Cognitive aspects of afterlife beliefs

Inroduction Biographical note Further reading A note on the text The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius Antoninus Appendix: A selection from the correspondence of Marcus Cornelius Fronto and Marcus Aurelius Explanatory notes Comparative style of references for Fronto's letters Index

In a good will there's always the distilling of that pure love that always inspires rightas mal-aimed wants all form from impure willing. Good will now made that song cease at its height, and brought to silence all the holy strings that Heaven's right hand both slackens and draws tight. Would they be deaf to just solicitings, those beings who, to prompt in me the will to ask of them, left off their carollings? Fittingly pain unending, and pain still, 10 will be his lot who loves what cannot last, yet leaves his eternal longings unfulfilled.

Despite a wealth of research exploring developmental patterns of children’s understanding of the thoughts and desires of another (or, their theory of mind), relatively little research has explored children’s developing understanding of supernatural minds. Of the work that exists, very few studies have explored whether patterns are similar in other cultural contexts, or religious traditions outside of Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) societies. To address this deficit, the present study recruited 2-to-5-year-old children from three countries (United Kingdom, Albania, and Israel) with different religious traditions (Christian, Muslim, and Jewish). Children completed two perception (audio and visual) tasks and one memory task assessing their understanding of natural and supernatural minds’ cognitive abilities. Analyses revealed different patterns for responses about human minds. However, there were similar results across samples for responses about God, s...

On what basis do we attribute phenomenal states to others? One answer, defended by John Stuart Mill, appeals to an analogy between ourselves and the similar bodies and actions of others (1865, p. 208). Despite its intuitive plausibility, this position is often rejected (Arico et al., 2011; Buckwalter & Phelan, 2014; Knobe & Prinz, 2008). In line with Mill's account, we propose that the primary factors used when making phenomenal state ascriptions are the appropriate display of functional and behavioral cues and having bodies with the right kind of physical composition. To test this account, we gave five groups of participants a vignette followed by three to six questions. For four of the groups, the vignette described an alien-human encounter and the participants had to judge the likelihood (on a 7-point scale) that the alien had a non-phenomenal state (a belief) and the likelihood that it could have a phenomenal state (pain). The fifth group, as a control, read a vignette about a similar interaction between two humans. We found that, as appropriate functional and behavioral cues and then humanoid features are added to the alien, people are more willing to attribute a phenomenal state to it. Attributions of the non-phenomenal state are primarily dependent on the appropriate functional and behavioral cues, not on having humanoid features.

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Jesse Bering's (2002) recent study of the ways dead agents are mentally represented is a very interesting and important contribution to the cognitive science of religion. In showing that our conceptions of afterlife clearly cannot be just 'learned from culture' Bering has provided us new evidence for the importance of natural intuitions in religious thought. I would, however, like to point out a few things that may need careful rethinking. First, Bering's explanation for his results might need some revision; second, his insistence on the 'innateness' of religion is confused; third, his way of contrasting his own approach with that of Boyer is based on a misunderstanding.

A psychological struggle between good and evil, lasting for centuries and still on despite time passing, both aiming at a positive outcome. The two sides of the same coin, that is, the human heart and soul, the real driving force of existence. The title of this paper can be interpreted this way since it refers to a theme shifting from culture to entertainment till reaching science and its multiple nuances. Artists, intellectuals and scientists tried to provide people with their ideas of it, something going beyond any logical order they may happen to perceive in the air. A still unsolved conflict despite the triumph of rationalism over instincts, but even the presence of rules and law within all societies has not solved anything yet. Its denial is by no means wrong, that is why its multiple expressions are noteworthy works of art despite the fact that another conflict, among atheists and believers, is still present on earth. And the aim of this paper is showing how these positions can never find a good compromise among differences and similarities, maybe drawing inspiration from what surrounds them all the time.

One of the central claims of Norenzayan et al.'s article is that supernatural monitoring and intergroup competition have facilitated the rise of large-scale prosocial religions. Although the authors outline in detail how social instincts that govern supernatural monitoring are honed by cultural evolution and have given rise to Big Gods, they do not provide a clear explanation for the success of karmic religions. Therefore, to test the real scope of their model, Norenzayan et al. need to seriously engage with questions concerning the evolution of karmic prosocial religions.

