Advances in Religion, Cognitive Science, and Experimental Philosophy

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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.

Reviews

It is worth noting that I am an experimental philosopher and not a philosopher of religion or a student of religion more generally. That said, I quite enjoyed the collection. It provides a fascinating overview of the cognitive science of religion (CSR) -- an interdisciplinary field applying methods from cognitive and evolutionary sciences to the study of religious belief and behavior -- and how some of the lessons from this field bear on philosophy of religion. An engaging volume. -- Justin Sytsma, Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand * Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews *
[This is] a collection that both offers philosophers access to a wealth of scientific information, and sketches novel, interdisciplinary approaches to longstanding philosophical problems concerning religious belief. Anyone not acquainted with philosophically relevant studies of religious belief in cognitive science and psychology will learn a great deal from this book, as will those unfamiliar with recent and promising applications of experimental philosophy to the study of religion. [...] This collection is important for the developing fields of CSR and experimental philosophy of religion. I hope that it is read, discussed, and encourages philosophers to further engage with empirical data when considering traditional problems in the philosophy of religion. * International Journal for Philosophy of Religion *

Author Bio

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.