In the book Hearing Voices and Other Matters of the Mind, McCauley and Graham present a novel contribution to the Cognitive Science of Religion. The authors propose a naturalistic, pluralistic, and interdisciplinary approach to analyze the continuities between normal cognition, religious cognition, and abnormal cognition. McCauley and Graham use the idea of maturationally natural systems to understand different religious “abnormal” experiences: hearing voices from God or other spiritual beings, mood disorders caused by a failure in petitionary prayer, religious scrupulosity and its resemblance with Obsessive-Compulsive symptoms, and the “mindblind atheism” of Autistic Spectrum Disorder. Despite some minor weaknesses, e.g., an excessive use of maturationally natural systems to explain religious phenomena, the book is an important contribution to the Cognitive Science of Religion.
{"title":"Introduction to Hearing Voices and Other Matters of the Mind","authors":"Ismael Apud","doi":"10.1558/jcsr.19902","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/jcsr.19902","url":null,"abstract":"In the book Hearing Voices and Other Matters of the Mind, McCauley and Graham present a novel contribution to the Cognitive Science of Religion. The authors propose a naturalistic, pluralistic, and interdisciplinary approach to analyze the continuities between normal cognition, religious cognition, and abnormal cognition. McCauley and Graham use the idea of maturationally natural systems to understand different religious “abnormal” experiences: hearing voices from God or other spiritual beings, mood disorders caused by a failure in petitionary prayer, religious scrupulosity and its resemblance with Obsessive-Compulsive symptoms, and the “mindblind atheism” of Autistic Spectrum Disorder. Despite some minor weaknesses, e.g., an excessive use of maturationally natural systems to explain religious phenomena, the book is an important contribution to the Cognitive Science of Religion.","PeriodicalId":29718,"journal":{"name":"Journal for the Cognitive Science of Religion","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-08-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"43817543","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Approaching religious or mystical experience in association with mental or brain disorder has been a widespread practice in psychology and neuropsychology, but not so much in the cognitive science of religion (CSR). By their recent book, McCauley and Graham balance the disproportion within CSR. In the commentary, I address McCauley and Graham’s solutions to fundamental problems typical for the psychiatric approach to a religious experience. This approach understands religious experience as a mental or a brain disorder, diagnoses the disorder based on insufficient data in historical cases, and neglects cultural and historical aspects of religious experience and mental disorders. McCauley and Graham handle the diagnosis problem by focusing on the particular aspect of the religious experience (e.g., “hearing voices”) and analyzing its pathological and non-pathological aspects, instead of simply assuming disorder. In regards to the neglect of historical and cultural aspects of religious experience and mental illness, McCauley and Graham stress the importance of the cultural domestication of unusual aspects of religious experience. In dealing with the psychiatric approach problems, McCauley and Graham introduce a new complementary and complex theoretical model for embracing mental abnormalities into the framework of CSR.
{"title":"Hearing Voices, Epilepsy, and Religious Experience","authors":"Jakub Cigán","doi":"10.1558/jcsr.20219","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/jcsr.20219","url":null,"abstract":"Approaching religious or mystical experience in association with mental or brain disorder has been a widespread practice in psychology and neuropsychology, but not so much in the cognitive science of religion (CSR). By their recent book, McCauley and Graham balance the disproportion within CSR. In the commentary, I address McCauley and Graham’s solutions to fundamental problems typical for the psychiatric approach to a religious experience. This approach understands religious experience as a mental or a brain disorder, diagnoses the disorder based on insufficient data in historical cases, and neglects cultural and historical aspects of religious experience and mental disorders. McCauley and Graham handle the diagnosis problem by focusing on the particular aspect of the religious experience (e.g., “hearing voices”) and analyzing its pathological and non-pathological aspects, instead of simply assuming disorder. In regards to the neglect of historical and cultural aspects of religious experience and mental illness, McCauley and Graham stress the importance of the cultural domestication of unusual aspects of religious experience. In dealing with the psychiatric approach problems, McCauley and Graham introduce a new complementary and complex theoretical model for embracing mental abnormalities into the framework of CSR.","PeriodicalId":29718,"journal":{"name":"Journal for the Cognitive Science of Religion","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-08-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42964297","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Can Science Explain Religion? The Cognitive Science Debate, by James W. Jones. Oxford University Press, 2015. 236 + xii pp. Hb., $31.95. ISBN: 9780190249380
{"title":"Can Science Explain Religion? The Cognitive Science Debate, by James W. Jones.","authors":"Halvor Kvandal","doi":"10.1558/jcsr.20676","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/jcsr.20676","url":null,"abstract":"Can Science Explain Religion? The Cognitive Science Debate, by James W. Jones. Oxford University Press, 2015. 236 + xii pp. Hb., $31.95. ISBN: 9780190249380","PeriodicalId":29718,"journal":{"name":"Journal for the Cognitive Science of Religion","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-08-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"46245222","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
How God Becomes Real: Kindling the Presence of Invisible Others, by Tanya Luhrmann. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020. xv + 235 pp., $29.95 (cloth), ISBN: 9780691164465.
