Mind, Consciousness, and Religion - Watts, Fraser

Fraser Watts
Mind, Consciousness,
and Religion
For personal use only -- not for reproduction
Abstract: My paper in the first issue of this journal marked the begin-
Copyright (c) Imprint Academic 2013
ning of a 20-year programme of work on the interface of psychology

and religion, which is summarized here under three headings; (i)
reductionism and beyond, (ii) the structure of mind, and (iii) psychol-
ogy and theology. It is suggested that there can be fruitful cross-fertil-
ization between consciousness studies and the interdisciplinary work
between psychology and religion.
The first volume of this journal, to which I contributed, coincided

with my first year as the Starbridge Lecturer in Theology and Natural
Science at the University of Cambridge, and I complete nearly 20
years in that post as this journal reaches its twentieth volume. The
invitation to write this article gives me an opportunity to review my
research on mind, consciousness, and religion over the last 20 years.
(Over this time I have also published on theology and science more
broadly, but that is outside the scope of this article.) I will deal here
with three main themes: (i) how the challenge of reductionism has
changed over the last 20 years, (ii) implications of the structure of
mind, especially dual-system theories of cognition, for the psychol-
ogy of religion, and (iii) work on the interface of psychology and the-
ology. I will suggest that the issues about human mind with which I
have been concerned in work on the interface of psychology and reli-
gion are also important for consciousness studies.
Correspondence:
Fraser Watts, Emeritus Reader in Theology and Science, 19 Grantchester Road,
Cambridge, CB3 9ED. Email: fraser.watts@cantab.net
Journal of Consciousness Studies, 21, No. 34, 2014, pp. 21629

MIND, CONSCIOUSNESS & RELIGION 217
1. Reductionism and Beyond

The Challenge of Reductionism
My paper in volume one of this journal (Watts, 1994) concerned the
challenge of reductionism. I focused there particularly on the
reductionism that arises in the brain sciences, especially Francis
Cricks nothing but a bundle of neurones (Crick, 1994). Subse-
quently (Watts, 2002; 2004) I expanded that critique of reductionism
to include evolutionary reductionism (e.g. the idea that humans are
nothing but survival machines for their genes), and the reductionism
of Artificial Intelligence, which equates the human mind with a com-
puter programme.
Reductionism, which characteristically takes the form of claiming

that people are nothing but this or that, is one of the enduring sources
of tension that arise between the human sciences and the religious tra-
ditions. However, it would be highly misleading to suggest that it is a
necessary conflict. One key point here is that reductionism is by no
means a necessary feature of the human sciences. Many scientists
working on humans never make reductionist claims, and see no need
to do so. It is also important to recognize that reductionism is not a
necessary conclusion from any scientific data or argument. Rather, it
is a gratuitous metaphysical position that is frequently conjoined with
the human sciences, but neither a necessary presupposition of science,
nor a necessary conclusion from it.
Reductionism has equally been a problem for the development of
consciousness studies. In particular, the analogy between mind and
computer tends to be linked to the assumption that the important
aspects of human cognitive processing are those that humans have in
common with computers. That is usually taken to exclude conscious-
ness, and human consciousness is therefore often assumed to be an
epiphenomenon of no causal significance. It is interesting that Crick
(1994) slides between targeting soul and consciousness in developing
his physicalist position, as though they were almost the same thing.
Strong reductionism has been as much of an obstacle to the develop-
ment of consciousness studies as it has been to the development of the
religious view of the human person.
A strange feature of reductionsim in its various forms is that it
assumes that we have a complete scientific explanation of the phe-
nomenon in question in terms of whatever explanatory factors are
being considered, i.e. that brain processes, or natural selection, etc.
provide a complete explanation of whatever aspect of human nature is
under discussion. In fact, the human sciences hardly ever achieve a
218 F. WATTS
complete explanation, certainly not of anything interesting. We do not