Religion has long been a prominent subject of study by scholars in both humanities and social sciences. It is only recently, however, that religious phenomena have exercised scholars employing the theoretical perspectives and analytical tools of the cognitive and evolutionary sciences. Within the cognitive science of religion, two competing concepts of religion have emerged: (1) religion as a homogeneous phenomenon and (2) religion as an aggregate phenomenon. The former concept implies a set of beliefs about supernatural agents and a set of corresponding doctrines. These beliefs and doctrines naturally lead to behaviors such as the performance of prescribed rituals, visionary experiences, and organizational arrangements that invariably lead to in-group/out-group requirements. The second concept regards religion as a set of discrete and independent concepts and behaviors such as (1) an intuitive response to potential danger including contagion, pollution, loss of status, loss of resources, concepts of contagion and pollution, fears about loss of status, intimations of misfortune; (2) ideas about agents with counterintuitive qualities; (3) social coalitions; and (4) ritualized behavior. Each tendency requires a separate description and explanation. The overall idea governing the second concept is that these individual adaptations have led to survival and reproductive success. Some scholars who have adopted this perspective argue that the religious form of such behaviors is adaptive; others suggest that religious notions are parasitic on other behaviors that are themselves adaptive. Such scholars argue that religious notions should be considered by-products of quite ordinary cognitive processes. I am more sympathetic to the second theoretical perspective, and it will largely inform my approach to imagining the gods.

The present study investigated predictions from the preparedness hypothesis that children's God concepts may not be strictly anthropomorphic along certain dimensions. In particular, 39 American children (ages 3 to 7) predicted the visual, auditory, and olfactory perspectives of humans, animals with special senses, and God. Results revealed that preschoolers distinguished God and the special animals as having greater perceptual access than humans and normal animals, who were predicted to have limited perceptual access. These results offer further support for the theory that in developing a concept of God, even young children differentiate God from humans and resist incorporating certain aspects of the human concept into their concept of God.

Prior research has investigated children’s ability to distinguish between possible and impossible events in our own world, but relatively little empirical research has investigated adults’ intuitions about the boundaries or limitations of imaginary worlds. Here, we presented participants with brief scenarios that were either Morally Deviant, Factually Unlikely, or Conceptually Contradictory. Participants rated how easy it was for them to imagine a world in which each description held true and assessed whether such a world was improbable or impossible. Worlds in which morality operates differently were significantly harder to imagine than worlds that contained unlikely events and significantly easier to imagine than worlds that contained inherent conceptual contradictions. When forced to choose whether Morally Deviant worlds were impossible or improbable, a significant majority of individuals classified them as improbable; however, among individuals who rated these worlds as maximall...

This study aimed at exploring of the concepts of irreversibility, universality, finality, causality of death and Filipino children’s other concepts of death. It involved 30 children, ages 7–11. Findings show that the development of concept of death among Filipino children is not a single construct and requires understanding of the different concepts of irreversibility, universality, finality and causality of death. Grasping these concepts requires understanding of non-corporeal continuation, dys-functionality, all-inclusiveness, unpredictability, inevitability, immobility, and insensitivity. Children understand that sickness, tragedy, accidents and personal conflicts are conditions that really do or can bring about the death of a living thing. Filipino children’s other concept of death lies in their belief in the divine providence (pagpapasa-Diyos) and old age. The concepts of death among Filipino children is regarded as either concrete or abstract and goes on...

Background: The extent to which people ascribe mind to others has been shown to predict the extent to which human rights are conferred. Therefore, in the context of disorders of consciousness (DOC), mind ascription can influence end of life decisions. A previous US-American study indicated that participants ascribed even less mind to patients with unresponsive-wakefulness-syndrome (UWS) than to the dead. Results were explained in terms of implicit dualism and religious beliefs, as highly religious people ascribed least mind to UWS. Here, we addresses mind ascription to UWS patients in Germany. Methods: We investigate the perception of UWS patients in a large German sample (N = 910) and compare the results to the previous US data, addressing possible cultural differences. We further assess effects of medical expertise, age, gender, socioeconomic status and subjective knowledge about UWS in the German sample. Results: Unlike the US sample, German participants did not perceive UWS patients as "more dead than dead", ascribing either equal (on 3 of 5 items) or more (on 2 items) mental abilities to UWS patients than to the dead. Likewise, an effect of implicit dualism was not replicated and German medically trained participants ascribed more capabilities to UWS patients than did a non-medical sample. Within the German sample, age, gender, religiosity and socioeconomic status explained about 15% of the variability of mind ascription. Age and religiosity were individually significant predictors, younger and more religious people ascribing more mind. Gender had no effect. Conclusion: Results are consistent with cross-cultural differences in the perception of UWS between Germany and the USA, Germans ascribing more mind to UWS patients. The German sample ascribed as much or more but not less mind to a UWS patient than to a deceased, although within group variance was large, calling for further research. Mind ascription is vital, because, in times of declining resources for healthcare systems, and an increasing legalization of euthanasia, public opinion will influence UWS patients' rights and whether 'the right to die' will be the only right conceded to them.

