4E Cognition and Major World Religions’ Anthropology and Ontology

Abstract

4E cognition offers resources supporting an anthropology and an ontology that overcome mind/body and related dualisms that contradict the original understandings of some major world religions, including the Western monotheisms and some Asian religions. 4E cognition embraces a holism with respect to the human organism, enabling a rapprochement with the Hebrew biblical, New Testament, and Qur’anic view of the human being as a psycho-somatic unity, as well as with scriptures and traditions about human nature of some Asian religions. For 4E cognition, the human organism comes embedded or emplaced in an environment with affordances, as it enacts meaning in co-constituting its lifeworld, in terms of both general orientation and particular values. The cruciality of social relationships and nature resonate with Western scriptures and with Mahayana Buddhism, Ruism/Confucianism, and Daoism. 4E cognition extends the joint project of organism and environment to evolution, with a mutual adaptation or specification of organism and environment. The fit of organism and environment finds resonance with these world religions, insofar as they uphold the goodness of creation or of the world. Moreover, the anthropology and ontology of 4E cognition provide a springboard for the analysis and affirmation of ethical values that resonate with the world religions insofar as they affirm the goodness of life.