Ilkka Pyysiainen
Biographic Data
| ID | 137673 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Ilkka Pyysiainen |
| GIVEN NAMES | Ilkka |
| FAMILY NAME | Pyysiainen |
| SIGNATURE | PYYSIAINEN I |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Helsinki |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 33 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 18 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 30 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 3 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1992 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2014 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
God is great - but not necessary? On Ara Norenzayan,Big Gods(2013)
Norenzayan provides ample evidence to support the claim that beliefs about moralizing Big Gods correlate with prosocial behavior. Atheists, for their part, are the most mistrusted minority wherever there is a widespread belief in moralizing gods. Projecting these patterns of thought and behavior on to our ancestors 10 000 years back is risky, though. It is a plausible hypothesis that prosociality in societies where people meet anonymous others on…
Fear, Disgust, and Territory: A Comment on Martin and Wiebe
Martin’s and Wiebe’s use of the Hazard Precaution Theory are evaluated in the light of biological theories of territory or home range. The activation of precautionary actions is also connected to hyperactive agent detection as described by Guthrie and Barrett
Putting Cognition and Culture Back Together Again: Religion in Mind and Society
The cognitive science of religion tries to explain how human mental architecture canalizes the spread of cultural ideas. Co-evolutionary theories aim at explaining the cultural stability of ideas and practices by constructing models of social behavior. I try to show that both research programs provide useful insights for the construction of mechanical explanations of the mental representation and transmission of religious ideas. Combining cogniti…
Imagine there is no religion
Schloss and Murray (S&M) have written an important and well-argued target article. They provide a perceptive analysis that helps us understand the many issues and problems involved in the differing
Religion, Economy, and Cooperation
Why give money to beggars? Why make sacrifices to help others? The current volume targets such questions with the tools of neoclassical and behavioural economics, philosophy, and sociology of religion. Both religion and economics are analyzed as social institutions that support human intra-group cooperation. Even if individuals are rational maximizers of personal utility, they yet must take into account the reciprocal nature of human relationship…
Explaining Christian Origins and Early Judaism: Contributions from Cognitive and Social Science
Cognitive science of religion is a radically new paradigm in the study of religion. Apart from psychology and anthropology of religion, also historians of religion have shown increasing interest in this approach. This volume is groundbreaking in combining cognitive analysis with historical and social-scientific approaches to biblical materials, Christian origins, and early Judaism. The book is in four parts: an introduction to cognitive and socia…
Explaining Christian Origins and Early Judaism: Contributions from Cognitive and Social Science
Explaining Christian Origins and Early Judaism: Contributions from Cognitive and Social Science (Biblical Interpretation Series)
Memories: Religion and Cultural Transmission
Harvey Whitehouse, Modes of Religiosity: A Cognitive Theory of Religious Transmission. (Cognitive Science of Religion Series.) AltaMira Press, 2004. Peter Richerson and Robert Boyd, Not By Genes Alone: How Culture Transformed Human Evolution. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005. Anthropology and comparative religion have had a love-hate relationship with the theory of evolution. In the early days of both disciplines, attempts to apply Darw…
Religion, Délire and Counterintuitiveness
God: A Brief History with a Cognitive Explanation of the Concept
The Christian concept of 'God' names a category with surprisingly heterogeneous contents. In the Old Testament traditions God is an anthropomorphic agent; in Christian theology God often appears as a personalized metaphysical principle; philosophers of religion try to find the inherent rationality of this concept; finally, some natural scientists regard God as the "intelligent designer" of the world. What is common to all these ideas, covering a …
Forestilling og handling
In this paper I outline the hypothesis that counterintuitive religious beliefs partly acquire their plausibility for the believer from the fact that they guide motor action in rituals. The hypothesis is based on connecting theories of a ‘theory of mind’ with findings about the so-called ‘mirror neurons’ that are activated in certain kinds of motor actions as well as in watching and imitating other people’s similar action
Intuitive and Explicit in Religious Thought
It has been argued within the new cognitive science of religion that people's actual religious concepts and inferences differ from their explicitly held religious concepts and beliefs; the latter are too complex to be used in fast online reasoning. Natural intuitions thus tend to overwrite theological doctrine and to drive behavior. The cognitive science of religion has focused on this intuitive aspect of religion, ignoring theological thought. H…
Folk religion and theological correctness
On the 'Innateness' of Religion: A Comment on Bering
Gods, Genes, and Passions
"Buddhism, Religion, and the Concept of "God
