Dear Colleagues!
Let me call your attention to a talk by Justin Sytsma (Victoria
University of Wellington), who is one of the leading figures of
"experimental philosophy", an emerging field that forges close
relationship between philosophy, psychology, and cognitive science.
See the details below.
Yours,
B.
Justin Sytsma (Victoria University of Wellington):
Are religious philosophers less analytic?
Time: 2017. december 5., 16h
Place: MTA BTK Filozófiai Intézet, Tóth Kálmán u. 4., 7. emelet,
B.7.16 (Trapéz terem)
Abstract:
Some researchers in philosophy of religion have charged that the
sub-discipline exhibits a number of features of poor health,
prominently including that "partisanship is so entrenched that most
philosophers of religion, instead of being alarmed by it, just take it
for granted" (Draper and Nichols, 2013, 421). And researchers in
experimental philosophy of religion have presented empirical work that
supports this contention, arguing that it shows that confirmation bias
plays a notable role in the acceptance of natural theological
arguments among philosophers (De Cruz, 2014; Tobia, 2015; De Cruz and
De Smedt, 2016).
But while these studies indicate that there is a correlation between
religious belief and judgments about natural theological arguments,
they do not establish that causation runs from belief to judgment as
has been claimed. In this paper I offer an alternative explanation,
suggesting that thinking style is a plausible common cause. I note
that previous research has shown a significant negative correlation
between analytic thinking style and both religious belief and
religious engagement in the general population (Shenhav, Rand, and
Greene, 2012; Gervaise and Norenzayan, 2012; Pennycook et al., 2012,
2013; Jack et al., 2016).
Further, other research has shown a significant positive correlation
between analytic thinking style and training in philosophy that is
independent of overall level of education (Livengood et al., 2010).
Pulling these threads together, I hypothesize that there is an
especially strong correlation between thinking style and religiosity
among philosophers. This hypothesis is tested by looking at a sample
of 524 people with an advanced degree in philosophy. The results
support the hypothesis, showing a medium-large negative correlation
between analytic thinking style and religious engagement that is
roughly twice as strong as has been reported for the general
population (r=-0.39 among men, r=-0.34 among women). And the
correlation is even stronger if we restrict to Christian theists and
non-theists (r=-0.61 among men, r=-0.62 among women).
--
Balazs Gyenis
Institute of Philosophy of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences
http://hps.elte.hu/~gyepi
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