{"title":"How God Becomes Real: Kindling the Presence of Invisible Others, by Tanya Luhrmann.","authors":"Ingela Visuri","doi":"10.1558/jcsr.19945","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/jcsr.19945","url":null,"abstract":"How God Becomes Real: Kindling the Presence of Invisible Others, by Tanya Luhrmann. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2020. xv + 235 pp., $29.95 (cloth), ISBN: 9780691164465.","PeriodicalId":29718,"journal":{"name":"Journal for the Cognitive Science of Religion","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-08-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"42202292","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Two categories of mental events – ecstatic or indescribable religious revelations and bizarre beliefs or behavior with related mental abnormalities – have been compared and contrasted in order to understand whether they are manifestations of different basic neural and psychological processes, or fundamentally the same. In popular terms, such comparisons point to the issue of the relationship between being religious and being mentally ill. McCauley and Graham (2020) have argued for a benign “maturational naturalism” (MN) as an over-arching concept to subsume and understand the two approaches. MN rests on the assumption that for purposes of understanding the processes that mediate any “matters of the mind,” it makes no difference whether they are labeled religious or not. All must be functions of maturationally natural processes, or else they would not occur. Whether they are labeled “religious” or “mental illness,” or whether an extra-world agent or spirit was involved, is left for others to discuss. There is a gap in their analysis, however: They refer to beliefs (religious, delusional, evidence-based), but do not adequately clarify the processes from which they spring or what believing is even for. The present article completes the picture by explaining the fundamental processes of believing that underpin all they say, and more. The keyword for the processes of believing is the term credition, a neologistic variant of credible or believable. This article elaborates how believing processes make possible religious, esoteric, and logical and evidence-based beliefs; where they come from and how they are constructed: and what they are good for, i.e., why humans do what is called believing at all.
{"title":"Processes of Believing, Mental Abnormalities, and Other Matters of the Mind","authors":"R. Seitz, H. Angel, R. Paloutzian","doi":"10.1558/jcsr.19559","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/jcsr.19559","url":null,"abstract":"Two categories of mental events – ecstatic or indescribable religious revelations and bizarre beliefs or behavior with related mental abnormalities – have been compared and contrasted in order to understand whether they are manifestations of different basic neural and psychological processes, or fundamentally the same. In popular terms, such comparisons point to the issue of the relationship between being religious and being mentally ill. McCauley and Graham (2020) have argued for a benign “maturational naturalism” (MN) as an over-arching concept to subsume and understand the two approaches. MN rests on the assumption that for purposes of understanding the processes that mediate any “matters of the mind,” it makes no difference whether they are labeled religious or not. All must be functions of maturationally natural processes, or else they would not occur. Whether they are labeled “religious” or “mental illness,” or whether an extra-world agent or spirit was involved, is left for others to discuss. There is a gap in their analysis, however: They refer to beliefs (religious, delusional, evidence-based), but do not adequately clarify the processes from which they spring or what believing is even for. The present article completes the picture by explaining the fundamental processes of believing that underpin all they say, and more. The keyword for the processes of believing is the term credition, a neologistic variant of credible or believable. This article elaborates how believing processes make possible religious, esoteric, and logical and evidence-based beliefs; where they come from and how they are constructed: and what they are good for, i.e., why humans do what is called believing at all.","PeriodicalId":29718,"journal":{"name":"Journal for the Cognitive Science of Religion","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-08-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44123824","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In this commentary of McCauley and Graham’s book on mental abnormalities and religions, we identify a number of challenges, and present possible extensions of their proposed research. Specifically, we argue that no specialized religious cognition should be assumed, and instead suggest that the cases of mental abnormalities discussed in the book specify particular instances of religious content, and that other disorders may show a more causal relationship to religiosity. We argue that the discussed religious content may be best explained in the context of cultural frameworks and their contribution to experiencing the world through priors and predictive processing. Moreover, cognition required to understand and engage with religion, but not special to it, might crucially involve our capacity for imagination, supported by memory. Disorders in imagination are therefore expected to show likewise dysfunctions in religious phenomena.
