Mind– Society
From Brains to s ocial s ciences and Pro F essions
Paul Thagard
1
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Thagard, Paul, author.
Title: Mind-society : from brains to social sciences and professions / Paul Thagard.
Description: New York, NY : Oxford University Press, [2019] | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018033235 | ISBN 9780190678722
Subjects: LCSH: Social sciences and psychology. | Cognitive neuroscience.
Classification: LCC BF57. T534 2019 | DDC 150—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018033235
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed by Sheridan Books, Inc., United States of America
To John Holmes and Bob McCauley, good friends and social minds.
Contents
List of Illustrations xiii
Foreword xv
Preface xix
Acknowledgments xxi
Part I | Mechanisms
1. Explaining Social Change 3
Social Change 3
Explanatory Styles 6
Mental, Neural, and Social Mechanisms 9
Emergence 11
The Social Cognitive-Emotional Workup 15
Applications 16
Summary and Discussion 19
Notes 20
Project 21
2. Mental Mechanisms 22
Cognition and Emotion 22
Brains and Semantic Pointers 23
Images 27
Concepts 29
Beliefs 31
Rules 32
Analogies 34
Emotions 35
Mapping Values 37
Inference and Coherence 40
Emotion-Driven Inferences 42
Summary and Discussion 43
Notes 46
Project 47
3. Social Mechanisms 48
Social Mechanisms and Communication 48
What Are Social Mechanisms? 51
Structural Connections 54
Social Interactions 55
Verbal Communication 57
Nonverbal Communication 59
Interagent Inference 61
Social Mechanisms for Spreading Emotions 62
Multilevel Explanations 65
Change and Emergence 67
Summary and Discussion 70
Notes 74
Project 75
Part II | Social Sciences
4. Social Psychology: Romantic Relationships 79
Relationships Matter 79
Social Cognition and Microsociology 80
Mechanisms in Relationships 81
Murray and Holmes on Interdependent Minds 82
Romantic Relationships: Social Cognitive-Emotional Workup 83
Trust and Commitment 92
Love 94
Romantic Interactions 96
Contrast with Gottman 98
Relationship Success and Failure 100
Does the Heart Want What It Wants? 102
Summary and Discussion 103
Notes 105
Project 106
5. Sociology: Prejudice and Discrimination 107
Discrimination and Prejudice 107
Stereotypes 109
Women: Social Cognitive-Emotional Workup 110
Jews: Social Cognitive-Emotional Workup 117
Social Norms and Institutions 123
Overcoming Prejudice 127
Conceptual Change 131
Summary and Discussion 133
Notes 135
Project 136
6. Politics: Ideology 137
Political Change 137
Political Mechanisms 138
Ideology: Three- Analysis 139
Ideology: Value Maps 141
Ideological Change 142
The Islamic State: Social Cognitive-Emotional Workup 144
Power 164
Summary and Discussion 167
Notes 170
Project 172
7. Economics: Bubbles and Crashes 173
Beyond Animal Spirits 173
Economic Decisions 175
Booms and Bubbles: Social Cognitive-Emotional Workup 178
Panics and Crashes: Social Cognitive-Emotional Workup 188
Mindful Economics 193
Reflexivity 196
Summary and Discussion 197
Notes 199
Project 200
8. Anthropology: Religion 201
Cultures 201
Religion 202
The Latter-Day Saint Religion: Social Cognitive-Emotional Workup 204
Why Is the LDS Church Successful? 217
Why Is Religion Generally So Successful? 221
Summary and Discussion 224
Notes 226
Project 227
9. History and International Relations: War 228
Explaining War 228
History 229
International Relations 230
Nationalism 231
Origins of the First World War: Social Cognitive-Emotional Workup 233
Minds and Groups 247
Historical Explanation 250
Social Cognitivism as a Theory of International Relations 251
Summary and Discussion 253
Notes 255
Project 256
Part III | Professions
10. Medicine: Mental Illness 259
Mind, Society, and the Professions 259
Medicine 260
Mental Illness 262
Depression: Social Cognitive-Emotional Workup 264
Depression: Multilevel Mechanisms 283
Treating Depression 287
Summary and Discussion 288
Notes 289
Project 291
11. Law: Wrongful Conviction and Criminal Responsibility 292
Legal Mechanisms 292
Legal Coherence 294
Wrongful Conviction: Social Cognitive-Emotional Workup 300
Explaining Wrongful Convictions 310
The Brain and Legal Responsibility 311
Summary and Discussion 314
Notes 315
Project 317
12. Education: Teaching and Conceptual Change 318
Learning and Teaching 318
