LAUSR

What does the cognitive science of religion (hereafter, CSR) offer to studies of religious embodiment and materiality? The answer to this question depends on how we understand CSR, which in turn depends on how we view the field of cognitive science. In essence, CSR is the application of theories and methods of cognitive science to the study of religious thought and behavior. It is based on the premise that our scientific understanding of minds in general can help us to understand religious minds (Lawson 2000, 79). But what, according to cognitive science, is a mind? The field of cognitive science was originally founded on a seemingly straightforward answer to this question: a mind is a kind of computer. Indeed, it is difficult to imagine the historical emergence of cognitive science without some version of this computational thesis at its foundation (Gardner 1985), even if a precise formulation has since proved elusive (Piccinini 2011). In short, the original raison d’être for a unified science of cognition that includes psychology as well as computer science was the idea that mind is a computational function that can be realized by a wide range of living and non-living systems. However, within the biological realm it has generally been assumed that only tissues of the brain can support computation, and thus the dominant orientation of cognitive science as applied to human minds has been “inside the head.” Moreover, since we evidently do not experience our mental life as computation, another general assumption has been that our minds are almost entirely constituted by unconscious processes. These assumptions are well reflected in CSR, which at least until recently has focused on determining the unconscious mechanisms of thought that are presumed to underlie cross-cultural patterns of religious belief (Xygalatas 2014). Accordingly, at least in its standard form, CSR has perpetuated the “mentalistic” bias in religious studies that the founding editors of this journal are determined to correct (Meyer et al. 2010; for an extended discussion of these issues, see Barrett, forthcoming). In this selection of short articles, however, we see that a very different approach to CSR is possible if cognitive science changes its view of mind. The essays of Cummins, Froese, and González-Grandón take up the perspective of enactive theory, one of several branches of cognitive theory that reject the computational thesis. Since its emergence in the 1990s (Varela et al. 1991), enactive theory has grown into a diverse set of philosophical and scientific perspectives loosely bound together by the desire to reconceive mind as a “radically embodied” phenomenon (Hutto and Myin 2013; Di Paolo et al. 2017). Among the hallmarks of the enactive approach are attempts to incorporate phenomenology into scientific description and an emphasis on the continuity of mind and life (Thompson 2007). The term “enactive” refers to the view that, as self-organizing processes minds “enact” or “bring forth” a “world” of interaction rather than represent “pre-given” objective features (Varela et al. 1991). Of special interest to the readers of this journal is the fact that the enactivist rejection of the computational thesis opens the door to considerations of a diverse range of structures, processes, and materials as interactive participants in mental life. When mind is no longer viewed as a set of rule-based operations, there is less reason for it to be confined to the “circuitry” of the brain. Put another way, when mind is viewed as a self-organizing process of autonomously guided interaction, it is more easily extended to a variety of transient “couplings” that loop through the brain, body, and environment. As demonstrated by these three articles, within this alternative framework it is possible to conceive of minds as quite literally spread across multiple bodies and materials—especially in the case of highly coordinated activities such as religious rituals. Accordingly, what we see in this collection is the beginnings of a fresh and promising approach to the scientific study of religious ritual: an approach that supports close attention to embodiment and to social interaction, and that is able to take seriously the possibility that certain religious activities give rise to distinctly collective forms of experience. Cummins’s article looks at phenomena of “joint speech”—e.g. chanting—as a form of strongly embodied, collective experience that is much closer to music and dance than to many ordinary uses of language. Froese’s article explores the possibility that altered states of consciousness attained through religious ritual could have played a vital “anti-structural” role in the formation of complex societies. González-Grandón shows how music can be used to facilitate a special kind of social consciousness that is sensed through the rhythmic coordination of participants’ bodies. Thus, in each Material Religion volume 14, issue 3, pp. 415–416 DOI: 10.1080/17432200.2018.1485339