Quiz 3 - Cognitive Science And Religion Flashcards
What is Pascal Boyer’s counter ontology theory?
We have subsystems for understanding different things in the world - contagions, persons, living things, tool, physical objects - these form ontologies - we find it fascinating that things that belong to one category but have a thing from another ie a ghost or God is a person with no body - a zombie is a person with no mind
Studies show that people find these one-violation concepts the most plausible
Compelling because interesting
What is Person Permanence?
Our belief that people still exist when we can no longer perceive them
It seems this does not shut off immediately when someone dies leading to beliefs that their minds still exist - studies show that most people even atheists attribute mental states to the dead
Religion creates afterlife/soul
Is religion learned or innate like language?
If something is learned we predict that it gets stronger during enculturation
The opposite happens with attributing mental states to the dead
Kindergarten kids more likely to do this over older kids
This suggests there is an innate component
Are we natural dualists? Bad/good, heaven/hell
The old brain and the new brain
Old brain is intuitive - we are conscious of its outputs not its processing
People’s implicit reasoning about the supernatural can be at odds with what they say they believe
Dead bodies are naturally counter ontological
We are fascinated with corpses because they bring up intuitions from different systems that are contradictory
Religion fills in the gaps - our cognition system makes us fear it - our theory mind makes us think the person is still around and we might feel their love - our biological system tells us it is dead and cannot move
As a result all religions have prescriptions/instructions on what to do with corpses
Whereas things like God’s or magical objects have to be in some sense, invented (by person or culture) corpses are universally compelling
Dead body has pathogens that can harm humans so needs to be dealt with safely
Religion conforms to geographical area
Explain dual funerals
According to anthropologists (Boyer) this is common - the body is buried then some time later it is disinterred and something else is done
Boyer says this is to make sense of our changing intuitions about the status of the dead person (approx. 3 months after death)
The first ritual is to remove the body even though we believe the person still exists
The second is to mark the change of our acceptance of the person being gone and only existing in memories
Religion encourages pro social behaviour
Group teaches we treat each other better with language - a reputation can spread and affect someone for years
One theory says humans evolved to have beliefs in supernatural agents (such as God) to keep us behaving even when nobody is watching - this requires group selection which is controversial
Evidence - people are more pro social when primed with supernatural concepts (act better)
People think God has strategic knowledge - gossip is theorized to have a similiar function - it focuses on strategic knowledge
Origins of Religious beliefs, ritual and mental illness
In traditional societies, schizotypal and epileptics are perceived to be blessed - sets religious tone - mania, obsessive compulsive, disorders, schizophrenia, temporal lobe epilepsy all correlate with religion
Obsessive compulsive disorder
Compulsive rituals - checking, washing, cleaning, numbers, etc
Affects 2% of people
Hyperreligiousity is major feature of OCD
Orthodox religion are replete with food, cleansing, repetition of mantras, numbers
Failing to engage in the ritual causes feeling of dread
Religious ritual and OCD patients do not know mechanism that connects ritual to future event
People with OCD are attracted to religions especially ritualistic ones like catholic
Schizophrenia and schizotypy
Affects 3% o people
Hallucinations
People that experience delusions have more religious beliefs
Likely to be treated as blessed
Their hallucinations can be accepted as Devine truth
Amped up pattern detection
Dopamine and pattern detection
Experiential - skeptics given dopamine or placebo
Religious - can detect faces - finds faces where not one
Why are individuals religious?
50% genetic
50% environmental - 11% family - 42% everything else
When we encounter things out of ordinary we create
People see pattern in - Karma - just world - bad things happen ie Hindu’s reincarnated as animal
Termite collapse conspiracy theory - what did they do to be hurt like that
Baseball rituals - pitchers have due to large variances in pitching results - outfielders do not as results do not have strong variables
Christianity - good - heaven - bad - hell
