Membership of an extensive social network is imperative for human survival. However, maintaining network cohesion is particularly challenging for hunter–gatherers because they are dispersed over large home ranges and need to keep track of absent social partners for extended periods. The archaeological record suggests that compared to Neanderthals, contemporary modern humans maintained social ties between greater numbers of individuals over greater distances. I argue that such differences would have influenced neural development, driving differences in brain structure and the degree of (...) social complexity that each taxon could sustain cognitively. Following recent suggestions that modern humans’ larger parietals might suggest an enhanced ability to create a ‘virtual inner world’, I hypothesise that this capacity allowed them to monitor larger numbers of absent social partners and thus maintain larger dispersed social networks than their Neanderthal counterparts. Larger social networks would have boosted the ability of modern humans to insure against local resource failure, sustain demographic stability and conserve cultural innovations. (shrink)

This article examines ‘collective feelings’ by considering how ‘others’ create impressions on the surfaces of bodies. Rather than considering ‘collective feeling’ as ‘fellow feeling’ or in terms of feeling ‘for’ the collective, the article suggests that how we respond to others in intercorporeal encounters creates the impression of a collective body. In other words, how we feel about others is what aligns us with a collective, which paradoxically ‘takes shape’ only as an effect of such alignments. The article considers different (...) examples of racism in which a particular other is held in place by being aligned with other others. The ‘moment of contact’ is shaped by past histories of contact, which allows the proximity of a racial other to be perceived as threatening, at the same time as it re-shapes the bodies in the contact zone of the encounter. Feelings rehearse associations that are already in place, in the way in which they ‘read’ the proximity of others, at the same time as they establish the ‘truth’ of the reading. The article extends its analysis by showing that bodily proximity is not required to create the impressions of others, and offers an analysis of ‘collective feelings’ within virtual communities of global nomads. Proximity does not require physical co-presence: the collective can ‘surface’ through giving up on local attachments (where the screen becomes a substitute for the skin). The article concludes that collective feelings are not feelings that the collective ‘has’, as if the collective was a subject. Rather the collective is an effect of the impressions left by others on the surfaces of skins. (shrink)

Human existence is intrinsically community-oriented. Persons find themselves as responsible in community. This is a classical and Christian insight that is supported by significant contemporary philosophers such as Gabriel Marcel and Emmanuel Levinas. This article makes the claim that to thrive as a person is to belong; indeed, that it is the experience of belonging that satisfies the human need for meaning, value, and purpose. The article proceeds by considering the term ‘community.’ In itself, ‘community’ is a common sense term. (...) However, it is also a symbol with dimensions of meaning beyond common sense implicit within it. For the sake of a richer understanding of belonging, this article proposes to discuss some of those dimensions under three headings: Dynamism; Communion; and Consummation. ‘Dynamism’ relates to the members of a community whose mutual participation constitutes the characteristics of that community. ‘Communion’ considers the emergence of genuine community, as opposed to general association, from the prior mutual will to accommodate the Other in the self. ‘Consummation’ considers the significance of communion as both the goal and fulfilment of each person and community. Put another way, consummation is the perfection of belonging. (shrink)

Humans are highly responsive to social partners. Either consciously or unconsciously, humans adjust one’s own behavior to match with those of others. Moreover, humans can predict others’ intention or desire and often behave in a prosocial way to help themselves. A comparative approach is one of the powerful tools to understand the evolutionary origins of these social behaviors in humans, including emotional contagion, sympathetic concern, perspective-taking and targeted helping behaviors, and its relationship to each other. Among these social behaviors, an (...) ability for the coordinated movements with others has been postulated as the most essential to the other social behaviors. Interpersonal coordination includes two types of behavior: mimicry and interactional synchrony. Mimicry is matching a type of the behavior, such as body postures or facial expressions. In contrast, interactional synchrony is matching the timing of behavior. Relative to the studies on mimicry, there are few studies on interactional synchrony in non-human primate species possibly due to the difficulties in establishing a methodology. In this chapter, we present gradually the increasing number of studies on interactional synchrony in humans and non-human primates. The findings demonstrate that the ability for interactional synchrony is shared across humans, chimpanzees, bonobos, and macaques. The latest findings from a direct comparison between humans and chimpanzees further demonstrate that there are both similarities and significant differences on the ability between two species. At the end of this chapter, we suggest a future direction of the comparative studies on interactional synchrony. (shrink)