It is here argued that, although the Buddha and the buddhas are not regarded as gods by Buddhists, they clearly fulfill the criteria of "counter-intuitive agents" as they have been presented by Pascal Boyer. To the extent that religion can be understood as human thought, action, and experience that involve counter-intuitive representations, Buddhism does not have to be the problematic touchstone for a global concept of religion
Counterintuitiveness as the hallmark of religiosity
This article presents empirical evidence for the hypothesis that persons consider counterintuitive representations more likely to be religious than other kinds of beliefs. In three studies the subjects were asked to rate the probable religiousness of various kinds of imaginary beliefs. The results show that counterintuitive representations in general, and counterintuitive representations involving a conscious agent in particular, are considered m…
Mind and Miracles
Miracles are real or imagined events that contradict our intuitive expectations of how entities normally behave. Miracles in the weak sense are unexplained counterintuitive events. Miracles in the strong sense are counterintuitive events we explain by referring to the counterintuitive agents and forces of various religious traditions. Such explanations result from the fact that our minds treat half–understood information by carrying out searches …
Ontology of Culture and the Study of Human Behavior
It is here argued that 'culture' is a universal in the philosophical sense of the term: it expresses a general property. It is not a singular term naming an abstract entity, but rather a singular predicate the intension of which is 'cultureness.' Popper's view of the ontology of mathematics is used as an analogous example in the light of which the ontology of culture is analyzed. Cultures do not have an independent existence (realism), they are n…
A Theory of Ideology: Implications for Religion and Science
Both religion and science often have been regarded as forms of ideology. This has created interesting problems for the scientific study of religion. This paper presents a new theory of "ideology" that is based on Dan Sperber's distinction between intuitive and reflective beliefs as well as on his idea of metarepresentation. In ideological thinking it is presumed that decoupling any given beliefs from a given metarepresentational context a priori …
Religion in Mind: Cognitive Perspectives on Religious Belief, Ritual, and Experience
Religion in Mind is a 2001 text which summarizes and extends the advances in the cognitive study of religion throughout the 1990s. It uses empirical research from psychology and anthropology to illuminate various components of religious belief, ritual, and experience. The book examines cognitive dimensions of religion within a naturalistic view of culture, while respecting the phenomenology of religion and drawing together teachers of religion, p…
How Religion Works: Towards a New Cognitive Science of Religion
Recent findings in cognitive science and evolutionary psychology provide important insights to the processes which make religious beliefs and behaviors such efficient attractors in and across various cultural settings. The specific salience of religious ideas is based on the fact that they are 'counter-intuitive': they contradict our intuitive expectations of how entities normally behave. Counter-intuitive ideas are only produced by a mind capabl…
Kognitiivne usundilugu
The article is concerned with a scientific approach which emerged in the 1990s and uses scientific results in psychology, linguistics, neurology and other sciences for studying religious convictions and behaviour. Cultural anthropology tends to explain religious beliefs through «cultural context», but this has often proved insufficient: beliefs also reflect the essence of human perception. The spectrum of religious ideas not unlimited as the idea…
Phenomenology of Religion and Cognitive Science: The Case of Religious Experience. Why Phenomenology and Cognitive Science? Categories, Taxonomies and Comparison
No abstract available
Intuitive and Explicit in Religious Thought
It has been argued within the new cognitive science of religion that people's actual religious concepts and inferences differ from their explicitly held religious concepts and beliefs; the latter are too complex to be used in fast online reasoning. Natural intuitions thus tend to overwrite theological doctrine and to drive behavior. The cognitive science of religion has focused on this intuitive aspect of religion, ignoring theological thought. H…
Folk religion and theological correctness
Counterintuitiveness as the hallmark of religiosity
This article presents empirical evidence for the hypothesis that persons consider counterintuitive representations more likely to be religious than other kinds of beliefs. In three studies the subjects were asked to rate the probable religiousness of various kinds of imaginary beliefs. The results show that counterintuitive representations in general, and counterintuitive representations involving a conscious agent in particular, are considered m…
"Buddhism, Religion, and the Concept of "God
It is here argued that, although the Buddha and the buddhas are not regarded as gods by Buddhists, they clearly fulfill the criteria of "counter-intuitive agents" as they have been presented by Pascal Boyer. To the extent that religion can be understood as human thought, action, and experience that involve counter-intuitive representations, Buddhism does not have to be the problematic touchstone for a global concept of religion
Ontology of Culture and the Study of Human Behavior
