So, agency isn't the only thing that the soul gives us. In trying to understand the cognitive representation of the soul, what I've done in my work with Professor Oglevee and some of his students has been to think out what exactly is the soul all about? Well, many cultures say the soul is immaterial, right? It's not made out of matter. It's not somewhere that you can see it which is exactly what we had described with agency. It is the center of agency or the source of our animacy, the thing that makes us alive. The things that makes us want to do things, and have intentions, and beliefs and desires. In many cultures the soul is the center of our morality. We say that, if a person does something immoral, they have harmed their soul, or they have damaged their soul, and they need to fix it. Many cultures will say that a soul is the essence of a living being. It is the essence of who you are. It is your identity. And finally, many people write about the soul as indivisible. Every person has one soul, you can't have two souls. I'm thinking of a Simpsons episode where Bart Simpson sells his soul, right? We don't think that's actually possible. And so [COUGH] this is the cultural concept, obviously I'm not accounting for all cultures here, but what many people would say if they recognized these things is say yeah I've at least heard that idea somewhere. So we can ask ourselves, these are all things, we can't see a person's morality you need to remember it you need to remember that this person does X or my sense of morality is Y. We can't see those things we say oh okay they are located in the soul. The soul is the thing that drives a person. That is their agency. That you don't know where it is but it's unique to every individual and it describes that person. It's very important to be able to describe and predict other people. And so we would make inferences based on our concept of the soul. So, one of the things we did in trying to understand this, was describe certain sentences about the soul and see how people responded to it. And I'm only going to give you a brief explanation of this, but I think it's useful. So if I told you that Sandra rolled down the hill because she wanted to get to the bottom, and you would say to me, well Sandra is a person. So Sandra is part of the category person. Now Sandra has agency so she can roll down the hill because she wants to. Sandra has what we call a belief desire psychology. She does things because she has certain beliefs and she has certain desires. And Sandra's also subject to the laws of physics. So Sandra can roll down the hill because Sandra is a physical person and when she rolls down the hill, she'll keep rolling. If I told you that the rock rolled down the hill because it wanted to get to the bottom, well you would say to me that's absurd because the rock doesn't have agency. A rock doesn't do things because it wants to do it and a rock doesn't have beliefs and desires. A rock is subject to the laws of physics, but that's where it ends. And so, to say that the rock rolled down the hill because it wanted to get to the bottom that doesn't really make sense. Similarly if I told you Sandra's soul rolled down the hill because it wanted to get to the bottom. Well, you would say to me that yeah, the soul has agency. Probably. The soul has beliefs and desires, probably. But the soul's not subject to the laws of physics. So Sandra might be able to roll down the hill, but Sandra's soul is not able to roll down the hill. So we predicted that this sentence would be absurd. So as I said before, we predicted that the soul was immaterial. Its source of agency, center of morality. And so let's just look at the center of agency. So we asked college students, does a plant have a soul? Does it have a mind? Those two questions. And does a horse have a soul, and does it have a mind? And what we found is that, if we look at the top of this scale means it's absurd and the bottom means it's very reasonable. We would say that people thought it's not really reasonable to say that a shrub has a soul or a mind, but a horse much more reasonable to say it has a soul than a plant. And people were pretty much across the board willing to say that a horse had a mind. But something about uniqueness of individuality makes the soul more a human concept than an animal concept. And because a horse has agency and animacy, because a horse moves around, it's more likely to have a soul than a shrub. Another example that we used was the soul being the center of morality. Not much in this talk is focused around morality, but one of the things we asked was can the soul experience certain emotions? And so we asked can the soul experience disgust, and we thought of two forms of disgust. You see roadkill, you get disgusted. And moral disgust, disgusted by Hitler. And we found that people would say it's much more reasonable to say a person's soul was disgusted by Hitler than a person's soul was disgusted by roadkill. Because a soul is more relevant to morality than to physical symptoms of disgust. So, these are two brief examples that research is still ongoing, but the point that I'm trying to drive home here is that the concept of what we consider reasonable and describe bribing a soul is influenced by these factors of agency, that we think are very important to identifying people in the world and to understanding and predicting the world around us. So if we go back and say the evolutionary context influences our thinking, right? The goals and trials and tribulations of human kind as evolution has it's strongest effect as we were developing those are going to influence how we think. And our modern, our explicit or conscious ideas, may have their roots in evolutionary problems, or evolutionary modes of thinking. We have a certain mode of thinking, that says this thing is important to us. It is important to predict how somebody's going to behave in our environment. And therefore, through that we develop a concept of the soul, that helps us identify the source of that prediction. So the soul is one type of idea that can be relevant in the context of our evolutionary development. And so we can say that religious and cultural concepts build on challenges of our environment. Our environment had a challenge. We needed to describe agency. We needed to put words to it. We needed explain how and why it's happening. We needed to identify moral behavior because we needed to kick the people out of our group if they were acting immorally, if they weren't contributing to our group. We need to keep track of people's essences. We need to know if that person is a good person, or a bad person, or type of person who takes risks, or the type of person who reacts well in situations. I need to know that. And, I can say, there's nothing about looking at that person that tells me. Oh, looking at this person, he reacts well in difficult situations. I don't know that. So, I identify a place, I say that person's soul, that person's essence. That's a person who is quick to jump in an emergency. And so. When we think of a cognitive explanation of the soul, we think of this as taking our unconscious inferences about the world and about other people, and putting them into words. And I'll just leave you with a question to think about what this means about how the concept of soul came to be. Where this came from, how it developed over time, and how it solved useful problems in our environment. So a cognitive approach to religion attempts to understand the mental processes that are involved in thinking about religious concepts. We are not trying to explain away. We're not trying to say, because I've got an explanation, ha-ha, religious concepts are totally illegitimate. It's not trying to make that claim. Although, I'm sure people on both sides of the argument would be able to take those concepts and say, if there was an atheist who was trying to prove his atheism, might take these and use them as proofs. But I think the people on the religious end would also take them as proofs to prove what they were talking about. And this leads us to the notion of doctrinal versus intuitive beliefs. And this is the kind of the last point that I want to make here, that we have well thought out philosophies about how the world works. We have explanations of human behavior. We have explanations of the world, and those are thought out and they're philosophical, and we also have intuitive beliefs. We have our natural gut reactions to how things happen. I'll give you an example of this. At Rutgers University a couple years ago, we sampled students and we found out about 60% of Rutgers students were believers, believed in some God, some religion. 30% were agnostic, and 10% were atheists. But over 95% believe in a soul. So I wouldn't say that the soul and religion are necessarily comparable. They're not the same concept that we're talking about here. But this suggests that whatever your doctrinal beliefs, whatever philosophy you have of the world. Whether it's a specific religious practice, whether it's a specific atheist belief, whether it's somewhere in the middle or some point of indecision, the soul describes an aspect of reality that you find compelling. Or that most people, at least at Rutgers University, rather non-believing place when you compare it to the rest of America, though not many other places in the world. That the soul is compelling, and I'm going to argue here that it's compelling to people who believe and don't believe because it describes an aspect of our experience, and we find that useful. We find that useful in the common challenges and the role that it has in our environment. So thank you very much. >> Thank you, Aldrin, that was very interesting. I was especially interested in one of the examples you gave about not being able to not see something in color because we are wired to do that. And so there are a lot of these things which are coded into our brain. But at the same time, you talked about the long childhood which we've also talked about in a couple of other context in the class. And I'm wondering if you've given any thought to how some of these more complicated ideas, like cheater detection and things like that, might be a part of what we acquire during childhood, that we may have the basic template there. But then have a belief system or some sort of an intuitive analysis that gets developed through social interaction. >> That's a fascinating question. And I think it's very relevant because when we talk about soul beliefs, we're talking about conceptions that are learned, a lot of them. At least the explicit form is learned. And you're really asking the question about a lot of developmental psychology and questions of, well, is the ability their and then it's evoked when the child comes into contact with whatever teaching is necessary? Or is this something that is entirely learned? I think that the argument that the evolutionary psychologists would make is