Vaccination: Social Cognitive-Emotional Workup 321
Teaching Better 340
Summary and Discussion 341
Notes 344
Project 346
13. Engineering: Creative Design 347
Creative Engineering 347
Steve Jobs and Apple: Social Cognitive-Emotional Workup 348
Engineering Creativity 365
Teaching Creativity 369
Summary and Discussion 371
Notes 372
Project 373
14. Business: Leadership and Marketing 374
Vision 374
Emotional Intelligence 375
Charisma 379
Leadership of Ed Catmull: Social Cognitive-Emotional Workup 380
Marketing and Emotional Coherence 389
Apple’s Marketing: Social Cognitive-Emotional Workup 390
Enhancing Collective Emotional Intelligence 400
Summary and Discussion 403
Notes 406
Project 407
References 409
name Index 429
subject Index 439
List of Illustrations
1.1 A simple mechanism with only three parts 10
1.2 Duck-rabbit illusion, which can perceptually emerge as either a duck or a rabbit depending on whether you notice ears or a bill 12
1.3 Three kinds of emergence 14
2.1 Semantic pointer resulting from binding sensory, motor, emotional, and verbal information 25
2.2 Schema for a value map 38
2.3 Value map of some vegetarians 39
2.4 Value map of some nonvegetarians 39
3.1 Kinds of social interaction 56
3.2 Kinds of communication 57
3.3 Coleman diagram for deepening social explanations by psychological ones 66
3.4 Expanded diagram for recognizing relevance of neural and molecular causes as well as social and mental ones 66
4.1 Value map of Pat’s infatuation with Sam 84
4.2 Value map of Pat’s disillusionment with Sam 85
4.3 Trust as a semantic pointer 93
5.1 Value map of misogynistic view of women 111
5.2 Value map of Hitler’s view of Jews 118
6.1 Fragment of the conceptual structure of right- wing (conservative) ideology 141
6.2 Fragment of the conceptual structure of left- wing (progressive) ideology 142
6.3 Value map of the Islamic State, depicting central concepts and associated values of its adherents 145
6.4 Semantic pointer for emotion about Islam 151
6.5 Multimodal value map of Nazi ideology 157
6.6 The emotional coherence of the decision to support Hitler and the Nazis 159
6.7 Fragment of the conceptual structure of contemporary anarchism 160
6.8 Value map of the Occupy Wall Street movement of 2011 161
6.9 Multimodal value map of parts of anarchist ideology 162
6.10 Value map of fear and anger arising from right- wing concerns about immigration and crime, with hope and pride arising from the right- wing prospects of a nationalist party and leader 162
6.11 Hutu ideology as one of the causes of the 1994 massacre 163
6.12 Value map of Hutu ideology 164
7.1 Value map of bubble mentality 179
7.2 Value map of crash mentality 180
8.1 Value map of Mormons 205
8.2 Joseph’s Smith vision of meeting Moroni 207
9.1 Value map of many monarchs and leaders in European countries before World War I 235
9.2 Value map of Serbian nationalism in 1914 235
10.1 Value map of medical professional regarding a depressed patient 267
10.2 Semantic pointer for sadness as a pattern of activation in millions of neurons resulting from binding of representations 274
10.3 Approximate interactions among the neurocognitive mechanisms of semantic pointers and social and molecular mechanisms 286
11.1 Explanatory coherence in a simplified legal case 296
11.2 Legal trial as combining explanatory coherence with the value of presumption of innocence 298
11.3 Value map of police view of Ron Williamson 300
11.4 The explanatory coherence of the prosecution’s case against Williamson 306
11.5 Motivational contributions to the prosecution’s case against Williamson 308
12.1 Core values in public health 323
12.2 Value map of pro- vaccine view 324
12.3 Value map of anti- vaccine view 324
13.1 Value map of Steve Jobs 350
14.1 Map of Catmull’s most important leadership values 381
14.2 Map of values in 1984 television ad for Macintosh 392
14.3 Map of values in 1997 television ad for Think Different 393
14.4 Map of values in television ad for Get-a-Mac 393
Foreword
Frank E. Ritter
Three decades ago, Newell, Anderson, and Simon shared a desire for a unified theory of psychology, that is, how cognition arises, and what a mechanistic explanation would look like. Today, much still remains to be done to pursue that desire, but much has been accomplished.
