Two paradigms for religious representation: The physicist and the playground (a reply to Levy)

Leeuwen, Neil Van

doi:10.1016/j.cognition.2017.03.021

Cited by 22 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 31 publications

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“…Before continuing, we have one comment on the term "belief." One of us (Van Leeuwen, 2014, 2017 has argued that the set of mental states that receive the label "belief" in the cognitive sciences actually divides into at least two kinds: religious credence and factual belief, which have distinct psychological functions. Roughly, religious credences are reverential, identity-constituting attitudes that bear striking features in common with imaginings, whereas factual beliefs are mundane, matterof-fact attitudes that, from the standpoint of the agent, portray straightforward facts (see Van Leeuwen, 2014 for theoretical details).…”

Section: Introduction: a Theoretical Inversionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Seeking the supernatural: the Interactive Religious Experience Model

Leeuwen

Elk

2018

Religion, Brain & Behavior

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We develop a new model of how human agency-detection capacities and other socio-cognitive biases are involved in forming religious beliefs. Crucially, we distinguish general religious beliefs (such as God exists) from personal religious beliefs that directly refer to the agent holding the belief or to her peripersonal time and space (such as God appeared to me last night). On our model, people acquire general religious beliefs mostly from their surrounding culture; however, people use agencyintuitions and other low-level experiences to form personal religious beliefs. We call our model the Interactive Religious Experience Model (IREM). IREM inverts received versions of Hyperactive Agency-Detection Device Theory (HADD Theory): instead of saying that agency-intuitions are major causes of religious belief in general, IREM says that general belief in supernatural agents causes people to seek situations that trigger agency-intuitions and other experiences, since these enable one to form personal beliefs about those agents. In addition to developing this model, we (1) present empirical and conceptual difficulties with received versions of HADD Theory, (2) explain how IREM incorporates philosophical work on indexical belief, (3) relate IREM to existing anthropological and psychological research, and (4) propose future empirical research programs based on IREM.

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Section: Introduction: a Theoretical Inversionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Seeking the supernatural: the Interactive Religious Experience Model

Leeuwen

Elk

2018

Religion, Brain & Behavior

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“…The most recent additions to the current discussion have tried to identify which traits in religious beliefs could be more or less resistant depending on the context or to what extent religious beliefs manage to provide immunization against contrary evidence (Levy, 2017(Levy, , 2018Van Leeuwen, 2017a, 2017b. We found this new stage of the discussion quite interesting but in our view, less relevant, since the main issue at stake remains: to what extent religious beliefs are unique or can be clearly distinguished from other kinds.…”

Section: Religious Credences As Existential or Ultimate Beliefsmentioning

confidence: 94%

“…Recent discussion has focused on the differences that distinguish religious credences and "factual beliefs." One important position can be described as "secessionist," stressing the differences between "factual beliefs" and "religious credences" (Van Leeuwen, 2014, 2017b, while a second position is "assimilationist," or leaning toward a greater similarity or inability to distinguish both types (Boudry & Coyne, 2016a).…”

Section: Religious Credences As Existential or Ultimate Beliefsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Religious—And Other Beliefs: How Much Specificity?

Torró

Szocik

2020

Sage Open

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The scientific study of beliefs, including religious beliefs, is thriving. The focus of this research is broad, but notably includes attempts at classifying different kinds of beliefs and their contrasting traits. Religious beliefs appear as more or less specific depending on chosen approaches and criteria. This paper intends to bring the discussion to a different level applying two strategies that yield a similar result. The first tries to reframe the debate about the nature of religious beliefs by connecting it with the current wave of “belief studies,” to test their potential utility. The second critically reviews the epistemological and cognitive dimensions that are involved. Our research points in some distinctive directions: religious beliefs belong to a broad category or class whose structure and function are more related to meaning and purpose provision; at that level, there is no clear way to distinguish religious and non-religious beliefs except possibly by their content.

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“…The authors of publications on religious beliefs, even in flagship journals, not only do not distinguish between such concepts as the psychological act, its content and object (meaning conceptual distinction rather than terminological), but introduce a very complex and not always coherent conceptual grid. Interesting examples of such accumulation are the articles by Neil Van Leeuwen (2009, 2014, 2017), which are being increasingly discussed, in which the authors use terms such as mental state, cognitive attitude, religious cognition, beliefs versus factual beliefs, religious credence, varieties of belief, various subtypes of belief, and so on. The authors not only refer to different traditions as psychology, philosophy, cognitive science, and anthropology but also combine concepts that refer to ontologically different phenomena, wanting to explain two basic types of religious beliefs (Boudry & Coyne, 2016).…”

Section: Theoretical Foundations For Experimental and Non-experimental Psychologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Psychology of religion in the theories and research of the Lvov-Warsaw School (basic achievements and developments)

Citlak

2021

Archive for the Psychology of Religion

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This article presents the basic achievements of the psychology of religion in the Lvov-Warsaw School of K. Twardowski, their developments and significance for the contemporary psychology of religion. Twardowski’s School existed parallel to other European psychological schools: the Würzburg School, founded by Oswald Külpe, and the Dorpat School of the Psychology of Religion, founded by Karl Girgensohn (unfortunately without mutual scientific relations). The article presents two research trends in the psychology of religion resulting from Twardowski’s works, specifically research on mental acts and religious beliefs with use of introspection and research in the field of cultural-historical psychology. The theory of acts and products, and the theory of cratism/power (similar to the theory of Alfred Adler) played crucial roles here. Psychological investigations into religious beliefs were also dominated by the psychological principle of contradiction, and the obtained results also seem to be important today.

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Two paradigms for religious representation: The physicist and the playground (a reply to Levy)

Cited by 22 publications

References 31 publications

Seeking the supernatural: the Interactive Religious Experience Model

Seeking the supernatural: the Interactive Religious Experience Model

Religious—And Other Beliefs: How Much Specificity?

Psychology of religion in the theories and research of the Lvov-Warsaw School (basic achievements and developments)

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