that, no, cheating detection is something that's there. It's not something that's learned, it's something that kids know naturally, and they're very attuned to it from the very early ages. But I wouldn't throw the baby out with the bath water in that sense. I'm not a devoted evolutionary psychologist, though I do spend a lot of time studying it. But I would say that it's certainly possible for a lot of constructs to be things that do emerge through education. >> Yeah, so some of the details of that in terms of a particular set of religious beliefs or cultural beliefs. So it's really just setting the fine tuning on a module that's already there. >> Right, and that would go back to the concept of a meme that I was talking about that there are certain things that we're ready to believe, so to speak. That just because our parents teach us something, doesn't mean that we believe it, although many of us do. But the notion that a lot of this cognitive approach looks is to say, well, these things are things that are easy to believe. Given the way that the mind is structured, this makes sense, it fits our framework. And so it would be kind of talking about a brain that is ready to then take on certain learned concepts. >> Yes, but I think one of the things that's also become apparent as we've gone through this syllabi in this course is there must also be some sort of a, for lack of a better term, defense module in there. >> [LAUGH] >> Because once people have their set of beliefs, it is just very, very difficult to make any change in that. And we almost have an intuitive ability to accept information that is compatible with that, and to automatically reject information that's not. Whether it's a religious belief or a political belief that we really have a lot of easy shorthand ways, which is what you said, that it makes life for successful and simpler if we can do a lot of this quickly and intuitively. >> Right, and I think a lot of recent research, I'm less familiar exactly with this research, but I've read a few things, dabbled in a few things here and there that have made suggestions that the ability that we have to argue has kind of developed not to come to conclusions but to prove that we're right. And so that we've kind of developed a way to argue any point as long as we've dug our hills. >> I love your discussion of memes. I like the whole thing, but memes I wish you been able to bring that into the class because it was something I would have built upon. The soul or the term soul is such a wonderful name because everybody has an intuitive sense of what we are talking about. Most people have different things in mind. But it's there. So I can see how that it's adaptive. It enables us to communicate about a whole bunch of ideas. And it's so easy, convenient, to assume it exists. >> Right. >> Now. There's another assumption that's interesting to me, that it's going to continue to exist. So when I think about the soul course, I describe it to other people and even in my mind, it's soul and afterlife beliefs. >> Mm-hm. >> And that's where religion comes in so strongly, that you not only have a soul, but it's going to go somewhere. And lots and lots of people believe that. It's not just a belief, it's turned into an assumption, which then is turned into a fact. It's just going to happen. There's no questions about it. What are your ideas about how is that adaptable? >> How is belief in the aftermath? >> The belief that it's going to go somewhere. >> That's a very interesting question and so much of my own work has focused on more of the here and now. What is God now? What is the soul now? And I know that the course spent a lot more time emphasizing the afterlife beliefs. >> Over time, we've done that because it- >> Right. And it's a crucial aspect of the soul that isn't really involved in this lecture and, the first thing that strikes me is the notion of episodic memory and the episodic future thinking. That we're constantly, to take a step back, I'm a memory researcher and one of the ideas which is very prevalent in episodic and autobiographical memory research- >> What do you mean by episodic? Episodic memory, being memory for events that are occurring, and when I remember them, I remember what it was like, as opposed to remembering facts, which we would call semantic memory. And so a lot of what people are saying nowadays in episodic memory is that memory is there to guide the future. And the concepts that we hold now exist for the sake of planning future behaviors. And to me, that just seems like that's, the afterlife makes so much sense, because if our memory is constantly about planning for the future, what happens when we get to the point where we don't really envision a future for ourselves? Where we come up against the reality that we're going to die. >> Right. Face into the death. >> And forget the emotional, forget the terror management theory stuff, forget all the reasons why that's scary. But we've got this system that's functioning. This system that's planning our future based on our memory. And so we could again talk about how afterlife belief really makes sense because I was planning for the future and now I don't have to stop planning for the future, and so it would fit in the way of a similar meme. That it says okay, well here's my planning for the future activity and here's how I'm going to apply it. >> I like your response. And there are some occasions when I have the sense that along the line, in some