Please use the form below to submit comments. Also provide an e-mail address and name. Your e-mail address and/or name will be used only to communicate with you about this or future comments you may submit. I am particularly keen to receive references to published material that contradicts the assertions and arguments I have made.
By submitting the above comment, I grant to Ross Alan Hangartner the right to incorporate the comment in full or in part, literally, paraphrased, or conceptually, as he sees fit, into State of Pain or other writings that he may create in the future. However, I don't grant permission to include my name or e-mail address, or to use them in any other way than to contact me for follow-up. I understand that by submitting the comment I acquire no right of any kind in State of Pain or other writings of Ross Alan Hangartner.
Last updated: Thu, Sep 5, 2024
An aphorism about conspiracy theories: Facts can't disturb the theory for a good reason. The important part of the conspiracy theory isn't congruence with facts, it's the point it makes about the nature of the system. Any facts that don't fit well can be wedged in. The conspiracy theory is supported not by facts but by fundamental beliefs about the system it refers to.
Sociologists and political scientists use the term "ideology" to refer to sets of fundamental beliefs about social life. Ideology has been defined in many ways, but I think the following is suitable for discussing ideology and pain:
An ideology is a shared model of social phenomena used for conceptualizing, discussing, and evaluating social issues.
Start with "social." Here, it's intended to cover anything that has to do with how we interact with one another, from table manners to sexual rules to concepts about governance or the existence of an afterlife.
Next, "model." An ideology is a set of beliefs about abstract and complex things, including the nature of man, the nature of the world, the responsibilities and rights that pertain to people in different roles and different circumstances, and the source of authority. These beliefs incorporate or assume a lot of facts and relationships about things that are complex and non-obvious. Hence, the ideological beliefs provide a means for thinking, discussing, and deciding about the issues of social life. They are less complex than the reality that the beliefs refer to and they provide a means to analyze and manipulate the social world, hence they are a model. The ideological model can often be articulated using words, but it can exist somewhat apart from the ability of the subject to express it verbally.
Next, "shared." While each person has his own beliefs, ideological beliefs are shared in a couple of senses. First, ideological beliefs are socially shared when they are expressed, whether directly or indirectly. Second, shared ideological beliefs are often central to groups and affiliations.
Last, "evaluating." Ideological beliefs are about what is right and what is wrong, what is good and what is bad in behaviors and systems.
Under this concept of ideology, religions are ideological. Like political ideologies, our major religious belief systems meet the definition above. Our major religions all include a god, who is the ultimate source of moral authority, as well as what sociologists call "privileged texts," which adherents may or may not to question, but can't repudiate. In addition, our religions include social ceremonies that confirm shared beliefs.
Various polls condicted from 1997 through 2000 found that 76% of Americans believed in the Biblical account of creation, 79% that Biblical miracles happened, 76% believed in angels, the devil, and other spirits, 67% in existence after death, but 15% that evolution is the best explanation for human existence.1
Anyone who doesn’t believe in evolution is certainly not going to believe in evolution of the mind, and anyone who believes in an immaterial soul is certainly not going to believe that thought and feeling consist of information processing in the tissues of the brain.2
Beliefs or perspectives that do not harmonize with privileged texts (or other ideological beliefs) are resisted by adherents. This affects understandings related to pain in a pretty direct way, as Pinker points out in the preceding quotation. Creation implies a world created by the ultimate authority, presumably to accomplish It's purposes. Evolution implies a world created by itself with complex emergent properties and values that must be discovered or devised.
(I believe that in the US we distinguish political from religious ideologies in part because religious orthodoxies would otherwise interfere with political coalitions that are needed to succeed in electoral politics. Religious political parties do exist in multi-party democracies.)
Ideologies serve functions in life. First, they provide a baseline for dealing with social issues. Ideologies seem to exist as a set of general propositions which are ready-to-hand when an issue comes up. Think of the Ten Commandments or the Golden Rule. Thus, they serve the needs of us as cognitive misers. Such principles are easy to transmit to new audiences and new generations. To the extent that ideologies are shared within a group, there is much less need to debate the right and wrong of questions.
