Professional Documents
Culture Documents
1 de 12
http://www.desdeelexilio.com/2009/11/24/la-religion-explicada-entrev...
Informacin
No es cierto que quienes tienen creencias religiosas padecen un defecto cognitivo: una
y
licencia
ha sido ledo 1.280 veces
Etiquetado en:
Boyer, Entrevistas,
Evolucin, Religin, ritual
La mayora de los seres humanos alberga algn tipo de creencia religiosa. Ser ateo
es ms difcil de lo que parece. Es como volar. El atesmo, como la aerodinmica o el
sintosmo, es un producto de la evolucin cultural (o tcnica). Una diferencia importante
Comprtelo
es que uno slo deja de ser ingeniero aeronutico o piloto cuando le prejubilan o
merman sus facultades mentales, mientras que la religiosidad es algo contra lo que el
ateo se enfrenta constantemente Ser dualistas natos, en afortunada expresin de
Paul Bloom, no ayuda. No es que el dualismo y la religin sean la misma cosa, ni mucho
Sponsors
Videntes de
calidad
Los mejores videntes
te atienden. Visa solo
0,66/min 806501213
Tarot-Videncia.Wengo.es
Mujer Y Salud
Consejos para
disfrutar de la vida
Infrmese en
www.Tena.es !
www.tena.es
Tirada de Tarot
Gratis
Realiza ahora tu
tirada de Tarot. Ahora
1 Tirada online
Gratuita.
www.cosmotarot.es/tirada-tarot
Chocolate en
Brujas
Capital del chocolate
Prueba esta oferta
exquisita.
www.chocinbrujas.be
Concursos Pblicos
Obras
Informacin,
Documentacin
Tcnica,
Mejoras,Revisiones
Proyecto...
www.infolicitaciones.com
22/11/2011 10:36
2 de 12
http://www.desdeelexilio.com/2009/11/24/la-religion-explicada-entrev...
Sguenos en Facebook
Facebook
Me gusta
Carlos
Maria Esther
cualquier otro; y la existencia real de seres sobrenaturales que forjaran dicho credo.
El profesor Boyer ha contestado amablemente a nuestras preguntas, por cierto,
traducidas magnficamente al ingls por Jos M. Guardia
Sguenos en Google+
En ingls:
1.-What is the deep meaning of ritualized behaviors?
I do not think there is any need for ritualized behaviors to have meaning, deep or not.
Desde el exilio
on Google+
Indeed, as Maurice Bloch has pointed out, many behaviors that occur in ritualized
contexts seem designed precisely to avoid conveying any specific meaning: eg using
formulaic language, massive repetition, archaic idioms, etc. What people sometimes call
the meaning of some ritual is a set of exegetic thoughts that may or may not occur to
participants. It is a familiar finding in anthropology, that one can feel compelled to
perform a particular ritual, have the intuition that it matters, have the intuition that it
should be performed the proper way, etc., without entertaining any such interpretive
thoughts.
Meaning here is icing on the cake. For a long time, anthropologists used to see rituals
as some way of conveying meaning, but that raised the difficult question (formulated by
Maurice Bloch, Roy Rappaport and others), Why should people bother to communicate
these meanings in that particular, ritualized form? I think that question is better
addressed, perhaps solved, if we forget about meanings and focus on the psychological
processes involved in making ritualized behavior interesting, that is, attentiongrabbing, compelling and memorable. That is what Pierre Lienard and I tried to do in our
articles on ritualized behavior.
2.- How do we make decisions? How do we make inferences? What is the weight
of emotions and instinct on them?
I do not think it is possible to answer such a broad question without summarizing the
whole of modern cognitive science, for which there is no space here!
3.-What is creativity from an evolutionary standpoint?
From an evolutionary viewpoint, there is creativity in many standard cognitive
22/11/2011 10:36
3 de 12
http://www.desdeelexilio.com/2009/11/24/la-religion-explicada-entrev...
operations, in those complex inferences that our cognitive systems produce all the time.
