In other words, what we know of cognitive functioning suggests
that our common view of religious belief has things diametrically
wrong. We would assume that some explicit decision ("there are
ancestors around"; "there is an omniscient God") comes first, that
helps people make sense of particular situations. But in the religious as
in the everyday case, several mental systems have already delivered
intuitions that make sense in the light of those general assumptions.
So you do not really needto consider the question of the ancestors' or
gods' existence in order to produce interpretations of specific situa-
tions, or plans for future courses of action, that include ancestors or
gods in the picture. [315]
In the example of beliefs about children, I insisted on the fact that
severaldistinct systems are delivering intuitions about situations, all of
which are compatible with a general interpretation. This, I think, is
crucial to understanding the dynamics of belief.
Our inference systems produce intuitions driven by relevance, that
is, by the richness of inferences that can be derived from a particular
premise. But in many cases the premises are only conjectures. Again, it
helps to consider simple, everyday beliefs and inferences. If you ask a
three-year-old, "Who did you say the teacher failed to blame for
telling her friend not to bring her lunch box?" the only response may
well be a baffled expression on the child's face. In such a situation you
may, without having to think about it, rephrase the question in a way
that is simpler to parse. This would be because your intuitive psychol-
ogy system has noticed the failure to respond and has produced the
intuition that the child probably did not understand the question.
This is only a hypothesis. It is a sound one, as it would make sense of
the child's reaction. It will become a stronger conjecture if the child
understands the subsequent, simplified version of the question. But,
again, all this is conjectural. It may be that the child was inattentive,
tired, deliberately obtuse, had suddenly become deaf or aphasic. Even
without considering outlandish possibilities, there are many possible
premises that could explain the facts equally well. But a specialized
system like our intuitive psychology only produces a limited set of
intuitions, based on premises that are both least costly (they are for
instance plausible) and richest in inferences (most helpful to us in
making sense of what happened). Such systems automatically produce
some interpretation on the basis of some premise, however tentative.
Also, in some cases they can produce severalcompeting interpretations
based on different premises.
WHYBELIEF?