Search

Seven researchers in the growing field of the cognitive science of religion recently claimed to have documented the unique neural correlates of spirituality separate from and independent of religion. They claimed that spirituality is therefore a natural part of human cognition and suggested that they proved definitively that spirituality is substantively different than religion. Using insights developed by scholars associated with the critical religion approach to the academic study of religion, this article identifies a series of methodological errors that undermine the researchers’ project and that potentially impacts the larger academic study of the cognitive science of religion.

Specialists in Islamic studies have taken virtually no interest in the influential and rapidly developing field of Cognitive Science of Religion (CSR). The present article seeks to address this problem by considering how insights from CSR can be systematically applied to reconceptualize Islamic theology, law, education, and mysticism. The article centers on what is probably CSR’s most influential and well-established idea; namely, that religion is closely linked to an evolved “mindreading” ability (i.e., a “Theory of Mind Module”). It is argued that Islamic theology employs mindreading focused on events and objects in the universe, Islamic law and education employ mindreading focused on scriptural texts and embodied practices, and Islamic mysticism employs mindreading focused on psychological experiences. The article develops these ideas through an analysis of the Arabic-language writings of Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī, the famous medieval Islamic theologian, jurist, and mystic.

I have spent a number of years focusing my research on the Roman Cults of Mithras. In this autobiographical reflection on that study, I consider the relationship between research on a specific, if perhaps obscure, religious tradition and methodological and theoretical issues in historical and comparative studies of religion generally.

In response to the recent publication ofTheory In a Time of Excessthis article offers an outsider perspective on the theoretical issues raised and why they are ultimately unlikely to be resolved. The article argues that there is a widespread problematic tendency to equatetheorywith a specific category ofcritical theorythat tautologically restricts the theoretical boundaries of the study of religion field and neglects the contributions of more empirically inclined theorists. In a similar manner, essentialising narratives about the Cognitive Science of Religion that portray the field as unified and monolithic are highlighted and the validity of such critiques is questioned.

Reports of people who have survived death have captured the attention of mainstream audiences. Why do these ideas enjoy persistent and widespread success in contemporary Western culture? Adopting a cognitive approach to the study of afterlife accounts and drawing upon our own research, we argue that mainstream survival narratives are popular because they provide convincing evidence that one has journeyed to another realm. Such accounts are convincing, in part, because they meet default cognitive assumptions about what human survival would look like if it were possible. We support this claim by highlighting recurring common themes in recounted episodes of near-death experiences and past life accounts and outlining how key findings in the cognitive science of religion, in conjunction with culturally situated accounts, can help scholars concerned with ideas about anomalous experiences to better understand their appeal.

In his new book, Paden argues that evolutionary theory creates new and fertile ground for the comparative study of religion. I suggest that extending Paden’s argument to embrace new theories of cultural evolution will continue to broaden our ability understand the origins of both the similarities and differences in religions across societies. Religions are cultural systems and as such an understanding of our shared biology can only explain a limited amount of what religion is and does. I discuss how new cultural evolutionary theories that examine cultural variation and cultural change based on how humans learn and transmit cultural content and can improve the theoretical foundations of comparative studies of religion. Exploring different mechanisms of cultural learning can help explain why certain features of religion are found across a wide variety of religions while others are only found in specific groups.

Many scholars have expressed fears that naturalism will homogenize religion, thereby reifying the concept and distorting the academy’s perception of local cultures. Yet this fear is misplaced. In fact, recent advances in cognitive science, most notably regarding the development of interactional theories of cognition, lend significant support to conceptualizing religion heterogeneously. In this paper I first explore Russell McCutcheon’s rationale for fearing naturalism. I then obviate McCutcheon’s fears by demonstrating how the interactionalist perspective in cognitive science both promotes a heterogeneous understanding of human behavior as well as refutes sui generis religion. I conclude by recommending fusing insights from interactionalism with a ground-up, sociological approach to “religion” such as Timothy Fitzgerald’s, which results in research methodology that is appropriately sensitive to the natural differences of behavior that have been historically identified as religious.

