I've been mentioning doing a reading club on Scott Atran's In Gods We Trust. Following my brother's advice, I'm going to treat this book a tad different from the Tomasello volume I'd been reading and discussing. Rather than analyzing the book, I'll put up a few reactions. Before I do that though I did want to raise some tangental and contextual issues relating to the approach of the book.
The book is part of a movement called Evolutionary Psychology. Now among many Evolutionary Psychology has a bad name. Why? Well the obvious problem is that you're speculating on the psychology of figures who you have no direct access to and typically extremely small indirect access to. The end result is that a lot of Evolutionary Psychology (EP from now on) involves large amounts of hand waving and precious few testable facts. Of course there is Evolutionary Psychology with caps, best exemplified by Steven Pinker and then the more modest (and lower case) evolutionary psychology which offers speculation but of a more conservative bent with more of an emphasis on the details of cognitive science. I'm not a cognitive scientist, although I enjoy reading about it. I can't say yet where Atran comes down in all this. Chris, over at Mixing Memory, had up an interesting discussion of the issue that mentions Atran in passing.
A few thoughts on the preface, where Atran sets out his methodology. Clearly Atran is only discussing a limited subset of what we call religion. That is he is excluding the issue of faith as well as the issue of the content of religion. He is also following a kind of naturalism. Now I've been a critic of the term naturalism (and the associated concept of supernaturalism). I don't mind it here though. The basic problem with notions of naturalism is that we can't say what it is. That is, science is constantly changing what we consider natural. A description of black holes in the 19th century would probably be verging on supernaturalism. A description of the same in the late 1980's is fully naturalistic. Science, especially physics, makes the notion of naturalism a moving target and thus a problematic category. We're always unsure whether we mean naturalism as understood now or some unknowable ideal state of science. Neither seems terribly helpful. Atran though clearly is suggesting that we attempt to understand religion cognitively in terms of the kind of natural entities we encounter daily. Thus not only is he excluding future scientific entities, he's even excluding some of the more esoteric entities we do encounter. Put an other way, he's grounding religion in terms of the "common sense" entities of our world.
The downside to this is that many issues religious people will raise, simply can't be addressed by the book. As he says, "this work...[is] prone to charges of insincerity from either side of the religious divide." (viii) I don't take that as a negative thing. It merely means that the topic is narrowed from what some might wish to speak of. At the same time I think those who detect a distinct atheistic bent are right. Atran starts out discussing things that are obviously false and asking why we believe them. Things like life after death or a resurrection. While they are scientifically unknown, I'm not sure it's fair to say they are false. But that's a minor point, although I suspect this may introduce a blind spot into some of Atran's analysis.
Rather than simply making critiques that end up being little more than summaries of what everyone can read themselves, let me use the first few pages as a leaping off point to other thoughts.
Atran's discussion of the Druze religion was fascinating to me. Both because I've been told there actually are some really interesting parallels between LDS thought and Druze thought, as well as the whole issue of initiations. Now clearly we don't go so far as to ask people to not discuss the content of our beliefs. Far from it. LDS blogs are full of it. But it does raise to me the whole idea of whether in all religions there is a sense of the unspeakable. Not necessarily unspeakable in the sense of ineffable experience. Rather unspeakable because religion entails a kind of line of sacredness where some things are spoken before the world. It's interesting, especially if this is a human condition, since it would explain a lot of human instincts that otherwise make little sense. (Such as social taboos that crop up in odd places and that typically aren't overtly religious) It also is interesting that many social activities, including science, are so diametrically opposed to this dividing sacred speech from secular speech.
One thing that occurred to me while reading the preface also was the very problematic nature of the word "religious." Even with the narrowing of the topic Atran engages in, I'm left wondering how we distinguish the religious from the a-religious. Many point to religion as what offers stories that give meaning to events. That is, everything has a purpose or a meaning. Beyond not thinking that this is true, I also wonder if that's fair. Humans seek to understand and we instinctively hypothesize causes that are rationally understandable. But is that a religious drive or a human drive? Why label some causes religious and others otherwise? Sure one can point, as Atran does, to religion providing an answer that is socially relevant. But I think even in many religions chance plays a part. Certainly in individual religious thinking it does. Also, why is religion's answers the attempt to be socially relevant when say sociology's isn't?
I don't have good answers for this. My own feeling is that the word and concept of religion are often unhelpful. They are simply too broad in meaning and too unstable in application.
What do you personally think about evolutionary psychology?
I ask this because it seems that you have been dabbling in it quite a lot recently with the Tomasello book and now with the Atran book. Of course this is your site, so you can do what you want, it just seemed a little out of place given the sites subtitle "Contemplations in Philosophy and Theology".
