Abstract
Cognitive studies have offered an explanation of religion. Important contributions to this discussion have been made by Pascal Boyer and Harvey Whitehouse. Boyer argues that religious ideas are minimally counterintuitive and therefore easily adopted. The argument depends on what constitutes intuition and on the assumption that there are standard cross-cultural cognitive processes, and that beliefs are the main focus of discussion. Embodiment theory, by contrast, would focus on practices and rituals. Whitehouse has argued for a combination of cognitive and social modes of explanation. Whitehouse developed a robust ideal-type dichotomy, postulating doctrinal versus imagistic modes of religiosity. While his concept here comprises a dichotomous frame, Whitehouse recognizes that the frame is broken in practice by the coexistence of these modes within a given system.
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References
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Stewart, P.J., Strathern, A.J. (2017). Religion and Cognition. In: Breaking the Frames. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47127-3_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-47127-3_7
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