Cultural, Cognitive, and Ecological Dynamics of Individual Religiosity
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/jcsr.24038Keywords:
religion, religious commitment, ritual and costly signals, self-signaling, individual religiosity, subtle signalsAbstract
In the following, I consider how to better link the study of cognition and behavior to the evolutionary origins of cognitive mechanisms, within the framework of embodied cognition theory. Specifically, I attempt to show this by examining the topic of individual commitment, its origins, and its relationship to beliefs and identity. I then go on to point out that the way we talk about cognition and cognitive processes can be misleading, and although we cannot dispense with the use of metaphorical language, it might be worth considering some of the shortcomings of the metaphors in order to rid ourselves of misconceptions.
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