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Afterlife beliefs and mind-body dualism General questions What implications does an adaptationist interpretation of afterlife beliefs have for religious claims about afterlife survival? Is an adaptationist interpretation of afterlife beliefs persuasive, or is a by-product interpretation more plausible? Is dualism compatible with the findings of cognitive science of religion, or would cognitive scientists of religion be more consistent in regarding consciousness as noise or illusion by design? Do Berings [1] simulation constraint hypothesis or his functional arguments have any important bearing on the possibility of postmortem survival? Do the findings of cognitive science of religion about afterlife beliefs and the related issue of intuitive dualism have any implications for current mind-body debates? Is the lack of match between ordinary and scientific views of the mind a problem for common sense dualism, or for the scientific view of the mind presupposed by certain cognitive scientists of religion? Summary See Afterlife beliefs in empirical summaries Examples of philosophical and theological issues Bering [1] has argued that childrens expectation that some mental processes will continue after death is the natural product of a default cognitive stance. His simulation constraint hypothesis suggests that it is impossible to conceive of what it must be like to be dead and therefore we would expect children (and, to a diminishing degree, adults) to conceptualise the afterlife in terms of the continuation of certain (usually mental) processes. Prima facie it is plausible that cognitive constraints on our ability to conceive of total annihilation might massively incline us toward a default belief in the afterlife (and also, one might think, pre-existence). Some may regard this argument as part of a sufficient naturalistic explanation of afterlife beliefs. Others, on the other hand, might argue by appeal to physicalist (e.g., bodily resurrection by an omnipotent God) or dualist considerations (e.g., the possibility of survival granted that mind/soul is a separate substance) that an inability to conceive of total annihilation is not informative about whether or not one will in fact survive physical death. Moreover, Astuti & Harris [2] interpret their more recent findings concerning childrens beliefs about mortality in rural Madagascar as indicating (following Boyer [3] and other proponents of a by-product explanation) that afterlife belief may not be the default cognitive stance children may have mortalist views about the total cessation of mental and physical processes from as early as five years of age - and it may be precisely because they have a well entrenched mortalist understanding of death that counterintuitive beliefs about the afterlife may become more cognitively salient for them (as constituting a minimal violation of their intuitions in this area), and hence get adopted. The contrasting findings of the Bering and Harris research groups therefore need to be kept in mind when drawing out the implications of the current quite ambivalent results. One broad underlying issue here is the assumption of physicalism by scholars such as Bering, Astuti & Harris, and Bloom [4] in their interpretations of these and similar findings.

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Despite interpretative differences all seem to agree that the purported scientific consensus in favour of some form of physicalism establishes that the mature (Astuti, Harris) or scientific (Bering, Bloom) concept of death is that of the total cessation of all processes, mental and physical. If, as Bloom maintains, contemporary cognitive science will show us that folk intuitions about the mind/self are mistaken just as folk intuitions about physics proved to be mistaken, then the evidence for innate dualism cannot count as support for philosophical dualism, since folk dualistic conceptions, though perhaps adaptive, would not give us the truth on the matter. There are, however, well known difficulties with physicalism as a solution to the mindbody question, e.g., those concerned with the hard problem of consciousness and the possibility of top-down causality. Oviedo [5] sees an assumption of psycho-physical epiphenomenalism in much cognitive science of religion theorising, whereby the real causal efficacy that explains human actions belongs to brain and not to mental states, the latter being mere noise. Moreover, cognitive scientists of religion who assume both evolutionary naturalism and the causal inefficacy of conscious beliefs will need to address difficulties connected with this position, e.g., why nature should have provided us with the ability to have conscious representations if conscious states do not have any real causal importance in the survival of individuals or species? Critics of the cognitive science of religion have also pointed out that no approach to the mind can afford to overlook the phenomenological aspect of qualia; consequently (given that religious experiences are also conscious ones) any complete explanation of religion must also have something to say about these qualitative features which manifest themselves in religious experiences [6], but this presents a challenge to a merely physicalist interpretation. One solution might be to push a third-person approach to consciousness along the lines philosophers such as Dennett [7, 8] have proposed. Another might be to grant some form of dualism and make a case that the arguments of dualist philosophers basically refine and show the correctness of common sense dualist intuitions about the conscious self. Dualism is commonly perceived as an unpopular option, but dualists also have some strong arguments on their side and physicalism would need to be justified rather than simply assumed. Even if it can be shown that there is a very compelling evolutionary story to tell about why people would probably form afterlife beliefs, this does not as such diminish the strength of dualist arguments, e.g., for the possibility of afterlife survival from mind/soul as a separate substance. Were dualism to be the case, this would have implications (and create difficulties) for functional illusion by design/byproduct explanations of consciousness. Berings further hypothesis that human cognition is apparently not very good at updating the list of players in our complex social rosters [1, p. 456] by adapting to the recent non-existence of any one of them suggests that peoples tendency to have afterlife beliefs may be explicable in terms of a residue of habitual social behaviours. If this hypothesis were to find increasingly solid empirical support, it may well oblige certain religious traditions to abandon or make substantive revisions to their afterlife conceptions. Also, Berings suggestion that afterlife beliefs can be explained functionally as an illusion by design conferring survival advantages on those who curbed their selfish (and reputation damaging) behaviours through fear of the watchful dead could be construed as an updated evolutionary version of the venerable political imposture argument for the explanation of afterlife beliefs. On the face of it the implications of these hypotheses for religious belief are negative. However, even were one to grant the

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adequacy of these hypotheses to explain all relevant features of afterlife beliefs, it cannot simply be assumed that these hypotheses as they stand are sufficient to explain away afterlife beliefs naturalistically e.g., they are compatible with dualism and the possibility of afterlife survival which substance dualism at least opens up. Nevertheless, the evolutionary stories which scholars are beginning to tell about these beliefs may force very substantial changes on certain religious conceptions of the afterlife, even if they arguably do not force an abandonment of the possibility of afterlife survival as such. Outstanding issues Implications of findings on innate dualism and afterlife beliefs for debates within philosophy of mind/philosophy of religion. Implications of innate dualism for philosophical dualism. Physicalist versus dualist readings of cognitive science of religion findings concerning afterlife beliefs/innate dualism. Evaluation of evolutionary (adaptationist/spandrelist) accounts of afterlife beliefs/innate dualism. The warrant of afterlife beliefs in the light of cognitive science of religion findings

See also Broad doctrinal implications of cognitive science of religion for religion and theology; Cognitive science of religion and evolutionary theory (coming soon) References 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. Bering, J.M., The folk psychology of souls. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 2006. 29: p. 453-498. Astuti, R. and P.L. Harris, Understanding mortality and the life of the ancestors in rural Madagascar. forthcoming. Boyer, P., Religion explained: the evolutionary origins of religious thought. 2001, New York: Basic Books. Bloom, P., Descartes' baby: how the science of child development explains what makes us human. 2004, New York: Basic Books. Oviedo, L., Is a complete biocognitive account of religion feasible ? Zygon, 2008. 43(1): p. 103-126. Nreaho, L., The cognitive science of religion: philosophical observations. Religious Studies, 2008. 44: p. 83-98. Dennett, D., Sweet dreams: philosophical obstacles to a science of consciousness (The Jean Nicod lectures). 2005, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Dennett, D., Breaking the spell: religion as a natural phenomenon. 2006, New York: Penguin.

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