ABSTRACT
Previous chapters demonstrated that the phenomenon of religious belief is quite different from the kind of phenomena the cognitive science of religion is studying. To fully understand belief, researchers must apprehend socially constituted experiential realities that communities of believers embody in their languages and cultures. This chapter and the next turn to a discussion about how taking the constitutive force of language and culture seriously does not mean the suspension of good science. We can still have good scientific practice that fits with both religious and scientific communities, which is a criterion for truth for James. Specifically, this chapter addresses how cognitive science of religion could be enhanced if provided with the theoretical articulacy to grasp the constitutive role of language in the formation of religious cognition. Religious ritual and the everyday ritualistic use of language is discussed to specify what CSR stands to gain by taking the foregoing seriously. The proposal herein draws on dynamic systems theory, which offers an approach to cognition that enables the study of religious belief as it emerges in life and offers a theoretical framework that allows researchers in the cognitive science of religion to proceed in harmony with cultural psychology.
