Analysis and Philosophical Critique of the Standard Model in the Cognitive Science of Religion

Abstract

"Cognitive Science of Religion" is the emerging branch of cognitive science, which uses the findings of cognitive science to study religious beliefs and behaviors. Most scholars in this area believe that religious beliefs and behaviors are the byproducts of the cognitive architecture of our minds. Based on this predominant approach, known as the "Standard Model", the human mind is not an integrated processing system, but has multiple proprietary tools for processing input information. These mental tools, in the process of evolution, have found biases that affect the input information and systematically guide them. For the Standard Model defenders, these mental tools and their cognitive bias play an essential role in shaping many of our beliefs, including religious beliefs. In this paper, from the perspective of the philosophy of science, we examine three main indicators for demonstrating the validity of this approach: the empirical evidence to defend it, its explanatory power and its theoretical structure, as well as its methodological presuppositions. In this paper, we show that the Standard Model is underdetermination in terms of empirical evidence, weak in terms of explanatory power, and challenged in terms of methodological presuppositions.

Keywords

• cognitive sciences of religion
• standard model
• mental tools
• agency detection device