Animism and Philosophy of Religion 3030941698, 9783030941697

Table of contents :
Contents
List of Contributors
1: Introduction
1 Animism’s Neglect
2 Animism and Its Definitions
3 Animism, Science, and Reason
4 Animism and Society
References
2: Animism and Cognitive Science of Religion: A Critical Perspective
1 Guthrie’s Anthropomorphism and Animism
2 Evolutionist Commitments
3 Secular Hyperopia
4 Conclusions
References
3: Wilkinson’s “Animism and Cognitive Science of Religion”
1 A reply to Stewart Guthrie from Darryl Wilkinson
References
4: Edward Tylor’s Animism and Its Intellectual Aftermath
1 New Versus Old Animism: An Overview
2 Development, Survival, Abandonment, and Revival
3 Animals, Plants and Objects as Spiritual Beings
4 Conclusion
References
5: Animisms: Practical Indigenous Philosophies
1 Introduction: The scope of philosophy of religion
2 What “Religion” Means in Philosophy of Religion
3 Cognitive Science of Religion and the Study of Animism
4 Animism as a Philosophical Stance
4.1 Kincentric Ecology of the Rarámuri
4.2 The Significance of the Land and Its People for Inuktitut-Speaking Inuit
5 Implications for the Philosophy of Religion
6 Conclusion
References
6: New Animism as Cultural Critique?
1 The Concept of Cultural Critique
2 Animisms Old and New
3 A Higher Order of Objectivity?
4 Affirmatory New Animism as Critique of Western Modernity
5 Challenges to Affirmatory New Animism
6 A Critical Approach to New Animism
7 Conclusion
References
7: Animism and Naturalism: Practice and Theory
1 The New Animism
2 The Ontological Turn
3 Animism and Naturalism
4 How to Think about Animism
5 An Enactivist and Practice-Based Theory
6 The Idea of Representation
7 Activity and Representation
8 Practices and Representations
9 Naive and Theorized Practices
10 Animism and Naturalism
11 Underdetermination
12 Cognitive Pluralism
13 The Truth in Animism
References
8: Sensible Animism
References
9: Animism: Its Scope and Limits
1 Animism
2 Animists
3 Universal Animation
4 Hard Cases for Animation
5 Motivations for ‘New’ Animism
6 Concluding Remarks
References
10: Scientific Animism
1 Animism in Western Thought
2 Entropic Forces
3 Entropic Forces Drive Flows to Self-Organize
4 The Degrees of Animation
5 The Ascents of Heliodromes
6 The Ascents of Astrodromes and Terradromes
7 The Ascents of Liquidromes and Ecodromes
8 The Ascents of Biodromes
9 Animated Universes
10 Conclusion
References
11: Childhood Animism and Innate Belief
1 Childhood Animism
2 Childhood Artificialism
3 Rationalism and Arguments from Innateness
4 The Naturalness of Animist Belief
5 The Dubious Defence of the Disenchanted
6 Childhood Animism Is a Reason to Accept Animism
References
12: An Epistemic Defense of Animism
1 Defining Animism
2 Old Animism
3 New Animism
4 The Rationality of Tacitly Held Beliefs
5 Assessing Animistic Beliefs Epistemically
6 Underminers for Animistic Beliefs
7 Stewart Guthrie’s Account of Animism
8 Mistaken Attribution of Agency
9 Attributing Mentality
10 Concluding Remarks: Interpreting or Misinterpreting the World?
11 Coda: Moral Arguments for Animism
References
13: Robotic Animism: The Ethics of Attributing Minds and Personality to Robots with Artificial Intelligence
1 Robotic Animism and Robotic Mind-Reading
2 An “Attitude Towards a Soul”?
3 Non-skeptical Empirical Research About Animistic Robot Mind-Reading
4 Ethically Motivated Animism: Theoretical Versus Practical Interests in Machine Minds
5 Robotic Animism and Possible/Imagined Super-intelligences
6 Should We Reflectively Endorse Some Form of Robotic Animism? Do Any Robots Have Minds of Any Significant Kinds?
7 Concluding Remarks
References
14: Towards a Cosmopolitan Animism
1 Indigenous Animism and the “New Animism”
2 Animism in a Cosmopolitan World
3 The Socio-politics of Indigenous/Non-Indigenous Relations: Discourses of Cultural Appropriation
4 Towards a Cosmopolitan Animism
5 Conclusion
References
Index

Citation preview

PALGRAVE FRONTIERS IN PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION

Animism and Philosophy of Religion Tiddy Smith

Palgrave Frontiers in Philosophy of Religion

Series Editors Yujin Nagasawa Department of Philosophy University of Birmingham Birmingham, UK Erik J. Wielenberg Department of Philosophy DePauw University Greencastle, IN, USA

Palgrave Frontiers in Philosophy of Religion is a long overdue series which will provide a unique platform for the advancement of research in this area. Each book in the series aims to progress a debate in the philosophy of religion by (i) offering a novel argument to establish a strikingly original thesis, or (ii) approaching an ongoing dispute from a radically new point of view. Each title in the series contributes to this aim by utilising recent developments in empirical sciences or cutting-edge research in foundational areas of philosophy (such as metaphysics, epistemology and ethics).

Tiddy Smith Editor

Animism and Philosophy of Religion

Editor Tiddy Smith Philosophy University of Indonesia Depok, Indonesia

ISSN 2634-6176     ISSN 2634-6184 (electronic) Palgrave Frontiers in Philosophy of Religion ISBN 978-3-030-94169-7    ISBN 978-3-030-94170-3 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94170-3 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and ­transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use. The publisher, the authors, and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and information in this book are believed to be true and accurate at the date of publication. Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, expressed or implied, with respect to the material contained herein or for any errors or omissions that may have been made. The publisher remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations. Cover illustration: Carol Yepes / Getty Images. This Palgrave Macmillan imprint is published by the registered company Springer Nature Switzerland AG. The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland

Contents

1 I ntroduction  1 Tiddy Smith 2 Animism  and Cognitive Science of Religion: A Critical Perspective 23 Darryl Wilkinson 3 Wilkinson’s  “Animism and Cognitive Science of Religion” 45 Stewart Guthrie 4 Edward  Tylor’s Animism and Its Intellectual Aftermath 63 Frederico Delgado Rosa 5 Animisms:  Practical Indigenous Philosophies 95 Johan De Smedt and Helen De Cruz 6 New  Animism as Cultural Critique?123 Mikel Burley 7 Animism  and Naturalism: Practice and Theory153 Gregory W. Dawes v

vi Contents

8 S  ensible Animism179 Evan Fales 9 Animism:  Its Scope and Limits199 Graham Oppy 10 S  cientific Animism227 Eric Steinhart 11 Childhood  Animism and Innate Belief257 Tiddy Smith 12 An  Epistemic Defense of Animism285 Hans Van Eyghen 13 Robotic  Animism: The Ethics of Attributing Minds and Personality to Robots with Artificial Intelligence313 Sven Nyholm 14 Towards  a Cosmopolitan Animism341 Kathryn Rountree I ndex365

List of Contributors

Mikel Burley  University of Leeds, Leeds, UK Gregory W. Dawes  Department of Philosophy, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand Helen De Cruz  Saint Louis University, St. Louis, MO, USA Johan De Smedt  Saint Louis University, St. Louis, MO, USA Evan Fales  Department of Philosophy, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, USA Stewart Guthrie  Fordham University, Bronx, NY, USA Sven Nyholm  Utrecht University, Utrechtm, The Netherlands Graham Oppy  Department of Philosophy, Monash University, Clayton, VIC, Australia Frederico Delgado Rosa  Department of Anthropology, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal Kathryn Rountree  Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand Tiddy Smith  Department of Philosophy, Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand vii

viii 

List of Contributors

Eric Steinhart  Department of Philosophy, William Paterson University, Wayne, NJ, USA Hans Van Eyghen  Department of Systematic Theology and Philosophy, Tilburg University, Tilburg, The Netherlands Darryl Wilkinson  Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, USA

1 Introduction Tiddy Smith

Nobody cares about animism; well, nobody in philosophy departments at least. Search through the archives of a few of the leading philosophy journals and you will be hard-pressed to find the topic as much as mentioned. Incredibly, this lack of interest persists even within the very subdiscipline that should be most interested: Philosophy of religion. It is an almost paradoxical state of affairs. Most contemporary philosophers of religion find they spend their days debating the existence of a divine being—a god. And let’s face it, this ain’t just any old god, but usually (even if tacitly) the god of Abraham. It may seem unlikely, but the sad truth is that religion in its various forms and with its various commitments is not really the study of philosophy of religion at all. What should be a mighty river of critical thought is, on the contrary, a little creek. Where we ought to find depth and breadth and various rapid tributaries, we find instead shallowness, narrowness, and a gentle trickle of progress in one direction.

T. Smith (*) Department of Philosophy, Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Smith (ed.), Animism and Philosophy of Religion, Palgrave Frontiers in Philosophy of Religion, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94170-3_1

1

2 

T. Smith

Sure, a growing number of subclusters have recently emerged inside of which philosophers engage with some “unusual” theologies and cosmologies. Most prominently are the Buddhist and Vedic traditions, containing as they do their own rich histories of critical discourse. Yet this development has not much changed the overarching direction of the field. Lecturers continue to dish out the standard menu. A wide-eyed freshman taking an introductory philosophy of religion paper will be introduced to something like the following: Aquinas and his five ways, Kierkegaard and his radical faith, William James’ will to believe, Plantinga’s proper functions, and perhaps a bit of Swinburne, Mackie, or Flew for garnish. If lucky, the student may even get to ponder whether God could make really enormous stones, bigger than even He could carry! The freshman will find a god hiding in every nook and cranny. God is often said to be omnipresent—in every flower and around every star—but should he be in every final exam question? Perhaps there is ultimately nothing awry here. Perhaps all religion deals, in some sense or other, with a god. Of course, not necessarily the god of Abraham, but some divine power, some hidden hand, some agent cause of the Universe, some sort of Ultimate Reality (with capital letters, which makes it quite important). The hallmark of any religion is its quest to relate humanity with some sort of transcendent absolute. In English, we name this thing “God”, but elsewhere it has names such as “Allah” or “Brahman” or “Mulajadi Nabolon” or “Bondye”. Behind the veil of our culturally determined names and conceptions, there lies a common source for the religious urge. This is the tack taken by many modern theologian-philosophers. Take Robert Cummings Neville, according to whom all religious phenomena can be reduced to “human engagement of ultimacy expressed in cognitive articulations, existential responses to ultimacy that give ultimate definition to the individual, and patterns of life and ritual in the face of ultimacy” (2018: 13). All religions grasp at ultimacy, however they conceive of it and whatever they happen to name it. In a similar vein, for the pluralist philosopher John Hick, the focus of all religious traditions is The Real and all religious activity is an attempt at turning toward The Real. The distinct religious traditions ultimately share the same subject, some