For instance, understanding other minds, figuring out what others know, want, guess,
desire, etc., requires a huge amount of (largely unconscious) hypothesis-testing, use of
theoretical principles, on-the-hoof updating of ones models, etc. That all this is complex
becomes clear only when those systems are impaired, eg in autistic or schizophrenic
patients.
Understanding this kind of everyday, unconscious, implicit creativity is pretty difficult,
but I think we are on the right track. The other kind, the Schubert and Shakespeare kind,
seems to me largely intractable not that there is anything mystical about it, but simply
that we are not able to formulate the questions with any precision, so there is no hope
of solving them any time soon!
4.- How do you think nature and culture relate to each other in originating all
human behaviors and institutions?
I do not think there is any opposition between nature and culture. Indeed, if you want
to understand human behavior you have to abandon this dichotomy (and others such as
innate vs acquired). It is part of human evolved nature that we acquire massive
amounts of information from (and about) conspecifics, what is sometimes called
culture. Many species store information in the external environment. we are
exceptional in the amount and diversity of that information but that does not mean that
there is such a thing as culture out there that would be a special domain of reality. We
do not need that assumption t explain human behavior and its diversity across groups.
5.-What is religion? How do you think the first religion arose? How did religions
evolve?
I do not think there is any such thing as religion. To make sense of all the stuff people
talk about when they use that term, one should distinguish between: [a] the sets of
supernatural notions (spirits, ancestors, ghosts, gods, ghouls, goblins and whatnot) that
people in most groups will create; [b] some religious traditions (roughly similar sets of
understandings of [a] transmitted across generations, and usually stable within a group);
[c] established religious corporations, guilds and brands (what we usually call religions
in the modern world), with doctrine of [b], as well as specialists, books, formalized
ceremonies etc.
Now [a] is (I have argued at length) a not-too-improbable result of human cognitive
architecture; people tend to create such concepts and communicate them. In that
minimal sense [a] is a by-produc of evolution that created human cognitive capacities.
[b] is a not-too-improbable result of having stable social groups, in which some forms of
[a] tend to become more enduring and widespread than others.
[c] is what happens to [b] once your have large societies and literacy.
If you think of it that way, there is no way in which religions were part of human
evolution they are a recent development like large towns, literacy and the wheel.
Some authors are talking as if wed always had religions, but that is probably true only
of a few millenia in a few places on earth, so nothing of great evolutionary importance.
6.- What, in your opinion, are the major milestones in human evolution?
The obvious ones: understanding of other minds which made possible language or
resulted from it -, urbanization and complex societies, literacy, the scientific revolution,
the digital revolution
22/11/2011 10:36
4 de 12
http://www.desdeelexilio.com/2009/11/24/la-religion-explicada-entrev...
7.- What are you now working on? What is your highest intellectual challenge?
What is the mystery you would dream to unveil?
I would very much like to understand why we have memories, what is the functional
point of having the episodic memory system, which seems so important to us although
most complex learning does not require episodic memories.
In a more ambitious way, I would like to find a conceptual pill that could shortcut many
sources of violence a set of notions such that, once you have them, religious
fanaticism or ethnic hatred for instance can be seen as the monstrous absurdities they
are. But I am not holding my breath. The Enlightenment was a great thing, but it seems
that not everyone likes that form of secular humanism and evolutionary psychology
can probably explain why.
En espaol:
1.-Cul es el significado profundo de los
comportamientos rituales?
Yo no creo que los comportamientos rituales
deban tener o no un significado profundo. De
hecho, como Maurice Bloch ha sealado, muchos
de los comportamientos que se dan en contextos
rituales parecen diseadas precisamente para
evitar que se transmita un significado concreto:
por ejemplo, utilizando un lenguaje formulista, la
repeticin masiva, expresiones arcaicas, etc Lo
que la gente a veces llama el significado de un
ritual es un conjunto de razonamientos
exegticos que pueden o no pueden habrseles
ocurrido a quienes participan en el ritual. Es un
hallazgo habitual en la antropologa, que uno puede sentirse obligado a ejecutar un ritual
particular, tener la intuicin de que importa, tener la intuicin de que debera llevarse a
cabo de manera adecuada, etc, sin abrigar tales pensamientos interpretativos.
