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338 Conversion

Health
Evolution

Mutation

Figure 10.1. Two hypothetical center-periphery structures, representing a person’s
beliefs about health and biological evolution, are tangled by sharing the concept of
mutation.

The Components of Conflicts

Cognitive conflicts play an important role in conversion, but a different role
from the one envisioned in past theories based on the evaluation of evidence.
Due to the operation of the resistance mechanisms described in Chapter 9, the-
ory-data conflicts have less power to drive change than theory-theory conflicts.
But the notion of a theory-theory conflict stands in need of clarification.
If all knowledge representations were compatible with each other, then
all belief formation events would be monotonic. Belief systems would always
grow through additions and extensions. We could believe every state of affairs
that we could represent, and once a belief were formed, there would never
be any reason to revise it or reject it. But knowledge representations vary in
degree of compatibility. In some cases, it is possible to maintain two different
representations simultaneously without feeling any cognitive strain. This hap-
pens when we see a Saturday street market both as a shopping opportunity and
a traffic hassle. The market itself is what it is, and it does not determine or force
either conception. We feel no need to choose between them. But when we
see an older gentleman and much younger woman stroll through the market
arm in arm, we wonder: father and daughter or December-June couple? As we
normally use these concepts, the pair cannot be both. Incompatibility recurs
in all cognitive processes. Is the Necker cube angled one way or the other?