RE: RT list: "negative cognitive effect"?

 
Hi, Ernst!

I think I totally agree with you, except on this paragraph:

"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".

I don't think that I have wasted my effort not improving my knowledge of the World. As I see it, on the contrary, I have, since my son's response was intended to be an excuse and I have interpreted just that. So the World has ANOTHER EXCUSE in it that didn't exist before he spoke, and I have managed to KNOW (i.e., be aware of) it.

If I would (rightly or wrongly) believe he was not in school, but was busy at home breaking my vase is another problem. From my point of view, this has little to do with THE PROCESS of communicating this type of excuse. It has to do with my LACK OF TRUST in my son's mischievous behaviour, and so I may ignore it and go on scolding him.

Of course, in the rest of your message you seem to be on the same line as I am. (So, I am still wondering what Dan tried to mean the other day).

Thanks for the answer!

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

El día 16 dic 2013 13:02, ernst-august_gutt@sil.org escribió:
> 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 [ 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 [ mailto: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 [ http://www.dan.sperber.fr ]
> www.cognitionandculture.net [ http://www.cognitionandculture.net ]
>
Received on Mon Dec 16 13:00:21 2013