The Cognitive Science of Religion (CSR) is a scientific approach to the study of religion that seeks to provide causal explanations of religious beliefs and practices. Proponents of CSR seek to explain the process of the formation, acceptance, transmission, and prevalence of religious beliefs by explaining the natural features of the human mind and how it functions. One of the religious beliefs that exists in all human cultures, and has attracted the attention of many CSR scholars in the last decade, is the belief in afterlife. According to CSR researchers, this belief is rooted in the natural structures of the human mind. They see the belief in life after death as a non-reflective or intuitive belief that results from the functioning of mental tools. They have proposed various theories to explain the formation, development, spread, and transmission of belief in life after death. But among these theories, two theories have been more widely accepted, intuitive dualism theory and simulation constraint theory. Intuitive dualism theory says that all humans have the two mental tools: Intuitive Biology and Intuitive Psychology. Intuitive Biology in the face of a dead person makes us believe that he is no longer alive because he cannot move and act. Intuitive Psychology continues to attribute invisible features (such as desires, thoughts, beliefs, and emotions) to the dead person automatically. The simultaneous functioning of the above two mental tools makes the human mind believe that a part of the dead person is immaterial and remains after the physical death. Simulation constraint theory says that all humans have the mental tools to process information from the environment and acquire religious beliefs. None of the mental tools can imagine or simulate the nonexistence of one's desires, thoughts, beliefs, and emotions. Therefore, the human mind in the face of the dead person, although easily imagining his physical death, continues to believe in the existence of another part of the person (thoughts, desires, etc.). Both of these theories seem to face challenges and limitations in explaining the formation of belief in afterlife. These include inability to provide causal explanation, the lack of distinction between the natural and the rational foundations of belief in afterlife and disregarding the supernatural foundations of the afterlife belief. Neither of the two theories seems to provide a sufficient causal explanation for the formation of belief in the afterlife. Both theories attempt to present a possible story about the formation of afterlife beliefs based on how mental tools function. They provide only a reasonable story of the process that has led to the belief in afterlife. What these two theories offer is a description (not causal explanation) of the human mind and its tools and how they function. This in itself does not explain that these tools have produced a belief in the afterlife. Therefore, the claim that belief in the afterlife is the result of the functioning of mental tools requires a causal relationship between mental tools and this belief. Neither of these two theories can explain this causal relationship, and they merely describe a reasonable story of the relationship between them. Furthermore, distinction between rational foundations of religious belief and natural foundations of religious belief shows that finding a natural origin for believing in the afterlife or describing the cognitive mechanisms associated with it does not in any way mean rejecting or discrediting that belief. Cognitive theories about the natural origins of the belief in the afterlife cannot show us whether this belief is rational or irrational. These explanations can only (if they can) show us the natural roots of the formation and prevalence of this belief. Also Religious belief is a complex notion. Firstly, it is a natural notion, in that sense it is rooted in the human nature and is related to human cognitive systems and mental tools. Secondly, it is a cultural and social notion, in that sense it is both influenced by cultural and social change, and also affects it. Thirdly, it is a supernatural notion, in that sense it is deeply connected with both revelation and prophecy, and with the immaterial aspect of human. Belief in afterlife seems to require all three levels of explanation.

Imagination plays a fundamental role in conceptualizing superhuman agents, namely, gods, spirits, demons, angels and so forth in all human cultures where they appear in mythic narratives, oral and written, as well as ritual structure and practice. Even very young children are captivated by minimally counter-intuitive agents. This paper will examine why, despite the enlightenment and the revolutionary ideas brought about by scientific discovery, the human imagination refuses to abandon such modes of thought. The cognitive and evolutionary science of religion (CSR) provides important clues as to why that might be the case.