If you are interested I think that Gould and I are in agreement on this one. I also think that quite frankly not enough is known about Good Old Fashioned Evolution (GOFE), biological speciation by means of natural selection in order to start speculating in the areas touched on by evolutionary psychology.
I think Chris convinced me Evolutionary Psychology (with caps) ala Pinker is kind of bunk. I still liked Pinker's books. But even then I thought his conclusions went a bit beyond the evidence. With regards to evolutionary psychology, I have far less trouble so long as things are tightly argued and categories kept clear.
As I mentioned above, one big problem I have is over the use of the word religion in these sorts of debates. It's just too vague and I never think that it's used in a useful way. Same in philosophy. For instance I think arguments over "religious experience" are unhelpful because its tremendously unclear how to decide what is or isn't such an experience. (Clearly you can see me applying Peirce's pragmatic maxim here - I need some kind of way to determine what something is)
As to whether this is out of place. I don't think so. The way I actually returned to studying philosophy was from studying linguistics and mind. While at that time I only did limited study of cognitive science, I ended up reading a lot on the mind and linguistics. I think that science has to be carefully by considered by any philosopher writing on most topics. It's unfortunate when so many philosophers are ignorant of science - especially science that touches upon their topics. I think the great flaw in much of philosophy the past centuries is in taking intuitions as if they were the conclusions from careful inquiry done scientifically.
I think that cognitive science has a lot important to say to religion. I do tend to think though that it is unfortunate that so many people writing about science and religion appear unaware about the nature of religion though. Especially from a more phenomenological point of view.
As I mentioned above, one big problem I have is over the use of the word religion in these sorts of debates. It's just too vague and I never think that it's used in a useful way.
two paragraphs later...
I think that cognitive science has a lot important to say to religion. I do tend to think though that it is unfortunate that so many people writing about science and religion appear unaware about the nature of religion though.
Sorry, but how is it that you can use the word "religion" correctly in the second quote, but the poor saps in the first quote have no idea how to use the word "religion" correctly. I'm not trying to be snide, but at least on paper you have contradicted yourself.
I think the problem with religion it is too vague when used in arguments or as a stable structure. Yet in regular common speech we use the term all the time, along with lots of other terms that are extremely vague and unhelpful in scientific or philosophical discussions.
I think questions of what is and isn't religious are significant. Part of this is because of the negative, non-scientific connotations it now has. For some reason the soft social sciences don't have this baggage, despite similarities they have with some types of religious thought (mormon pragmatism for instance).
I am not sure his complaint is over the meaning we ascribe to things. It seems to be a complaint that religious foundations are wobbly, and any rigor given in its analysis are therefore worthless. With this type of analysis, I would hate to see how many soft scientific studies would get thrown out as well. The difference seems to be that soft sciences rely on communal experience to justify correlations. Of course, many would say religion does this as well. I would hazard a guess that degree determines the difference. In addition, the repeatability of correlation based studies seems to be another factor. Atran seems to infer that the multiple representations of religious thought prove that correlation type studies would never be universally repeatable. Of course changing cultural values seems to do the same thing to sociology type studies.
Ultimately though, I am left to wonder, if religious tendencies are an ingrained part of human nature, like so many evolution of religion analysis conclude, why we consider conclusions based on them unscientific? We certainly don't discard psychology because it analyzes thinking. If religion is indeed a widespread aspect of human nature, it seems like we should deal with the issue scientifically rather than discarding it as irrelevant.
Note, I am not saying God's existence has to be proved to provide a proper foundation for study. Rather, I am saying, that if most people believe some configuration of God exists, conclusions based on this premise will be repeatable for most people. Thus the aim of a scietific approach to religion wouldn't be to make conclusions universal, rather it would be to make them proportional to how ingrained they are in human nature.
For instance, gay tendencies aren't universally represented in our population. It certainly seems true that they are an ingrained part of human nature, and follow a normal distribution in intensity. We don't believe queer studies are automatically faulty even if they aren't universally repeatable. Instead we say they are repeatable within the population they are based on and applied to. I am not sure why the same doesn't apply to religion? Perhaps it is the degree of specificity we give to religion doctrine. We assume religion is based on unprobable, overly precise positions. True enough, but don't throw the baby out with the bath water. Across the board, it seems more related to universal tendencies, and social generalities. Certainly an applicable branch of study.
I think the problem with religion it is too vague when used in arguments or as a stable structure. Yet in regular common speech we use the term all the time, along with lots of other terms that are extremely vague and unhelpful in scientific or philosophical discussions.
