The Role of Cognition and Feeling in Religious Experience

Inquiry into religious experience is informed by conceptualizations of emotion. Although a long history of theoretical and empirical work has provided considerable insight into the philosophical, psychological, and (more recently) neurobiological structure of emotion, the role of cognition and feeli...

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Détails bibliographiques
Auteurs: Azari, Nina P. (Auteur) ; Birnbacher, Dieter (Auteur)
Type de support: Électronique Article
Langue:Anglais
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Publié: Wiley-Blackwell 2004
Dans: Zygon
Année: 2004, Volume: 39, Numéro: 4, Pages: 901-918
Sujets non-standardisés:B human brain imaging
B Religious Experience
B Neuroscience
B Emotion
Accès en ligne: Volltext (lizenzpflichtig)
Volltext (lizenzpflichtig)
Édition parallèle:Non-électronique
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Résumé:Inquiry into religious experience is informed by conceptualizations of emotion. Although a long history of theoretical and empirical work has provided considerable insight into the philosophical, psychological, and (more recently) neurobiological structure of emotion, the role of cognition and feeling in religious emotional states remains poorly conceived, and, hence, so does the concept of religious experience. The lack of a clear understanding of the role of emotion in religious experience is a consequence of a lack of an adequate interdisciplinary account of emotions. Our primary aim here is to examine the consequences of a properly interdisciplinary understanding of emotions for the analysis of religious experience. To this end, we note points of convergence between psychological, philosophical, and neuroscientific accounts of emotion and between such accounts and reports on the neurobiology of religious experience, in particular two recent human brain imaging studies. We conclude that emotions are richer phenomena than either pure feeling or pure thought and that, rightly understood, emotion affords religious experience its distinctive content and quality. Accordingly, we argue that religious experience cannot be reduced to pure feeling or pure thought. Rather, on our analysis, religious experience emerges as “thinking that feels like something.”
ISSN:1467-9744
Contient:Enthalten in: Zygon
Persistent identifiers:DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9744.2004.00627.x