The author argues that, contrary to received wisdom, neurotypical humans (a.k.a., the folk) do not conceive of death as the annihilation of the individual. If that received wisdom were true, then afterlife beliefs, which have proven to be intuitive to the folk and ubiquitous across the vast time and space of human religious cultures, are a straightforward, blatant contradiction in the minds of the folk. To alleviate and ameliorate that contradiction, those who accept the received wisdom have argued for one of two theories regarding how and why the folk create, accept, and enforce their cultural afterlife beliefs: through cognitive dissonance or explanatory coexistence. The author argues, however, that these cognitive explanations fail to explain the intuitive and ubiquitous nature of afterlife beliefs. Contrariwise, the author argues that the folk has three different concepts of death—the folk biological concept of death, the existential concept of death, and the concept of social death—which apply to different experiential domains: the fate of the body, the fate of the individual, and the social fate of the individual, respectively. Finally, the author argues that these integrated concepts allow afterlife beliefs to be held coherently and consistently in the folk's mind and accounts for their intuitiveness and ubiquity.

The author introduces and critically analyzes two recent, curious findings and their accompanying explanations regarding how the folk intuits the capabilities of the dead and those in a persistent vegetative state (PVS). The dead are intuited to survive death, whereas PVS patients are intuited as more dead than the dead. Current explanations of these curious findings rely on how the folk is said to conceive of death and the dead: either as the annihilation of the person (via the secular conception of death), or that person's continuation as a disembodied being (via folk dualism). The author argues that these two conceptions are incompatible and inconsistent with each other and the evidence. Contrariwise, the author argues that the folk intuition about dead-survivors and the living dead are more easily explained by appealing to cross-culturally established concepts: the folk biological concept of death, the existential (metaphorical) concept of death, and the concept of social death. KEYWORDS: Afterlife beliefs, persistent vegetative state; folk biological concept of death; religious conception of death; secular conception of death; folk dualism; existential (metaphorical) concept of death; social death.

This paper is an invitation to reflect on the advisability of analysing philosophy from a naturalistic perspective. That is, from a perspective that considers philosophy as if it was one more cultural object, which can be studied using the tools that we have available to us today and that are provided by disciplines such as evolutionary psychology or anthropology oriented by a distinctly cognitivist approach. A central concept in the analysis is that of " intuitive ontology " – closely linked to intuitive (or folk-) philosophy or the spontaneous, naïve (natural) way of thinking that is associated with common sense – which is a result of the evolutionary process and a source of metaphysical prejudices such as dualism. A metaphilosophical reflection, such as that proposed here, identifies the " natural " character of a transcendent metaphysics that is still too close to intuitive philosophy, and the interest of constituting a naturalistic philosophy that is fully conscious of its " unnatural " or " counterintuitive " character.

Science investigates phenomena in nature that are either experienced or observed by people. However, one special class of phenomena is generally considered unscientific, i.e., unworthy of scientific investigation, by the majority of scientists. Science generally ignores any phenomenon associated with the possibility of an afterlife, which amounts to a scientific bias against this possibility. This shortcoming of science is actually a historical artifact that our present science inherited from the earlier break between science and religion and the separation of human thought into the two realms of MIND and MATTER. The bias is so strong that science, as it now defines itself, will never accept the reality of the afterlife and associated phenomena no matter how strong or persuasive the evidence is to the contrary. But new research does point directly to a conclusion that the afterlife is real or at least that consciousness in some form survives death; so science must change in order accept this new reality and progress.

Cognitive science of religion (CSR) brings theories from the cognitive sciences to bear on why religious thought and action is so common in humans and why religious phenomena take on the features that they do. The field is characterized by a piecemeal approach, explanatory non-exclusivism, and methodological pluralism. Topics receiving consideration include how ordinary cognitive structures inform and constrain the transmission of religious ideas, why people believe in gods, why religious rituals and prayers tend to have the forms that they do, why afterlife beliefs are so common, and how human memory systems influence socio-political features in religious systems. CSR is often associated with evolutionary science and anti-religious rhetoric but neither is intrinsic nor necessary to the field.

It is commonly supposed that religious experience requires a belief in the existence of the (presumably transcendent) object of the experience. Yet it is not clear that this must be so. In this essay, I defend the possibility that a subject could have a genuine religious experience without thereby necessarily believing that the purported object of her experience corresponds to reality and/or is the cause of her experience. To do so, I put forward what I call an imaginative account of religious engagement. I argue that sincere religious engagement is compatible with both non-belief and disbelief, and that such engagement may give rise to particular religious emotions and attitudes, despite the subject’s not believing in the truth of certain propositions or the reality of certain concepts relevant to those emotions and attitudes.