1 Introduction 

3

sort of transcendental absolute. To quote Hick, when he quoted Rumi: The lamps are different, but the light is the same (1989: 233). Indeed, some philosophy of religion textbooks that seek to broaden the horizons of the discipline incorporates these sorts of pluralist and transcendentalist commitments. Keith Yandell’s Philosophy of Religion: A Contemporary Introduction is a good example of this. It is, in many ways, a superb example of inclusiveness, as it fluently navigates discussions of Buddhist and Vedic doctrines in among the more familiar discussions of the Abrahamic variety. And Yandell’s discussion seems to succeed just because it is cloaked in the language of a transcendentalist pluralism. Buddhists and Jains, for example, seek not “The Real”, nor “Ultimacy”, but “Ultimate Reality” (1999: 109). Using such terms as these, we can make sense of religion as a shared human quest for a common purpose. So, we may not need to worry after all. God figures prominently in the academic philosophy of religion just because religious activity is essentially concerned with placing believers in relationship with “God”, not the big beardy giant who lives in the clouds, but the metaphysically fundamental, that is, the Absolute or the Ultimate or the Real, or some other sort of very capitalized being. At the end of the day, these are all just tags that help to make our transcendental quest comprehendible. The tags are different, but the referent is the same. Like the lamps, the light is no different. And religion—all religion—is the reaching for or the communing with or the submitting to or the turning toward this same light. Philosophers of religion talk about God because that is what religion talks about. It’s a nice and tidy story that absolves the discipline of its parochialism. Alas, if only it were true. The problem that arises from this conception of the discipline is a common problem for any attempt to define religion. That is, if we dish out the core idea of religion solely in transcendentalist terms then too many religious traditions would no longer count as religious at all. The above definitions of religion that incorporate metaphysical absolutes like The Real or Ultimacy or Fundamental Being systematically exclude all those religious traditions whose focus is not a transcendental reality. Opposed to all the transcendentalist traditions, there are immanentist traditions whose focus is the maintenance of right relations in this world— now—with the living, the dead, the hunted, and the hidden. We can

4 

T. Smith

readily identify such traditions as religious, even without a thorough-­ going theory or definition of religion. When offerings are left for the ancestors or when a shrine is established for the spirit of the forest, these are religious acts—like it or not. And so any definition that would exclude these examples is inherently suspicious. Indeed, the problem of defining religion is so thoroughly vexed that our non-reflective judgments about its scope are perhaps, at present, our most reliable guide. Transcendentalism is not the only pervasive bias in the field of philosophy of religion. There is also a bias for orthodoxy over orthopraxy. That is to say, right belief—as opposed to right practice—is emphasized. And so, religions which stress the importance of the latter at the expense of the former are often overlooked. Perhaps this bias is, again, unsurprising. It is, after all, the duty of philosophy to draw out and analyze the contents of our beliefs. Thus, it is more convenient to engage with religions which are more explicit about matters of dogma and theology. But whatever the cause of this bias, it nevertheless affects which traditions are studied, and which parts of those traditions are taken seriously. And then—the cherry on top—there is analytic philosophy’s cozy relationship with modern science. Despite some infrequent creationist murmurings from evangelicals such as Alvin Plantinga, the field of philosophy of religion is like any other within the broader context of analytic philosophy. Contemporary philosophy of religion is pretty science-friendly. It operates largely under the assumption that the general picture provided by the sciences (particularly biology, geology, and other “historical sciences”) is basically correct. And so, it is thought, if any religious ideas deserve unique attention, these must be those ideas which do not impinge on the picture provided to us by the sciences. This desire to cohere with the general picture of modern science manifests as a general avoidance of the kooky or spooky. Religions embracing something like the Philosopher’s God are given priority: God as first cause, God as ground of all being, God as necessary being. But those traditions with commitments which appear to violate the picture of our current best science are kept at arm’s length. Angels and demons, for example, hardly get a mention. So what for traditions with star ancestors or person-rivers? At best, they are seen as implausible. At worst, they are seen as derisible.

1 Introduction 

5

What remains is an austere philosophy of religion. What remains is a field that has set aside a large portion of human religious activity before having even touched upon it. What remains is a field in need of a broader range of discussions and directions. This volume is an attempt to carve out one such path.

1 Animism’s Neglect Because of the biases alluded to above, analytic philosophy of religion singles out animist traditions as almost uniquely unworthy of study. At almost every step, it seems, the animist manages to put a foot wrong. Animist religions often lack transcendental commitments. Animists often emphasize ritual and practice over right belief. And the denizens of the animist’s worldview—whether taken to be ghosts or spirits or sprites or ancestors or living rocks—all seem to violate the naturalism of the sciences. Animists are seen as embracing primitive superstition and magical thinking. In embracing these very bad things, the animist’s crude picture of the world constitutes a denial of both modern science and the nuances of sophisticated theology. Animism, then, has no place in modern philosophy of religion. Like a UFO religion or a cargo cult, animism has been leapfrogged by more “sophisticated” studies of theism, faith, and salvation. How should an animist feel about this situation? Are the animists upset by this? Who knows? And indeed, who cares? We may as well admit that the number of believers in animistic traditions has been decimated within the last 500 years or so, ever since the dawn of the age of discovery. Whether by war, plague, colonization, conversion, or genocide, the numbers of adherents of the animist religions have dwindled. The variety of animist traditions which once flourished are no more. So, as a matter of brute mathematics, there are few to no animists working in analytic philosophy departments. Few researchers are sympathetic to the view that, say, a certain mountain might be an ancestor or that said mountain might feel such emotions as rage, sadness, or jealousy. Of course, there are a few outliers here and there: Neopagan and New Age types (“hippies” for short), who tend to get associated with crystal healing, crystal skulls, and

6 

T. Smith

tie-dyed, organic, patchouli-infused sweat lodges. Since these hippy outliers are taken to be mostly harmless, they are usually tolerated as human curios. But by and large, the numbers are such in the academy (see De Cruz and De Smedt, this volume) that it is unsurprising that there are few animist voices in philosophy. Even less surprising is the lack of any sustained critical engagement with any animist traditions. After all, such traditions are widely considered to be, not just kooky or spooky, but quite evidently wrong. But has it always been like this, and everywhere? If we search for historical precedents of philosophical engagement with animism, there are a few examples that can be found. However, their locus is largely not within the standard corpus of the analytic tradition. The critical theorists Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, for example, argued in their 1947 Dialektik der Aufklärung (Dialectic of Enlightenment) that positivist commitments of the enlightenment worldview are the cause of ecological alienation and disenchantment. It is precisely because of the enlightenment’s “extirpation of animism” that we have arrived at a reality divorced from soulish qualities (2002: 2). Our experience of the world is delimited by the denial of the subject, of subjects more generally, and by the rise of the cold, imposing, and impassive object-world. From this disenchanted state of being, a form of domination is born in which nature is regarded as a bare machine turning human cogs. As Lambert Zuidervaart characterizes this domination, it has a triple sense: The domination of nature by human beings, the domination of nature within human beings, and, in both of these forms of domination, the domination of some human beings by others (2015: §2). More recently, there is the work of Bruno Latour, another philosopher “from the continent”, whose discussions of animism have gone relatively unnoticed in Anglophone philosophy departments. His challenging book, We Have Never Been Modern, is a hermeneutics of modern science, which traces what he dubs the “constitution” of modern science to early modern thinkers like Hobbes and Boyle. For Latour, unlike Horkheimer and Adorno, our modern, positivist, scientistic interpretation of the world has been a (failed) attempt to set out a nature as divorced from agency and the subject. But as Latour sees it, even this naturalist ontology

1 Introduction 

7

derives from (and persists in) an understanding of agency that could only be described as “animistic”. In an interview on this subject, he says: If animism is about things having agency, then one thing modernists have done has been to multiply the amount of agencies in the world to an extraordinary degree. But we have silenced it. … [T]he angels that are behind gravitational waves or gravitational forces have no wings. The wings are not visible. It’s a very beautiful case. If you ask what it is to be modern, is it to have angels carrying gravity? Is it angels losing their wings so we now believe that gravity is a purely material force? And what would it mean if it were only a material force? It would be a really strange thing, indeed. What is it to have agency? Now take the scientists who believe that things have agency—and who doesn’t say that? … [T]he great puzzle is how they can believe that animism is a problem, as if they were living in a world where no one has it, no one speaks, no one has a soul, and suddenly there are these strange guys from far away … who believe that things have agency. (2010: 88)

For Latour, we have never been modern and our naturalism is a cloak beneath which hides all the spirits that animists had ever conjectured. We need not remain on the continent. William James, the American pragmatist, explicitly discussed the phenomenological richness of animistic views and took the animist’s way of being as definitive of the human religious impulse at its most naked. In his seminal work, The Varieties of Religious Experience, he writes: Weight, movement, velocity, direction, position, what thin, pallid, uninteresting ideas! How could the richer animistic aspects of Nature, the peculiarities and oddities that make phenomena picturesquely striking or expressive, fail to have been first singled out and followed by philosophy as the more promising avenue to the knowledge of Nature’s life? Well, it is still in these richer animistic and dramatic aspects that religion delights to dwell. It is the terror and beauty of phenomena, the “promise” of the dawn and of the rainbow, the “voice” of the thunder, the “gentleness” of the summer rain … and not the physical laws which these things follow, by which the religious mind still continues to be most impressed. (1917: 489)

