Cognitive Aspects of Religious Symbolism

In closely focused essays, a group of anthropologists debate the particular nature of religious concepts and categories.

Pascal Boyer (Edited by)

9780521438704, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 30 October 2008

260 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.5 cm, 0.39 kg

How are religious ideas presented, acquired and transmitted? Confronted with religious practices, anthropologists have typically been content with sociological generalizations, informed by vague, intuitive models of cognitive processes. Yet the modern cognitive theories promise a fresh understanding of how religious ideas are learnt; and if the same cognitive processes can be shown to underlie all religious ideologies, then the comparative study of religions will be placed on a wholly new footing. The present book is a contribution to this ambitious programme. In closely focused essays, a group of anthropologists debate the particular nature of religious concepts and categories, and begin to specify the cognitive constraints on cultural acquisition and transmission.

I. Cognitive processes and cultural representations: 1. Cognitive aspects of religious symbolism Pascal Boyer
2. Whither 'ethnoscience'? Scott Atran
II. The structure of religious categories: 3. Computational complexity in the cognitive modelling of cosmological ideas J. D. Keller and F. K. Lehman (U Chit Hlaing)
4. 'Earth' and 'path' as complex categories: semantics and symbolism in Kwaio culture Roger Keesing
5. Domain-specificity, living kinds and symbolism Maurice Bloch
6. Pseudo-natural kinds Pascal Boyer
III. Acquisition and belief fixation: 7. Sign into symbol, symbol as sign: cognitive aspects of a social process Christian Toren
8. Talking about souls: the pragmatic construction of meaning in Cuna ritual language Carlo Severi
IV. The structure of ritual action: 9. Cognitive categories, cultural forms and ritual structures E. Thomas Lawson
10. The interactive basis of ritual effectiveness in a male initiation rite Michael Houseman.

Subject Areas: Cognition & cognitive psychology [JMR], Society & social sciences [J], Religion: general [HRA]