The classical "laws of thought" (such as the law of non-contradiction) do not describe the way we always think but denote the way we ought and ought not to think. Likewise, moral, legal, and prudential laws do not describe the way we always feel, intend, and act but the ways we ought and ought not to feel, intend, and act. Are there parallel laws of imagination? I hypothesize that there are. These laws -- which I call "imaginative norms" -- denote the ways we ought and ought not to imagine. The Imaginative Norm Hypothesis explains of the phenomenon of "imaginative resistance" (that is, resistance to imagining gross immorality). My primary thesis is that an agent's entertaining thoughts or images with grossly ugly or immoral mental contents -- irrespective of whether these thoughts influence action -- tend to detract from the highest moral character and healthiest overall psychology. Thus, the mental attitude of imaginative resistance can be explained: it is a peculiarly moral mental attitude arising from the aspiration to high moral character. As a corollary, we might expect those who (for whatever reason) are less worried about strictly protecting their mind pure and spotless will report less imaginative resistance; and second, that the mental attitude of resistance will not appear as strongly -- or not appear at all -- when an agent entertains thoughts or images that are less morally objectionable. Both of these corollaries turn out to be true.

A series of studies have found an association between the content of beliefs in the supernatural and increased cooperation in social groups. " High Moralizing Gods, " " fear of supernatural punishment, " and " supernatural monitoring " have been claimed to permit greater social cohesion through the specific epistemic engagement they produce in the minds of those who hold certain religious beliefs. However, the evolutionary pathways linking these religious features with cooperation remain unclear. Focusing on the example of belief in supernatural sanctioning, we delineate different mechanisms by which beliefs in supernatural entities could, in principle, lead to greater cohesion and emphasize the different predictions each evolutionary mechanism affords. We thus reassess several studies that have been interpreted as supporting or, on the contrary, as failing to support one or some of these cultural evolutionary processes. Finally, we propose several avenues by which research addressing the link between cooperation and specific forms of belief in supernatural entities could be strengthened.

Our age is retrospective. It builds the sepulchres of the fathers. It writes biographies, histories, and criticism. The foregoing generations beheld God and nature face to face; we, through their eyes. Why should not we also enjoy an original relation to the universe? Why should not we have a poetry and philosophy of insight and not of tradition, and a religion by revelation to us, and not the history of theirs? Embosomed for a season in nature, whose floods of life stream around and through us, and invite us by the powers they supply, to action proportioned to nature, why should we grope among the dry bones of the past, or put the living generation into masquerade out of its faded wardrobe? The sun shines to-day also. There is more wool and flax in the fields. There are new lands, new men, new thoughts. Let us demand our own works and laws and worship.

This paper examines how the cognitive science of religion (CSR) relates to naturalism, both as a methodological and a metaphysical principle. CSR is heir to a rich tradition of natural histories of religion. They provided integrated causal accounts of religion based on anthropological, historical, and psychological observations. Natural histories of religion traditionally had a strong anti-theistic agenda. This in part explains why CSR is still regarded as a project that has mainly negative implications for the rationality of religious beliefs. The question of whether CSR challenges religious beliefs nevertheless remains a subject of enduring debate. To approach this question, I examine how naturalness is developed as a concept in CSR, exploring McCauley’s claim that religion is natural. I conclude that the naturalness of religion does not challenge the epistemic standing of religious beliefs. Notably, this is a result of CSR’s self-imposed methodological constraints, in particular, its attempts to reduce religious phenomena to non-religious cognitive dispositions.

Both philosophers and scientists have long assumed that the impetus to develop and hold afterlife beliefs was primarily provided by one’s fear of one’s own death (an egocentric view).  Recent empirical studies, however, present compelling evidence against this assumption: it has been observed that participants intuitively believe that others survive death (an allocentric view).  Despite this, most theories offered to explain this finding rely on egocentric mechanisms and claim that the deceased are represented as disembodied minds.  Here, the author offers an allocentric explanation for intuitive afterlife beliefs based on the intentional stance and offline social reasoning which also suggests that the deceased should be represented as socially embodied.  The author then argues that this socially embodied representation is more in line with both the findings and folk descriptions of those in the afterlife.  Finally, the author discusses the impact on both the scientific and philosophical investigations into afterlife beliefs.

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