Abstract
In this essay, we set out to survey and critically assess various attitudes and understandings of reductionism as it appears in discussions regarding the scientific study of religion. Our objective in the essay is twofold. First, we articulate what we will refer to as three ‘meta-interpretative’ frameworks, which summarize the distinct positions one can witness in response to the explanations coming out of research within the new science of religion. Second, and more importantly, we seek to demonstrate that under no sensible interpretation of the notion of ‘reduction’ do the explanations provide a basis for defending one of the meta-interpretative frameworks rather than another.
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Notes
Much has been written about the history of explanation in religious studies. For more on the subject, see Preus (1987).
In Naturalism, Theism and the Cognitive Study of Religion, Aku Visala proposes three possible readings of the relationship between CSR and Theism: 1) The Falsity of Religious Belief Thesis; 2) the Religious Relevance Thesis; and 3) the Religious Agnosticism Thesis. He argues that reading 2 is the most reasonable because reading 1 presupposes a strict naturalism, which he has argued is not the only philosophical framework for CSR, and reading 3 seems to "go a bit too far" as there "are reasons to think that some CSR theories might challenge some claims associated with theism as well as have an impact on some arguments made for (and against) theism” (p. 159). The main thesis of Visala's work is to argue against the claim that a strict naturalist framework (i.e., physicalism) is necessary for CSR methodology or current theories in order to argue that CSR does not necessarily imply atheism. Visala is not trying to dismisss the viability or the findings of CSR as a research project, but rather argue that it is compatible with a “broad naturalism” grounded in a non-reductive materialism that denies the causal closure of the physical. It should be noted that Visala's book is an attempt at working out of implications and findings of CSR that the current project argues is necessary prior to adoption of any one of the meta-interpretive framework. We thank an anonymous reviewer for referring us to this work.
The emphasis we add here is to highlight that our project is intended to help clarify Proudfoot’s stated confusion about the term ‘reduction’.
There are numerous discussions regarding these issues. For representative examples, one can look at the debate between Francisca Cho and Richard K. Squier and Edward Slingerland in the Journal of the American Academy of Religion (Cho & Squier 2008a, b, c; Slingerland 2008a, b, c) or the review symposium of Anne Taves’s Religious Experience Reconsidered in Religion (Stausberg et al. 2010).
Proponents of the sui generis view might object to this claim. They might maintain that the HADD module DOES wrongfully minimize belief in supernatural beings, for it fails to account for the individual subject’s own sense of their commitment to those beings’ existence and activity. However, this response betrays a terrible misunderstanding of explanation in this context. The explanadum is not individuals’ own sense of their propositional commitment, it is the prevalence of individuals who have this type of commitment. All the response does, in short, isintroduce a new explanatory project, and surely an explanation cannot be faulted for failing to have explained something it does not set out to explain.
This idea of ‘extra-logical factors’ is inspired by Willard V. O. Quine’s classic views on empirical underdetermination (1951) but even more by Longino’s (2001) social philosophy of science, wherein ‘non-cognitive values’ are an integral part of a satisfactory account of good scientific practice.6 This line of argument will no doubt prove unconvincing to many who insist that the final arbiter of successful epistemic practice is the truth, in its traditional objective, or correspondence, sense. These critics may contend that one should generally expect sound epistemic practice to converge on a single set of correct beliefs, and that the position we've adopted here fails in this regard. This criticism targets a fundamental philosophical issue that goes well beyond the scope of this essay; however, we would acknowledge that our views do commit us to rejecting this standard for successful epistemic practice. We thank an anonymous reviewer for encouraging us to think about this point.
This line of argument will no doubt prove unconvincing to many who insist that the final arbiter of successful epistemic practice is the truth, in its traditional objective, or correspondence, sense. These critics may contend that one should generally expect sound epistemic practice to converge on a single set of correct beliefs, and that the position we've adopted here fails in this regard. This criticism targets a fundamental philosophical issue that goes well beyond the scope of this essay; however, we would acknowledge that our views do commit us to rejecting this standard for successful epistemic practice. We thank an anonymous reviewer for encouraging us to think about this point.
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Pearson, C.H., Schunke, M.P. Reduction, Explanation, and the New Science of Religion. SOPHIA 54, 47–60 (2015). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-014-0438-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-014-0438-9