The following reviews recent developments in the cognitive and evolutionary psychology of religion, and argues for an adaptationist stance.

Adaptationists explain the evolution of religion from the cooperative effects of religious commitments, but which cooperation problem does religion evolve to solve? I focus on a class of symmetrical coordination problems for which there are two pure Nash equilibriums: (1) ALL COOPERATE, which is efficient but relies on full cooperation; (2) ALL DEFECT, which is inefficient but pays regardless of what others choose. Formal and experimental studies reveal that for such risky coordination problems, only the defection equilibrium is evolutionarily stable. (...) The following makes sense of otherwise puzzling properties of religious cognition and cultures as features of cooperative designs that evolve to stabilise such risky exchange. The model is interesting because it explains lingering puzzles in the data on religion, and better integrates evolutionary theories of religion with recent, well-motivated models of cooperative niche construction. (shrink)

We describe the results of an experiment testing for the presence of strong altruism among Christians in New Zealand. The study examined anonymous participant generosity to cohort. We found that in modified dictator games, anonymous Christians in New Zealand gave significantly more to Canadian Christians than anonymous New Zealand citizens gave to their fellow citizens. The gifting opportunities occurred after anonymous benefactors observed recipients willingly undertake costly acts of group commitment. We found that mean gifting after witnessing a fellow group (...) member metaphorically "fall on a hand grenade" to punish a member of an out-group was almost four times greater in the Christian group than it was in the New Zealand control. Our data support the hypothesis that religious altruism exists and is especially strong among Christians in New Zealand. The data also weakly support a multi-level selection hypothesis for the evolution of religious altruism. (shrink)

McKay & Dennett (M&D) observe that beliefs need not be true in order to evolve. We connect this insight with Schelling's work on cooperative commitment to suggest that some beliefs are best approached as social goals. We explain why a social-interactive perspective is important to explaining the dynamics of belief formation and revision among situated partners.

Evolutionary researchers argue that religion evolves to support cooperation, where it is assumed that cooperation is threatened by freeriding. I identify a distinct threat to cooperation from uncertainty. I briefly explain how the distinction between freeriding and uncertainty is relevant to both ultimate and proximate explanations of the biocultural mechanisms that express religious traits.

This article examines the benefits of incorporating religious reflection into the psychology of religion and vice versa. By applying Bayes’ theorem, we discover that scientists and theologians can collaborate without sharing prior beliefs. Instead, rationality requires updating our beliefs before data collection in response to the degree of surprise generated by the data. Moreover, although people who start with different beliefs may become more aligned after data collection, rationality does not entail a convergence to identical beliefs. To illustrate the potential (...) for growth in understanding from greater collaboration between theologians and scientists, I examine a longitudinal investigation of religion after a natural disaster. This case study illustrates how conversations between theological and psychological perspectives on religion can lead to a more comprehensive understanding of virtue cultivation, benefiting both science and theology. (shrink)

We welcome Norenzayan et al.’s claim that the prosocial effects of beliefs in supernatural agents extend beyond Big Gods. To date, however, supporting evidence has focused on the Abrahamic Big God, making generalisations difficult. We discuss a recent study that highlights the need for clarity about the causal path by which supernatural beliefs affect the evolution of big societies.

Book Review. . ???aop.label???. doi: 10.1080/00048402.2014.929720.

Collective rituals have long puzzled anthropologists, yet little is known about how rituals affect participants. Our study investigated the effects of nine naturally occurring rituals on prosociality. We operationalized prosociality as (1) attitudes about fellow ritual participants and (2) decisions in a public goods game. The nine rituals varied in levels of synchrony and levels of sacred attribution. We found that rituals with synchronous body movements were more likely to enhance prosocial attitudes. We also found that rituals judged to be (...) sacred were associated with the largest contributions in the public goods game. Path analysis favored a model in which sacred values mediate the effects of synchronous movements on prosocial behaviors. Our analysis offers the first quantitative evidence for the long-standing anthropological conjecture that rituals orchestrate body motions and sacred values to support prosociality. Our analysis, moreover, adds precision to this old conjecture with evidence of a specific mechanism: ritual synchrony increases perceptions of oneness with others, which increases sacred values to intensify prosocial behaviors. (shrink)

