A LITERARY TRINITY FOR COGNITIVE SCIENCE AND RELIGION

Summary

Cognitive science can inform the religion-and-science dialogue through three perspectives: first-person accounts help understand consciousness and subjective experience, though they have epistemic limits and only indirect causal effects on behavior; second-person perspectives reveal empathic, embodied relationality that supports an externalist view of mind, as shown by social neuroscience; third-person accounts expose us/them distinctions that fuel dangerous tribalism, which threatens an interdependent world.

Study at a glance

Abstract

The cognitive sciences may be understood to contribute to religion‐and‐science as a metadisciplinary discussion in ways that can be organized according to the three persons of narrative, encoding the themes of consciousness, relationality, and healing. First‐person accounts are likely to be important to the understanding of consciousness, the “hard problem” of subjective experience, and contribute to a neurophenomenology of mind, even though we must be aware of their role in human suffering, their epistemic limits, and their indirect causal role in human behavior and subsequent experience. Second‐person discussions are important for understanding the empathic and embodied relationality upon which an externalist account of mind is likely to depend, increasingly uncovered and supported by social neuroscience. Third‐person accounts can be better understood in uncovering the us/them distinctions that they encode and healing the dangerous tribalisms that put an interdependent and communal world increasingly at risk.

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