Caveman Logic: The Persistence of Primitive Thinking in a Modern World by Hank Davis Read Free Book Online

deceased parents, and how he sometimes veered toward the comfort of widely held beliefs about their souls still being with us, communication with them, and an afterlife in which we are all united. But Sagan recognized these needs for what they were and did not act on them. This book, as well as Sagan’s, acknowledges how powerful such impulses can be but encourages you not to follow the well-worn path to delusion and superstition, despite the comfort it offers. In his view, as in mine, the transient benefits are extremely costly in terms of our intellectual integrity.
    There is another aspect to the argument against Caveman Logic, and it has to do with wasted human potential. Many people are strongly opposed to feeling they are being “controlled.” Notions of “free will,” although they may rest on shaky philosophical ground, remain central to pride and self-respect. It is understandable that individuals want to feel in charge of the important decisions they make. They want to believe that they have thought things through clearly before making a decision, that the evidence before them has been weighed carefully, that their highest mental faculties have been brought to bear on their beliefs, perceptions, and actions. Anything less than that would be cause for concern, even embarrassment.
    It is precisely for this reason that Caveman Logic and Stone Age thinking should be viewed with disdain. Those Pleistocene default modes with their mental and perceptual shortcuts are the very essence of “being controlled.” They amount to nothing less than relinquishing control of your mental equipment to a brutish, clueless, fearful caveman. It may not feel that way, but you have turned over the reins to an inferior being. You simply cannot take pride in being in control of your own destiny at the same time you have handed the strings over to a prehistoric puppeteer.

A MIND IN COMMON
    There is no way to overstate how the architecture of the human brain sets limits on the beliefs we generate and share. The strongest reading of this view is offered by Noam Chomsky; it says simply that if we humans did not share brain architecture, culture could not exist. It is those hardwired modular circuits common to the brain of every human, regardless of his or her race, religion, or geographical home, that make culture possible. If we each had unique blank-slate bits of brain tissue in our skulls, allowing all our uniqueness to emerge each day, it is doubtful we would get together long enough to mate, much less form productive social groups.
    Occasionally, you’ll find a neurological outsider—someone like Albert Einstein—whose inferior parietal lobe was 15 percent wider than normal. The result was an exceptional person, a bit of a social klutz who didn’t do well in school but who effortlessly saw connections between mathematical and spatial entities in a way unlike those around him. The result was breakthroughs in theoretical physics or mathematics. Most ordinary people labeled Einstein as a genius, although the case can be made that he wasn’t any smarter (whatever that means) than most people. Indeed, he may not have worked any harder than most. He simply “got it.” He understood aspects of the universe that few others did. Even when Einstein’s ideas and perceptions were expressed in everyday language, it took mental effort for his normal colleagues to grasp those relationships. The standard-issue Pleistocene brain is not geared for such rarified skills. If Einstein’s anatomical mutation had been present 100,000 years ago, it’s uncertain whether it would have been favored by natural selection. One thing is for sure: if Einstein’s mind were the norm, culture as we know it would be quite different.
    The culture that emerges from our shared mental equipment is impressively diverse, but even more impressive than its diversity are its similarities. To this day, I have undergraduates who argue that we are what (or who) we are