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Faces in the Clouds: A New Theory of Religion

New York and Oxford: Oup Usa (1993)

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  1. Gilles Deleuze and the Atheist Machine: The Achievement of Philosophy.F. LeRon Shults - 2024 - Edinburgh University Press.
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  • Bridging Belief and Social Practice: Connecting the Participatory Dimension of Religious Belief to an Account of Socially Extended Mind.Liam Luckett - 2023 - Dissertation, University of Exeter
    The theory of extended mind has been applied by some to the study of religious cognition. Past efforts have mainly centered around how material culture, like bibles and rosaries, functions in the perspective of extended cognition. In the present paper, I shift focus to unite these works with research on socially extended mind and participatory theory and discuss the additional role of living and nonmaterial culture, including cultural norms, customs, institutions, social ritual, and social others in capturing a full-bodied view (...)
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  • (1 other version)Why Cognitive Science of Religion Matters for Christian Theology and Philosophy : An Overview.Lari Launonen - 2021 - Philosophy, Theology, and the Sciences 8 (2):209-223.
    Cognitive science of religion (CSR) raises a number of issues that are of interest to theologians and philosophers of religion. The latter have focused primarily on the epistemological implications of CSR, that is, whether science shows religious belief to be irrational or unjustified. Another broad question is whether CSR is compatible with theism and Christian theology. Theological doctrines, such as Calvin’s views about sensus divinitatis and the noetic effects of sin, play an important part in these conversations. Less attention has (...)
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  • Animisms: Practical Indigenous Philosophies.Johan De Smedt & Helen De Cruz - 2022 - In Tiddy Smith (ed.), Animism and Philosophy of Religion. Springer Verlag. pp. 95-122.
    In this chapter, we focus on animism and how it is studied in the cognitive science of religion and cultural anthropology. We argue that philosophers of religion still use (outdated) normative notions from early scientific studies of religion that go back at least a century and that have since been abandoned in other disciplines. Our argument is programmatic: we call for an expansion of philosophy of religion in order to include traditions that are currently underrepresented. The failure of philosophy of (...)
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  • Wittgenstein and the Cognitive Science of Religion: Interpreting Human Nature and the Mind.Robert Vinten (ed.) - 2023 - London: Bloomsbury Academic.
    Advancing our understanding of one of the most influential 20th-century philosophers, Robert Vinten brings together an international line up of scholars to consider the relevance of Ludwig Wittgenstein's ideas to the cognitive science of religion. Wittgenstein's claims ranged from the rejection of the idea that psychology is a 'young science' in comparison to physics to challenges to scientistic and intellectualist accounts of religion in the work of past anthropologists. Chapters explore whether these remarks about psychology and religion undermine the frameworks (...)
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  • Can I Feel Your Pain? The Biological and Socio-Cognitive Factors Shaping People’s Empathy with Social Robots.Joanna Karolina Malinowska - 2022 - International Journal of Social Robotics 14 (2):341–355.
    This paper discuss the phenomenon of empathy in social robotics and is divided into three main parts. Initially, I analyse whether it is correct to use this concept to study and describe people’s reactions to robots. I present arguments in favour of the position that people actually do empathise with robots. I also consider what circumstances shape human empathy with these entities. I propose that two basic classes of such factors be distinguished: biological and socio-cognitive. In my opinion, one of (...)
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  • (1 other version)The cross-cultural study of mind and behaviour: a word of caution.Carles Salazar - 2022 - Review of Philosophy and Psychology (2):1-18.
    Nobody doubts that culture plays a decisive role in understanding human forms of life. But it is unclear how this decisive role should be integrated into a comprehensive explanatory model of human behaviour that brings together naturalistic and social-scientific perspectives. Cultural difference, cultural learning, cultural determination do not mix well with the factors that are normally given full explanatory value in the more naturalistic approaches to the study of human behaviour. My purpose in this paper is to alert to some (...)
