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RELIGION and COGNITION |
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An Introduction by István Czachesz |
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Religion in contextMuch theorising has taken place about the definition of religion. For the time being, we can limit the scope of our investigation to patters of human behaviour that produce utterances about supernatural entities. Notice that there is no widely accepted definition of culture, language, or art, yet all of them can be studied meaningfully
Behaviour in contextenvironment => human behaviour => cultural artefacts This scheme shows that behaviour translates environmental inputs into cultural outputs. Bit of culture themselves also serve as inputs of human behaviour. Whereas behaviourism did not look into the box, most of cognitive science has been interested in what is inside the box. A synthesis of the two perspectives is needed to get the whole picture. Religion in contextThe cognitive study of religion focusses on a particular slice of the matrix, that is, on behaviours producing utterances about supernatural entities: environment => religious behaviour => utterances about supernatural entities |
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