Pascal Boyer: Den ganske historie om religion (nogensinde)

This review article was occasioned by the publication of Pascal Boyer’s Religion Explained. The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought (2001), the title of which left this reviewer in some doubt and intent on investigating whether Boyer’s ambition has been fulfilled. Here, it must be noted that this reviewer is generally positive about the rewarding aspects of the ‘cognitive turn’ in the study of religion and Boyer’s earlier substantial contributions to this, but he is also wary of the fallacy of ‘partial explanation’: explaining a part does not amount to an explanation of the whole.After a presentation of the reviewer’s perspective and involvement in a research group working on religious narrative, cognition and culture, a substantial step-by-step review of the contents and structure of Boyer’s argument is presented. Then follows a discussion of the central concepts of domain specificity concerning cognitive representations and the ‘counter-intuitive’ nature of religious thought and, further, Boyer’s subsequent ideas concerning rituals and the ramifications for social formations and historical developments in what he calls ‘The Full History of All Religion (ever)’. Next, the reviewer offers some ‘critical intuitions’ and questions the return of (a new mode of) psychologism in the human sciences and Boyer’s dependence upon earlier theorizing which is not clearly noted nor acknowledged, but which has consequences for the epistemic status of his project and for those who follow the same tracks in the cognitive study of religion. It turns out that the methodology is based on extreme individualistic and scientistic attitudes, where ‘higher-order’ theoretical objects are explained (away?) by lower-order phenomena. In short, Boyer (and others) stops where culture begins and, as a consequence, religion is transformed into an epiphenomenal category without any causal effects. In the chosen theoretical perspective, religions ‘mean’ nothing; there exist ‘nothing but’ the cognitive representations of individual individuals – but in this manner, the currently dominating approach in the cognitive study of religion perpetuates a Cartesian mystique and a dubious physicalist dualism concerning the mind and the objects it ‘cognizes’. Cognitive theory is definitely an advance in the study of religion but it takes more than materialist fideism to make it convincing. The work of language, culture etc. has to be accounted for more seriously and in more detail

Religion og 'evolution'

I et meget bredt perspektiv synes religionen at have en generel historie eller evolution: der er begyndelser, en mængde forandringer over tid og, formodentlig, afslutninger. Evolution har dog været et tabuiseret tema i det meste af det 20. århundredes religionsforskning, men det er ved at ændre sig. Det er dog ikke uproblematisk at bruge begreber som ’evolution’ og ’religion’ og der fordres en vis videnskabsteoretisk og filosofisk omhu for at undgå reifikationer og forsimplinger. I tilfældet ’religion og evolution’ handler det om hvilke elementer og mekanismer, som reelt kan siges at være evolverede og i hvordan det giver mening at tale om evolution på gruppeniveau. I artiklen påpeges det, at der i tilfældet religion snarere (så vidt det empiriske materiale rækker) er tale om forandringer over tid der går i retning af komplikation og differentiering. Dette synes at gælde generelt for sociale og kulturelle institutioner. En væsentlig faktor i denne bevidsthedens historie er den symbolske eksternalisering, som ikke mindst skrift har muliggjort. Her inddrages den canadiske psykolog Merlin Donalds store hypotese om den menneskelig bevidstheds historie og den tilhørende teori om ’hybrid minds’: mennesket som både biologisk og kulturelt væsen, med en bevidsthed som rækker ud over individet. Den refleksive bevidsthed, som dette kan medføre, nemlig udviklingen af de mekanisker, som indgår i den ’kognitive styring’, bevirker at religiøse tolkningssamfund kan blive mere kritisk bevidste og udvikler sekulariseringstendenser. Ved religionens opløsning gennem den kritisk bevidsthed, er der mulighed for at ny forskning i menneskets mentale verden, f.eks. i moralpsykologien, kan danne baggrund for et videnskabeligt funderet og til dels normativt begrundet menneskesyn

