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Do animals have souls?

Where religious power comes from

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Dr. Pat Duffy Hutcheon -
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"Man is a credulous animal, and must believe something; in the absence of good grounds for belief, he will be satisfied with bad ones."

Bertrand Russell

"Reason is not one tool of thought among many, it is the entire toolbox. To advocate that reason be discarded in some circumstances is to advocate that thinking be discarded- which leaves one in the position of attempting to do a job after throwing away the required instrument."

George Smith, Atheism: The Case Against God (Buffalo, NY: Prometheus, 1989), p. 110.

"To save the world requires faith and courage: faith in reason, and courage to proclaim what reason shows to be true."

Bertrand Russell, "The Prospects of Industrial Civilisation"

"Religion is something left over from the infancy of our intelligence, it will fade away as we adopt reason and science as our guidelines."

Bertrand Russell

"There is something feeble and a little contemptable about a man who cannot face the perils of life without the help of comfortable myths. Almost inevitably some part of him is aware that they are myths and that he believes them only because they are comforting. But he dare not face this thought! Moreover, since he is aware, however dimly, that his opinions are not real, he becomes furious when they are disputed."

Bertrand Russell, "Human Society in Ethics and Politics"

"Science can teach us, and I think our own hearts can teach us, no longer to look around for imaginary supports, no longer to invent allies in the sky, but rather to look to our own efforts here below to make this world a fit place to live in, instead of the sort of place that the churches in all these centuries have made it."

Bertrand Russell, "Why I Am Not A Christian"

"William James used to preach the 'will to believe.' For my part, I should wish to preach the 'will to doubt.' ... What is wanted is not the will to believe, but the will to find out, which is the exact opposite."

Bertrand Russell, _Skeptical_Essays_, 1928

I missed a few quotes from Sagan in THE DEMON-HAUNTED WORLD that I had selected last night to accompany "The Culture of Fantasy", so here they are: *

"What a more critical mind might recognize as a hallucination or dream, a more credulous mind interprets as a glimpse of an elusive but profound external reality."

Carl Sagan, The Demon - Haunted World

"But I try not to think with my gut. Really, it's okay to reserve judgment until the evidence is in."

Carl Sagan, The Demon - Haunted World

"The practice of superstition is so congenial to the multitude that, if they are forcibly awakened, they still regret the loss of their pleasing vision."

Carl Sagan, The Demon - Haunted World

" We risk becoming a nation of suckers, a world of suckers, up for grabs by the next charlatan who saunters along."

Carl Sagan, The Demon - Haunted World

" It is a characteristic conceit of our species to put a human face on random, cosmic violence."

Carl Sagan, The Demon - Haunted World

"Throughout history, mankind has consistently and willingly assumed a second-best position, considering himself to be at the capricious mercy of a wide variety of gods and demons populating a supernatural world of awesome power."

Isaac Asimov, Today and Tomorrow and ...

"I constantly surprise myself at the extent to which I don't really accept emotionally what I know intellectually."

Isaac Asimov, Of Matter Great and Small

"As mankind's knowledge of the world expanded, the room available for the dread or beautiful monsters he had invented shrank, and belief in them began to fade."

Isaac Asimov, The Beginning and the End

"Because pagan philosophy and Christianity were alike geocentric and anthropocentric it was easy for the Roman Empire to become Christian. And because ... [these views] do not portray an accurate picture of the universe, scientific inquiry became undesirable."

Isaac Asimov, The Tragedy of the Moon

"Doubting is far more important for the advancement of science than believing is, and doubting is a serious business that requires extensive training."

Isaac Asimov, Fact and Fancy

"The hallmark of the ideological explainway is that it rests on statements false, unproven or unprovable through reference to empirical rules."

