A cognitive revolution?

: Cognitive machinery and explanatory ambitions posted by Barbara Herrnstein Smith One of the most influential wor s among recent !cognitive" and#or !evolutionary" studies of religion is a boo by $rench anthropologist and evolutionary psychologist %ascal Boyer& 't is titled( with imposing finality( )eligion *xplained: +he *volutionary Origins of )eligious +hought& Boyer organi,es the boo around a series of sharp contrasts between( on the one hand( explanations of religion based( li e his own( on !findings and models in cognitive psychology( anthropology( linguistics and evolutionary biology" and( on the other hand( what he refers to as !spontaneous( commonsense" ideas and !most accounts of the origins of religion&" +hough he gives few explicit examples of the latter( it is evident from his descriptions and incidental references( including an allusion to !boo shelves - overflowing with treatises on religion( histories of religion( religious people.s accounts of their ideas( and so on(" that these include not only wor s by scholars such as /ircea *liade( who see religion as immune to naturalistic explanation( but also the classic naturalistic accounts of religion by( among others( /ax 0eber and 1mile 2ur heim& !Spontaneous" and !commonsense" are of course peculiar terms to use to describe accounts that offer( as the latter do( considerable erudition( extensive empirical observation( detailed theoretical analysis( and more or less unconventional conclusions& $or Boyer( however( the crucial contrast is between explanations of religion that are genuinely scientific3in a specific sense that ' comment on below3 and everything else& Accordingly( all the items on those overflowing boo shelves are e4uivalent to each other and also to anyone.s spontaneous( commonsense ideas about religion& !All(" he declares( !fail to tell us why we have religion and why it is the way it is&" Boyer.s argument throughout )eligion *xplained is that( contrary to more familiar views( we should understand religious ideas 5e&g&( gods( immortality( or moral teachings6 and related practices 5e&g&( prayers or communal rituals6 not as more7or7less functional 5or dysfunctional6 human responses to recurrent human conditions and experiences but( rather( as the effects of the automatic operation of a number of specific( highly speciali,ed( innate and universal mental mechanisms& 'n the evolutionary7 psychology paradigm to which Boyer subscribes( it is assumed or proposed that these mechanisms evolved by natural selection to provide our ancestors with adaptive solutions to an array of fitness7 related problems recurrent under stone7age conditions& +he mechanisms are also posited as being discrete 5!modular"6( genetically specified( and somehow 5though it is not yet nown exactly how6 neurophysiologically reali,ed3or( in the computer7derived idiom of that paradigm( as being !coded" in !our" 5presumptively universally shared6 genes and !hardwired" in !the" 5singular( presumptively universally shared6 human brain& Boyer presents a picture of human behavior as largely a matter of the automatic( unconscious wor ings of evolved mental mechanisms( and he promotes the description of such wor ings as a properly scientific explanation of religion that trumps all other accounts& 'ndeed( for Boyer( it is precisely insofar as an explanation of some phenomenon3any phenomenon3is put in terms of what he refers to repeatedly as !underlying causal mechanisms" that it counts as genuinely scientific& 'n relation to these central features of )eligion *xplained( two important points should be made& $irst( it should be recogni,ed that neither the computational7modular model of the mind nor the idea of innate( automatically triggered mental mechanisms is a foregone conclusion of contemporary cognitive science or of any other science& +he computational model has been significantly challenged both by

practitioners of cognitive science per se and by researchers and theorists wor ing in a number of related fields( including evolutionary biology( developmental psychology( paleoanthropology( and philosophy of mind& /oreover( a number of important alternative models of cognition have been developed in these and other fields& 5See( e&g&( )afael 8u9e, and 0alter :& $reeman( eds&( )eclaiming Cognition: +he %rimacy of Action( 'ntention and *motion; +im van <elder and )obert $& %ort( eds&( /ind as /otion: *xplorations in the 2ynamics of Cognition; Horst Hendri s7:ansen( Catching Ourselves in the Act: Situated Activity( 'nteractive *mergence( *volution( and Human +hought; and *dward Hutchins( Cognition in the 0ild&6 +he alternative models often give considerable attention to a number of features of human cognition slighted in Boyer.s boo and in the new cognitive accounts of religion more generally& Among them are the significance( for humans( of ongoing individual experiential learning; the complex social dynamics involved in the transmission of s ills and beliefs; the presence among post7%aleolithic humans of such crucial cultural cognitive resources as transgenerational material culture( schools( texts( and duplicated images; and the significant differences among individuals with regard to various aspects of cognition& Contrary( then( to the assumptions of paradigmatic evolutionary psychology and the claims of current cognitive explanations of religion( it is by no means clear that our interactions with our environments are determined largely by the operation of mental mechanisms hardwired at birth or that various widespread and recurrent features of human behavior and culture( including those associated with religion( are best explained by reference to a universal and virtually uniform species7specific mind& 0hat Boyer presents in )eligion *xplained as a properly corrective( hard7nosed( comprehensive explanation of religion based on up7to7date( scientifically established nowledge is better described as an array of more or less speculative accounts of selected features of religious belief and practice based on a set of still highly controversial theories developed in fields at some distance from evolutionary biology and empirical neuroscience& Second( Boyer.s identification of scientific explanation with descriptions of underlying causal mechanisms is 4uestionable both from a theoretical perspective and also in relation to what can be claimed by his own accounts& 0hile the identification reflects standard views formed when the ma=or examples of scientific theories and explanations were drawn from the physical sciences 5largely astronomy( physics( and chemistry6( current understandings in philosophy of science recogni,e a variety of explanatory modes and due attention is given to the biological( behavioral( and social sciences& 'n these areas of science( explanation often ta es the form of models of the emergence of complex phenomena from the dynamic interaction of multiple forces and contingent events operating at different levels of organi,ation& 0ith regard to many aspects of religion( the latter types of explanation are li ely to be more ade4uate to the range( complexity( and heterogeneity of the phenomena involved than the unilinear( inside7to7outside( depth7to7surface models sought and produced in evolutionary psychology& 'ndeed( on Boyer.s own definitions( his explanations of religion are !scientific" primarily in aspiration& +hus( while he defines scientific theories as those in which !we describe phenomena that can be observed" and !explain them in terms of other phenomena that are also detectable(" in many of his own accounts( as in those of evolutionary psychology more generally( the strictly hypothetical mental !mechanisms(" !systems(" and !devices" in terms of which behavioral and cultural phenomena are explained are not observable at all( and !detectable" often means little more than hopefully posited and strenuously asserted&