Материал: The Routledge Companion to the Study of Religion by John Hinnells

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activities, the ‘supernatural’ inflections of which prove to be quite natural (Boyer 2001). Ironically, this cognitively informed definition of religion returns to and builds upon proposals by the nineteenth-century proponents of a scientific study of religion (Tylor, Durkheim), but it contributes a naturalistic foundation, a theoretical formulation and an analytic precision that were previously unavailable to earlier definitions. It is this more precise definition that can provide a clearly stipulated theoretical object, heretofore absent, for historical and comparative studies of religion.

The historical study of religions

In addition to providing historians of religion with a clearly defined theoretical object, cognitive science can provide them with a theoretical framework for explaining and understanding past expressions of religion. Evolutionary psychologists and cognitive archaeologists have taught us that a fundamental architecture of human cognition is the product of our evolutionary history. The capacities and constraints that are characteristic of this organic architecture, consequently, can allow historians to discriminate between and organize their culturally variable data in ways that are consonant with processes that are common to all human cognition rather than conflating such data as the singular product of a common time and place. For example, a particular religious practice judged to be an example of Whitehouse’s imagistic mode of religiosity might well have a history incommensurate with that of one judged to be doctrinal, even if those two histories have conventionally been considered to be of the ‘same’ tradition. Or the successful spread and establishment of one religion in the face of its alternatives might be explicable in terms of its adopted modality or its attraction to innate cognitive templates rather than in terms of its contents, which, in a common cultural context, are likely to be similar.

Further, cognitive science can contribute insights into how and why some historical events and representations but not others that may have been historically possible were selected, remembered and transmitted over time. For example, the acceptance of a new or imported religious practice might be attributed, in part at least, to its relative absence in the traditional ritual system and, therefore, provides a balance within that system. Or the successful spread of a new religion might simply be attributed to its attractiveness to intuitive cognitive proclivities rather than to similarities with traditional expressions.

The historical record, in other words, is not only limited by historical antecedents and cultural contingencies but is constrained by mental processes that are common to all humans. Based upon the predictable patterns of the latter, historians can construct historical trajectories that can help fill in the gaps of historical knowledge – especially when the data are incomplete or fragmentary, as of course, historical data mostly are. And they can do so with greater accuracy and with more nuance than they could if working from historical remains alone. Such a pursuit has already begun to produce significant research in the historical study of religion (see e.g. Whitehouse and Martin 2004).

The comparative study of religion

The nineteenth-century recognition of different religious traditions from around the world and the desire in some way to compare these traditions provided the very impetus for the founding of an academic study of religion. For many, this comparative perspective is what continues to inform and to motivate the academic study of religion. If, however, our own past

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is, as the saying goes, a foreign country, how much more so is the past – and the present – of others.

As scholars of religion began to amass detailed knowledge of the various cultures of the world and of their local religious expressions and traditions, they produced evergrowing compilations of their ‘phenomenal’ characteristics. Cultural studies in the latter half of the twentieth century have revealed that the innumerable traits catalogued in these ‘phenomenographies’ of religion were largely organized in Western, if not specifically Christian (colonial), categories. Such scholarly biases, together with an emphasis on the autonomy of particular cultural formations, correctly called the comparative method into question. The evolved capacities and constraints of human cognition can, however, provide a metric of universal human possibilities in terms of which the vast diversity of human cultures – and their religious expressions – might be measured and in terms of which they have been historically and socially constructed (see e.g. Whitehouse and Laidlaw 2004). A comparative study of religions cannot, in other words, be pursued productively at the level of their cultural expressions and meanings but must be based in the generative level of cognitive functions.

Related theoretical initiatives

Cognitive theories of religion have generated, and continue to generate, a wealth of experimental, analytic and applied research. Research from related social sciences remain, however, relatively unexploited by cognitive scientists of religion, e.g. that of ethology, sociobiology, and behavioral economics

Ethologists employ evolved animal behaviors as a basis for explaining the cultural behavior of humans – including the religious (e.g. Burkert 1996). Sociobiologists seek to explain both animal and human behavior on the basis of evolutionary history and genetic makeup (e.g. E. O. Wilson 1998, Chapter 11). Both ethologists and sociobiologists have, however, tended to overstate their case by suggesting direct relationships between their data and religious behaviors and expressions. In other words, they take little account of cognitive processing in the complex process of cultural production. On the other hand, ethological research, especially primatology, has offered insights into the evolutionary history of human cognitive potentials while fundamental conclusions by sociobiologists concur with similar conclusions by cognitivists – about evolved constraints upon human sociality, for example, such as those based on the limitations of short-term memory upon information processing or those governing optimal group size.