Allen Newell talked about narrow and deep theories, and broad and shallow theories, and that theories could differ in these ways. Many psychology theories are deep, explaining a few phenomena in great detail but not explaining many phenomena nor how they interact and mutually constrain each other.
In the trio of books making up his treatise, Paul Thagard creates a much broader and accessible explanation than we have seen before of what a mechanistic explanation of mind and human behavior would look like for psychology and also areas related to psychology. These books explain the cognitive science approach to cognition, learning, thinking, emotion, and social interaction—nearly all of what it means to be human—and what this means for a wide variety of sciences and philosophy. These books provide a good overview of cognitive science and its implications. Different readers will be drawn to the treatise in different ways. It does not matter where they start.
The lessons in these books are based on the semantic pointer architecture (SPA) by Chris Eliasmith, Thagard’s colleague at the University of Waterloo. SPA is a very useful dynamic theory that can do multiple tasks in the same model, and it
is explained in journal articles and by Eliasmith’s (2013) book in the Oxford Series on Cognitive Models and Architectures. Most of the implications based on SPA are also supported by and have lessons for other computational models of cognition, so these books can be useful to users of other cognitive architectures, particularly related architectures. Mind–Brain, another book in Thagard’s treatise, focuses on what SPA means for brain and mind.
In this book, Mind– Society, after explaining the use of SPA, Thagard examines what this approach means for social science and related professional fields. This book provides a very broad, singular framework for explaining the breadth of human behavior.
Is this framework useful? Very much so. This three-book treatise starts to address some problems that I have seen in various fields by using multilevel analyses, with a cognitive architecture at its middle level. These topics include how cognitive limitations can be addressed by legislation and professional practice. This treatise also notes how the SPA provides explanations naturally for many phenomena directly and that many similar cognitive architectures also provide. While this treatise does not note the linkages for other cognitive architectures, many architectures can be seen to provide most (but not all) of the support for this framework to explain how minds work in society.
In his book, Natural Philosophy, Thagard examines what this approach means for philosophy, including important topics of philosophy of mind and of beauty. It provides a useful and engaging overview of philosophy, particularly for those interested in cognitive science or working in cognitive science.
These books introduce several useful theories and methods about how to do science as well. Beyond allowing and using explanations via multilevel mechanisms, particularly valuable are Thagard’s introduction and use of three-analysis for definitions and coherence. The three-analysis definitions are a way to explain concepts without using simple definitions. They define a concept using exemplars, typical features, and explanations. This approach resolves several problems with simple dictionary definitions.
Coherence is a valuable concept for reasoning and is used in this book as a way to describe the quality of theories. Theories are not just good when they predict a single result but also how they cohere with multiple sources of data and with other theories. Coherence is hard to quantify itself, in some ways, but it is clearly useful. But the use of coherence is not just normative— we should use it—it is also descriptive in that scientists and laypersons appear use it in everyday life and that even scientists use it in their work. Making this often implicit reasoning process explicit will help us to apply, teach, and improve the process.
These books will be useful to cognitive scientists and those interested in cognitive science. They will also be useful to those who simply want to learn more about the world and cognition. They offer one of the best and clearest explanations we have for cognition and how it would apply to the humanities and to the social sciences. Pieces of liberal education are sprinkled throughout because this book draws examples and support from a wide range of material. Thus, humanists and social scientists interested in knowing how cognitive science works will find some answers here.
These books contain powerful ideas by one of the most highly cited living philosophers. They can change the way you think about the world, including brains and mind, and how you might think that the mind works and interacts with the world. Thagard calls these trio of books a treatise, and I found them so compelling that I’ve decided to use them in a course this next semester.
Reference Eliasmith, C. (2013). How to build a brain: A neural architecture for biological cognition. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Preface
This book is part of a trio (Treatise on Mind and Society) that can be read independently:
Brain–Mind: From Neurons to Consciousness and Creativity
Mind– Society: From Brains to Social Sciences and Professions
Natural Philosophy: From Social Brains to Knowledge, Reality, Morality, and Beauty.