This explanation actually makes it worse. For if the term "religion" is extremely vague and unhelpful in scientific or philosophical discussions how in the world is it that cognitive science has a lot important to say to religion?
i.e. people who consider themselves religious in the common vernacular have a lot of learn from cognitive science studies. However the discussion and utility could be improved if cognitive science dropped "religion" as a category.
The problem can be seen in many cognitive studies. Take meditation. We can map out actual effects and changes in the brain. But is that religious? Clearly some religions (meaning narrow movements) practice meditation. But not all don't. But also clearly one can be an atheist and associated with no religious movement yet meditate.
Atran brings up an even better problem. When looking at the empirical evidence, ideology fulfills most of what one associates with religion. Marxists or proponents for Capitalism often fit the empirical trappings of religion in terms of cognitive effects.
The question then becomes, what is tied to religion and what is simply innate to humans and affects many avenues of our behavior and society? I think Atran is actually pretty good about being up front about this.
people who consider themselves religious in the common vernacular have a lot of learn from cognitive science studies. By that do you mean they can learn a lot in a generic sense, i.e. without it having any application to their religion or do you mean that they learn information applicable to their religion? If it is just in the generic sense then sure, religious people have a lot to learn from cognitive science. However the same could be said about physics, meteorology, or feminist Belgian literature of the 16th century. If you mean it is the sense of it being applicable to religion or religious life then I don't see it. What does it matter if I meditate and some PET scan or MRI scan shows brain changes? What matters is the experience of meditation itself. The meditator doesn't really need to know that meditating "activates relaxation pathways", or some such neurological explanation, the meditator already experienced the effects of that, which was the whole point of meditation.
By the way I have always thought the whole idea of performing experiments where a person engages in an activity and then someone performs a scan of the brain is almost totally useless. The scans are too coarse grained to be of any use. It's like trying to learn about relational databases by listening to hard drives, the data is just not refined enough.
However I do agree 100% when you said the discussion and utility could be improved if cognitive science dropped "religion" as a category. Cognitive scientists should take your advise on this one. If they stick to narrowly defined and empirically verfiable physical phenomena they will make great progress. Unfortunately, this advise pretty much makes the Atran book pointless.
Out of curiosity, have you read the Atran book? I think he does raise some interesting issues. I've only just begun the book. (I started it when Chris put up his posts). But I think it very interesting even if the broad category is problematic. But then from what I can see I think he may agree. There isn't something "religious" there is just the brain.
Chris, what do you mean by the parallels between the soft sciences and religion? Do you mean the soft sciences like psychology, sociology, or economics are religions? I'm not sure I'd agree. Psychology and sociology, even with their many feeble minded practitioners do have many good rigorous practitioners who can provide a lot of evidence and justification for their conclusions. Admittedly more is allowed in those disciplines than you'd get away with in the hard sciences - even back in the early days of the hard sciences. But I think the comparisons to religion are weak precisely because they still are largely scientific and one can always reject a lot of the bad science that goes on.
I have not read the Atran book. Part of having this discussion was to try and see if something "popped up" that interested me. I did go to Amazon and read the stuff up on line to see if that interested me. It did not. However, I was still open to someone pointing out where I was wrong. You put up a good defense of continental style thinking (Heidegger, Derrida, etc) a while back which interested me enough to start reading continental philosophy. I just finished Critique of Pure Reason last night. It seemed the logical place to begin when reading continental philosophy. I started Critique of the Power of Judgement today, which is more continentally flavored I have heard. I plan to move on to Hegel next month or so and then to Kierkegaard. Sometime after that Husserl, Heidegger, Gadamer, and Derrida. Anyway, your defense of the book hasn't been very vigorous, perhaps that is because you haven't read much of it yet. So I guess I still remain unconvinced as to the merits of reading this book in particular or evolutionary psychology in general.
BTW, Clark I thought that you might like this link:
http://www.klab.caltech.edu/cns120/videos.php
I think one of the correlations I was hinting at between soft sciences and religion was the degree to which they expand on facts. I was mainly thinking of sociology and related subjects, not economics or even much pychology. It seems like sociology and the like are based on few fundamentally proveable or reproduceable results. Because of venue they work in, I hear qualitative studies are often the most effective way to determine correlations. The effect of this just seems to be a fleshing out of existing beliefs. It does not seem to provide a way to question whether framing assumptions are correct or not. In this way it seems similar to how Atran described religion. It is an attempt to make some counter intuitive ideas as rational and realistic aspossible. They both try and rationalize an existing world view. The difference merely lies in the methodology chosen for such rationalization. Oh, and of course the ease with which we believe framing assumptions. I guess to some people this latter point is substantial. Personally, I am not sure how much of a difference it really makes.
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