This article addresses the question: how do Norwegian Jewish parents reflect on _brit milah_ (circumcision) in a context where this practice is frequently criticised? The data are derived from twenty-five in-depth interviews. Drawing on the perspectives of Catherine Bell and Joseph Bulbulia, the text explores circumcision as part of social life. The parental narratives uncover ongoing negotiations occurring between parents and the minority/majority population. The article argues that circumcision serves as a rite of passage as much for parents (...) as for the infant. For most parents, circumcision is utilised to strengthen a Jewish identity and as a cultural strategy to recreate a Jewish cosmos, even if it entails a costly signal, owing to ambivalence and/or majority opposition. Some individuals find the costs too high and discontinue the practice. However, they all desire to manifest Jewish identity, whether through bodily adaptation or the lack thereof. In this manner, bodies speak louder than words. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the "public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity (individual or corporate) has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be (...) preserved, reproduced, and made generally available to the public. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

Consciousness is currently a thriving area of research in psychology and neuroscience. While this is often attributed to events that took place in the early 1990s, consciousness studies today are a continuation of research that started in the late 19th century and that continued throughout the 20th century. From the beginning, the effort built on studies of animals to reveal basic principles of brain organization and function, and of human patients to gain clues about consciousness itself. Particularly important and our (...) focus here is research in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s involving three groups of patients—amnesia, split brain, and blindsight. Across all three groups, a similar pattern of results was found—the patients could respond appropriately to stimuli that they denied seeing (or in the case of amnesiacs, having seen before). These studies paved the way for the current wave of research on consciousness. The field is, in fact, still grappling with the implications of the findings showing that the ability to consciously know and report the identity of a visual stimulus can be dissociated in the brain from the mechanisms that underlie the ability to behave in a meaningful way to the same stimulus. (shrink)

Theories of discourse bring to realism new ideas about how knowledge develops and how representations of reality are influenced. We gain an understanding of the conceptual aspect of social life and the processes by which meaning is produced. This collection reflects the growing interest realist critics have shown towards forms of discourse theory and deconstruction. The diverse range of contributions address such issues as the work of Derrida and deconstruction, discourse theory, Eurocentrism and poststructuralism. What unites all of the contributions (...) is a sense that it is essential to provide a realist alternative to the hitherto dominance of social constructionism, hermeneutics and postmodernism, over many of the issues discussed. By developing a realist perspective the different authors attempt to embed discourse within the structured nature of the reality of the world. Realism can situate language, discourse and ideology within context specific, or 'causally efficacious' circumstances. Realism can help to uncover issues of power, representation, and subjectivity and how discursive and other social practices produce real effects. This can help us understand the manner in which social structures are reproduced through various forms of ideology and discourse. And by knowing this, we can start to address questions concerning human emancipation and how the world is to be transformed. (shrink)

While there had been much radical thought before John Stuart Mill, Joseph Persky argues it was Mill, as he moved to the left, who provided the radical wing of liberalism with its first serious analytical foundation, a political economy of progress that still echoes today. A rereading of Mill's mature work suggests his theoretical understanding of accumulation led him to see laissez-faire capitalism as a transitional system. Deeply committed to the egalitarian precepts of the Enlightenment, Mill advocated gradualism and (...) rejected revolutionary expropriation on utilitarian grounds: gradualism, not expropriation, promised meaningful long-term gains for the working classes. He endorsed laissez-faire capitalism because his theory of accumulation saw that system approaching a stationary state characterized by a great reduction in inequality and an expansion of cooperative production. These tendencies, in combination with an aggressive reform agenda made possible by the extension of the franchise, promised to provide a material base for social progress and individual development.The Political Economy of Progress goes on to claim that Mill's radical political economy anticipated more than a little of Marx's analysis of capitalism and laid a foundation for the work of Fabians and other gradualist radicals in the 20th century. More recently, modern philosophic radicals, such as Rawls, have deep links to this Millean political economy. These links are still worthy of development. In particular, a politically meaningful acceptance of Rawls's radical liberalism waits on a movement capable of re-engineering the workplace in a manner consistent with Mill's endorsement of worker management. (shrink)

A journey from "brainfulness" to mindfulness, from self-control to self-regulation, and from indifference to compassion. Mindfulness meditation is an increasingly popular form of an ancient and powerful technique for reducing stress, elevating one's mental state, and improving the practitioner's overall quality of life. Award-winning author and mindfulness meditation teacher Joseph Emet now takes you down a step-by-step path to integrate this potent form of meditation into your daily life. Offering tips, techniques, and practices from mindfulness meditation-coupled with stories from (...) the author's life as a teacher-Buddha's Book of Meditation guides you to a life teeming with the benefits of regular meditation practice. This volume also includes original music by the author that the reader can access through the web-calming the mind and enhancing the meditation experience. (shrink)

This book presents a collection of original essays by leading thinkers in political theory, philosophy, and bioethics on key issues concerning global justice and bioethics. It is the first collection to comprehensively address these pressing theoretical and practical questions about international distributive justice, humans rights, health care and medical research.