have well-worked examples of complete explanations now, and it
seems extremely unlikely that we ever will. Many human phenomena,
depression or violence for example, are known to be the result of mul-
tiple explanatory factors, precluding a complete explanation in terms
of any one factor. Another problem with the idea of a complete expla-
nation is that it rests on proving a negative, i.e. that no explanatory
factors are relevant apart from the one under discussion. It is surpris-
ing that the reductionist project in the human sciences has been able to
work on the assumption that we are nearly in possession of a whole set
of complete explanations. We are not, and never seem likely to be.
It is also important to note that reductionism takes many forms, and
not all come into conflict with a religious view of human nature. There
is no problem, for example, with methodological reductionism, e.g.
the attempt to explain higher-level processes in terms of lower-level

ones as far as that is possible. Indeed, some religious thinkers might
see the reductionist project as a helpful way of specifying with greater
precision exactly what it is about humans that is not-reducible. It is
also important to note that resistance to reductionism is by no means
confined to people of religious convictions. Humanists are as likely to
resist the suggestion that humans are just a bundle of neurons or just a
survival machine for their genes. Indeed it is one of the strange fea-
tures of reductionism that even its most passionate advocates do not
seem to behave as though they completely believed it. It is in the
nature of consciousness studies that it rejects strong forms of
reductionism, and assumes that consciousness is a significant phe-
nomenon, worth studying.
Beyond Reductionism: Embodied Cognition and Systems Biology

Increasingly over the last 20 years my attention has moved from argu-
ing against reductionism to exploring post-reductionist ways of con-
ceptualizing human nature in a multifaceted way (Watts, 2000a). One
of the most promising of these arises from recent work on embodied
cognition (Watts, 2013a). This is important, I suggest, for both con-
sciousness studies and for work on the interface between psychology
and religion.
Whereas debates about reductionism have been largely philosophi-
cal, there is a solid body of scientific research that argues for the
importance of embodiment for how cognition proceeds. Second,
whereas debates about reductionism have been concerned with the
brain as the basis from which cognition arises, embodied cognition
focuses on how the broader context of embodiment shapes and influ-

ences cognition. Third, whereas the literature on reductionism is
wracked with debates about the reality of mind and how far it might
have an independent existence, the literature on embodied cognition
assumes the reality and importance of cognition, but is so fascinated
by the interdependence of mind and body that the idea that cognition
might be independent of body seems quaint and unconvincing.
Though the present literature focuses on embodiment as the context
within which cognition functions, it seems likely that equally strong
evidence will accumulate for the influence of social context on cogni-
tion, and I suggest that the broader concept of contextual or embed-
ded cognition will ultimately prove more apt and helpful than
embodied cognition. It is notable that biology, after a highly

reductionistic phase, is moving towards a stronger emphasis on sys-
tems or organismic biology (in which epigenetics has an important

place), and embedded cognition seems to be part of this new zeitgeist
in the life sciences.
There is convergence between the religious traditions and this new
look in the human sciences. One of the earliest publications on
embodied cognition (Varela et al., 1991) presented it as being in
explicit alliance with Buddhist theories of mind. Though Christianity
is often assumed by people such as Francis Crick to be inseparably
wedded to dualism, the Judeo-Christian tradition actually has a strong
holistic strand (Watts, 2013a) that sits very easily with recent work on
embodied cognition. There is potential for post-reductionist concepts
of human nature to converge with religious ones and yield a fresh
approach to human dignity (Watts, 2006a).
Another recent project of mine has focused on Rupert Sheldrakes
radical theoretical ideas of morphic fields and extended mind (Watts,
2011a). My sense is that the mind sciences are approaching a para-
digm shift, as inconvenient data accumulates that cannot easily be
handled within our current theoretical frameworks and paradigmatic
assumptions. Sheldrake is much to be commended both for his persis-
tence and skill in demonstrating empirical phenomena that are cur-
rently hard to explain, and for his creativity in developing the kind of
emancipated theoretical concepts that I believe will be needed. I sus-
pect that he will prove to be ahead of his time in arguing that we
should not think of mind as confined within the skin. If things do
indeed proceed in that direction, there will be a convergence between
the new mind science and the religious traditions.
220 F. WATTS
2. The Structure of Mind

