Neil Van Leeuwen
Biographic Data
| ID | 3873253 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Neil Van Leeuwen |
| GIVEN NAMES | Neil |
| FAMILY NAME | Van Leeuwen |
| SIGNATURE | VAN LEEUWEN N |
| AFFILIATIONS | Georgia State University |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2491-3886 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 15 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 15 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 15 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2009 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Three questions on imagery and perception: A comment on Nanay's Mental imagery
Some parts of Bence Nanay's view of the relationship between mental imagery and perception appear iconoclastic. Other parts appear traditionalist. This commentary on his recent book Mental imagery poses three questions that put pressure on the idea that the iconoclastic parts and the traditionalist parts can coexist harmoniously
Revisiting feeling of threat and agency detection: A preregistered virtual reality study
While agency detection has been used to explain religious phenomena, there are two competing theories regarding the neurocognitive mechanism underlying it: hyperactive agency detection device (HADD) and the predictive processing-based model. Those two theories differ in their predictions regarding the impact of feeling of threat on agency detection. The present study aimed to put this hypothesized effect to a new test in virtual reality. One hund…
Rational atheism revisited: A comment on Disbelief by Will Gervais
Double coding and the plurality of “belief”: A response to commentaries
This piece is part of a book symposium in _Religion, Brain & Behavior_ on my recent book _Religion as Make-Believe: A Theory of Belief, Imagination, and Group Identity_. In it, I respond to commentaries by Bortolotti and Mameli, Funkhouser, Gow, Hong and Boudry, Lewis-Jong, Luhrmann, and van Elk. A key emphasis in this piece is on double coding, in which religious "believers" evince two strikingly different attitudes and behavioral repertoires to…
Group identity and the willful subversion of rationality: A reply to De Cruz and Levy
De Cruz and Levy, in their commentaries on Religion as make‐believe , present distinct questions that can be addressed by clarifying one core idea. De Cruz asks whether one can rationally assess the mental state of religious credence that I theorize. Levy asks why we should not explain the data on religious “belief” merely by positing factual beliefs with religious contents, which happen to be rationally acquired through testimony. To both, I say…
Religion as Make-Believe: A Theory of Belief, Imagination, and Group Identity
To Believe Is Not to Think: A Cross-Cultural Finding
Are religious beliefs psychologically different from matter-of-fact beliefs? Many scholars say no: that religious people, in a matter-of-fact way, simply think their deities exist. Others say yes: that religious beliefs are more compartmentalized, less certain, and less responsive to evidence. Little research to date has explored whether lay people themselves recognize such a difference. We addressed this question in a series of sentence completi…
Imagining stories: Attitudes and operators
Does think mean the same thing as believe? Linguistic insights into religious cognition
When someone says she believes that God exists, is she expressing the same kind of mental state as when she says she thinks that a lake bigger than Lake Michigan exists - i.e., does she refer to the same kind of cognitive attitude in both cases? Using evidence from linguistic corpora (Study 1) and behavioral experiments (Studies 2-4), the current work provides evidence that individuals typically use the word “believe” more in conjunction with sta…
Seeking the supernatural: Responses to commentary
We would like to thank all commentators for their thoughtful and informative remarks. We found much to agree with and appreciate the constructive criticism. As one would expect, however, we don't t
Seeking the supernatural: The Interactive Religious Experience Model
We develop a new model of how human agency-detection capacities and other socio-cognitive biases are involved in forming religious beliefs. Crucially, we distinguish general religious beliefs (such as God exists) from personal religious beliefs that directly refer to the agent holding the belief or to her peripersonal time and space (such as God appeared to me last night). On our model, people acquire general religious beliefs mostly from their s…
Religious credence is not factual belief
The Meanings of "Imagine" Part II: Attitude and Action
In this Part II, I investigate different approaches to the question of what makes imagining different from belief. I find that the sentiment-based approach of David Hume falls short, as does the teleological approach, once advocated by David Velleman. I then consider whether the inferential properties of beliefs and imaginings may differ. Beliefs, I claim, exhibit an anti-symmetric inferential governance over imaginings: they are the background t…
The Meanings of "Imagine" Part I: Constructive Imagination
In this article (Part I), I first clarify what the words "imagine,""imagining," and "imagination" can mean. Each has (a) a constructive sense, (b) an attitudinal sense, and (c) an imagistic sense. Keeping the senses straight in the course of cognitive theorizing is important for both psychology and philosophy. I then discuss the roles that perceptual memories, beliefs, and genre truth attitudes play in constructive imagination, or the capacity to…
Self-Deception Won’t Make You Happy
I argue here that self-deception is not conducive to happiness. There is a long train of thought in social psychology that seems to say that it is, but proper understanding of the data does not yield this conclusion. Illusion must be distinguished from mere imagining. Self-deception must be distinguished from self-inflation bias and from self-fulfilling belief. Once these distinctions are in place, the case for self-deception falls apart. Further…
The Meanings of "Imagine" Part I: Constructive Imagination
In this article (Part I), I first clarify what the words "imagine,""imagining," and "imagination" can mean. Each has (a) a constructive sense, (b) an attitudinal sense, and (c) an imagistic sense. Keeping the senses straight in the course of cognitive theorizing is important for both psychology and philosophy. I then discuss the roles that perceptual memories, beliefs, and genre truth attitudes play in constructive imagination, or the capacity to…
