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Chapter 4 - Embodied Cognition and the Neurology of Religion

from I.II - Philosophical and Historical Issues

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 October 2019

By
Warren Brown
Edited by
Alasdair Coles  and
Joanna Collicutt
Alasdair Coles
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
Joanna Collicutt
Affiliation:
University of Oxford
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Summary

This statement by Nobel laureate Roger Sperry encourages us to consider the sort of information that is necessary to bridge the conceptual gap between psychological phenomena (such as religious behaviours and experiences) and the phenomenology of neurology. But what is it that needs to be taken into account in the gap between basic neurophysiology and the social and psychological phenomena of religiousness? Are religiousness and spirituality embodied physical phenomena at all? Answers to such questions are critical to establishing the basis upon which one should approach study of the impact of neurological disorders on religiousness and spirituality. What model of the relationship between body and mind is most fruitful for such study?

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Chapter
Information
Neurology and Religion , pp. 25 - 34
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2019

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