Advances in Religion, Cognitive Science, and Experimental Philosophy

Experimental philosophy has blossomed into a variety of philosophical fields including ethics, epistemology, metaphysics and philosophy of language. But there has been very little experimental philosophical research in the domain of philosophy of religion. Advances in Religion, Cognitive Science, and Experimental Philosophy demonstrates how cognitive science of religion has the methodological and conceptual resources to become a form of experimental philosophy of religion.

Addressing a wide variety of empirical claims that are of interest to philosophers and psychologists of religion, a team of psychologists and philosophers apply data from the psychology of religion to important problems in the philosophy of religion including the psychology of religious diversity; the psychology of substance dualism; the problem of evil and the relation between religious belief and empathy; and the cognitive science explaining the formation of intuitions that unwittingly guide philosophers of religion when formulating arguments.

Bringing together authors and researchers who have made important contributions to interdisciplinary research on religion in the last decade, Advances in Religion, Cognitive Science, and Experimental Philosophy provides new ways of approaching core philosophical and psychological problems.

Helen De Cruz is Assistant Professor in the Department of Philosophy, VU University, Amsterdam

Ryan Nichols is Associate Professor in the Department of Philosophy at California State University, Fullerton, USA, and Research Affiliate, Centre for Human Evolution, Cognition & Culture, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada.

1. Introduction: Cognitive science of religion and its philosophical implications, Helen De Cruz (Department of Philosophy, VU University Amsterdam) and Ryan Nichols (Department of Philosophy, California State University, Fullerton, and Centre for Human Evolution, Cognition, & Culture, University of British Columbia)
2. Is religion or science debunked by the evolution of cognitive faculties? John Wilkins (Honorary Fellow at the School of Historical and Philosophical Sciences, The University of Melbourne)
3. A cognitive psychological account of reasoning about ritual efficacy, Cristine H. Legare (Associate Professor of Psychology, Cognition, Culture, and Development Lab, Department of Psychology, University of Texas) and Rachel Watson-Jones (Postdoctoral fellow, Cognition, Culture, and Development Lab, Department of Psychology, University of Texas)
4. Atheism, inference and intuition, Kelly James Clark (Senior Research Fellow, Kaufman Interfaith Institute, Grand Valley State University)
5. Cognitive science, evil and God, John Teehan (Professor of Religion, Hofstra University)
6. How to witness your own funeral: “The folk” respond to Anthony Flew, Mitch Hodge (Adjunct Professor of Philosophy, Amarillo College)
7. How do philosophers evaluate natural theological arguments? An experimental philosophical investigation, Helen De Cruz (Assistant professor, Department of Philosophy, VU University Amsterdam) and Johan De Smedt (Postdoctoral fellow, Department of Philosophy, Ghent University)
8. Remembering past lives, Claire White (Assistant Professor, California State University, Northridge, Robert Kelly (California State University, Northridge) and Shaun Nichols (Professor, Department of Philosophy, University of Arizona)
9. An ecological theory of gods' minds, Benjamin Grant Purzycki and Rita McNamara (Centre for Human Evolution, Cognition & Culture, University of British Columbia)
10. Rethinking the significance of moral and religious diversity, Jason Marsh (Assistant professor of Philosophy, St Olaf College) and Jon Marsh (St. Louis University)
Index

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