It is here argued that 'culture' is a universal in the philosophical sense of the term: it expresses a general property. It is not a singular term naming an abstract entity, but rather a singular predicate the intension of which is 'cultureness.' Popper's view of the ontology of mathematics is used as an analogous example in the light of which the ontology of culture is analyzed. Cultures do not have an independent existence (realism), they are n…
A Theory of Ideology: Implications for Religion and Science
Both religion and science often have been regarded as forms of ideology. This has created interesting problems for the scientific study of religion. This paper presents a new theory of "ideology" that is based on Dan Sperber's distinction between intuitive and reflective beliefs as well as on his idea of metarepresentation. In ideological thinking it is presumed that decoupling any given beliefs from a given metarepresentational context a priori …
God is great - but not necessary? On Ara Norenzayan,Big Gods(2013)
Norenzayan provides ample evidence to support the claim that beliefs about moralizing Big Gods correlate with prosocial behavior. Atheists, for their part, are the most mistrusted minority wherever there is a widespread belief in moralizing gods. Projecting these patterns of thought and behavior on to our ancestors 10 000 years back is risky, though. It is a plausible hypothesis that prosociality in societies where people meet anonymous others on…
Putting Cognition and Culture Back Together Again: Religion in Mind and Society
The cognitive science of religion tries to explain how human mental architecture canalizes the spread of cultural ideas. Co-evolutionary theories aim at explaining the cultural stability of ideas and practices by constructing models of social behavior. I try to show that both research programs provide useful insights for the construction of mechanical explanations of the mental representation and transmission of religious ideas. Combining cogniti…
Holy Book — a Treasury of the Incomprehensible. The Invention of Writing and Religious Cognition
This paper provides a theoretical discussion of the role the introduction of writing plays in the development of religious conceptual systems. It is argued that the writing down of religious traditions makes the transmission of radically counter-intuitive ideas possible, and that the formation of Canons introduces the distinction between a foundational text and its philosophical commentary. Defending the foundational role of the sacred texts by r…
Paradise Regained: The Religious Features of Primal Therapy
No abstract available
Not-Self (Anattâ) and Mysticism
No abstract available
Jñānagarbha and the “God's‐eye view”
In trying to define the difference between conventional and ultimate truth, the Mādhyamika Buddhist author Jñānagarbha ends up in paradoxical formulations. Putnam's discussion of Nietzsche's remark that “as the circle of science grows larger it touches paradox at more places” is presented as an illustration for Jñānagarbha's case. No comparison of Putnam and Jñānagarbha is intended as regards the contents of their presentations, the focus being o…
Somewhere Over the Rainbow? Cosmogony and Mystical Decreation
Religious answers to the question of how the world has come into being fall roughly into two categories: mythical narratives and doctrinal formulations based on cosmogonical mythology. In explaining how the world has come into being, such myths and doctrines also tell us something about the conditions before the world was created. David Herbst's "co-genetic" logic is used to explain why we are prone to think that if the world is a spatio-temporal…
Rethinking ‘God’: The concept of ‘God’ as a category in comparative religion
Comparative religion should not remain isolated from other sciences. To enable interdisciplinary dialogue with other fields of study, scholars in comparative religion should make use of precise scientific concepts. 'God' is not a scientific but an emic concept used intuitively. Behind our intuitions about the concept of 'god' there are implicit Judeo-Christian assumptions. Substituting 'superhuman agent' for 'god' is no solution. The author provi…
Method and Theory in Finland an Iahr Regional Meeting University of Turku, August 4-7, 1997
Holy Book — a Treasury of the Incomprehensible. The Invention of Writing and Religious Cognition
This paper provides a theoretical discussion of the role the introduction of writing plays in the development of religious conceptual systems. It is argued that the writing down of religious traditions makes the transmission of radically counter-intuitive ideas possible, and that the formation of Canons introduces the distinction between a foundational text and its philosophical commentary. Defending the foundational role of the sacred texts by r…
Kognitiivne usundilugu
The article is concerned with a scientific approach which emerged in the 1990s and uses scientific results in psychology, linguistics, neurology and other sciences for studying religious convictions and behaviour. Cultural anthropology tends to explain religious beliefs through «cultural context», but this has often proved insufficient: beliefs also reflect the essence of human perception. The spectrum of religious ideas not unlimited as the idea…
Phenomenology of Religion and Cognitive Science: The Case of Religious Experience. Why Phenomenology and Cognitive Science? Categories, Taxonomies and Comparison
No abstract available
Sounds of Silence. 'Mystical' Paradox in the Atthakavagga
Religion in Mind: Cognitive Perspectives on Religious Belief, Ritual, and Experience
