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The Concept of God and the Cognitive Science of Religion: An International Conference at Birmingham
Europe | United Kingdom | Birmingham
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| Lecture Room 3, Arts Building, University of Birmingham |
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| Opening date: |
JUN 14, 2009 |
Closing date: |
JUN 16, 2009 |
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| Registration period: |
JUN 14, 2009 |
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Conference Theme: According to so-called Anselmian perfect-being theology, God is the being than which no greater can be thought and has many distinctive attributes, such as omniscience, omnipotence, omnibenevolence, omnipresence, timelessness, and incorporeality. Over the last few hundreds of years, philosophers have tried to understand the existence and nature of God by analysing His individual attributes. They have, however, faced a persistent difficulty. Although it is not difficult to grasp the basic ideas conceptualised in these attributes, it is extremely difficult to define them precisely. Whenever someone proposes a new definition of an attribute, it is assailed by powerful counterexamples. Anselmian theists recognise that the difficulty of analysing the nature of God arises, at least in part, from the unavoidability of anthropomorphism. On the one hand, God is supposed to be fundamentally different from human beings. Yet on the other hand any definitions of God and His attributes that we can provide are constrained by our epistemic limitations. Recently anthropologists, psychologists, and cognitive scientists have published numerous interesting empirical findings that have significant implications for these challenges to Anselmian perfect-being theology. The conference aims to advance the traditional theological and philosophical debate by studying the most recent research in these areas.
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| Topic : |
Filosofía |
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| Type : |
Conferencias |
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| Topics : |
Topics: Topics that the conference covers include, but are not limited to: (i) The origin of the Anselmian conception of God: Theologians and philosophers tend to think that God’s omniscience and omnipotence are highly complex because they involve very large sets of powers and pieces of knowledge. However, recent research in developmental psychology suggests that these attributes might be cognitively much more primitive than they appear. According to such research, young children do not infer the nature of omniscience and omnipotence from their understanding of knowledge and power. On the contrary, they often make the assumption first that adults are omniscient and omnipotent and then amend it later. (Chapter 6, Justin L. Barrett, 2004, Why Would Anyone Believe in God?, Lanham, MD: Rowman Altamira.) (ii) Anthropomorphism and God: Gaunilo, a contemporary of Anselm, acknowledged the unavoidability of anthropomorphism in understanding the nature of God as follows: ‘When I hear someone speak of [God] I can no more think of [Him] . . . in terms of anything whose genus or species I already know, than I can think of God himself . . .’. A recent study by Barrett and Keil seems to illustrate this difficulty. It shows that people who accept literal versions of ‘theologically correct’ concepts of divine attributes tend to anthropomorphise them when they do not have time to engage in sophisticated theological reflection. (Justin L. Barrett and Frank C. Keil, 1996, ‘Conceptualizing a Nonnatural Entity: Anthropomorphism in God Concepts’, Cognitive Psychology, 31, 219-247.) (iii) Two categories of divine attributes: Theologians and philosophers often treat divine attributes as a homogeneous set. However, empirical evidence shows that there are two categories of divine attributes: those that are developmentally privileged (omniscience, omnipotence, immortality, etc.) and those that are not (omnipresence, timelessness, etc.). This may suggest that theologians and philosophers ought not to treat these distinct kinds of attribute in the same way. |
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| Event's Web Site: |
http://www.philosophy.bham.ac.uk/events/cogsci.shtml
fontem recommends you consult the event web in order to be sure there has been no last minute changes in the organization |
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