7/29/2019 Minimal Counterintuitiveness

1/2

1

2008 University of Oxford

Minimal counterintuitivenessGeneral questions

What is the exact role of counter-intuitive concepts and beliefs in CSR explanations of religion?Is the appeal to counter-intuitive concepts and beliefs compatible with the common claim of

cognitive scientists of religion to be neutral with respect to the ontological status of supernatural

entities? Can one argue that religious explanations should be naturalistic and also regard it aspossible that supernatural agents may exist? On the assumption of theism, does the minimal

counterintuitiveness hypothesis have any implications for the value of theological discourse

about God, or of religious instruction?

Summary

Pascal Boyer observes that religious concepts belong to a class of concepts which Barrett [1] has

called minimally counterintuitive, namely, fulfilling intuitive assumptions about any given

class of objects (e.g., persons, plants, tools) but also violating some of those assumptions in smallways which make the resulting concepts particularly attention grabbing and memorable. An

example of a counterintuitive concept would be a plant which has all the usual properties of a

plant but which has the additional property of being able to talk (i.e., violating the naturalassumption that plants cannot communicate verbally). Pyysiinen & Anttonen [2] claim that

counterintuitiveness is a condition which can be taken as a universal characteristic of all religion,

although it is not a sufficient criterion for religion. (See also Minimal counterintuitivenessempirical summary).

Examples of philosophical and theological issues

Counterintuitiveness plays a dominant role in CSR explanations of religion, but some scholars

who have so far taken an interest in the philosophical and theological implications of the theory(e.g., Nreaho[3]) have suggested that the concept of counter-intuitiveness in CSR remains

unclear, and cognitive scientists of religion should clarify their views about the role counter-

intuitive concepts and beliefs play in their explanations of religion. For example, does theminimal counterintuitiveness theory imply the non-existence of the referents of these concepts/

beliefs? Cognitive scientists of religion officially claim that this is not an implication of the

theory (e.g., Boyer [4]; Atran [5]). However, notwithstanding claims of this sort many cognitive

scientists of religion (sometimes the very same) do nevertheless write as though the minimalcounterintuitiveness theory of CSR rules out a supernatural interpretation of the data (e.g., Boyer

[4], Atran [5] although not all: see e.g. Barrett [6]). Is the present lack of clarity about these

central implicational issues merely a result of some cognitive scientists of religion allowing theirworldviews to colour their theoretical commitments, or do their assumptions about the nature of

mind, the world, and the relation between them actually determine their theoretical commitments

such that they cannot remain neutral on the existence/non-existence of supernatural entitieswithout it making a genuine difference to their theory building?

Whether or not cognitive scientists of religion actually remain neutral on the existence of

supernatural entities may have real world consequences for the theory of counterintuitiveness.

7/29/2019 Minimal Counterintuitiveness

2/2

2

2008 University of Oxford

Nreaho [3], for example, speculates about what would happen if empirical research were to

show that ghosts and poltergeists are real phenomena. If these were real entities in the

environment with the ability to affect us, would beliefs about them still count ascounterintuitive? The answers to questions like this are unclear, and would seem to depend on

the tacit metaphysics of the theory builders. For instance, if it is assumed that selective pressureswill produce reliable intuitive/ontological categories in humans generating mostly true beliefs

about the environment and that supernatural entities are included in that environment, would it

still make sense to say that supernatural entity concepts involved violations of ontologicalcategories? Presumably it would no longer be acceptable to explain such concepts as illusory

by-products of our cognitive architecture, regardless of whether they remained counter-intuitive

or not. Issues such as these require further exploration, but thought experiments can encouragecognitive scientists of religion to be explicit about their metaphysical assumptions and clarify

their relationship to naturalism and its alternatives.

See also

Broad doctrinal implications of CSR for religion and theology

Outstanding issues

Does the CSR theory of counterintuitiveness carry implications for the existence or non-existence of supernatural entities?

What is the relationship between the CSR theory of counterintuitiveness and the worldviewsof cognitive scientists of religion?

Which aspects of religion can the theory of counterintuitiveness illuminate? To what extent can the theory of counterintuitiveness illuminate how believers conceive of

supreme gods?

If the theory of counterintuitiveness suggests that some religious ideas are harder to transmitthan others, what implications (if any) might this have for religious instruction?

References

1. Barrett, J.L.,Exploring the natural foundations of religion. Trends in Cognitive Sciences,

2000. 4: p. 29-34.

2. Pyysiinen, I. and V. Anttonen, Current approaches in the cognitive science of religion.2002, London: Continuum.

3. Nreaho, L., The cognitive science of religion: philosophical observations. Religious

Studies, 2008. 44: p. 83-98.4. Boyer, P., Religion explained: the evolutionary origins of religious thought. 2001, New

York: Basic Books.

5. Atran, S.,In gods we trust: the evolutionary landscape of religion. 2002, Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press.

6. Barrett, J.L., Why would anyone believe in God? 2004, Walnut Creek, CA: AltaMira

Press.