8 

T. Smith

James had already written something similar, albeit in condensed form and more like a slogan. In The Will to Believe he noted that for all religious people, “the universe is no longer a mere It to us, but a Thou”. Even less well-known and further removed from the analytic tradition, Fukansai Habian, a Japanese Jesuit philosopher, wrote the Myōtei Dialogues in 1605. This text sought to resolve the religious conflict of his time: One between East and West, having Buddhism, Confucianism, and Shinto on the one hand and the newcomer Christianity on the other. In this very interesting discussion (which has unfortunately received little philosophical attention outside Japan), Habian treats Shinto as an animist tradition, and he discusses some of the problems that are peculiar to its animistic ontology. He asks questions that hadn’t been asked before. How, for example, could the Sun kami be thought to be the “ancestor” of the Japanese race? This clearly could not be true, reasons Habian, since every human has a human mother. It follows, he reasons, that the commitment to an animate sun ancestor must be thrown out. Suns do not beget humans. Habian also stresses some explanatory advantages of theistic Christianity over the animistic metaphysics of Shinto. Whereas Shinto texts proffered explanations for the origins of particular places or particular kinds of beings—the Japanese islands, for example—the religion had no compelling ultimate explanation for the causes or origin of all things (Paramore, 2008: 238). It is a truly fascinating discourse of a kind not found in the West. It is a snapshot in time, standing witness to ancient beliefs facing the threat of a nascent European colonialism. While the newcoming Christianity would largely be rebuffed in Japan, it would elsewhere succeed in extirpating the old beliefs. So, discussions can be found, but few fit naturally within the traditional canon of analytic philosophy of religion. Where the analytic corpus is concerned, the most obvious candidate discussion is found in Hume’s Natural History of Religion. At the evolutionary root of all religion, Hume conjectured, was an animistic impulse which would first of all manifest as a crude polytheism. The birth of animism is humanity’s first attempt to escape ignorance of natural causes. In a passage which is by now legendary, he writes:

1 Introduction 

9

There is an universal tendency amongst mankind to conceive all beings like themselves, and to transfer to every object those qualities with which they are familiarly acquainted, and of which they are intimately conscious. We find human faces in the moon, armies in the clouds; and by a natural propensity, if not corrected by experience and reflection, ascribe malice and good will to everything that hurts or pleases us. Hence the frequency and beauty of the prosopopœia in poetry, where trees, mountains, and streams are personified, and the inanimate parts of nature acquire sentiment and passion.… No wonder, then, that mankind, being placed in such an absolute ignorance of causes, and being at the same time so anxious concerning their future fortunes, should immediately acknowledge a dependence on invisible powers possessed of sentiment and intelligence.… Nor is it long before we ascribe to them thought, and reason, and passion, and sometimes even the limbs and figures of men, in order to bring them nearer to a resemblance with ourselves. (1956: 29–30)

In blunt opposition to the celebratory tones of Horkheimer, Adorno, and James, Hume here offers a debunking argument against animism and its naive commitments. Hume, alongside Habian, sees the animist as making a kind of mistake. Already, some lines can be drawn between the pugilists of this debate. In contemporary philosophy of religion, the view of Hume and Habian persists: Animism is a naive and superstitious mistake in reasoning. This idea has survived more or less until the present day. Funnily, this consensus has been the result of two attacks from quite different directions. On the one hand, animism has been seen as impeding believers’ paths to salvation (this is, as it happens, Habian’s view). On this view, sophisticated theism has been taken to be the cure for this childish way of thinking. Then there is Hume’s naturalistic attack, which would be later developed by thinkers on the outskirts of modern philosophy, like Sigmund Freud and James Frazer. 1 Ever since the development of experimental science, animism has been seen as redundant and explanatorily dangerous: A presumptuous reading of intention and will into blind  Frazer once remarked incredulously that “[i]f trees are animate … the cutting of them down becomes a delicate surgical operation, which must be performed with as tender a regard as possible for the feelings of the sufferers” (1983: 148). 1

10 

T. Smith

nature. As T. H. Huxley put the point: “The essence of modern as contrasted with ancient, physiological science appears to me to lie in its antagonism to animistic hypotheses and animistic phraseology” (1881: 800). For the theists, animism is not efficacious for salvation. For the naturalists, animism is of no use in a proper understanding of the world. This twin-pronged attack has left animism with little ground to hold, rejected by the supernaturalists and naturalists alike. So, we can regroup. Unpopular, unworthy of study, and unlikely to be on the right track: That’s the received view. And it’s precisely the view that this volume seeks to challenge. Make no mistake, the aim of this volume is not to convert the reader to animism. This is no flimsy plea for new congregants. Indeed, the contributors to this volume disagree strongly with each other about whether animism has anything to recommend it. They even disagree about just what this thing, animism, is. To that extent, they may often be talking past each other. But that is part and parcel of the process of reappraisal. As can be seen within the first few chapters, anthropologists over the last century have themselves been debating just what animism is. There remains little by way of consensus. And it may take decades of arguing past one another before the strategic positions in a worthwhile debate can be triangulated. The aim of this volume is not to convince, but to challenge. It is hoped that the floor will be opened to a debate that was never really begun, let alone settled. Indeed, as the reader may notice, the chapters that follow may, altogether, be difficult to shoehorn into the category of philosophy of religion. Whether we should be animists about robots (Nyholm, Chap. 13, this volume) or whether we are animists when we speak of newborns as persons (Wilkinson, Chap. 2, this volume): These are not questions that a traditional philosophy of religion would consider part of its domain. Whether such discussions should be included within that domain is a question I will leave with the reader.

1 Introduction 

11

2 Animism and Its Definitions The reader is predictably annoyed. No definition of animism has yet been given. I have gestured toward vague ideas like ancestor mountains, living rocks, and the subjectivity of the universe, but I have not really given any definition of animism. What’s the topic of this book? What sort of book is this? Define your terms! Alright, I relent. Animism was first set out as a category in the study of religion by E. B. Tylor, who defined it as the belief in a range of spirit beings, who could occupy such bodies as “trees and rocks and waterfalls” (1871: 260). These spirit beings are like us, in some important senses (they share with us the capacity for sensation and the having of some kind of cultural life). So, on a first pass, we could define animism in a very traditional way like so: Animism is the belief that human beings have souls, or, by extension, the belief that animals, plants or even rocks have souls.… [T]hey are subjects of feeling or consciousness, or display intelligence, in ways that ensouled human beings do. (Eldridge, 1996: 3)

It is a definition that is faithful to Tylor’s theory. But this is only a first approach—it is one way to start thinking about animism. And as Frederico Rosa will demonstrate in his chapter (Chap. 4), animism was not taken by Tylor to be a metaphysical view restricted only to spirits who might reside in strange places like trees and rocks and waterfalls. Instead, Tylor held that animism, qua belief in spiritual beings, permeated all human religious thought to some degree or other throughout history. What Tylor wished to emphasize was the belief in spirits of any form, gods included. Tylor, like Latour, would have lamented that we have never been modern. With the development of anthropology in the twentieth century, Tylor’s terminology came to be seen as something of an embarrassment. His theory was seen to perpetuate perspectives of indigenous peoples as primitive and childlike in their metaphysics; as though hunter-gatherers could not reliably discern between living and non-living things or between the ensouled and the spiritually inert. But are animists really making such an obvious mistake? It would be an uncharitable

12 

T. Smith

interpretation of animist ritual and practice, akin to taking the economist’s talk of “invisible hands” to signify a belief in disembodied, causally efficacious limb-beings. There is the possibility that what is being said by the animist is a kind of metaphor. Talk of sentient trees, who might become sad or angry, needs to be understood as a way of describing the state of trees in language that we would usually call “poetic” or “romantic”. A forest which is “angry” when it is clearfelled is just a forest in a disrupted or undesirable state. A river which will “avenge” its own pollution is just a river that will eventually be unswimmable. But this approach—the interpretation of animistic descriptions as metaphorical—seems to destroy any notion that animistic descriptions are propositionally distinct from naturalistic descriptions. It seems that either we must understand the animist literally, and take talk of “angry rivers” on its childlike face. Or we must take the animist to be speaking metaphorically, and take talk of “angry rivers” as a sort of whimsical description of what is otherwise obvious. Neither approach seems to do the job. As Mario von der Ruhr writes, this literal/ metaphorical distinction cuts too severely on both sides, such that animist “beliefs and rituals become either ridiculous or cheap, saying either too much to be intelligible, or too little to convey the meaning intended” (1996: 30). In the history of the social sciences, the meaning of the term “animism” gradually shifted toward more charitable interpretations, which sought to sail between the Scylla of literalism and the Charybdis of metaphor. Most notably, the later anthropologist Irving Hallowell (particularly in his Ojibwe Ontology, Behaviour, and Worldview [1960]) emphasized the animist’s commitment to what he dubbed other-than-human-­persons. This new interpretation stood in opposition to Tylor’s notion of a commitment to spiritual beings or a belief in the “animation of all nature”. What the animists were doing hinged on unfamiliar attributions of personhood, not life or spirit. It is Hallowell’s view which has informed a new outlook on animism within anthropology, and this new outlook tends to commend animist belief and ritual. Far from making a mistake, animists are doing something radical. Animists are not misascribing life to the non-living. They are accepting as persons a whole bunch of things that the anthropologist

1 Introduction 

13

typically doesn’t. Anthropologists following in the footsteps of Hallowell have similarly sought to find ways to capture what is special about animists’ interpretations of the world without ascribing to them metaphysical views that border on the magical. It is this new animism, as it has come to be called, that has had a wide influence across the fields of anthropology and religious studies. Notable contemporary proponents of the new animism include Graham Harvey, Tim Ingold, Nurit Bird-David, and Philippe Descola. The new animists give what Mikel Burley dubs an affirmatory approach to animism (Chap. 6, this volume). The new animist approach celebrates the worldview and practice of the animists. This approach suggests a radical and alternative way of interacting with the world around us. So what for Tylor and his positivism? The Tylorian view was not lost to the abyss of discarded scientific theories. In fact, it largely persists intact, but not within the field of anthropology. It continues to shape and direct schools of research in the burgeoning new field of cognitive science of religion (CSR). The most notable “neo-Tylorian” cognitive scientist of religion is Stewart Guthrie, whose 1993 book Faces in the Clouds is a classic in the field. According to Guthrie and other CSR researchers, the likes of Hume, Tylor, Freud, and Frazer were essentially on the right track. Animism is a sort of error in reasoning. The error is the belief that some sorts of non-living, non-sentient, non-communicative, non-persons are living, sentient, and communicative persons. The aim of CSR is to explain why this error keeps on getting made. There is, in that respect, a major divide in the literature between contemporary anthropology and contemporary CSR. The positivist commitments of CSR have been challenged on the grounds that the field is not reflective enough of its own heritage and that it fails to articulate why we should take such a dim view of animist thought on any grounds distinct from our own modernist, scientistic frame. In this volume, we will witness such a challenge take place. In the very next chapter, Darryl Wilkinson will mount an attack on Guthrie that leads to some very interesting conceptual questions indeed. Guthrie’s own response to Wilkinson may be found in the following chapter. Is this debate between CSR and contemporary anthropology resolvable? To any outsider, it would seem not. These two scientific paradigms appear to