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  • Cognitive Regeneration and the Noetic Effects of Sin: Why Theology and Cognitive Science May not be Compatible.Lari Launonen - 2021 - European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 13 (3).
    Justin Barrett and Kelly James Clark have suggested that cognitive science of religion supports the existence of a god-faculty akin to sensus divinitatis. They propose that God may have given rise to the god-faculty via guided evolution. This suggestion raises two theological worries. First, our natural cognition seems to favor false god-beliefs over true ones. Second, it also makes us prone to tribalism. If God hates idolatry and moral evil, why would he give rise to mind with such biases? A (...)
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  • Fictional Characters and Their Discontents: Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics of Fictional Entities.Shamik Chakravarty - 2021 - Dissertation, Lingnan University
    In recent metaphysics, the questions of whether fictional entities exist, what their nature is, and how to explain truths of statements such as “Sherlock Holmes lives at 221B Baker Street” and “Holmes was created by Arthur Conan Doyle” have been subject to much debate. The main aim of my thesis is to wrestle with key proponents of the abstractionist view that fictional entities are abstract objects that exist (van Inwagen 1977, 2018, Thomasson 1999 and Salmon 1998) as well as Walton’s (...)
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  • Cast in a Bad Light or Reflected in a Dark Mirror? Cognitive Science and the Projecting Mind.Daniel Kelly - 2018 - In N. Strohminger and V. Kumar (ed.), The Moral Psychology of Disgust. pp. 171-194.
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  • Security, Local Community, and the Democratic Political Culture in Africa.Krzysztof Trzcinski - 2021 - In Olajumoke Yacob-Haliso Adeshina Afolayan (ed.), Pathways to Alternative Epistemologies in Africa. Springer Verlag. pp. 111-122.
    In this study, the idea of the local African community as a social structure ensuring the security of its members is presented. An understanding of the concept of security is first briefly discussed, followed by the meaning of the concept of the local African community. The chapter also makes an a priori distinction between what one can call “moderate” and “radical” types of communal life and two case studies exemplifying them are presented. The chapter aims to analyze the trade off, (...)
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  • Machine.Thomas Patrick Pringle, Bernard Stiegler & Gertrud Koch - 2018 - Minneapolis: Minnesota University Press and Meson Press.
    In today’s society of humans and machines, automation, animation, and ecosystems are terms of concern. Categories of life and technology have become mixed in governmental policies and drive economic exploitation and the pathologies of everyday life. This book both curiously and critically advances the term that underlies these new developments: machine.
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  • The ‘sentient’ city and what it may portend.Nigel Thrift - 2014 - Big Data and Society 1 (1).
    The claim is frequently made that, as cities become loaded up with information and communications technology and a resultant profusion of data, so they are becoming sentient. But what might this mean? This paper offers some insights into this claim by, first of all, reworking the notion of the social as a spatial complex of ‘outstincts’. That makes it possible, secondly, to reconsider what a city which is aware of itself might look like, both by examining what kinds of technological (...)
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  • Existential anxiety and religiosity.Frederic Peters - 2019 - Critical Research on Religion 7 (3):275-291.
    Analysis of the psychological processes involved in generating the sense of supernatural agency, as well as social scientific research into the factors most directly associated with the prevalence of religious belief and practice, both support a common finding: the direct correlation between levels of existential anxiety and the prevalence and intensity of religiosity. All functional elements of religion involve efforts to invoke, activate, and deploy supernatural causal agency of one sort or another. But religiosity varies throughout the world. This paper (...)
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  • Medical conspiracy theories: cognitive science and implications for ethics.Gabriel Andrade - 2020 - Medicine, Health Care and Philosophy 23 (3):505-518.
    Although recent trends in politics and media make it appear that conspiracy theories are on the rise, in fact they have always been present, probably because they are sustained by natural dispositions of the human brain. This is also the case with medical conspiracy theories. This article reviews some of the most notorious health-related conspiracy theories. It then approaches the reasons why people believe these theories, using concepts from cognitive science. On the basis of that knowledge, the article makes normative (...)
