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Straight out of Durkheim? Haidt’s Neo-Durkheimian Account of Religion and the Cognitive Science of Religion

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Abstract

Jon Haidt, a leading figure in contemporary moral psychology, advocates a participation-centric view of religion, according to which participation in religious communal activity is significantly more important than belief in explaining religious behaviour and commitment. He describes the participation-centric view as ‘Straight out of Durkheim’. I argue that this is a misreading of Durkheim, who held that religious behaviour and commitment are the joint products of belief and participation, with neither belief nor participation being considered more important than the other. I further argue that recent evidence from the cognitive science of religion provides support for Durkheim’s balanced account of religion and counts strongly against Haidt’s participation-centric view of religion. I suggest that Haidt’s adherence to the participation-centric view of religion is better explained by his desire to accept an account of religion that is consistent with his social intuitionist moral psychology than by his desire to accept an account of religion that accords with available scientific evidence about religion.

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Notes

  1. In another paper, the same authors inform us that ‘... shared social practice is a more important determinant of religious conversion than specific beliefs’ (Graham and Haidt 2010, p. 142).

  2. Haidt quotes from Harris’s The End of Faith to illustrate the new atheist view of the importance of belief (2012, pp. 249–250). According to Harris, ‘A belief is a lever that, once pulled, moves almost everything else in a person’s life’ (2004, p. 12). Dawkins, as the title of his 2006 book suggests, is centrally concerned to oppose a particular belief which he regards as delusional, and which he locates at the heart of religion: The God Delusion (2006). Dennett’s views are more nuanced that either Harris’ or Dawkins’ views. However, as Haidt points out, Dennett (2006) is primarily concerned with the consequences and causes of religious belief (Haidt 2012, p. 366, n10).

  3. See Cladis 2001, xvi.

  4. In this context, ‘profane’ means mundane or ordinary, rather than irreverent or idolatrous.

  5. This finding is confirmed by recent studies of religious rituals. See for example, McCauley and Lawson (2002), Henrich (2009) and Norenzayan (2016).

  6. He puts this point in language that sounds very politically incorrect a century after he wrote:

    Even the crudest religions made familiar to us by history and ethnography have a complexity that belies the common notion of the primitive mentality. They display not only an elaborate system of beliefs and rites but such a variety of different principles and a wealth of basic ideas that they seem to be the recent products of a rather long development (Durkheim 1912, p. 47).

  7. Props can include incense, fire, music, costumes, weapons and animal (sometimes human) sacrifices.

  8. Scholars working in the cognitive science of religion include Atran (2002), Boyer (2002), McCauley and Lawson (2002) and Barrett (2004).

  9. It is sometime said that Buddhists and Jains do not postulate supernatural beings. But this is not the case. What is true is that neither Buddhists nor Jains postulate a supreme being. Mainstream Buddhists postulate supernatural ‘devas’, which are more powerful than humans, but not as powerful as a supreme being (Sadakata 1997). Also, mainstream Jains accept the existence of various less-than-supreme supernatural beings (Dundas 2002, pp. 212–214).

  10. For further discussion of the case for religion having evolved, as well as an argument dismissing an alternative hypothesis, that religion spread from a common source and so may not have been subject to the influence of evolution, see (Powell and Clarke 2012, pp. 457-459).

  11. The by-product and the group-level adaptation account of the evolution of religion are not incompatible. For discussion of the possibility of mixing the two, see (Powell and Clarke 2012, pp. 478-480). For an example of a mixed view, see Atran and Henrich (2010).

  12. The HADD hypothesis is hugely influential, but the current evidential basis for it is thin (Clarke 2014, p. 43).

  13. Haidt (2001, 2012) focuses on moral intuitions and it could be that while moral intuitions are, almost invariably, accompanied by emotions, non-moral intuitions, some of which may be the result of very different cognitive processes from the cognitive processes that underpin moral intuitions, are not almost invariably accompanied by emotions. For a recent survey of work in psychology on intuitions, see Thompson (2014).

  14. Haidt does not argue that deliberative conscious reasoning never plays a direct role in the formation of individual moral judgement. When he sets out the Social Intuitionist Model, he specifically allows for ‘reasoned judgment’ and ‘private reflection’ (2001, p. 815). Our reasoned judgments can override our moral intuitions, and our private reflections can reshape the moral intuitions that generate our moral judgments. Haidt’s view, however, is that these possibilities are not often instantiated. In his words, ‘… moral reasoning is rarely the direct cause of moral judgment’ (2001, p. 815).

  15. Why should moral intuitions covary with emotions? One explanation for this covariance is that moral intuitions are constituted by moral emotions. For a recent philosophical defence of this view, see Kauppinen (2013).

  16. These critics include Pizzaro and Bloom (2003), Saltzstein and Kasachkoff (2004), Fine (2006), Clarke (2008), Sauer (2012), Hindriks (2015) and Greenspan (2015).

  17. Kiper and Sosis (2014) argue that Haidt’s account of the relationship between religion and morality is overly simple.

  18. Earlier versions of this paper were read at a one-day philosophy of religion conference held at the University of Birmingham in 2016, and at the workshop ‘Explaining Religion: Cognitive Science of Religion and Naturalism’ held at, VU University Amsterdam in 2015, as well as at staff seminars held at the Australian Catholic University and Charles Sturt University. Thanks to audience members for helpful feedback. Thanks also to Daniel Cohen, Matt Kopec, Yujin Nagasawa and two anonymous referees. Research leading to the final version of the paper was supported by Australian Research Council Grant DP130103658.

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Clarke, S. Straight out of Durkheim? Haidt’s Neo-Durkheimian Account of Religion and the Cognitive Science of Religion. SOPHIA 59, 197–210 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-018-0650-0

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