14 

T. Smith

take up incommensurable understandings of animism. They are talking past each other. This difference in understanding leads to a clear delineation between those who would embrace and those who would scorn animism. But as Mikel Burley shows in his chapter in this volume, there may be a way to resolve this dichotomy. A third position is available which can be found expressed in some of the recent work of the anthropologists Rane Willerslev and Nicholas Peterson. This position Burley dubs a “critical approach” to animism, which may (or may not) be better placed to give the sort of self-reflective “cultural critique” which we expect from our anthropological investigations of other cultures, especially when those cultures appear to harbor ontological commitments which strongly differ from our own. So, we have at least one distinction to draw between those who would take animism to consist in a set of commitments to the existence of non-­ human persons and those who would take animism to consist in the attribution of a soul or spirit to things that most of us to have no soul or spirit (e.g. trees and rocks and rivers). But there is a stronger view according to which animism is a position about biology, concerning what sorts of things are animate or living. It is this definition that will be discussed by Graham Oppy and Eric Steinhart (Chaps. 9 and 10, respectively), who disagree about the proper scope of attributions of life and agency. For Oppy, attributions of life are to be conservative, applying only to the usual suspects (humans, trees, bedbugs, etc.). For Steinhart, they are to be liberal, applying to a wider range of things than we have previously taken (solar systems, for example). So, is animism a thesis about life, about spirits, or about personhood? In this volume, that question will not be answered. Instead, each discussion must be taken on its own terms. Perhaps there is a view that is most plausible. On the other hand, perhaps all three can be proper interpretations of particular animist religious traditions, which will naturally differ across time and place. But perhaps the crucial thread that ties each of the three views together is the following (very crude) notion: Animists, across all times and places, are sympathetic to the view that many non-humans are human-like, in some way which seriously challenges traditional Western views of life, spirit, and personhood.

1 Introduction 

15

3 Animism, Science, and Reason How reasonable is animism? Hopefully reasonable enough. After all, evidence from developmental psychology indicates that we are, as a species, predisposed to attribute life, consciousness, agency, and human-like personality to non-humans from a very early age. It was this feature of our cognition that CSR was so eager to explain. As I will discuss in my own chapter on childhood animism, there may be good reason to think that this predisposition is a reliable feature of human cognition, rather than some kind of pediatric epistemic disease that is cured by the wisdom of adulthood. The extent to which children animate the world around them should, I argue, not be so glibly assumed to be a mistake. However, as already noted, Oppy disagrees (Chap. 9). He argues that to attribute life and sentience so promiscuously is to go against our best science. It would be irrational to continue to animate the world while also understanding what the science has said. For sentience in particular, biologists agree, is a relatively recent phenomenon in evolutionary history restricted to sufficiently complex organisms. Animism, understood as the promiscuous attribution of life to the non-living, is not reasonable. This is, of course, the common sense view. But could one reasonably accept both the scientific world picture and some kind of animism? Steinhart answers affirmatively. Whereas Oppy’s argument depends, in part, on the ultimate correctness of the naturalistic, scientific picture, Steinhart turns this picture on its head. It is through his developing a thoroughly naturalistic theory of animation that he endorses a picture of the universe as full to the brim with living agents. There are many more things with a far greater degree of animation in this universe than the received common sense view tells us. In Steinhart’s words: “Far from declaring that animism is superstitious or unscientific, modern Western science affirms that animism is a scientifically accurate and sophisticated way of understanding nature”. Steinhart and Oppy are both naturalists, and they disagree about the degree to which the universe is animate or living. For Oppy, the animists are fools. For Steinhart, they are prophets. But could animists be reasonable just because their commitments and practices are not so

16 

T. Smith

ontologically imposing? Evan Fales believes this is the case. He presents us with a picture of “sensible animism” in Chap. 8, which rejects the definition of animism adopted by both Steinhart and Oppy. For the sensible animist, attributions of life or spirit take second place to the attribution of what Fales dubs “personages”. To treat any particular thing as a personage is to class it as part of the social structure. It is to acknowledge its office. As Fales will explain: [W]e have natural persons who are designated official roles, and those officers occupy the offices out of which the structure is fashioned. Here, again, a physical thing–a natural person–embodies an immaterial personage: an officer. The natural person is mortal; the officer survives as long as the correlate office/social role does–that is to say, the officer is, at least potentially, not mortal, or anyway not subject to natural death. Indeed, the personage–the officer–can be transferred intact from one person to another, and so passed down through the generations.

This social-structural view shares common ground with the new animists such as, most notably, the early Hallowell. Yet another alternative is proposed by Greg Dawes in his chapter on animism and its relationship with naturalism. Here, Dawes advocates a “cognitive pluralism” which conceives of animism as a practice which is (at least sometimes) successful in certain contexts. Conceiving of animism as a practice, Dawes turns away from animism as an ontology and embraces what could be called an enactivist account. By so doing, he believes that the apparent conflict between animism and naturalism can be resolved, and that this is not by virtue of embracing a broader sort of pragmatist view of knowledge (one which denies that truth is a necessary condition for knowing). It may be that interpretations of animic practice and scientific practice converge on key questions, and even that certain animic practices outcompete scientific rivals. The starkly different conclusions drawn by myself, Oppy, Steinhart, Fales, and Dawes show that the relationships between animism, science, naturalism, and epistemology are complex, contestable, and contested. Indeed, it is perhaps unsurprising to note that the anthropologist Robin Horton figures prominently throughout this discussion as a touchstone.

1 Introduction 

17

His seminal work, Patterns of Thought in Africa and the West, was one of the first books to contest the view that animist ontologies violate principles of scientific naturalism. For Horton, both animist and scientific approaches stand as attempts to unravel the mysteries of empirical phenomena: To expose the hidden, to explain causal relations, and to predict phenomena. In that sense, animic and scientific approaches were taken to be equally naturalistic, and shared significant overlap as tools of explanation for the same domain. Whether or not animism is compatible with naturalism, there seems to be an altogether different problem between animism and science. It may be thought that any degree of scientific awareness will be enough to dispel the possibility that the animists are even partly on the right track. Not only do the commitments of animism appear to violate certain commitments of the sciences, but these commitments themselves also appear to be explicable by appeal to theories in psychology and CSR.  In other words, we can debunk the animist’s claims, and we can do so by appeal to many of the standard explanations of CSR. Examples abound. Perhaps we have evolved such that we have inherited a “better safe than sorry” strategy in our identification of agency (à la Stewart Guthrie). Perhaps we have “hyperactive agency-detection devices” in our brains (à la Justin Barrett [2004]). Or perhaps claims which violate the commitments of our innate ontologies about life and agency are attention-grabbing enough to be good candidates for cultural transmission (à la Pascal Boyer [2004]). Whichever way you want to go, persuasive and respectable evolutionary debunking arguments explaining animist belief away are twoa-­penny. We can show that the emergence of animist belief has been caused by off-track cognitive processes. In a chapter that challenges the above idea, Hans Van Eyghen (Chap. 12) defends animism from these attacks. The findings of CSR, Van Eyghen argues, have little epistemic bite against the animist’s seeming that certain aspects of the environment harbor mentality and are communicative. Leaning on a similar “innocent until proven guilty” strategy as I do in my own argument, Van Eyghen borrows some ideas from Richard Swinburne, which provide a framework for the appraisal of rational religious beliefs. In particular, Van Eyghen shows that the supposed

18 

T. Smith

undermining evidence presented by CSR is not sufficient to undermine many examples of animist belief. In short, where the epistemological questions are concerned, there is a rich debate to be found. The defenders of a realist, doxastic conception of animism (Steinhart, Van Eyghen, and myself ) find opponents in those who think we are just plain mistaken (Oppy), as well as in those who may veer toward more practice-based or relational views (Fales, Dawes). But the relations between the arguments are more tangled than just that, with various degrees of convergence and divergence. The direction in which future debate may lead depends on the positions themselves being reworked, reviewed, and refined. There is fertile ground to explore!

4 Animism and Society A philosophical exploration of animism would not be complete without some discussion of its relationship with ecology and the rights of indigenous peoples. Whatever you think about the plausibility of animism, there may be other reasons to take it seriously. Val Plumwood once wrote: The appearance of ecological crises on the multiple fronts of energy, climate change and ecosystem degradation suggests we need much more than a narrow focus on energy substitutes. We need a thorough and open rethink which has the courage to question our most basic cultural narratives. (2010: 32)

One such narrative needing interrogated, Plumwood contended, was the fundamental divorce between humanity and environment. Plumwood urged us to see “nature in the active voice”. This reorientation of our most fundamental assumptions could promote ecological and feminist causes. For Plumwood, modern Western societies make a range of binary hierarchies between such things as nature and culture, man and woman, reason and intuition. She sought to undo this state of affairs. Plumwood was not the only—but she was perhaps the most vocal—philosopher to argue that engaging with nature as agentive and communicative should have

1 Introduction 

19

clear pragmatic benefits. Undoing these hierarchies was a political necessity. Incredibly, Plumwood was once the victim of a near-fatal crocodile attack in Australia’s Northern Territory. Deborah Rose Bird, a close friend and colleague of Plumwood, narrates the event: Val Plumwood had the experience of actually being taken by a crocodile. While canoeing in Kakadu National Park during the season when crocodiles become territorial, she was attacked and taken into the death roll three times before escaping up the river bank. Wounded and bleeding, she crawled for hours trying to reach the ranger station, and was finally rescued and rushed to hospital. This experience had a formative impact on her understanding of being a creature in a world in which other creatures have their own intelligence and objectives. (2013: 101–102)