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  • Supernatural punishment and individual social compliance across cultures.Pierrick Bourrat, Quentin Atkinson & Robin Dunbar - 2011 - Religion, Brain and Behavior 1 (2):119-134.
    Cooperation for the public good is vulnerable to exploitation by free-riders because it always pays individuals to exploit the social contract for their own benefit. This problem can be resolved if free-riders are punished, but punishment is itself a public good subject to free-riding. The fear of supernatural punishment hypothesis (FSPH) proposes that belief in supernatural punishment might offer a solution to this problem by deflecting the cost of punishment onto supernatural forces and thereby incentivizing cooperation. FSPH is supported empirically (...)
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  • The doctrine of the intelligent design from the point of view of the cognitive science of religion.Wojciech Piotr Grygiel - 2020 - Scientia et Fides 8 (1):165-181.
    The doctrine of the Intelligent Design offers an intuitive explanation of why the ordering in the Universe is authored by an intentional agency. Due to its appeal to common-sense perception, this doctrine is endorsed even by scientifically literate circles despite of its obvious contradiction with the discoveries of science. In this article, an attempt to apply the tools of the cognitive science of religion to the appraisal of the methodological and epistemic status of the ID doctrine is presented. It is (...)
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  • The Challenge of Evolution to Religion.Johan De Smedt & Helen De Cruz - 2020 - Cambridge University Press.
    This Element focuses on three challenges of evolution to religion: teleology, human origins, and the evolution of religion itself. First, religious worldviews tend to presuppose a teleological understanding of the origins of living things, but scientists mostly understand evolution as non-teleological. Second, religious and scientific accounts of human origins do not align in a straightforward sense. Third, evolutionary explanations of religion, including religious beliefs and practices, may cast doubt on their justification. We show how these tensions arise and offer potential (...)
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  • Origins and evolution of religion from a Darwinian point of view: synthesis of different theories.Pierrick Bourrat - 2014 - In Thomas Heams, Philippe Huneman, Guillaume Lecointre & Marc Silberstein (eds.), Handbook of Evolutionary Thinking in the Sciences. Springer. pp. 761-779.
    The religious phenomenon is a complex one in many respects. In recent years an increasing number of theories on the origin and evolution of religion have been put forward. Each one of these theories rests on a Darwinian framework but there is a lot of disagreement about which bits of the framework account best for the evolution of religion. Is religion primarily a by-product of some adaptation? Is it itself an adaptation, and if it is, does it benefi ciate individuals (...)
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  • the cultural evolution of institutional religions.Michael Vlerick - forthcoming - Religion, Brain and Behavior.
    In recent work, Atran, Henrich, Norenzayan and colleagues developed an account of religion that reconciles insights from the ‘by-product’ accounts and the adaptive accounts. According to their synthesis, the process of cultural group selection driven by group competition has recruited our proclivity to adopt and spread religious beliefs and engage in religious practices to increase within group solidarity, harmony and cooperation. While their account has much merit, I believe it only tells us half the story of how institutional religions have (...)
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  • On the dispensability of grounding: Ground-breaking work on metaphysical explanation.James Norton - 2017 - Dissertation, The University of Sydney
    Primitive, unanalysable grounding relations are considered by many to be indispensable constituents of the metaphysician’s toolkit. Yet, as a primitive ontological posit, grounding must earn its keep by explaining features of the world not explained by other tools already at our disposal. Those who defend grounding contend that grounding is required to play two interconnected roles: accounting for widespread intuitions regarding what is ontologically prior to what, and forming the backbone of a theory of metaphysical explanation, in much the same (...)
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  • Near-Death Experiences are Not Evidence for Either Atheism or Theism.Keith Augustine - 2019 - In Graham Oppy & Joseph W. Koterski (eds.), Theism and Atheism: Opposing Viewpoints in Philosophy. Farmington Hills: MacMillan Reference. pp. 594-596.