A recent neurophysiological study suggested one possible benefit of religious belief. Scientists observed the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), a region of the brain that is involved in many processes, including self-regulation, attention, and anxiety. Activity in the ACC was recorded by EEG while people were taking the Stroop test. In this test, subjects are shown the names of colors, but the names are printed in a different color. The task is to name the color in which a word is written, while the word names a different color. The stronger people's religious zeal (as measured by a scale) or the more they professed a belief in God, the less their ACC fired in response to the errors they made, and the fewer errors they made. Was religious belief providing a buffer against error? Trivers suggests that there must be many such possible effects.3
We are by-and-large self-conscious about our own ideological beliefs. That is, our beliefs are an important part of our self-identity. We call them our values. When ideologies are the basis of social affiliation, the stakes in ideological conformity are raised.
We're also concerned about how adequate our understanding of the world around us is. The general nature of ideological assertions makes them resistant to challenge by facts about the real world. The general nature of ideological assertions provides a toolkit that allows us often to resolve social issues through ideological assertions without detailed knowledge of the stakes involved in the issue.
Ideology is about basic moral beliefs, hence things addressed ideologically can be addressed with emotional heat.
Ideology is a complex subject and I provide only a summary here. If you are interested in a more-detailed analys, you might refer to my detailed write-up about ideology
An example of ideological beliefs is belief in a just world (BJW). It is a different thing to believe that the world ought to be just, than to believe that it is in fact just. BJW is the belief that the world is in fact just. If you do believe in a just world, you may say things such as “you reap what you sow,” “what goes around comes around,” or “you get what you deserve.” You might also believe in karma, reincarnation, or heaven and hell.
Just like a conspiracy theory, facts to the contrary don't challenge the belief. Thus we have karma or reward and punishment in an afterlife. Research psychologists tend to explain the BJW belief as "motivated cognition," a belief that is maintained not by evidence but by emotional needs.
BJW supports the belief that we can control our lives. If you're a good person you face less risk. That has the attraction of simplicity. If you're having problems, straighten up your act and your troubles will go away. You're in charge. That's a pretty nice message, and a message that many parents are happy to pass along to their children. In several Christian traditions (Calvinism, "prosperity" Christianity) God is a sort of just-world machine. People who work hard prosper, preferably now but if not now, in the great by-and-by. In a not-too-subtle inversion of logic, if you prosper it's because you're good.
While this belief may be useful in child-raising and comforting to those who are happy and prosperous, the belief that the world is just simultaneously denies the existence of un-just situations.
Faith healing seems to me to rely on BJW. Physical affliction is removed when the Holy Spirit is received. Similar to this is the idea that happiness and success accrues to those who follow the path which the supreme being has set for them. I would expect that believers in a just world would tend to believe in psychologically-based theories of pain causation. (Somatization, Psychogenic Pain, and So Forth.)
BJW as a fact is problematic. One of the most prominent problems is that belief in a just world leads to the blaming and derogation of people who need the benefit of your compassion. This occurs in sexual assaults, poverty, employment, and other areas. Misattribution of responsibility, like convicting an innocent person, causes at least two problems, one being that the cause is misidentified and un-addressed. The designation of victims should be a matter for inquiry, but in a just world there are no victims.
Belief in a just world is also a complex subject and has been the subject of much research. If you are interested in a more-detailed analys, you might refer to my write-up about BJW.
System justification is a separate sociological process than BJW, but BJW tends to reinforce system justification. System justification denotes the tendency that we have to justify the current system because it is the current system, and the tendency to evaluate ourselves based upon the roles we occupy in the current system. Things are as they ought to be. As we learn about our systems growing up, we learn to fit in, not to critique them. Justification concepts apply to systems broadly considered, including things such as how medical care is provided, how government assists sufferers, and other systems that affect pain sufferers.
You can see my thoughts about system justification if you are interested.
Earlier, I pointed out evidence that we are equipped with a basic intuitive psychology which believes that people have a mind or soul which has beliefs and desires that motivate their behavior. (See Core Intuitions and Core Behaviors.) It is therefore a natural inference that human behavior is caused by beliefs and desires. In addition to much empirical evidence to the contrary, there is much recent theoretical evidence which indicates the inference is at best questionable. (See Neuroscientific Thinking.)
"Attribution" is a term that researchers use to describe the explanations that people make for social outcomes. People differ in the degree to which they tend to attribute behaviors to the character or disposition of the actor as opposed to the characteristics of the situation. In other words, they differ about how important the actor's beliefs and desires are in causing the observed behaviors.
Research shows, first, that in social contexts including income, crime, homelessness, and obesity, liberals prefer (are more likely to adopt) situational explanations, explanations that emphasize the importance of the situation, including the institutional context. Conservatives prefer personal explanations, explanations that emphasize the behavior or character of the protagonist, such as presence or lack of discipline, etc. (Use this link to see details.)
