Does "credence-granting circuit" refer to "circuit that grants credence"?

Forums: Grammar, Esl, English
Email this Topic • Print this Page

Context:

Given your prior cognitive commitments, and the contextual cues
in which the utterance was spoken, some credence-granting circuit
inside your brain will begin to test a variety of possibilities. You will
study your friends' faces. Are their expressions compatible with the
more nefarious interpretations of this statement that are now occur-
ring to you? Has one of your friends just confessed to sleeping with
your wife? When could this have happened? There has always been
a certain chemistry between them. . . . Suffice it to say that
whichever interpretation of these events becomes a matter of belief
for you will have important personal and social consequences.

-Sam Harris The End of Faith P57

Topic Stats
Top Replies
Link to this Topic

Type: Question • Score: 4 • Views: 568 • Replies: 8

No top replies

View best answer, chosen by oristarA

@oristarA,

The above seems oddly written but in content it seems to be referring to having the logical sections of your brain analyzing statements utter by others for truthfulness and for others meaning.

Employing nonverbal clues beside logic to test those statements.

The one paragraph you have given might not be enough to fully understand what the author is driving at but that the best I can do.

0 Replies

The operation of the brain is being likened to that of an electrical device (which has "circuits"). We know that the brain does not work like a simple electrical device but the comparison is still useful for discussion purposes. A credence-granting circuit is one that is imagined to grant credence. You may see phrases of this form [noun1-action] [noun2] which mean the same as [noun2] that [does action to noun1] e.g. a wood-cutting machine is a machine that cuts wood.

1 Reply

@Tes yeux noirs,

Quote:

We know that the brain does not work like a simple electrical device

Tes, in what way

0 Replies

@oristarA,

Its a standard reference to a neural net of the brain in which a subtask for "believability" is given a "Lemon test"
(A Lemon test is a forensic tool that asks "Do the suspects seem to believe this or do it themselves"?)

1 Reply

@farmerman,

Quote:

Its a standard reference to a neural net of the brain

Thanks for the info as I never hear of such a term.

0 Replies

@oristarA,

Thank you guys.
BTW, here is a question about the grammatical structure of " Suffice it to say that whichever interpretation of these events becomes a matter of belief
for you will have important personal and social consequences".

Does "that" here refer to "whichever interpretation of these events becomes a matter of belief for you"?

1 Reply

@oristarA,

The word "that" is being used to introduce a clause. These relative clauses have their own subject/verb.

Sample: She didn't have time to shop for a dress that she could wear to the dance.

1 Reply

@PUNKEY,

PUNKEY wrote:

The word "that" is being used to introduce a clause. These relative clauses have their own subject/verb.

Sample: She didn't have time to shop for a dress that she could wear to the dance.

Thanks.
But I knew it refers to a clause. I just wondered which clause it refers to. My question is:
Does "that" here refer to "whichever interpretation of these events becomes a matter of belief for you"?

That is, I didn't know the division of the sentence.

0 Replies

Does "credence-granting circuit" refer to "circuit that grants credence"?

Related Topics

Quick Links

My Account

able2know