Maarten Boudry

Does cultural evolution happen by a process of copying or replication? And how exactly does cultural transmission compare with that paradigmatic case of replication, the copying of DNA in living cells? Theorists of cultural evolution are divided on these issues. The most important objection to the replication model has been leveled by Dan Sperber and his colleagues. Cultural transmission, they argue, is almost always reconstructive and transformative, while strict ‘replication’ can be seen as a rare limiting case at most. By means of some thought experiments and intuition pumps, I clear up some confusion about what qualifies as ‘replication’. I propose a distinction between evocation and extraction of cultural information, applying these concepts at different levels of resolution. I defend a purely abstract and information-theoretical definition of replication, while rejecting more material conceptions. In the end, even after taking Sperber’s valuable and important points on board, the notion of cultural replication remains a valid and useful one. This is fortunate, because we need it for certain explanatory projects.

Certain enterprises at the fringes of science, such as intelligent design creationism, claim to identify phenomena that go beyond not just our present physics but any possible physical explanation. Asking what it would take for such a claim to succeed, we introduce a version of physicalism that formulates the proposition that all available data sets are best explained by combinations of “chance and necessity”—algorithmic rules and randomness. Physicalism would then be violated by the existence of oracles that produce certain kinds of noncomputable functions. Examining how a candidate for such an oracle would be evaluated leads to questions that do not admit an easy resolution. Since we lack any plausible candidate for any such oracle, however, chance-and-necessity physicalism appears very likely to be correct

What, if any, are the limits of human understanding? Epistemic pessimists, sobered by our humble evolutionary origins, have argued that some parts of the universe will forever remain beyond our ken. But what exactly does it mean to say that humans are ‘cognitively closed’ to some parts of the world, or that some problems will forever remain ‘mysteries’? In this paper we develop a richer conceptual toolbox for thinking about different forms and varieties of cognitive limitation, which are often conflated by the so-called ‘new mysterians’. We distinguish between representational access and imaginative understanding, as well as between different modalities of cognitive limitation. Next, we look at tried-and-tested strategies for overcoming our innate cognitive limitations, drawing from the literature on distributed cognition and cognitive scaffolding’. This allows us to distinguish between the limits of bare brains vs. scaffolded brains. Most importantly, we argue that this panoply of mind-extension devices is combinatorial and open-ended. In the end, this allows us to turn the table on the mysterians: for every alleged ‘mystery’, they should demonstrate that no possible combination of mind extension devices will bring us any closer to a solution.

Judgments of the rationality of beliefs must take the costs of acquiring and possessing beliefs into consideration. In that case, certain false beliefs, especially those that are associated with the benefits of a cohesive community, can be seen to be useful for an agent and perhaps instrumentally rational to hold. A distinction should be made between excusable misbeliefs, which a rational agent should tolerate, and misbeliefs that are defensible in their own right because they confer benefits on the agent. Likely candidates for such misbeliefs are to be found in the realm of nationalism and religion, where the possession costs of true beliefs are high, and where collective beliefs in falsehoods may allow for a cohesive community. We discuss the paradoxes of reflective awareness involved in the idea of deliberately embracing falsehoods. More rigorous, fully reflective concepts of rationality would still disallow false beliefs, but such demanding versions of rationality would commit agents to pay large costs, thereby weakening the motivation for acquiring true beliefs.

In the space of all possible beliefs, conspiracy theories stand out with a special and possibly unique feature: they are the only beliefs that predict an absence of evidence in their favor, and even the discovery of counterevidence. In the traditional, narrow sense of the term, a ‘conspiracy theory’ refers to an alternative explanation of a historical event in terms of a small group of actors working together to achieve some nefarious goal. In a broader sense, however, any theory that involves a form of invisible intentional agency can adopt the contours of a conspiracy theory. In this paper, I adopt a broader and more abstract definition of conspiracy theories, based on a conceptual core that unifies all such theories. By drawing comparisons between conspiracy theories in a range of different domains, we gain more insight into their central epistemological defects, as well as their cultural dynamics. Some belief systems are inherently conspiratorial, in that they posit some form of intelligent agency that deliberately wants to escape detection, while others merely resort to conspiratorial reasoning when threatened with counterevidence. This paper builds on earlier research into the cultural evolution of belief systems.