Dual-system Cognitive Theories
Another enduring strand in my research programme has focused on
the assumption, about which there is a growing theoretical consensus,
that humans have two different ways of doing cognition. There are
various ways in which this can be formulated, and there is so far no
agreement about the details. I have mainly used the distinction
between implicational and propositional cognition in Philip Barnards
Interacting Cognitive Subsystems (e.g. Teasdale and Barnard, 1993).
Dual-system cognitive theory provides an approach to the much
discussed question of human distinctiveness, and I have followed
Barnard in suggesting that it was a novel feature of emerging human-

ity to have two cognitive subsystems, one propositional and the
other implicational (see Watts, 2013b). The claim is that the capacity
to propositionalize meanings was a new achievement of emerging
humanity, and that the development of this new capacity for proposi-
tional cognition was crucial to the distinctive human capacity for con-
scious cognition. This new propositional subsystem has also had
implications for the phylogenetically older capacity to formulate
holistic meanings in a tacit and intuitive way through the implica-
tional subsystem, and created the possibility of cross-talk between
two distinct central subsystems.
My particular focus has been on applying this kind of dual-system
theory to the cognitive basis of religion. I argue that the distinctive
human capacity for two kinds of cognition is what not only made reli-
gion possible, but also all the other features of the cultural explosion
in the Upper Paleolithic period (Watts, 2014). This provides an alter-
native to the kind of explanation of the evolution of religion advanced
from a cognitive science of religion perspective by people such as
Justin Barrett (Barrett, 2004).
It is one of the odd features of the Cognitive Science of Religion
approach to evolution that it focuses just on the evolution of religion,
ignoring other aspects of the cultural explosion. That is unparsimoni-
ous and unconvincing, but only one of many concerns about the cur-
rently fashionable CSR approach to the evolution of religion (Watts
and Turner, 2014). It is much more likely that there were core cogni-
tive developments that led to the whole cultural explosion, including
religion.
Whereas Mithen (1996) has suggested that the cultural explosion
arises from bringing together specialized intelligences that were pre-
viously separate, I argue, following Barnard, that it was due to the
differentiation of the central engine of cognition into two separate

cognitive systems. Further, Barrett and others see the animism that is a
feature of emerging religion as arising from the hyper-sensitive
agency detection device (HADD) being misapplied to the inanimate
world, where it doesnt belong, leading to the loss of a clear cognitive
boundary between animate and inanimate worlds. In contrast I sug-
gest that it is much more likely that emerging humanity gradually
made a sharper distinction between animate and inanimate worlds
after an initial lack of distinction, leading an early intuitive theism to
be replaced by increasingly naturalistic assumptions about the inani-
mate world.
Dual-system cognitive theory provides a rich theoretical frame-
work for the psychology of religion, as I have argued in various

places, but most fully (Watts, 2013b) in a recent edited volume,
largely written by members of my research group in Cambridge, and

focusing on head and heart in religion (Watts and Dumbreck,
2013). For example, dual-system theory provides a helpful approach
to understanding the ineffability that has long been recognized as a
hallmark of mystical experience. It seems likely, especially in mysti-
cal experience, that religious meanings arise very largely in the intu-
itive implicational system that has no direct route to articulation.
Such meanings can, of course, be translated into the different cogni-
tive code of the propositional system, enabling mystics to write at
length about their experiences, though with the sense that the original
gleam in the eye has been lost.
Dual-system theory also provides a helpful approach to under-
standing developmental changes in religion (Watts, 2013b). Children
gradually acquire the capacity to propositionalize and articulate reli-
gious meanings. However, it should not be assumed, as it sometimes
has been in the past, that children have no capacity to understand
aspects of religion that they cannot yet articulate. Prior to that, they
can understand them in the different, more intuitive code of the
implicational system.
Many religious practices seem designed, in effect, to close down
propositional processing and to give the implicational cognitive sys-
tem free reign (ibid.). As such they represent an interesting and wide-
spread naturally-occurring experiment in the self-regulation of
consciousness. Different religious traditions go about it in different
ways. Sacramental worship augments words with a richly multi-sen-
sory worship experience. Contemplative forms of religion emphasize
meditational practices that, in various ways, suspend the usual stream
of verbal meanings. Charismatic worship has practices such as
222 F. WATTS
glossolalia, which seems to be a kind of ecstatic utterance, the gist of

