Paranormal beliefs? A matter of core knowledge confusion (that can be simulated by a computational model)

The term ‘core knowledge’ refers to a narrow but fundamental set of beliefs about evolutionarily important phenomena that determine our intuitive understanding of physics, biology, and psychology. These beliefs are usually learned by children before starting school and largely without instruction (Rakison & Poulin-Dubois 2001; Wellman & Gelman 1998) and can be considered the backbone of our conceptual system, engendering, shaping, and constraining further conceptual development (Carey 2009; Wellman & Gelman 1998). Core knowledge includes information about the differing nature and behavior of objects belonging to distinct ontological domains, such as: physical phenomena are material and objective, while mental phenomena (e.g. thoughts, desires, imagination, and representations) are subjective and immaterial; animate beings can commit purposeful acts, inanimate entities cannot; physical objects have an independent existence in space and can move other objects by physical force, but mental states cannot; living organisms can grow and heal or die, lifeless objects cannot; access to the physical world is necessary for perception, but desires and emotions can arise mentally. The aim of this contribution is to show that, if these ontological domains are confused with each other and we attribute the properties or behaviors of objects in one domain to entities belonging to another, we develop specific kinds of irrational beliefs, and in particular beliefs about paranormal events, i.e. events that violate the fundamental and scientifically established principles of nature (Broad 1953). If, for example, the biological processes of contagion or healing are transposed onto the psychological domain, we may believe that we can either contaminate or heal somebody through thought. If the psychological and the physical ontological domains are confused with each other, we may think that the mind can exert a force on external objects and make them move (psychokinesis) or that it can transfer thoughts from one mind to another as if they were objects (telepathy). Or we might believe that the positon of the celestial bodies at birth determines the basic psychological characteristics of people (astrology) or that knowing future events is a purely mental process (precognition). Importantly, it has been shown that people who believe in superstitions, conspiracy theories, precognition and horoscopes score high in tests that aim to evaluate core knowledge confusion (e.g. Lindeman & Aarnio 2007; Lindeman, Svedholm-Hakkinen, & Lipsanen 2015). In our presentation, we will also point out that this form of irrationality can be explained within the framework of a semantic model. In this model, semantic knowledge is organized according to a vertical taxonomy with three dominant conceptual nodes: (intuitive) physics, (intuitive) biology, and (folk) psychology. Ontological confusion is attributed to sets of links that horizontally traverse the taxonomy to connect representations that per se are located “far away” from each other in semantic space. The question we are going to address is exactly how this semantic model is structured. In conclusion, we will also argue that this model allows us – at least in principle – to design a computer simulation of the way in which we develop paranormal beliefs.