Why do people behave religiously?

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Why do people behave religiously?
Prepared for NEI Second International Conference
August 13, 2003
Steve Kercel, University of New England
Endogenous Systems Research Group Don Mikulecky,
Virginia Commonwealth University Center for the
Study of Biological Complexity
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Common thread our goal or true end is harmony
with an unseen and unseeable world

• Does it produce visible effects?
• Kant Moral sense gt freewill
• Can we produce effects in it?
• Do effects there gt effects here?
• How can we know the unknowable?

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Personal religious experience has its root and
centre in mystical states of consciousness (W.
James)

• Claims to reveal big ideas
• God
• The unseen world
• Inaccessible by
• Evidence of the senses
• Rational reflection

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Prayer is a process wherein work is really done
(James)
as is believed in the American South and Midwest
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More than just present payoffs,there is
something wrong about us as we naturally stand
proper connection with the higher powers
we are saved from wrongness by making
(James)
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These are the attributes that James found common
to religious experience

• There is something wrong with Man
• Out of touch with the unseen world
• Prayer and mysticism put us in touch
• Goal change human nature
• Maybe on Earth
• Maybe in Heaven

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We do make choices and some are self-destructive
but, does what is wrong about us as we
naturally stand, require connection
with higher powers to put right?
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If we know why we do what we do, can we choose
to do something else?
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The rational consideration of why questions
goes back at least as far as Aristotle

• Why this effect, or transformation?
• Material cause what was transformed?
• Efficient cause by what constraints?
• Formal cause why this form?
• Final cause what is the purpose?

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Efficient cause forces behavior through constraint
Morphology of Natural System
Fundamental Relationship Characterized as Law
of Nature
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A fundamental relationship constrained by a
morphology gt specific constraint
Transfer function T(S) (s2LC)/(S2LC
1) constrains transformation of V1 into V2
The constraint is characterized as efficient
cause, ???????dynamical
law, or law of behavior
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Three Aristotelian causes seem adequate to
explain why machines do what they do

• Effect V2
• Material cause V1
• Efficient cause
• T(s) (s2LC)/(S2LC 1)
• Formal cause
• Specific instances L and C
• Final cause There isnt any

T(s)
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The influence of the parts on the whole is also
called upward causation
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But efficient cause also depends on the parts and
the morphology of the process
In a machine, efficient cause is externally
entailed
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But what entails the entailments of the thing
that entailed efficient cause, T(s)?
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Aristotle saw this process from large to small
terminating in an uncaused First Cause
The Hand of God, for some function, entails
the Hand of Man, for some function, entails
the big robot, for some function, entails
the small robot, for some function, entails
T(s)
also called downward causation
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The parts serve a function in the whole
Since it ends with God, discussion of downward,
or final, causation is dismissed as
unscientific.
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From the time of Lamarck, scientists and
theologians have neatly split the turf
with each camp getting the part that matters
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The traditions share some remarkable common ground

• Relevant causation is a linear hierarchy
• Organization is separable from substrate
• Physical substrate matters little
• Sufficiently large description
• Indistinguishable from process
• Will of God, or
• Equations of particle dynamics

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Larger possibility ignored by both Let multiple
processes entail efficient cause of another
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Can we form these hierarchies of entailment into
a loop?
Does this entailment structure make sense?
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Endogenous causal loop commutes with a hyperset
Coherent existence of hypererset gt
coherence of endogenous
loop
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Traversing the short path gives downward
causation,
A entails C via B
C entails B via A
B entails A via C
Traversing the long path gives upward causation
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Endogenous causal loops are observed in brain
function
Intelligent behavior is characterized
by flexible and creative pursuit of
endogenously defined goals.
(Freeman)
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Endogeny differs from both orthodox science and
religion

• Relevant causation forms a loop hierarchy
• Simultaneously upward and downward
• Organization is inseparable from substrate
• Physical substrate matters crucially
• No largest model of this larger world
• Always distinct from process
• Impredicatives gt partial insight

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Endogeny does not disprove the existence of God

• By rational inquiry, God is
• Neither provable
• Nor disprovable
• Endogeny of life and mind
• neither precludes nor necessitates God
• Evidence of God depends on mystical revelation

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James does mysticism yield genuine insights?

• Absolutely authoritative to recipient
• No duty for others to accept uncritically
• Is it another kind of consciousness?

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Do entailments revealed by insight commute with
those of processes in reality?
e.g., Reductionism, the Talmud, Shamanism?
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It is unwise to dismiss sudden insights without
asking if they commute with reality

• Perplexity suddenly resolved
• Abduction or revelation?
• Subjectively attributed
• We all believe something
• Self-evident truths
• Not provable/disprovable

Happens in endogeny, the Talmud,
Shamanism, and even Reductionism
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This is the third of three answers to Why do
people behave religiously?

• Interpreting insight as inspiration
• Metaphor for downward causation
• Seeking alternatives to self-destructiveness