The cognitive science of religion is a rapidly growing field whose practitioners apply insights from advances in cognitive science in order to provide a better understanding of religious impulses, beliefs, and behaviors. In this book Ilkka Pyysiäinen shows how this methodology can profitably be used in the comparative study of beliefs about superhuman agents. He begins by developing a theoretical outline of the basic, modular architecture of the human mind and especially the human capacity to understand agency. He then goes (...) on to discuss examples of supernatural agency in detail, arguing that the human ability to attribute beliefs and desires to others forms the basis of conceptions of supernatural agents and of such social cognition in which supernatural agents are postulated as interested parties in social life. Beliefs about supernatural agency are natural, says Pyysiäinen, in the sense that such concepts are used in an intuitive and automatic fashion. Two dots and a straight line below them automatically trigger the idea of a face, for example. Given that the mind consists of a host of such modular mechanisms, certain kinds of beliefs will always have a selective advantage over others.theological concepts are usually elaborate versions of such simpler and more contagious folk conceptions. Pyysiäinen uses ethnographical and survey materials as well as doctrinal treatises to show that there are certain recurrent patterns in beliefs about supernatural agents both at the level of folk-religion and of formal theology. (shrink)

It has been argued within the new cognitive science of religion that people's actual religious concepts and inferences differ from their explicitly held religious concepts and beliefs; the latter are too complex to be used in fast online reasoning. Natural intuitions thus tend to overwrite theological doctrine and to drive behavior. The cognitive science of religion has focused on this intuitive aspect of religion, ignoring theological thought. Here I try to outline a theoretical model on the basis of which it (...) should be possible to explain the interaction of the intuitive and explicit processes in religious cognition. (shrink)

This volume addresses the issue of religion and economy in the evolution of human cooperation. Both religious practices and economic behaviour create and sustain intra-group cooperation by providing people with common goals and values. Even if individuals are selfish maximizers of utility, in the end everybody benefits from being part of a cooperative community, the market. The rules of the market are the invisible hand which turns selfishness into cooperation. In the same way, God beliefs constrain individual selfishness and ensure (...) cooperation within the group. (shrink)

It is here argued that 'culture' is a universal in the philosophical sense of the term: it expresses a general property. It is not a singular term naming an abstract entity, but rather a singular predicate the intension of which is 'cultureness.' Popper's view of the ontology of mathematics is used as an analogous example in the light of which the ontology of culture is analyzed. Cultures do not have an independent existence, they are not mere names, and neither do (...) they exist as fixed entities in the mind. Cultures are abstractions made by the mind, which yet are not reducible to the mind. They exist in the form of certain mental operations creating a new level of reality. Scientific study of culture involves both explaining how cultural phenomena are constructed in minds and how these constructions function in cognition and communication. (shrink)

This article develops a new perspective on theism that makes the simple juxtaposition of theism and atheism problematic, and helps bridge philosophy of religion and the empirical study of religious phenomena. The basic idea is developed inspired by Terrence Deacon's book Incomplete Nature and its description of “ententional” phenomena, together with some ideas from the cognitive science of religion, especially those related to agency and “theological correctness.” It is argued that God should not be understood as a “homunculus” that stops (...) an otherwise infinite regress of arguments. (shrink)

Miracles are real or imagined events that contradict our intuitive expectations of how entities normally behave. Miracles in the weak sense are unexplained counterintuitive events. Miracles in the strong sense are counterintuitive events we explain by referring to the counterintuitive agents and forces of various religious traditions. Such explanations result from the fact that our minds treat half–understood information by carrying out searches in the memory, trying to connect new information with something already known. This is cognitively the most economical (...) way of dealing with new information: we obtain the maximum of relevance at minimal processing cost. (shrink)

Religionists often presuppose that “mysticism” aims at somehow emptying the mind. In the light of evidence, however, meditation seems rather to consist of ritualized action without an explicit emphasis on subjective experience. Boyer & Lienard's (B&L's) theory of ritualized action as “swamping” working memory thus might help explain the effects of meditation without postulating experiential goals the “mystics” obviously do not have. (Published Online February 8 2007).

The distinction between such differing approaches to cognition as connectionism and rule-based models is paralleled by a distinction between two basic modes of cognition postulated in the so-called dual-process theories. Integrating these theories with insights from hybrid systems might help solve the dilemma of combining the demands of evolutionary plausibility and computational universality. No single approach alone can achieve this.

In trying to define the difference between conventional and ultimate truth, the Mādhyamika Buddhist author Jñānagarbha ends up in paradoxical formulations. Putnam's discussion of Nietzsche's remark that “as the circle of science grows larger it touches paradox at more places” is presented as an illustration for Jñānagarbha's case. No comparison of Putnam and Jñānagarbha is intended as regards the contents of their presentations, the focus being only on the logical form of their argumentation. The paradoxical nature of Jñānagarbha's doctrinal system (...) is explained to derive from the logical incompleteness of formal systems. The paradox is also explained to work as a direction arrow pointing to what can only be realised in a mystical experience. (shrink)

Bering's findings about the mental representation of dead agents are important, although his opposition between “endemic” and “cultural” concepts is misleading. Endemic and cultural are overlapping, not exclusive categories. It is also diffcult to see why reasoning about the dead would require a specific cognitive mechanism. Bering presents no clear evidence for the claim that the postulated mechanism is an adaptation.

Some forms of religion may in some cases alleviate existential anxieties and help maintain morality; yet religion can also persist without serving any such functions. Atran & Norenzayan (A&N) are unclear about the importance of these functions for a theory of the recurrence of religious beliefs and behaviors.

Research on entrepreneurship as a policy discourse has focused mostly on relations between the discourse and targets of the policy, that is, actors intended to become entrepreneurial or entrepreneurs, while the role of policy implementers has received much less attention. The present study examines the ‘rationality’ of entrepreneurship policies by analyzing how actors in charge of the grassroots level policy implementation in the farming context use entrepreneurship discourse and argue for the communicative and interactive viability of their mission. The analysis (...) of stances and positioning in interview talk reveals that policy implementers are active discourse users who, on the one hand, are able to reflect on the dilemmas and problems inherent in their task but, on the other hand, use their rhetorical agency to maintain and defend their mission as promoters of entrepreneurship policy and to save and support their own face as experts. As a result, the implementation emerges as a delicately managed interaction process. (shrink)

_Christianity and the Roots of Morality_ combines philosophical, early Christian and empirical studies to cast light on the role of religion, especially Christianity, in morality, pro-social behavior and altruism.

Recent work in cognitive science of religion (CSR) is beginning to converge on a very interesting thesis—that, given the ordinary features of human minds operating in typical human environments, we are naturally disposed to believe in the existence of gods, among other religious ideas (e.g., seeAtran [2002], Barrett [2004; 2012], Bering [2011], Boyer [2001], Guthrie [1993], McCauley [2011], Pyysiäinen [2004; 2009]). In this paper, we explore whether such a discovery ultimately helps or hurts the atheist position—whether, for example, it lends (...) credence to atheism by explaining away religious belief or whether it actually strengthens some already powerful arguments against atheism in the relevant philosophical literature.We argue that the recent discoveries of CSR hurt, not help, the atheist position—that CSR, if anything, should not give atheists epistemic assurance. (shrink)

Beyond Language and Reason: Mysticism in Indian Buddhism Ilkka Pyysiäinen, 1993 Annales Academiæ Scientiarum Fennicæ Dissertationes Humanarum Litterarum 66 Helsiniki, Sumolainen Tiedeakatemia.