New item in the Archive for Religion and Cognition:


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Author(s): Gabriel Levy
Title: Religious “Cognition”: Between Integrated Physiology and
Network
Category: published article
Length: 16
Keywords: Religion; Davidson; Boyer; Sperber; Triangulation; Networks

Abstract: Recent scholarship in the cognitive science of religion
would have us believe that we are somewhere close to a
cognitive explanation of religion. I argue that it will take us a step even
closer if we give up on the project of reductive
psychology. Recent cognitive approaches to religion are
excessively psychological, focusing primarily on the brains of
individual subjects. Since the brain develops in the context of
non-cognitive physiological and network processes, and
concepts and actions in the world depend on non-cognitive
physiological and network processes, we can say that these
processes are just as important to understanding religion as those
processes that take place in individual heads.
I thus argue that any ‘bottom-up’ approach must look to
the field of integrated physiology, while any ‘top-down’
approach must look to pragmatism. An individual’s cognitive
capacity for religion may only be understood in relation to the
physiological systems, notably the endocrine system, and in light
of a sophisticated network theory. After some introductory
remarks, I describe in detail some of the physiological
constraints on cognition. This domain very loosely corresponds
to what Searle, following John Dewey calls “background”. I
then describe the notion of triangulation, which corresponds to
Searle’s “network” and Dewey’s
“environment”. The last section lays out some of the implications of
the argument for
religion.

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