Cognitivism and Religion: Am I My Keeper’s Brother?

Abstract

The key factor which underwrites both the enduring appeal of cognitivism and its differences with social anthropology relates to its ‘naturalism’, the continuity perceived between animal and humankind, combined with a view of the priority of realism over the imagination. This paper begins by tracing the path by which cognitivism first marginalized religion and then restored it to a central place, always relying on a naturalistic account that links mental properties to long term evolutionary patterns. After a brief review of the problems anthropologists have raised with some of the implications of this approach, the paper turns to a recent essay by an evolutionary biologist that casts doubt, using a wide range of evidence from the natural science side, on the continuity between animal worlds and human world views. It concludes by drawing some lessons as to the kind of realism required which might reconcile the two social scientific approaches.