of different objects (e.g., a lollipop and a balloon) if that is what the
creators intended.^35
It is certainly useful to reason away from the here and now; but that
works only if such reasoning is tightly constrained. If our inferences
ran wild—for example, "If we go down to the valley, my dog will lose
its teeth" or "If my brother is sad, this telephone will break into
pieces"—they would not provide the basis for efficient behavior. Note
that these strange inferences are not strange just because their conse-
quences seem outlandish. You could instead say "If I feed the dog noth-
ing but candy-canes it will lose its teeth" or "If you put the telephone in
the tumbler-drier it will break into pieces." So it is the connection [131]
between the hypothesis and the consequence that is or is not sensible.
The crucial point to remember about decoupled thoughts is that
they run the inference systems in the same way as if the situation were
actual. This is why we can produce coherent and useful inferences on
the basis of imagined premises. For instance, the sentence "If kangaroos
had shorter legs, they would jump higher" seems implausible, and "If
kangaroos had shorter legs, they would eat broccoli" seems to make no
sense at all. The first inference sounds plausible because it is supported
by our inference systems. Our intuitive physics assumes that a stronger
push will result in a longer trajectory, therefore that longer legs should
produce longer jumps. In the same way, if I tell you that I saw a tiger in
the forest yesterday, you will probably infer that I wasin the forest yes-
terday, because your intuitive psychology requires that condition.
Hypothetical scenarios suspend one aspect of actual situations but
then run all inference systems in the same way as usual. If this sounds
familiar, it is because I already mentioned it in my presentation of
supernatural concepts, which include one violation of expectations ("If
some agents were invisible.. .") and then run all relevant inferences
in the same way as usual ("... we could not see them, but they would
see what was going on"). Supernatural concepts are just one conse-
quence of the human capacity for decoupling representations. But
what makes them more or less important is the kind of inferences we
then produce on the basis of these premises, as we will see presently.
BY-PRODUCTS AND SALIENT GADGETS
The fact that the brain comes equipped with many specialized infer-
encesandcan run them in the decoupled mode may explain whyTHEKIND OF MIND ITTAKES