{"title":"Religious Experiences Are Interpreted through Priors from Cultural Frameworks Supported by Imaginative Capacity Rather Than Special Cognition","authors":"V. van Mulukom, M. Lang","doi":"10.1558/jcsr.19803","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/jcsr.19803","url":null,"abstract":"In this commentary of McCauley and Graham’s book on mental abnormalities and religions, we identify a number of challenges, and present possible extensions of their proposed research. Specifically, we argue that no specialized religious cognition should be assumed, and instead suggest that the cases of mental abnormalities discussed in the book specify particular instances of religious content, and that other disorders may show a more causal relationship to religiosity. We argue that the discussed religious content may be best explained in the context of cultural frameworks and their contribution to experiencing the world through priors and predictive processing. Moreover, cognition required to understand and engage with religion, but not special to it, might crucially involve our capacity for imagination, supported by memory. Disorders in imagination are therefore expected to show likewise dysfunctions in religious phenomena.","PeriodicalId":29718,"journal":{"name":"Journal for the Cognitive Science of Religion","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-08-03","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49581149","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
In addition to a set of beliefs, religion is fundamentally a corporeal practice. Across religions, specific postures adopted for prayer and worship may not simply reflect arbitrary customs but are closely intertwined with religious experience. This contribution reviews embodiment theory and related empirical evidence showing how body postures influence our emotions, thoughts, and decision-making. We propose a typology of postures adopted in religious practices along the dimensions of expansiveness-constrictiveness and upward-downward body orientation, and review the corpus of published/unpublished research on the embodiment of worship. We further discuss that in addition to enabling the experiential and ritualistic aspect of religion, embodiment serves at least four functions: communicative, social, cognitive, and intrapersonal. Finally, we suggest contextual and individual differences variables that may constrain the choice and psychological consequences of postures within and outside religious contexts. Together, we emphasize that the locus of religion’s psycho-social “effects” is not only in the mind or the brain but in the full body.
