Cognitive science of religion

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Cognitive Science of Religion is the study of religious thought and behavior from the perspective of the cognitive sciences. The field employs methods and theories from cognitive psychology, evolutionary psychology, cognitive anthropology, artificial intelligence, cognitive neuroscience, neurobiology, zoology, ethology, among others. The scholars in this field seek to explain how human minds acquire, generate, and transmit religion by means of ordinary cognitive capacities.

E. Thomas Lawson is widely considered to be the founder of the Cognitive Science of Religion. A systematic treatment of religious representations can be found in the book he created with Robert McCauley called Rethinking Religion: Connecting Cognition and Culture. A festschrift in his honor, Religion as a Human Capacity was published in 2004. Pascal Boyer in his Naturalness of Religious Ideas and Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought made the contribution of evolutionary psychology to the cognitive psychology of religion explicit. The focus in the field has now shifted from theorizing to experimental and empirical studies. Currently there are two multi-million dollar projects based out of Oxford's Centre for Anthropology and Mind that address both theoretical and empirical questions. One is the Explaining Religion project, funded by the European Commission and led by Harvey Whitehouse. The other is the Cognition Religion and Theology Project funded by the John Templeton Foundation and led by Justin L. Barrett. Both projects have received considerable media attention.

Other early shapers of this field include Robert McCauley, Stewart Guthrie, Pascal Boyer and Harvey Whitehouse. Dan Sperber foreshadowed the Cognitive Science of Religion in his 1975 book Rethinking Symbolism. The first use of the term "cognitive science of religion" appears to be in a 2000 review article by Justin L. Barrett who "practically invented the field," according to Pascal Boyer.

Contents 1 Experts 2 Publications 3 See also 4 References

[edit] Experts

Experts in the field:

• E. Thomas Lawson, research scientist at the Institute of Cognition and Culture, Queen's University - Belfast
• Robert N. McCauley, William Rand Kenan Jr. University Professor at Emory University
• Pascal Boyer, Henry Luce Professor of Individual and Collective Memory at Washington University in St. Louis
• Dan Sperber, Directeur de Recherche CNRS, Paris
• Harvey Whitehouse, professor of social anthropology at the University of Oxford
• Justin L. Barrett, senior researcher at the University of Oxford
• Jesse Bering, Director of the Institute of Cognition and Culture, Queen's University - Belfast
• Ilkka Pyysiäinen, Institute of Advanced Studies, University of Helsinki
• D. Jason Slone, assistant professor of religious studies at Webster University
• Todd Tremlin, assistant professor of religion at Central Michigan University
• Joel Mort, research scientist in the Cognitive Systems Branch, Air Force Research Laboratory
• Pierre Liénard, postdoctoral fellow at Washington University in St. Louis
• William W. McCorkle Jr., lecturer at The University of North Carolina at Charlotte
• Stewart E. Guthrie, Anthropology Emeritus at Fordham University
• Emma Cohen, postdoctoral researcher at the University of Oxford
• Brian Malley, lecturer at the University of Michigan
• Jesper Sorensen, lecturer at the University of Copenhagen
• Dimitris Xygalatas, postdoctoral fellow at Princeton University

[edit] Publications

• Barrett, J.L. "Cognitive Science of Religion: What Is It and Why Is It?" Religion Compass. 2007, vol 1.
• Barrett, J.L. "Exploring the Natural Foundations of Religion." Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 2000, vol. 4 pp 29-34
• Barrett, J.L. "Why Would Anyone Believe in God?" AltaMira Press, 2004.
• Boyer, Pascal. "The Naturalness of Religious Ideas." University of California Press, 1994.
• Boyer, Pascal. "Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought." Basic Books, 2001
• Boyer, Pascal. "Religious Thought and Behavior as By-Products of Brain Functions," Trends in Cognitive Schiences, vol 7, pp 119-24
• Boyer, P and Liénard, P. "Why ritualized behavior? Precaution Systems and action parsing in developmental, pathological and cultural rituals .” Behavioral and Brain Sciences. 29: 595-650.
• Cohen, E. The Mind Possessed. The Cognition of Spirit Possession in the Afro-Brazilian Religious Tradition Oxford University Press, 2007.
• Guthrie, S. E. (1993). Faces in the Clouds: A new theory of religion. New York: Oxford University Press.
• Lawson, ET. "Religious Thought." Encyclopedia of Cognitive Science, vol 3 (A607).
• Lawson, ET and McCauley, RN. "Rethinking Religion: Connecting Cognition and Culture." Cambridge University Press, 1990.
• Light, T and Wilson, B (eds). "Religion as a Human Capacity: A Festschrift in Honor of E. Thomas Lawson." Brill, 2004.
• McCauley, RN. "The Naturalness of Religion and the Unnaturalness of Science." Explanation and Cognition (Keil and Wilson eds), pp 61-85. MIT Press, 2000.
• McCauley, RN and Lawson, ET. "Bringing Ritual to Mind: Psychological Foundations of Cultural Forms." Cambridge University Press, 2002.
• Nuckolls, C. "Boring Rituals," Journal of Ritual Studies, 2006.
• Pyysiäinen, I. "How Religion Works: Towards a New Cognitive Science of Religion." Brill, 2001.
• Slone, DJ. "Theological Incorrectness: Why Religious People Believe What They Shouldn't." Oxford University Press, 2004.
• Slone, DJ (ed). "Religion and Cognition: A Reader." Equinox Press, 2006.
• Sperber, D. "Rethinking Symbolism." Cambridge University Press, 1975.
• Sperber, D. "Explaining Culture." Blackwell Publishers, 1996.
• Sperber, D. (1975). Rethinking Symbolism. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Tremlin, T. "Minds and Gods: The Cognitive Foundations of Religion." Oxford University Press, 2006.
• Whitehouse, H. (1995). Inside the Cult: Religious innovation and transmission in Papua New Guinea. Oxford: Clarendon Press.
• Whitehouse, H. (1996a). Apparitions, orations, and rings: Experience of spirits in Dadul. Jeannette Mageo and Alan Howard (eds). Spirits in Culture, History, and Mind, New York: Routledge.
• Whitehouse, H. (1996b). Rites of terror: Emotion, metaphor, and memory in Melanesian initiation cults. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 2, 703-715.
• Whitehouse, H. (2000). Arguments and Icons: Divergent modes of religiosity. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Whitehouse, H. (2004). Modes of Religiosity: a cognitive theory of religious transmission. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press.

[edit] See also

• International Association for the Scientific Study of Religion (IACSR)
• Evolutionary epistemology
• Evolutionary psychology
• Faith and rationality
• Evolutionary psychology of religion
• Relationship between religion and science

[edit] References

Small Text

dfxgdfgdfgdfga