Anthropological records and psychological studies demonstrate the recurrence of ideas about how to determine the identity of reincarnated persons. These ideas are often incoherent with corresponding theological dogma about the process of reincarnation. Specifically, even though reincarnation is represented as a process of change, people often seek out and interpret particular similarities between the deceased and reincarnated agent as evidence that the two are one and the same person. This paper argues that panhuman cognitive tendencies explain, in part, the spread and recurrence of ideas about what provides evidence of reincarnation: specifically, representations of reincarnated agents are informed and constrained by everyday cognitive intuitions that govern representations of continued identity for intentional agents generally. The paper concludes that these constraints go some way towards explaining the recurrent features of reincarnation concepts and behaviors cross-culturally.

In this paper, I explore two of the most pernicious kinds of scientific distortions and misconceptions pertinent to the study of religion (i.e., pseudoscientific trends focused on allegedly paranormal/supernatural phenomena and discontinuity between human and non-human cognition), arguing that: a) the adherence to the prestigious reputation of Eliadean academic frameworks may still cause grave distortions in the comprehension of relevant scientific fields; b) a reliance on cognition alone does not guaranteeipso factoa more epistemically warranted study of religion; c) an evolutionary and cognitively continuist approach to the study of religion is, instead, the most promising and fundamental scholarly tool to bridge the gap between the humanities and the natural sciences, even though it remains a long-term goal; d) the obsolete language of “aboriginal cultures” as open-air museums for our past is rooted in the aforementioned misconceptions and, though basically flawed, is still very much alive.

Several authors in the field of the cognitive science of religion have resorted to ‘dual-process’ models in their own developments. These models distinguish between non-conscious (fast, intuitive, and automatic) and conscious (slow, reflective and controlled) forms of religious reasoning. Most of the published studies focus only on the first of those two processes when dealing with religion. The present pages offer a summary of the current state of dual-process research, their application to religion to the date, and a plea for their broader use, aimed at building a more integrated view of religion as a combination of both cognitive dimensions. The developments on ‘heuristics’ might contribute to a better understanding of several features of the religious mind.

Abstract This paper attempts to situate the contemporary prominence of cognitive science accounts of religion by viewing cognitive science through a Foucaultian lens. The paper focuses on two trajectories in cognitive science: the modular approach of Pascal Boyer and the metaphorical approach of Lakoff and Johnson. Beginning with a brief discussion of Foucault’s Birth of a Clinic, I identify three methodological moves central to empiricism. I then show how these three moves structure the modular and the metaphorical approach, both of which conjoin a particular way of seeing with a particular way of saying. In each case, religion is used to close, rather than open, the biological body. I contend that both approaches are part of a larger cultural incitement to (at least discourse about) religiosity. I conclude by reflecting on disciplinary differences as matters of intellectual taste.

Many religious traditions embrace ideas that include boundless elements (i.e., beings that are omnipresent, omniscient, etc.). The origin of ideas with such boundless qualities has not yet been successfully accounted for in the cognitive science of religion. In this study I suggest that the domain-general use of recursion underlies the mental representation of boundless qualities. I also examine the contribution of recursive patterns to other aspects of religiosity: the conceptualization of divine agency and the emergence of magical rituals. I suggest that the human ability to use recursion in a domain-general way is minimally required for the human Faculty of Religion in a Narrow Sense.

The cognitive science of religion tries to explain how human mental architecture canalizes the spread of cultural ideas. Co-evolutionary theories aim at explaining the cultural stability of ideas and practices by constructing models of social behavior. I try to show that both research programs provide useful insights for the construction of mechanical explanations of the mental representation and transmission of religious ideas. Combining cognitive predispositions and their expression in forms of social behavior paves way for a more integrated explanatory framework.

Cognitivism in the anthropology of religion and religious studies is an approach to religion that appeals to evolved or selected architectures of cognition from which theories of—and explanations for—religion, can be generated. Cognitive approaches to religion are hardly new, though today, cognitive theory draws upon an evidence base heavily influenced by the insights of evolutionary psychology. The writings of scholars such as Dan Sperber, Pascal Boyer and Ilkka Pyysiainen are defining this new field of research into religion. In this essay I want to consider the place of Claude Levi-Strauss in relation to this “cognitive turn” in the study of religion (Jensen 2009: 145). Levi-Strauss’ work has been described as an approach that “we could call cognitivist today” (Henaff 1998: 119) but I will argue that his cognitively oriented writings on religion lead—though not unequivocally—to an alternative theory of the mind to that posed by evolutionary psychology.

