Religion Evolving - Cultural, Cognitive, and Ecological Dynamics - Benjamin Grant Purzycki
What do Gods Know?
Religion Evolving - Cultural, Cognitive, and Ecological Dynamics - Benjamin Grant Purzycki
Benjamin Grant Purzycki [+]
Aarhus University
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Richard Sosis [+]
University of Connecticut
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Description
Chapter 5 describes a series of experiments we designed to determine whether or not people could rapidly process certain classes of information about God’s and other agents’ knowledge. Assessing predictions related to themes expressed in Chapter 4, it addresses the question: Is there a cognitive link between moral information and thinking about other knowledgeable minds? If so, it should be evident in how quickly and easily we respond to questions about the moral knowledge that others possess, including the moral knowledge of omniscient or effectively omniscient supernatural agents. If our reasoning about supernatural agents’ minds taps into moral cognition, it should be easier to cognitively process information that explicitly links these two, which is precisely what we found in our experiments.