Religion in Mind is a 2001 text which summarizes and extends the advances in the cognitive study of religion throughout the 1990s. It uses empirical research from psychology and anthropology to illuminate various components of religious belief, ritual, and experience. The book examines cognitive dimensions of religion within a naturalistic view of culture, while respecting the phenomenology of religion and drawing together teachers of religion, p…
How Religion Works: Towards a New Cognitive Science of Religion
Recent findings in cognitive science and evolutionary psychology provide important insights to the processes which make religious beliefs and behaviors such efficient attractors in and across various cultural settings. The specific salience of religious ideas is based on the fact that they are 'counter-intuitive': they contradict our intuitive expectations of how entities normally behave. Counter-intuitive ideas are only produced by a mind capabl…
Mind and Miracles
Miracles are real or imagined events that contradict our intuitive expectations of how entities normally behave. Miracles in the weak sense are unexplained counterintuitive events. Miracles in the strong sense are counterintuitive events we explain by referring to the counterintuitive agents and forces of various religious traditions. Such explanations result from the fact that our minds treat half–understood information by carrying out searches …
Ontology of Culture and the Study of Human Behavior
It is here argued that 'culture' is a universal in the philosophical sense of the term: it expresses a general property. It is not a singular term naming an abstract entity, but rather a singular predicate the intension of which is 'cultureness.' Popper's view of the ontology of mathematics is used as an analogous example in the light of which the ontology of culture is analyzed. Cultures do not have an independent existence (realism), they are n…
A Theory of Ideology: Implications for Religion and Science
Both religion and science often have been regarded as forms of ideology. This has created interesting problems for the scientific study of religion. This paper presents a new theory of "ideology" that is based on Dan Sperber's distinction between intuitive and reflective beliefs as well as on his idea of metarepresentation. In ideological thinking it is presumed that decoupling any given beliefs from a given metarepresentational context a priori …
On the 'Innateness' of Religion: A Comment on Bering
Gods, Genes, and Passions
"Buddhism, Religion, and the Concept of "God
It is here argued that, although the Buddha and the buddhas are not regarded as gods by Buddhists, they clearly fulfill the criteria of "counter-intuitive agents" as they have been presented by Pascal Boyer. To the extent that religion can be understood as human thought, action, and experience that involve counter-intuitive representations, Buddhism does not have to be the problematic touchstone for a global concept of religion
Counterintuitiveness as the hallmark of religiosity
This article presents empirical evidence for the hypothesis that persons consider counterintuitive representations more likely to be religious than other kinds of beliefs. In three studies the subjects were asked to rate the probable religiousness of various kinds of imaginary beliefs. The results show that counterintuitive representations in general, and counterintuitive representations involving a conscious agent in particular, are considered m…
Intuitive and Explicit in Religious Thought
It has been argued within the new cognitive science of religion that people's actual religious concepts and inferences differ from their explicitly held religious concepts and beliefs; the latter are too complex to be used in fast online reasoning. Natural intuitions thus tend to overwrite theological doctrine and to drive behavior. The cognitive science of religion has focused on this intuitive aspect of religion, ignoring theological thought. H…
Folk religion and theological correctness
Religion, Délire and Counterintuitiveness
God: A Brief History with a Cognitive Explanation of the Concept
The Christian concept of 'God' names a category with surprisingly heterogeneous contents. In the Old Testament traditions God is an anthropomorphic agent; in Christian theology God often appears as a personalized metaphysical principle; philosophers of religion try to find the inherent rationality of this concept; finally, some natural scientists regard God as the "intelligent designer" of the world. What is common to all these ideas, covering a …
Forestilling og handling
In this paper I outline the hypothesis that counterintuitive religious beliefs partly acquire their plausibility for the believer from the fact that they guide motor action in rituals. The hypothesis is based on connecting theories of a ‘theory of mind’ with findings about the so-called ‘mirror neurons’ that are activated in certain kinds of motor actions as well as in watching and imitating other people’s similar action
Memories: Religion and Cultural Transmission
Harvey Whitehouse, Modes of Religiosity: A Cognitive Theory of Religious Transmission. (Cognitive Science of Religion Series.) AltaMira Press, 2004. Peter Richerson and Robert Boyd, Not By Genes Alone: How Culture Transformed Human Evolution. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005. Anthropology and comparative religion have had a love-hate relationship with the theory of evolution. In the early days of both disciplines, attempts to apply Darw…
Philosophy (26 works) · Epistemology (22 works) · Philosophy (17 works) · Psychology (16 works) · Sociology (15 works) · Theology (10 works) · Religion and Society Interactions (9 works) · Study and Philosophy of Religion (9 works) · Cognition (8 works) · Political science (8 works)