Johan De Smedt
Saint Louis University, Philosophy, Department Member
- Aesthetics, Cognitive Science of Religion, Philosophical Anthropology, Cognitive archaeology, Philosophy Of Mathematics, Philosophy of Mind, and 21 morePhilosophy Of Religion, Philosophy of Science, Philosophical Theology, Philosophy of Art, Philosophy of Material Culture, Epistemology, Philosophy of Cognitive Science, Social Epistemology, Philosophy of Archaeology, Philosophy of Biology, Cognitive Science, Theology, Human Evolution, Middle Stone Age (Archaeology), Psychology of art, Natural Theology, Paleolithic Art, Modularity (Evolution), Palaeolithic venus figurines, Cultural Group Selection, and Philosophy of Human Natureedit
Understanding the pervasiveness of sin is central to Christian theology. The question of why humans are so sinful given an omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent God presents a challenge and a puzzle. One element of this puzzle is how... more
Understanding the pervasiveness of sin is central to Christian theology. The question of why humans are so sinful given an omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent God presents a challenge and a puzzle. One element of this puzzle is how sinful tendencies transmit in human communities. Here, we investigate Friedrich Schleiermacher's account of sin which we characterize as a biocultural evolutionary approach. That is, we propose that Schleiermacher conceives of sin as both biologically rooted and as culturally transmitted. We look at empirical evidence to support his account and use the cultural Price equation to provide a naturalistic model of the transmission of sin. This model can help us understand how sin can be ubiquitous and unavoidable, even though it is not biologically transmitted, and even if there is no historical Fall that precipitated the tendency to sin.
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Arguments for the existence of God, such as the moral, design, and cosmological argument, have an enduring popularity across times and cultures. A natural history of natural theology uses insights from the cognitive science of religion to... more
Arguments for the existence of God, such as the moral, design, and cosmological argument, have an enduring popularity across times and cultures. A natural history of natural theology uses insights from the cognitive science of religion to understand this appeal. We argue that intuitions that underlie arguments in natural theology have a stable cognitive basis and emerge early in development. These include a preference for teleological explanations, the intuition that ordered states are caused by agents, and an intuitive moral realism.
Natural theological arguments have been formulated across times and cultures. Arguments like the argument from design and the cosmological argument continue to generate discussion. This book examines the cognitive origins of the enduring fascination with natural theology, looking at the intuitions that underlie its practice. The main conclusion is that while natural theological arguments can be very sophisticated, they are rooted in everyday intuitions about purpose, causation, agency, and morality that emerge early in development and that are a stable part of human cognition.
You can pre-order this book on amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/Natural-History-Theology-Cognitive-Philosophy/dp/0262028549/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1414657983&sr=1-1&keywords=natural+history+of+natural+theology+cruz+smedt
Natural theological arguments have been formulated across times and cultures. Arguments like the argument from design and the cosmological argument continue to generate discussion. This book examines the cognitive origins of the enduring fascination with natural theology, looking at the intuitions that underlie its practice. The main conclusion is that while natural theological arguments can be very sophisticated, they are rooted in everyday intuitions about purpose, causation, agency, and morality that emerge early in development and that are a stable part of human cognition.
You can pre-order this book on amazon.com: http://www.amazon.com/Natural-History-Theology-Cognitive-Philosophy/dp/0262028549/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1414657983&sr=1-1&keywords=natural+history+of+natural+theology+cruz+smedt
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The aim of this dissertation is to create a naturalistic philosophical picture of creative capacities that are specific to our species, focusing on artistic ability, religious reflection, and scientific study. By integrating data from... more
The aim of this dissertation is to create a naturalistic philosophical picture of creative capacities that are specific to our species, focusing on artistic ability, religious reflection, and scientific study. By integrating data from diverse domains (evolutionary and developmental psychology, cognitive anthropology and archeology, neuroscience) within a philosophical anthropological framework, I have presented a cognitive and evolutionary approach to the question of why humans, but not other animals engage in such activities. Through an application of cognitive and evolutionary perspectives to the study of these behaviors, I have sought to provide a more solid footing for philosophical anthropological discussions of uniquely human behavior. In particular, I have argued that art, religion and science, which are usually seen as achievements that are quite remote from ordinary modes of reasoning, are subserved by evolved cognitive processes that serve functions in everyday cognitive tasks, that arise early and spontaneously in cognitive development, that are shared cross-culturally, and that have evolved in response to selective pressures in our ancestral past. These mundane cognitive processes provide a measuring rod with which we can assess a diversity of cultural phenomena; they form a unified explanatory framework to approach human culture. I have argued that we can explain uncommon thoughts (exceptional human achievements, such as art, religion and science) in terms of interactions between common minds (ordinary human minds that share their knowledge through cultural transmission). This dissertation is subdivided into four parts. Part I outlines the problem of human uniqueness, examining theories on how humans conceptualize the world, and what their mental tool box looks like. Part II discusses the evolutionary and cognitive origins of human artistic behavior. Part III focuses on the cognitive science of religion, especially on how it can be applied to the reasoning of theologians and philosophers of religion. Part IV considers the cognitive basis of scientific practice.
