RE: RT list: "negative cognitive effect"?

Hi Jose Luis and all,
 
It seems your misunderstanding lies at the following point: "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." If I see things correctly, Dan's
point is not that you haven't been able to interpret your son's excuse, but
that since the derived interpretation is not true of the actual state of
affairs, it is not actually "beneficial" from an "objective" point of view:
the communication has not led to an improvement of your knowledge of the
world. Hence you have "wasted" your effort.
 
However, I think matters are more complex than that. As Jose Luis states,
the effort is not entirely wasted: one has correctly discovered what the
communication partner intended to convey. (Compare this to a case where one
could not figure out what the other was meaning at all.)
 
More importantly, it seems to me that the distinction between positive and
negative cognitie effects does point to some deeper issues, and I am not
sure that it is up to the scholar to decide whether to adopt the subjective
or objective point of view. It seems to me that as a cognitive theory of
communication, RT should actually stay with the subjective point of view,
because that is what the comprehension process is limited to. The
comprehension process unfortunately is not, in and of itself, sensitive to
any difference between positive and negative cognitive effects; it's
sensitivity to truth is mediated by the notion of "manifestness" - which is
subjective "what one can accept as true or probably true".
 
The tendency to, despite this de facto cognitive "solipsism", go for the
"objective" view seems to arise from the concern for an evolutionary
justification of the comm. POR: as the story goes, the cognitive system as
we know it got selected because it provided people with better survival
chances because it helped them to get better knowledge of the world around
them. This argument would at least be weakened if the system were unable to
distinguish between true and false information. However, it is not a priori
clear, that improvement of the knowledge of the world around us necessarily
increases the chances of survival for human beings. It seems that many of
the ordinary concepts we live with are quite erroneous compared to what
natural science has established: the sun does not rise but we are being
turned towords it on the surface of a rotating spherical body, matter is not
"solid" but made up of a host tiny particles spinning around with lots of
empty space in between, etc. etc. Yet it seems very doubtful that if in our
minds we were to replace the - often erroneous - common sense concepts by
the scientifically (more?) accurate ones that this would necessarily be a
selective advantage! Rather, despite of being factually wrong, common sense
ideas often seem to help us to function, for example, with the necessary
speed in the environment we live in. So, the relationship between degrees of
"objective truth" (not generally accessible to us anyway) and benefit to
human beings in terms of their survival does not seem to be a
straightforward one. In my view, the adoption of an "objective", that is
epistemic, viewpoint not instantiated in the comprehension procedure, goes
outside the limits of the human communication process as a cognitive
phenomenon. There is epistemic vigilance - but it does not seem to be an
intrinsic part of the comprehension procedure; the comm. principle of
relevance seems to apply equally to naive, cautiously optimistic as well as
sophisticated strategies of understanding.
 
Ernst-August Gutt

  _____

From: owner-relevance@linguistics.ucl.ac.uk
[mailto:owner-relevance@linguistics.ucl.ac.uk] On Behalf Of Jose Luis
Guijarro Morales
Sent: 03 December 2013 10:32
To: edacotto@yahoo.fr; dan.sperber@gmail.com
Cc: relevance@linguistics.ucl.ac.uk
Subject: 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>

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

--
 www.dan.sperber.fr
 www.cognitionandculture.net