Are emotions really separate from rationality? Is trusting science similar to religious faith? Do poetry and mythic archetypes disclose a reality beyond the material world? What might characters like Mr. Spock reveal about logical thinking? Julian explores the relationships between scientific and religious world views through the lenses of emotions, metaphors, and the brain. He draws on clips from neuroscientist Antonio Damasio, philosopher Julia Galef, linguist George Lakoff, biology professor Robert Sapolsky, and neurologist Vilayanur Ramachandran.Show NotesThis Time With Feeling: David Brooks and Antonio Damasio40/40 Vision Lecture: Neurology and the Passion for ArtGeorge Lakoff - How Does Philosophy Illuminate the Physical World? 24. SchizophreniaThe Straw Vulcan, Julia Galef Skepticon 4
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Hello, Matthew here from the Conspirituality Podcast Team.
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I want to talk today about the relationship between scientific and religious worldviews, but especially through the lens of emotions and metaphor.
And to do that, I'm going to draw on some of my favorite thinkers, the neuroscientist and philosopher Antonio Damasio, the philosopher and linguist George Lakoff, Stanford psychology professor and very widely read author, Robert Sapolsky, and my personal favorite neurologist, Professor Vilayanur Ramachandran.
For episode 75, I interviewed philosopher of science, Lee McIntyre, about his book, How to Talk to a Science Denier.
and I'm not sure.
In hindsight, I realize that this book and our conversation really centered on the relationship between two types of rationality.
Epistemic rationality, or using science and reason to understand the world on the one hand, and instrumental rationality on the other, which we could describe as the method of figuring out how to achieve goals in the world.
In a rational way, in a way that will be more likely to be successful than if we did it otherwise.
And in this case, instrumental rationality with regard to his book, How to Talk to a Science Denier, refers to how to communicate, for example, the science of vaccines or climate change to others.
And this second topic, instrumental rationality, is, as it turns out, really about considering the psychology of belief and what it takes to earn someone's trust in a way that gives you any chance of influencing them to change their minds.
Now, Lee McIntyre writes and talks about this relationship with great empathy and clarity, and I think that's why this episode resonated for so many people who've expressed their appreciation in comments and messages and social media posts about the episode.
Matthew Derrick and I had an ensuing conversation after the interview during the episode and in that conversation Matthew talked about how on reflection he saw his own way of trusting in the science communicated by public health officials as being somewhat like religious faith.
He wondered whether his own process of developing trust in these experts was really so different from how conspiracists bond with the charismatic red-pilled social media influencers we cover.
He reflected on how, in the absence of our own scientific expertise, we choose to trust culturally conditioned markers of legitimacy In a way that is perhaps more emotional than rational.
Perhaps more about liking the person or feeling good about them and how they speak.
Is the scientific expert then our worldview's stand-in figure for the priest or the new age influencer?
As all three of these, the scientific expert, the priest, or the new age influencer, they all are claiming knowledge that we ourselves don't have.
Now, in his follow-up bonus episode from last week, Matthew then drew parallels between our collective early responses to the pandemic and religious rituals.
He drew upon Stanford professor Robert Sapolsky, who I'll also use today, his hypothesis that religious rituals have their roots in the same brain processes that give rise to conditions like obsessive-compulsive disorder.
How, in the absence of personal scientific knowledge, Those of us who looked to the public health experts for guidance at the beginning of the pandemic dutifully disinfected surfaces and groceries, sung the liturgy of Happy Birthday as we meticulously washed our hands, and tried to hew close to the changing and contradictory doctrine on masks.
Now there's a self-critical transparency that I admire in his thought process here.
It's one of the reasons I really appreciate Matthew as a colleague and a friend.
The points he raises makes me in turn reflect on a ubiquitous cultural way of conceiving an either-or binary between emotions and logic.
As well as how we frame an even deeper dynamic between religious and scientific worldviews.
Both of which, I think, can tend to miss something about our human nature.
Before exploring this topic more deeply, let me just say this.
I think the difference between beliefs based in pseudoscience, superstition, magical thinking, or conspiracy theories and those informed by science and reason is not that the latter are somehow scrubbed clean of any emotion or intuition.
Rather, it is that the former are based on a faulty model of reality.
Both types of worldview can have equally dispassionate claims or be expressed with equally strong emotions for several reasons, perhaps chief among them being the values we hold in terms of the impact we feel the opposing belief will have on the world, on real people.
Proponents of vaccines or climate science are just as emotionally driven in our convictions and just as dismissive of counter-arguments as anti-vaxxers and climate deniers are.
We are just typically relying on better models of reality in conjunction with those admittedly emotional value judgments.
A common way of talking about rationality is to contrast it with being influenced by our emotions.
Being informed by science or logic might conjure up an image of Mr. Spock from Star Trek, a person who models standing apart from emotional concerns or reactions and calculating the correct course of action based purely on the facts.
This way of framing reason and feelings as in opposition to one another or as two wholly different processes permeates our cultural attitudes about science, religion, relationships and what it means to be human.
Many beloved Hollywood stories feature coldly rational characters waking up through a dramatic or comedic narrative to the importance of emotion or some kind of mystical wonder or earthly love that is beyond the grasp of mere science or rationality.
So here's philosopher and author Julia Galef on the TV trope of the Straw Vulcan.