The role of emotion in religion should also be noted. Emotion (and its related senses of ‘significant experience’ or ‘emotion-laden thought and perception’) is, today, perhaps the most widespread popular ‘theory’ of religion. Religions have their origin, or their ‘essence’, according to this view, in religious experiences or in feelings of spirituality, the paradigm of which is mysticism. This popular view about the causal significance of an inward experience for the origin of or basis for religion in contrast to institutional externalities and practices is largely the consequence of Protestant theological claims. Nevertheless, religious claims and practices are universally correlated with (as opposed to caused by) heightened feelings and emotional display. Although the significance of emotion for religion has been acknowledged in connection with ‘special agent rituals’ and with the mnemonic strategies of the ‘imagistic’ mode of religious transmission, a comprehensive theory of the relation between emotion and religious cognition has yet to be fully undertaken (but see Pyysiäinen 2004: Chapter 5).

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Economic models, such as rational choice theory, have also proposed useful and insightful explanations for religious behaviors and ideas (see Young 1997). Such models are based, however, in classic economic theorizing which assumes that individual humans are rational agents who act in their own self-interest. This view has recently been challenged by the revisionist work of behavioral economists in light of insights concerning cognitive and emotional constraints on human rationality (e.g. Ariely 2008); for example, little to no correlation has been found between moral reasoning and moral behavior. While behavioral economics is increasingly influential for an understanding of human decision making generally, it has not yet been employed in the study of religion.

Challenges and conclusion

The cognitive sciences are a relatively new area of study. They have, however, firmly established their basic principles and are poised to make dramatic breakthroughs over the coming century, both in new areas of discovery and application as well as in an integration of their fundamental theoretical premises. This is no less the case with the even more recent cognitive science of religion. As with any new discipline, however, basic challenges remain.

Challenges

If the cognitive sciences, including the cognitive science of religion, are to realize a comprehensive set of scientific explanations, then the relationship of cognitive functions to their neurological base, to neurochemical/hormonal effects, etc., must ultimately be identified. While cognitivists acknowledge the neurophysiological basis of cognition, the present state of knowledge does not yet allow for a close modeling of this relationship, although plausible theories are being proposed and significant research is beginning to emerge. Different mental functions, for example, have been associated with specific areas of the brain and the neural mechanisms of some of these functions, what we experience as memory, for example, have begun to be tracked at the molecular level.

On the other hand, caution must be exercised about interpreting neurophysiological functions – those revealed by brain imaging, for example – as causal rather than as correlative data for such ‘states of mind’ as ‘religious’ experiences. This identity of neurophysiological activity with particular mental representations neglects mediating levels of cognitive processing as well as the significance of environmental factors upon the expression of those mental representations and for their transmission. Such correlative data have even been evoked as proofs for the objective validity of specific religious claims, a fallacy of the so-called ‘neurotheology’ that is reminiscent of some sociobiological and ethological conclusions about religious practices and ideas.

If a comprehensive explanation for the organization and functions of human cognition based upon the material conditions of brain activity has not yet been fully realized, neither has a comprehensive explanation for the connection between cognition and culture, though scientific explanations for this connection is sometimes resisted. Least constructively, some have raised the old caveat of reductionism. Others, who have devoted their professional life to cultural studies but who nevertheless wish to include human cognition in their considerations, have been drawn to theories that are more congenial to conventional cultural studies, those associated with narrativity and imagination, for example (e.g. Fauconnier and Turner 2002).

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Of the first, reductionistic, concern, it might simply be noted that, from a scientific perspective, theoretical reduction (in contrast to a reduction of the data) is what is recognized as progress in knowledge (Slingerland 2008: Chapter 6). The second concern arises from perceptions that cognitivists are neglecting culture in favor of brain research. This is a somewhat surprising concern since leading cognitive scientists of religion have, in fact, addressed and emphasized just this connection and have offered plausible suggestions for precisely this connection (e.g. Sperber 1996; Lawson and McCauley 1990; Boyer 2001; Atran 2002; Whitehouse 2004). If comprehensive suggestions for the exact connections between cognition and culture remain tentative, however, it is because cognitive science is a new science and it is important for this new science to map precisely the forms and functions of human cognition before they are related to the conclusions of the past 150 years of cultural studies.