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Research Interests: Philosophy and Indigenous
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Een miniatuurkathedraal door de volkskunstenaru: Jan Baptist Minne. Er bestaat geen eerdere beschrijving van dit object.Voorafgegaan door artikel 'De Fanfare van Kulders' door Els Veraverbeke.
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We examine animism as a philosophically rich religious attitude that offers scope to expand the philosophy of religion. We show that animism rests on cognitive biases that make it an intuitive option, though, like other religious systems,... more
We examine animism as a philosophically rich religious attitude that offers scope to expand the philosophy of religion. We show that animism rests on cognitive biases that make it an intuitive option, though, like other religious systems, animisms need cultural
elaboration. Cultural elaboration requires philosophical presuppositions to ground the ontological, epistemic, and ethical aspects of animistic thinking. Philosophers of religion can not only broaden their toolkit significantly; they can also expand the range of problems they investigate (e.g., ecological deterioration) by considering animisms within the scope of philosophy of religion.
elaboration. Cultural elaboration requires philosophical presuppositions to ground the ontological, epistemic, and ethical aspects of animistic thinking. Philosophers of religion can not only broaden their toolkit significantly; they can also expand the range of problems they investigate (e.g., ecological deterioration) by considering animisms within the scope of philosophy of religion.
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Research Interests: Philosophy and Zygon
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Research Interests: Psychology and Teleology
Research Interests: Philosophy, Philosophy of Mind, Art, Psychology of art, Cognition, and 15 morePhilosophy of Art, Philosophy of Cognitive Science, Intention, Upper Paleolithic, Philosophy and Religion, South Africa, Drawings, Paleolithic Art, Middle Stone Age, Ochre, Art Theory and Criticism, Pictures, Stimuli, Young Children, and Adhesives
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The artistic design stance is an important part of art appreciation, but it remains unclear how it can be applied to artworks for which art historical context is no longer available, such as Ice Age art. We propose that some of the... more
The artistic design stance is an important part of art appreciation, but it remains unclear how it can be applied to artworks for which art historical context is no longer available, such as Ice Age art. We propose that some of the designer's intentions can be gathered noninferentially through direct experience with prehistoric artworks.
Research Interests: Psychology, Cognitive Psychology, Cognitive Science, Metaphysics, Philosophy of Mind, and 15 morePhilosophy of Science, Metaphilosophy, Art, Cognition, Philosophy of Art, Consciousness, Cognitive archaeology, Personal Identity, Medicine, Prehistory, Esthetics, Humans, Philosophy of Artificial Intelligence, Psychological Theory, and Neurosciences
According to Mary Midgley, philosophy is like plumbing: like the invisible entrails of an elaborate plumbing system, philosophical ideas respond to basic needs that are fundamental to human life. Melioristic projects in philosophy attempt... more
According to Mary Midgley, philosophy is like plumbing: like the invisible entrails of an elaborate plumbing system, philosophical ideas respond to basic needs that are fundamental to human life. Melioristic projects in philosophy attempt to fix or reroute this plumbing. An obstacle to melioristic projects is that the sheer familiarity of the underlying philosophical ideas renders the plumbing invisible. Philosophical genealogies aim to overcome this by looking at the origins of our current concepts. We discuss philosophical concepts developed in Indigenous cultures as a source of inspiration for melioristic genealogy. Examining the philosophical concepts of these communities is useful because it gives us a better idea of the range of ethical, political, and metaphysical approaches that exist in the world. Members of western societies do not get a clear view of this range, in part because living in large groups presents its own constraints and challenges, which limit
philosophical options. We argue that features of Indigenous philosophies, such as egalitarianism and care for one's natural environment, are not inevitable byproducts of Native material conditions and lifestyles, but that they are deliberate forms of conceptual engineering. We propose that comparative philosophy is an integral part of the genealogical project.