The same research shows that, once the attribution is decided, liberals and conservatives differ concerning who is entitled to support from the community. Both liberals and conservatives are willing to provide aid when the scenario is uncontrollable, whether the cause was situational or personal. Both are willing to provide aid when the cause is external (situational) and controllable. When the cause is internal (dispositional) and controllable, however, and the protagonist might have avoided being in need, liberals are much more inclined to offer community aid than are conservatives.
So, according to this research, support is contingent upon attributions.
For more detail, as well as references to the research I've reported, see my essay on attribution.
Behavior in response to beliefs and motivations is also known as free will. One extreme position on attribution, that all outcomes are caused by motivations, is very similar to some BJW beliefs. The other extreme, that all outcomes are caused by the situation (which could include both external conditions and the innate nature of the individual) would deny free will.
When free will dominates, responsibility rests with the actor. Community support is limited and the actor must correct themself and the situation. When conditions overwhelm the will, the actor is entitled to community support.
Even if creation/evolution can be left out of the discussion, free will is a major ideological commitment, so neuroscientific findings that mediate against free will meet opposition on ideological grounds.
Our intuitive psychology, that behavior is the result of attempts to achieve goals, must be supported by some engine that interprets human behavior as more than just moving arms and legs. I've suggested (Human Nature) that this is a theory of mind which is based on the belief or assumption that others are like oneself at this level, and that they have motivations like oneself. In that same section I presented evidence that, whatever role motivations have in behavior, much of our decision-making occurs subconsciously, and that our introspections of our own motivations seem to be contrived after the fact. (Deception and Self-deception.)
We use the terms "mind," "soul," "spirit," and such to describe the thing that has motivations, beliefs, and behaviors. The oldest written conception of this comes from the Jewish traditions through the many varieties and changes of Christian doctrine over the centuries. As characterized by neuroscientist Pinker, in this view humans are made in God's image and are distinct from animals. The mind is immaterial. It continues to exist after bodily death. It has a moral sense, the ability to love, and an ability to reason. It chooses how to behave based upon how behavior accords with standards. It has a tendency not just to make errors but to choose sin.4
Beyond this Judeo-Christian concept of the soul, religious and political philosophers have refined it in response to ideological motivations over the years. In the 17th century, the century of Galileo and Newton, the universe, including humans, was being modeled as clockwork. French philosopher Rene Descartes believed that nerve fibers operated somewhat like cords. When they were pulled, they alerted the brain to the condition that had activated them. (Methodological Challenges in Psychology.) He was however dissatisfied with the clockwork view of cognition, and instead proposed that, while the body was a clockwork, the mind (soul) stood apart from rules of mechanical cause and effect. (This was during the Reformation, a period of high religious tension.) Hence we have Cartesian dualism, the enduring idea that the mind is not a machine of any sort.
Also in the 17th century, Hobbes in "Leviathan" talked about nature, "red in tooth and claw" and life as "nasty, brutish, and short," promoting the need for powerful central authority. The nature of human nature has been a matter of ideological contention since ideologies were first discussed.
Neuroscience, since it paints the mind as a machine, however complex, can be seen as antithetical to the doctrine of the soul bestowed by God. Thus, “The ‘scientific belief’ would ... appear to be corrosive of any notion of free will, personal responsibility, or universal morality.” (From the creationist A. Ferguson, “The end of nature and the next man,” Weekly Standard, 1999.)5
Englishman John Locke proposed the “blank slate” idea in the late 17th century as an alternative to conservative political theory, which claimed that a hierarchical political order was suited to the innate nature of man. In the 18th century Rousseau gave as "Candide" and the noble savage, painting a picture of a different human nature more in line with the aspirations of the Enlightenment.
While the idea of free will is consistent with an ideology that highlights personal responsibility, a flexible and trainable human nature is ideologically consistent with progressive ideals that societal arrangements are less constrained by human nature, and that we are not fated in life by our inherited nature. The blank slate has been so fiercely defended that Steven Pinker wrote his 2002 "Blank Slate" to argue that the concept not only is not true, but also not helpful. According to Pinker, belief in a blank slate has “the mentality of a cult, in which fantastical beliefs are flaunted as proof of one’s piety.”6
Apparently any constraints on the soul or mind are liable to stir up some resistance. With ideological beliefs come emotions and moral framing.
When a belief about the nature of the world is framed as morally right or wrong, it is evaluated in a different way than pragmatic decisions are. Think of taboos or articles of religious faith.