Scholars working in the cognitive science of religion have proposed that the study of religion be considered a subset within the larger paradigm of Worldviews, and specifically Scientific Worldview Studies (Taves, Asprem, 2019). Worldviews are understood as systems of beliefs and practices that address fundamental issues that allow humans to understand the nature and workings of the world they live in, develop an ethical framework, and make sense of their place in the larger scheme of things. In other words, worldviews are meaning-making projects.
As such, worldviews function as buffers against existential anxiety and sources of self-esteem. Research into Terror Management Theory (TMT), for example, provides impressive evidence that worldviews—whether religious or cultural—in fact play such roles: In the face of existential threats people cling more tightly to their worldviews and react more negatively to those challenging their worldviews or even holding different worldviews (Solomon, et al. 2015). Scientific Worldview Studies aims to ground “human meaning making capacities in species-independent biological processes” and to uncover the “interaction between explicit, reflective, worldviews” and “subpersonal appraisal processes that are operative not only in humans, but in other animals as well (Taves, Asprem, 297).” This project, then, places the development of Worldviews in an evolutionary context which sees the sophisticated, socio-linguistic expressions of worldviews as continuous with the basic sense-making task that all living organisms engage in as a basic biological function.
While TMT has treated worldviews as a development within human evolutionary history, its explanatory framework of ‘the denial of death’, grounded in Ernest Becker’s psychoanalytic theorizing (Becker, 1973), limits it in terms of both scope and empirical support. As was true of the Freudian psychoanalysis he sought to displace, Becker’s model is similarly open charges of being unfalsifiable. More significant, identifying the denial of death as the prime psychological function of worldviews is unduly reductive and casts worldviews in a reactive/defensive light. It is also problematic to ground such a function on sub-personal processes operative across species and throughout evolutionary timeframes. I will argue that a more promising theoretical approach for scientific worldview studies is that of enactivism.
Enactivism holds that cognition is something that organisms, not just brains, do. Although brains are incredibly important for those organisms possessing one, cognition predates brains—once we recognize the broader sense of cognition as organisms responding flexibly and adaptively to challenges in their environment. From the enactive perspective, all living things do, and must act. in this manner in order to maintain their structural and functional integrity. Doing so requires an organism to discriminate between aspects of their environment that serve this fundamental life function and those which threaten it. Elements that serve to further survival have intrinsic value for that organism. While it is fair to argue that the ultimate goal of all organismic behavior is survival (whether as an individual organism, or through replication/reproduction), it is not apt to characterize this goal-driven activity, which defines life, as ‘denial of death’ or, even an avoidance of death. Enactivism characterizes this process as one of meaning-making.
To make sense of how the ‘meaning-making’ of a single-cell organism, such as the E. coli bacterium, can be connected to the complex meaning-making embodied in worldviews, we need to see ‘meaning-making’ as a drive to sustain homeostasis—that is to keep an organism within the physical/biological parameters that allow for the continuing vitality of the organism. In order to successfully engage with its environment an organism acts in a non-random manner, responding differentially to the affordances of its particular ecological niche. It, in effect, enacts an ecological niche through the dynamic coupling of the organism (with its specific sensorimotor contingencies) and those aspects of the environment which maintains the continued biological integrity of the organism. In this way, the organism can be said to be engaged in world-making. This approach is consonant with the notion of autopoiesis, central to enactivism (Froese, Di Paolo, 2011). I argue that a fuller embrace of enactive cognition allows for a richer account of the continuity between basic level world-making and the socio-linguistic worldmaking expressed in religious worldviews (see also, Schjødt, 2007).
As life evolves into more complex forms, the drive to sustain life becomes more complex. With the advent of social creatures, homeostasis comprises elements that encompass the social environment. It is this evolutionary step that sets the stage for the sophisticated, symbolically encoded, psychologically powerful worldviews constructed by humans.
For social creatures, the self-production and maintenance of autopoiesis entails social world-making—not simply as cultural production but as a biological function, one that has shaped the cognitive-emotional capacities of social animals. Given this, the construction of worldviews is a process of participatory world-making, with all the existential significance of ecological world-making. From this perspective we can reframe one of the key social-psychological theories of worldview construction, Terror Management Theory, as an extension of basic autopoietic processes. We will consider the construction and maintenance, that is, the enaction of religious worldview, as a particularly important case study.
References:
Becker, E. (1973). The Denial of Death. New York: The Free Press.
Froese, T., & Di Paolo, E. A. (2011). The enactive approach: Theoretical sketches from cell to society. Pragmatics & Cognition, 19(1), 1–36. https://doi.org/10.1075/pc.19.1.01fro
Schjødt, U. (2007) Homeostasis and religious behavior. Journal of Cognition and Culture 7, 313-340.
Solomon, S., J. Greenberg, J., Pyszczynski, T. (2015). The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life. New York: Random House.
Taves, A. and Asprem,E. (2019). Scientific worldview studies: A programmatic proposal,” Evolution, Cognition, and the History of Religion: A New Synthesis, ed. A.K. Petersen, I.S. Gilhus, L.H. Martin, L.H., J.S. Jensen, J. Sorensen. New York: Brill, 297-308.
Religion can be studied within the paradigm of Scientific Worldview Studies. Worldviews address fundamental issues, enabling humans to make sense of their place in the larger scheme of things. Scientific Worldview Studies grounds this meaning-making in an evolutionary context, treating human worldviews as continuous with basic sense-making tasks all organisms engage in. Terror Management Theory (TMT) supports this meaning-making role of worldviews. While TMT treats worldviews within an evolutionary context, its explanatory framework of ‘the denial of death’ limits its scope and empirical support. Enactivism allows for a richer account of continuity between basic-level world-making and the socio-linguistic sophistication of religious worldviews. It argues that all organisms act in non-random ways to maintain functional integrity—this is autopoiesis. For social creatures, this process encompasses elements of the social environment, setting the stage for the symbolically encoded worldviews constructed by humans. This approach frames worldview construction as an extension of autopoietic processes.