Recent research in the cognitive science of religion suggests that humans intuitively believe that others survive death. In response to this finding, three cognitive theories have been offered to explain this: the simulation constraint theory (Bering, Citation2002); the imaginative obstacle theory (Nichols, Citation2007); and terror management theory (Pyszczynski, Rothschild, & Abdollahi, 2008). First, I provide a critical analysis of each of these theories. Second, I argue that these theories, while perhaps explaining why one would believe in his own personal immortality, (...) leave an explanatory gap in that they do not explain why one would intuitively attribute survival of death to others. To fill in the gap, I offer a cognitive theory based on offline social reasoning and social embodiment which provides for the belief in an eternal social realm in which the deceased survive—the afterlife. (shrink)

The focus of this research is to explore the developmental trajectory of the propensity to see meaning in unexpected or chance events, and more specifically, to explore the origin and development of nonmaterial or supernatural explanations. Sixty-seven children aged 8, 10 and 12, along with 22 adults, were presented with scenarios describing unusual or unexpected events. They were first asked to provide explanations for why they thought the events occurred and then asked to rate different supernatural explanations as they pertained (...) to each scenario. Results indicated that adults spontaneously appealed to supernatural explanations more frequently than did children, and that this tendency to appeal to supernatural concepts increased with age. Participants of all ages frequently endorsed multiple explanations for the same events and were more likely to endorse supernatural explanations for positively valenced than for negatively valenced stories. Religiosity affected both spontaneous explanations and ratings. Findings are discussed in terms of how children acquire the explanatory systems of their culture. (shrink)

Previous research suggests that how people conceive of minds depends on the culture in which they live, both in determining how they interact with other human minds and how they infer the unseen minds of gods. We use exploratory factor analysis to compare how people from different societies with distinct models of human minds and different religious traditions perceive the minds of humans and gods. In two North American samples (American adults, N = 186; Canadian students, N = 202), we (...) replicated a previously found two‐factor agency/experience structure for both human and divine minds, but in Fijian samples (Indigenous iTaukei Fijians, N = 77; Fijians of Indian descent, N = 214; total N = 679) we found a three‐factor structure, with the additional containing items related to social relationships. Further, Fijians’ responses revealed a different three‐factor structure for human minds and gods’ minds. We used these factors as dimensions in the conception of minds to predict (a) expectations about human and divine tendencies towards punishment and reward; and (b) conception of gods as more embodied (an extension of experience) or more able to know people's thoughts (an extension of agency). We found variation in how these factors predict conceptions of agents across groups, indicating further theory is needed to explain how culturally generated concepts of mind lead to other sorts of social inferences. We conclude that mind perception is shaped by culturally defined social expectations and recommend further work in different cultural contexts to examine the interplay between culture and social cognition. (shrink)

Around 30% of world cultures endorse reincarnation and 20% of contemporary Americans think that reincarnation is plausible. This paper addresses the question of why belief in reincarnation is so pervasive across geographically disparate contexts. While social scientists have provided compelling explanations of the particularistic aspects of reincarnation, less is known about the psychological foundations of such beliefs. In this paper, I review research in the cognitive science of religion to propose that selected panhuman cognitive tendencies contribute to the cross-cultural success (...) of basic ideas in reincarnation. Together, this research suggests that extraordinary convictions, including those associated with postmortem survival, are underpinned by some of the same processes that govern mundane social cognition. (shrink)

There is considerable evidence that beliefs in supernatural punishment decrease self-interested behavior and increase cooperation amongst group members. To date, research has largely focused on beliefs concerning omniscient moralistic gods in large-scale societies. While there is an abundance of ethnographic accounts documenting fear of supernatural punishment, there is a dearth of systematic cross-cultural comparative quantitative evidence as to whether belief in supernatural agents with limited powers in small-scale societies also exert these effects. Here, we examine information extracted from the Human (...) Relations Area Files on cultural discourse about the recently deceased, local ancestor spirits, and mortuary practices across 57 representative cultures. We find evidence that in traditional small-scale societies ancestor spirits are commonly believed to be capable of inflicting harm, with many attendant practices aimed at mitigating this danger. However, such beliefs do not appear to promote cooperation, as ancestor spirits seem to be concerned with interactions between themselves and the living, and to prioritize their own welfare. Many attendant practices are inconsistent even with bipartite cooperation with ancestors that could be viewed as a model for other relationships. The broader implications of this research for the cultural evolution of religion are discussed. (shrink)

Little is known about how the minds and bodies of reincarnated agents are represented. In three studies, participants decided which individual, out of multiple contenders, was most likely to be the reincarnation of a deceased person, based upon a single matching feature between the deceased and each of the candidates. While most participants endorsed reincarnation as entailing a new body, they reasoned that candidates with a similar physical mark or a similar episodic autobiographical memory to the deceased, when alive, were (...) more likely than candidates with other physical or psychological based similarities to be the reincarnation of the deceased. As predicted, by increasing the distinctiveness of a matching physical mark and an episodic autobiographical memory, while holding others constant, likelihood judgments for the candidate with the similar distinctive physical mark were significantly higher than candidates with non-distinctive physical marks, but differences between the distinct and general episodic autobiographical memory condition did not reach statistical significance. These findings support the claim that we intuitively represent reincarnated agents as psychologically determined but physically embodied, and that different assumptions underpin the use of physical and psychological features to establish identity in reincarnation contexts. (shrink)

Supernatural beliefs are ubiquitous around the world, and mounting evidence indicates that these beliefs partly rely on intuitive, cross‐culturally recurrent cognitive processes. Specifically, past research has focused on humans' intuitive tendency to perceive minds as part of the cognitive foundations of belief in a personified God—an agentic, morally concerned supernatural entity. However, much less is known about belief in karma—another culturally widespread but ostensibly non‐agentic supernatural entity reflecting ethical causation across reincarnations. In two studies and four high‐powered samples, including mostly (...) Christian Canadians and mostly Hindu Indians (Study 1, N = 2,006) and mostly Christian Americans and Singaporean Buddhists (Study 2, N = 1,752), we provide the first systematic empirical investigation of the cognitive intuitions underlying various forms of belief in karma. We used path analyses to (a) replicate tests of the previously documented cognitive predictors of belief in God, (b) test whether this same network of variables predicts belief in karma, and (c) examine the relative contributions of cognitive and cultural variables to both sets of beliefs. We found that cognitive tendencies toward intuitive thinking, mentalizing, dualism, and teleological thinking predicted a variety of beliefs about karma—including morally laden, non‐agentic, and agentic conceptualizations—above and beyond the variability explained by cultural learning about karma across cultures. These results provide further evidence for an independent role for both culture and cognition in supporting diverse types of supernatural beliefs in distinct cultural contexts. (shrink)

Natural and supernatural explanations are used to interpret the same events in a number of predictable and universal ways. Yet little is known about how variation in diverse cultural ecologies influences how people integrate natural and supernatural explanations. Here, we examine explanatory coexistence in three existentially arousing domains of human thought: illness, death, and human origins using qualitative data from interviews conducted in Tanna, Vanuatu. Vanuatu, a Melanesian archipelago, provides a cultural context ideal for examining variation in explanatory coexistence due (...) to the lack of industrialization and the relatively recent introduction of Christianity and Western education. We argue for the integration of interdisciplinary methodologies from cognitive science and anthropology to inform research on explanatory coexistence. (shrink)

I argue that psychology and epistemology should posit distinct cognitive attitudes of religious credence and factual belief, which have different etiologies and different cognitive and behavioral effects. I support this claim by presenting a range of empirical evidence that religious cognitive attitudes tend to lack properties characteristic of factual belief, just as attitudes like hypothesis, fictional imagining, and assumption for the sake of argument generally lack such properties. Furthermore, religious credences have distinctive properties of their own. To summarize: factual beliefs (...) are practical setting independent, cognitively govern other attitudes, and are evidentially vulnerable. By way of contrast, religious credences have perceived normative orientation, are susceptible to free elaboration, and are vulnerable to special authority. This theory provides a framework for future research in the epistemology and psychology of religious credence. (shrink)

Anthropomorphism, or the attribution of human properties to nonhuman entities, is often posited as an explanation for the origin and nature of God concepts, but it remains unclear which human properties we tend to attribute to God and under what conditions. In three studies, participants decided whether two types of human properties—psychological properties and physiological properties—could or could not be attributed to God. In Study 1, participants made significantly more psychological attributions than physiological attributions, and the frequency of those attributions (...) was correlated both with participants’ religiosity and with their attribution of abstract, theological properties. In Study 2 and Study 3, participants not only showed the same preference for psychological properties but were also significantly faster, more consistent, and more confident when attributing psychological properties to God than when attributing physiological properties. And when denying properties to God, they showed the reverse pattern—that is, they were slower, less consistent, and less confident when denying psychological properties than when denying physiological properties. These patterns were observed both in a predominantly Christian population and a predominantly Hindu population. Overall, we argue that God is conceptualized not as a person in general but as an agent in particular, attributed a mind by default but attributed a body only upon further consideration. (shrink)

Ruth Millikan has hypothesised that human cognition contains ‘consistency testers’. Consistency testers check whether different judgements a thinker makes about the same subject matter agree or conflict. Millikan’s suggestion is that, where the same concept has been applied to the world via two routes, and the two judgements that result are found to be inconsistent, that makes the thinker less inclined to apply those concepts in those ways in the future. If human cognition does indeed include such a capacity, its (...) operation will be an important determinant of how people use concepts. It will have a major impact on which concepts they deploy and which means of application (conceptions) they rely on. Since consistency testers are a selection mechanism at the heart of conceptual thinking, they would be crucial to understanding how concepts are selected – why some are retained and proliferate and others die out. Hence, whether consistency testers for concepts exist, and how they operate, is an important question for those seeking to understand the cultural evolution of concepts, and of the words we use to express them. (shrink)

In this investigation, Balinese Hindus were interviewed to explore the impact of ritual practice on the flexibility and pattern of afterlife beliefs. Adults from communities where ancestral ritual practices are widespread were asked whether bodily and mental processes continue after death. Prior research with the ancestor-worshiping Malagasy Vezo revealed that their responses to such questions varied depending on narrative context and which conception of death they subsequently deployed: A religious conception, wherein death marks the beginning of a new form of (...) spiritual existence, or a biological conception, wherein death terminates all living processes. No studies to date have looked at the narrative effect in a culture having close proximity to altars dedicated to ancestors and frequent rituals to honor them. To explore the cross-cultural replicability of the narrative effect, an adaptation of Astuti and Harris’ experiment was conducted with Balinese Hindu adults. Participants heard one of two death scenarios and were asked about a deceased person’s capacities. Results revealed that Balinese adults were not influenced by narrative context. While they ascribed more mental than bodily capacities to the dead, they attributed comparatively more capacities overall than the Vezo. A distinctive Balinese pattern of capacity attribution was found, notably high attributions of an enduring spirit and real-time perceptual capacities. Findings suggest that the proximity and high frequency of rituals directed toward ancestors serve to shape, strengthen, and stabilize religious conceptions of death, while weakening the salience of solely biological conceptions. (shrink)

Two experiments were conducted to explore whether children, who have been exposed to the concept of the soul, differentiate the soul from the mind. In the first experiment, 4- to 12-year-old children were asked about whether a religious ritual affects the mind, the brain, or the soul. The majority of the children claimed that only the soul was different after baptism. In a follow-up study, 6- to 12-year-old children were tested more explicitly on what factors differentiate the soul from the (...) mind and the brain. Children differentiated the soul from the mind and the brain along two dimensions: function and stability. In contrast to their responses about the mind and the brain, children did not claim that the soul was important for cognitive, non-cognitive, or biological functioning. Children consistently indicated that the mind and the brain change and grow over time. In contrast, children indicated that the soul is something that stays constant and is devoted to various, predominantly spiritual, functions. (shrink)

A large, diverse sample of adults was interviewed about their conception of the ontological and functional properties of the mind as compared to the soul. The existence of the mind was generally tied to the human lifecycle of conception, birth, growth and death, and was primarily associated with cognitive as opposed to spiritual functions. In contrast, the existence of the soul was less systematically tied to the lifecycle and frequently associated with spiritual as opposed to cognitive functions. Participants were also (...) asked about three ethical issues: stem cell research, life support for patients in a persistent vegetative state and cloning. As expected, participants' beliefs about the ontology and function of the soul were linked to their judgments about these ethical issues whereas their beliefs about the mind were unrelated. Overall, the findings show that many adults do not espouse a simple body-mind dualism, and any tendency toward such dualism is unlikely to explain their beliefs in an afterlife. Instead, afterlife beliefs appear to be associated with the idea of an immaterial essence, potentially dissociable from the biology of life and death. (shrink)

Young children judge that violations of ordinary, causal constraints are impossible. Yet children’s religious beliefs typically include the assumption that such violations can occur via divine agency in the form of miracles. We conducted two studies to examine this potential conflict. In Study 1, we invited 5- and 6-year-old Colombian children attending either a secular or a religious school to judge what is and is not possible. Children made their judgments either following a minimal prompt or following a reminder of (...) God’s extraordinary powers. Irrespective of their education, and whether or not they had been reminded of God’s extraordinary powers, children systematically judged violations of ordinary, causal constraints to be impossible. In Study 2, we asked if more extensive reminders of God’s special powers would prompt religious children to say that the impossible can happen. Five- and 6-year-old Colombian children attending either a secular or a religious school were presented with narratives in which the protagonist desired an ordinarily impossible outcome. In half the stories, the protagonist prayed to God for the desired outcome. Irrespective of education and of whether the protagonist prayed, children systematically concluded that the desired outcome would not occur and justified that conclusion by reference to ordinary causal constraints. Nevertheless, in a minority of their replies children did assert that violations of ordinary causality are possible. Overall, irrespective of their religious education, young children judge that events rarely deviate from their natural course; only occasionally do they acknowledge exceptions. (shrink)

Abstract: Thought experiments about the self seem to lead to deeply conflicting intuitions about the self. Cases imagined from the 3rd person perspective seem to provoke different responses than cases imagined from the 1st person perspective. This paper argues that recent cognitive theories of the imagination, coupled with standard views about indexical concepts, help explain our reactions in the 1st person cases. The explanation helps identify intuitions that should not be trusted as a guide to the metaphysics of the self.

In an earlier issue, I argue (2014) that psychology and epistemology should distinguish religious credence from factual belief. These are distinct cognitive attitudes. Levy (2017) rejects this distinction, arguing that both religious and factual “beliefs” are subject to “shifting” on the basis of fluency and “intuitiveness.” Levy’s theory, however, (1) is out of keeping with much research in cognitive science of religion and (2) misrepresents the notion of factual belief employed in my theory. So his claims don’t undermine my distinction. (...) I conclude by suggesting some approaches to empirically testing our views. (shrink)

Cognitive approaches to religious phenomena have attracted considerable interdisciplinary attention since their emergence a couple of decades ago. Proponents offer explanatory accounts of the content and transmission of religious thought and behavior in terms of underlying cognition. A central claim is that the cross‐cultural recurrence and historical persistence of religion is attributable to the cognitive naturalness of religious ideas, i.e., attributable to the readiness, the ease, and the speed with which human minds acquire and process popular religious representations. In this (...) article, we primarily provide an introductory summary of foundational questions, assumptions, and hypotheses in this field, including some discussion of features distinguishing cognitive science approaches to religion from established psychological approaches. Relevant ethnographic and experimental evidence illustrate and substantiate core claims. Finally, we briefly consider the broader implications of these cognitive approaches for the appropriateness of ‘religion’ as an explanatorily useful category in the social sciences. (shrink)

The linguistic and cognitive sciences have severely underestimated the degree of linguistic diversity in the world. Part of the reason for this is that we have projected assumptions based on English and familiar languages onto the rest. We focus on some distortions this has introduced, especially in the study of semantics.

This paper argues for thinking about religious commitments as different in kind from everyday ordinary understandings of the world. It argues against the straightforward assertion from the cognitive science of religion that belief in the supernatural is easy. That is, there is a way in which intuitions of invisible presence come very easily to people. Yet to sustain that belief commitment is hard, especially when the invisible other is omnipotent and benevolent. Here I suggest that it makes more sense to (...) understand faith commitments as a kind of frame that coexists with everyday commitments. The approach shares much with Neil van Leeuwen’s understanding of religious commitments and factual commitments as being held with different kinds of cognitive attitudes. Here I suggest that people engage the faith frame the way engage play and fiction—except that in the case of faith, the commitment is a serious claim about the world. (shrink)

Because of the privileged place of beliefs in explaining behaviour, mismatch cases—in which agents sincerely claim to believe that p, but act in a way that is inconsistent with that belief—have attracted a great deal of attention. In this paper, I argue that some of these cases, at least, are at least partially explained by agents believing that they believe that p, while failing to believe that p. Agents in these cases do not believe that ~p; rather, they have an (...) indistinct first‐order, beliefy, representation that p. The indistinctness of this first‐order representation provides the leeway for the inconsistency seen in their behaviour. (shrink)

ABSTRACTIn a recent paper published in this journal, Eric Funkhouser argues that some of our beliefs have the primary function of signaling to others, rather than allowing us to navigate the world. Funkhouser’s case is persuasive. However, his account of beliefs as signals is underinclusive, omitting both beliefs that are signals to the self and less than full-fledged beliefs as signals. The latter set of beliefs, moreover, has a better claim to being considered as constituting a psychological kind in its (...) own right than the set of beliefs Funkhouser identifies. (shrink)

What explains the context sensitivity of some (apparent) beliefs? Why, for example, do religious beliefs appear to control behaviour in some contexts but not others? Cases like this are heterogeneous, and we may require a matching heterogeneity of explanations, ranging over their contents, the attitudes of agents and features of the environment. In this paper, I put forward a hypothesis of the last kind. I argue that some beliefs (religious and non-religious) are coupled to cues, which either trigger an internal (...) representation or even partially constitute the beliefs. I show that such coupling will give rise to the context-sensitivity, without entailing that religious believers take a different attitude to belief content. (shrink)

Children and adults from theus and China heard about people who died in two types of narrative contexts – medical and religious – and judged whether their psychological and biological capacities cease or persist after death. Most 5- to 6-year-olds reported that all capacities would cease. In theus, but not China, there was an increase in persistence judgments at 7–8 years, which decreased thereafter.uschildren’s persistence judgments were influenced by narrative context – occurring more often for religious narratives – and such (...) judgments were made especially for psychological capacities. When participants were simply asked what happens to people following death, in both countries there were age-graded increases in references to burial, religious ritual, and the supernatural. (shrink)

