Singh proposes to integrate the study of shamanism into the broader framework of the cognitive/evolutionary psychology of religion and offers a behavioral description of shamanism as “a suite of practices developed through cultural evolution that adapts to people's intuitions to convince observers that a practitioner can influence otherwise uncontrollable events” (sect. 1, para. 7).
The vignette that opens the article presents the basic elements of the practice: a dramatic performance by persons who use their bodies to generate genuine ecstasy based on fake physical evidence, leading to some closure, if not resolution (Porterfield Reference Porterfield1987). It may fail completely, but closure will be offered. Although disease entities are sometimes displayed as physical, the ultimate death and life power lies with the spirit world. This notion is commonplace, even in the absence of shamans and in the presence of biomedicine (Legare et al. Reference Legare, Evans, Rosengren and Harris2012).
In specifying the psychological mechanisms involved in religious practices, Singh seems to ignore the cognitive approach he claims to embrace. The choice of superstition to describe evolved religious practices is less than enlightening. We may regard these ineffective behaviors as based on illusions (or delusions), but calling them superstitions lacks a theoretical connection.
Directing the reader to Skinner's notion of superstitious learning does not help, because this notion is less significant than the reality of human cognition for religious actions. The implied connection between practices referred to as superstition and superstitious learning is misleading. Using our anthropomorphic vocabulary, Skinner (Reference Skinner1948) describes an animal that is trying to determine causality and reaches a mistaken inference. By the time an animal forms a mistaken inference, an average human creates a theory of everything (mostly borrowed from cultural traditions). Burger and Lynn (Reference Burger and Lynn2005) and Henslin (Reference Henslin1967), cited by Singh, demonstrate how the process of creating superstitions in humans is conscious and the connection to reinforcement unclear.
Observational learning in humans (Bandura et al. Reference Bandura, Grusec and Menlove1966) involves superior cognitive abilities and shortcuts. This is how humans may acquire large chunks of symbolic and practical behaviors. I may suffer from triskaidekaphobia (fearing number 13) not because of any negative experiences with the number, but because of what I learned from peers. The history of religion is filled with failed prophecies, sometimes repeated, that don't shake up the believers most of the time; they carry on with the help of their beliefs and in the absence of any reinforcement. Finding excuses for lacunae in theorizing comes naturally to shamans, academics, and the rest of humanity.
The basis for all religious practices is an imagined interaction with spirits (Beit-Hallahmi Reference Beit-Hallahmi2015). Humans, like pigeons, reach mistaken inferences, but their reasoning is affected by mentalizing (i.e., fantasizing about other human minds or the minds of spirits). Mentalizing, hypervigilant agent detection, and anthropomorphism explain the development of rituals Singh calls superstition.
An example of the way humans believe they pacify angry spirits, great and small, is found in Genesis 8:20–22:
And Noah builded an altar unto the Lord; and took of every clean beast, and of every clean fowl, and offered burnt offerings on the altar. And the Lord smelled a sweet savour; and the Lord said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake; for the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth; neither will I again smite any more every thing living, as I have done. While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.
Could animal or human sacrifice (Sanday Reference Sanday1987) be the result of superstitions learning? The notion of savory offerings came from fantasies about other minds (or spirit minds), rather than from any reinforcement schedules.
How are shamans different from other religious practitioners? What is the difference between shamanic practices and the Noah ritual, which aims at keeping humanity (and the cosmos) from extinction? Shamanic performances and general-purpose devotional or apotropaic rituals are predicated on (1) the same cognitive shortcuts and (2) the same notion of spirit contact. Singh quotes observations about one culture in which shamans “confer protection and good luck,” but all religious practices and practitioners everywhere are assumed to do that.
Accounts of shamanic success belong in the genre of miracle narratives, which assure us that, even if the universe is not totally benign, benevolent forces may intervene on our behalf if we know how to contact them. Miracles are tied to the presence of spirits, if around a saint's tomb or during a trance. Spirit contact may be intense and brief, in shamans, or less intense and permanent, in a holy site. If acts of worship contribute to safeguarding human existence or tribal welfare, the focus in shamanic acts is on concrete problems and not the cosmic order. Those who specialize in divination and healing enjoy a lower status compared with religious leaders charged with offering insights into the fate of the cosmos and the minds of great spirits. Still, the closure offered by shamanic performances contributes to the illusion of cosmic equilibrium.
Singh ends the article with a puzzling metaphor: the shaman as cheesecake, that is, the shaman as “an exquisite confection crafted to tickle the sensitive spots of our mental facilities” (Pinker Reference Pinker1997, p. 534). This is taken from Pinker's How the Mind Works, and what Singh left out reads “music is auditory cheesecake.” Pinker claimed that music has no evolutionary value, just as others have claimed that religion is a byproduct of valuable evolved mechanisms; I share their views. Pinker's cheesecake metaphor seems particularly ill chosen (Carroll Reference Carroll1998; Davies Reference Davies2010), if only because the worst cheesecake still has some nutritional value. Singh has shown convincingly that the shaman's acts are based on deception; however, he is so eager to remind us that all religious practices and interventions are illusionary or delusional that he has decided to embrace this image, which detracts from the value of his analysis.
