It occurred to me that some readers may be interested in the grant project, so I put the details beneath the fold. I am funded for an Australian Postdoctoral (APD) research fellowship for three years.
DP0984826 Dr JS Wilkins; Prof PE Griffiths
Approved Project Title: Contemporary scientific explanations of religion: A methodological and philosophical analysis
2009 : $ 87,195
2010 : $ 88,506
2011 : $ 88,446
Primary RFCD 4401 PHILOSOPHY
APD Dr JS Wilkins
Administering Organisation
The University of Sydney
Project Summary
The idea that religion is an evolved feature of human nature plays a key role in the ongoing culture war between those critical of some aspects of the scientific worldview, especially the theory of evolution, and those who take it upon themselves to defend science against the perceived threat of religion, notably the so-called 'new atheist' media stars. Analysing the philosophical and methodological issues raised by naturalistic explanations of religion will clarify the potential relationships between science and religion in a pluralist and predominantly secularist society like Australia in which the claims of science are accorded a special authority.
- Log in to post comments
Oh, well done.
So, um. The Australian government is paying you to wind up a well known Minnesotan biologist for three years, then?
'Analysing the philosophical and methodological issues raised by naturalistic explanations of religion will clarify the potential relationships between science and religion in a pluralist and predominantly secularist society like Australia in which the claims of science are accorded a special authority.'
As hard as I try, I cannot comprehend what that means.
Some dumb questions from someone outside the university system:
Will you still be required to lecture, or can you pursue the subject of the grant full time?
You're not currently at the University of Sydney, so will you be moving there?
Congratulations once again.
And with Griffiths, too. No one can say you don't run in rarefied company!
Nosy question: Do you have to pay any grad students, etc. out of that or is it all yours? ("Mind your own business" is an acceptable response.)
Congratulations! (does happy dance)
Flaky, it's not meant to say anything. It's a grant application...
No, I don't get grad students; I think. I have one now, but that's a clerical error.
does that mean you have to move to sydney or can you do it from brisbane?
Flaky, he's a philosopher. It's supposed to be unintelligible to mere mortals.
Awww John, calling a student a clerical error is like calling a child a mistake. Its just one of those things you shouldn't say even if it is true :p
Hrmm..students seem to get handed off on everyone in BACS. Even I have undergrads...and I am not even enrolled in a program there!
Good work John, and congratualtions. I have a book on the subject, Pascal Boyer; Religion Explained. I am not sure whether I saw that on you reading list, and I am now motivated to read it and keep an eye on your posts on the subject.
Congratulations again.
Cliff
congrats. good to hear.
John, my congratulations on the project.
The proposal you and Flaky seem to have trouble with simply says you're going to be figuring out how science and religion relate to each other in a secular society, and how science in such a society informs religion. Your difficulty comes from the fact it was composed to impress instead of inform. :)
Analysing the philosophical and methodological issues raised by naturalistic explanations of religion will clarify the potential relationships between science and religion in a pluralist and predominantly secularist society like Australia in which the claims of science are accorded a special authority.
Flaky wrote:
Flaky if you could comprehend it then John would not have got his grant.
Question: what is AUS$ 264147 in real money or how many cans of beer will that buy you in Sydney?
Not sure what "real" money is, so I chose two possibilities, Icelandic Kronur and Indian Rupee.
19,947,886.36 Icelandic Kronur, very generous to the Icelandics.
9,082,083.16 Indian Rupees.
A pot of Carlton Draught costs AU$2.90 to AU$3.50 in Melbourne so, assumming he doesn't go clubbing we'll assume AU$3.00/pot so he'll only be able to buy 88049.
So he'll have to subsist on a paltry 80 pots/day.
Anyone know what a pot of beer is?
In Sydney A schooner of Tooheys, Reschs or VB will cost about AU$3.50 to AU$3.80.
Is a schooner more than a pot?
Is a schooner more than a pot?
According to wiki, a pot is 2/3 of a schooner, being half an imperial pint (10oz), which make Aussie beer seem a bit expensive to this provincial Englishman (In London you have to remortgage your house for a night out).
Also according to wiki, what you call it and what you get depends on which bit of Fourex you're in, which I'm sure is very romantic and traditional and all, but seems to me to be taking the cute a bit far.
Seems Wiki isnt correct (what a surprise).
The size of the measure depends on location in Australia, very strange.
One would think they could adopt an internationally recognised standard, say Imperial.
That would make their life simpler.
Though as AU$1 = £0.40 even if a pot is less than a pint it is still fairly cheap.
John, would you like me to email you the answers to all your questions about contemporary scientific explanations of religion? That way you can pretty much take a vacation for the next three years.
(Hint: superstition)
Larry's explanation of religion has about the same intellectual content as "survival of the fittest" does in explaining evolution.