What, if anything, is wrong with conspiracy theories (CTs)? A conspiracy refers to a group of people acting in secret to achieve some nefarious goal. Given that the pages of history are full of such plots, however, why are CTs often regarded with suspicion and even disdain? According to “particularism,” the currently dominant view among philosophers, each CT should be evaluated on its own merits and the negative reputation of CTs as a class is wholly undeserved. In this paper, I defend a moderate version of “generalism,” the view that there is indeed something prima facie suspicious about CTs, properly defined, and that they suffer from common epistemic defects. To demarcate legitimate theorizing about real-life conspiracies from “mere conspiracy theories” (in the pejorative sense), I draw on a deep asymmetry between causes and effects in the natural world. Because of their extreme resilience to counterevidence, CTs can be seen as the epistemological equivalent of black holes, in which unwary truth-seekers are drawn, never to escape. Finally, by presenting a generic “recipe” for generating novel CTs around any given event, regardless of the circumstances and the available evidence, I rescue the intuitions beneath colloquial phrases like “That's just a conspiracy theory.”

Are there any such things as mind viruses? By analogy with biological parasites, such cultural items are supposed to subvert or harm the interests of their host. Most popularly, this notion has been associated with Richard Dawkins’ concept of the “selfish meme”. To unpack this claim, we first clear some conceptual ground around the notions of cultural adaptation and units of culture. We then formulate Millikan’s challenge: how can cultural items develop novel purposes of their own, cross-cutting or subverting human purposes? If this central challenge is not met, talk of cultural ‘parasites’ or ‘selfish memes’ will be vacuous or superfluous. First, we discuss why other attempts to answer Millikan’s challenge have failed. In particular, we put to rest the claims of panmemetics, a somewhat sinister worldview according to which human culture is nothing more than a swarm of selfish agents, plotting and scheming behind the scenes. Next, we reject a more reasonable, but still overly permissive approach to mind parasites, which equates them with biologically maladaptive culture. Finally, we present our own answer to Millikan’s challenge: certain systems of misbelief can be fruitfully treated as selfish agents developing novel purposes of their own. In fact, we venture that this is the only way to properly understand them. Systems of misbelief are designed to spread in a viral-like manner, without any regard to the interests of their human hosts, and with possibly harmful consequences. As a proof of concept, we discuss witchcraft beliefs in early modern Europe. In this particular case, treating cultural representations as “parasites” – i.e. adopting the meme’s eye view – promises to shed new light on a mystery that historians and social scientists have been wrestling with for decades.

What, if anything, is wrong with conspiracy theories? A conspiracy refers to a group of people acting in secret to achieve some nefarious goal. But given that the pages of history are full of such plots, why are CTs regarded with suspicion? Just like with the traditional demarcation problem, philosophers disagree about where to draw the line between legitimate hypotheses about conspiracies and unfounded ‘conspiracy theories’. Some believe that there is no such demarcation line to be drawn, that each CT should be evaluated on its own merits, and that the bad reputation of CTs is wholly undeserved. In this paper, I intend to rescue the intuition that there is indeed something prima facie suspicious about CTs. First, I demarcate legitimate theorizing about real-life conspiracies from “mere conspiracy theories”. Along the way, my analysis will clarify some epistemological issues surrounding falsifiability, asymmetries between causes and effects, and hypotheses involving intentional agents. Because of their extreme resilience to external criticism and counterevidence, I argue, CTs are the epistemological equivalent of a ‘black hole’, in which unwary truth-seekers are drawn, never to escape again. But this strong attraction of CTs comes at a steep price: their theoretical parameters are essentially arbitrary, making them vulnerable to internal disruption. In essence, because it is so easy to construct a novel CT, it is equally easy to construct many ones about the same historical event. And that is what justifies our suspicion of CTs.

We respond to Van Leeuwen's critique of our paper. We clarify why our account is not committed to a unitary view of "belief", and we argue that Van Leeuwen's dichotomy between "fakers" and "fanatics" is a false dilemma, based on an equivocation in the use of the term "fanaticism". Once we pay attention to crucial content differences in religious belief, to which Van Leeuwen is largely oblivious, we can explain all the phenomena that he alludes to. Finally, we discuss some peculiar features of religion, such as the unfalsifiablity of many doctrines and the importance of mystery, but we insist that such features do not rest on a difference in cognitive attitude. By and large, religious folks factually believe what they profess to believe.