Gwynn Nettler, Explanations

INTRODUCTION

Along with the all-encompassing culture of violence, the hostile solitudes of the cultures of poverty and affluence, and the incompatible cultures of tribalism and pluralism, there exists yet another system of ideas and customs affecting how people in modern industrialized society operate from day to day. We are all immersed to some extent in what we can call "the culture of fantasy": a way of being that is fed by the human propensity for creating an imaginary world to provide a cushion against the harshness of the surroundings. From our earliest beginnings, the need to render impinging circumstances in some way controllable drove our primitive forebears to explain their daily experience. For this critical task they used those terms available to their thought processes which appeared most capable of generating an illusion of security. Much of what we now recognize as fantasy was the only conceptual world known to early humans. It should not be too surprising that, regardless of their proven lack of efficacy and reliability, these ancient interpretations continue to beckon and gratify many of us. When we consider our innate suggestibility, coupled with the fact that even the content of our dreams and private hallucinations reflects these deeply embedded cultural beliefs, we can even better understand their pervasiveness. Nonetheless, when an archaic "culture of fantasy" threatens to cripple the reasoning capacity of the majority of the population, it is time to look for the source of the problem in the socialization process to which our children are currently exposed.

How is it, we might ask, that in this so-called Age of Science so many people seem to be attracted to astrology, psychic healing, fortune telling, searching out sea monsters and UFOs, communing with the dead, joining cults, engaging in therapeutic touch and mystical incantations of all kinds, achieving "oneness" with the universe by walking on fire, and so on and on? How can we explain the fact that the bookstore sections devoted to the occult are often much larger than those housing philosophy or the social sciences? How does it happen that so many highly schooled young people are willing to follow totalitarian political or religious gurus? How can we explain phenomena such as middle-class tourists swarming to casinos and the poor lining up to buy lotto tickets? What causes so many people to live out their lives dreaming of instant wealth, or convincing others to join some "get rich quick" scheme? How can we avoid the paradoxical conclusion that our much-lauded, media-driven explosion of information seems to be rendering the general public ever more ignorant and more vulnerable to delusion? What makes people want to explain their experience in terms of mysterious forces lurking within, or impinging from without? What accounts for the widespread resistance to readily available natural explanations for apparent anomalies -- and to the recognition that no actions can occur in isolation from predictable natural consequences? What, indeed, causes so many of us to be so gullible?

People are gullible to the extent that they are easily satisfied by the explanations coming from those who set out to persuade them. They neither demand nor feel comfortable with explanations that identify observable cause-and-effect connections: connections amenable to some sort of public procedure of verification. In fact, there are some who seem not to think logically and skeptically at all. To think in terms of cause-and-effect relations, and observable evidence for these, is to be equipped with a "built-in doubter": Isaac Asimov's concept of an internal barometer for assessing the probable reliability of propositions about reality. It means that curiosity is not quelled by explanations relying merely upon magic; or upon popular New Age versions of animism; or upon esoteric exercises in semantics; or upon appeals to fellow feeling and attributed motivations; or upon traditional mythology or utopian ideology. It means that one has been fortunate enough to have been socialized in such a way that curiosity is aroused rather than satisfied by the above types of explanations, because none of these provide answers to the question of "How could that possibly have come to be?" And only answers to questions of that particular type will lead to the understanding of cause-and-effect relationships that results in reliable knowledge.

Jean Piaget discovered that children normally proceed through four distinctive levels of cognitive development in the course of their growing up: the sensorimotor stage from infancy to about the age of two; the pre-operational stage that typically lasts until the age of five through seven; the concrete operational, extending to approximately age eleven; and finally to the stage of formal operations or abstract thought. It also appears that there exist distinctive patterns of intuitive response and conscious belief as well -- and distinctive ways in which emotional needs are gratified -- which are characteristic of children at each particular stage of intellectual development. However, these emotional needs requiring satisfaction are not unique to children in their various stages of growing up. Certain cultural influences can cause needs appropriate to earlier or more primitive phases of development to be carried over into adulthood, where they will continue to determine which types of explanations will be experienced as satisfactory and which will not.

Because curiosity is actually satisfied and reinforced quite differently at these various levels of cognitive functioning, different "explainways" are demanded in the normal course of events. If age-appropriate answers are not provided, or if those that have proven rewarding in the past are repeated long after the child should have outgrown that stage, then curiosity may be permanently crippled. Such children are frozen or trapped into a way of interpreting experience that makes them easily deluded by self and others -- and many remain in this mode throughout their lives.

