Fiat Lux: Religion as Distributed Cognition

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Author: Reimer, Kevin

Journal of Psychology & Christianity, Vol. 24(2), Sum 2005, pp. 130-139

Abstract:

L’Arche is a unique Christian community embracing the developmentally disabled and their caregiver assistants, providing a cognitively diverse context for the study of religious experience. This article considers the religious significance of a simple candle ritual in L’Arche. Based on Hutchins’ (1995) theory of distributed cognition, it is argued that problem-solving and meaning in religion are less dependent upon cognitive capacities of individual agents and more related to how knowledge is attributed to artifacts that serve as external scaffolds. To differentiate this discussion from constructivist philosophy, religious experience and cognition are considered on the basis of public language that exerts downward selection influence upon individual brains. The article concludes with methodological considerations in the study of semantically distributed cognitions relevant to the candle ritual and L’Arche religious experience.



The Journal of Psychology and Christianity

The Jounal of Pyschology and Christianity is an official publication of the Christian Association for Psychological Studies, Inc. (CAPS), designed to provide scholarly interchange among Christian professionals in the psychological and pastoral professions.

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