{"title":"Embodiment of Worship","authors":"Patty Van Cappellen, M. Edwards","doi":"10.1558/jcsr.38683","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/jcsr.38683","url":null,"abstract":"In addition to a set of beliefs, religion is fundamentally a corporeal practice. Across religions, specific postures adopted for prayer and worship may not simply reflect arbitrary customs but are closely intertwined with religious experience. This contribution reviews embodiment theory and related empirical evidence showing how body postures influence our emotions, thoughts, and decision-making. We propose a typology of postures adopted in religious practices along the dimensions of expansiveness-constrictiveness and upward-downward body orientation, and review the corpus of published/unpublished research on the embodiment of worship. We further discuss that in addition to enabling the experiential and ritualistic aspect of religion, embodiment serves at least four functions: communicative, social, cognitive, and intrapersonal. Finally, we suggest contextual and individual differences variables that may constrain the choice and psychological consequences of postures within and outside religious contexts. Together, we emphasize that the locus of religion’s psycho-social “effects” is not only in the mind or the brain but in the full body.","PeriodicalId":29718,"journal":{"name":"Journal for the Cognitive Science of Religion","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-02-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49087035","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Methodology in the Cognitive Science of Religion","authors":"A. Geertz, K. Nielbo, V. van Mulukom","doi":"10.1558/jcsr.42613","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/jcsr.42613","url":null,"abstract":"<jats:p>.</jats:p>","PeriodicalId":29718,"journal":{"name":"Journal for the Cognitive Science of Religion","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2021-02-06","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"41652574","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Religion is viewed as necessary for moral behaviour in many parts of the world. Today, however, many societies are becoming more secular and the view of atheists as immoral might therefore change. This study investigated anti-atheist and anti-religious bias in Sweden, by replicating Gervais et al. (2017). The study used an online version of the conjunction fallacy test, which investigates whether a description, in this case of extremely immoral behaviour, is viewed as representative of a category or group. In this study we chose atheists and religious believers as targets. The sample consisted of 268 Swedish participants. The results showed no significant difference between conditions. However, the anti-atheist bias was lower than in the original American sample from the replicated study, while the anti-religious bias was higher. Further research can investigate differences between cultures, using the conjunction fallacy test.
{"title":"Bias against Atheists and Religious Persons in Sweden","authors":"Nathalie Hallin, D. Västfjäll, G. Andersson","doi":"10.1558/jcsr.41002","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/jcsr.41002","url":null,"abstract":"Religion is viewed as necessary for moral behaviour in many parts of the world. Today, however, many societies are becoming more secular and the view of atheists as immoral might therefore change. This study investigated anti-atheist and anti-religious bias in Sweden, by replicating Gervais et al. (2017). The study used an online version of the conjunction fallacy test, which investigates whether a description, in this case of extremely immoral behaviour, is viewed as representative of a category or group. In this study we chose atheists and religious believers as targets. The sample consisted of 268 Swedish participants. The results showed no significant difference between conditions. However, the anti-atheist bias was lower than in the original American sample from the replicated study, while the anti-religious bias was higher. Further research can investigate differences between cultures, using the conjunction fallacy test.","PeriodicalId":29718,"journal":{"name":"Journal for the Cognitive Science of Religion","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-12-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47159329","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This article utilizes a cognitive science of religion framework in approaching the cultural phenomena of relics from the prophet Muhammad in Islamic tradition. The basic arguments are that a contagion aspiration system that underlies the phenomenon of relics in general could hypothetically be construed as an evolutionary exaptation of a contagion avoidance system within a framework of social learning, and that the specific phenomenon of relics can be seen as a by-product of this exaptation. This explanatory model is used to make sense of two specific complexes of beliefs and practices: (1) the notion that physical contact with prophetic relics results in transfer substance, baraka, with this-worldly beneficial effect, and (2) the fact that prophetic relics throughout history has been used by political and religious dignitaries as a means to boost social prestige and authority.
{"title":"Contagious Muhammad","authors":"Jonas Svensson","doi":"10.1558/jcsr.40987","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1558/jcsr.40987","url":null,"abstract":"This article utilizes a cognitive science of religion framework in approaching the cultural phenomena of relics from the prophet Muhammad in Islamic tradition. The basic arguments are that a contagion aspiration system that underlies the phenomenon of relics in general could hypothetically be construed as an evolutionary exaptation of a contagion avoidance system within a framework of social learning, and that the specific phenomenon of relics can be seen as a by-product of this exaptation. This explanatory model is used to make sense of two specific complexes of beliefs and practices: (1) the notion that physical contact with prophetic relics results in transfer substance, baraka, with this-worldly beneficial effect, and (2) the fact that prophetic relics throughout history has been used by political and religious dignitaries as a means to boost social prestige and authority.","PeriodicalId":29718,"journal":{"name":"Journal for the Cognitive Science of Religion","volume":" ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2020-12-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"44237843","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
京公网安备 11010802042870号
京ICP备2023020795号-1
扫码关注我们
求助内容：
应助结果提醒方式：