This personal interaction with the crocodile, in which Plumwood was prey, added to her conviction that we needed to treat nature as more than a passive resource. We needed to extend the realm of respect to those deserving of it. Pragmatic arguments for animism take many forms, whether they are seen as conducive to fighting ecological problems, undoing patriarchy, or defending indigenous rights. Some of these arguments, decent as they may seem, are rebutted by Oppy in the present volume (and very persuasively, might I add). For Oppy, what seems to matter from a pragmatic perspective is what we value, and not the reasons we have for valuing it. Take Plumwood’s crocodile as just one example: We may well believe that a crocodile is a non-human person, or an agent with spirit, or whatever. But taking up such a position hardly prevents us from viewing this person or spirit as a malevolent one, and thereby, perhaps, affording us some right for a vengeful response. Plumwood might well have decided that the crocodile was declaring war. As the new animist Graham Harvey writes: “The recognition of personhood and of human participation in an ‘all-encompassing moral community’ need not be a cosy, romantic vision of peaceful co-operation and unity. Not only is enmity relational, but persons can be prey and/or predator” (2005: 28). If Oppy is right, then we may wonder, just where is the link between environmentalism and

20 

T. Smith

animism? What would make an animist’s view of the world particularly desirable in an effort to scrub out inequality or to solve environmental problems? Are we simply embracing some kind of caricature of animism as the philosophy of the indigenous “noble savage”? Van Eyghen, at the end of his chapter defending animism, considers the idea that it may be simpler to regard spirited things as having intrinsic value by virtue of the fact. Perhaps this is true, but as noted by Oppy, much depends on which things are regarded as spirited. To give a blunt example, when the volcano erupts and destroys the forest, this may be of little concern so long as it is the volcano rather than the forest that we acknowledge as a person. To conclude the book, two authors pen chapters that address, in concrete terms, how animistic ways of thinking could affect society in the future. Sven Nyholm (Chap. 13) asks whether we should be animists about robots. Kathryn Rountree (Chap. 14) asks what attitude a cosmopolitan society should take up with respect to animist traditions. These are not distant or far-off questions. Indeed, political questions pertinent to these very cases have already been decided. Should a cosmopolitan society recognize animist commitments to the personhood of the non-­ living? In New Zealand, the answer was apparently “yes”. Incredibly enough, in 2017, the country effected the metaphysical commitments of its indigenous people into law. According to the language of the Te Awa Tupua Act of 2017: The Whanganui river is recognized as “an indivisible and living whole, comprising the Whanganui River from the mountains to the sea, incorporating all its physical and metaphysical elements”. The river is “a spiritual and physical entity that supports and sustains … life and natural resources”. And the Act makes it such that the river “is a legal person and has all the rights, powers, duties, and liabilities of a legal person”. During the time that New Zealand was extending the realm of personhood in one direction, another country was moving things in a different direction altogether. By cosmic coincidence, 2017 was the same year that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia granted citizenship and legal personhood to a humanoid robot named Sophia. The decision—a public relations gimmick by the Kingdom, to be sure—was at least partly due to Sophia’s uncanny social abilities. Unlike the unhuman river, it was precisely Sophia’s humanlikeness that recommended her for the status of

1 Introduction 

21

personhood. More recently, in a case that received worldwide media attention, the software developer Blake Lemoine was placed on paid leave from Google, after releasing confidential information in support of his claim that LamDA (a chatbot under development) was a sentient person, deserving of legal rights and protections. All of this points toward animism needing to be taken more seriously, whether for reasons relating to environmentalism and the rights of indigenous peoples, or for reasons relating to the increasingly sophisticated creations found in the world of artificial intelligence. We are, as a society, coming to reappraise what the animists have said, and the reasons behind this reappraisal are often new and surprising. The more we listen to the animists, the more we will come to understand animism as a way of living in community with others. The very first step in this conversation is to acknowledge animists as reasonable and sensible, even if we ultimately disagree with what they say. “Taking animists seriously”, says Rountree, in this volume, “is a prerequisite and, hopefully, a precursor to taking animism seriously”. And if the reader still wonders: But why should we take animism seriously? There is only one answer I can bring forward that really matters: Because our thinking will be richer for it. And that is already enough.

References Barrett, J. (2004). Why would anyone believe in God? AltaMira Press. Barrett, J., & Clark, K. J. (2011). Reidian religious epistemology and the cognitive science of religion. Journal for the American Association of Religion., 79(3), 639–675. Bird, D. R. (2013). Val Plumwood’s philosophical animism: Attentive interactions in the sentient world. Environmental Humanities, 3(1), 93–109. Boyer, P. (2004). The naturalness of religious ideas: A cognitive theory of religion. University of California Press. Eldridge, R. (1996). Is animism alive and well? In D.  Z. Phillips (Ed.), Can religion be explained away? (pp. 3–25). St. Martin’s Press.

22 

T. Smith

Franke, A., & Latour, B. (2010). Angels without wings a conversation between Bruno Latour and Anselm Franke. In A. Franke (Ed.), Animism (pp. 86–96). Sternberg Press. Hallowell, A. I. (1960). Ojibwe ontology, behaviour, and worldview. Columbia University Press. Harvey, G. (2005). Animism: Respecting the living world. Wakefield Press. Hick, J. (1989). An interpretation of religion. Yale University Press. Horkheimer, M., & Adorno, T. (2002). Dialectic of enlightenment. University Press. Hume, D. (1956). The natural history of religion. University Press. Huxley, T. H. (1881). The connection of the biological sciences with medicine. Popular Science Monthly., 19, 795–808. James, W. (1917). The varieties of religious experience: A study in human nature being the Gifford lectures on natural religion delivered at Edinburgh in 1901-1902. Longman, Green, and Co. Neville, R.  C. (2018). Defining religion: Essays in philosophy of religion. SUNY Press. Paramore, K. (2008). Early Japanese Christian thought reexamined Confucian ethics, Catholic Authority, and the issue of faith in the scholastic theories of Habian, Gomez, and Ricci. Japanese Journal of Religious Studies, 35(2), 231–262. Plumwood, V. (2010). Nature in the active voice. In R. Irwin (Ed.), Climate change and philosophy: Transformational possibilities (pp. 32–47). Continuum. Tylor, E. B. [1871] 1958. Religion in primitive culture. Harper. Zuidervaart, L. (2015). Theodor W. Adorno. In E. Zalta (Ed.), Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy. Accessed August 03, 2022, from https://plato.stanford. edu/entries/adorno/

2 Animism and Cognitive Science of Religion: A Critical Perspective Darryl Wilkinson

The first thing that anyone learns about animism is that the word is most closely associated with the nineteenth-century anthropologist Sir Edward Burnett Tylor. Many others have since used the term, but none have escaped the intellectual shadow cast by Tylor, perhaps most of all those who have argued against him. The most important aspect of Tylor’s theory was that he saw animism as a mistake, an attribution of spirit to entities that are in truth inanimate. Until about a decade ago, a typical anthropology course—at least in the United States—would have presented animism as little more than an intellectual artifact; a dusty old idea that was at best a historical curiosity. Yet over the past few years, animism has been revived as an active scholarly category. This “New Animism” is substantially different from the old version in a variety of respects, especially its rejection of the Tylorian premise that animism is an erroneous set of beliefs (e.g. Harvey, 2005). I have discussed the intellectual project of New Animism in some detail elsewhere (see Wilkinson, D. Wilkinson (*) Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Smith (ed.), Animism and Philosophy of Religion, Palgrave Frontiers in Philosophy of Religion, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94170-3_2

23

24 

D. Wilkinson

2017), and do not wish to repeat myself here. Instead, I will focus on the quite distinct use of animism in what is often referred to as the Cognitive Science of Religion (hereafter CSR). Although both have risen to prominence in recent years, New Animism and CSR are, intellectually speaking, quite different. Whereas the New Animism categorically rejects the falsity of animism, and is thus post-Tylorian, everything said about animism within the CSR tradition flows from the premise that animism is self-evidently wrong. In this respect, we could say that CSR is basically a neo-Tylorian position, since it shares Tylor’s assumption that error comprises the irreducible core of animism. It is useful to begin with an outline of CSR’s basic premises. First, scholars in CSR generally assume that a naturalistic ontology provides an empirically superior conception of reality, and regard animism, and by extension religion in general, as erroneous precisely because neither animism nor religion is naturalistic. For instance, CSR scholars will often explicitly define religious beliefs as “counterfactual” (e.g. Atran, 2002: 4). At the same time, religion, usually defined as any supernaturalist ontology, is seen as a universal feature of all human societies—past as well as present (e.g. Boyer, 2001: 2). Indeed, for CSR scholars, there are really only two possible ontologies: naturalism and supernaturalism. All religions are thus placed in the same supernaturalistic box, and although distinctions between them certainly exist, these are regarded as trivial from an evolutionary perspective. Thus CSR scholars are not particularly interested in understanding any specific religion, so much as religion in general. Within the CSR tradition, it is also taken as a given that humans are a product of natural selection, and our basic cognitive characteristics must have been adaptive over evolutionary timescales. By extension, if human cognition emerged in the context of natural selection, and religion is an inherent aspect of human cognition, this must mean that the cognitive basis of religion itself is (or was) adaptive. However, this does not mean that religion itself is adaptive (a matter of debate among CSR scholars), only that the cognitive structures that give rise to religion are adaptive. In the latter case, religion might simply be a “byproduct” of our cognitive evolution (see Boyer, 2003). From these premises emerges a conundrum: why would a false belief in supernatural agents—or the cognitive structures that generate such

