Recent years have seen a growing willingness in the evolutionary cognitive science of religion to embrace an inclusive, theoretically pluralistic approach and the emergence of a broad consensus around some key themes that collectively constitute a central theoretical core of the field. Nevertheless, ECSR still raises serious problems for some in the humanities. In exploring the reasons for the perception of conflict between humanistic and cognitive evolutionary approaches to religion, I suggest that both ECSR’s default account of the origins of (...) religion and religion’s role in social bonding rely upon notions of culturally unmediated universal cognitive mechanisms that preclude alternative humanistic explanations. I subsequently suggest that the gap between humanistic approaches and the evolutionary study of religion more broadly conceived may be narrowed by further expanding ECSR to include recent research into the brain opioid theory of social attachment, which emphasises the emotional rather than cognitive basis of religion’s social bonding functions. Finally, I outline a possible evolutionary account of the earliest forms of religious ideas and practices, which decouples the origins of religion from the evolution of specialised cognitive machinery and which humanists are likely to find more amenable than mainstream ECSR. (shrink)

The dominant view in the cognitive science of religion (the ‘Standard Model’) is that religious belief and behaviour are not adaptive traits but rather incidental byproducts of the cognitive architecture of mind. Because evidence for the Standard Model is inconclusive, the case for it depends crucially on its alleged methodological superiority to selectionist alternatives. However, we show that the Standard Model has both methodological and evidential disadvantages when compared with selectionist alternatives. We also consider a pluralistic approach, which holds that (...) religion or various aspects of religion originated as byproducts of evolved cognitive structures but were subsequently co-opted for adaptive purposes. We argue that when properly formulated, the pluralistic approach also has certain advantages over the Standard Model. (shrink)

A theory of sacralization is offered in which the sacred emerges from the collision of temptation and tradition. It is proposed that when innate or acquired desires to behave in one way conflict with socially acquired and/or mediated drives to behave in another way, actors ascribe sacredness to the objects of their action as a means of reconciling the difference between their desired and actual behavior toward those objects. After establishing the sacred as a theoretical construct, the theory is sketched (...) and then fleshed out with a more formal specification. The foundational assumptions and mechanisms of the theory are then empirically substantiated as a first step toward validating the theory, and a handful of predictions deduced from the theory are assessed. (shrink)

In the modern world, situations often arise in which the value-based regulation of human activity weakens and the old requirements lose their relevance. The need for analysis is associated with the “normality” of the state of anormativity as an attribute of a new social status relating to the sphere of government. The purpose of this article is to study the dynamics of the development of values and norms as a possible reason for the inefficiency of managerial decisions. The sociocultural method (...) made it possible to consider the individual, the person and society as a single integral system in which the elements are not reducible to each other, as well as to describe the conflict of values and norms as a complex of sociocultural pathologies leading to ineffective managerial decisions. Value analysis was used to reveal the content of the conflict of values and norms and their manifestations in culture and to describe the axiological mechanisms of sociocultural interactions. The hermeneutical method made it possible to identify and study the factors of conflict between values and norms and to form an idea of value consciousness. The structural-functional approach was used to identify elements of society and culture that contribute to the emergence of a conflict of values and norms. The phenomenological method was useful in the analysis of the conflict of values and norms as a pathological state (deformation) of human consciousness. Methods of comparison, analysis, deduction, induction, generalization, analogy, classification, abstraction were also used. Value-normative and institutional analysis made it possible to clarify the nature of the norm and to define a negative value convention. It was found that the change in values is carried out through value consciousness as a special phenomenological feature of a person, the main pathology of which is fragmentation, which leads to a conflict of values and norms. In particular, the idea of interaction between value-normative and institutional analysis was introduced, which made it possible to clarify the nature of the norm, define a negative value convention, and also distinguish between two ways of thinking and behavior as a prerequisite for a conflict of values and norms: based on common axiological attitudes and particular institutions. It was determined that with the help of norms, society leaves a reflection on values, and social actors are able to initiate the normization of certain actions. If these actions do not correspond to norms and values, a process of denormization takes place, as a result of which anormia arise. Norms break away from values and merge with particular institutional rules, forming an agreement on the methods of obtaining benefits – a negative value convention. The practical value of this scientific work lies in the possibility of using its materials in the process of developing decisions to reform the management decision-making system. (shrink)