This article argues for the dogmatic rather than just ethical significance of the biotechnological enhancement of human beings. It begins by reflecting on the close theological connections between salvation, sanctification, and affective and bodily transformation in light of the fact that affects and desires are in principle manipulable through biotechnological enhancement. It then examines the implications of this observation for questions of moral responsibility, asking whether biotechnological enhancement can be viewed as a kind of means of grace. The conclusion argues (...) that theological reflection on the relationship between affects, soteriology and bioenhancement reveals limitations of the emphasis on embodiment in recent Christian theology. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis article considers some analogies for religion which are so common in our ordinary language that they might pass without notice. I explore five in detail to show how each in different ways limits what we can say, and indeed think, about religion. By using multiple religious belonging as an example, I am able to compare the things we ordinarily say about religion with the complexities of real, lived religion and illustrate some of the ways in which our analogies for (...) religion fall short. Many of these analogies are so ‘natural’ – so deeply embedded in the ways ordinary language works – that without this specific attention, they can shape what can be said about religion without the speaker noticing. Often, this makes things which the sociological evidence shows people are getting on and doing, like practising multiple religious belonging, seem ‘impossible’ when we try to describe them. By paying attention to the analogies which underlie this sensation, I am able to show that a wider variety of analogies, used with more conscious attention, can be employed to allow us to think more clearly about complex lived religion, including multiple religious belonging. (shrink)

The Machiavellian intelligence hypothesis and the social brain hypothesis have revolutionized traditional views on how primate cognition can be studied. Beyond the study of individual problem-solving capacities of various primates, these hypotheses have demonstrated the close relationship between the complexity of primate social life and the emergence of more sophisticated cognitive skills. The social brain hypothesis demonstrated the existence of a close correlation between the volume of the neocortex and the number of individuals in primate social groups. The amount of (...) studies in this area have increased dramatically and have successfully enhanced our understanding of the evolutionary roots of complex social phenomena, including theory of mind, cultural transmission, social learning, and shared attention. The cognitive capacities present in primates also underlie the evolution of cognitive capacities in humans. This chapter introduces present avenues taken in research on primate social cognition, and it walks the reader through the chapters of this volume. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThis paper seeks to problematise and complexify scholarly accounts of contemporary emotional repression in Western contexts by presenting counterevidence in the form of two examples of post-secular collective affectivity and their ritual expressions. It argues that both narratives of emotional repression and expression fail to capture the non-linear complexity of processes of cultural transformation, which have resulted in the simultaneous expression and repression of ritualistic affects that are products of our evolutionary embodied history. Drawing on insights from affect theory, this (...) paper seeks to illustrate how contingent yet nonetheless residual ritualistic affects have become repressed in the nominally secular public sphere in modernity. This has presented certain obstacles to the open communal display of religious ritual, and, as a corollary, the expression of certain religious affects, which have subsequently re-emerged in post-secular ritual spaces that are both publically private and pr... (shrink)

This article highlights the contemporary relevance of Macmurray’s work for the turn in philosophy of religion towards living religion. The traditional academic focus on belief analyses cognitive dissonance from a distance, and misses the experience of being religious. Alternatively, in an astute move ahead of his time, Macmurray emphasized emotion and action over theory and cognition; he examined religion as the creation and sustenance of community, over and above doctrinal division and incompatible beliefs. From an understanding of humans as embodied (...) and relational, Macmurray critiques individualism and self-sacrifice for failing to result in othercentred action and the promotion of social justice and equality. Using Macmurray as a springboard, this article considers the new speech acts of digital media and the possibility of community in online religion, finding that the virtual world holds both the risk of threats of violence and hate, as well as advantages for women and other marginalized groups to have a voice and explore diverse religious practices and identities, including reimagining metaphors and symbols to have relevance and meaning in changed social circumstances. In conclusion, this article finds that online communities are significant for the spiritual practice of the religiously affiliated and religious ‘nones’, as such, online religion is relevant to the understanding of living religion aimed at in philosophy. (shrink)

This article considers the relationship between philosophy of religion and an approach to the study of religion, which prioritises the experience of lived religion. Considering how individuals and communities live out their faith challenges some of the assumptions of analytic philosophers of religion regarding the position the philosopher should adopt when approaching the investigation of religion. If philosophy is understood principally as a means for analysing belief, it will have little space for an engagement with what it feels like to (...) live out one’s faith. (shrink)

Developmental psychologists identify propensities for social engagement in human infants that are less evident in other apes; Sarah Hrdy links these social propensities to novel features of human childrearing. Unlike other ape mothers, humans can bear a new baby before the previous child is independent because they have help. This help alters maternal trade-offs and so imposes new selection pressures on infants and young children to actively engage their caretakers’ attention and commitment. Such distinctive childrearing is part of our grandmothering (...) life history. While consequences for other cooperative activities must surely follow, the novel rearing environments set up by helpful grandmothering can explain why natural selection escalated preferences and motivations for interactivity in our lineage in the first place, and why, unlike other aspects of infant development, social sensitivities are not delayed in humans compared with genus Pan. (shrink)