2  Animism and Cognitive Science of Religion: A Critical… 

25

beliefs—have been so beneficial to the survival of our species so as to have been selected for consistently across the millennia? Put another way, why has most of our species for most of its history been completely wrong in its understanding of the fundamental nature of reality? One might have assumed that the ability to accurately interpret the world is a useful cognitive faculty, which makes it is rather surprising that precisely the opposite was apparently favored by natural selection. How does one offer a naturalistic explanation for the fact that naturalism is so rare? CSR scholars are fairly uniform in the basic resolution they offer to this conundrum. Although supernaturalism is empirically inferior, they claim that it is (or was) adaptive in evolutionary terms, because it arises from a hypersensitivity to agency in the surrounding environment. One of the earliest iterations of this argument was developed by Stewart Guthrie (1980, 1993, 2014), and virtually all CSR scholars utilize some version of his original hypothesis, albeit with several modifications and refinements. According to Guthrie (1993: 45), perception is always a gamble, and in the long run, some bets will pay off better than others. The classic example he offers is someone who perceives a large mass out of the corner of their eye, which could be interpreted either as a bear or a boulder. For Guthrie, it is better to jump to the conclusion that the mysterious mass is a bear, rather than a boulder, because of the relative risks entailed. Mistake a rock for a bear, and at worst you will have given yourself an unnecessary fright; but mistake a bear for a rock, and you very well might end up as dinner. Thus the assumption that is less likely to be correct (i.e. that the unknown mass is a bear) will over time increase your chances of survival, and is cumulatively less risky than the statistically more reliable assumption (i.e. that the unknown mass is just a rock). Herein lies the basic CSR explanation for why supernaturalism is adaptive. Although the assumption that everything in the environment is an agent will usually prove false, it is also an assumption that in the long run kept our ancestors alive. Scott Atran offers a similar view, saying that our “agency detector system … is trip-wired to respond to fragmentary information under conditions of uncertainty, inciting perception of figures in the clouds, voices in the wind, lurking movements in the leaves… This hair-triggering of the agency-detection mechanism lends itself to supernatural interpretation of uncertain and anxiety-provoking events” (2002:

26 

D. Wilkinson

78). An almost identical claim is made by Justin Barrett, arguing that “the reason people believe in gods, ghosts, and goblins also comes from the way in which our minds, particularly our agency detection device (ADD) functions. Our ADD suffers from some hyperactivity, making it prone to find agents around us, including supernatural ones, given fairly modest evidence of their presence” (2004: 31). Now the first thing to say about this notion of “hypersensitive agency detection” is that it is simply weak evolutionary hypothesizing on the part of Guthrie, Barrett, and Atran. It is easy to posit adaptive mechanisms, but serious evolutionary hypotheses always consider the trade-offs that must come with any given adaptation. Indeed, it is questionable whether this “hair-trigger” reaction would be evolutionarily advantageous at all. When faced with a potential threat, humans (as with many other animals) experience a fight-or-flight response, which entails considerable physiological changes. Muscles become more tense, the endocrine system floods the body with adrenaline, and the heartbeat substantially increases. The flight-or-fight response is energetically costly, and it would therefore be maladaptive to any organism to experience it too much. When humans experience a flight-or-fight response to an excessive degree, we usually call it chronic stress. Moreover, an organism needs to be able to transit the landscape in a reasonably efficient manner in order to find essential things like food and water. Continuous reactions to potential predators far in excess of their actual incidence would substantially reduce the efficiency of an organism’s movements and foraging. Although Guthrie asserts that there is little cost to mistaking a rock for a bear, the abstract way in which this equation is formulated is misleading. If you make such a mistake once, then yes, it is a relatively inconsequential error. But if you are constantly making this mistake, perhaps hundreds of times a day in a boulder-­ rich environment, then the equation becomes a rather different one. Constantly responding to every boulder as if it were a threat is going to be extremely inefficient over extended periods of time. In evolutionary terms, everything comes down to energetic trade-offs, something which is largely ignored by Barrett, Atran, and Guthrie. But let us assume, for the sake of argument, that the basic CSR hypothesis is correct—in other words, we are cognitively predisposed to over-­ detect agency in our environment, and this is the root cause of belief in

2  Animism and Cognitive Science of Religion: A Critical… 

27

supernatural entities. Let us also accept the other general premises that underpin CSR research, as I have outlined them. To be clear, I am not saying that these premises should be accepted. For instance, the assumed universal validity of religion as an analytical category is a highly contentious matter (e.g. Asad, 1993; Dubuisson, 2003; Fitzgerald, 1997) as is the ontological superiority of naturalism itself (e.g. Viveiros de Castro, 1998). But in this chapter, my aim is to offer a critical account of several aspects of CSR in its own terms—especially Guthrie’s deployment of the terms “animism” and “anthropomorphism”. This chapter is not therefore intended as a wholesale critique of CSR, but more a targeted evaluation of its neo-Tylorian understanding of animism. Despite my primary concern being with Guthrie’s work, his ideas have influenced other CSR scholars considerably, and I will also seek to draw out such connections where relevant.

1 Guthrie’s Anthropomorphism and Animism As discussed above, for CSR scholars the term “religion” is basically a synonym for any supernaturalistic ontology. Moreover, when it comes to supernatural beliefs the “serious stuff … is generally about person-like beings” (Boyer, 2001: 142). In other words, at the core of all supernaturalistic ontologies is the proposition that there exist nonhuman creatures who are similar to humans. Although these supernatural entities can resemble humans in any number of respects, including their physical form, by far their most important human-like characteristic is the possession of a mind (Boyer, 2001: 144; Pyysiäinen, 2003: 16). In the CSR literature it is therefore common to focus primarily on god concepts, a term of art that refers to any person-like supernatural entity that is not a human—so not just literal deities, but all manner of “ghosts, ancestor spirits, devils, witches, and angels” (Barrett, 2007: 772). Much of this thinking builds on Guthrie’s (1980, 1993, 2014) arguments, in which he explicitly defines religion as a form of anthropomorphism. For Guthrie, anthropomorphism is the perception of human characteristics in something that is not human. Guthrie uses the term “animism” in a slightly

28 

D. Wilkinson

distinct way, to refer to the attribution of life to the non-living. But in practice the two frequently overlap. For instance, believing a mountain to be a god would simultaneously be animism (i.e. the attribution of life to something lifeless) and anthropomorphism (i.e. the attribution of human-like cognition to something that is not human). Here we can see that how the CSR understanding of religion is largely cognate with Tylor’s view of animism. Tylor (1920: 285) understood animism as the personification of natural entities, which for him formed the primordial core of all religion, as distinct from later embellishments like ethical codes or concerns over ritual purity. Similarly, CSR understands the projection of intentional agency onto elements of the surrounding environment as the cognitive foundation of religion over evolutionary timescales. In this section, I want to explore Guthrie’s discussion of anthropomorphism and animism in detail, given that his ideas on the topic have been so influential with respect to CSR research. In an attempt to clarify his terms, Guthrie (1993) suggests that we “animate, but do not anthropomorphize … if we say an automobile purrs like a kitten”. He then goes on to say if “we speak to the automobile, however, we both animate and anthropomorphize”. There is a lot to unpack here, so let us begin with the first of these statements. The initial problem is that Guthrie is conflating a literary device called a simile with ontological propositions. An ontological proposition is a belief or statement about the nature of reality; a representation of what does and does not exist in the world. For example, the statement “demons sometimes possess people” is clearly an ontological proposition. It posits a world in which there exist external entities called demons, who can inhabit people’s bodies, and thus alter their behavior or abilities. By contrast, the statement “he fought like a man possessed” is not an ontological proposition in the same sense, because its reference to demonic possession is only meant figuratively. As a matter of logic, ontological propositions can be erroneous. In other words, any given representation of reality could always be a misrepresentation. For instance, demons might not actually exist, and the behavior attributed to demonic possession might be due to some other cause, like psychosis. What then of Guthrie’s cars and kittens? Clearly he is not talking about people who seriously believe that their cars are kittens, but instead referring to a common tendency to compare the sounds made by kittens with

2  Animism and Cognitive Science of Religion: A Critical… 

29

the sounds made by automobile engines. Moreover, since Guthrie (1993: 204) insists that animism and anthropomorphism are “by definition mistaken”, we must read him as saying that it is erroneous to compare the sound made by a car to the sound made by a kitten. But this makes no sense at all. The basis of the comparison to which he is referring is that humans often find the sounds made by kittens pleasing, and they also find the sounds made by a well-tooled engine pleasing. Surely if the person in question finds car sounds and feline sounds similarly pleasant, the comparison is a perfectly apt one? How could a subjective response such as this possibly be considered an error? Similes, like literary devices in general, are intended to conjure a particular representation in their audience. At most they can be ineffective, but they can never meaningfully be wrong (i.e. empirically false). Guthrie treats the statement “my car is a cat” as if it were equivalent to the statement “the sound made by my car pleases me in a way similar to the sound made by cats”. But these two statements are not equivalent. Now let us move on to Guthrie’s other example, which deals with the phenomenon of people talking to their cars. Here again, we find Guthrie conflating ontological propositions with figurative expressions. Of course, there might be people in the world who genuinely believe that their car is sentient or possessed by some sort of spirit, but obviously this is not what Guthrie is talking about here. Instead, he is describing a tendency for people to vocalize in the direction of complex technological artifacts, especially things like cars and computers. To a large extent, this reflects the unpredictably of complex technologies. There is relatively little that can go wrong with a spoon or a knife, whereas cars and computers experience all manner of breakdowns and malfunctions. Does it matter if people genuinely believe that their cars and computers can hear and respond to these utterances? It would presumably matter to a psychiatrist, who would likely draw a sharp distinction between swearing at one’s computer in frustration—and insisting that one’s computer is a sentient creature that can hear and think. All these examples of people speaking to technological artifacts are really forms of ironic play-acting, the performative equivalent of a literary device. Humans constantly engage in irony, mockery, exaggeration, pretense, and insincerity.

30 

D. Wilkinson

In fairness, Guthrie (1993: 54) does anticipate that his conflation of metaphors and ontological propositions might be read by some as an apples-to-oranges comparison. His counter-argument is that metaphorical animism is just a more self-conscious and calculated version of the “naïve” animism that underlies actual religious belief (Guthrie 1993: 122). For Guthrie then, anthropomorphic metaphor and religious anthropomorphism both arise from the same cognitive source, the only difference being the degree of self-awareness in the mind that generates them. Again, however, this contradicts Guthrie’s own definition of anthropomorphism as an inherently erroneous perception. If it is a category error to see metaphors as empirically false—because they are not intended to serve as descriptions of reality in the first place—then we cannot accept the argument that anthropomorphic metaphors and belief in anthropomorphic beings are just different iterations of the same phenomenon. Setting all that aside, is there any reason to believe that the human capacity for figurative language is a function of the same cognitive structures that allow sentience to be attributed to entities like trees or rocks? In other words, does an animistic belief that the sun, moon, and other celestial bodies possess sentience arise from the same cognitive structures that led Bob Marley to sing “The High Yellow Moon won’t come out to play”? Recall that the basic hypothesis of CSR is that our evolved cognitive structures include a hypersensitivity to agency, which leads us to overrepresent the number of intentional agents that exist in our environment. In other words, we are hardwired to assume that rocks are bears, but not to assume that bears are rocks. This is supposedly why religions are relentlessly and consistently prone to anthropomorphism and animism; they see the world as more organizationally complex, and more human-like than it really is (Guthrie, 1993: 39). Moreover, if metaphor emerges from the same cognitive structures as religion, then it follows that metaphorical thought should resemble religion in exhibiting the same fundamental tendency toward anthropomorphism. Let us be clear here, the question is not whether metaphors can be anthropomorphic; clearly they can be. The question is whether or not metaphors are quintessentially and overwhelmingly anthropomorphic, because this is precisely the claim that is made about religion, and Guthrie insists there is no sharp line to be drawn between the two.