Brain–Mind shows the relevance of Chris Eliasmith’s Semantic Pointer Architecture to explaining a wide range of mental phenomena concerning perception, imagery, concepts, rules, analogies, emotions, consciousness, intention, action, language, creativity, and the self. This book, Mind– Society, systematically connects neural and psychological explanations of mind with social phenomena, covering major social sciences (social psychology, sociology, politics, economics, anthropology, and history) and professions (medicine, law, education, engineering, and business). After the chapters 1 to 3, the remaining chapters can be read in any order. Chapters 4 to 9 concern social sciences, and chapters 10 to 14 discuss professions.
My aim is not to reduce the social to the psychological but rather to display their harmony and interdependence. This display is accomplished by describing
the interconnections among mental and social mechanisms, which interact to generate social changes ranging from marriage patterns to wars. The major tool for this description is a method I call the social cognitive-emotional workup, which connects the mental mechanisms operating in individuals with social mechanisms operating in groups. I call this general approach social cognitivism.
Because this book includes in chapter 2 a succinct summary of the relevant ideas about mind and brain, it can be read on its own. But readers who want a deeper discussion of mental mechanisms can read Brain–Mind and the more technical journal articles it cites. Natural Philosophy extends the integrated mental– social approach to apply to the humanities, primarily philosophy but also the arts, especially painting and music. An integrated account can be given of all branches of philosophy—epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, and aesthetics—by applying the intellectual tools developed in Brain–Mind and Mind– Society.
The integration of cognitive sciences, social sciences, and professions in this volume requires new methods that have broader application. The method of three-analysis characterizes concepts by identifying examples, features, and explanations rather than definitions. Value maps (cognitive-affective maps) provide a concise depiction of the emotional coherence of concepts. The general method of social cognitive-emotional workups guides the investigation of societies as groups of interacting individuals with complex minds.
These methods can also be applied to understanding the development of the natural sciences, whose cognitive and social processes I have discussed in previous books: Thagard 1992b, 1999, 2012b. Most of my papers can be found via paulthagard.com, which also contains live links for the URLs in this book.
Acknowledgments
Most of this book was newly written in 2015–2018, but I have incorporated some extracts from other works, as indicated in the notes and in the figure and table captions. I have also used excerpts from my Psychology Today blog, Hot Thought, for which I hold the copyright.
I am grateful to University of Waterloo students, especially Peter Duggins and Louise Upton, for corrections to earlier versions. I have benefitted greatly from discussions with Tobias Schröder, Thomas Homer-Dixon, John Holmes (comments on chapter 4), and Robert McCauley (comments on chapter 8). For helpful suggestions, I am grateful to Richard Carlson, Shawn Clark, Christopher Dancy, William Kennedy, Laurette Larocque, Jonathan Morgan, Frank Ritter, Jose Soto, and anonymous reviewers. I thank Joan Bossert for editorial advice, Phil Velinov and Shanmuga Priya for organizing production, Alisa Larson for skilled copyediting, and Kevin Broccoli for professional indexing. CBC Radio 2 and Apple Music provided the accompaniment.
Part I
Mechanisms
Explaining Social Change
Social Change
When I was a child in Saskatchewan in the 1950s, my parents and their friends smoked cigarettes, women were mostly housewives, birth control and homosexuality were illegal, and pornography was scarce. Today, almost no one I know smokes, many women are professionals, Canada and some other countries allow same- sex marriage, and hard- core pornography is available to anyone with Internet access. What causes such enormous social changes?
Contemporary social science is oddly incompetent to explain such transformations. Many economists and political scientists still assume that individuals make rational choices, despite the abundance of evidence that people frequently succumb to thinking errors such as motivated inference, confirmation bias, sunk costs, and framing losses differently from gains. Much of sociology and anthropology is taken over with postmodernist assumptions that everything is constructed on the basis of social relations such as power, with no inkling that these relations are mediated by how people think about each other. Social psychology should serve as the connection between changes in individual minds and social transformations, but the study of social cognition tends to focus on how pairs of individuals make sense of each other, rather than on the group processes that produce the spread of concepts and emotional attitudes across societies.
A better approach to explaining social change needs to be constructed by building on current work on the neural mechanisms responsible for cognition and emotion. Brain–Mind shows how all mental representations—images, concepts, Mind–Society:FromBrainstoSocialSciencesandProfessions. Paul Thagard, Oxford University Press (2019). © Paul Thagard. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190678722.003.0001
