Having traced the historical trajectory that led to the disenchanted world, we can now move from from the societal level to the psychological, from the "why" of this condition to the "how" of its potential change. The emergence of a possible new ways of meaning-making is not predicated on a simple return to pre-modern beliefs, an act of willful ignorance in the face of scientific knowledge. Instead, it is rooted in a cognitive evolution, an emergent property of minds that have been shaped by the unique pressures of the modern information environment. The very forces of materialism and globalization that emptied the sky of its gods have, paradoxically, forged the psychological tools needed to navigate a more complex, multi-layered reality.
First, modern research has found support for what Enlightenment thinkers like Hume articulated in their time. Contemporary neuroscience and psychology have increasingly demonstrated that human reason is not the autonomous, sovereign process that rationalists imagined it to be. Instead, emotions and feelings play a foundational role in decision-making, moral judgment, and even supposedly "rational" thought processes. Researchers like Antonio Damasio have shown that patients with damage to brain regions involved in emotional processing become paradoxically worse at making rational decisions, not better—they can analyze options endlessly but cannot actually choose. Similarly, work in social psychology and behavioral economics has revealed that human reasoning is often a post-hoc process, a way of justifying decisions that were made on affective or intuitive grounds. The dual-process models of cognition, which distinguish between fast, automatic, emotion-driven thinking (called System 1) and slow, deliberate, rational thinking (called System 2), suggest that the former is not a primitive system to be overcome, but a powerful and often more efficient guide to action.
But actions and their motivations via different feelings are often in conflict.
The classic psychological model for how individuals handle conflicting information is Leon Festinger's theory of cognitive dissonance, first proposed in the late 1950s.25 The theory posits that when a person holds two or more contradictory cognitions—beliefs, ideas, or values—or when their behavior conflicts with their beliefs, they experience a state of psychological discomfort or tension. This dissonance creates a powerful motivation to reduce the inconsistency, much as hunger motivates a search for food.25 An individual might achieve this by changing one of the conflicting beliefs, altering their behavior, or re-evaluating the importance of the cognitions to make them seem less contradictory.26 For example, a person who believes smoking is harmful but continues to smoke experiences dissonance and may resolve it by quitting (changing behavior), downplaying the health risks (changing belief), or convincing themselves that the pleasure of smoking outweighs the risks (re-evaluating importance).26
For much of the twentieth century, this model provided a robust framework for understanding the human drive toward internal consistency.26 However, the contemporary information environment presents a challenge to this paradigm. Modern individuals are perpetually inundated with a torrent of contradictory information, competing worldviews, and fragmented narratives. From political polarization to the collision of scientific findings with cultural traditions, the experience of cognitive dissonance is no longer an occasional disruption but a constant state of being. In such an environment, the classic strategy of eliminating dissonance by choosing one belief over another becomes cognitively exhausting and often impractical. This relentless exposure to contradiction may be selecting for a different cognitive strategy: not the frantic elimination of dissonance, but the development of a higher tolerance for it, managed through an enhanced capacity for cognitive flexibility.27
This enhanced capacity is not a magical development but is grounded in emerging understandings of the mind's fundamental architecture. The key mechanisms that enable a new, more nuanced relationship with belief can be found in the concepts of cognitive pluralism and cultural frame-switching.
The philosopher Steven Horst, in his work on cognitive pluralism, challenges the long-held assumption that the mind operates like a single, unified computer running a single, consistent model of reality.28 He argues that this "standard view," which sees knowledge as built from word-sized concepts and sentence-sized beliefs, is inadequate.30 Instead, Horst proposes that human understanding is organized into a collection of specialized, domain-specific mental models—akin to a suite of different "apps" on a smartphone, each designed for a specific task.31 We possess distinct cognitive systems for tracking objects, for understanding social interactions, for engaging in geometric reasoning, and so on.29 This perspective suggests that the mind is naturally equipped to handle different, and at times mutually incompatible, ways of representing the world. It is not designed to form a single, grand unified theory of everything, but rather to deploy the most useful model for a given context, even if that model's assumptions conflict with those of another.32
This architectural feature of the mind finds its dynamic expression in the phenomenon of cognitive or cultural frame-switching (CFS). Primarily studied in bicultural and multicultural individuals, CFS is the process of shifting between different cultural frameworks—including values, self-concepts, emotions, and behaviors—in response to cues in the social environment.33 This is a far deeper process than mere linguistic code-switching, which involves changing languages or dialects.36 CFS is a shift in the very interpretive lens through which one perceives the world.34 For example, a Chinese-American bicultural individual might exhibit more collectivist thinking when primed with Chinese cultural icons, and more individualistic thinking when primed with American icons.34 This is not a sign of a confused or fragmented identity, but of a sophisticated cognitive skill. Research consistently shows that the experience of navigating multiple cultural worlds enhances cognitive flexibility, creativity, and the ability to manage competing perspectives.38 The bicultural mind, through its constant practice of detecting, processing, and reconciling dissonant cultural cues, develops a more complex and nuanced cognitive architecture.42
The modern individual, living at the crossroads of a scientifically disenchanted world and an enduring human need for meaning, is becoming adept at what might be called "ontological frame-switching." This is the capacity to fluidly shift between two fundamental modes of engaging with reality:
When these are working together well, like in the realm of building physical things, the symbolic frame (what product to build) is steering the rational frame (how to build it), while the second one provides natural explanation and support when needed. However, there are times when they come in conflict. The most current example is mental health. Is a person in a state of depression because they have imbalance of chemicals in the brain, or because they feel stuck in the current self-narrative of their life?
In this case, the "bi-ontological" mind does not attempt to force selecting just one frame while disregarding the other, an effort that inevitably fails and leads either to dogmatic fundamentalism. Instead, it learns to apply the right frame for the right context. It uses the scientific frame to understand the biochemistry of an illness and the symbolic frame to find new meaning via experience within a narrative. It uses the principles of physics to build a bridge and the power of feelings to inspire the collective will to undertake the project. This cognitive evolution—from a mind that seeks a single, unified truth to a mind that skillfully navigates multiple, context-dependent truths—is the engine of the new meaning-making. It is an emergent property of minds that have been trained by the very contradictions of modernity to hold complexity, to tolerate ambiguity, and to find utility in worldviews that, from a purely logical standpoint, ought to be mutually exclusive.
The concept of an "ontological frame-switching" mind, capable of holding both scientific and symbolic worldviews, may seem abstract. But this cognitive duality is not a futuristic speculation; it is a demonstrable reality, vividly illustrated by one of the most fascinating and misunderstood phenomena in medicine: the placebo effect. By examining how the placebo effect operates, particularly in a modern, scientifically literate individual, we can see the "bi-ontological" mind in action. The placebo effect serves as a perfect case study, revealing that the disenchanted, materialist worldview and the enchanted, meaning-driven worldview are not mutually exclusive competitors for the truth, but complementary operating systems for the human mind-body.