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The Institutional Cognition Model of Religion

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The Institutional Cognition Model of Religion Effective January 18, 2019, this article will be subject to a CC-BY-NC license. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/. Other than as provided by these licenses, no part of this article may be reproduced, transmitted, or displayed by any electronic or mechanical means without permission from the publisher or as permitted by law. ESIC 2018 DOI: 10.26613/esic/2.2.89 Religion, Evolution, and the Basis of Institutions: The Institutional Cognition Model of Religion Connor Wood and John H. Shaver Abstract Few outstanding questions in the human behavioral sciences are timelier or more urgently debated than the evolutionary source of religious behaviors and beliefs. Byproduct theo- rists locate the origins of religion in evolved cognitive defaults and transmission biases. Others have argued that cultural evolutionary processes integrated non-adaptive cognitive byproducts into coherent networks of supernatural beliefs and ritual that encouraged in- group cooperativeness, while adaptationist models assert that the cognitive and behavioral foundations of religion have been selected for at more basic levels. Here, we survey these differing approaches, noting their respective strengths and weaknesses. We then advance a novel model that centers on the ability of language to generate alternative worlds inde- pendent of immediate empirical facts, and thus highlight the similarities between religious belief and the modes of cognition that underlie institutions in general. The institutional cognition model of religion accounts for some of the shortcomings of extant approaches and draws attention to the human ability to create non-empirical worlds; that is, worlds that are imaginary. Both religious beliefs and institutional facts—such as jurisdictional borders—are non-empirical assertions, yet they are socially accepted as truths and rei- fied through ritual and behavior. One type of non-empirical, linguistically generated be- lief—supernatural agent belief—is particularly effective for stabilizing systems of arbitrary norms by rooting them in deontic rather than utilitarian reasoning. The evolutionary roots and continued persistence of religion are thus functions of the capacity for humans to generate cognitive alternatives to empirical reality, and the need to stably coordinate those alternative conceptions. Keywords: religion, evolution, cognition, transcendental social, institutional facts, byproduct theories, cultural evolution, supernatural beliefs, norms INTRODUCTION 2010) and motivate obedience to norms (Shariff et al. 2016), religious rituals forge social bonds Religions are among the most complex, most (Mogan, Fischer, and Bulbulia 2017) and sig- consequential, and least understood of all human nify commitments to parochial obligations social phenomena. From the smallest ancestor (Rappaport 1999; Sosis and Bressler 2003), cults to the largest world traditions, religions while religious identity often drives intractable motivate powerful attachments and group alle- conflicts (Atran and Ginges 2012; Gómez et al. giances (Ginges and Hansen 2010), shape affec- 2017) and anchors ethnic loyalties (Berns et al. tive commitments (Sibley and Bulbulia 2014), 2012). Yet although religion is critically tied to and have consistently influenced the course of the most fundamental human social dynamics, human history (Bellah 2011). Religious beliefs and despite centuries of theoretical speculation soothe individual fears and anxieties (Vail et al. (e.g., Hume [1779] 2007; Nietzsche [1887] Connor Wood and John H. Shaver 1998; Durkheim [1912] 2008), much about at the expense of other, less successful religions. the nature of religion—including its evolution- Finally, a third, albeit smaller, group of scholars, ary origins—remains unresolved. focused more on ritual than on belief, hypothe- Over the past 30 years, a growing research sized that the core features of religions—in and community in the cognitive, behavioral, and of themselves—may be biologically adaptive, evolutionary sciences has begun to address the insofar as they provide reliable mechanisms for origins and functions of religion as a universal the communication of in-group commitments. human phenomenon—one that varies radi- Here we detail each of these approaches, and cally in expression from culture to culture, but their major strengths and weaknesses. which yet retains similar core features worthy One of the most consequential and long- of, and amenable to, systematic examination standing debates within the evolutionary sci- (McNamara, Sosis, and Wildman 2011). The ences of religion pits adaptationist models overall explanatory framework for these devel- against byproduct models for the evolution oping research programs in the sciences is an of religious capacities. This debate has often evolutionary one, rooted in the neo-Darwinian proved unproductive, however, and as a result synthesis. Though these researchers all share a several thinkers have recently called for a move commitment to using evolutionary insights beyond simplistic adaptationist-versus -byproduct to explain the emergence and general features discourse (Purzycki et al. 2014; Shaver et al. of religion, this has not been a unified effort. 