    The failure to secure replicable positive results in near-death experience (NDE) target-identification experiments does not establish the nonexistence of any spiritual realms, but it does serve to substantially challenge positive arguments in favor of the existence of spiritual realms from NDE reports. For if veridical paranormal perception occurs during out-of-body experiences (OBEs) or NDEs, why the failure to find it in all of the controlled experiments that have been undertaken to document it thus far? Various explanations can be put forward, (...)
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  • Panpsychism, intuitions, and the great chain of being.Luke Roelofs & Jed Buchanan - 2019 - Philosophical Studies 176 (11):2991-3017.
    Some philosophical theories of consciousness imply consciousness in things we would never intuitively think are conscious—most notably, panpsychism implies that consciousness is pervasive, even outside complex brains. Is this a reductio ab absurdum for such theories, or does it show that we should reject our original intuitions? To understand the stakes of this question as clearly as possible, we analyse the structured pattern of intuitions that panpsychism conflicts with. We consider a variety of ways that the tension between this intuition (...)
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  • The Faith Frame: Or, Belief is Easy, Faith is Hard.T. M. Luhrmann - 2018 - Contemporary Pragmatism 15 (3):302-318.
    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 (...)
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  • Dimensional Structure of and Variation in Anthropomorphic Concepts of God.Nicholas J. Shaman, Anondah R. Saide & Rebekah A. Richert - 2018 - Frontiers in Psychology 9:388081.
    When considering other persons, the human mind draws from folk theories of biology, physics, and psychology. Studies have examined the extent to which people utilize these folk theories in inferring whether or not God has human-like biological, physical, and psychological constraints. However, few studies have examined the way in which these folk attributions relate to each other, the extent to which attributions within a domain are consistent, or whether cultural factors influence human-like attributions within and across domains. The present study (...)
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  • The Role of Control in Attributing Intentional Agency to Inanimate Objects.Justin Barrett & Amanda Hankes Johnson - 2003 - Journal of Cognition and Culture 3 (3):208-217.
    Previous research into the perception of agency has found that objects in twodimensional displays that move along non-inertial-looking paths are frequently attributed intentional agency, including beliefs and desires. The present experiment re-addressed this finding using a tangible, interactive, electromagnetic puzzle. The experimental manipulation was whether or not participants controlled the electromagnet that moved the marbles along unexpected trajectories. Thirty-one college undergraduates participated. Participants who lacked control over the movement of the marbles were significantly more likely to attribute agency to the (...)
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  • Theistic Percepts in Other Species: Can Chimpanzees Represent the Minds of Non-Natural Agents?Jesse Bering - 2001 - Journal of Cognition and Culture 1 (2):107-137.
    The present theoretical article addresses the empirical question of whether other species, particularly chimpanzees, have the cognitive substrate necessary for experiencing theistic and otherwise non-natural percepts. The primary representational device presumed to underlie religious cognition was viewed as, in general, the capacity to attribute unobservable causal mechanisms to ostensible output and, in particular, a theory of mind. Drawing from a catalogue of behaviors that may be considered diagnostic of the secondary representations involved in theory of mind, important dissimilarities between humans (...)
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  • Religious Disagreement.Helen De Cruz - 2018 - Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
    This Element examines what we can learn from religious disagreement, focusing on disagreement with possible selves and former selves, the epistemic significance of religious agreement, the problem of disagreements between religious experts, and the significance of philosophy of religion. Helen De Cruz shows how religious beliefs of others constitute significant higher-order evidence. At the same time, she advises that we should not necessarily become agnostic about all religious matters, because our cognitive background colors the way we evaluate evidence. This allows (...)
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  • Spirit Beliefs Debunked?Hans Van Eyghen - 2018 - Science, Religion and Culture 5 (1):73-82.
