On Sun, 22 Aug 2004 lweiger at umich.edu wrote:
> That people can be very irrational in other cultures, and our own as well
> (in addition to the creationists I alluded to previously, some folks also
> believe in astrology), is no news flash even to this pop sociobiologist. My
> claim is that there aren't any cultures in which "logical reasoning on the
> basis of relevant evidence" isn't a fact of everyday life. We couldn't
> survive without it. (Putting my hand in the fire last night hurt. But the
> oracle says that it'll be very pleasurable tonight. So I'll sleep in the
> fire tonight.)
>
> -- Luke
Isn't this just speculation? To play the game in your court, imagine that belief in some supernatural ideas is crucial to acceptance in society x. If evidence contradicts the supernatural claim (e.g., the shaman's prediction does not come to pass), anyone who questions the supernatural is marginalized (this occurs in many societies). Marginalization = less access to shared resources and sexual partners = poorer reproductive success. (It is just as easy to create a just-so story against your claim! As Justin points out, this type of sociobiological reasoning is pretty facile.)
The thing I'm trying to stress here is that the kind of rationality we engage in is an amazing social accomplishment: yes, humans for hundreds of thousands of years have had about the same sensory and intellectual capacities, but complex patterns of culture, building on prior knowledge and technology, encourage us to think the way we do. (If you need to be convinced that rationality and logic require rigorous training and practice, teach an elementary logic class or a scientific research methods course. I can assure you the way of thinking you celebrate requires a huge amount of hard work and indocrination; it doesn't come easily or naturally to many students!) --And surprisingly, our rational modes of thought are often considered strange or outright childish, according to the standards of people in some nonindustrial societies.
--Another example: cultural psychologists asked members of the Kpelle tribe to do a hierarchical classification task. They were supposed to take pictures and arrange them from general to specific (put food at the top, different types of food below, subtypes below those). The Kpelle could not do the task, no matter how many times they were shown, until the psychologists asked them to do the task "like a foolish child would". Then they did the task quickly and correctly, ridiculing this way of thinking as they did so.
Perhaps this is a bit of a hyperbole, but I think we can treat this research with the Kpelle as a synechdoche for reasoning in humans.
Miles