After describing what the author regards as important and commendable characteristics of the current cognitive science of religion, the author contends that future theorizing ought to take account of mounting criticisms of cognitive-evolutionary theories of religion. That is especially so when criticism recognizes the great complexity of what we conventionally mean by the term “religion” and when it suggests that monochromatic theorizing is likely to prove inadequate for explaining the existence of polychromatic phenomena. Indeed, monochromatic perspectives tend to confine or impoverish our understandings of religion. Future theorizing about religion should aim for theories that better reflect the complexity of the phenomena that they purport to explain. One possibility, based on an analogy to epigenetic theorizing, is described by way of providing an example.

In addition to god beliefs, belief in life after death or in a nostalgic era when everything was perfect is a widespread phenomenon in world religions. In this paper, my aim is to explain how and why paradise beliefs have emerged and why they have survived over generations. Using recent theories and results from the cognitive and evolutionary study of religion as well as from studies of environmental preferences, I suggest that the answer lies in pan-human unconscious motivations, the architecture of mind, and the way human mind processes information.

Proposals for a scientific study of religion have never been realised because, Daniel Dennett argues in Breaking the Spell, religion is surrounded by a spell that protects it from the critical inquiry characteristic of other academic fields of study. Dennett suggests two reasons for proposing such a study anew at this time. The first is political, namely, major policy decisions are currently being made on the basis of perceptions about religion; the second is theoretical, namely the establishment of an evolutionary psychology and of a cognitive science of religion which can provide the basis for such a study. Surprisingly, a number of those scholars in the field who are well-known for advocating precisely such a scientific study of religion have reacted negatively to Dennett's proposal. Do their very reactions confirm his thesis that an enchanting spell surrounding religion remains unbroken?

This article is a critical examination of Dennett's book Breaking the Spell. The main argument is that there are good and effective ways of doing the cognitive science of religion and there are poor and ineffective ways of doing it. Dennett's book is poorly done on a number of fronts: it is exceedingly hostile and rhetorical, thus missing the public audience he wishes to persuade, it is arrogant towards and shows clear ignorance of the professional study of religion, and it poorly represents serious cognitive science of religion. Furthermore, Dennett ignores the vast amount of literature on the very subjects that worry him the most, namely, fundamentalism, terror, violence, bigotry, deception, oppression, rape, child abuse, and false beliefs—all of which are not necessarily related to religion, on which he is silent. He also leaves untouched the literature on a number of subjects highly relevant to his evolutionary scenario, such as the evolution of consciousness, theories of memory, the role of narrative, the development of persons and selves, embodied cognition, extended mind, etc.

Boyer's theory of counterintuitive cultural concept transmission claims that concepts that ideas that violate naturally occurring intuitive knowledge structures enough to be attention-demanding but not so much to undermine conceptual coherence have a transmission advantage over other concepts (Boyer et al. 2001: 535-64). Because of the prominence of these counterintuitive concepts in religious belief systems, Boyer's theory features prominently in many cognitive treatments of religion. Difficulties in identifying what are and are not counterintuitive concepts in this technical sense, however, has made empirical treatment of Boyer's theory irregular and difficult to evaluate. Further, inability to quantify just how counterintuitive a given concept is has made ambiguous specifying where the alleged cognitive optimum lies. The present project attempts to clarify Boyer's theory and presents a formal system for coding and quantifying the "counterintuitiveness" of a concept, and hence, facilitates empirical scrutiny of the theory.

Donald Davidson's concept of "anomalous monism" is not nearly as well known as his related attack on the idea of "conceptual schemes," though they are closely related. This concept, I shall argue, has several important implications for the study of religion. In particular, it implies that, as an account of mind and language, "cognitive science" is going to be of limited interest. Moreover, and that approaches to the study of religion based on models drawn from cognitive science are likely to be "degenerate research programmes." If this is so, then we can reasonably marginalize such programmes to the extent that they compete with more promising projects.

This article proposes understanding an important task of the Study of Religion as a monitoring system in the neuroscience sense, i.e. a higher-order-level of evaluation and reflexivity. The Study of Religion in the context of several specialized cultural studies approaches reflects on these approaches and on how they frame a discourse. These scientific and popular discourses as well form our contemporary world view. By its self-critical dissolution from theology and its intercultural focus the Study of Religion is specialized in differentiality in cultural systems as holistic entities and on how they generate normative attitudes. The fruits of this suggested self-understanding as monitoring are demonstrated in discussing three perspectives from the anthropology of religion, cognitive or aesthetic ritual theory (McCauley & Lawson), and the economics of religion (Alles)—all dealing with the same piece of fieldwork from Harvey Whitehouse.