We will refer to these emotionally satisfying "explainways" as (1) the magical, (2) the tautological, (3) the projective, (4) the ideological, and (5) the conjectural, or cause-and-effect modes. This does not necessarily mean that cognitive/emotional development follows a rigid pattern, with all children managing to navigate each of them successfully at the same age and proceeding to operate consistently within the most recently achieved level. Nor do most grown-ups necessarily function in all aspects of their lives within the most advanced mode -- regardless of whether they have mastered the intellectual tools required for accomplishing this. In fact, our previous socialization can make it appear that different circumstances demand different "explainways". Even the most mystically inclined among us is usually content to rely on cause-and-effect when shopping for a new car, while conjectural thinkers can lapse into mysticism when explaining the source of their own artistic genius. As in the case of moral development, the relevant cognitive level is necessary for a corresponding advance from one explainway to another. However, it is by no means sufficient to ensure it.

THE MAGIC MODE

In what Piaget called the sensorimotor stage of cognitive development, the infant's view of the surroundings can be viewed as "magical." Things happen in an undifferentiated physical/social fantasy world because all-powerful adults or unknowable entities can make them happen. All is mysterious and arbitrary. Some cultures encourage magical interpretations of experience to such an extent that the mode remains the prevailing one throughout adulthood. In fact, Piagetian researchers found that certain tribal groups impose magical explainways so powerfully that youngsters actually regress in this sense as they experience their culture's "rites of passage" in the process of leaving adolescence behind. Even within modern scientific cultures there are many who live out their lives in a conceptual world defined in magical terms.

Those operating according to this mode are satisfied by magical explanations. In other words, their curiosity is readily quelled by pronouncements from self-styled propitiators or manipulators of the "unknowable" forces of nature. They are positively reinforced by involvement in almost any sort of ritualistic activity deemed meaningful by an authority figure. People in the magic mode do not expect anything to make sense in terms of their own immediate experience; therefore they lose the capacity to be energized by feelings of dissonance. They have learned to accept ambiguity and contradiction as "the way of the world." They are content to "feel the mystery" and pray for a miracle. In other cases, curiosity becomes harnessed to the drive to manipulate people in the service of the actor's immediate ego needs -- rather than to control objects and the consequences of action. In this way are shaped some of the more extreme of the spinners of delusion, along with their ultimate victims.

THE TAUTOLOGICAL MODE

Not too far beyond the magic mode is what we can call the "tautological" way of explaining things. The most significant features of the pre-operational stage of cognitive development are egocentrism and language acquisition. Egocentrism encourages a self-centered way of being in the world, while the rapid onset of language requires and produces a repetitious, definitional approach to everything encountered. The explainway which seems to be demanded by children operating at this level of development is that which satisfies the urge for the security which comes from being able to name everything; and to feel that all these named entities have no purpose other than to serve one's needs.

The most telling example of an adult body frozen into the response pattern of childhood egocentrism is the character of "Mr. Bean" so familiar to television audiences today. Mr. Bean operates in a closed little world of his own making, and is oblivious to other people except as objects in the environment, presumably put there solely either to enhance or impede his own intended actions. He is utterly incapable of feeling empathy for other "selves." He exhibits the overweening self-centeredness of young children, which limits understanding to a process of discovering how external things impinge upon them. Everything is still arbitrary to the egocentric child, and answers phrased in terms of regularities will not be effective in quelling curiosity at this stage. For the nursery-school child, the landscape can seem quite naturally to be peopled with spirits, demons, fairies and ghosts, all of which are concerned in some way with responding to the whims of the "self." Planetary objects, animals and plants in the surroundings are viewed in the same way -- as are the humans who intrude into the private domain of the egocentric little person. Their sole function is viewed as the satisfaction of the child's felt needs. Answers that do not take this natural egocentrism into account tend not to satisfy the child in question.

Something else of critical importance is happening at the same time. The child's imitative capacities are instigating a rapid soaking-up of symbols from the communication occurring within the family and neighborhood and on the television. Increasingly, children progressing through this developmental stage want to know the names of things. They are endeavoring to dissect and map their hitherto amorphous world. Their questions reveal the need to categorize and label every event and, to the extent that this is occurring, responses offering and repeating names and simple definitions are required in order to provide emotional and intellectual satisfaction. Positive reinforcement at this stage demands not only the quelling of curiosity but satiation of the need for security. Labels and definitions, viewed as unchanging units of an otherwise arbitrary reality, satisfy the all-important desire for certainty.