2016; Sterelny 2017). Thus, after our initial Instead, there have been three relatively distinct review, we describe a model for the evolution- evolutionary approaches to religion, each with ary origins of religious phenomena that extends different assumptions, foci, and methodological current theories by accounting for the social preferences (Sosis and Bulbulia 2011; Shaver and apparently functional aspects of religions, et al. 2016). as well as for beliefs in supernatural agents (e.g., The earliest evolutionary approaches to gods and spirits) as expected individual-level religion were those that treated supernatural ancillaries to the social and cognitive processes beliefs as emerging from cognitive modules that produce human institutions. In particular, that solved adaptive problems in ancestral these processes center on the ability to maintain human environments. Importantly, although different mental representations at the same originally emerging as functional solutions to time (Taves 2015) and to conform behavior to pressing social and environmental issues, the representations that are socially generated rather cognitive modules responsible for religion did than empirical in nature. This model helps to not emerge from selection for religion. Instead, account for the cognitive underpinnings of the theorists in this camp contend that religion complex imaginal content of religions, a topic naturally emerged as a cognitive byproduct of that evolutionary approaches to religion have the human mind. Another group of theorists often overlooked (Bloch 2008). began with this byproduct approach to religion, but extended this model to contend that some BYPRODUCT THEORIES OF THE EVOLUTION religious beliefs that emerged over the course OF RELIGION of human evolution were more effective at promoting cooperation than others, and that As a contemporary research program, the cog- those religions that more effectively cultivated nitive byproduct account for the evolution of cooperative affordances came to dominate the religion emerged from the work of scholars contemporary religious landscape. In other such as Stewart Guthrie (1995) and Pascal words, some religions, through processes of Boyer (2001; Boyer and Liénard 2006), among cultural evolutionary group selection, spread others (Lawson and McCauley 1993; Atran 2 Evolutionary Studies in Imaginative Culture Religion, Evolution, and the Basis of Institutions: The Institutional Cognition Model of Religion 2002; Barrett 2004; Whitehouse 2004). These the cognitive naturalness and spontaneity of thinkers drew on theories of cognitive modular- supernatural agent beliefs (Atran 2002; Atran ity (Fodor 1983), and later the assumptions of and Henrich 2011; McCauley 2013). evolutionary psychology (Barkow et al. 1995; By contrast, Boyer’s (1994; 2001) work see Sosis, 2017) to posit that the apparent ubiq- emphasizes the epidemiology of religious ideas, uity of religious belief is due to a native “fit” or how and why they spread through, and attain between certain innate features of the human fixity within, populations. Drawing on the ‘epi- mind and the most successful supernatural demiology of representations’ approach of Dan concepts. Guthrie’s work, itself informed by Sperber (1985; 1996), Boyer posits that some the work of the anthropologists Robin Horton ideas, particularly those that are “minimally (1967) and E. B. Tylor (1870), suggests that counterintuitive” (MCI) violations of folk epis- religious beliefs are the result of the over-appli- temologies, are cognitively appealing, and thus cation of innate, evolved teleological intuitions are more likely to spread. Similar to the work and perceptual biases to the nonhuman world, of Guthrie and Barrett, the folk intuitions that and the consequent imputation of person-like make some ideas more appealing than others did traits to natural phenomena. In short, “religion not evolve to produce religious representations. is anthropomorphism” (1995, 178). Guthrie’s Instead, folk intuitions evolved to make adaptive theory, like all byproduct theories, focuses on inferences about the physical and social world. the ways that proto-religious and supernatural Unlike Guthrie’s and Barrett’s theories, however, concepts spontaneously emerge from normal the MCI theory is
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