    I discuss and criticize an argument for the conclusion that belief in spirits is unreliably formed and hence unjustified. The argument is based on three scientific explanations for spirit-beliefs; hyperactive agency detection device, infrasound, and magnetic stimulation of the temporal lobe. I argue that the argument fails because the explanations are of too limited scope.
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  • (1 other version)Rationality: Constraints and Contexts.Timothy Joseph Lane & Tzu-Wei Hung (eds.) - 2016 - London, U.K.: Elsevier Academic Press.
    "Rationality: Contexts and Constraints" is an interdisciplinary reappraisal of the nature of rationality. In method, it is pluralistic, drawing upon the analytic approaches of philosophy, linguistics, neuroscience, and more. These methods guide exploration of the intersection between traditional scholarship and cutting-edge philosophical or scientific research. In this way, the book contributes to development of a suitably revised, comprehensive understanding of rationality, one that befits the 21st century, one that is adequately informed by recent investigations of science, pathology, non-human thought, emotion, (...)
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  • Reforming reformed epistemology: a new take on the sensus divinitatis.Blake Mcallister & Trent Dougherty - 2019 - Religious Studies 55 (4):537-557.
    Alvin Plantinga theorizes the existence of a sensus divinitatis – a special cognitive faulty or mechanism dedicated to the production and non-inferential justification of theistic belief. Following Chris Tucker, we offer an evidentialist-friendly model of the sensus divinitatis whereon it produces theistic seemings that non-inferentially justify theistic belief. We suggest that the sensus divinitatis produces these seemings by tacitly grasping support relations between the content of ordinary experiences (in conjunction with our background evidence) and propositions about God. Our model offers (...)
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  • Anthropomorphism in Human–Robot Co-evolution.Luisa Damiano & Paul Dumouchel - 2018 - Frontiers in Psychology 9:468.
    Social robotics entertains a particular relationship with anthropomorphism, which it neither sees as a cognitive error, nor as a sign of immaturity. Rather it considers that this common human tendency, which is hypothesized to have evolved because it favored cooperation among early humans, can be used today to facilitate social interactions between humans and a new type of cooperative and interactive agents - social robots. This approach leads social robotics to focus research on the engineering of robots that activate anthropomorphic (...)
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  • Believing is Seeing: A Perspective on Perceiving Images of Objects on the Shroud of Turin.Mercedes Sheen & Timothy R. Jordan - 2016 - Archive for the Psychology of Religion 38 (2):232-251.
    For many years, the Shroud of Turin has been famous for images of a body and face which many believe were formed during The Resurrection. More recently, however, claims have been made that the Shroud also contains evidence of other objects, and these claims have been used to support the view that the Shroud is the burial cloth of Jesus. However, these claims are based on marks that are barely visible and the psychological processes known to be involved in perceiving (...)
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  • Seeking the Supernatural: The Interactive Religious Experience Model.Neil Van Leeuwen & Michiel van Elk - 2019 - Religion, Brain and Behavior 9 (3):221-275.
    [OPEN ACCESS TARGET ARTICLE WITH COMMENTARIES AND RESPONSE] We develop a new model of how human agency-detection capacities and other socio-cognitive biases are involved in forming religious beliefs. Crucially, we distinguish general religious beliefs (such as *God exists*) from personal religious beliefs that directly refer to the agent holding the belief or to her peripersonal time and space (such as *God appeared to _me_ last night*). On our model, people acquire general religious beliefs mostly from their surrounding culture; however, people (...)
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  • Intuitions and Arguments: Cognitive Foundations of Argumentation in Natural Theology.Helen De Cruz & Johan De Smedt - 2017 - European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 9 (2):57-82.
    This paper examines the cognitive foundations of natural theology: the intuitions that provide the raw materials for religious arguments, and the social context in which they are defended or challenged. We show that the premises on which natural theological arguments are based rely on intuitions that emerge early in development, and that underlie our expectations for everyday situations, e.g., about how causation works, or how design is recognized. In spite of the universality of these intuitions, the cogency of natural theological (...)