Significado es aqu la guinda del pastel. Durante mucho tiempo, los antroplogos
solan ver los rituales como una manera de transmitir significado, lo que plantea una
difcil cuestin (en la formulacin de Maurice Bloch, Roy Rappaport y otros), Por qu
las personas se molestan en comunicar estos significados de esa forma particular,
ritualizada? Creo que la pregunta est mejor planteada, tal vez resuelta, si nos
olvidamos de los significados y nos centramos en los procesos psicolgicos que hacen
interesante el comportamiento ritual, es decir, seductor, convincente y memorable.
Eso es lo que Pierre Lienard y yo tratamos de hacer en nuestros artculos sobre el
comportamiento ritualizado.
2. Cmo tomamos decisiones? Cmo hacemos inferencias? Qu peso tienen
las emociones y los instintos en ellas?
No creo que sea posible contestar a una pregunta tan amplia sin resumir toda la
moderna ciencia cognitiva, para lo que no tenemos espacio aqu !
3.- Qu es la creatividad desde un punto de vista evolucionista?
Desde un punto de vista evolucionista, hay creatividad en muchas operaciones
cognitivas estndar, en esas complejas inferencias que nuestros sistemas cognitivos
producen constantemente. Por ejemplo: entender a otras mentes; averiguar lo que otros
saben, quieren, desean, etctera, requiere un enorme esfuerzo (en buena medida
22/11/2011 10:36
5 de 12
http://www.desdeelexilio.com/2009/11/24/la-religion-explicada-entrev...
22/11/2011 10:36
6 de 12
http://www.desdeelexilio.com/2009/11/24/la-religion-explicada-entrev...
Bitacoras.com
10 comentarios
Germanico
noviembre 24, 2009
Geralt
noviembre 24, 2009
Muy interesante.
Una visin sosegada acerca del hecho religioso vista con los ojos
de la ciencia cognitiva
Responder
Geralt
noviembre 24, 2009
Germanico
noviembre 24, 2009
22/11/2011 10:36
7 de 12
http://www.desdeelexilio.com/2009/11/24/la-religion-explicada-entrev...
atesmo.
Responder
Geralt
noviembre 24, 2009
Germanico
noviembre 24, 2009
Antonio Gimeno
noviembre 24, 2009
Hola,
Sobre este tema, uno reciente. Esta vez de Nick Wade,
columnista del NYT y autor de Before the dawn:
http://www.nicholas-wade.com/
Comentado por l.
Por su colega en el NYT J.Tierney.
Gracias
A.
Responder
Rojirigo
noviembre 25, 2009
22/11/2011 10:36
8 de 12
http://www.desdeelexilio.com/2009/11/24/la-religion-explicada-entrev...
22/11/2011 10:36
9 de 12
http://www.desdeelexilio.com/2009/11/24/la-religion-explicada-entrev...
Rojirigo
noviembre 26, 2009
22/11/2011 10:36
10 de 12
http://www.desdeelexilio.com/2009/11/24/la-religion-explicada-entrev...
4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfmWrHWrrzQ (Aqui la charla
con Boyer)
5
22/11/2011 10:36
11 de 12
http://www.desdeelexilio.com/2009/11/24/la-religion-explicada-entrev...
Responder
Antonio
noviembre 26, 2009
22/11/2011 10:36
12 de 12
http://www.desdeelexilio.com/2009/11/24/la-religion-explicada-entrev...
A.
Responder
Deja un comentario
Name *
advanced.path: p
E-Mail *
Website
Send
22/11/2011 10:36