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Functional origins of religious concepts: ontological and strategic selection in evolved minds
Author(s) -
Boyer Pascal
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
journal of the royal anthropological institute
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.62
H-Index - 62
eISSN - 1467-9655
pISSN - 1359-0987
DOI - 10.1111/1467-9655.00012
Subject(s) - salience (neuroscience) , epistemology , morality , cultural transmission in animals , social psychology , selection (genetic algorithm) , cognition , sociology , psychology , identity (music) , cognitive science , cognitive psychology , aesthetics , philosophy , computer science , artificial intelligence , neuroscience , biology , genetics
Culturally successful religious concepts are the outcome of selective processes that make some concepts more likely than others to be easily acquired, stored and transmitted. Among the constructs of human imagination, some connect to intuitive ontological principles in such a way that they constitute a small catalogue of culturally successful supernatural concepts. Experimental and anthropological evidence confirm the salience and transmission potential of this catalogue. Among these supernatural concepts, cognitive capacities for social interaction introduce a further selection. As a result, some concepts of supernatural agents are connected to morality, group identity, ritual and emotion. These typical ‘religious’ supernatural agents are tacitly presumed to have access to information that is crucial to social interaction, an assumption that boosts their spread in human groups.