philosophical options. We argue that features of Indigenous philosophies, such as egalitarianism and care for one's natural environment, are not inevitable byproducts of Native material conditions and lifestyles, but that they are deliberate forms of conceptual engineering. We propose that comparative philosophy is an integral part of the genealogical project.
Research Interests: Environmental Philosophy, Comparative Philosophy, Genealogy, Egalitarianism, Michel Foucault, and 15 moreAnimism, Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, Tim Ingold, Amerindian Perspectivism, Inuit, Inuktitut, Mary Midgley, Indigenous Philosophy, Lakota, TARAHUMARA RARAMURI, James Woodburn, Conceptual Engineering, Lynn White Jr, Kincentric Ecology, and José Medina
This introductory essay provides a historical and cross-cultural overview
of evolutionary ethics, and how it can be situated within naturalized ethics. We also situate the contributions to this volume.
of evolutionary ethics, and how it can be situated within naturalized ethics. We also situate the contributions to this volume.
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81 Cognition and Visual Art Cross-Sensory Principles of Aesthetics Paul Hekkert, & Hendrik N.. J. Schifferstein, Delft University of Technology PPM ... For instance, Hyde and Witherly (1993) proposed that the most highly palatable... more
81 Cognition and Visual Art Cross-Sensory Principles of Aesthetics Paul Hekkert, & Hendrik N.. J. Schifferstein, Delft University of Technology PPM ... For instance, Hyde and Witherly (1993) proposed that the most highly palatable foods produce higher levels of dynamic contrast. ...
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This paper examines the cognitive foundations of natural theology: the intuitions that provide the raw materials for religious arguments, and the social context in which they are defended or challenged. We show that the premises on which... more
This paper examines the cognitive foundations of natural theology: the intuitions that provide the raw materials for religious arguments, and the social context in which they are defended or challenged. We show that the premises on which natural theological arguments are based rely on intuitions that emerge early in development, and that underlie our expectations for everyday situations, e.g., about how causation works, or how design is recognized. In spite of the universality of these intuitions, the cogency of natural theological arguments remains a matter of continued debate. To understand why they are controversial, we draw on social theories of reasoning and argumentation.
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Research Interests: Sociology, Sociology of Culture, Paleoanthropology, Human Evolution, Philosophy, and 15 moreEpistemology, Philosophy of Science, Philosophy of Biology, Philosophy of Anthropology, History of Science, Social Epistemology, Philosophy of Archaeology, Epistemology of Disagreement, Prehistory, Epistemology of the Social Sciences, Cultural Globalization, Homo floresiensis, Classical and Contemporary Social Theory, Peer Disagreement, and Historical and Comparative Sociology
Empirical research in the psychology of nature appreciation suggests that humans across cultures tend to evaluate nature in positive aesthetic terms, including a sense of beauty and awe. They also frequently engage in joint attention with... more
Empirical research in the psychology of nature appreciation suggests that humans across cultures tend to evaluate nature in positive aesthetic terms, including a sense of beauty and awe. They also frequently engage in joint attention with other persons, whereby they are jointly aware of sharing attention to the same event or object. This paper examines how, from a natural theological perspective, delight in natural beauty can be conceptualized as a way of joining attention to creation. Drawing an analogy between art and creation, we propose that aesthetic appreciation of nature may provide theists with a unique phenomenological insight into God’s creative intentions, which are embodied in the physical beauty of creation. We suggest two directions in which this way of looking at the natural world can be fleshed out: in a spontaneous way, that does not take into account background information, and with the help of science.
