Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-mkpzs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-26T08:25:39.117Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Power, other-worldliness, and the extended mind

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 September 2018

ADAM GREEN*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, Azusa Pacific University, Azusa, CA, USA
*

Abstract

In this article, I use the extended mind literature to elucidate religious phenomena that are normally left well outside the purview of analytic philosophy of religion. I show that the extended mind literature casts light on how the potential relationships of the ordinary believer to extra-natural power dictate cross-culturally re-occurring ways of structuring religious praxis. This application of the extended mind illuminates a diverse but subtly interconnected set of religious phenomena, from the cross-cultural appeal of magic as a negative category to the role of other-worldliness in the major world religions.

Type
Original Article
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Arcadi, James (2015) ‘Impanation, incarnation, and enabling externalism’, Religious Studies, 51, 7590.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Atran, Scott (2002) In Gods We Trust: the Evolutionary Landscape of Religion (New York: Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
Barnes, Michael Horace (2000) Stages of Thought: The Co-evolution of Religious Thought and Science (New York: Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
Barrett, Justin (2000) ‘Exploring the natural foundations of religion’, Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 4, 2934.10.1016/S1364-6613(99)01419-9CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bellah, Robert & Joas, Hans (2012) The Axial Age and its Consequences (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press).10.4159/harvard.9780674067400CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boyer, Pascal (2001) Religion Explained (New York: Basic Books).Google Scholar
Bulbulia, Joseph (2008) ‘Meme infection or religious niche construction? An adaptationist alternative to the cultural maladaptationist hypothesis’, Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, 20, 67107.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clark, Andy & Chalmers, David (1998) ‘The extended mind’, Analysis, 58, 719.10.1093/analys/58.1.7CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clark, Andy (2008) Supersizing the Mind: Embodiment, Action, and Cognitive Extension (New York: Oxford University Press).10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195333213.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clark, Kelly & Barrett, Justin (2010) ‘Reformed epistemology and the cognitive science of religion’, Faith and Philosophy, 27, 174189.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Clark, Kelly and Barrett, Justin (2011) ‘Reidian religious epistemology and the cognitive science of religion’, Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 79, 639675.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cohen, Emma (2007) The Mind Possessed: The Cognition of Spirit Possession in an Afro-Brazilian Religious Tradition (New York: Oxford University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cross, Richard (2011) ‘Vehicle externalism and the metaphysics of the incarnation: a medieval contribution’, in Marmodoro, Anna & Hill, Jonathan (eds) The Metaphysics of the Incarnation (New York: Oxford University Press), 186204.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Day, Matthew (2004a) ‘The ins and outs of religious cognition’, Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, 16, 241255.10.1163/1570068042652284CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Day, Matthew (2004b) ‘Religion, off-line cognition, and the extended mind’, Journal of Cognition and Culture, 4, 101121.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
De Cruz, Helen & De Smedt, Johann (2015) A Natural History of Natural Theology: The Cognitive Science of Theology and Philosophy of Religion (Cambridge MA: MIT Press).Google Scholar
Dennett, Daniel (2006) Breaking the Spell: Religion as a Natural Phenomenon (New York: Penguin).Google Scholar
Farrer, D. S. (2014) ‘Introduction: cross-cultural articulations of war magic and warrior religion’, Social Analysis, 58, 124.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fowler, Robert (1995) ‘Greek magic, Greek religion’, Illinois Classical Studies, 20, 122.Google Scholar
Fraser, Kyle (2014) ‘The contested boundaries of “magic” and “religion” in late pagan Monotheism’, in Bailey, Michael (ed.) Magic and Witchcraft (New York: Routledge), 96113.Google Scholar
Fricker, Miranda (2007) Epistemic Injustice: Power and the Ethics of Knowing (New York: Oxford University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grant, Robert (1966) Gnosticism and Early Christianity (New York: Harper & Row).Google Scholar