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  • Mysticism and Mind: Using Cognitive Science to Explore Religious Experience.Ryan G. Hornbeck & Robert E. Sears - 2015 - European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 7 (2):59--80.
    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 (...)
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  • What Cognitive Science of Religion Can Learn from John Dewey.Hans Van Eyghen - 2018 - Contemporary Pragmatism 15 (3):387-406.
    Cognitive science of religion is a fairly young discipline with the aim of studying the cognitive basis of religious belief. Despite the great variation in theories a number of common features can be distilled and most theories can be situated in the cognitivist and modular paradigm. In this paper, I investigate how cognitive science of religion (CSR) can be made better by insights from John Dewey. I chose Dewey because he offered important insights in cognition long before there was cognitive (...)
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  • The Natural Foundations of Religion.Mark Collier - 2013 - Philosophical Psychology 27 (5):665-680.
    In the Natural history of religion, Hume attempts to understand the origin of our folk belief in gods and spirits. These investigations are not, however, purely descriptive. Hume demonstrates that ontological commitment to supernatural agents depends on motivated reasoning and illusions of control. These beliefs cannot, then, be reflectively endorsed. This proposal must be taken seriously because it receives support from recent work on our psychological responses to uncertainty. It also compares quite favorably with its main competitors in the cognitive (...)
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  • Grounding: it’s (probably) all in the head.Kristie Miller & James Norton - 2017 - Philosophical Studies 174 (12):3059-3081.
    In this paper we provide a psychological explanation for ‘grounding observations’—observations that are thought to provide evidence that there exists a relation of ground. Our explanation does not appeal to the presence of any such relation. Instead, it appeals to certain evolved cognitive mechanisms, along with the traditional modal relations of supervenience, necessitation and entailment. We then consider what, if any, metaphysical conclusions we can draw from the obtaining of such an explanation, and, in particular, if it tells us anything (...)
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  • Do religious “beliefs” respond to evidence?Neil Van Leeuwen - 2017 - Philosophical Explorations 20 (sup1):52-72.
    Some examples suggest that religious credences respond to evidence. Other examples suggest they are wildly unresponsive. So the examples taken together suggest there is a puzzle about whether descriptive religious attitudes respond to evidence or not. I argue for a solution to this puzzle according to which religious credences are characteristically not responsive to evidence; that is, they do not tend to be extinguished by contrary evidence. And when they appear to be responsive, it is because the agents with those (...)
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  • Religious Cognition as Social Cognition.Hans Van Eyghen - 2015 - Studia Religiologica 48 (4):301-312.
    In this paper, I examine the relationship between social cognition and religious cognition. Many cognitive theories of religion claim that these two forms are somehow related, but the details are usually left unexplored and insights from theories of social cognition are not taken on board. I discuss the three main (groups of) theories of social cognition, namely the theory-theory, the simulation theory and enactivist theories. Secondly, I explore how these theories can help to enrich a number of cognitive theories of (...)
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  • With God on our side: Religious primes reduce the envisioned physical formidability of a menacing adversary.Colin Holbrook, Daniel M. T. Fessler & Jeremy Pollack - 2016 - Cognition 146 (C):387-392.
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  • (1 other version)Assessing Lives, Giving Supernaturalism Its Due, and Capturing Naturalism: Reply to 13 Critics of Meaning in Life (repr.).Thaddeus Metz - 2015 - In Masahiro Morioka (ed.), Reconsidering Meaning in Life: A Philosophical Dialogue with Thaddeus Metz. Journal of Philosophy of Life, Waseda University. pp. 228-278.
    A lengthy reply to 13 critical discussions of _Meaning in Life: An Analytic Study_ collected in an e-book and reprinted from the _Journal of Philosophy of Life_. The contributors are from a variety of philosophical traditions, including the Anglo-American, Continental and East Asian (especially Buddhist and Japanese) ones.
