Primatology

• An Introduction to Primate Societies

Primary Sequence

• [Overview] The Deep History of Humanity
• The Walking Ape
• Born To Run: a theory of human anatomy
• Cooking and the Hominid Revolution
• An Introduction To Domestication
• The Human Domestication Hypothesis
• [Excerpt] Self-Domestication and Human Homosexuality

Related Material

• [Excerpt] When Language Evolved
• [Excerpt] How Language Evolved
• The Argumentative Theory of Reasoning
• The Evolution of Disgust

Most of my efforts focus on various aspects of science and mathematics. Why write about religion?

I am not particularly interested in evaluating theological claims. But this blog is very interested in the computational and biological bases of primate sociality. And religion plays a key role in our evolved social capacities.

This post is meant as an executive summary of various positions I have come to accept over the years. As with my other overview posts, the positions laid out here are a moving target. I’m hoping to eventually motivate each topic; to give you the evidence rather than summarizing the belief. If you want to hear more about a particular topic, don’t hesitate to let me know!

Social Theses

At a social level, religious belief brings communities together. This explains the special attention many faiths place on ethics: ethical norms are the frame on which social institutions rest. It also explains why most conversion experiences tends to occur at a deeper, more emotional place of the mind (not so much in the cold light of reason).

1. The Relational Sphere Hypothesis. Social institutions come in three flavors. There is the political sphere, economic sphere, and social sphere. Religious institutions are an extension of (a buttressing of) the social sphere.
2. Generator of Social Capital. The reason why religion became institutionalized is that, with the triumph of market economies over gift economies, religious structure provided an alternative mode for promoting social bonds within a community.
3. Monotheistic Cohesion Hypothesis. Monotheistic cultures tend to treat strangers more fairly than polytheistic ones. Monotheism was successful in part because it facilitated larger group size (strangers could identify as the same team).

Cognitive Theses

At a cognitive level, religious experience meets at been the nexus of animism, mythology, and ritual. Occasionally it is accentuated by numinous (altered) states of consciousness. Only very recently has belief played a role in some forms of religious participation. Here, I survey the cognitive machinery that drives these aspects of religiosity.

1. Animism as Hyperactive Agency Detection. Mammals are good at differentiating events caused by inanimate nature, versus those caused by animate events. Due to the asymmetry of false positives vs false negatives, our Agency Detectors are built on a hair trigger: we are often too quick to attribute agency. Humans are susceptible to invoke supernatural agents whenever emotionally eruptive events arise that have superficial characteristics of agency in the absence of a corresponding agent.
2. Mythology as Counterintuitive Narratives. 
3. Ritual as Paradox-Based Social Bonding. 
4. The Numinous as Altered States of Consciousness. 
5. Two Faces of Meaning. Beliefs are like clothes; they serve two purposes. The first purpose is functional: beliefs can constrain expectations of physical experience. The second purpose is signaling: beliefs can signal group membership, ethical values, and personality. Most beliefs serve both purposes, at least to some extent. Religious belief is notable in that its content is mostly the latter. That is, religious belief typically does not constrain expectation of physical experience.

Related Content

• History sequence contains 5+ articles on the history of ancient Israel.

Central Principles sequence

• Regression vs. Classification
• Bias vs. Variance
• Intro to Gradient Descent
• Intro to Regularization

Optimization Techniques sequence

• Least Squares Estimation via Projection

Sociology of ML

• Five Tribes of Machine Learning
• New Foundations: Towards Tribal Unity

Related sequences

• Reinforcement Learning sequence
• Optimization Maths sequence

Logic

• Logic Structure: Connective Rules in IPL
• Logic Design: Harmony in IPL
• Logic Inference: Natural Deduction
• Logic Inference: Sequent Calculus

Set Theory

• An Introduction to Set Theory
• Relations and Functions
• Injection, Surjection, Bijection

Abstract Algebra

• An Introduction to Abstract Algebra
• An Introduction to Geometric Group Theory
• The Symmetric Group
• Cosets and Normality
• Semirings as Algorithmic Parameters

Linear Algebra

• An Introduction to Linear Algebra
• Eigenvalues and Eigenvectors
• Singular Value Decomposition (SVD)
• Least Squares Estimation via Projection Matrices

Category Theory

• An Introduction to Category Theory [Part One]
• Computational Trinitarianism

Related sequences

• Language sequence

Prerequisite

• An Introduction To Group Theory
• An Introduction To Probability Theory
• An Introduction To Linear Algebra

Main Sequence

• Least Squares
• An Introduction to Linear Optimization
• Duality: Algorithmic Dark Matter
• Convex Analysis
• An Introduction to Convex Optimization

Background

• An Introduction To Bayesian Inference

Main Sequence

• An Introduction To Communication
• Error Correcting Codes
• Entropy As Belief Uncertainty

 

Part of: Demystifying Consciousness sequence

Suggested Prereading:

• Cognitive Epistemology
• Knowledge: An Empirical Sketch
• Machery: Doing Without Concepts
• The Three Stream Hypothesis

Core Sequence:

• Nouns Are Ephemeral, Adjectives Are Forever
• Perceptual Objects: Two Novel Hypotheses
• The Language of Consciousness
• Perceptual Objects: Implications for AI and Philosophy
• Object Mechanics
• The Role of Hippocampus