If cognitive science is finally to be applicable to a study of ‘religion’, then those cognitive mechanisms and processes that generate cultural formations, such as the ‘religious’, must be specifically identified as must those that, in turn, may be altered by environmental factors, including the social and cultural (see now Smail 2008). Although social and cultural theorists may have to relinquish certain of their conventional presumptions, about the sui generis autonomy of culture, for example (Tooby and Cosmides 1992; Atran 2002), they are as capable of addressing the connection between cognition and culture as are cognitivists – a potential contribution presciently noted by one of the founders of sociological studies.3

Conclusion

Religious actions derive from the basic repertoire of ordinary human behaviors that are predicated by counterintuitive ideas, which are, however, also natural products of human cognition. The ready grasp of such behaviors and ideas from a very early age attests to this ‘naturalness’, i.e. to the cognitive ease whereby they are produced and to the readiness of our cognitive acceptance of, and even commitment to, their cultural valuations and manipulations. Because of this naturalness, it is unlikely that religiosity will ever wither away from the activities and ideas of our species. Despite the predictions of many social scientists, ‘religious’ ideas and behavior continue to persist as an ‘intuitive’ category that is documented from virtually all human societies. Because of this intuitive ‘naturalness’ of ‘religion’ – even among the community of religious scholars – cultural studies of ‘religion’ have also proven to be unreliable as an academic pursuit, especially in any scientific sense envisioned by its founders. The cognitive science of religion, on the other hand, can formulate hypotheses about behaviors and ideas deemed ‘religious’ as predictions that are intersubjectively testable, not only by experimentalists but, guided by their experimental designs and predictions, also by ethnographers and historians. Such study, like the cognitive sciences generally, will require broad interdisciplinary cooperation; its achievements will be those of a community of scholars working together scientifically over the coming decades.

Notes

1E. B. Tylor’s well-known ‘minimum definition of Religion’ is ‘the Belief in Spiritual Beings’ (Tylor 1958 [1871]: 8).

2For Durkheim, religion ‘always presupposes that the worshipper gives some of his substance or his goods to the gods’ (Durkheim 1915: 385).

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3‘Society exists and lives only in and through … individual minds’, Durkheim wrote. ‘If … the beliefs, traditions and aspirations of the group were no longer felt and shared by the individuals, society would die’ (Durkheim, 1915: 359).

Bibliography

Ariely, Dan (2008) Predictably Irrational: The Hidden Forces that Shape Our Decisions. New York: HarperCollins. A popular introduction to experimental insights into everyday human behaviors from the perspective of behavioral economics.

Atran, Scott (2002) In Gods We Trust: The Evolutionary Landscape of Religions. Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press. A comprehensive view of religion as an evolutionary by-product, by a leading cultural anthropologist.

Barrett, Justin L. (2004) Why Would Anyone Believe in God? Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press. An examination of religious ideas about god(s) by an experimental psychologist.

Boyer, Pascal (2001) Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought. London: Heinemann and New York: Basic Books. A comprehensive view of religion, and one of the most important, by an anthropologist who is one of the pioneers of the cognitive science of religion.

Bulbulia, Joseph, Richard Sosis, Erica Harris, Russell Genet, Cheryl Genet, and Karen Wyman, eds. (2008) The Evolution of Religion: Studies, Theories, and Critiques. Santa Margarita, CA: The Collins Foundation Press. A recent and comprehensive discussion by 50 contributors concerning an evolutionary perspective on religion.

Burkert, Walter (1996). Creation of the Sacred: Tracks of Biology in Early Religions. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. An examination of religious behaviors employing insights from ethology.

Durkheim, Émile (1915) The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, trans. J. W. Swain. New York: The Free Press.

Fauconnier, Gilles and Mark Turner (2002) The Way We Think: Conceptual Blending and the Mind’s Hidden Complexities. New York: Basic Books. A study of conceptual blending (and reblending) as the basis of human imagination.

Gassaniga, Michael S. (2008) Human: The Science Behind What Makes Us Unique. New York: HarperCollins. A comprehensive and accessible overview of most of the themes addressed in this article.

Guthrie, Stewart (1980) ‘A Cognitive Theory of Religion’, Current Anthropology, 21 (2): 181–203. ——Â(1993) Faces in the Clouds: A New Theory of Religion. Oxford and New York: Oxford University

Press. A view of religion as an innate tendency of humans to anthropomorphize their environment, by a cultural anthropologist.

Lawson, E. Thomas and McCauley, Robert N. (1990) Rethinking Religion: Connecting Cognition and Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. A cognitive theory of religious ritual and one of the most important theories for the cognitive science of religion, by two of the pioneers in the field.

McCauley, Robert N. and Lawson, E. Thomas (2002) Bringing Ritual to Mind: Psychological Foundations of Cultural Forms. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. An important continuation and extension of the arguments presented in Lawson and McCauley 1990.

Mithen, Steven (1996) The Prehistory of the Mind: The Cognitive Origins of Art and Science. London: Thames & Hudson. A fascinating and highly plausible reconstruction of the Âevolution of the human mind, by a cognitive archaeologist.

Pyysiäinen, Ilkka (2004) Magic, Miracles, and Religion: A Scientist’s Perspective. Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira Press. A comprehensive overview of the cognitive science of religion to date.

Slingerland, Edward (2008) What Science Offers the Humanities: Integrating Body and Culture. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. A historian of religion defends naturalistic and scientific studies of religion.