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Singh proposes to integrate the study of shamanism into the broader framework of the cognitive/evolutionary psychology of religion and offers a behavioral description of shamanism as “a suite of practices developed through cultural evolution that adapts to people's intuitions to convince observers that a practitioner can influence otherwise uncontrollable events” (sect. 1, para. 7).
The vignette that opens the article presents the basic elements of the practice: a dramatic performance by persons who use their bodies to generate genuine ecstasy based on fake physical evidence, leading to some closure, if not resolution (Porterfield Reference Porterfield1987). It may fail completely, but closure will be offered. Although disease entities are sometimes displayed as physical, the ultimate death and life power lies with the spirit world. This notion is commonplace, even in the absence of shamans and in the presence of biomedicine (Legare et al. Reference Legare, Evans, Rosengren and Harris2012).
In specifying the psychological mechanisms involved in religious practices, Singh seems to ignore the cognitive approach he claims to embrace. The choice of superstition to describe evolved religious practices is less than enlightening. We may regard these ineffective behaviors as based on illusions (or delusions), but calling them superstitions lacks a theoretical connection.
Directing the reader to Skinner's notion of superstitious learning does not help, because this notion is less significant than the reality of human cognition for religious actions. The implied connection between practices referred to as superstition and superstitious learning is misleading. Using our anthropomorphic vocabulary, Skinner (Reference Skinner1948) describes an animal that is trying to determine causality and reaches a mistaken inference. By the time an animal forms a mistaken inference, an average human creates a theory of everything (mostly borrowed from cultural traditions). Burger and Lynn (Reference Burger and Lynn2005) and Henslin (Reference Henslin1967), cited by Singh, demonstrate how the process of creating superstitions in humans is conscious and the connection to reinforcement unclear.
Observational learning in humans (Bandura et al. Reference Bandura, Grusec and Menlove1966) involves superior cognitive abilities and shortcuts. This is how humans may acquire large chunks of symbolic and practical behaviors. I may suffer from triskaidekaphobia (fearing number 13) not because of any negative experiences with the number, but because of what I learned from peers. The history of religion is filled with failed prophecies, sometimes repeated, that don't shake up the believers most of the time; they carry on with the help of their beliefs and in the absence of any reinforcement. Finding excuses for lacunae in theorizing comes naturally to shamans, academics, and the rest of humanity.
The basis for all religious practices is an imagined interaction with spirits (Beit-Hallahmi Reference Beit-Hallahmi2015). Humans, like pigeons, reach mistaken inferences, but their reasoning is affected by mentalizing (i.e., fantasizing about other human minds or the minds of spirits). Mentalizing, hypervigilant agent detection, and anthropomorphism explain the development of rituals Singh calls superstition.
An example of the way humans believe they pacify angry spirits, great and small, is found in Genesis 8:20–22:
And Noah builded an altar unto the Lord; and took of every clean beast, and of every clean fowl, and offered burnt offerings on the altar. And the Lord smelled a sweet savour; and the Lord said in his heart, I will not again curse the ground any more for man's sake; for the imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth; neither will I again smite any more every thing living, as I have done. While the earth remaineth, seedtime and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.
Could animal or human sacrifice (Sanday Reference Sanday1987) be the result of superstitions learning? The notion of savory offerings came from fantasies about other minds (or spirit minds), rather than from any reinforcement schedules.
How are shamans different from other religious practitioners? What is the difference between shamanic practices and the Noah ritual, which aims at keeping humanity (and the cosmos) from extinction? Shamanic performances and general-purpose devotional or apotropaic rituals are predicated on (1) the same cognitive shortcuts and (2) the same notion of spirit contact. Singh quotes observations about one culture in which shamans “confer protection and good luck,” but all religious practices and practitioners everywhere are assumed to do that.
Accounts of shamanic success belong in the genre of miracle narratives, which assure us that, even if the universe is not totally benign, benevolent forces may intervene on our behalf if we know how to contact them. Miracles are tied to the presence of spirits, if around a saint's tomb or during a trance. Spirit contact may be intense and brief, in shamans, or less intense and permanent, in a holy site. If acts of worship contribute to safeguarding human existence or tribal welfare, the focus in shamanic acts is on concrete problems and not the cosmic order. Those who specialize in divination and healing enjoy a lower status compared with religious leaders charged with offering insights into the fate of the cosmos and the minds of great spirits. Still, the closure offered by shamanic performances contributes to the illusion of cosmic equilibrium.
Singh ends the article with a puzzling metaphor: the shaman as cheesecake, that is, the shaman as “an exquisite confection crafted to tickle the sensitive spots of our mental facilities” (Pinker Reference Pinker1997, p. 534). This is taken from Pinker's How the Mind Works, and what Singh left out reads “music is auditory cheesecake.” Pinker claimed that music has no evolutionary value, just as others have claimed that religion is a byproduct of valuable evolved mechanisms; I share their views. Pinker's cheesecake metaphor seems particularly ill chosen (Carroll Reference Carroll1998; Davies Reference Davies2010), if only because the worst cheesecake still has some nutritional value. Singh has shown convincingly that the shaman's acts are based on deception; however, he is so eager to remind us that all religious practices and interventions are illusionary or delusional that he has decided to embrace this image, which detracts from the value of his analysis.