The nature of the Catholic faith often places practitioners at odds with established order and the specificity of our values may cause us to run afoul of secular sensibilities. What follows is a collection of writings by National Catholic Bioethics Center President, Dr. Joseph Meaney, exploring our place in the public square, the proper way to respond to government driven injustice, and some specific instances in which the current administration has infringed or threatened to infringe upon the conscience and (...) religious rights of not just faithful Catholics, but faithful members of many other religions as well. (shrink)

Unearthing the Unknown Whitehead argues that it is Alfred North Whitehead's recently published Harvard lectures, and not his books, that contain the truest record of the development of his philosophy, including the false starts and dead ends that the published works obscure. This development could previously only be inferred as taking place in the gaps between books. It thus calls for a complete reconsideration of Whitehead's philosophical corpus. Joseph Petek critically evaluates the accuracy and reliability of the student accounts (...) of Whitehead's recently published Harvard lectures and then examines these notes, along with a number of previously unknown essays, in order to trace previously unknown aspects of Whitehead's philosophy and the development of his thought. Additionally, neglected early letters between Whitehead and Bertrand Russell appear to reveal a precise point at which he began transitioning from his long career in mathematics to a new career in philosophy. Two previously undiscovered essays-"Religious Psychology of the Western Peoples" and "Freedom and Order"-display Whitehead's concern for a creeping hyper-nationalism that is intensely relevant in today's political climate, along with terminological experiments that stretch our conceptions of Whitehead's philosophy in new directions. (shrink)

Version 1.0 of this paper was delivered orally as an invited paper at a meeting of the American Physical Society, Lubbock, Texas, October 28, 1995. Version 2.0, November 22, 1997, was posted on-line. The present version, 3.1, differs only cosmetically from 3.0, but the latter does involve a substantial expansion from version 2.0.

This book aims to spell out the consequences of taking the technologies behind the doing of science seriously.

A broadly sketched exploration of the theory of state-law and of the ways developments in international law are transforming states.

This paper discusses the relationship between Kantian idealism and Marxian materialism. Part I examines the reasons this relationship is misconstrued to be predominantly a matter of practical philosophy and turns to the neglected works of Alfred Sohn-Rethel and Richard Seaford to outline the importance of money for understanding Kant’s theoretical work. Part II considers an objection that Kant confuses the commodity form for the transcendental object of experience. I am ultimately concerned with defusing the accusation that the identity of the (...) commodity with a Kantian thing renders Kantian idealism “bourgeois” in the pejorative sense. Money is implicated, historically and conceptually, in the very intelligibility of metaphysics. In that case, Kantian idealism and Marxian materialism are two sides of the same coin. (shrink)

Bruno de Finetti is one of the founding fathers of the subjectivist school of probability, where probabilities are interpreted as rational degrees of belief. His work on the relation between the theorems of probability and rationality is among the corner stones of modern subjective probability theory. De Finetti maintained that rationality requires that degrees of belief be coherent, and he argued that the whole of probability theory could be derived from these coherence conditions. De Finetti’s interpretation of probability has been (...) highly influential in science. This paper focuses on the application of this interpretation to quantum mechanics. We argue that de Finetti held that the coherence conditions of degrees of belief in events depend on their verifiability. Accordingly, the standard coherence conditions of degrees of belief that are familiar from the literature on subjective probability only apply to degrees of belief in events which could be jointly verified; and the coherence conditions of degrees of belief in events that cannot be jointly verified are weaker. While the most obvious explanation of de Finetti’s verificationism is the influence of positivism, we argue that it could be motivated by the radical subjectivist and instrumental nature of probability in his interpretation; for as it turns out, in this interpretation it is difficult to make sense of the idea of coherent degrees of belief in, and accordingly probabilities of unverifiable events. We then consider the application of this interpretation to quantum mechanics, concentrating on the Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen experiment and Bell’s theorem. (shrink)

DIFFICULTIES about existence have plagued Western thought since the time of Parmenides. The Eleatic sage had concentrated on what was most obvious and most incontrovertible to him, namely, that something exists. He made that tenet the way and the test of truth. From it he drew consequences that succeeding Greek thinkers from Empedocles to Plotinus accepted in part and rejected in part, intrigued by much of what he had stated but repelled by seeming enormities in some of his conclusions. Later, (...) the patristic acceptation of being as the most appropriate name for God gave additional complication to the issue. In modern times the Kantian and linguistic approaches have raised the questions how existence is a predicate and whether there is a concept of it, and if so, what kind of a concept. On the other hand, the impact of Heidegger has inspired renewed and often enthusiastic absorption in the important role played by existence in philosophical thought, and current contacts with Hindu philosophies are furthering this interest. (shrink)