2  Animism and Cognitive Science of Religion: A Critical… 

31

And yet literature is replete with the opposite of anthropomorphism— that is the metaphorical attribution of thing-like qualities to human beings. We seem to lack an ideal term for this phenomenon. Objectification is one possibility, although it has pejorative connotations, and so here I will suggest “pragmatomorphism” as a more suitable neologism. Anthropomorphism represents nonhumans as humanlike, whereas pragmatomorphism is the reverse, representing humans in terms of the nonhuman. For instance, numerous singers in the twentieth century have struck a maudlin tone with the lyrics “You are my sunshine, my only sunshine”. Elsewhere, Shakespeare has Romeo opine “what light through yonder window breaks? It is the east, and Juliet is the sun!”, and centuries later, Bill Withers would sing that there “ain’t no sunshine when she’s gone”. I could exhaust my entire word limit on solar metaphors alone. To be fair, the sun is a remarkably important object from the perspective of life on earth; so perhaps it is a special case. What about rocks then? Surely there are few things as ubiquitous and insensate as mere lumps of stone? And yet, lithic metaphors seem to be just as popular in lyrical circles. For instance, Pink Floyd gave us the refrain “shine on you, crazy diamond” and Simon and Garfunkel sang “I am a rock, I am an island”. Similarly, Bob Dylan famously chorused “how does it feel, to be … like a rolling stone”, a metaphor also used by The Temptations in “Papa was a rolling stone”. Another common font of metaphor is the comparison of humans to animals, often with sexual connotations, such as Tom Jones’ question: “what’s new pussycat?” or Elvis’ faux admonishment: “you ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog”. Rather than anthropomorphic imputations of greater agency, the function of such zoomorphic metaphors is to reduce the implied intentionality of the humans to which they refer. Not only are there endless examples of metaphors and similes that describe humans as either things or animals, there are also those that compare one thing to another, with no living beings involved on either side of the equation. For instance, in the poem The Highwayman by Sir Alfred Noyes, we are told “the road was a ribbon of moonlight”, while “the moon was a ghostly galleon”. And according to Jacques in Shakespeare’s As You Like It, “all the world’s a stage”. I will not belabor the point any further, but clearly there is no obvious tendency for metaphors to take a predominantly

32 

D. Wilkinson

anthropomorphizing form. I suppose one could in theory conduct a large-scale analysis of figurative language across a representative sample of world literature to determine if anthropomorphism truly dominates human figuration, but Guthrie undertakes no such empirical study. He simply cherry-picks a lot of anthropomorphic metaphors, and ignores all the others. All this matters because Guthrie posits the tendency to leap to anthropomorphic interpretations as having an adaptive evolutionary advantage. Recall that we are supposedly hardwired to see rocks as bears, but not to see bears as rocks, because it was the former that kept our ancestors alive. That being the case, the existence of thing-to-thing metaphors makes no sense at all within the parameters of Guthrie’s argument. After all, what would be the adaptive advantage in misinterpreting a rock for a tree, or vice versa? Yet if Guthrie’s assertions are correct, then the human brain should generate a lot more anthropomorphic metaphors than it does other kinds of figuration. In particular, pragmatomorphic metaphors should go against the cognitive grain, since it would be patently maladaptive to habitually interpret bears as rocks. And yet there is no evidence that our figurative expressions have any particular bias toward anthropomorphism. This suggests that the human capacity for figuration and metaphor probably has very little to do with our tendency to believe in gods, and Guthrie’s idea that they are more or less self-conscious manifestations of the same phenomenon is not well supported. Another concern is the conflation of anthropomorphism with comparison in general. Yet again, literary devices are the mainstay of Guthrie’s argument. For example, he makes the remarkable claim that the “most striking animist is a Victorian, Charles Dickens” (Guthrie, 1993: 58). Why exactly does the famous novelist merit being labeled an arch-­ animist? As evidence, Guthrie points to one of Dickens’ sentences from Barnaby Rudge, in which he is describing a house: “The bricks of which it was built had originally been a deep dark red, but had grown yellow and discolored like an old man’s skin”. This is presented by Guthrie as an example of anthropomorphism. The first thing to say here is that this is not actually anthropomorphism, even according to Guthrie’s own

2  Animism and Cognitive Science of Religion: A Critical… 

33

definition. Anthropomorphism entails the extension of an exclusively human characteristic to a nonhuman entity. For example, if Dickens had said that the bricks looked tired, then that would indeed be an example of anthropomorphism, since bricks do not experience fatigue. However, in the quoted passage, the author is ascribing bricks with the property of yellowness. But neither being yellow nor undergoing discoloration is an exclusive feature of human beings. It is therefore entirely possible for both a human and a house to share in the property of yellowness. In a literary register, Dickens is comparing the aging of houses with the aging of people, both of which lead to “yellowing”. But again, experiencing the passage of time is common to all things, not just humans. Anthropomorphism is the extension of exclusively human characteristics to nonhumans, not the recognition of similarities between humans and nonhumans. For example, if I were to say that “horses bleed just as red as humans” I would not actually be anthropomorphizing horses; both species do in fact have blood that is red in color. Guthrie seems to be of the view that all comparison involving humans and nonhumans constitutes “anthropomorphism”, even when the comparison involves characteristics that are empirically shared. Why does it matter if Guthrie conflates ontological propositions with examples of metaphor and irony? This point is not simply nitpicking on my part. It is vital to distinguish between anthropomorphism on the one hand, and comparisons between humans and nonhumans on the other. According to Guthrie, religion is non-naturalistic, insofar as it is based on the empirical error of anthropomorphism. And yet comparison is fundamental to naturalistic science. For example, zoologists compare humans with nonhuman animals all the time. Indeed, the very notion that humans and animals (along with plants, fungi, bacteria, etc.) are organic entities rests on their having a number of shared characteristics that distinguish them from inorganic entities. By conflating anthropomorphism with comparison, Guthrie undermines the distinction between naturalistic and supernaturalistic ideas, even though this entire theory is built on just such a binary.

34 

D. Wilkinson

2 Evolutionist Commitments Given that Guthrie’s ostensible concern is with religion and its origins, why then does he spend so much time focusing on metaphors rather than actual religious beliefs? Why make Charles Dickens the arch-animist in the story, rather than a more traditional ethnographic subject, such as a shaman from an Indigenous culture? No doubt aware of the colonial baggage carried by the term “animism”, a number of scholars in the CSR tradition have tried to decouple it from any lingering connotations of Victorian theorizing about the minds of “primitives”. For instance, Guthrie (2000: 106) articulates this aim in quite explicit terms, saying, “I emphasize material from the contemporary West, not from indigenes”. For Guthrie (2014) then, animism is not a feature of primitive thought, so much as feature of human thought in general, making it a cultural universal. As such, the focus on novels by Dickens, or people swearing at their computers, is an attempt to demonstrate the universality of animism, even amid the secular West. Yet despite these efforts, Guthrie’s understanding of religion remains a thoroughly evolutionist one, positing a ladder of intellectual progress where Indigenous religions occupy the bottom rung, and Western science the top. I deliberately use the term evolutionist here, as distinct from evolutionary. An evolutionist account is a teleological narrative of progress that occurs over time, whereas an evolutionary account is, in the spirit of Darwinism, radically non-teleological. Consider, for example, the following claim: Animism … is not peculiar to tribal or nonliterate culture, as often thought, but is common also in literate Europe and East Asia. And although literate expressions of animism may be self-conscious, they originate in the unconscious interpretative processes shared by all perception. (Guthrie, 1993: 60)

It is clear here that Guthrie thinks we are all animists, and he is not suggesting that Western culture has transcended or abandoned animistic thinking. But his narrative is still one of universal progress, wherein

2  Animism and Cognitive Science of Religion: A Critical… 

35

literate and Western societies are presented as self-conscious of their animism, while Indigenous societies are seen conversely as naïve in their tendencies to anthropomorphize the world around them. Predictably, Christianity sits on a middle rung below science, but above Indigenous religion. As Guthrie puts it, “perhaps somewhat diminished by Christianity, animism has continued throughout Western Culture” (1993: 55; my emphasis). Given that actual Christianity is replete with bleeding statues, saintly relics, and demon-possessed idols, it is unclear to me how it can be seen as constituting a diminishment of animism. Instead, the Christianity Guthrie refers seems more like a theoretical construct intended to bridge the gap between Indigenous religions and science— which is precisely the role Christianity has often played in evolutionist accounts of religion. Moreover, secular intellectuals, and especially scientists, are claimed to be “the people wariest of anthropomorphism, and although most regard it as unalloyed error, they are as prone to it as the rest of us” (Guthrie, 1993: 176). At this point the evolutionist tenor of the overall narrative is clear. Whereas our Stone Age ancestors and Indigenous peoples innocently embrace animism, Christians and especially secular scientists are wary of it, knowing it to be a mistake. Thus Guthrie’s progressivist story hinges on humanity’s growing consciousness of animism as an error, even if our cognitive structures mean that despite our best efforts, we will always lapse back into our evolutionary hardwiring. It is important to recognize that there is nothing particularly new about such perspectives. Tylor himself did not think that Victorian Britain had abandoned animism either, regarding the widespread popularity of séances in his time as clear evidence for the persistence of primitive religiosity (Stocking, 1971). Thus the idea that animism endures despite modernity has been part of evolutionist narratives on religion from their very inception. In fact, evolutionist accounts almost never posit a clean break between modernity and the primitive; our primal nature is ever lurking, ready to reassert itself in unguarded moments.

