Joseph Agassi

A Cognitive Theory of Religion [and Comments and Reply]

I use an old observation (that religion is anthropomorphistic) to solve a problem almost as old (why do people have religious beliefs?) by arguing that religion is a special case of the more general phenomenon of anthropomorphism. This view suggests that religious belief, often thought nonempirical and cognitively anomalous, is as much based in experience as is nonreligious belief and that it consists in a plausible application of significant models to ambiguous phenomena. Anthropomorphism, often thought a cognitive aberration, appears to me both reasonable and inevitable, although by definition mistaken. On this argument, religious models of and for the world differ in content from nonreligious models but are epistemologically similar to them.

Science in Flux

To what extent and in what respect is science intellectually valuable? This is a controversial matter. What is hardly disputed is that what is alterable in science is of mere ephemeral value; and what is valuable in it is that which is more universal and permanent, that which is more solid and lasting. One of the very few philosophers who oppose this accepted view is Sir Karl Popper. In his view, science is so valuable because of its open- mindedness, because any of its achievements may at any time be given up and newer achievements may be hoped for to replace the relinquished ones. Science, says Popper, is at constant war with itself, and it progresses by revolutions and internal conflicts.

The Problem of the Rationality of Magic

As a beginning we want to distinguish rational action from rational belief. An action is rational, by and large, if it is goal-directed;1 a belief is rational if it satisfies some standard or criterion.2 When we deem a person ‘rational’ we mean he acts rationally, or he holds rational beliefs, or both. Let us call the rationality that consists in acting rationally the weak sense of ‘rationality’; and the rationality that consists in acting rationally on the basis of rationally held beliefs the strong sense of ‘rationality’. Now our thesis in this study can be formulated so: magic is rational in the weak sense, but not in the strong sense; this demarcates it from science which is rational in the strong sense.

The Inner World

Standard current philosophy is stuck. Dividing the world and our experience of it into two compartments, the inner and the outer, it holds fast to the defunct thesis that information about the outer world reaches us as information about the inner world. Refutations of this thesis do not reduce its popularity. Perhaps exposing the deceptive character of the arguments in its favor might. This discussion is politically important, since the thesis in question was initially individualist and progressive and it has become romantic and reactionary.

The Nature of Scientific Problems and their Roots in Metaphysics

According to Popper’s philosophy the perfect division of labor in research would soon stop scientific progress. His view explains why in the history of science many investigators have concentrated on a handful of problems. The problem arises: How did investigators coordinate their choice of scientific problems? By what criteria did the bulk of investigators of a given period decide which problem was fundamental or important?

Between Science and Technology

Basic research or fundamental research is distinct from both pure and applied research, in that it is pure research with expected useful results. The existence of basic or fundamental research is problematic, at least for both inductivists and instrumentalists, but also for Popper. Assuming scientific research to be the search for explanatory conjectures and for refutations, and assuming technology to be the search of conjectures and some corroborations, we can easily place basic or fundamental research between science and technology as a part of their overlap. As a bonus, the present view of basic or fundamental research as an overlap explains the specific hardship basic research workers encounter.

The Confusion between Science and Technology in the Standard Philosophies of Science

The distinction between pure and applied science seems too trivial to draw, since applied science, as the name implies, aims at practical ends, whereas pure science does not. There is an overlap, to be sure, which is known as fundamental research and which is pure science in the short run but applied in the long run; that is to say, fundamental research is the search for certain laws of nature with an eye to using these laws. Still, this overlap shows that though the distinction is not exclusive it is clear enough. The distinction between applied science and technology is a different matter altogether. All philosophers of science equate them, whereas it is clear that technology includes, at the very least, applied science, invention, implementation of the results of both applied science and invention, and the maintenance of the existing apparatus, especially in the face of unexpected changes, disasters, and so forth. The distinction between applied science and invention, to my knowledge, was made by only one writer, the most important writer on technology, perhaps; I am referring to H. S. Hatfield and his The Inventor and His World. Hatfield does not draw the distinction explicitly, but he uses it clearly and systematically enough. Applied science, according to his view, is an exercise in deduction, whereas invention is finding a needle in a haystack.

The Logic of Scientific Inquiry

Is methodological theorya priori ora posteriori knowledge? It is perhapsa posteriori improvable, somehow. For example, Duhem discovered that since scientists disagree on methods, they do not always know what they are doing.

Magic and Rationality Again

The previous paper has created some controversy, and has been labelled both absurd and obvious. We would not deny the charge of obviousness. For if the basic question here is how to understand beliefs that are prima facie irrational, then our suggestion — that first there had to be prior agreement on criteria of rationality of belief — was hardly startling. We by-passed detailed discussion of such criteria because this would take us into one of the most extensive debates in contemporary philosophy (for example, the entire vast literature on induction consists of attempts to state criteria for rational belief or rational choice between beliefs). Our heart would not have been in a summary of this literature because we thought it pointless. Unless beliefs are a sub-class of actions (which, we hinted in a footnote, they are), then it is not at all clear whether a belief can be rational or irrational, any more than whether it can be red or not red, lazy or energetic. To be more precise, it is quite generally agreed that the act of believing in a belief, or of holding on to a belief, may or may not be rational; not really the object of the act — the belief itself, the doctrine, the theory in question. While it makes sense to claim that Catholics, alchemists, phlogistonists, and Newtonians are rational or irrational, then, it is loose to claim Catholicism, alchemy, phologistonism and Newtonianism to be so.

Tautology and Testability in Economics

Economics is a science-at least positive economics must be. And science is in part applied mathematics, in part empirical observations and tests. Looking at the history of economics, one cannot find much testing done before our century, and even the collection of data, even in the manner Marx engaged in, was not common in his day. It is true that economic policy is an older field, and in that field much information is deployed for the purpose of prescribing a course of action. But this is not to say that the information procured for that purpose is either based on observation or has been tested. In the seventeenth century some alchemists and economists hoped to boost