which is normally clear, even though there is no one-to-one corre-
spondence of speech sounds and concepts.
Emotion and Religion

Emotion is a topic that in various ways has long been central to my
research interests, and one around which I believe it is especially fruit-
ful to bring psychology into dialogue with religion. Emotion is multi-
faceted, involving physiological processes, cognition, experience,
and behaviour. This has become increasingly apparent with the grow-
ing recognition, in both psychology and philosophy, that emotion is
not opposed to cognition but closely integrated with it (as was recog-
nized in the journal Cognition and Emotion, of which I was the

Founding Editor in 1987). Religion is similarly multifaceted, involv-

ing religious experience, practices, beliefs etc. The interface between
the psychologies of religion and emotion is one to which I have
returned on more than one occasion (e.g. Watts, 1996; 2007a).
One important clutch of issues focuses on questions of primacy,
and the role of cognition in both emotion and religion (Watts, 2007b).
In both cases William James is still a figure to contend with, both for
his view of emotion, in which bodily processes are regarded as pri-
mary and the experiential aspect of emotion is regarded as being an
interpretation of it (see Dixon, 2006), and for his view of religion set
out in the Varieties of Religious Experience (James, 1902) that sees
experience as primary in religion, and the dogmatic and social aspects
of religion as secondary. This latter view has been much criticized for
ignoring the social and cultural context in which personal experience
arises. However, it seems to me unhelpful to introduce a debate about
what is primary, and better to focus instead on how different aspects
of both emotion interact (as illustrated by Schachters well-known
two-factor theory of emotion, see Cotton, 1981), and similarly how
different aspects of religion interact.
In sorting all this out, I suggest that it is important to make a distinc-
tion between different levels of cognition, such as that made by Inter-
acting Cognitive Subsystems. It seems likely that there is both a tacit
pre-propositional level of cognition that plays a significant role in
shaping more immediate aspects of emotion, and also a propositional
level of cognition that is involved in more conceptual aspects of
emotion.
There is scope here for clarifying the role of consciousness in
human emotions. Emotions are themselves quite varied, some show-
ing more cognitive elaboration than others. Some, like disgust, seem
not to depend on any great degree of cognitive elaboration, but there
are also self-referential emotions such as guilt that depend on more
elaborate self-schemas, and in which conscious reflection probably
plays a more significant role. A similar distinction between cog-
nitively simple and cognitively elaborate aspects of mystical experi-
ence is implicit in the factor structure of Ralph Hoods mysticism
scale, as Watts (2012a) has pointed out. There seems to be an element
in mystical experience that is relatively immediate and unreflective,
but another element that is much more dependent on doctrinal
assumptions.
There is another separate set of issues about the role of emotion in
religion, about which views have been remarkably varied. Emotions

have sometimes been regarded as important in the religious life, and
sometimes as quite dangerous (Watts, 2007a). In sorting this out, it is

important to distinguish between different aspects of what are now
called emotion. In the prior religious literature that was largely
eclipsed by the development of scientific approaches to emotion by
William James and others in the late nineteenth century, there was an
important distinction between affections and passions, in which
the former were seen as an important part of religious life, but the lat-
ter as disruptive (Dixon, 2006). Some such distinction needs to be
recovered in order to understand the important role of subtle religious
feelings in religious life (Watts and Williams, 1988).
There is also much to be said, from a religious point of view, about
almost every particular emotion. Anger, for example, is often
regarded as problematic from a religious point of view, though it is
helpful to make distinctions about different degrees of anger, and the
religious tradition is not undisciminatingly negative about all anger
(Watts, 2007a). A discriminating approach to guilt is also called for.
Though psychology has tended to emphasize the harm that guilt can
do, while religion has seen its potential value, they may have been
focusing on different kinds of guilt (Watts, 2001a).
3. Psychology and Theology

