RT list: "negative cognitive effect"?

 
¡Hola, buenas!

I must be losing the scant knowledge of English I believe I used to master when I was an active professional, but read it as I may, I am unable to understand what Dan is trying to point to with his distinction about positive and negative cognitive effects. Let me give you an illustrative example of my misgivings.

Suppose my twelve year old son (I don't have one! This is "fiction") has broken a wonderful Sèvres vase I had in the mantelpiece (It's still "fiction", mind you!). When I come in and see the disaster I go mad at him. But he says coolly:

"I was in school"

The message he intends to convey is of course that he claims he could not have done it.
And the message I am able to recover is precisely that he claims he cannot be blamed for it, since he was not at home, for he was in class, bla, bla, bla, etc.

Now, suppose that what he says is not true. That, today, the teacher was ill, and the students were given permission to leave the school two hours before the normal time. I don't have this information, so I swallow the lie with no problem.

I have not acquired a new knowledge, as Dan says, since I have been misled.

But I have been able to find the relevance of my son's answer, have therefore drawn some cognitive effects (false, but ... oh well!), so that the whole process of my understanding his message is, from my point of view, perfect.

On the other hand, if I happen to know he his indeed lying, I will still interpret his answer as an excuse, will I not? The fact that I will accept it or not, has nothing to do, as far as I can see, with my interpretation of the exchange according to the principle of relevance

What I don't understand, then, is how (I BELIEVE Dan is saying) the "content" of some representation or other will make it a negative cognitive effect which then would prevent the relevance device to act accurately and I would somehow not be able to interpret my son's excuse.

I am sure I've got it all wrong, but where did I begin to go astray (i.e., where did I get negative cognitive effects from Dan's text)?

¡Hast'adiós!

**********************
José Luis Guijarro
Profesor Emérito
Universidad de Cádiz
Facultad de Filosofía y Letras
11003 Cádiz, España (Spain)

El día 02 dic 2013 11:47, Dan Sperber <dan.sperber@gmail.com> escribió:
> Bonjour y'all!
> Deirdre and I added 'positive' to cognitive effects in the definition of relevance for the following reason. Relevance is a cost-benefit notion. The cost is in term of effort (or expenditure of time and energy). The benefit is in terms of cognitive effects (improvement of one's knowledge state). But suppose you draw a mistaken inference, or -- looking at communication -- that you are misled by a communicator, either intentionally or unwittingly, then, to that extent, you are not getting from cognition or communication the cognitive benefit that makes cognition and communication advantageous. Instead of being informed, you are being misinformed. To the extent that being genuinely informed is beneficial and that, because of this, cognition is aimed at genuine information, being misinformed is costly. It is a negative cognitive effect. At that point we had the following alternative: to define relevance from the subjective point of view of the individual and to consider relevant whatever causes cognitive effects; or else define relevance from an objective point of view and consider only cognitive effects that are genuine improvement in the individual's state of knowledge. The subjective point of view is of course asymmetrically dependent on the objective one. Moreover it is the objective definition that is essential to the justification of the cognitive and communicative principles of relevance.
> Salut! Dan
>
>
>
> 2013/12/2 Edoardo Acotto <edacotto@yahoo.fr [ mailto:edacotto@yahoo.fr ]>
>
>
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> Hallo, I have a question about cognitive effects.
> Someone has already analyzed the conceptual implications of the "cognitive positive effect"? I mean: someone possibly tried to conceptualize a "negative effect" or there is agreement that the opposite of a positive effect is a "null effect"?
> Note that, obviously, I'm speaking of effect, not of relevance,
> Thanks for your attention.
> Edoardo Acotto

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