THE PROJECTIVE MODE

During the early part of the concrete-operational stage of cognitive development (at about the age of seven) the great breakthrough in conceptualization has to do with perspective. Children learn to view things from perspectives other than their own. This enables them to understand the operation and functional utility of rules. The idea that rules ensure fair play can very easily be made a feature of the family and school culture of these children. All rules -- even those governing the external world -- tend to be interpreted by children of this age in terms of fairness. A teacher once reported the comment of one such pupil concerning the law of gravity: "It means no fair if you jump up and don't come back down," the child said.

Another critical breakthrough occurs at this stage where conditions are conducive to it. It is now possible for the development of empathy to proceed apace -- providing, of course, that the socialization process provides the appropriate experiences. The type of explanation most likely to satisfy curiosity in the concrete-operational phase is what can be termed "projective." For the first time, there is a strong tendency to look for what causes things to happen. However, "causes" are viewed here as the essentially hidden motivations of the actors rather than in terms of observable events preceding the action, or the consequences that followed previous choices. Intentions are everything for these children. "I didn't mean to do it" is thought to excuse any transgression; unanticipated consequences are "not my fault."

With the emerging recognition of the role of chance and coincidence in human affairs, the desire for certainty intensifies at this concrete-operational stage. This is why the myth is so readily grasped by older elementary-school children. Myths are stories which present a comprehensive purpose and plan for the world as experienced. They give meaning and provide comforting answers to every newly recognized fear and concern. At this age personal death becomes a real possibility for the first time. Because the self's annihilation is inconceivable to the self in question, the very concept cannot be viewed by people at this level of development other than in terms of the annihilation of the world as a whole. Human life can only be understood to have continuity if the individual can be presumed to survive death in some other form. Myths provide satisfaction here because of their traditional and unchangeable explanations for birth, death and other decisive events in the traditional human story. Among these are the "creation of life," "the purpose of life," the birth of figures defined by the group as divine, the origin of fire and other technologies and institutions. Mythological explanations respond to the individual's "why?" in the empathetic, purposive terms demanded by the question. They have a particular power because they tend to be expressed in terms of motives.

Myths also provide objectives, context, bodies of beliefs and rituals and rallying cries for groups. This function is particularly meaningful for children of late-elementary school age. It is the age of group formation, group activity, herd behavior and peer-group pressure. The mythological explanation tends to be a communal explanation rather than an individualistic one. It appeals to people in the collective. In its positive form, this can encourage cooperation and rule-following. On the negative side, it can interfere with rule-making activity and can exacerbate the tendency for individuals at this level of development to indulge in coercive herd behavior and the most blatant kinds of cruelty. The myth defines the group Will, or consensus, and the group Will must be enforced!

THE IDEOLOGICAL MODE

The age of adolescence is critical for a number of reasons. One of the most important, but least recognized, is the fact that it marks a decisive turning point in the process of conceptualization. The latter begins to snowball in one or the other of two intellectual directions. Young people of this age either make the leap into what Piaget called the stage of formal operations or they remain at the concrete-operational cognitive level and become increasingly committed to the "projective explainway" with its quest for certainty. Fortunately, most of those who have developed the intellectual capacity for operating logically tend to be attracted to, and stimulated by, cause-and-effect thinking. They begin to develop rapidly beyond the need for certainty, as they increasingly find their rewards in the new-found power of inductive reason to order experience and direct open-ended inquiry into the nature of things.

For countless others, however, the quest for certainty -- combined with the idealism and rebellion against authority typical of their age -- moves them in the opposite direction. They are propelled into the "ideological" mode of interpreting their world. For the most part, these are the youths who still require the reassurance provided by magical, tautological or projective explanations, but who are ripe for a change in the focus of their beliefs. The ideologies to which they now turn as substitutes for traditional family myths continue to satisfy their need for certainty, but they serve other functions as well.

At an age when patience is in short supply, and action is the order of the day, ideology provides easy answers to complex problems. It also offers the promise of escape from uncertain futures. It presents the possibility of avoiding the type of painstaking scholarship needed for any honest attempt at objectivity -- and which, in turn, would require a commitment to cause-and-effect thinking. Not only does the ideological stance not recognize the quest for objectivity as desirable, it defines it as an unnecessary and impossible guideline and ideal. Small wonder, then, that many young people who are creative in their approach to ideas, but find authentic scholarship too burdensome to bear, are among those most likely to be satisfied by the ideological explanation.

