Naturalising methods : possibilities of using neuroscience in the scientific study of religion
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| Year of publication | 2012 |
| Type | Appeared in Conference without Proceedings |
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| Description | Thanks to technological advancement in the area of brain research, neuroscience brings a new evidence, which can help us better understand human behavior. Thus, its methods are being used also in humanities or social sciences. In the last decade, there was a boom of neuroscientific studies on religion, which brought a load of new data. However, the character of these data was very new as well, and the scholars of religion were confronted with a new type of reasoning, based on neuroscientific principles. But is this type of reasoning relevant for the field of scientific study of religion? And should the scholars of religion reflect on these studies? In the presented paper it will be argued that the scholars of religion should reflect on these studies. This is mainly because history of the discipline (i.e. scientific study of religion) went through a methatheorethical critical stages, which helped to overcome some of the possible pitfalls. Apparently, neuroscientists lack this kind of self-reflection and most of their studies can be therefore flawed with unscientific inferences. The aim of this paper is therefore to discuss possibilities of using neuroscience in the scientific study of religion, as well as its pitfalls. |
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