Ontological Confusions and Belief in the Supernatural
On the origins of supernatural, superstitious, and religious beliefs
“I’m not superstitious, but I am a little stitious”
~Michael Scott
One of the most persistent trends throughout history is that of superstition and supernatural beliefs. Their very origins date back to a time when the mechanics of nature were entirely mysterious to us. Bad weather was considered a divine punishment, bad fortune came to those who tempted fate or broke superstitions, and severe illness was commonly diagnosed as demonic possession. Today, we jinx our luck, knock on wood, cross our fingers, and put spoons under our pillows in hopes of a snow day tomorrow.
The Functionalist Approach
When people have no idea how to solve a problem, they try everything and see what happens. You would think that the first couple of failed attempts would retire these beliefs, but they stick around for times when there are no simple solutions, or when the beliefs fulfill some other psychological need.
For example, supernatural beliefs provide conclusive and bulletproof (that is, unfalsifiable) solutions to life’s biggest problems. Scared of death? Your soul will live on. Have a loved one who is sick? You can save them through prayer. Your favorite team sucks? Wear your favorite player’s jersey on game day. When there is no hope and you have nothing to lose, it might be rational to entertain superstitious behaviors even if on some level you know that they won’t work. These psychological functions remain relatively constant, even as the beliefs evolve over time, and vary across cultures.
Though this functionalist approach offers a lot of explanatory power, it is unlikely to be the only cause of supernatural beliefs. If it were, these beliefs would cease to exist whenever science provides us with suitable alternatives, such as medicine. Furthermore, they persist even when their proffer no clear benefit, as seen in superstitions portents of bad luck. Therefore, these beliefs are likely to be multifaceted, with some facets more ingrained in our epistemology than others.
Core Knowledge Acquisition
Before a child utters their first word, they will already have an impressively accurate understanding of how the world works. For example, children seem to be born with some level of intuitive physics. They know that unsupported objects will crash to the ground and that hidden objects do not cease to exist. Intuitive physics continues to get sharpened throughout childhood and as we grow into adulthood. When an adult bumps a glass of water off the table, they will attempt to save the glass from shattering; they don't bother to try to save the water that spills out. Fortunately for us, we don't have to think much about this. As the word ‘intuitive’ implies, these actions are often unconscious, reflexive, and automatic.
Our intuitive judgments can often be accurate - at least enough to keep our ancestors alive. But our intuitions can also fail us, especially when our core conceptions of reality are unsound. The study of these core knowledge conceptions is called ontology, i.e., the nature of things. Ontological knowledge is what allows us to differentiate the mental from the physical, animate from the inanimate, and living from the lifeless. Like intuitive physics, ontological concepts are learned through instinct rather than explicit instruction at roughly the same age across cultures.
While developing their core knowledge, children will make some amusing assertions. John Piaget once asked a 7-year-old participant about the nature of thoughts, and she answered that thoughts are “white and round”, but we cannot see them because they are “too far back in the mouth.” This is a classic ontological confusion, which assigns physical properties (in this case, color, shape, and spatial location) to mental phenomena (in this case, thoughts).
Children also have a tendency to explain phenomena by their perceived purpose rather than their cause, which researchers like to call “promiscuous teleological reasoning”. For example, children will often claim things like “clouds exist for raining”, or “mountains exist for climbing”, or “lions exist so we can visit them at the zoo.”
Errors like these bear a stark resemblance to common unfounded beliefs in adulthood. Take a few examples:
Children believe that a person can know where a toy is even if they weren’t there when the toy was hidden Pillow & Weed, 1997; compare with belief in telepathy and clairvoyance in adults.
Children at 3 years of age often believe that an object will appear in a box if they think about the object first; compare with belief in telekinetic powers in adults.
Children understand that the dead can not perform functions like eating or drinking, but they tend to believe that mental states can continue after death; compare with belief in the soul and life after death in adults.
Children often confuse symbols for their material referents. In Piaget’s interviews, many children thought that the sun always had its name and that the word “sun” could actually be found inside of the sun; compare with the belief that the position of celestial bodies can influence human affairs on Earth (i.e., Astrology).
Children tend to assign purpose to everything, then assume that it was made for that purpose (i.e., teleological reasoning). Though this tendency is usually suppressed in adulthood, it can come out while under a heavy cognitive load or under time pressure in the lab. Even when we aren’t forced to ‘think fast’, we still say things like, “everything happens for a reason,” or “it was meant to be.”
Why do we make these ontological errors? It might have something to do with how we chunk information as we learn. Day in and day out, children are inundated with information. Chunking information offers an efficient way to bundle related concepts together as one. It is plausible that overzealous chunking may lead to a lack of conceptual discrimination.
Ontological confusions may also result from the fact that a child’s knowledge base and cognitive abilities develop simultaneously. For example, children learn to mentalize (i.e., acknowledge consciousness in beings other than themselves) at the same time that they learn ontological categories (e.g., mental processes are different from physical processes). Children tend to overapply this ability to mentalize, rather than not apply it enough. This is why it is common for children to have imaginary friends and to talk to their toys. By school age, most children grow out of the tendency to mentalize and confuse ontological categories. Those who don’t are presumably more predisposed to make ontological errors as they grow into adulthood.
