Causal Beliefs and Human Behavior: Understanding the Power of Cause and Effect

1. 'For what a man had rather be true he more readily believes' Bacon 16th Century

2. Causal beliefs can determine how we behave. We cannot tolerate not knowing the cause of important events like illness and death.

3. The original and only true function of the brain, from and evolutionary viewpoint, is to control movement and interaction with the environment. That is why plants have no brains.

4. Causal beliefs make us human and different from all other animals. It evolved in relation to use of tools. It led to religious beliefs.

5. All cultures have beliefs about causes, but more than 90% of events have causes not easily accessible to an individual. Supernatural explanations are common: telepathy communication with spirits homeopathy ghosts and angels

6. Causal understanding in children is a developmental primitive.

7. From 3 months infants can reason about physical causality ; by 7 months objects remain whole, and require contact to move. By 18 months they can rake a toy to themselves.

10. By 3 years they understand that people have different beliefs. Many questions about causes. Light on box -touch hand/head

11. ..humans, but no other primates, understand the causal and intentional relations that hold among external entities. Michael Tomasello

12. Seeing the wind shake a branch so that the fruit falls, off would lead no animal other than a human to shake the branch to get the fruit.

13. Crows use sticks as tools

16. Lack of causal understanding

17. Chimps are at the edge of causal understanding, but do not ever modify a stone. Kanzi was taught to make tools

18. The first human tools may have been the result of a stone breaking when used on nuts - but causal thinking was essential

20. A million or so years in stasis in tool use, and then some 100,000 years ago new tools appeared.

22. Technology requires a concept of physical cause, and drove human evolution.

25. Language may have come from gesture and throwing. It helped with causal beliefs.

26. Technology drove human evolution. Humans could manipulate their environment. Dunbar argues that it was social understanding that drove human evolution. But what was the big advantage?

29. Religion provided causal understanding. Religion offered the possibility of asking for help by praying. All societies have had religious beliefs.

30. Humans were the most obvious causal agents and gods are human-like. “men create the gods after their own image” Aristotle

31. Religion is the commitment to the existence of culturally postulated superhuman beings.

32. It was a selective advantage to have religious belief, as it removed uncertainty. Such beliefs may have become genetically programmed. There is evidence that those with religious beliefs have better health.

34. In almost all religions there is an afterlife. This can reduce the fear of death and so is an advantage. This involves mystical thinking. Religion is not based on evidence.

35. Mostmental illnesses involve false beliefs; common are delusions/hallucinations Confabulation Depression Schizophrenia Hypnotism Capgras

36. Mysticism I discovered that beauty, revelation, sensuality, the cellular history of the past, God, the Devil - all lie inside my body, outside my mind Timothy Leary on LSD We have a mystical mind probably from religion

38. There is evidence that the drug from magic mushrooms can trigger a religious experience. Also electrical stimulation of the brain can also.

39. Being a member of a religious community an be an advantage. Sloan Wilson Religion and the belief in God is most common in societies that have the most intensive struggle for existence. Is the USA a counter example?

41. Science is special, not technology -and it all comes from the Greeks. Thales Aristotle Euclid Archimedes Egyptians no explanation Greeks explain heavens Chinese

43. Science is the best way to understand the world, but it is unnatural - it goes against common sense. Archimedes. Moon; force and motion; quantum mechanics Galileo and falling body.

44. No miracle should be believed unless the evidence was such that it would be miraculous not to believe in it. David Hume

45. There is no evidence that the fertilised human egg is a human being. Implications for stem cells and abortion.

46. Intelligent design is based on faith not science. There will always be some unanswered questions. Science is the best way to understand the world. If the history science were rerun the results would be the same, but DNA might be googy.

48. Paranormal beliefs invoke forces and causes both outside ordinary experience and science. They offer believers new powers. possible to contact the dead to access past lives horoscopes can predict the future spiritual healing can cure telepathy angels and ghosts and aliens read someone else's mind spirits can move objects levitation is possible

49. ‘If a person is poorly, receives treatment to make him better, and then gets better, then no power of reasoning known to medical science can convince him that it may not have been the treatment that restored his health’. Peter Medawar

50. Placebo effect determined by beliefs