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  • An introduction to evolutionary psychology and its application to suicide terrorism.James R. Liddle, Lance S. Bush & Todd K. Shackelford - 2011 - Behavioral Sciences of Terrorism and Political Aggression 3:176-197.
    This article introduces evolutionary psychology to a general readership, with the purpose of applying evolutionary psychology to suicide terrorism. Some of the key concepts related to evolutionary psychology are discussed, as well as several misconceptions associated with this approach to psychology. We argue that one of the primary, but insufficient, motivating factors for suicide terrorism is strong religious belief. Evolutionary psychological theories related to religious belief, and supporting empirical work, are described, laying a foundation for examining suicide terrorism. Several promising (...)
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  • Dead as a Doornail: Souls, Brains, and Survival.Matt McCormick - 2015 - In Keith Augustine & Michael Martin (eds.), The Myth of an Afterlife: The Case against Life After Death. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. pp. 53-67.
    There is a strong probabilistic case that human cognitive abilities, memories, personalities, thoughts, emotions, conscious awareness, and self-awareness are dependent upon the brain to occur/exist and thus cannot survive the death of the brain. This paper a broad overview of the general lines of evidence that even the highest mental functions are produced by brain activity, evidence that does not sit well with the notion of any sort of soul or ethereal double that can function completely independently of the brain. (...)
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  • How Children and Adults Represent God's Mind.Larisa Heiphetz, Jonathan D. Lane, Adam Waytz & Liane L. Young - 2016 - Cognitive Science 40 (1):121-144.
    For centuries, humans have contemplated the minds of gods. Research on religious cognition is spread across sub-disciplines, making it difficult to gain a complete understanding of how people reason about gods' minds. We integrate approaches from cognitive, developmental, and social psychology and neuroscience to illuminate the origins of religious cognition. First, we show that although adults explicitly discriminate supernatural minds from human minds, their implicit responses reveal far less discrimination. Next, we demonstrate that children's religious cognition often matches adults' implicit (...)
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  • What Goes Around Comes Around: The Evolutionary Roots of the Belief in Immanent Justice.Nicolas Baumard & Coralie Chevallier - 2012 - Journal of Cognition and Culture 12 (1-2):67-80.
    The belief in immanent justice is the expectation that the universe is designed to ensure that evil is punished and virtue rewarded. What makes this belief so ‘natural’? Here, we suggest that this intuition of immanent justice derives from our evolved sense of fairness. In cases where a misdeed is followed by a misfortune, our sense of fairness construes the misfortune as a way to compensate for the misdeed. To test this hypothesis, we designed a set of studies in which (...)
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  • What makes weird beliefs thrive? The epidemiology of pseudoscience.Maarten Boudry, Stefaan Blancke & Massimo Pigliucci - 2015 - Philosophical Psychology 28 (8):1177-1198.
    What makes beliefs thrive? In this paper, we model the dissemination of bona fide science versus pseudoscience, making use of Dan Sperber's epidemiological model of representations. Drawing on cognitive research on the roots of irrational beliefs and the institutional arrangement of science, we explain the dissemination of beliefs in terms of their salience to human cognition and their ability to adapt to specific cultural ecologies. By contrasting the cultural development of science and pseudoscience along a number of dimensions, we gain (...)
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  • Persistence through function preservation.David Rose - 2015 - Synthese 192 (1):97-146.
    When do the folk think that material objects persist? Many metaphysicians have wanted a view which fits with folk intuitions, yet there is little agreement about what the folk intuit. I provide a range of empirical evidence which suggests that the folk operate with a teleological view of persistence: the folk tend to intuit that a material object survives alterations when its function is preserved. Given that the folk operate with a teleological view of persistence, I argue for a debunking (...)
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  • Evolved to be irrational?: evolutionary and cognitive foundations of pseudosciences.Stefaan Blancke & Johan De Smedt - 2013 - In Massimo Pigliucci & Maarten Boudry (eds.), Philosophy of Pseudoscience: Reconsidering the Demarcation Problem. University of Chicago Press.
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