Berent Iris
Department of Psychology, Northeastern University.
Cogn Sci. 2023 Nov;47(11):e13380. doi: 10.1111/cogs.13380.
People exhibit conflicting intuitions concerning the mind/body links. Here, I explore a novel explanation for these inconsistencies: Dualism is a violable constraint that interacts with Essentialism. Two experiments probe these interactions. In Experiment 1, participants evaluated the emergence of psychological traits in either a replica of one's body, or in the afterlife-after the body's demise. In line with Dualism, epistemic (i.e., disembodied) traits (e.g., knowing the contrast between good/bad) were considered more likely to emerge (relative to sensorimotor/affective traits) only in the afterlife. However, so were innate traits (in line with Essentialism). To further gauge Essentialism, Experiment 2 presented the same traits to innateness judgments. Here, sensorimotor/affective (i.e., embodied) traits were considered more likely to be innate, suggesting that innateness intuitions are informed by embodiment. Moreover, innateness judgments (in Experiment 2) and embodiment intuitions (in Experiment 1) correlated. These results suggest that Dualism tacitly constrains reasoning about one's innate origins and its persistence after death. But since Dualism is "soft" and interacts with Essentialism, supernatural intuitions are chimeric, not purely ethereal.
人们在身心联系方面表现出相互矛盾的直觉。在此，我探讨了对这些不一致现象的一种新颖解释：二元论是一种可被违背的约束，它与本质主义相互作用。两项实验探究了这些相互作用。在实验1中，参与者评估心理特质是在一个人的身体复制品中出现，还是在身体消亡后的来世中出现。与二元论一致，认知（即非实体的）特质（例如，知晓善恶之分）被认为仅在来世更有可能出现（相对于感觉运动/情感特质而言）。然而，先天特质也是如此（与本质主义一致）。为了进一步衡量本质主义，实验2将相同的特质用于先天判断。在此，感觉运动/情感（即实体化的）特质被认为更有可能是先天的，这表明先天直觉受到实体化的影响。此外，（实验2中的）先天判断和（实验1中的）实体化直觉存在相关性。这些结果表明，二元论默认限制了关于一个人先天起源及其死后存续的推理。但由于二元论是“软性的”且与本质主义相互作用，超自然直觉是虚幻的，并非纯粹空灵的。
