AAR Conference | Robert McCauley | Gods in Disorder: Schizophrenia, Religious Experience, and Hearing Voices
The cognitive science of religion (CSR) illuminates similar features of experience that arise in religious settings and that are associated with some mental disorders. We endorse explanatory pluralism, the view that cross-scientific investigations are enriched by integrating theory, methods, and evidence from multiple analytical levels, and ecumenical naturalism, which holds that: (1) examining features of experiences in different mental disorders and similar features of religious experiences will offer insights about underlying mental systems that figure in both, (2) CSR’s by-product theory maintains that religious experiences rely on cultural triggers of maturationally natural mental systems that underpin various ordinary experiences, and (3) CSR’s methods, theories, and findings will provide leverage for explaining many similar features of mental disorders. Schizophrenics and some Christians not only hear voices but attribute those experiences to agents other than themselves. An examination of experiencing voices in schizophrenia and experiencing God’s voice suggests that they rely on the same mental systems and cognitive dispositions. Whether in mental disorders or in religions, these include: *experiencing a person’s own self-conception in narrative terms *(automatic) linguistic processing *(automatic) attributions of agency and mind *(intrinsic or extrinsic disruptions in) source monitoring *filling-in agents (whether via culturally available resources or not)