The mind as a bundle of explanation machines
Is it really true that human ideas are spurred by a general urge to
understand the universe? Philosopher Immanuel Kant opened his
Critique of Pure Reason—an examination of what we can know beyond
experience—with the statement that human reason is forever troubled
by questions it can neither solve nor disregard. Later, the theme of
religion-as-an-explanation was developed by a school of anthropology
calledintellectualism,which was initiated by 19th-century scholars
such as Edward Burnett Tylor and James Frazer and remains quite
influential to this day. A central assumption of intellectualism is this: [15]
if a phenomenon is common in human experience and people do not
have the conceptual means to understand it, then they will try and
find some speculative explanation.^5
Now, expressed in this blunt and general manner, the statement is
plainly false. Many phenomena are both familiar to all of us from the
youngest age and difficult to comprehend using our everyday con-
cepts, yet nobody tries to find an explanation for them. For instance,
we all know that our bodily movements are not caused by external
forces that push or pull us but by our thoughts.That is, if I extend my
arm and open my hand to shake hands with you, it's precisely because I
want to do that. Also, we all assume that thoughts have no weight or
size or other such material qualities (the idea of an apple is not the size
of the apple, the idea of water does not flow, the idea of a rock is no
more solid than the idea of butter). If I have the intention to lift my
arm, to take a classic example, this intention itself has no weight or
solidity. Yet it manages to move parts of my body.... How can this
occur? How could things without substance have effects in the mater-
ial world? Or, to put it in less metaphysical terms, how on earth do
these mental words and images pull my muscles? This is a difficult
problem for philosophers and cognitive scientists... but surprisingly
enough, it is a problem for nobody else in the entire world. Wherever
you go, you will find that people are satisfied with the idea that
thoughts and desires have effects on bodies and that's that. (Having
raised such questions in English pubs and Fang villages in Cameroon I
have good evidence that in both places people see nothing mysterious
in the way their minds control their bodies. Why should they? It
requires very long training in a special tradition to find the question
interesting or puzzling.)
WHATISTHEORIGIN?