Increased Affluence Explains the Emergence of Ascetic Wisdoms and Moralizing Religions

Abstract

We discussed several possible causal pathways, including the development of literacy and urban life, and put forward the idea, inspired by life history theory, that absolute affluence would have impacted human motivation and reward systems, nudging people away from short-term strategies (resource acquisition and coercive interactions) and promoting long-term strategies (self-control techniques and cooperative interactions).

How should neuroscience study emotions? by distinguishing emotion states, concepts, and experiences

“…inferring emotions in other people (social inference, theory of mind) (Spunt and Lieberman, 2012; Skerry and Saxe, 2015]…”

“…On the other hand, semantic knowledge for emotions has indeed been mapped, at least across cortex, and can be compared with semantic knowledge of many other concepts for which we have words (Huth et al , 2016). Another study (Skerry and Saxe, 2015) was notable for comparing similarity amongst neural representations with conceptual similarity in how people rate emotions according to several popular psychological theories (arousal/valence; basic emotions; appraisal dimensions). That study (Skerry and Saxe, 2015) found that attributions about other people’s emotions that we make from thinking about the situations in which people find themselves activate representations in a system of brain structures known to be involved in mental state attribution more generally (such as the temporoparietal junction, dorsomedial prefrontal cortex and precuneus); the best match between neural and psychological similarity structures held for ratings on appraisal dimensions.…”

“…Another study (Skerry and Saxe, 2015) was notable for comparing similarity amongst neural representations with conceptual similarity in how people rate emotions according to several popular psychological theories (arousal/valence; basic emotions; appraisal dimensions). That study (Skerry and Saxe, 2015) found that attributions about other people’s emotions that we make from thinking about the situations in which people find themselves activate representations in a system of brain structures known to be involved in mental state attribution more generally (such as the temporoparietal junction, dorsomedial prefrontal cortex and precuneus); the best match between neural and psychological similarity structures held for ratings on appraisal dimensions. These recent examples use techniques that would likely be useful also to investigate how emotion states (functionally defined) might be topographically represented in the brain [voxel-based modeling (Huth et al , 2016), and representational dissimilarity analysis (Skerry and Saxe, 2015), respectively).…”

Representational coexistence in the God concept: Core knowledge intuitions of God as a person are not revised by Christian theology despite lifelong experience

“…A full discussion of this debate is beyond the scope of this article, but we consider the by-product view, most notably advanced by Boyer (2001), more likely. See for example Baumard, Hyafil, Morris, and Boyer (2015) for a cogent critique of Norenzayan (2013). conceptual repertoire? We address this question by focusing on the case study of the God concept in Christian theology.…”

The paradox of the long term: human evolution and entanglement★

“…More recently, Morris has charted the growth of energy capture in the five most intensive agricultural zones from 11000 BC to 1 CE (Baumard, Hyafil, Morris & Boyer 2015). In this study, variables such as house size, population density, and population of the main city are used as proxies for energy capture.…”