Guthrie, Stewart (1993) Faces in the Clouds: A New Theory of Religion (New York: Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
Haluszka, Adria (2010) The Sacred Domain: A Semiotic and Cognitive Analysis of Religion and Magic in the Ancient Mediterranean World (The Ohio State University, ProQuest Dissertations Publishing).Google Scholar
Hick, John (1989) An Interpretation of Religion: Human Responses to the Transcendent (New Haven CT: Yale University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jokic, Zeljko (2014) ‘Shamanic battleground: magic, sorcery, and warrior shamanism in Venezuela’, Social Analysis, 58, 107126.10.3167/sa.2014.580106CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kox, Willem, Meeus, Wim & Hart, Harm't (1991) ‘Religious conversion of adolescents: testing the Loflund and Stark model of religious conversion’, Sociology of Religion, 52, 227240.Google Scholar
Krueger, Joel (2016) ‘Extended mind and religious cognition’, in Kripal, J. (ed.) Religion: Mental Religion (New York: Macmillan), 237254.Google Scholar
Lindeman, Marjaana, & Svedholm, Annika (2012) ‘What's in a name? Paranormal, superstitious, magical, and supernatural beliefs by any other name would mean the same’, Review of General Psychology, 16, 241255.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lofland, John & Stark, Rodney (1965) ‘Becoming a world-saver: a theory of conversion to a deviant perspective’, American Sociological Review, 30, 862875.10.2307/2090965CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Makarius, Laura (1968) ‘The blacksmith's taboos: from the man of iron to the man of blood’, Diogenes, 62, 2548.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marmodoro, Anna (2011) ‘The metaphysics of the extended mind in ontological entanglements’, in Marmodoro, Anna & Hill, Jonathan (eds) The Metaphysics of the Incarnation (New York: Oxford University Press), 205227.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McCauley, Robert & Lawson, E. Thomas (2002) Bringing Ritual to Mind: Psychological Foundations of Cultural Forms (New York: Cambridge University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
McNaughton, Patrick (1993) The Mande Blacksmiths: Knowledge, Power, and Art in West Africa (Bloomington IN: Indiana University Press).Google Scholar
Menary, Richard (2007) Cognitive Integration: Mind and Cognition Unbounded (New York: Palgrave Macmillan).10.1057/9780230592889CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pyysiäinen, Ilkka (2004) Magic, Miracles, and Religion: A Scientist's Perspective (Walnut Creek CA: Altamira Press).Google Scholar
Provan, Iain (2013) Convenient Myths: The Axial Age, Dark Green Religion, and the World that Never Was (Waco TX: Baylor University Press).Google Scholar
Rockwell, Teed (2009) ‘Minds, intrinsic properties, and Madhyamaka Buddhism’, Zygon, 44, 659674.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rowlands, Mark (2010) The New Science of the Mind: From Extended Mind to Embodied Phenomenology (Cambridge MA: MIT Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sorensen, Jesper (2007) A Cognitive Theory of Magic (Lanham MD: AltaMira Press).Google Scholar
Sterelny, Kim (2010) ‘Minds: extended or scaffolded?’, Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 9, 465481.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sutton, John (2010) ‘Exograms and interdisciplinarity: history, the extended mind, and the civilizing process’, in Menary, Richard (ed.) The Extended Mind (Cambridge MA: MIT Press), 189225.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sutton, John, Harris, Celia, Keil, Paul & Barnier, Amanda (2010) ‘The psychology of memory, extended cognition, and socially distributed remembering’, Phenomenology and the Cognitive Sciences, 9, 521560.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Talmont-Kaminski, Konrad (2013) ‘Malinowski's magic and Skinner's superstition: reconciling explanations of magical practices’, in Xygalatas, Dimitris & McCorkle, William (eds) Mental Culture: Classical Social Theory and the Cognitive Science of Religion (Durham: Acumen), 98109.Google Scholar
Taves, Ann (2015) ‘Reverse engineering complex cultural concepts: Identifying building blocks of “religion”’, Journal of Cognition and Culture, 15, 191216.10.1163/15685373-12342146CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Taylor, Charles (2007) A Secular Age (Cambridge MA: Harvard University Press).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wheeler, Michael (2010) ‘In defense of extended functionalism’, in Menary, Richard (ed.) The Extended Mind (Cambridge MA: MIT Press), 245270.Google Scholar
Whitehouse, Harvey (1995) Inside the Cult: Religious Innovation and Transmission in Papua New Guinea (New York: Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
Whitehouse, Harvey (2004) Modes of Religiosity: A Cognitive Theory of Religious Transmission (Lanham MD: Altamira Press).Google Scholar
Wlodarczyk, Nathalie (2009) Magic and Warfare: Appearance and Reality in Contemporary African Conflict and Beyond (New York: Palgrave Macmillan).CrossRefGoogle Scholar