While working on the Göbekli Tepe Series, a reader suggested some possible intersections with the work of Julian Jaynes. At her suggestion I’m reading The Origins of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (1976) and some of Jaynes’ other writings, including his 1970 essay on “The Problem of Animate Motion in the Seventeenth [...]
Tags:agency attribution·agency detection·animation·animism·Edward Tylor·Fabricus ab Aquapendente·folk physics·HADD·Julian Jaynes·motion·movement
In 1993, the anthropologist Stewart Guthrie published his seminal book Faces in the Clouds: A New Theory of Religion. One of Guthrie’s primary points was that humans have an innate tendency to perceive intentional agents in the environment, even when there are no agents. A rustling of leaves, shadows in the forest, movement of clouds, [...]
Tags:agency attribution·Ara Norenzayan·causal attribution·deception·Faces in the Clouds·HADD·hyperactive agency detection device·Justin Barrett·Pascal Boyer·pattern imposition·Scott Atran·Stewart Guthrie·theory of mind
In recent decades, some of the best work on the origins of religion deal with the cognitive architecture which supports supernatural beliefs. Most researchers in this area think that supernatural or religious thinking naturally arises from the workings of the brain-mind. Seen from this perspective, religion is a “byproduct” of normal cognition. There was not, [...]
Tags:agency attribution·byproduct theorists·cognition·dualism·pattern imposition