There are also issues that arise when psychology is brought into dia-
logue with theology (i.e. the rational reflection of faith traditions), a
matter to which I have returned quite frequently over the last 20 years,
from various perspectives (e.g. Watts 2002; 2010; 2011c; 2012b,c;
Watts et al., 2002, chapters 14 and 15; Watts and Gulliford, 2004,
chapter 1). This can be seen as a particular aspect of the wider
224 F. WATTS
dialogue between theology and science (Watts, 1997) that I have gen-
erally wanted to handle in terms of theology and science bringing dis-
tinct but complementary perspectives to bear on the same phenomena,
but answering different but interrelated sets of questions about them
(Watts, 1998). The relationship between theology and science is often
framed in terms of dialogue. Up to a point that is a helpful concept,
but it implies that both sides are equally interested in the conversation,
which is generally not the case. However, I would argue (Watts, 2010)
that the dialogue between theology and psychology is potentially
more two-way than that between theology and science generally, and
that psychology can gain conceptual enrichment from the way in
which religious traditions have explored psychological phenomena.
The dialogue between theology and psychology focuses on three

main areas. One is human nature, where I would argue that an
exchange between psychology and theology about how human nature

is best conceptualized needs to be mediated through philosophy. I sug-
gest that there can be fruitful convergence around post-reductionist
perspectives on human nature, making use of concepts of embodied
cognition, as discussed above. There is potentially much interesting
work to be done about concepts of human nature on the interface of
theology and psychology, as is illustrated by the work of my former
student, Lon Turner, on the single and plural self (Turner, 2008),
though I wont say more here about the general dialogue between the-
ology and psychology about human nature.
I will illustrate my general approach to the dialogue between theol-
ogy and psychology here, first in terms of topics such as forgiveness,
that have migrated from religion into psychology, and on which both
disciplines now have a perspective, and then in terms of dialogue
between theology and psychology about religion itself, in which the
perspective of the religious practitioner is brought into dialogue with
that of psychology.
Positive Psychology and Religious Virtues

Forgiveness, gratitude, and hope have recently become the focus of
positive psychology, but they have also long been seen as virtues that
are central to the religious life (Watts et al., 2006). Though the migra-
tion of emotions from religious to psychological discourse took place
in the late nineteenth century (Dixon, 2006), it is only in recent
decades that positive psychology has taken up topics such as forgive-
ness. I have been especially concerned to see a fruitful exchange
between religious and psychological approaches, rather than just
separate, parallel approaches to the same phenomena. Religious life

obviously has useful practical things to learn from the very focused
way in which psychology has learned to help people to forgive, but I
have argued that theology, in some important respects, has a richer
conceptualization of forgiveness from which psychology could learn
(Watts and Gulliford, 2004, especially chapter 4).
For example, religion is more concerned with receiving forgive-
ness, which people often find quite challenging, whereas psychology
is currently largely concerned with extending forgiveness to others.
Religion tends to see forgiveness as something that one receives (from
God and others) and then passes on. That gives a different attri-
butional approach to forgiveness, and it would be interesting to
explore the psychological significance of that. Psychology tends to

take a purely pragmatic approach to forgiveness, whereas religion is
more likely to see it as an ethical duty. The implications of those dif-