Disease transmission is a fruitful domain in which to examine how scientific and folk theories interrelate, given laypeople’s access to multiple sources of information to explain events of personal significance. The current paper reports an in-depth survey of U.S. adults’ causal reasoning about two viral illnesses: a novel, deadly disease that has massively disrupted everyone’s lives, and a familiar, innocuous disease that has essentially no serious consequences. Participants received a series of closed-ended and open-ended questions probing their reasoning about disease (...) transmission, with a focus on causal mechanisms underlying disease contraction, transmission, treatment, and prevention; non-visible biological processes; and ontological frameworks regarding what kinds of entities viruses are. We also assessed participants’ attitudes, such as their trust in scientific experts and willingness to be vaccinated. Results indicated complexity in people’s reasoning, consistent with the co-existence of multiple explanatory frameworks. An understanding of viral transmission and viral replication existed alongside folk theories, placeholder beliefs, and lack of differentiation between viral and non-viral disease. For example, roughly 40% of participants who explained illness in terms of the transmission of viruses also endorsed a non-viral folk theory, such as exposure to cold weather or special foods as curative. Additionally, participants made use of competing modes of construal when explaining how viruses operate, such as framing the immune system response as cells trying to fight off the virus. Indeed, participants who displayed greater knowledge about viral transmission were significantly more likely to anthropomorphize bodily processes. Although comparisons of COVID-19 and the common cold revealed relatively few differences, the latter, more familiar disease elicited consistently lower levels of accuracy and greater reliance on folk theories. Moreover, for COVID-19 in particular, accuracy positively correlated with attitudes, self-protective behaviors, and willingness to be vaccinated. For both diseases, self-assessed knowledge about the disease negatively predicted accuracy. The results are discussed in relation to challenges for formal models of explanatory reasoning. (shrink)

This article derives from a paper presented at the Philosophy of Religion and Mysticism Conference hosted by the Russian Academy of Sciences in Moscow, May 22-24, 2014. That paper introduced theories and methods drawn from the ”cognitive science of religion’ and suggested future avenues of research connecting CSR and scholarship on mysticism. Towards these same ends, the present article proceeds in three parts. Part I outlines the origins, aims, and basic tenets of CSR research. Part II discusses one specific causal (...) perspective that informs a wide range of CSR research, Sperber’s ”epidemiological’ approach to cultural expression, and connects this perspective to the example of creator deities. Part III discusses some possible future directions for CSR research concerning mysticism and mystical experience. Finally, a coda addresses two common misunderstandings concerning the ”reductionist’ nature of CSR research. (shrink)

The author argues for three interconnected theses which provide a cognitive account for why humans intuitively believe that others survive death. The first thesis, from which the second and third theses follow, is that the acceptance of afterlife beliefs is predisposed by a specific, and already well-documented, imaginative process - the offline social reasoning process. The second thesis is that afterlife beliefs are social in nature. The third thesis is that the living imagine the deceased as socially embodied in such (...) a way as to continue to fulfill on-going social obligations with others. The author further suggests six reasons why the fantasy/reality distinction breaks down for the imaginer such that the continued existence of the decedent in the afterlife is believed to be real. Finally, the author suggests avenues for further research which would support this cognitive account. (shrink)

The author introduces and critically analyzes two recent, curious findings and their accompanying explanations regarding how the folk intuits the capabilities of the dead and those in a persistent vegetative state. The dead are intuited to survive death, whereas PVS patients are intuited as more dead than the dead. Current explanations of these curious findings rely on how the folk is said to conceive of death and the dead: either as the annihilation of the person, or that person’s continuation as (...) a disembodied being. The author argues that these two conceptions are incompatible and inconsistent with each other and the evidence. Contrariwise, the author argues that the folk intuition about dead-survivors and the living dead are more easily explained by appealing to cross-culturally established concepts: the folk biological concept of death the existential concept of death, and the concept of social death. (shrink)

Abstract: William James argued that we ordinarily think of the objects that we can observe—things that belong to 'the world of sense'—as having an unquestioned reality. However, young children also assert the existence of entities that they cannot ordinarily observe. For example, they assert the existence of germs and souls. The belief in the existence of such unobservable entities is likely to be based on children's broader trust in other people's testimony about objects and situations that they cannot directly observe (...) for themselves. (shrink)

In two studies, children's concepts of various types of ordinarily unobservable entities were examined. Study 1 confirmed earlier findings in showing that children aged 4–9 years are confident of the existence of scientific entities such as germs as well as religious beings such as God. At the same time, both age groups are skeptical of the existence of various mythical beings such as mermaids. In Study 2, older children aged 10–12 years were probed for their concepts of religious as compared (...) to scientific phenomena. Despite considerable confidence in each type, older children differentiated between them, both with respect to their level of confidence and their pattern of justification. (shrink)

There is much evidence that the relationship between religiosity/spirituality and mental health is linear and positive, but relatively few studies have included samples of non-religious participants in their analyses. Some findings suggest that, compared to people who have intermediate levels of R/S, those with higher levels and those with insignificant levels are mentally healthier. However, this curvilinear model does not appear to have been tested through a measure of spiritual beliefs and the comparison of different religious/spiritual groups. In view of (...) this, 1788 Brazilians were assessed in terms of their spiritual beliefs, their religious/spiritual experiences, and their positive and negative mental health components. We found curvilinear relationships between R/SE and all components of mental health, but the level of spiritual belief predicted only the variance in the meaning in life. With the exception of comparisons involving happiness, at least one of the groups that had intermediate levels of R/SE had worse mental health than the groups that had the highest and lowest levels. Although religious people and atheists had similar levels of symptoms of anxiety and depression, the former presented more happiness and meaning in life. Together, these findings corroborate the curvilinear model, but suggest that R/SE is related in different ways to the positive and negative components of mental health. (shrink)

Mounting evidence suggests that endorsement of psychological continuity and the afterlife increases with age. This developmental change raises questions about the cognitive biases, social representations, and cultural input that may support afterlife beliefs. To what extent is there similarity versus diversity across cultures in how people reason about what happens after death? The objective of this study was to compare beliefs about the continuation of biological and psychological functions after death in Tanna, Vanuatu, and the United States. Children, adolescents, and (...) adults were primed with a story that contained either natural or supernatural cues. Participants were then asked whether or not different biological and psychological processes continue to function after death. We predicted that across cultures individuals would be more likely to endorse the continuation of psychological processes over biological processes and that a theistic prime would increase continuation responses regarding both types of process. Results largely supported predictions; U.S. participants provided more continuation responses for psychological than biological processes following both the theistic and non-theistic primes. Participants in Vanuatu, however, provided more continuation responses for biological than psychological processes following the theistic prime. The data provide evidence for both cultural similarity and variability in afterlife beliefs and demonstrate that individuals use both natural and supernatural explanations to interpret the same events. (shrink)

The cultural transmission of theological concepts remains an underexplored topic in the cognitive science of religion (CSR). In this paper, I examine whether approaches from CSR, especially the study of content biases in the transmission of beliefs, can help explain the cultural success of some theological concepts. This approach reveals that there is more continuity between theological beliefs and ordinary religious beliefs than CSR authors have hitherto recognized: the cultural transmission of theological concepts is influenced by content biases that also (...) underlie the reception of ordinary religious concepts. (shrink)

We report the results of a cross-cultural investigation of person-body reasoning in the United Kingdom and northern Brazilian Amazon (Marajó Island). The study provides evidence that directly bears upon divergent theoretical claims in cognitive psychology and anthropology, respectively, on the cognitive origins and cross-cultural incidence of mind-body dualism. In a novel reasoning task, we found that participants across the two sample populations parsed a wide range of capacities similarly in terms of the capacities’ perceived anchoring to bodily function. Patterns of (...) reasoning concerning the respective roles of physical and biological properties in sustaining various capacities did vary between sample populations, however. Further, the data challenge prior ad-hoc categorizations in the empirical literature on the developmental origins of and cognitive constraints on psycho-physical reasoning (e.g., in afterlife concepts). We suggest cross-culturally validated categories of “Body Dependent” and “Body Independent” items for future developmental and cross-cultural research in this emerging area. (shrink)

Causal reasoning is one of our most central cognitive competencies, enabling us to adapt to our world. Causal knowledge allows us to predict future events, or diagnose the causes of observed facts. We plan actions and solve problems using knowledge about cause-effect relations. Without our ability to discover and empirically test causal theories, we would not have made progress in various empirical sciences. In the past decades, the important role of causal knowledge has been discovered in many areas of cognitive (...) psychology. Despite the ubiquity of causal reasoning, textbooks of cognitive psychology have neglected this growing field. The goal of The Oxford Handbook of Causal Reasoning is to fill this gap. The handbook brings together the leading researchers in the field of causal reasoning and offers state-of-the-art presentations of theories and research. It provides introductions of competing theories of causal reasoning, and discusses its role in various cognitive functions and domains. The final section presents research from neighboring fields. 1. Causal Reasoning: An Introduction Michael R. Waldmann Part I: Theories of Causal Cognition 2. Associative Accounts of Causal Cognition Mike E. Le Pelley, Oren Griffiths, and Tom Beesley 3. Rules of Causal Judgment: Mapping Statistical Information Onto Causal Beliefs José C. Perales, Andrés Catena, Antonio Cándido, and Antonio Maldonado 4. The Inferential Reasoning Theory of Causal Learning: Toward a Multi- Process Propositional Account Yannick Boddez, Jan De Houwer, and Tom Beckers 5. Causal Invariance as an Essential Constraint for Creating a Causal Representation of the World: Generalizing the Invariance of Causal Power Patricia W. Cheng and Hongjing Lu 6. The Acquisition and Use of Causal Structure Knowledge Benjamin Margolin Rottman 7. Formalizing Prior Knowledge in Causal Induction Thomas L. Griffiths 8. Causal Mechanisms Samuel G. B. Johnson and Woo-kyoung Ahn 9. Force Dynamics and Causation Phillip Wolff and Robert Thorstad 10. Mental Models and Causation P. N. Johnson- Laird and Sangeet S. Khemlani 11. Pseudocontingencies Klaus Fiedler and Florian Kutzner 12. Singular Causation David Danks 13. Cognitive Neuroscience of Causal Reasoning Joachim T. Operskalski and Aron K. Barbey Part II: Basic Cognitive Functions 14. Visual Impressions of Causality Peter White 15. Goal-Directed Actions Bernhard Hommel 16. Planning and Control Magda Osman 17. Reinforcement Learning and Causal Models Samuel J. Gershman 18. Causation and the Probability of Causal Conditionals David E. Over 19. Causal Models and Conditional Reasoning Mike Oaksford and Nick Chater 20. Concepts as Causal Models: Categorization Bob Rehder 21. Concepts as Causal Models: Induction Bob Rehder 22. Causal Explanation Tania Lombrozo and Nadya Vasilyeva 23. Diagnostic Reasoning Björn Meder and Ralf Mayrhofer 24. Inferring Causal Relations by Analogy Keith J. Holyoak and Hee-Seung Lee 25. Causal Argument Ulrike Hahn, Roland Bluhm, and Frank Zenker 26. Causality in Decision- Making York Hagmayer and Philip M. Fernbach Part III: Domains of Causal Reasoning 27. Intuitive Theories Tobias Gerstenberg and Joshua B. Tenenbaum 28. Space, Time, and Causality Marc J. Buehner 29. Causation in Legal and Moral Reasoning David A. Lagnado and Tobias Gerstenberg 30. The Role of Causal Knowledge in Reasoning About Mental Disorders Woo-kyoung Ahn, Nancy S. Kim, and Matthew S. Lebowitz 31. Causality and Causal Reasoning in Natural Language Torgrim Solstad and Oliver Bott 32. Social Attribution and Explanation Denis Hilton Part IV: Development, Phylogeny, and Culture 33. The Development of Causal Reasoning Paul Muentener and Elizabeth Bonawitz 34. Causal Reasoning in Non-Human Animals Christian Schloegl and Julia Fischer 35. Causal Cognition and Culture Andrea Bender, Sieghard Beller, and Douglas L. Medin. (shrink)

