A LITERARY TRINITY FOR COGNITIVE SCIENCE AND RELIGION

The cognitive sciences contribute to the religion-and-science dialogue through three narrative perspectives—first, second, and third person—which correspond to consciousness, relationality, and healing. First-person accounts are crucial for understanding subjective experience and neurophenomenology, despite their epistemic limits and indirect causal role in behavior. Second-person perspectives highlight empathic, embodied relationality that supports an externalist account of mind, as increasingly evidenced by social neuroscience. Third-person accounts reveal us/them distinctions that can fuel dangerous tribalisms, threatening an interdependent world. The paper argues for awareness of these perspectives to foster healing.

Study at a glance

Abstract

The cognitive sciences may be understood to contribute to religion‐and‐science as a metadisciplinary discussion in ways that can be organized according to the three persons of narrative, encoding the themes of consciousness, relationality, and healing. First‐person accounts are likely to be important to the understanding of consciousness, the “hard problem” of subjective experience, and contribute to a neurophenomenology of mind, even though we must be aware of their role in human suffering, their epistemic limits, and their indirect causal role in human behavior and subsequent experience. Second‐person discussions are important for understanding the empathic and embodied relationality upon which an externalist account of mind is likely to depend, increasingly uncovered and supported by social neuroscience. Third‐person accounts can be better understood in uncovering the us/them distinctions that they encode and healing the dangerous tribalisms that put an interdependent and communal world increasingly at risk.