I'm currently working on my master's thesis in a very closely related topic (the related roles of functionalism and analogical reasoning like "groups as organisms" in Wilson's theory of religion). It's very encouraging to see that there are people willing to fund this type of research out there. It means I might actually be able to find work after I complete my phd. :)
Be sure to keep us all abreast of your research. The whole topic of the evolution of religion fascinates me (which is a big part of why I read your blog).
Larry
As I think that religion is adaptive at various levels (kin group, community, state) both culturally and biologically, simplistic advocacy is going to be largely unhelpful here.
Wes, I wish I could say there was employment in this regard,and it may very well be more employable than my previous failed grant applications (biodiversity measures). But it's a fun topic.
The epistemology of analogy versus the epistemology of homology here is critical. Previous sociobiology has been all about adaptive analogies: I think that is a cheat's way, and wish to do a phylogenetic analysis of primate social behaviours as setting up the explanans of religion.
I've encountered a lot of people who are very opposed to that approach. It all seems to me like an application of third person skepticism to non-human primate psychological states. If and when I discuss a possible synapomorphic behavioral traits in, say, chimps, it's pretty much guaranteed someone will stand up and say we don't know if their psychology is similar to ours and maybe their apparently complex behavior which resembles ours is actually just some mindless behavioral reflex. I think blanket skepticism is no way to do philosophy (plus that most of what humans do is also mindless reflex which we rationalize after the fact). But they do have a point that we need to be cautious about over-anthropomorphizing other species. Barbara King's book seemed to me to be guilty of that.
And I agree on the adaptive heuristic being the wrong approach. Anyone can put together a Darwinian history about any apparently functional trait, but that doesn't prove much. That's part of why, even though I'm sympathetic to group selection, I'm a bit suspicious of Wilson's methods. Analogizing groups with organisms, presupposing functionalism, and then weaving adaptive stories to explain the apparent "functions" of religion which Wilson claims to have identified seems problematic to me. That's not to say it CAN'T work, though. I'm just not sure if the functionalist approach can appropriately deal with all the historical contingency and spandrels we should expect to find in complex behaviors. The byproduct theorists seem to have a better grasp on the contingency aspect of the phenomenon. But their approach has its own problems.
A schooner is actually a type of sailing vessel. Of goodly size, it is useful for traveling Australia's coast searching for shore-side taverns and pubs.
Anthropomorphism is exactly the problem of comparative psychology that a phylogenetic approach is designed to overcome. Set up the plesiomorphic states of primates at various nestings, and you can highlight what needs to be examined as an autapomorphy in those clades. Human behaviour is easy to read back into primate behaviour (I fully agree about King and her "empathy" claim), so if we have a default model of primate sociality, we can start to identify what is unique about human behaviour at the species-typical level, and the pre- and post-agrarian stage.
As to Wilson (and Wilson) it appears to me that their groups have become Hamiltonian kin groups, which is fine for everyone, and that Sloan Wilson tends to find adaptive stories first. His recent papers have left me completely whelmed. But if it's an apomorphy of humans, then a prima facie argument for its adaptivity is easy to make.
Alan, "schooner" is a contextual term. In Qld it means "bloody big glass of beer". In Victoria, it means "ship, on which beer may have been exported once". In NSW it means whatever they want it to mean, rather like New Yorkers.
#23 Alan, there is a very popular marina-side establishment in my city that apparently combines all of your comments
http://schoonerorlater.com/
In relation to Wes's comments, I'm wondering how you're going to explain the wide range of human religious behaviour and thinking (individual, cultural, etc, in all its rich diversity, and in all religions the world has ever known), in term of observable behaviour, without considering first person psychology. It seems analogous to the problem of explaining first person subjectivity in terms of third person models. It is easy to explain third person models in terms of first person experience, but much more problematic to explain the first person in terms of the third. If you can do that, then you've essentially solved all hard consciousness problems.
That presumes that first person motivations are what drives large scale institutions like religion. Personally I think that is highly unlikely to be true, and subjective states are usually reactions rather than actions, as it were.
That is not to solve anything major, but to recognise that reasons are usually post hoc constructions.
I wouldn't say that the first person drives it, or that religion's origins are necessarily with the first person, just that it may have become a significant factor. Take Art for example. A simplistic evolutionary explanation might be that the human capacity for art evolved through sexual selection, as a way of impressing one's mate. But that does not even begin to address the richness, motivations for, and complexity of art in all it's current forms, and today art cannot be meaningfully discussed without referencing the first person. Intelligence has amplified it into something more. Now I'm not saying that religious activity approaches the complexity of art (not even close, IMO), but that perhaps it has grown into something in it's current form that is difficult to analyze without considering the first-person.
This might seem a tad off-topic - but would you be willing to present something on this research at the Queensland hosting of the Australian Skeptics National Convention next year? :)
Will there be a book?