Intuition in the Cognitive Science

This article examines the notions of “intuitive” and “counterintuitive” beliefs and concepts in cognitive science of religion. “Intuitive” states are contrasted with those that are products of explicit, conscious reasoning. In many cases the intuitions are grounded in the implicit rules of mental models, frames, or schemas. I argue that the pathway from intuitive to high theological concepts and beliefs may be distinct from that from intuitions to “folk religion,” and discuss how Christian theology might best interpret the results of studies in cognitive psychology of religion. In Cognitive Science of Religion (CSR), religious concepts and beliefs have been characterized as “intuitive” or “counterintuitive” by psychologists (Barrett 2004; Bloom 2004; Kelemen 2004) and anthropologists (Boyer 2001); and others (Pyysiäinen 2004, following Sperber 1997) have made use of a notion of “intuitive” representations in their accounts of religious cognition. The word ‘intuition’ and its variants are, of course, used in several different ways in ordinary language, and have also been used in multiple technical ways in philosophy, psychology, and other academic disciplines. I shall first examine recent uses of these terms in CSR, clarifying them in relation to existing usages in philosophy and psychology which contrast “intuitive” states and processes with those that are products of conscious, explicit reasoning. I shall then outline an account of how intuitions are produced in the mind via the rules of what have variously been called mental models, schemas, or frames. In Section 3, I shall examine a few possible implications of this model-based account of intuition for CSR—particularly, the possibility that a study of the cognitive processes that produce “high theological” or “theologically correct” religious views might (somewhat surprisingly) be undertaken separately “Notions of Intuition in the Cognitive Science of Religion” by Steven Horst, The Monist, vol. 96, no. 2, pp. 377–398. Copyright © 2013, THE MONIST, Peru, Illinois 61354.