If we define history, in the sense of what historians do, as explaining change over time, then history interacts with theories such as Harvey Whitehouse's Modes of Religiosity theory in two important ways. First, history provides data, just as anthropological fieldwork and controlled laboratory experiments do, to test and refine the theory. Second, if a theory is logically coherent and empirically productive across a range of cases then it can be used to add plausibility to hunches where his torical data on particular cases are lacking, can point to fruitful research agendas, and can contribute to explanations of change for which his torians strive.

Cognitive scientists seek to explain the kinds of perceptual and con ceptual representations—including "religious" representations—which the mental processing of sensory input allows, the memory, transmis sion, and transformations of these mental representations, and the rela tionships, historical and potential, among them. Although a cognitive science of religion was first proposed in 1980 (Guthrie), it was not until the following decade that systematically cognitive theories of religion began to be proposed. These theories focused largely on religious rit ual (Lawson-McCauley 1990), religious ideas (Guthrie 1993; Boyer 1994), religious persistence (Whitehouse 1995; 2000), and the relation ship of these practices and ideas to evolutionary theory (Mithen 1996). These theoretical proposals have produced—and are continuing to pro duce—a large number of works that now firmly establish this new field of inquiry as an exciting new approach to the study of religion, (e.g., Barrett 2000, 2004; Boyer 2001; Pyysiainen 2001; McCauley-Lawson 2002; Atran 2002; Pyysiainen-Antttonen 2002; Martin 2003; Slone 2004; Malley 2004; Whitehouse 2004). One of the cognitive theories of religion that has generated a significant amount of commentary and research—and that is the primary focus of this special issue of Method & Theory in the Study of Religion—is that of divergent modes of religiosity, proposed by the British anthropolo gist Harvey Whitehouse (and summarized in this journal by him, 2002). Briefly stated, Whitehouse has identified two different clusters of vari ables that tend to be selected for in processes of religious transmission (Whitehouse 2004). He terms these two modes of religiosity "imagis tic" and "doctrinal". It need be emphasized at the outset that the "imagistic" mode does not refer, in Whitehouse's description, to reli gious traditions that trade in images—a trait of virtually all religions. Rather, "imagistic" is Whitehouse's designation for a convergence of analogical precepts and practices that are transmitted through infre quently performed rituals and are rendered especially salient and mem orable through intense sensory pageantry and heightened emotionality. The dramatic, often traumatic, means of transmission (e.g., by some ini tiation rites) typically occasions a personal and spontaneous exegesis of that knowledge among its recipients as well as an enduring cohesion

Mind matters 1 Emile Durkheim's postulate about the independence of the social from the psychological notwithstanding, recent anthropological thought has increasingly recognized the role of cognition in organizing cultural phe nomena Religious phenomena figure prominently in cognitive anthropolog ical discussions, because religion, in several ways, is a limiting case for anthropological theory As a result, a considerable body of cognitive theory has developed around religion, and recent years have witnessed the emer gence of a distinctly cognitive psychology of religion In this essay I shall survey the cognitive scientific literature pertaining to religion and summarize the theoretical picture painted in the works reviewed The earliest cognitive theory of a religious phenomenon was advanced by Dan Sperber in his prolegomenon to a general theory of symbolism, Rethink ing Symbolism (1975) Sperber begins by arguing that, despite anthropolo gists' commitment to the rationality of peoples the world over, it is precisely the irrationality of certain statements and actions that leads the fieldworker to identify those statements and actions as symbolic "I note then as symbolic all activity where the means put into play seem to me to be clearly dispro portionate to the explicit or implicit end, whether this end be knowledge, communication or production that is to say, all activity whose rationale escapes me" (1975 4) Sperber thus identifies the problem of symbolism as one of irrationality Sperber attacks head-on the wide-spread hypothesis that symbols are made rational by their meanings symbols enter into no relationship that can be called "meaning" He begins by examining the linguistic criteria for meaning In order for a term in a natural language to have meaning, it must have two properties analyticity the ability to be broken up into constituent conceptual primitives without loss of sense and paraphrase the ability to be replaced by another term without loss of sense Symbols do not have these properties, so they cannot be said to have meaning in the linguistic sense of the term