Filosofi og religion: konvergens og divergens

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Kognition og betydning

Over the past decade, the cognitive study of religion has gained momentum as a major theoretical breakthrough. However, most of its major contributors, often referred to as ‘cognitive hardliners’, have so far largely disregarded issues that have otherwise been of central concern to scholars in the study of religion, namely those concerning the cultural levels of e.g. meaning and semantics. Thus the cognitive study of religion appears to be ‘culture-blind’. The analysis presented here explains why this has been so and what could be done to remedy that situation and thus perhaps make the advances provided by the cognitive study of religion more attractive to scholars outside that paradigm. In the initial phase, cognitive theorists of religion have disregarded the cultural and social aspects of religion and religious traditions in pursuit of universals at the mental, psychological and cognitive levels that play a formative, causal role in the production of religious representations. The cultural, symbolic, linguistic etc. levels have not been considered relevant and issues concerning e.g. symbols, language, meaning and semantics were excluded on the basis of the nature of the explanatory frameworks employed. Now it seems that there may be other theories and methods available that permit the re-inclusion of matters cultural, symbolic etc. and that, contrary to the ‘hardliner’ opinion, the development of human cognition, individually as well as collectively, is not solely a matter of what goes on in brains but also what goes on between brains. This contribution reviews the state of the ‘art’ from a perspective of the philosophy of language and discusses some of the proposals to that effect by e.g. Michael Tomasello, Merlin Donald, Edwin Hutchins and Andy Clark

Islam på dansk

Review-artikel om udgivelser på dansk 1989-1991 omhandlende islam på den ene eller den anden måde

Ritual, sprog og verden

Reflektioner over et brud i ritualforskningen.Theories of ritual have mainly focused on the various functions of ritual. S shift in the study of ritual has occurred through two recent publications, i.e. Rules without Meaning by Frits Staal (1989) and Rethinking Religion by E. Thomas Lawson and Robert N. McCauley (1990). Both works draw on theoretical linguistics, in particular the transformational and generative grammars formulated by Noam Chomsky and attempt to apply this theorizing in pursuit of formal properties of ritual system. whereas Staal concentrates on the purely rule-governed, Lawson and McCauley include semanti dimeensions in their investigations of ritual syntax. this article cirtically surveys both works, their theses and divergences, and their validity and applicability in the history of religion

Honningsøde Orfeus

As an example of the predominant trend in modern structuralist-influenced classical research on the myths of antiquity the interpretation of Marcel Detienne of the myth of “Honeyed Orpheus” found in the fourth Georgic of Virgil is reviewed in this survey-article, thereby demonstrating the usefulness of the structuralist approach. The occasion for this review is the publication in 1981 of a series of articles by the French structuralist historians and mythologists Detienne, Vidal-Naquet, Vernant and Gernet, where most of the articles have been made available, collected form various sources, and translated into English for the benefit of a large public.A short description of the method employed by Claude Lévi-Strauss in his work with myths is followed by examples of the critique that has been levelled against him. But the emphasis here is on the positive results gained by the insight into cultural contexts through the process of deciphering the archaic and classical myths that structural analysis can provide. But the conclusion remains that any attempt to read ancient myths must relate carefully to the philological and historical achievements of related disciplines to complement a full and exhaustive description of the semantic universes disclosed in the classical myths

Religion og politik. Kommunikation, epistemologi og etik

Som et mere ureflekteret resultat af vestlig sekulariseret tænkning betragtes forholdet mellem religion og politik ofte som en konflikt mellem to heterogene enheder. Det er forfatterens overbevisning, at nogle af de nuværende antropologiske definitioner af religion som et kulturelt ideologisk system lige så godt kan anvendes på ideologisk baseret politik, som leverer et verdenssyn, der gør mennesket i stand til at definere sin rolle og plads i universet. I primitive og arkaiske samfund har politik og religion en tendens til at interagere og repræsentere forskellige sider af en kultur-opretholdende kraft.Denne artikel er altså optaget af at undersøge, ved hjælp af illustrative eksempler, nogle specifikke områder, hvor der er ligheder mellem religion og politik og deres eksistentielle konsekvenser som retningslinjer for mennesket. I diskussionen af følgende spørgsmål: kommunikation, epistemologi og etik, anvendes en funktionel såvel som en strukturel fremgangsmåde. Religion og politik har et højt niveau af auto-kommunikation til fælles, som defineret af den sovjetiske semiotician Juri Lotman, og en høj grad af standardiseret kommunikativ handling både verbal og non-verbal. Epistemologi som et middel til at opdage verden er i sidste ende afhængig af de kulturelle lokaler individet og igen er tæt knyttet til et etisk kodeks baseret på midler tjener nogle ende. Den utopiske vision er derfor den ultimative målestok, som mennesker bliver målt på i politik såvel som i religion

Ritual between Art and Control

No abstract availabl