Research Interests: Philosophy, Aesthetics, Aesthetics Of Nature, Environmental Aesthetics, Theological Aesthetics, and 9 moreNatural Theology, Doctrine of Creation, Joint attention, Religious Experience, Phenomenology of the Body (Philosophy), Phenomenology of Space and Place, Beauty, Abraham Joshua Heschel, and Merleau Ponty
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Humans have a tendency to reason teleologically. This tendency is more pronounced under time pressure, in people with little formal schooling and in patients with Alzheimer’s. This has led some cognitive scientists of religion, notably... more
Humans have a tendency to reason teleologically. This tendency is more pronounced under time pressure, in people with little formal schooling and in patients with Alzheimer’s. This has led some cognitive scientists of religion, notably Deborah Kelemen, to call intuitive teleological reasoning promiscuous, by which they mean teleology is applied to domains where it is unwarranted. We examine these claims using Immanuel Kant’s idea of the transcendental illusion in the first Critique and his views on the regulative function of teleological reasoning in the third Critique . We examine whether a Kantian framework can help resolve the tension between the apparent promiscuity of intuitive teleology and its role in human reasoning about biological organisms and natural kinds.
Following Darwin, many comparative psychologists assume that the human mind is a kind of ape mind, differing only in degree from the extant apes – we call this the mental continuity assumption. However, the continuity principle in... more
Following Darwin, many comparative psychologists assume that the human mind is a kind of ape mind, differing only in degree from the extant apes – we call this the mental continuity assumption. However, the continuity principle in evolutionary theory does not posit continuity between extant closely related species, but between extant species and their extinct ancestors. Thus, it is possible that some human cognitive capacities have no parallels in extant apes, but that they emerged in extinct hominid species after the human-chimpanzee divergence. Our examination of the case of social cognition from an archaeological and comparative psychological perspective suggests that the human brain is not simply an enlarged chimpanzee brain. Instead, natural selection seems to have favoured a different social cognition in both species.
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The extended mind thesis proposes that humans are capable of advanced cognition, not mainly through radical structural changes in the brain, but through their ability to delegate cognitive tasks to the external world. It views material... more
The extended mind thesis proposes that humans are capable of advanced cognition, not mainly through radical structural changes in the brain, but through their ability to delegate cognitive tasks to the external world. It views material culture as an important causal factor in human cognitive evolution. Here, we explore this hypothesis through an analysis of Upper Palaeolithic forms of material culture which have been interpreted as artificial memory systems. We argue that material calendrical systems complement evolved internal time representations, because they enable humans to project past events into the future more accurately than is possible with episodic memory alone, which greatly improves foraging strategies. Thus, the earliest calendars can be seen as a material extension of the human mind’s evolved cognitive abilities.
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abstract The aim of this dissertation is to create a naturalistic philosophical picture of creative capacities that are specific to our species, focusing on artistic ability, religious reflection, and scientific study. By integrating data... more
abstract The aim of this dissertation is to create a naturalistic philosophical picture of creative capacities that are specific to our species, focusing on artistic ability, religious reflection, and scientific study. By integrating data from diverse domains (evolutionary and developmental psychology, cognitive anthropology and archeology, neuroscience) within a philosophical anthropological framework, I have presented a cognitive and evolutionary approach to the question of why humans, but not other animals engage in such activities. Through an ...
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The psychology of prayer and supernatural causation has received surprisingly little attention from empirical researchers. This paper discusses implicit belief patterns about the causal mechanisms by which God effects changes in the... more
The psychology of prayer and supernatural causation has received surprisingly little attention from empirical researchers. This paper discusses implicit belief patterns about the causal mechanisms by which God effects changes in the world. The authors offer a psychological account of belief in supernatural causation based on the existing empirical literature on petitionary prayer, incorporating mechanisms of psychological selfcorrection and rationalisation, confirmation bias and folk physics. They propose that religious believers ‘prefer’ modes of divine action that are subtle and indistinguishable from the natural course of events: given that the causal structure of our world is partly inscrutable, beliefs in subtle and unascertainable modes of supernatural causation will be compelling and cognitively appealing because they are more susceptible to occasional confirmation and less vulnerable to repeated disconfirmation. In other words, believers who request supernatural intervention...
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ABSTRACT This article considers the imago Dei from the perspective of paleoanthropology. We identify structural, functional, and relational elements of the imago Dei that emerged mosaically during human evolution. Humans are unique in... more
ABSTRACT This article considers the imago Dei from the perspective of paleoanthropology. We identify structural, functional, and relational elements of the imago Dei that emerged mosaically during human evolution. Humans are unique in their ability to relate to each other and to God, and in their membership of cultural communities where shared attention, the transmission of moral norms, and symbolic behavior are important elements. We discuss similarities between our approach and the concept of theosis adopted in the Eastern Orthodox Church.
