Religion, Evolution, and the Basis of Institutions: The Institutional Cognition Model of Religion

Few outstanding questions in the human behavioral sciences are timelier or more urgently debated than the evolutionary source of religious behaviors and beliefs. Byproduct theorists locate the origins of religion in evolved cognitive defaults and transmission biases. Others have argued that cultural...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:Evolutionary studies in imaginative culture 2018-09, Vol.2 (2), p.1
Main Authors: Wood, Connor, Shaver, John H
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Analysis
Cognition
Cognitive biases
Evolution (Biology)
Novels
Reasoning
Religion
Religious aspects
Religious beliefs
Social evolution
Surveys
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:Few outstanding questions in the human behavioral sciences are timelier or more urgently debated than the evolutionary source of religious behaviors and beliefs. Byproduct theorists locate the origins of religion in evolved cognitive defaults and transmission biases. Others have argued that cultural evolutionary processes integrated non-adaptive cognitive byproducts into coherent networks of supernatural beliefs and ritual that encouraged ingroup cooperativeness, while adaptationist models assert that the cognitive and behavioral foundations of religion have been selected for at more basic levels. Here, we survey these differing approaches, noting their respective strengths and weaknesses. We then advance a novel model that centers on the ability of language to generate alternative worlds independent of immediate empirical facts, and thus highlight the similarities between religious belief and the modes of cognition that underlie institutions in general. The institutional cognition model of religion accounts for some of the shortcomings of extant approaches and draws attention to the human ability to create non-empirical worlds; that is, worlds that are imaginary. Both religious beliefs and institutional facts--such as jurisdictional borders--are non-empirical assertions, yet they are socially accepted as truths and reified through ritual and behavior. One type of non-empirical, linguistically generated belief--supernatural agent belief--is particularly effective for stabilizing systems of arbitrary norms by rooting them in deontic rather than utilitarian reasoning. The evolutionary roots and continued persistence of religion are thus functions of the capacity for humans to generate cognitive alternatives to empirical reality, and the need to stably coordinate those alternative conceptions. Keywords: religion, evolution, cognition, transcendental social, institutional facts, byproduct theories, cultural evolution, supernatural beliefs, norms
ISSN:2472-9884
DOI:10.26613/esic/2.2.89