Title

A literary trinity for cognitive science and religion

Document Type

Article

Publication Title

Zygon

Publication Date

6-1-2010

Abstract

The cognitive sciences may be understood to contribute to religion-and-science as a metadisciplinary discussion in ways that can be organized according to the three persons of narrative, encoding the themes of consciousness, relationality, and healing. First-person accounts are likely to be important to the understanding of consciousness, the "hard problem" of subjective experience, and contribute to a neurophenomenology of mind, even though we must be aware of their role in human suffering, their epistemic limits, and their indirect causal role in human behavior and subsequent experience. Second-person discussions are important for understanding the empathic and embodied relationality upon which an externalist account of mind is likely to depend, increasingly uncovered and supported by social neuroscience. Third-person accounts can be better understood in uncovering the us/them distinctions that they encode and healing the dangerous tribalisms that put an interdependent and communal world increasingly at risk. © 2010 by the Joint Publication Board of Zygon.

Volume

45

Issue

2

First Page

469

Last Page

478

DOI

10.1111/j.1467-9744.2010.01096.x

ISSN

05912385

E-ISSN

14679744

Link to Full Text

Share

COinS