SOPHIA (2012) 51:319–321 DOI 10.1007/s11841-012-0300-x

Comments on Justin Barrett’s Why would anyone believe in God? Dwayne Raymond

Published online: 23 March 2012 # Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2012

Abstract This review discussion outlines Justin Barrett’s Preparedness Model. This evolutionary model for belief in God is shown to posit a maladaptive mind for infants. Questions about its implications and the supporting data are considered. Keywords Barrett . CSR . MCI . Preparedness Model Justin L. Barrett’s evolutionary basis for belief in God suggests that the mind of an infant is maladaptive. This intriguing feature is a consequence not of the general model for cognitive science of religion, but of his Preparedness Model. In this discussion of his monograph, Why would anyone believe in God?, I will briefly outline the general model, followed by the Preparedness Model. I will raise questions that pertain to this maladaptive aspect of the Preparedness Model. The mind, according to Barrett, is a ‘workshop that selectively brings in raw material and then alters and combines those materials into new useful units’ (Barrett 2004: 14). Three kinds of tools perform these functions: categorizers, describers and facilitators. In a rapid and unconscious manner, categorizers determine the sort of thing that is being perceived. Describers provide the content, and facilitators ‘[coordinate] social activity and other behaviors that depend on the situation and not merely on the identity of the things involved’ (Barrett 2004: 5). Categorizers for object and agent detection play an important role in the formation of religious concepts. Objects that are perceived to violate an intuitive assumption about how objects move are automatically categorized (erroneous or otherwise) as agents. The agency detector is hypersensitive to the mere possibility of agency, called a hypersensitive agency detective device (HADD). HADD increases sensitivity to predators, and its ‘tendency to attach agency to objects contributes to the formation of religious concepts’ (Barrett 2004: 33). How so? Once an agent has been categorized, describers provide the content by automatically attributing intuitive non-reflective D. Raymond (*) Department of Philosophy, Texas A&M University, College Station, TX, USA e-mail: [email protected]

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beliefs. The Living Thing Describer, for example, ‘ascribes nutritional needs, growth, death and the ability to reproduce its own kind to the things categorized as animals’ (Barrett 2004: 4). The Agent Describer, a.k.a. Theory of Mind (ToM), ‘attributes a host of mental properties to the agent in question – percepts that enable it to negotiate the environment, desires that motivate actions, thoughts and beliefs that guide actions, memory for storing percepts and thought, and so forth’ (Barrett 2004: 4–5). Together HADD and ToM ‘make us prone to find agents, agency, and the consequences of agency in our environment’ (Barrett 2004: 109). Our reflective beliefs in gods, ghosts and chimeras find support from these mental tools, which operate without awareness. In general, reflective beliefs ‘gain their plausibility from 1) their fit with non-reflective beliefs, 2) their fit with reflectively available evidence including memories and experiences […], 3) their fit with other reflective beliefs’ (Barrett 2004: 15). ‘The more mental tools with which an idea fits, the more likely it is to become a (reflective) belief’ (Barrett 2004: 21). There are two kinds of non-reflective beliefs: practiced natural non-reflective beliefs and maturationally natural non-reflective beliefs. Whereas practiced naturalness varies between groups, maturational naturalness does not. The latter arises ‘through the ordinary functioning of human biological endowment in ordinary environments’ (Barrett and Lanman 2008: 113). Basic numerical skills, such as being able to distinguish between greater and lesser quantities, exemplify maturational naturalness. By contrast, we need to be taught the rules of culturally dependent games such as chess. When learned, the rules of chess exemplify practiced naturalness; driving a car is another example of practiced naturalness. Beliefs that do not fit with the intuitive ontology of our mental tools (the maturationally natural beliefs) are not only unlikely to become reflective beliefs, but we ‘experience great difficulty in remembering and understanding them’ (Barrett 2004: 23). While the precise number of violations that can be accommodated before the system encounters problems is unknown, cases ranging from three to seven violations are discussed: ‘[a]dding violation after violation … confuses the categorizers and describers to such a degree that these concepts become cumbersome and difficult to remember or make sense of’ (Barrett 2004: 23, 22–24). Beliefs that violate the intuitive ontological assumptions are not always debilitating. If only a small number of violations occur (one to two), the belief demands attention (Barrett 2004: Chap. 6 and p. 126). They are called minimally counterintuitive (MCI). MCIs ‘meet most of the requirements that categorizers and describers generate’ (Barrett 2004: 22). They either violate one or two of the intuitive ontological assumptions generated by the categorizers and describers. MCIs are unique in that they violate just enough intuitive ontological assumptions to demand attention, increasing the likelihood that they will dominate. MCIs ‘may be memorable and easy to transmit to others –provided that the violations that they make enable them to activate a broader range of mental tools in their support than would be possible without the violations. MCI agents typically fit this description better than other MCIs. Consequently, it is MCI agents that become believed and become part of religious systems’ (Barrett 2004: 30, emphasis added). The Preparedness Model holds that ‘children may be cognitively equipped to understand some properties of God in a non-anthropomorphic way’ (Barrett and Richert 2003: 300). That is, rather than having to reason analogically about God