This paper provides a roadmap for engaging in cross-cultural, developmental research in practical, ethical, and community-engaged ways. To cultivate the flexibility necessary for conducting cross-cultural research, we structure our roadmap as a series of questions that each research program might consider prior to embarking on cross-cultural examinations in developmental science. Within each topic, we focus on the challenges and opportunities inherent to different types of study designs, fieldwork, and collaborations because our collective experience in conducting research in multiple cultural contexts (...) has taught us that there can be no single “best practice”. Here we identify the challenges that are unique to cross-cultural research as well as present a series of recommendations and guidelines. We also bring to the forefront ethical considerations which are rarely encountered in the laboratory context, but which researchers face daily while conducting research in a cultural context which one is not a member. As each research context requires unique solutions to these recurring challenges, we urge researchers to use this set of questions as a starting point, and to expand and tailor the questions and potential solutions with community members to support their own research design or cultural context. This will allow us to move the field towards more inclusive and ethical research practices. (shrink)

Religious people seem to believe things that range from the somewhat peculiar to the utterly bizarre. Or do they? According to a new paper by Neil Van Leeuwen, religious “credence” is nothing like mundane factual belief. It has, he claims, more in common with fictional imaginings. Religious folk do not really “believe”—in the ordinary sense of the word—what they profess to believe. Like fictional imaginings, but unlike factual beliefs, religious credences are activated only within specific settings. We argue that Van (...) Leeuwen’s thesis contradicts a wealth of data on religiously motivated behavior. By and large, the faithful genuinely believe what they profess to believe. Although many religions openly embrace a sense of mystery, in general this does not prevent the attribution of beliefs to religious people. Many of the features of religious belief that Van Leeuwen alludes to, like invulnerability to refutation and incoherence, are characteristic of irrational beliefs in general and actually betray... (shrink)

