Robert N. McCauley and George Graham
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780190091149
- eISBN:
- 9780190091170
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190091149.003.0002
- Subject:
- Religion, Philosophy of Religion, Religious Studies
Humans are biologically evolved to identify sources of their own conscious experience and to distinguish between private inner speech and speech acts of external agents. So how are we to explain ...
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Humans are biologically evolved to identify sources of their own conscious experience and to distinguish between private inner speech and speech acts of external agents. So how are we to explain exceptions to our success in this capacity? How, in particular, can we account for hallucination of the voice of God? The chapter explores the question in detail. It distinguishes between hallucinations that result from religiously undomesticated breakdowns of source monitoring, in, say, schizophrenia, and those that are parts of culturally standard religious rituals and practices. The chapter identifies a range of cognitive systems that are connected with source monitoring and active in hallucination. These include, among others, theory of mind and linguistic processing systems. The chapter compares and contrasts hallucination of God’s voice with self-attribution of God’s thought in a delusion of thought insertion.Less
Humans are biologically evolved to identify sources of their own conscious experience and to distinguish between private inner speech and speech acts of external agents. So how are we to explain exceptions to our success in this capacity? How, in particular, can we account for hallucination of the voice of God? The chapter explores the question in detail. It distinguishes between hallucinations that result from religiously undomesticated breakdowns of source monitoring, in, say, schizophrenia, and those that are parts of culturally standard religious rituals and practices. The chapter identifies a range of cognitive systems that are connected with source monitoring and active in hallucination. These include, among others, theory of mind and linguistic processing systems. The chapter compares and contrasts hallucination of God’s voice with self-attribution of God’s thought in a delusion of thought insertion.
James Martel
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- October 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780190600181
- eISBN:
- 9780190600211
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780190600181.003.0007
- Subject:
- Political Science, Political Theory, Comparative Politics
This chapter discusses how the figure of God is addressed in Breaking the Waves. In the film, Bess McNeill talks to God, while letting the audience know that God exists only via her own belief. In ...
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This chapter discusses how the figure of God is addressed in Breaking the Waves. In the film, Bess McNeill talks to God, while letting the audience know that God exists only via her own belief. In some way, this invention makes God hers and hers alone. Thus, God produces two contradictory tendencies. First, God produces a sense of fate for Bess, an uncontrollable destiny to which she must submit. Second, God is a means by which she upends that same sense of fate. The metaphor of breaking, in the film’s title, suggests that Bess is broken by God (she is subject to what she sees as God’s unavoidable power). However, that sense of fatedness is itself broken by the way that Bess channels—or invents—God’s voice, thus creating a radical political alternative.Less
This chapter discusses how the figure of God is addressed in Breaking the Waves. In the film, Bess McNeill talks to God, while letting the audience know that God exists only via her own belief. In some way, this invention makes God hers and hers alone. Thus, God produces two contradictory tendencies. First, God produces a sense of fate for Bess, an uncontrollable destiny to which she must submit. Second, God is a means by which she upends that same sense of fate. The metaphor of breaking, in the film’s title, suggests that Bess is broken by God (she is subject to what she sees as God’s unavoidable power). However, that sense of fatedness is itself broken by the way that Bess channels—or invents—God’s voice, thus creating a radical political alternative.
Robert N. McCauley and George Graham
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780190091149
- eISBN:
- 9780190091170
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190091149.001.0001
- Subject:
- Religion, Philosophy of Religion, Religious Studies
This book endorses an ecumenical naturalism toward all cognition, which will illuminate the long-recognized and striking similarities between features of mental disorders and features of religions. ...
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This book endorses an ecumenical naturalism toward all cognition, which will illuminate the long-recognized and striking similarities between features of mental disorders and features of religions. The authors emphasize underlying cognitive continuities between familiar features of religiosity, of mental disorders, and of everyday thinking and action. They contend that much religious thought and behavior can be explained in terms of the cultural activation of maturationally natural cognitive systems, which address fundamental problems of human survival, encompassing such capacities as hazard precautions, agency detection, language processing, and theory of mind. The associated skills are not taught and appear independent of general intelligence. Religions’ representations cue such systems’ operations. The authors hypothesize that in doing so they sometimes elicit responses that mimic features of cognition and conduct associated with mental disorders. Both in schizophrenia and in religions some people hear alien voices. The inability of depressed participants to communicate with or sense their religions’ powerful, caring gods can exacerbate their depression. Often religions can domesticate the concerns and compulsions of people with OCD. Religions’ rituals and pronouncements about moral thought-action fusion can temporarily evoke similar obsessions and compulsions in the general population. A chapter is devoted to each of these and to the exception that proves the rule. The authors argue that if autistic spectrum disorder involves theory-of mind-deficits, then people with ASD will lack intuitive insight and find inferences with many religious representations challenging. Ecumenical naturalism’s approach to mental abnormalities and religiosity promises both explanatory and therapeutic understanding.Less
This book endorses an ecumenical naturalism toward all cognition, which will illuminate the long-recognized and striking similarities between features of mental disorders and features of religions. The authors emphasize underlying cognitive continuities between familiar features of religiosity, of mental disorders, and of everyday thinking and action. They contend that much religious thought and behavior can be explained in terms of the cultural activation of maturationally natural cognitive systems, which address fundamental problems of human survival, encompassing such capacities as hazard precautions, agency detection, language processing, and theory of mind. The associated skills are not taught and appear independent of general intelligence. Religions’ representations cue such systems’ operations. The authors hypothesize that in doing so they sometimes elicit responses that mimic features of cognition and conduct associated with mental disorders. Both in schizophrenia and in religions some people hear alien voices. The inability of depressed participants to communicate with or sense their religions’ powerful, caring gods can exacerbate their depression. Often religions can domesticate the concerns and compulsions of people with OCD. Religions’ rituals and pronouncements about moral thought-action fusion can temporarily evoke similar obsessions and compulsions in the general population. A chapter is devoted to each of these and to the exception that proves the rule. The authors argue that if autistic spectrum disorder involves theory-of mind-deficits, then people with ASD will lack intuitive insight and find inferences with many religious representations challenging. Ecumenical naturalism’s approach to mental abnormalities and religiosity promises both explanatory and therapeutic understanding.