Comments on Justin Barrett’s Why would anyone believe in God?

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from what the child’s thinks about humans, a child’s ToM renders him/her ‘prepared’ to accept the monotheistic concept of God. Specifically, the default assumptions, which inform ToM’s intuitive ontology before the mature maturationally natural categories develop, include the beliefs that agents have super-knowledge and super-perception; agents are super-powerful world-creators, who are also immortal (Barrett 2004: Chap.6). The God of Christianity, Islam and Judaism has all of these properties. Plus, since this God has the added property of being everywhere at every time, it violates just a few of the assumptions of categorizers and describers. For this reason, God is claimed to be an MCI agent. As an MCI agent, a belief in God finds support from a vast number of mental tools, enabling the concept to spread easily between and within generations. The Preparedness Model is an interesting thesis with an odd implication for an evolutionary explanation: In order to render God an MCI agent, young children are claimed to have maladaptive minds. According to the thesis, a child finds it easier to learn about God than any other normal being, which violates all of the super-default assumptions. While Barrett finds support in a number of his studies, it is worth pausing to consider just how odd this is, both at face value and in the context of other studies of maturational naturalness. I’ll end this discussion by raising a few important questions about this claim. The first concerns the number of violations that a young mind can tolerate before becoming debilitating. We are told that ‘violation after violation […] confuses the categorizers and describers to such a degree that these concepts become cumbersome and difficult to remember or make sense of’ (Barrett 2004: 23). Does the child’s mind initially resist learning about everyday creatures? While a maladaptive mind may explain why young children encounter difficulties learning, it may equally reflect a number of grey areas in the theory: what is the limit of tolerable violations before the young mind becomes debilitated? And, how many violations are required for the successful transmission of concepts within and between generations? It seems that the mind of a child is predisposed against both acquiring and transferring ideas about normal beings. Further work here is required. One final comment about the Preparedness Thesis: a maladaptive mind has not been reported in other cases of maturational naturalness, such as basic numeracy. These areas are connected. Super-default assumptions involve superlatives: the extreme range of a hierarchy of greater than relations. The evidence for the Preparedness Model would be considerably strengthened by ruling out the possibility that a child’s understanding of God’s super-properties draws on basic numeracy: God is greater than all other beings. Is it simply easier for the child to locate and recall God at the upper end of this hierarchy than to recall the exact location of other types of beings within that hierarchy? If this is so, the evidence leading one to posit super-defaults may, in fact, reflect another intuitive ontological assumption of basic numeracy: greater than.

Reference Barrett, J. L. (2004). Why Would Anyone Believe in God? New York: Altamira Press. Barrett, J. L., & Lanman, J. A. (2008). The Science of Religious Beliefs. Religion, 38, 109–124. Barrett, J. L., & Richert, R. A. (2003). Anthropomorphism or Preparedness? Exploring Children’s Concept of God. Review of Religious Research, 44, 300–312.