ferent approaches is again something it would be fruitful to explore
psychologically.
Religion also tends to take a longer-term view of the capacity to for-
give, which may need to be cultivated over time, whereas psychology
currently tends to focus just on isolated episodes of forgiveness. Of
course, there are resources in psychology for formulating the develop-
ment of the capacity to forgive, for example in terms of object rela-
tions (see ibid., chapter 8). There are thus various ways in which
religion might lead to an enrichment of the psychology of forgiveness.
There are similar issues about hope, where religion could help with
some richer conceptualization than is apparent in the positive psy-
chology literature. As I have pointed out (Watts, 2002, chapter 10;
Watts et al., 2006), there is an important distinction in religious think-
ing between hope in the sense of optimism (i.e. predicting good out-
comes because there are good reasons to do so) and what might be
called attitudinal hope (i.e. remaining hopeful when there are no rea-
sons for optimism). Current measures of hope/hopelessness seem to
focus more on the former, whereas the latter might have more signifi-
cant mental health implications. It is a distinction that at least needs to
be made clearly, so that possibility can be investigated.
Psychological Perspectives on Religious Practices

Many religious practices raise interesting psychological issues. My
general stance has been that the outsiders perspective of the psychol-
ogist and the insiders perspective of the religious practitioner are
complementary. A psychological perspective does not usually rule a
226 F. WATTS
religious practitoners perspective in or out. However, it may influ-

ence how that perspective is most plausibly formulated. It also indi-
cates the human processes by which religious practices can confer
benefits, while leaving open the question of whether they are benefi-
cial for other reasons.
The religious practice that I have recently considered most care-
fully is spiritual healing (Watts, 2011b), which normally takes the
form of prayer for healing accompanied by laying on of hands. That
raises many questions. The most basic is perhaps whether it does any
good at all and, if so, how it produces benefits. The published evi-
dence for the benefits of prayer for healing is suggestive but inconclu-
sive, though my personal experience indicates that there are at least
some people in whom it produces reliable benefits, such as pain relief.

I suggest that whatever benefits it has can be understood partly in
terms of processes that can be formulated scientifically, though we

may need a paradigm shift in science before we can take the scientific
understanding of spiritual healing as far as it can potentially go. I have
argued for a scientific approach to spiritual healing, while not seeing
that as excluding other more specifically religious factors as well. The
practice of spiritual healing seems to involve an interesting and dis-
tinctive way of managing and directing consciousness that is not yet
properly understood.
I have also considered similar issues in relation to prayer (Watts,
2001b), which can be seen, psychologically, as a programme of delib-
erate conscious processing with intended benefits. Many aspects of
prayer can be understood at least partly in psychological terms. For
example the regular practice of thanksgiving seems to involve a kind
of attributional retraining, in which attributions to a deity are intro-
duced alongside other more naturalistic attributions. Given the power-
ful effect that attributions are known to have on mood and self-esteem,
it is likely that such attributional retraining could have significant psy-
chological effects. Attributions play an important role in the religious
life, and should be seen as including attributions to religious practices
and community as well as to a deity (Williams and Watts, 2014). Par-
allel psychological accounts can be given of other aspects of prayer;
for example, petitionary prayer may involve a re-education of desires.
There are also interesting psychological issues about public reli-
gious rituals, which seem able to confer personal benefits. That is per-
haps most clearly seen in pastoral rituals such as funerals, but may
also be associated with more general rituals such as the Christian ser-
vice of Communion (Watts, 2006b). I have focused mainly on Chris-
tian religious practices, but interesting psychological questions also
arise about practices in other traditions such as yoga (Watts, 2000b).