Are there any such things as mind viruses? By analogy with biological parasites, such cultural items supposed to subvert or harm the interests of their host. Most popularly, this notion has been associated with Richard Dawkins’ concept of the “selfish meme”. To unpack this claim, we first clear some conceptual ground around the notion of cultural adaptation and units called ‘memes’. We then formulate Millikan’s challenge: how can cultural items develop novel purposes of their own, cross-cutting or subverting human purposes? If this central challenge is not met, meme talk will be vacuous or superfluous. First, we discuss why other attempts to answer Millikan’s challenge have failed. In particular, we put to rest the claims of panmemetics, a somewhat sinister worldview which treats all of culture as swarms of selfish agents. Next, we reject a more reasonable, but still overly permissive approach to cultural parasitism, which equates mind parasites with biologically maladaptive culture. Finally, we present our own answer to Millikan’s challenge: certain systems of misbelief can be fruitfully treated as selfish agents developing novel purposes of their own. Such mind parasites are designed to spread in a viral-like manner, without any regard to the interests of their human hosts. As a case study, we discuss the witch hunts of early modern Europe. In this particular case, adopting the meme’s eye view promises to shed new light on a mystery that historians and social scientists have been wrestling with for decades.

Pseudoscience spreads through communicative and inferential processes that make people vulnerable to weird beliefs. However, the fact that pseudoscientific beliefs are unsubstantiated and have no basis in reality does not mean that the people who hold them have no reasons for doing so. We propose that, reasons play a central role in the diffusion of pseudoscience. On the basis of cultural epidemiology and the interactionist theory of reasoning, we will here analyse the structure and the function of reasons in the propagation of pseudoscience. We conclude by discussing the implications of our approach for the understanding of human irrationality.

Some belief systems postulate intelligent agents that are deliberately evading detection and thus sabotaging any possible investigation into their existence. These belief systems have the remarkable feature that they predict an absence of evidence in their favor, and even the discovery of counterevidence. Such ‘epistemic black holes’, as I call them, crop up in different guises and in different domains: history, psychology, religion. Because of their radical underdetermination by evidence and their extreme resilience to counterevidence, they develop and evolve in certain predictable ways. Shedding light on how epistemic black holes function can protect us against their allure.

Is replication in the cultural domain ubiquitous, rare, or non-existent? And how does this relate to that paradigmatic case of replication, the copying of DNA in living cells? Theorists of cultural evolution are divided on these issues. The most important objection to the replication model has been leveled by Dan Sperber and his colleagues. Cultural transmission, they argue, is almost always reconstructive and transformative, while ‘replication’ can be seen as a rare limiting case at most. Though Sperber’s critique is valuable, I argue that a purely informational and pragmatic approach to replication can clear up some confusion. By means of some thought experiments, I make a distinction between evocation and extraction of cultural information, and apply these concepts at different levels of abstraction. I conclude that, depending on our theoretical focus and our granularity of analysis, sometimes we can talk about replication in the cultural domain, even after having taken Sperber’s important points on board.

All too often in contemporary discourse, we hear about science overstepping its proper limits—about its brazenness, arrogance, and intellectual imperialism. The problem, critics say, is scientism: the privileging of science over all other ways of knowing. Science, they warn, cannot do or explain everything, no matter what some enthusiasts believe. In Science Unlimited?, noted philosophers of science Maarten Boudry and Massimo Pigliucci gather a diverse group of scientists, science communicators, and philosophers of science to explore the limits of science and this alleged threat of scientism. In this wide-ranging collection, contributors ask whether the term scientism in fact (or in belief) captures an interesting and important intellectual stance, and whether it is something that should alarm us. Is scientism a well-developed position about the superiority of science over all other modes of human inquiry? Or is it more a form of excessive confidence, an uncritical attitude of glowing admiration? What, if any, are its dangers? Are fears that science will marginalize the humanities and eradicate the human subject—that it will explain away emotion, free will, consciousness, and the mystery of existence—justified? Does science need to be reined in before it drives out all other disciplines and ways of knowing? Both rigorous and balanced, Science Unlimited? interrogates our use of a term that is now all but ubiquitous in a wide variety of contexts and debates. Bringing together scientists and philosophers, both friends and foes of scientism, it is a conversation long overdue.

Many people have a fascination with ‘senseless violence’ and are concerned about its rise in our society. In the real world, however, violence is rarely senseless. It is not random and haphazard but driven by rational motives and justifications and governed by its own internal logic. The myth of ‘senseless violence’ taps into certain moral intuitions, but it has little or nothing to do with reality. If we want to prevent violent acts, we need to understand the motivations of the perpetrators rather than portraying their violence as random, mysterious, devoid of reason. I apply these insights to the extreme atrocities committed by the group known as the Islamic State and show how the myth of senseless violence has led many policymakers and commentators astray.