Religion And Cognition

by McCutcheon; Russell T.

• ISBN13: 9781904768715
• ISBN10: 1904768717
• Format: Nonspecific Binding
• Copyright: 2014-09-16
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

This volume explores cognition in the study of religionthat is, the mental processes that govern religious belief and behavior across cultures and eras. The essays in the volume are scientific in nature and universal in scope. They address (a) the naturalistic meta-theoretical stances taken to epistemologically justify cognitive explanations of religion, (b) the theoretical models of cognition that are employed in the cognitive science of religion, (c) the prominent cognitive theories of religion to date, (d) the methods used to gather data and test theories, and (e) experimental findings by cognitive scientists of religion. The volume is divided into two Parts. Part 1 includes selections that cover the meta-theories and theories employed by cognitive scientists of religion, and Part II includes experimental studies of religion. Combined, these selections make the volume especially useful for introducing students to the basic framework of the cognitive science of religion as well as to the experimental methods and findings that support cognitive theories of religion.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	ix
Religion and Cognition: An Introduction	1	(11)
PART I
1 E. THOMAS LAWSON AND ROBERT N. MCCAULEY	12	(24)
Interpretation and Explanation: Problems and Promise in the Study of Religion
2 DAN SPERBER	36	(18)
The Epidemiology of Beliefs: A Naturalistic Approach
3 LAWRENCE A. HIRSCHFELD AND SUSAN A. GELMAN	54	(32)
Toward a Topography of Mind: An Introduction to Domain Specificity
4 JUSTIN L. BARRETT	86	(13)
Exploring the Natural Foundations of Religion
5 DEBORAH KELEMFN	99	(17)
Are Children "Intuitive Theists"? Reasoning about Purpose and Design in Nature
PART II
6 JUSTIN L BARRETT AND FRANK C. KEIL	116	(33)
Conceptualizing a Nonnatural Entity: Anthropomorphism in God Concepts
7 JUSTIN L. BARRETT AND MELANIE A. NYHOF	149	(29)
Spreading Non-natural Concepts: The Role of Intuitive Conceptual Structures in Memory and Transmission in Culture
8 PASCAL BOYER AND CHARLES RAMBLE	178	(37)
Cognitive Templates for Religious Concepts: Cross-Cultural Evidence for Recall of Counter-Intuitive Representations
9 JUSTIN L. BARRETT AND E. THOMAS LAWSON	215	(16)
Ritual Intuitions: Cognitive Contributions to Judgments of Ritual Efficacy
10 E. MARGARET EVANS	231	(54)
Cognitive and Contextual Factors in the Emergence of Diverse Belief Systems: Creation versus Evolution
11 NICOLA KNIGHT, PAULO SOUSA, JUSTIN L. BARRETT, AND SCOTT ATRAN	285	(12)
Children's Attributions of Beliefs to Humans and God: Cross-cultural Evidence
12 JESSE BERING AND DAVID F. BJORKLUND	297	(40)
The Natural Emergence of Reasoning about the Afterlife as a Developmental Regularity
13 REBEKAH A. RICHERT	337	(15)
Modes of Research: Combining Cognitive Psychology and Anthropology through Whitehouse's Modes of Religiosity
Index of Authors	352	(5)
Index of Subjects	357