Quite often, our use of language is puzzling, indeed.  For instance, we often walk up to each other asking, “How are you doing?” or “what’s happening?” when we would be annoyed if the person we addressed tried to answer our question.  We spend a lot of time talking about the weather when it really doesn’t affect most of us.  We crave to talk with our friends and co-workers about entertainment such as the performance of professional sports teams, as though our lives and moods should depend upon such things. And we love to gossip.

What is language for?  Most people consider language merely as a means of preserving and communicating ideas.  In “Magic Words: How Language Augments Human Computation,” Andy Clark set forth six additional ways in which we use language, each of these uses serving to “re-shape the computational spaces which confront intelligent agents.”  

Clark discusses Lev Vygotsky, the Soviet psychologist of the 1930’s who “pioneered the idea that the use of public language had profound effects on cognitive development.”  Vygotsky focused on the role of private language and scaffolded action in guiding behavior by focusing attention and controlling action.  For instance, he found that children who are working on their own internalize the verbal directions previously given to them by responsible adults in order to guide complex tasks. 

Clark makes a strong case that his “supra-communicative” account of language can transform, re-shape and simplify computational tasks that confront our biological brains in six ways.  According to Clark, we use language to

1. Augment memory (by use of texts, diaries and notes)
2. Simplify our environment (e.g., using labels and signs)
3. Coordinate and reduce on-line deliberation (e.g., collaborative problem solving, where we use language to focus attention on things we might otherwise ignore).
4. Tame path-dependent learning (previous learning highlights certain locations in state space, as opposed to others.  Clark cites Paul Churchland for the proposition that public language allows human cognition to be collective)
5. Focus attention and resources (e.g., writing notes “to create an externalized control loop for our own future behavior.”); and
6. Manipulate Data (by tagging ensembles of ideas, we move them and interact with them in ways “alien to the on-board repertoire of the biological brain.”  Associating an external word with an idea or set of ideas “effectively freezes the concept into a sort of cognitive building block” that we can more readily manipulate than the original idea or set of ideas).

[I had the privilege of attending several cognitive science seminars led by Andy Clark.  He is a superbly clean and precise writer.  I highly recommend his works. For a terrific introduction to many cognitive science issues, see his Mindware: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Cognitive Science (2001).]

What Clark has shown, is that, in addition to using language to communicate ideas, humans use language for a variety for other tasks.  In short, we should not assume that any particular use of language is solely for the purpose of communicating ideas. As Clark points out, humans are usually oblivious to these important functions of language. When we navigate the world using these functions of language, we often give all the credit to the naked brain: 

We often marginalize the special contributions of these external manipulations, and speak as if the biological brain did all the work.  No parallel temptation afflicts the person who uses a crane to lift large weights, or a motorized digger to plough trenches!  In these cases, it is clear that the person uses additional tools whose capacities extend and complement those of the unaided laborer.  The relative invisibility of the special cognitive roles of text and words are a reflection, I think of their ubiquity and ease of use:  a reflection, indeed, of our tendency to think of these operations as proper to the biological agent rather than (like the crane) as technological additions. 

At this point, I need to stir in the work of Robin Dunbar.  Like Andy Clark, Dunbar is also a highly accomplished writer.  In The Human Story: A New History of Mankind’s Evolution (2004), Dunbar discusses the role of gossip.

In another terrific work, Grooming, Gossip and the Evolution of Language (1996), Dunbar discusses the close relationship between Neo cortex size and the group size in primates.  This almost-straight-line relationship would predict that the social group size for humans is 150; human groups of the size “seemed to be a common feature of human social systems the world over.” 

The principal mechanism used by other primates for bonding within their groups is grooming.  The time spent grooming relates directly to the typical group size of that species.  “The bigger the group, the more time the animals spent grooming each other.”  (Page 113).  Based on a group size of 150, if humans bonded to their groups using grooming “in the same time honored way as other monkeys and apes, grooming would have to occupy something in excess of 40% of our active day.”  (Page 114).  But no other species of primate devotes more than 20% of its day to social interaction-there is simply too much else to accomplish in a day. 

