Humans massively depend on communication with others, but this leaves them open to the risk of being accidentally or intentionally misinformed. To ensure that, despite this risk, communication remains advantageous, humans have, we claim, a suite of cognitive mechanisms for epistemic vigilance. Here we outline this claim and consider some of the ways in which epistemic vigilance works in mental and social life by surveying issues, research and theories in different domains of philosophy, linguistics, cognitive psychology and the social sciences.

Delusional beliefs have sometimes been considered as rational inferences from abnormal experiences. We explore this idea in more detail, making the following points. Firstly, the abnormalities of cognition which initially prompt the entertaining of a delusional belief are not always conscious and since we prefer to restrict the term “experience” to consciousness we refer to “abnormal data” rather than “abnormal experience”. Secondly, we argue that in relation to many delusions (we consider eight) one can clearly identify what the abnormal cognitive (...) data are which prompted the delusion and what the neuropsychological impairment is which is responsible for the occurrence of these data; but one can equally clearly point to cases where this impairments is present but delusion is not. So the impairment is not sufficient for delusion to occur. A second cognitive impairment, one which impairs the ability to evaluate beliefs, must also be present. Thirdly (and this is the main thrust of our chapter) we consider in detail what the nature of the inference is that leads from the abnormal data to the belief. This is not deductive inference and it is not inference by enumerative induction; it is abductive inference. We offer a Bayesian account of abductive inference and apply it to the explanation of delusional belief. (shrink)

Because of its complexity, contemporary scientific research is almost always tackled by groups of scientists, each of which works in a different part of a given research domain. We believe that understanding scientific progress thus requires understanding this division of cognitive labor. To this end, we present a novel agent-based model of scientific research in which scientists divide their labor to explore an unknown epistemic landscape. Scientists aim to climb uphill in this landscape, where elevation represents the significance of the (...) results discovered by employing a research approach. We consider three different search strategies scientists can adopt for exploring the landscape. In the first, scientists work alone and do not let the discoveries of the community as a whole influence their actions. This is compared with two social research strategies, which we call the follower and maverick strategies. Followers are biased towards what others have already discovered, and we find that pure populations of these scientists do less well than scientists acting independently. However, pure populations of mavericks, who try to avoid research approaches that have already been taken, vastly outperform both of the other strategies. Finally, we show that in mixed populations, mavericks stimulate followers to greater levels of epistemic production, making polymorphic populations of mavericks and followers ideal in many research domains. (shrink)

Divination has been practiced as a way of knowing and communicating for millennia. Diviners are experts who embrace the notion of moving from a boundless to a bounded realm of existence in their practice. They excel in insight, imagination, fluency in language, and knowledge of cultural traditions and human psychology. During a divination, they construct usable knowledge from oracular messages of various sorts. To do so, they link diverse domains of representational information and symbolism with emotional or presentational experience. Their (...) divinatory acts involve complementary modes of cognition associated with these rather different symbolic forms. In representational symbolism, intentional reference, within a relatively controlled inductive reality, is paramount, while in presentational symbolism, implicit experiential immersion, within a free-flowing context, is grasped intuitively. Wherever a theory of divination has been elicited from diviners, there is a clear recognition of the overlapping of inductive, intuitive, and interpretive techniques and ways of knowing. In order to arrive at a theory of practice for divination, as a form of practical consciousness or knowledge within different modes of cognition, one must take what diviners say and do seriously. Recent scientific studies reveal that consciousness is connected both to electrical information in the brain and nervous system and to electronic semi-conduction in body tissues. Brain consciousness is embedded in body consciousness and coupled to it. This validates the experience of mind-body consciousness diviners have used for millennia in their performances. (shrink)

Cultural evolution depends on both innovation (the creation of new cultural variants by accident or design) and high-fidelity transmission (which preserves our accumulated knowledge and allows the storage of normative conventions). What is required is an overarching theory encompassing both dimensions, specifying the psychological motivations and mechanisms involved. The bifocal stance theory (BST) of cultural evolution proposes that the co-existence of innovative change and stable tradition results from our ability to adopt different motivational stances flexibly during social learning and transmission. (...) We argue that the ways in which instrumental and ritual stances are adopted in cultural transmission influence the nature and degree of copying fidelity and thus also patterns of cultural spread and stability at a population level over time. BST creates a unifying framework for interpreting the findings of otherwise seemingly disparate areas of enquiry, including social learning, cumulative culture, overimitation, and ritual performance. We discuss the implications of BST for competing by-product accounts which assume that faithful copying is merely a side-effect of instrumental learning and action parsing. We also set out a novel “cultural action framework” bringing to light aspects of social learning that have been relatively neglected by behavioural ecologists and evolutionary psychologists and establishing a roadmap for future research on this topic. The BST framework sheds new light on the cognitive underpinnings of cumulative cultural change, selection, and spread within an encompassing evolutionary framework. (shrink)

Historical records show that there was no real concept of probability in Europe before the mid-seventeenth century, although the use of dice and other randomizing objects was commonplace. Ian Hacking presents a philosophical critique of early ideas about probability, induction, and statistical inference and the growth of this new family of ideas in the fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries. Hacking invokes a wide intellectual framework involving the growth of science, economics, and the theology of the period. He argues that the (...) transformations that made it possible for probability concepts to emerge have constrained all subsequent development of probability theory and determine the space within which philosophical debate on the subject is still conducted. First published in 1975, this edition includes an introduction that contextualizes his book in light of developing philosophical trends. Ian Hacking is the winner of the Holberg International Memorial Prize 2009. (shrink)

Cognitive Science, Volume 46, Issue 1, January 2022.