The Meanings of "Imagine" Part II: Attitude and Action
In this Part II, I investigate different approaches to the question of what makes imagining different from belief. I find that the sentiment-based approach of David Hume falls short, as does the teleological approach, once advocated by David Velleman. I then consider whether the inferential properties of beliefs and imaginings may differ. Beliefs, I claim, exhibit an anti-symmetric inferential governance over imaginings: they are the background t…
Self-Deception Won’t Make You Happy
I argue here that self-deception is not conducive to happiness. There is a long train of thought in social psychology that seems to say that it is, but proper understanding of the data does not yield this conclusion. Illusion must be distinguished from mere imagining. Self-deception must be distinguished from self-inflation bias and from self-fulfilling belief. Once these distinctions are in place, the case for self-deception falls apart. Further…
The Meanings of "Imagine" Part I: Constructive Imagination
In this article (Part I), I first clarify what the words "imagine,""imagining," and "imagination" can mean. Each has (a) a constructive sense, (b) an attitudinal sense, and (c) an imagistic sense. Keeping the senses straight in the course of cognitive theorizing is important for both psychology and philosophy. I then discuss the roles that perceptual memories, beliefs, and genre truth attitudes play in constructive imagination, or the capacity to…
Religious credence is not factual belief
The Meanings of "Imagine" Part II: Attitude and Action
In this Part II, I investigate different approaches to the question of what makes imagining different from belief. I find that the sentiment-based approach of David Hume falls short, as does the teleological approach, once advocated by David Velleman. I then consider whether the inferential properties of beliefs and imaginings may differ. Beliefs, I claim, exhibit an anti-symmetric inferential governance over imaginings: they are the background t…
Seeking the supernatural: Responses to commentary
We would like to thank all commentators for their thoughtful and informative remarks. We found much to agree with and appreciate the constructive criticism. As one would expect, however, we don't t
Seeking the supernatural: The Interactive Religious Experience Model
We develop a new model of how human agency-detection capacities and other socio-cognitive biases are involved in forming religious beliefs. Crucially, we distinguish general religious beliefs (such as God exists) from personal religious beliefs that directly refer to the agent holding the belief or to her peripersonal time and space (such as God appeared to me last night). On our model, people acquire general religious beliefs mostly from their s…
To Believe Is Not to Think: A Cross-Cultural Finding
Are religious beliefs psychologically different from matter-of-fact beliefs? Many scholars say no: that religious people, in a matter-of-fact way, simply think their deities exist. Others say yes: that religious beliefs are more compartmentalized, less certain, and less responsive to evidence. Little research to date has explored whether lay people themselves recognize such a difference. We addressed this question in a series of sentence completi…
Imagining stories: Attitudes and operators
Does think mean the same thing as believe? Linguistic insights into religious cognition
When someone says she believes that God exists, is she expressing the same kind of mental state as when she says she thinks that a lake bigger than Lake Michigan exists - i.e., does she refer to the same kind of cognitive attitude in both cases? Using evidence from linguistic corpora (Study 1) and behavioral experiments (Studies 2-4), the current work provides evidence that individuals typically use the word “believe” more in conjunction with sta…
Religion as Make-Believe: A Theory of Belief, Imagination, and Group Identity
Group identity and the willful subversion of rationality: A reply to De Cruz and Levy
De Cruz and Levy, in their commentaries on Religion as make‐believe , present distinct questions that can be addressed by clarifying one core idea. De Cruz asks whether one can rationally assess the mental state of religious credence that I theorize. Levy asks why we should not explain the data on religious “belief” merely by positing factual beliefs with religious contents, which happen to be rationally acquired through testimony. To both, I say…
Three questions on imagery and perception: A comment on Nanay's Mental imagery
Some parts of Bence Nanay's view of the relationship between mental imagery and perception appear iconoclastic. Other parts appear traditionalist. This commentary on his recent book Mental imagery poses three questions that put pressure on the idea that the iconoclastic parts and the traditionalist parts can coexist harmoniously
Revisiting feeling of threat and agency detection: A preregistered virtual reality study
While agency detection has been used to explain religious phenomena, there are two competing theories regarding the neurocognitive mechanism underlying it: hyperactive agency detection device (HADD) and the predictive processing-based model. Those two theories differ in their predictions regarding the impact of feeling of threat on agency detection. The present study aimed to put this hypothesized effect to a new test in virtual reality. One hund…
Rational atheism revisited: A comment on Disbelief by Will Gervais
Double coding and the plurality of “belief”: A response to commentaries
This piece is part of a book symposium in _Religion, Brain & Behavior_ on my recent book _Religion as Make-Believe: A Theory of Belief, Imagination, and Group Identity_. In it, I respond to commentaries by Bortolotti and Mameli, Funkhouser, Gow, Hong and Boudry, Lewis-Jong, Luhrmann, and van Elk. A key emphasis in this piece is on double coding, in which religious "believers" evince two strikingly different attitudes and behavioral repertoires to…
Psychology (12 works) · Epistemology (11 works) · Philosophy (10 works) · Social Psychology (10 works) · Cognitive psychology (6 works) · Sociology (6 works) · Cognition (5 works) · Aesthetics (3 works) · Cognitive science (3 works) · Credence (3 works)