论心理学实验证据对宗教认知优势理论的不充分性

On the Insufficiency of the Psychological Experimental Evidences for the Cognitive Advantage Theory of Religion

当代宗教认知科学提出了宗教表征具有特定认知优势的主张,以解释宗教现象的复现性和普遍性。然而,该解释策略以人类心智中存在具有成熟自然性的、产物为概念表征的心智模块为前提,而宗教认知科学用以支撑这一前提的发展心理学实验证据和认知心理学实验证据只能分别证实人心中存在成熟自然的模块和产物为概念的模块,逻辑上无法构成对这一前提的完整支撑。同时,现有证据所支撑的成熟自然模块,其产物并不满足概念的组合性要求和同一性要求。宗教认知科学需要进一步补充实验证据或修正其理论观点。

Contemporary cognitive science of religion suggests certain cognitive advantages of religious representations to explain the recurrence and the universality of religious phenomena. However, this explanatory strategy commits mental modules of maturational naturalness with conceptual products in human mind as a premise, while the evidences used to support the premise from developmental psychological experiments and those from cognitive psychological experiments can merely confirm the existence of modules of maturational naturalness and the existence of modules with conceptual products respectively, so that logically they cannot constitute a complete support for the premise. Moreover, the products of the modules of maturational naturalness supported by the accessible evidence do not satisfy the compositionality requirement and the identity requirement for concept. Further evidence or theoretical revision is needed.