Research on the division of cognitive labor has found that adults and children as young as age 5 are able to find appropriate experts for different causal systems. However, little work has explored how children and adults decide when to seek out expert knowledge in the first place. We propose that children and adults rely on “mechanism metadata,” information about mechanism information. We argue that mechanism metadata is relatively consistent across individuals exposed to similar amounts of mechanism information, and it (...) is applicable to a wide range of causal systems. In three experiments, we show that adults and children as young as 5 years of age have a consistent sense of the causal complexity of different causal systems, and that this sense of complexity is related to decisions about when to seek expert knowledge, but over development there is a shift in focus from procedural information to internal mechanism information. (shrink)

We investigated whether (a) people positively reevaluate the characters of recently dead others and (b) supernatural primes concerning an ambient dead agent serve to curb selfish intentions. In Study 1, participants made trait attributions to three strangers depicted in photographs; one week later, they returned to do the same but were informed that one of the strangers had died over the weekend. Participants rated the decedent target more favorably after learning of his death whereas ratings for the control targets remained (...) unchanged between sessions. This effect was especially pronounced for traits dealing with the decedent’s prosocial tendencies (e.g., ethical, kind). In Study 2, a content analysis of obituaries revealed a similar emphasis on decedents’ prosocial attributes over other personality dimensions (e.g., achievement-relatedness, social skills). Finally, in Study 3, participants who were told of an alleged ghost in the laboratory were less likely to cheat on a competitive task than those who did not receive this supernatural prime. The findings are interpreted as evidence suggestive of adaptive design. (shrink)

This paper adopted a constructive thinking model which is highly abstract and summary to investigate the life phenomena. It is more inclined to avoid detailednonessentials to grasp macroscopic outline trend, which is like: clearly see the direction of mountain range only by climbing to a height and looking forward; the more you enter into the braches and knots of trees, the more difficult to distinguish the general picture of the forest. Adopting this macroscopical mode of thought, it will be easier (...) to break away from the limitation of life body to grasp the inherent essence and common property of life. Any life is like a “running machine” and the running and living life state is the essential property of life. This life state isn’t windy; instead, it is a state of life material system and a state which could makematerial synthesis and energy transfer to keep automatic circulation and linkage running. When this state is established, life is formed. When this state is destroyed, life will be perished, when this state is restored, life could relive. It is the task of chemist and biologist to clarify precise material structure. From the property and characteristics of the life state, we could unearth the common connection and profound value meaning of movement development of objective world. It is Philosopher’s task to make it as the doctrine to guide the development of life world. On the basis of this life state, this paper put forth a theoretical model of life origin, so as to find answer of life origin theoretically. It opened passage between physical world and life world and made the life generated inmaterial system under specific condition to become an inevitable law. It will indicate orientation and a way out for the practical activity of exploring life origin. Meantime, this essay also found the vitality, which created life and push life to continuously run and develop, in addition, it created a significant theory of vitality extension. By means of life body, it downwardly connected with natural science law and upwardly connected with truth and doctrine of human society through life activity. It organically connected with material world, life world, human society and human spirit, offering an explanation to the world. It makes beautiful and simple world weltbild, which is like a developing and rising monument: A stele of weltbild. (shrink)

What is philosophy,what is the natrue and the task of philosophy and what is the function of philosophy? These basic knowledge of philosophy is the topic which is always argued and confered by the field of philosophy. After researching Metaphysics, the author think that Aristotle had already answered these questions. Philosophy is a knowledge which regards bing and its interdependence as obiect, regards the reason and nature as its target,and why practice as its purpose. The nature of philosophy is wisdom. (...) The task of philosophy is that the knowlege which is about four reasons and three primal thing and principle is aquired.Philosophy has three functions: First, philosophy provide basic frame and demonstration method for knowledge and science. Second, philosophy put the common sense thinking into logic thinking. Third, philosophy provide choices for people practice. (shrink)

Although a substantial literature in anthropology and comparative religion explores divination across diverse societies and back into history, little research has integrated the older ethnographic and historical work with recent insights on human learning, cultural transmission, and cognitive science. Here we present evidence showing that divination practices are often best viewed as an epistemic technology, and we formally model the scenarios under which individuals may overestimate the efficacy of divination that contribute to its cultural omnipresence and historical persistence. We found (...) that strong prior belief, underreporting of negative evidence, and misinferring belief from behavior can all contribute to biased and inaccurate beliefs about the effectiveness of epistemic technologies. We finally suggest how scientific epistemology, as it emerged in Western societies over the past few centuries, has influenced the importance and cultural centrality of divination practices. (shrink)