The So-Called Cognitive Optimum and The Cost of Religious Concepts

Abstract

When I try to explain to people who specialize in cognitive science and psychology basic positions in the cognitive scientific study of reli gion, they often reply, doesn't work. Now, I am willing to con cede that their negative reactions may result from my own inability to explain these positions adequately. I am also willing to entertain the notion that these people are not sufficiently competent to judge. They seem knowledgeable and bright enough to me, but perhaps my confidence in their abilities is excessive. Here, however, I want to entertain another possibility, namely, the possibility that my interlocutors may in fact be right. They certainly know considerably more about cognitive science and psychology than I do. And I want to entertain that possibility with regard to a question on which there is no little difference of opinion among those who study religion from the point of view of cognitive science. That question is the cost of religious concepts. The focal point of my inquiiy is Pascal Boyer's claim that religious concepts occupy a cognitive optimum, which some have taken to calling moderately costly (e.g., Whitehouse 2004: 17-47). In his ground-breaking book, The Naturalness of Religious Ideas, Boyer (1994: 121) put it this way: