Keynote Speaker
Emory University
Over the past 25 years, scholars have brought the theories and findings as well as the tools and methods of the various cognitive and brain sciences to bear on religious thought and behavior. From its beginnings, the cognitive science of religion has been a thoroughly interdisciplinary undertaking, seeking to integrate formal modeling, experimental psychology, ethnographic research, and evolutionary insights. More recently, general trends in cognitive science, from deploying the tools of brain imaging to incorporating insights about embodiment, have swept across the cognitive science of religion as well, shaping accounts of religious beliefs and representations (both mental and public), ritual and other forms of religious conduct, religious attitudes and values, and types of religious experience. This workshop explores some of the most prominent directions such research has taken over the past 25 years, focusing specifically on some of the most exciting recent developments.
