The Animal at Unease with Itself. Isaac M. Alderman
and affected by the body, particularly the brain. While the mind-body problem and its unsurprising spectrum ranging from monism to dualism is not the primary concern of our study, suffice it to say it is beyond question that our minds are both constrained and enabled by our bodies.[22]
The theory of mind, sometimes called the theory of mind mechanism, is an essential concept within cognitive science and is a useful concept for work in the humanities as well. The theory of mind is the ability to attribute a mental state, also referred to as mentalizing, to oneself and to others.[23] While my ability to recognize that other people are having their own thoughts that are distinct from my own might seem so obvious and simple as to need little attention, it is a very important ability that non-human animals largely lack. Even young children lack the ability to mentalize. To demonstrate the development of the theory of mind, much work has been done with both children and autistic individuals. One important demonstration of this ability is the false-belief test, which has many iterations but essentially runs as follows. A young child is shown a crayon box and asked what it contains. Crayons is the obvious answer. However, when the box is opened, it surprisingly contains candy. The experimenter puts the candy back in the box, closes it, and asks, “What did you first think was in the box?” Children three and under will generally respond that they had believed that the box contained candy. The child’s parent is brought into the room, and the child is asked, “What do you think mom thinks is in the box?” The child is unable to recognize that her mom would normally assume that a crayon box would hold crayons, and answers, “Candy.” By the age of four or five, children pass the test, recognizing that mom would expect crayons, even though her belief is wrong. By seven or eight, children can pass false belief tests to several orders. For example, they will know not only that mom is wrong about the crayons, but that she would wrongly believe that the child is wrong if she were to tell her that the box has candy. We can readily see the importance of this social skill. Not only does a child recognize the wrong belief, but understands that in expressing what is true, he will wrongly be thought to be wrong. The false belief test has garnered significant attention from literary scholars and is a great example of how the work of cognitive scientists has been productively used in literary analysis. As Boyd puts it, understanding “why others do what they do matters so much in both human life and literature.”[24] One must be able to pass the false belief test to be a competent reader, for it is an essential skill to be able to navigate complex literary situations in which characters, including the narrator, have various levels of knowledge and accuracy of beliefs. While some animals, such as chimpanzees, can infer intentions from others’ behavior, only cognitively mature neurotypical humans have the ability of metarepresentational thought; in other words, only a human can think about what Sally thinks that John thinks about her, while knowing that John is wrong. A simple example from Genesis 27:18–29 shows the importance of being capable of passing the false belief test. The passage is meaningless to readers if they are unable to see through Jacob’s hairy disguise while also understanding that Isaac cannot.
Another important insight in the cognitive science of religion draws upon our knowledge of theory of mind and the attention humans pay to agency. We have already seen that children develop a theory of mind, in which they recognize that other humans have minds. Even earlier, even in the case of infants, another skill becomes present, that of agency detection. Infants very quickly develop categories in which they separate those things which have agency and those which do not. Once this has happened, they attend more closely to those which do. For example, infants are much more attentive to people and pets than they are to furniture. Moreover, they are easily startled when something that should not have agency appears to behave like an agent. This is easily demonstrated in studies, where infants are startled by objects that are made to appear to move on their own, such as a remote-control toy. The human agency detection device is a naturally selected trait with survival benefits. Assuming agency when encountering ambiguous stimuli can save a life if correct and has little downside if wrong. Agency detection sacrifices accuracy for speed which leads to over-identification of agency. For example, if hearing a noise in the bushes causes one to be on guard against a predator, it could save one’s life. Conversely, if the noise was simply the wind, there is little consequence to one’s being wrong. As one scholar puts it, “it’s better to have a fast device that occasionally gets it wrong than a slow device that is always accurate.”[25]
In addition to natural agency detection, as children get older, they begin to impute teleological explanations and purposeful action where none exists.[26] For example, when shown images of pointy rocks, they might explain that the rocks are pointy so that no one will sit on them. When agency detection has been activated, theory of mind comes into play because agents have minds.[27] Barrett, like Pascal Boyer, has studied agency detection. Noting the human tendency toward liberal attribution of agency, he uses the term hypersensitive agency detection device.[28] Our over-attribution of agency and our proclivity to attribute mental states come together in the belief in gods, ghosts, and other supernatural beings. We attribute mind to everyone and to many things, often including animals and objects.[29]
Essentially, then, cognitive scientists are studying the embodied mind. This embodiment can cause complications, but one of the greatest assets humans have is the ability to recognize that others have minds, even when we only see their bodies. Moreover, we readily assign agency to movements and events, often even when no agency is involved. These concepts are essential for applying the insights of cognitive science in the humanities.
The Cognitive Turn
Since the 1990s, the humanities, particularly literary analysis, has broadened its scope of research to include what some refer to as cognitivism. Although the approach is itself challenged by what some view as “neuromania,” it is an important development.[30] As Hogan says, a theory of the human mind which cannot account for art is a poor theory.[31] Conversely, and more to the point of this project, analyses of the creative products of the human mind should also consider the workings of the human brain. A great deal of work in literary analysis is now focused on the cognitive processes involved in reading, writing, and storytelling.
The cognitive revolution has had a significant impact on literary and cultural studies. The humanities struggled in the early 1990s. Literary analysis in particular was threatened, as a committee studying the field of comparative literature put it, with finding itself in the “dustheap of history.”[32] The dominance of deconstruction and post-structuralist methods left many feeling that meaningful insights were no longer the focus. It was clear to many that the various sciences were achieving results, real data, in a way that was not possible for literary analysis as it was currently being practiced. One response to this crisis was the incorporation of the insights of cognitive science into the study of literature. The expansion of the cognitive revolution into literary studies and other fields within the humanities should not come as a surprise since interdisciplinarity and “fuzziness of boundaries” is an essential characteristic of cognitive cultural studies.[33] Communication had long been studied by cognitive scientists, analyzing elements such as patterns of speech, meaning making, and the use of metaphors. With the introduction of the cognitive study of culture, it became clear that art is a form of communication and not a separate system, and so art and literature are now being studied as cognitive acts.[34] Linguist and cognitive scientist Steven Pinker sees in this process a great merging of the sciences and the humanities.[35]
In paraphrasing William James, one scholar refers to this type of work as trying to turn on the light fast enough to see what the dark looks like.[36] The study of stories is in some sense an attempt to understand our own understanding. The arts are not marginal to human existence and storytelling is an integral part of our lives. We tell stories constantly, sometimes habitually and unintentionally.[37] We are “marinating ourselves in fiction,” consuming and creating stories, often spending more time with books, movies, and television than we do on other activities such as work or relationships.[38] The study of cultural interactions such as storytelling recognizes that these actions are cognitive actions rooted in the body itself. As Maryanne Wolf puts it, “reading is a neuronally and intellectually circuitous act,” that is impacted by the text, but also by the “unpredictable