There’s a problem with physical grooming for humans.  We resort to grooming only in intimate relationships.  We find close physical contact deeply arousing, separated by a thin line from full-blown sex.  (Page 127). Dunbar suggests, though, that music, laughter and emotions triggered by smiles, for instance, are ways that humans enhance their language to get the endorphin kick that other primates get through grooming (Page 128; GG&E, p. 191). Studies have shown that, like other primates, humans devote about 20% of their time to social interaction.  We tend to use language rather than grooming as her bonding mechanism.  As Dunbar describes, language allows us to interact with more than one person at the same time (although conversations become unstable when they involve more than four people-they tend to split up at that point into two separate conversations).

What makes an everyday conversation work is the fact that we interact.  Each of us needs to have his or her say at some suitable juncture in the narrative.  But more important than this is the fact that we engage in a genuine dialogue with the speaker (and perhaps the other listeners).  We comment as they speak (“oh yes!”  . . . “they didn’t!” . . . “Uh-huh?”), reinforcing what they say, encouraging them to continue like grooming, it’s a way of saying, “I’d rather be here with you than over there with Jim,” a statement of interest, a declaration of intent.   . . . one of the things that language allows us to do is to exchange information about the social networks into which we are embedded.  We can catch up on news of Aunty Flo and Uncle Fred, find out where nephew Bill is these days, and why cousin Penny’s marriage failed.

(Page 116). Language in the form of gossip, then, is far more than the transfer of the literal content of the statements uttered while gossiping.  Yes, social gossip primes us with up-to-date knowledge of what everyone is up to, but it is far more than that.  The manner in which we engage in gossip, and with whom, tells us where we stand with those other people. Like so many others these days, I’m working toward a theory of religious rituals—one important issue is the function of religious language in rituals. 

Andy Clark and Robin Dunbar have opened up new ways of considering language used in rituals. Their work can be used to show that the words spoken during rituals can be important even if the literal content of such words is vague or even oxymoronic. 

Sincere talk that a virgin had a baby (a self-contradiction) might yet have many of the computational benefits delineated by Andy Clark.  Public pronouncements and discussion about a pregnant virgin might serve to clarify the social landscape in the same way that we benefit by gossiping.  Uttering oxymoronic religious beliefs might help us to determine who is friend and who is foe.  Since I am not personally comfortable declaring that any virgin ever got pregnant, believers would immediately see me as an outsider.  This social sonar would be important to any group working hard to exclude cheaters (those who want to limit group benefits to loyal insiders).  This protection (against people like me who choke on claims that a virgin got pregnant) is available regardless of whether the believers themselves truly believe in virgin birth (in my experience, most of them don’t, although they utter it in public religious ceremonies). 

This approach to analyzing the use of language in rituals dovetails well with the theme of The Handicap Principle: A Missing Piece of Darwin’s Puzzle, by Amotz and Avishag Zahavi (1997).  The central claim of this book, thoroughly substantiated by the authors, that “in order to be effective, signals have to be reliable; in order to be reliable, signals have to be costly.”  It occurs to me that for those who value their credibility, oxymoronic public proclamations would indeed be an expensive and, therefore, a reliable display of in-group loyalty.

I will be exploring these ideas in more detail in future posts.  What intrigues me at this point, however, is that the public use of language to articulate oxymoronic religious views might be important to participants even though not literally true.  This was a huge breakthrough for me, personally.  Until a few years ago, I was convinced that absurd pronouncements simply could not be important for any purpose whatever. 

Now, however, I’m convinced that oxymoronic religious pronouncements might serve as expensive (and therefore reliable) public displays (Zahavi) that facilitate bonding among participants (Dunbar) and further allow participants to more accurately manipulate their oxymoronic ideas as well as compute the risks and benefits of their complicated social and intellectual environments (Clark). 

None of this is to claim that belivers are aware of the true function of their oxymoronic proclamations.  To the contrary, we are often unaware of the functions of our conduct.  In my experience, believers are oblivious to the potential functions of their statements of faith.  For background on this point, see here and here.

The above approach presents an opportunity to further explore the process of religious rituals.

Using these ideas, skeptics like me can now appreciate that something truly important might be going on when believers utter unproven (and even oxymoronic) supernatural religious claims.