THE CONJECTURAL OR CAUSE-AND-EFFECT EXPLANATION

Clearly, not all of those who achieve the formal-operational stage of intellectual functioning manage to complete the transition to the "conjectural" mode of being in the world. The appeal of the earlier-acquired explainways remains uppermost for a large percentage of intellectually advanced individuals -- even those in the so-called "hard" sciences. Many mature scientists compartmentalize their approach to life so that they respond conjecturally when operating in their own discipline while demanding magical, tautological or projective explanations in everyday situations. On the other hand, countless individuals without the advantage of any higher education live out their lives in a common-sense world of cause-and-effect. If induction into a scientific community is neither necessary nor sufficient to guarantee a conjectural conceptual stance, what, then, are its indicators? First and foremost is a commitment to the universality of cause and effect.

The habitual response of the conjectural thinker is to seek out the causal connections for any event, and to feel unsatisfied in the absence of evidence concerning these. "How?" rather than "why?" is the question asked. These are the people who readily recognize general principles and are capable of applying them to a variety of current or imagined future circumstances. They are able to propose workable solutions for problems, to predict probable consequences of projected programs, and to evaluate the actual consequences of programs in terms of the original guiding principles. This is really what is meant by being freed from the concrete and immediate and from the static imperatives of the past. Altogether, these attributes constitute the final piece of equipment for the "built-in doubter."

THE EXPLANATIONS THAT SATISFY

The various interpretive modes or explainways discussed previously are not unique to children. They co-exist, in more or less sophisticated forms, within the adult population of every modern pluralist society. Prevailing modes may vary across cultures, and in different historical eras within the same culture. To an overwhelming extent, the kind of explanation that satisfies us is dictated by our cultural imperatives -- and the socialization process implied by these and functioning both to preserve and alter them. Although genes are the source of our essential engine of curiosity, culture tends to establish its limits and to provide or withhold the fuel that fires it. World views, and the conceptual frameworks housing them, interact within biological limitations in the context of environmental challenges to determine the very questions that can be asked as well as the answers that will be found emotionally satisfying.

How is it possible for so many people to have grown up to be so gullible? For too long during their formative years their need for certainty was reinforced, and their curiosity lulled, by explanations which, by their very nature, were not subject to falsification. These are the people who never learned to respond to truth claims by requesting checkable evidence. In fact, such a response would now be foreign to their makeup and would produce discomfort rather than the satisfaction readily aroused by magical, tautological, projective or emotionally charged ideological appeals and explanations. What causes some people to turn into the frauds and charlatans who prey on others? They, too, are the products of a form of socialization that allows them to remain forever cut adrift from a recognition of the chains of cause and effect that operate in the world of actual experience. Very often these people have regressed into the magic mode. They constantly delude themselves into a belief in the "quick fix" and make their living by convincing others of the particular mirage that beckons for the moment; or they have become adept at the reification of abstract constructs and the semantic obfuscation typical of the more sophisticated forms of the tautological mode. Then there are those who, having become mired in the projective mode, may avoid accepting any responsibility for their actions because they believe that only intentions count, and that if their goal is defined as good by some religious or political leader, the means are irrelevant. Many become frozen into the ideological mode and can readily convince themselves that, by defining reality as they wish it to be, they can make it so.

Most of us, when we attempt to plan and structure the socialization process (and thereby consciously set out to educate), conceive of our objectives in terms of the beliefs or faiths we wish to inculcate. But we should remember that lack of faith is seldom the problem for children. Faith is their natural condition. It is doubt that is in short supply. The ability to doubt rationally and wisely does not emerge naturally with maturation or even with intellectual development. It must be planned for and carefully encouraged by a socialization process dedicated to the goal of making people less easily satisfied by explanations that lead nowhere. In the end, the only lasting cure for gullibility is an independent "built-in doubter" established step by step in the context of conceptual development. It is also our only hope for developing the wise and reasonable people needed to create and sustain a self-governing civic society.

Dr. Pat Duffy Hutcheon

This is an altered and abridged excerpt from the final chapter in Dr. Pat Duffy Hutcheon's new book: Building Character and Culture (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1999).