respects, religions have usurped that idea. And said, yes it's true. And that's increased the social control. I mean it's a very powerful mechanism, social control. You're not only behaving yourself because you've got to be a non-cheating member of this tribe. But you're also behaving yourself because you've got forever to live after this. And you better be good because if you're good, you go to a good place, if you're bad, you go to a bad place. I mean, that is so powerful, I mean so dominating part of my thinking right now about the whole matter of afterlife. And it's so prevalent today. We just had a horrible thing, a massacre of little kids in Connecticut and I tuned into a couple of the statements. I mean, you can't get away from them on television. You can't even watch a football game because it's always interrupted with this horrible thing that happened. And there is an upsurge of talk about the soul, it's a very common issue of people trying to deal with this matter. And the notion from variety of religions that these kids now are being, they're in heaven, they're being protected, nothing like this is going to happen. Human beings resonate to that idea. It's becoming so prominent in the in the news that it's, almost for this guy who deals with this, you know like thinks about it, it's shocking. >> Mm-hm. >> To see the power of this thing. And probably has to do with comforting and this sort of thing. But as we progressed, evolved in humans, afterlife has become such a powerful idea. >> Right. And there are so many different perspectives that we can look at it. What you're stressing now is more of a social perspective. I mean you mentioned it as control, and you also mentioned it as comfort, and all of those things factor into it. And I think that's the beauty of a course like this, of saying well, let's look at all the different perspectives because this matters in so many realms our life, and it's not just about anyone of them. It's not just about the evolutionary psychology approach, it's about what these ideas mean for people in their day to day lives. That's what makes it such a fascinating idea, you can look at it from so many different perspectives and get so much. Just so much inference and so many different perspectives that can feed into understanding this concept. >> Well, that's what I like about the course, too. Particularly the idea, once it's in there, it kicks in automatically. This idea and as Len said, it sorts the incoming mail, if it's compatible it'll stay around, if not it pushes it away. This course gives students the opportunity to maybe take a peek and it's automatistic. And once you bring something to mind, it becomes less automatic. And once you think about it As far as I'm concerned, you could put it back in the same place. But at least you thought about it and it increases the possibility. You might think about it again and then maybe, a little bit differently. And that's, I hope, it is a power of this course. >> And I would even argue against this assumption that you're making. Not an assumption, but describing how people are defending beliefs in the face of challenges to the contrary. I would say that the perspective that I'm trying to bring is I'm not trying to deny the fact that that defends a belief. But to say well, maybe they're not defending their beliefs. Maybe it's just that evidence to the contrary seems so nonsensical to them. >> That's great. I like that. Thank you. >> I think one of the somewhat surprising things to me about this course, going back to what you said a minute or so ago. Is that here we have a concept that the vast majority of people believe in and to a large degree, design their lives around. This ought to be a very boring course, but apparently it's not. It has just caught fire and has just become, I think, the most popular course on the Rutgers campus. So there's some sort of an intrigue in having the opportunity to step outside the automatic portion of it and to look at it. And I think that's clearly not what people normally do. Or this course would not have any interest. So I think just the opportunity to examine these beliefs and where they come from and how they're defended seems to be something that holds a lot of attraction to the students. >> I love what you said, because I love anything that makes me think about something differently. But in some instances, it is defense against belief. But your idea that something that goes counter to your automatic beliefs it's counter-intuitive. >> Mm-hm. >> I think one could go a long way with that. It's just counter-intuitive. Yeah. Instead of what I'm thinking, that >> Right. [CROSSTALK] Because you're talking about >> I mean, it fits in perfectly to your lecture. >> Right. And you're talking about people defending their beliefs in your course, as if you're trying to ram a different approach down their throats, which you're not doing. >> No. I try not to. >> Right? I mean the course tries very hard not to be in your face about it or push people to- >> Even Mussolini was backed off. >> Oh really, and it's not about making people think differently it's about making people think. >> Yes. >> And that's why I would say, well, yeah defensive maybe. You know, in some moments, there's a need for defense, but in many other moments, it's just a moment of reflection and then to say, well, these are automatic assumptions. [CROSSTALK]. >> I think this pretty much wraps it up. Thanks again, [CROSSTALK] >> All right, thank you.