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Cognitive and other scientifically informed approaches to the visual arts and aesthetics have the potential to explain the emergence, development, and cross-cultural distribution of art forms. Neuroaesthetics explores the neural... more
Cognitive and other scientifically informed approaches to the visual arts and aesthetics have the potential to explain the emergence, development, and cross-cultural distribution of art forms. Neuroaesthetics explores the neural underpinnings of art appreciation and how the architecture of the brain may constrain the cross-cultural success of art forms. Approaches in evolutionary psychology focus on the ultimate causes of artistic behavior and explain the emergence of art as either an adaptation or a by-product of other evolved adaptations. Interdisciplinary work has attempted to address the limitations of these approaches by taking into account cultural differences and the role of context and history, with the aim of developing an integrative science of art.
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Humans across cultures have formulated rich views about what happens after death, including reincarnationist beliefs and beliefs in an afterlife. Theologians further develop and elaborate these views. Recent work in the cognitive science... more
Humans across cultures have formulated rich views about what happens after death, including reincarnationist beliefs and beliefs in an afterlife. Theologians further develop and elaborate these views. Recent work in the cognitive science of religion suggests that afterlife beliefs are caused by psychological dispositions that are a stable part of human cognition. For instance, humans intuitively conceptualize themselves and others as composed of material and nonmaterial parts, which facilitates the idea that physical death is not the end of personhood. In this paper, we explore how psychological dispositions influence theological views of the afterlife, focusing on Mormon theology.
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This paper examines the cognitive foundations of natural theology: the intuitions that provide the raw materials for religious arguments, and the social context in which they are defended or challenged. We show that the premises on which... more
This paper examines the cognitive foundations of natural theology: the intuitions that provide the raw materials for religious arguments, and the social context in which they are defended or challenged. We show that the premises on which natural theological arguments are based rely on intuitions that emerge early in development, and that underlie our expectations for everyday situations, e.g., about how causation works, or how design is recognized. In spite of the universality of these intuitions, the cogency of natural theological arguments remains a matter of continued debate. To understand why they are controversial, we draw on social theories of reasoning and argumentation.
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Speculative fiction, such as science fiction and fantasy, has a unique epistemic value. We examine similarities and differences between speculative fiction and philosophical thought experiments in terms of how they are cognitively... more
Speculative fiction, such as science fiction and fantasy, has a unique epistemic value. We examine similarities and differences between speculative fiction and philosophical thought experiments in terms of how they are cognitively processed. They are similar in their reliance on mental prospection, but dissimilar in that fiction is better able to draw in readers (transportation) and elicit emotional responses. By its use of longer, emotionally poignant narratives and seemingly irrelevant details, speculative fiction allows for a better appraisal of the consequences of philosophical ideas than thought experiments.
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The artistic design stance is an important part of art appreciation, but it remains unclear how it can be applied to artworks for which art historical context is no longer available, such as Ice Age art. We propose that some of the... more
The artistic design stance is an important part of art appreciation, but it remains unclear how it can be applied to artworks for which art historical context is no longer available, such as Ice Age art. We propose that some of the designer's intentions can be gathered noninferentially through direct experience with prehistoric artworks.
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Epistemic peer disagreement raises interesting questions, both in epistemology and in philosophy of science. When is it reasonable to defer to the opinion of others, and when should we hold fast to our original beliefs? What can we learn... more
Epistemic peer disagreement raises interesting questions, both in epistemology and in philosophy of science. When is it reasonable to defer to the opinion of others, and when should we hold fast to our original beliefs? What can we learn from the fact that an epistemic peer disagrees with us? A question that has received relatively little attention in these debates is the value of epistemic peer disagreement—can it help us to further epistemic goals, and, if so, how? We investigate this through a recent case in paleoanthropology: the debate on the taxonomic status of Homo floresiensis remains unresolved, with some authors arguing the fossils represent a novel hominin species, and others claiming that they are Homo sapiens with congenital growth disorders. Our examination of this case in the recent history of science provides insights into the value of peer disagreement, indicating that it is especially valuable if one does not straightaway defer to a peer’s conclusions, but nevertheless remains open to a peer’s evidence and arguments.