Motivation and Justification from Dreams: Muslim decision making strategies in Punjab, Pakistan

Dreams may serve to justify or motivate decisions. This paper examines two dream incidents in Pakistan which have implications for the study of decision making processes. In the first incident, the centrality of the dream is questionable in the decision making process, while the second incident suggests that dreams may be more than justificatory props that enable people to do what they had already decided. If dreams play a motivational role in the decision making process then models of decision making may benefit from explicit recognition of the role unconscious, uncontrolled experiences though the narrative may be conscious and controlled. Introduction: Thinking and decision making How we think impacts not only on the kinds of decisions we can make, but also on how we make them. D’Andrade’s (1995) useful review of cognitive anthropology (including reference to broader cognitive sciences where appropriate) provides a foundation for understanding how the human mind is able to manipulate symbols, identify patterns, impose order and meaning in social and communicative ways. There are disagreements about the extent to which individuals carry Aristotelean taxonomies of natural kinds which can be measured against instances of observed phenomena to generate fitness-to-type measures. Berlin (1992) has argued that this is the case based on research among Tzeltal speakers. Ellen (1986,), on the other hand, has argued that it is unnecessary (and possibly indefensible) to posit that individuals store knowledge in such a way and instead, we must understand human thinking as the result of applying generative principles of relationships (as opposed to prototypes however flexible they may be). This addresses issues at the heart of cognitive anthropology about how knowledge categories are produced. Much of this work has been debated with specific reference to ethnobiological classifications (see Ellen 2006 for a brief summary of the signficance of ethnobiology in the formation of such debates). There are of course a number of finer points of argument, but one of the more significant and contentious themes is the extent to which knowledge categories are ‘hardwired’ within the architecture of the human brain (Berlin 1992; Berlin & Kay 1999 [1969]) complete with universal rankings, or whether such categories (as demonstrated via ethnobiological taxonomies) are the result of parallel development in the context of similar ecological stimuli (Ellen 1986). The implications of these ways of conceiving of human knowledge production speak directly to processes of human thought. Such debates are necessary and relevant, but fortunately, the truth of such approaches is slightly tangential to the goals of this paper. Regardless of whether thinking happens schematically, as a result of architecturally hardwired taxonomic logics or in some other way altogether, people use thinking as a tool to make many kinds of decisions. Consequently, it is necessary to extract or impose the mechanisms by which decisions may be made. Economists (and economic anthropologists) have engaged in such analyses extensively and have employed a range of theoretical tools to assess decisions against both universalistic and relativistic criteria. Part of the assessment includes explicit use of the term rational. Such a term raises the spectre of different ideologies. Formalist economics have adopted a notion of rationality imbued with assumptions about utility value that purport to be cross culturally applicable. Substantivist economics, has been more inclined to accept that the criteria for assessing what constitutes rational behaviour must include some context specific understanding of the motives of the agents involved. In this paper I suggest that Lukes’ problematisation of the concept ‘rational’ is apt for moving beyond sterile debates about whether or not a population engages in rational or irrational decision making. Invoking Lukes’ notion of context dependent criteria for connected to a cross culturally applicable criteria for the rationality, I argue that dreams play an important role in decision making. I suggest that they assume such a role in all populations, but that in some populations they may be invoked as legitimate and respected justification for decisions. In other populations (for example academic departments in British universities), dreams may serve motivational functions, but would not normally be treated as respected justifying factors when making decisions. The first part of the paper summarises the problems of rationality, communication and the notion of shared cognitive environments. I suggest that in order for dreams to serve as either motivational or justificatory they must be translated into narratives. Such narratives invoke shared cognitive environments and a more complete analysis of dreams, than offered here,would require a more comprehensive inclusion of processes of thinking. For my purposes, however, it is enough to suggest that communication and shared cognitive environments are necessary pre-conditions for dreams to play any social role in decisions or actions. The second part of the paper provides two case studies from an agricultural village in northern Punjab, Pakistan, which illustrate a number of key features of Muslim understandings of dreams. These cases suggest .firstly, that dreams may be used as justification for behaviour. Secondly, that such justification can be received as persuasive and legitimising evidence by other Muslims. Thirdly, that dreams not only serve justificatory functions, but also act to motivate individuals to modify decisions. Finally, I suggest that if dreams act to motivate decisions and actions, then modelling such phenomena must incorporate a more explicit inclusion of what amounts to an external stochastic environmental factor which must then be culturally and psychologically mediated by the individual. For while I am rooted in my own cultural biases and do indeed consider dreams as the product of internal brain chemistry rather than evidence of visitation by external sources, there remains the fact that people cannot control all aspects of their dreams with the result that dreams introduce a potential element of unpredictability into an individual’s decisions. The extent to which a population may formally discount dreams in decision making processes could render such modelling more problematic as the dream influence may be unknown or misrepresented, nevertheless it may still be useful to account for the potential emotive motivational impact dreams may have on decisions that go unacknowledged even, at times, by the decision makers themselves. Understanding decisions cross culturally