New Scientist had most of its current issue devoted to religious issues. Now if you've read any of the recent discussions about cognitive science and religion or empirical psychology and religion the articles won't be that new. (Which reminds me that I need to get back to Atran's In Gods We Trust since my brother Chris has been putting up quite a few posts on it.) But in the meantime let me make a few brief discussions on the New Scientist articles. I should note that most of the articles, while available online, are for subscribers only. But while it tends to get a tad sensational at times, I think New Scientist is one of the few magazines worth subscribing to.
The most interesting bit, which also was in Atran, was about levels of intent required for religion to be cognitively possible. Levels of intention are basically individual assertions put together to make an over all intention. So if I say I wish you believed me that is two levels of intention (I wish + you believed). Religion requires 5 levels of intention to be what we think of as religion. i.e. "I want you to know that we both believe that god wants us to act righteously." The problem is that apes can manage only 2 levels of intent while monkeys manage only 1. So clearly there is some cognitive development necessary for religion. The article unfortunately presents a graph of levels of intent possible for neanderthals, archaic humans, homo erectus and homo habilis. But it sure seemed to be to be pretty speculative - basically just assuming that intentionality level correlates with brain size in the frontal lobes. But I'm not sure that's a fair assumption.
The whole situation reminds me of that scene in 2001: A Space Odyssey where the monolith does something to the apes so as to enable the to use tools and eventually develop space travel.
I should add that reading through the articles there definitely is a bias that one can't take seriously as an answer for why humans might have evolved religion and religious capability is that there is something to religion. That is just as we evolved eye sight because there is light in our environment we evolve religion because there is something to this God hypothesis. I understand why this is an issue repressed in the discussions. But it does seem odd that in discussing religion the very question of religiosity is neglected.
It also seems that a lot of people do gravitate to the Marx "religion is the opiate of the masses" hypothesis. That is religion makes people happier. There is considerable evidence for this. So the hypothesis thus becomes that evolutionary the nobel lie is useful because happy, long living people reproduce better. This once again though avoids the issue of why religion does this. Is it akin to a runner's high? Or do most religions just teach practices that are inherently beneficial independent of the religion. (That is they could be conceived of apart from the religion) The other answer is of course that there is something to religion beyond the placebo effect or social networking. But admittedly that's harder to measure.
One part of religion analysis I like is the whole "free-rider" issue. That is if religion provides for a close social network that is overall beneficial to the members of the community, how does one deal with free riders? That is people who take the benefits from the community but contribute little or nothing? The speculation is that religion is something akin to what other apes do, only in a much more complex fashion. Thus religious taboos and teachings help eliminate free riders and provide better communal stability. It's interesting that in communal orders, a rather common development within many religions, the problem of free riders is big. Indeed I suspect it is why such communal systems often self-destruct: utopian schemes are notoriously difficult to put into practice. (As our own religious history shows)
The point is that religions allow larger "tribes" and societies to develop by providing a framework for group unity, development and contribution. Obviously the cognitive features of this "religion development" would then affect other institutions, especially government. And indeed in the ancient world government and religion are closely intwined as are most other social aspects of what we call civilization.
The other article in the issue was on the placebo affect and belief. Once again nothing that new. I think most of us are pretty familiar with how belief affects the body's responses not just to healing but to pain management. One thing I found a bit surprising was how the placebo effect was stronger when pain was worse. That is our desire for a solution correlates to how our body reacts to a perceived solution.
One thing I liked about this article was how it wasn't just tied to religion. Expectation and experience are tied closely together. But this then affects medicine since we have a kind of faith in medicine that allows the placebo affect to accompany most our our medical treatments.
Something very interesting was how new beliefs are treated by the brain. In a certain kind of brain damage called anosognosia people deny facts about their body. It turns out that belief forming probably is tied to "a back and forth between believing the old and accepting the new. The left hemisphere...tries to impose consistency, whereas the right hemisphere plays the devil's advocate, trying to get us to question our beliefs in the light of new evidence. In people with anosognosia [it is suspected] that brain damage...somehow impairs the right hemisphere's natural skepticism.
There are other brain disorders with other belief impairing effects. Obviously ones are anorexia and bipolar disorder.
Without going through the rest of the arguments (which admittedly get more and more speculative the closer one gets to the God question), the idea is that all of this is tied to emotion and belief. The idea being that belief is fundamentally both a rational issue and an emotional one. And of course there is cognitive evidence that even our very reasoning ability (our rationality) is really heavily biased by emotion.
All in all very interesting and perhaps worth picking up for those not interested in buying a whole book on religion and cognitive science.
Nice comments, Clark. You talk about New Scientist so much, I'm going to have to go take a look at it. Religious belief as a placebo (and an efficacious one at that), now that's an interesting idea.
It's not so much that religion is a placebo effect but religious belief can, like many beliefs, create a placebo effect.
I didn't mention it above, but they did mention how prayer does work, but only if the person being prayed for knows about it and believes.
BTW there is a great discussion on the problem of the Trinity at Prosbologian. We'll be discussing that issue at SMPT this year with Stephen Davis of Claremont. Are you going to be there Clark?
No idea yet. It really depends upon what's going on with my two companies.
We did just get in the chocolate beans though and made a sample batch. Best chocolate I've ever tasted bar none. And that was a preliminary run. So I may be pretty busy. (I actually spent the last 3 months doing 12 hour days here, sometimes until 4 in the morning)
Oh, regarding the Prosblogion post. I read that last week. Reminds me of Richard Cartwright's "On the Logical Problem of the Trinity." The standard rejoinders to Cartwright were brought up in the comments. It seems to me that Cartwright's strongest point was the claim that one can't say Jesus is a God. But not everyone agrees with that. (From past conversations Brandon doesn't and I think you can see that in his comments at Prosblogion). Once you remove that pseudo-complaint about how God can be used rhetorically then Cartwright's argument fails. (IMO)
I should add that it was a discussion on a similar topic with Brandon quite some time ago that more or less convinced me that the difference between most Christians and Mormons about the Trinity was much ado about little.
Clark: What do I have to do to get you there? I think I'll send my personal assistant Guido who has a lot of experience in fire insurance to insure that you get to the SMPT conference. You'll like Guido, but his manner is a bit rough and unorthodox.
I've closed comments in order to avoid spam since I don't check this older blog as much anymore.
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