Bilişsel Din Bilimi (CSR), dini inanç ve uygulamaların nedensel açıklamalarını sağlamayı amaçlayan din araştırmalarına bilimsel bir yaklaşımdır. CSR savunucuları, insan zihninin doğal özelliklerini ve nasıl işlediğini açıklayarak dini inançların oluşumu, kabulü, aktarımı ve yaygınlığı sürecini açıklamaya çalışırlar. Tüm insan kültürlerinde var olan ve son on yılda birçok CSR akademisyeninin dikkatini çeken dini inançlardan biri de öbür dünyaya olan inançtır. CSR araştırmacılarına göre, bu inanç, insan zihninin doğal yapılarına dayanmaktadır. Ölümden sonraki hayata olan inancı, zihinsel araçların işleyişinden kaynaklanan, yansıtıcı olmayan veya (...) sezgisel bir inanç olarak görürler. Ölümden sonra hayata inancın oluşumunu, gelişimini, yayılmasını ve aktarılmasını açıklamak için çeşitli teoriler önerdiler. Ancak bu teoriler arasında, iki teori daha geniş kabul görmüştür, sezgisel düalizm teorisi ve simülasyon kısıtlama teorisi. Sezgisel düalizm teorisi, tüm insanların iki zihinsel araca sahip olduğunu söyler: Sezgisel Biyoloji ve Sezgisel Psikoloji. Sezgisel Biyoloji, ölü bir kişinin karşısına geçip hareket edemediği için artık hayatta olmadığına inanmamızı sağlar. Sezgisel Psikoloji, ölü kişiye otomatik olarak görünmez özellikleri (arzular, düşünceler, inançlar ve duygular gibi) atfetmeye devam eder. Yukarıdaki iki zihinsel aracın aynı anda işleyişi, insan zihnini ölü kişinin bir kısmının önemsiz olduğuna ve fiziksel ölümden sonra kaldığına inandırır. Simülasyon kısıtlama teorisi, tüm insanların çevreden gelen bilgileri işlemek ve dini inançlar edinmek için zihinsel araçlara sahip olduğunu söyler. Zihinsel araçların hiçbiri, kişinin arzularının, düşüncelerinin, inançlarının ve duygularının var olmadığını hayal edemez veya simüle edemez. Bu nedenle ölü kişinin karşısındaki insan zihni, fiziksel ölümünü kolayca hayal etmesine rağmen, kişinin başka bir bölümünün (düşünceler, arzular vb.) Varlığına inanmaya devam eder. Bu teorilerin her ikisi de, öbür dünyaya inancın oluşumunu açıklamada zorluklar ve sınırlamalarla karşı karşıya görünüyor. Bunlar arasında nedensel açıklama yapamama, ölümden sonraki hayata olan inancın doğal ve rasyonel temelleri arasındaki ayrım eksikliği ve öbür dünya inancının doğaüstü temellerini göz ardı etme yer alır. İki teoriden hiçbiri öbür dünyaya inancın oluşumu için yeterli nedensel açıklama sağlamıyor gibi görünmektedir. Her iki teori de zihinsel araçların nasıl işlediğine bağlı olarak öbür dünya inançlarının oluşumu hakkında olası bir hikaye sunmaya çalışır. Ölümden sonraki hayata inanmaya yol açan sürecin yalnızca makul bir hikayesini sunarlar. Bu iki teorinin sunduğu şey, insan zihninin ve araçlarının ve bunların nasıl işlediğinin bir açıklamasıdır (nedensel açıklama değil). Bu, kendi başına, bu aletlerin öbür dünyaya bir inanç ürettiğini açıklamaz. Dolayısıyla ahirete olan inancın zihinsel araçların işleyişinin bir sonucu olduğu iddiası, zihinsel araçlar ile bu inanç arasında nedensel bir ilişki gerektirir. Bu iki teoriden hiçbiri bu nedensel ilişkiyi açıklayamaz ve yalnızca aralarındaki ilişkinin makul bir hikayesini açıklarlar. Dahası, dini inancın rasyonel temelleri ile dini inancın doğal temelleri arasındaki ayrım, ahirete inanmak veya onunla ilişkili bilişsel mekanizmaları tanımlamak için doğal bir köken bulmanın hiçbir şekilde bu inancı reddetmek veya itibarını sarsmak anlamına gelmediğini göstermektedir. Ahirete olan inancın doğal kökenleri hakkındaki bilişsel teoriler bize bu inancın rasyonel mi irrasyonel mi olduğunu gösteremez. Bu açıklamalar ancak (eğer yapabilirlerse) bize bu inancın oluşumunun ve yaygınlığının doğal köklerini gösterebilir. Ayrıca Dinsel inanç karmaşık bir kavramdır. Birincisi, doğal bir kavramdır, bu anlamda insan doğasına dayanır ve insanın bilişsel sistemleri ve zihinsel araçlarıyla ilgilidir. İkincisi, kültürel ve sosyal bir kavramdır, bu anlamda hem kültürel ve sosyal değişimden etkilenir hem de onu etkiler. Üçüncüsü, doğaüstü bir kavramdır, bu anlamda hem vahiy hem de kehanet ve insanın maddi olmayan yönüyle derinden bağlantılıdır. Öbür dünyaya inanç, her üç düzeyde açıklamayı gerektiriyor gibi görünüyor. (shrink)

People naturally intuit that an agent's ethereal thoughts can cause its body to move. Per intuitive physics; however, one body can only interact with another. Are people, then, covertly puzzled by the capacity of thoughts to command the body? Experiment 1 first confirms that thoughts (e.g., thinking about a cup) are indeed perceived as ethereal—as less detectible in the body (brain), and more likely to exist in the afterlife relative to matched percepts (e.g., seeing a cup). Experiments 2–5 show that (...) thoughts are considered less likely to cause behavior than percepts (e.g., thinking of a cup vs. seeing one). Furthermore, mind–body causation is more remarkable when its bodily consequences are salient (e.g., moving an arm vs. brain activation). Finally, epistemic causes are remarkable only when they are ascribed to mental‐ (e.g., “thinking”) but not to physical states (“activation”). Together, these results suggest that mind–body interactions elicit a latent dualist dissonance. (shrink)