There is good evidence for the efficacy of yoga, though there is much
work to be done on the interesting question of how it works; it is not
clear that it has greater efficacy than other simpler procedures such as
relaxation training.
Another widespread religious practice is reading scriptures, and
psychology can also make a contribution to elucidating the signifi-
cance of classic religious texts such as the Christian gospels (Watts,
2007c). There are various different questions here, including what can
be learned about the mindset of Jesus of Nazareth, how peoples psy-
chological dispositions affect their reading of such scriptural texts,
and how accounts of the transformation of people who feature in the
gospel stories can facilitate transformation of readers. Psychological

exegesis has a poor reputation, as does much psychohistory, but I have
argued that the features that have given it a bad reputation can gener-
ally be avoided if it is done carefully and circumspectly.
4. Conclusion
Religion provides a rich arena in which the distinctive consciousness
of humans can find fruitful and creative expression. As Donald
Winnicott (1971) has argued, religion, like art, occupies a transitional
space that lies between a world of private fantasy and external objec-
tivity. It is potentially a space that facilitates personal growth and
development, though it is also capable of taking various maladaptive
turns. The relation of religion to adjustment and mental health is com-
plex, but it most commonly seems to have positive effects (Sims,
2009). How that works and how it can go wrong is a fascinating topic
for psychology, and one that can be pursued without any presupposi-
tions about the correctness of religious beliefs.
However, I have studied religion in a way that does not ignore the
understanding religious people themselves have about their beliefs
and practices. Rather, I have taken the thinking of religious people as
something intrinsically interesting in its own right. Like any other
first-person accounts, it is worth taking seriously for the light it can
shed on what is going on in religion. It is also potentially fruitful to
bring religious and psychological thinking into dialogue with one
another, rather than treating religion just as something to be under-
stood, and religion as having the capacity to understand it.
Finally, I would argue that there is potentially a fruitful affinity
between the psychology of consciousness and the psychology of reli-
gion. Methodologically, first-person accounts play an important role
228 F. WATTS
in both domains. Theoretically, the faith traditions of the world gener-

ally share with consciousness studies the assumption that human con-
scious life is very significant and no mere epiphenomenon. Finally,
there are many ways in which religious life includes an interesting
programme of self-regulation of conscious processing that is poten-
tially able to advance our general understanding of consciousness.
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Fraser Watts

ning of a 20-year programme of work on the interface of psychology

The first volume of this journal, to which I contributed, coincided

Journal of Consciousness Studies, 21, No. 34, 2014, pp. 21629

1. Reductionism and Beyond

Reductionism, which characteristically takes the form of claiming

complete explanation, certainly not of anything interesting. We do not

the attempt to explain higher-level processes in terms of lower-level

Beyond Reductionism: Embodied Cognition and Systems Biology

focuses on how the broader context of embodiment shapes and influ-

embodied cognition. It is notable that biology, after a highly

tems or organismic biology (in which epigenetics has an important

2. The Structure of Mind

Barnard in suggesting that it was a novel feature of emerging human-

differentiation of the central engine of cognition into two separate

work for the psychology of religion, as I have argued in various

largely written by members of my research group in Cambridge, and

glossolalia, which seems to be a kind of ecstatic utterance, the gist of

Emotion and Religion

nized in the journal Cognition and Emotion, of which I was the

Founding Editor in 1987). Religion is similarly multifaceted, involv-

religion, about which views have been remarkably varied. Emotions

sometimes as quite dangerous (Watts, 2007a). In sorting this out, it is

3. Psychology and Theology

The dialogue between theology and psychology focuses on three

exchange between psychology and theology about how human nature

Positive Psychology and Religious Virtues

separate, parallel approaches to the same phenomena. Religious life

explore the psychological significance of that. Psychology tends to

more likely to see it as an ethical duty. The implications of those dif-

Psychological Perspectives on Religious Practices

religious practitoners perspective in or out. However, it may influ-

some people in whom it produces reliable benefits, such as pain relief.

terms of processes that can be formulated scientifically, though we

arise about practices in other traditions such as yoga (Watts, 2000b).

gospel stories can facilitate transformation of readers. Psychological

in both domains. Theoretically, the faith traditions of the world gener-

London: Simon & Schuster.

Watts, F. (2011b) Spiritual Healing: Scientific and Religious Perspectives, Cam-

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