why now?

LOL. you say relativists, and i say realists....

and to be clear, when i referred to humility i wasn't talking about religion. i was talking about the culturally and socially mediated political and personal beliefs that many atheists hold without reflection.

And they're wrong to do that. How does that make religionists less wrong?

By Caledonian (not verified) on 15 May 2008 #permalink

I didn't read Razib as defending religionists per se, but rather as noting a type of argument that is bound to fail against them because it cuts against every human being to some degree. If this is the case, it may not be the most practical argument to make.

We're not debating human beings, we're debating ideas. The ideas in question are irrational. What does it matter that humans tend to hold irrational ideas?

By Caledonian (not verified) on 15 May 2008 #permalink

Caledonian - Come on already. We debate _about_ ideas, and we do, indeed, debate human beings. So if our debates are going to amount to more than shouting matches, it matters a great deal that some of the ideas held by humans are held irrationally.

By bob koepp (not verified) on 15 May 2008 #permalink

You're confusing two uses of 'debate', bob koepp. People are not the subject of our debate, ideas are. People do who not follow the principles of rationality on the matter of debates cannot be debated with.

"But some of your ideas are probably irrational too!" is not a valid response to the criticism that an idea is irrational.

If we locate an arithmatic error in your tax return, responding by pointing out that humans often make math errors is inappropriate, because that is completely irrelevant to the issues at hand. No one, least of all the IRS, is concerned that humans may make errors sometimes. Everyone is concerned that you HAVE made an error, and that you're failing to correct it.

By Caledonian (not verified) on 15 May 2008 #permalink

Caledonian,
This is perhaps nothing more than an aside, but it appears Razib is also making a distinction between 1) irrational beliefs as beliefs that couldn't possibly be held rationally, and 2) irrational beliefs as beliefs that, as a matter of circumstance and regardless of how they could possibly be held, were arrived at in a not-quite-rational way. An appreciation of this distinction may change the way you read the post.

People do who not follow the principles of rationality on the matter of debates cannot be debated with.

Of course they can be debated, specially if that debate is public.

Even privately the fruitless discussion of today may sow the seeds for the change of thought tomorrow: one may happen to be stubborn about something today and change his/her mind some years later. It happens often. The mind may need time to chew on the "new" logic, to open itself to alternative ideas.

But publically this debate is even much more important because one of the main objective values of irrational ideas is their consensuality. If public debate erodes the consensuality of irrational ideas (even with the best of reasonings and pedagogy you are likely to have uneven effect on the different individual minds: some may be convinced, others set in doubt, others yet apparently unmoved), they lose that social value and are therefore more likely to be dropped eventually.

Today nearly nobody seems to believe that the Earth is flat or that it is at the center of the Universe... but that's not just because of the rational weight of the arguments against them but also because it is emotionally wrong: it's going against the mainstream and that has an emotional cost. Adding rationality with social acceptation makes a greater effect than just with rationality, which will be ignored or distrusted by many if it's not mainstream.

Of course, there may be other "irrational reasons" apart of socially induced ones. But the social value, consensuality or gregarism or however you want to describe that so human tendency, is a major factor in any case.

An appreciation of this distinction may change the way you read the post.

appreciation of other peoples' cognitive states is something caledonian was shorted. it's obviously part of its native intuition....

Of course they can be debated, specially if that debate is public.

No, they can only be talked at. Debate is impossible. Of course, given that we live in a society where Presidential candidate stump speeches are, in all seriousness, called 'debates', the word has clearly taken some serious damage over the years.

it appears Razib is also making a distinction between 1) irrational beliefs as beliefs that couldn't possibly be held rationally, and 2) irrational beliefs as beliefs that, as a matter of circumstance and regardless of how they could possibly be held, were arrived at in a not-quite-rational way

Probably the single most important insight of rationalism is that a belief cannot be separated from its justifications - no position is rational on its own merits, but only on the merits of the argument that produces it.

People who believe that the Earth is spherical, but who cannot provide a valid justification for that belief, are irrational, and their belief is irrational.

By Caledonian (not verified) on 15 May 2008 #permalink

No, they can only be talked at. Debate is impossible.

Just terminology. If you (assuming you are the one defending the rational viewpoint) are showing the facts that support it and the flaws of the irrational approach, you are making people think and giving them tools to think better. Maybe you'll never persuade your opponent (if he/she is so stubborn as to reject the facts) but that is a less important matter.

But, anyhow, I like to think that even themost stubborn and irrational of such dialectical opponents is at least minimally intelligent and self-honest, so sowing doubt on such irrational beliefs may have surprising long-term effects.

When did it become the duty of atheists to persuade religious believers to abandon their irrational beliefs? If religious believers drive you nuts, Razib is offering RATIONAL ways to improve your tolerance of them.