I’m back from Scotland. The conference was quite useful in a number of ways, including the discussions concerning my own work that I had with several people, ideas and references from which I will have to pursue. It was interesting the differences in the mood of such empirical meetings as opposed to philosophical ones. I guess that I was already somewhat used to them but this was the first one where I was virtually the only philosopher around (I mostly have attended interdisciplinary meetings where philosophers have represented a significant percentage of the overall group). The poster that I showed in St Andrews is below – a bit illegibile due to the small size but hopefully enough to give an idea.
Tom Rees
April 14, 2009
Belief and participation are two distinct constructs that fall under the religion umbrella. Given that participation in social organisations has a lot of beneficial effects at both the individual and group level, it makes sense that those groups that could harness the cognitive biases that underpin beliefs would be more successful. A form of cultural evolution.
Talking of philosophers meeting empiricists, you might be interested in Jesse Bering and Joshua Knobe discussing the cognitive science of religion. http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/18974
Konrad Talmont-Kaminski
April 14, 2009
I met Jesse in Cambridge a couple of weeks ago but didn’t have much of a chance to chat with him as it was in the middle of a very interesting conference on belief. Glad that you like the poster (or so I assume from your comments). I should add that reading your post on Keil’s work helped me to fit some things together that I saw in St Andrews. I’ll either blog about it or post a comment on your blog as soon as I get a round to-it. ;-)