Everyday Ontological Confusions
Examples like the one provided by Piaget and his 7-year-old subject can lead us to the mistaken belief that ontological confusions are for kids, or childlike adults. This is not the case. Take an example from something that torments us all: the finality of death. Most of us imagine the lights going out and the world going quiet when we die. For this to be the case, there would need to be someone to perceive the lights going out and the world going silent. But as death implies, there is no one to observe this. Death is not something to be experienced. You can read this and say, “makes sense enough.” But even after writing this, I still am imagining death as a quieting experience, rather than the obliteration of experience.
It is not merely false to believe in uninterrupted awareness after death, but it too is a category error. It mistakes consciousness as some material substance that can continue to experience the world even after the death of the body. In other words, it views thoughts as a body, rather than a function of the body. These cognitive shortcomings provide a plausible explanation for the origin of the soul.
Even some of the world's most admired minds are susceptible to ontological confusions. Jordan Peterson’s bible series lectures immediately spring to mind, wherein he defends events in the bible as literally and historically true. Here is a recent example from him discussing the story of Cain and Abel:
“Not only did that story happen, but it’s always happening, it always happened, it’s happening right now and it’s always going to happen into the future.”
Note that this would not be an ontological confusion if Peterson simply thought that the events in the bible actually happened. When creationists claim that the Earth is 6,000 years old, they are making an ordinate mistake, not an ontological one. It is an ordinate mistake because both the event and its explanation are within the realm of history. There is no category error here, just an improper evaluation of the evidence.
Instead of answering the question directly, Peterson gives a frustratingly obfuscatory answer which equates the bible’s moral validity (immaterial, subjective) with its historical validity (material, objective). When on Peterson’s Podcast, Richard Dawkins scoffed at Peterson’s mystical claims, “you're almost drunk on symbols and I think you've got to stop and say what does it actually mean…?” Drunk on symbols. It is hard to come up with a better phrase to describe this species of metaphorical-historical confusions.
The Role of Intuitions
Most of the time, when we are making ontological errors, we are relying on our intuitive system. Consider the following illustrative example:
“You are given the chance to wear a wonderfully knitted sweater, but are told that the sweater previously belonged to Hitler, would you wear it?”
If you answered no, then you are muddying the domain of moral disgust (psychological) with the domain of contagion (biological). Indeed, the insular cortex activates when we process physical disgust (as when we are sneezed on), and moral disgust (as when we consider Hitler's actions). Your gut is telling you to stay away from that sweater. We have the sense that the sweater is contaminated, not by germs, but by evil. We might even give supernatural powers to the sweater, and worry that wearing it will bring us misfortune. This is an example of an intuitive judgment that is extremely difficult to bypass.
Even when we vacillate over the sweater, and conclude that our initial decision was irrational, we still cannot overcome the intuition. This reveals that supernatural beliefs might not arise from a faulty analytical system, but an overactive intuitive one. In other words, we can recognize our cognitive errors without necessarily correcting them.
As with most things, this is a process that manifests itself differently across the population. Skeptics, for example, commit fewer ontological errors than religious believers. It also manifests itself differently across different belief systems. For example, reflective thinking appears to reduce religious beliefs in particular. One meta-analysis reported that 33 out of 35 studies found a statistically significant association between analytical thinking and the reduction of religious belief.
Caveats
It is necessary to recognize that unfounded beliefs are multi-faceted and cannot be understood by one concept alone. Intuitions don’t underlie all unfounded beliefs. If they did, then we wouldn’t have highly elaborate unfounded beliefs that are, at least on their face, analytical. One can be highly analytical, but only in one direction (i.e., motivated reasoning). Not only can analysis lead us to false beliefs, but intuitions can often be involved in our best decision-making.
One’s lack of supernatural beliefs doesn’t automatically make one analytical in general. Agnosticism is not always a result of careful analysis but can result from the lack of cultural pressure to adopt certain beliefs. There are no Christians in Papua New Guinea not necessarily because they are all hard-headed skeptics, but because Christianity is simply not a part of their culture.
Agnosticism can also result from a rejection any and all established beliefs, as seen in conspiracy theorists. To continue with the example of religion, conspiracy theorists might claim that religion is a manipulation device used by churches for our money. Here, the foundation for agnosticism lies not within reason, but within cynicism.
Not only are there highly intuitive agnostics, but there also exist highly analytical believers. Otherwise, we wouldn't have religious scientists, or doctors who perform superstitious rituals before going into surgery.
Therefore, It might be necessary to distinguish analytical skeptics from non-analytical skeptics. Non-analytical skeptics are more prone to ontological confusions and supernatural beliefs, and analytical skeptics are more partial to science and data. This might explain the finding that the gap between skeptics and believers is not as wide as one might think. There will always be analytical believers and non-analytical skeptics to pull the means closer together.
Conclusion
When we lack a core understanding of the physical world, we project mental states onto those conceptual gaps, filling our universe with agents such as ghosts, goblins, ghouls, and gods. This is why those with a limited understanding of reality (e.g., children, ancient societies) tend to hyper mentalize in precisely this way. Similarly, those who are unwilling or unable to apply their knowledge about the physical world (i.e., being analytical) are more susceptible to silly beliefs.
By identifying the mechanisms that lead us to strange beliefs, we can become more resilient ourselves. Policymakers will be able to implement programs within our education system that reduce unfounded beliefs. We can apply this knowledge to know when someone is just trying to fool or baffle us into adopting their beliefs. We can detect when someone is reasoning from intuition, or if they are confusing fundamental categories of knowledge. At the very least, we can become more selective in what unfounded beliefs we choose to leave behind and which to use for comfort. It doesn't hurt anyone to knock on wood, but it can be harmful to literally demonize everyone you disagree with.