X-Message-Number: 22194
Date: Mon, 14 Jul 2003 09:33:13 -0400
From: Keith Henson <>
Subject: Cognitive science (was Freedom of Religion) 

David Stodolsky wrote:

(Keith Henson)

> > I strongly suggest that anyone who is interested in either defending
> > against religion or making one up should get a copy of Pascal Boyer's
> > _Religion Explained_ and read it through a few times, maybe delve into
> > some
> > of the massive cites he provides.
>
>http://human-nature.com/nibbs/02/boyer.html
>
>This review suggests that reading this book is likely to be a waste of
>time.

I don't see how you could get this from the review.  Here is some of it.

"This book is a milestone on the road to a new behavioral understanding of 
religion, basing itself on what has come to be known as cognitive 
anthropology, and pointedly ignoring much work done over the past one 
hundred years in the behavioral study of religion and in the psychological 
anthropology of religion. The author wishes to challenge accepted wisdom 
and displays a contrarian spirit. No mention is made in this book of Freud, 
Durkheim, Wallace, La Barre, or Malinowski. We are in Year I of the 
Cognitive Anthropology Revolution and the Old Regime has to be erased from 
memory. What are the benefits, and costs, of this radical approach?

"The clearest virtue of this book is that of dealing with the real thing. 
Even today, most scholarly work on religion consists of apologetics in one 
form or another, and we are deluged by offers of grants to study 
 spirituality  or teach  religion and science . This all serves to make us 
forget that religion is a collection of fantasies about spirits, and Boyer 
indeed aims to teach us about the world of the spirits in the grand 
tradition of the Enlightenment. Any general introduction to the world of 
the spirits must be ambitious because it hasn t been done and also because 
it has been done intuitively by all of us.

"The framework is cognitive-evolutionary and assumes that the brain is a 
machine operating according to rules developed through evolution.  Religion 
is about the existence and causal powers of non-observable entities and 
agencies  (p. 8), and is made up of   a limited catalogue of possible 
supernatural beliefs  (p. 11). This is a good starting point. This world of 
the imagination contains  serious  religious ideas, as well as ideas about 
Santa Claus, witchcraft and various popular magical practices. 
Psychologically, they are produced by the same processes.

snip

"Despite its limitations, this book is a first-rate attempt to move the 
study of religion in the direction desperately needed now more than ever."

>Boyer seem to be unaware of recent developments in anthropology and
>psychology. A better source:
>
>ernestbecker.org

Hmm.  They pitch:

*************

Death and Denial: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on the Legacy of Ernest Becker
by Daniel Liechty

US List Price: USD $66.95

 From Book News, Inc.
Psychological anthropologist Becker's theory of Generative Death Anxiety 
explores how the biological and evolutionary constant of death and human 
awareness of it manifests in a variety of cultural and social environments. 
Contributors offer 25 psychological, psychotherapeutic, social scientific, 
philosophical, and theological reflections on it and its implications. 
There is no subject index.Book News, Inc. , Portland, OR

About the Author
DANIEL LIECHTY is Assistant Professor in the School of Social Work at 
Illinois State University and a licensed clinical social worker 
specializing in issues related to grief, loss, and death.

***********
The list "psychological, psychotherapeutic, social scientific, 
philosophical, and theological" sets off warning signals to the engineer in me.

The Amazon reviews of Denial of Death are interesting to read.  (I.e., they 
read as if they were written by cult members.)

I searched Google for "Ernest Becker" cryonics to see what he had said or 
what cross connections there might be. There were only 6 listings, one in a 
footnote by Jaron Lanier.

"Certainly the fear of death has been one of the greatest driving forces in 
the history of thought and in the formation of the character of 
civilization, and yet it is under-acknowledged. The great book on the 
subject, The Denial of Death, by Ernest Becker (1973), deserves a 
reconsideration. Even as the psychoanalytic tradition seems to be on the 
wane, this book holds up remarkably well."

The last one http://www.cofe.org.uk/html/body_humanity_-_our_need.html is 
by the Church of England.

The web site indicated that the late Becker has somewhat of a fan 
club.  But I really doubt we are going to see much support for cryonics 
from this direction, or even much insight into understanding why cryonics 
does so poorly in the marketplace of ideas.

Keith Henson

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