36 

D. Wilkinson

3 Secular Hyperopia The final matter I wish to discuss is a kind of analytical “hyperopia” that often permeates the CSR literature. Hyperopia is the opposite of nearsightedness, and so refers to an inability to focus on the things that are closest to us. Specifically, proponents of CSR often struggle to deal adequately with secular modernity in their accounts of human cognition. For instance, Guthrie does not think that anthropomorphism is an exclusive property of religions, but he does say that whereas, “Religious anthropomorphism typically is elaborate, shared, and enduring; secular anthropomorphism typically is ad hoc, idiosyncratic and fleeting” (Guthrie, 1993: 112). What he means here is that religions tend to build elaborate and long-lasting theologies and institutions around anthropomorphic gods, whereas secular anthropomorphism is usually more akin to swearing at a malfunctioning computer, or a line from a poem. Yet it is difficult to see how such claims can be squared with the existence of something like corporate personhood. In the United States, it is a fundamental legal principle that corporations are people, up to and including their right to exercise free speech and religion. Rather than an “ad hoc, idiosyncratic and fleeting” phenomenon, corporate personhood is one of the most important structural aspects of modern, capitalist societies. Of course, it was probably not Guthrie’s intention to make any explicit claims about corporate personhood in this instance—which is precisely the point—it never occurred to him to examine corporate personhood, even in a discussion about secular forms of anthropomorphism. When it comes to secular modernity, I contend that this sort of analytical blindness is a recurring feature of CSR scholarship. All manner of non-naturalistic entities typify secular modernity, and yet fall completely outside the analytical confines of CSR. Consider, for example, the conspicuously animistic ontology of infanthood that permeates Western societies. In Western contexts, personhood is almost uniformly regarded as being present in even the youngest of infants. Legally speaking, infants are deemed to be persons from the moment of birth, or, in some jurisdictions, from the moment of conception (Schroedel et al., 2000). We also see a similar ontology of personhood enacted in less codified social practices. Here we might point to the fact that Western infants

2  Animism and Cognitive Science of Religion: A Critical… 

37

are often given personal names shortly after birth, and increasingly in utero, a practice that has been strongly promoted through the routinization of prenatal ultrasound scanning. Insofar as photographic albums are biographical archives, it is now becoming very common for the “first baby photo” to take the form of an ultrasound scan (Mills, 2014: 92). Elsewhere, we could note that it has also become increasingly common for American parents to initiate their children’s education at a prenatal stage, the most widespread example being the exposure of fetuses to classical music with the intention of promoting their intellectual development. This is not just a popular fashion, but something promoted in scientific and medical literatures as well (e.g. Federico & Whitwell, 2001). Similarly, Western medicine commonly pathologizes the “failure” of mothers to develop a strong emotional bond toward their offspring, during pregnancy and especially in the days immediately following birth. According to one study recently published in the Journal of Psychology and Psychotherapy, “the bond between mother and child already starts during pregnancy.… During the second half of pregnancy in particular, the fetus becomes more human to the mother” (Cuijlits et  al., 2016). Note here how Western ontologies of infant personhood are presented in a highly naturalized fashion, and regularly grounded in universalized biological and psychological responses. My aim here is not to promote some “correct” ontological account of human infants. Rather I am highlighting that according to the definitions provided by CSR scholars themselves, normative Western ontologies of infanthood are both animist and supernaturalistic—which is to say, from a naturalistic perspective, they are “counterfactual”. As Guthrie puts it, “anthropomorphism entails seeing nonhuman phenomena as humanlike … but most importantly describes a mind, capable for example of desire, belief and most specifically language and symbolism” (2020: 49). Note here that “humanlike” refers to a very particular suite of cognitive characteristics, arranged in a hierarchical sequence culminating in the capacity for language and symbolic thought. Newborn infants might be considered members of the species Homo sapiens from a genomic perspective, but they are not yet “humanlike” according to these cognitive criteria. Humans are not born with the ability to produce language and abstract symbolism and, in some cases, may never acquire it. And yet,

38 

D. Wilkinson

Westerners clearly anthropomorphize their children when they attribute them with cognitive capacities that they are still only in the process of developing. Thus Western society is typified by a pervasive and deeply felt “infant animism”, meaning a tendency to treat infants as possessing a level of sentience in excess of what they empirically demonstrate. This infant animism is found at every possible level, including the legal, cultural, religious, and scientific. Moreover, infant animism should be seen as the norm for both Christians and secular atheists in Western societies. Although these two camps might disagree on the personhood of fetuses, they are largely in accord when it comes to attributing personhood to newborns. But perhaps this is just a universal aspect of the way humans act toward their offspring? Maybe everyone treats infants as if they were cognitively more advanced than they truly are, precisely to encourage their mental development? And yet infant animism is very far from being a universal phenomenon. For example, among the Masai, a pastoralist group residing in Tanzania and Kenya, a boy typically receives his first name after his incisors have erupted (usually around six months old). Prior to developing incisors, the infant is simply referred to in generic fashion as enkerai (baby) (de Vries, 1987). Interestingly, de Vries (1987: 173) observed that mothers had fairly muted emotional reactions when their nameless infants died, whereas the death of a named child produced intense public displays of grief. Obviously the “insufficient” emotional response of Masai mothers toward the death of unnamed children would be deemed quite pathological, unnatural even, from the perspective of Western psychiatry. Turning to the issue of language, among the Naiken, a hunter-­ gatherer group from South Asia, children are seldom verbally addressed at all until they reach around three years of age (Bird, 1982: 50). This practice was explained by one of the Naiken mothers interviewed by Bird, saying, “[H]e cannot yet respond to a name, so I do not call him” (Bird, 1982: 50). Conversely, for most Western parents, the idea that one should not address a child by name because it cannot yet speak would seem downright bizarre. Cross-cultural studies of infanthood indicate that for many non-industrialized societies, very young children are not ordinarily considered persons, and only achieve such status after a period of several months or years (with much variation as to which biographical

2  Animism and Cognitive Science of Religion: A Critical… 

39

milestones are deemed to be important). Even societies that have had long-running interactions with Christianity do not always shift their understandings of personhood to conform to “official” ontological frameworks. For example, despite the Catholic Church’s well-publicized position that life begins at conception, Indigenous Catholic communities in highland Ecuador tend to regard personhood as beginning instead from the moment of baptism (Morgan, 1997). It is clear that many ethnographically recorded societies do not conceptualize, or even act and feel toward infants as if they were persons. At best, they treat infants as if they were potential people, and months or years may pass before their personhood is fully recognized. We might refer to this phenomenon as “infant naturalism”, meaning a tendency to only attribute young humans with as much personhood as they empirically demonstrate. It contrasts sharply with infant animism, a tendency to perceive infants (and fetuses) as inherently persons, an increasingly prominent characteristic of industrialized societies. That being the case, does infant animism count as a religious phenomenon? For most CSR scholars, the answer would probably be “no”, since they understand religions as a belief in gods, who typically possess superhuman capabilities and attributes. But the tendency in CSR to reduce all religion to god concepts has been criticized as universalizing Christian norms, and lacking in empirical justification (e.g. Laidlaw, 2007). In any event, infant animism is clearly not grounded in naturalism. And what else should we call non-naturalistic and counterfactual beliefs, but “religion”? Of course, the real reason that infant animism is not deemed religious is obvious. No one is a self-professed animist—at least in the sense of CSR, where animism is explicitly defined as a false belief. We are all inclined to insist on the reality of our own beliefs, which is why animism is always something attributed to others. For that very reason, most Westerners do not see infant animism as animism precisely because for them, infant personhood is “natural”. Indeed, the term “supernatural” is arguably a euphemism for others’ concepts of nature (i.e. those we believe are false). Thus, for similar reasons, hardly anyone describes their own beliefs as supernaturalistic. And when CSR scholars identify various beliefs or activities as such, they are usually applying the label despite the emic taxonomies of the people in question. But millions of Westerners

40 

D. Wilkinson

believe in all manner of counterfactual and non-naturalistic constructs— from races to nations, and markets to money—without construing them in explicitly supernatural terms. Moreover, CSR scholars, themselves steeped in secular modernity, typically accept the validity of such emic perspectives without question—after all, it is their perspective as well.

4 Conclusions Despite occasional protestations to the contrary (e.g. Pyysiäinen, 2003: 1–5), CSR largely adheres to a Western folk understanding of religion. What I mean by this is that anytime CSR scholars offer examples of phenomena they deem religious, they conform exactly to what a typical Westerner would mean by the term. In other words, CSR scholars never give counterintuitive examples of religiosity, where something that would not commonsensically be categorized as religious turns out to be so. This is why clearly non-naturalistic phenomena like infant personhood do not figure very much in their analyses. The proponents of CSR believe in religion as a sui generis category, and are therefore committed to maintaining its validity in their writings. However, religion and secular modernity are a constitutive binary—neither makes sense without the other. Thus CSR must commit itself to avoiding any critical analysis of secular phenomena, since to do so would undermine the very binary upon which their work hinges. As a result, CSR scholars sometimes try to deny the “religiosity” of secular phenomenon even to the point of self-contradiction. Justin Barrett, for example, makes a valiant effort to justify why Santa Claus does not qualify as a god, saying that he “used magic reindeer for his flying trick… but presumably any ordinary person with access to Santa’s resources could do likewise” (2008: 155). It is obviously true that without Santa’s magical resources, he would seem less supernatural. But this argument seems inconsistent with Barrett’s (2007: 772) assertion elsewhere that beings such as witches certainly do count as gods (2007: 772). If we took away the magical resources available to witches, surely they would just be ordinary people too? Barrett’s argument here thus ends up as little more than a tautology: if we remove the godlike properties of

2  Animism and Cognitive Science of Religion: A Critical… 

41

gods, they become less godlike. I suspect Barrett is inclined to reject Santa Claus’ status as a god because he is not ordinarily considered as such within Western folk understandings of religion. That is, we do not normally think of Santa Claus as a religious figure, largely because he is only “real” to children, and we typically imagine religion to be a more adult affair. But rather than critically rethink the Western folk category of religion, Barrett tries to argue that Santa Claus does not conform to CSR’s understanding of a god, despite the contradictions that ensue. To my mind, such arguments are illustrative of CSR’s tendency to reinforce the folk category of religion that exists in Western cultures. In the end, the term “animism” always reveals more about those who use it than those of whom it is used. And it seems to me that CSR scholarship is no exception. Its proponents are very good at analyzing the non-­ naturalistic aspects of religious belief. But the price of fixating on others’ “mistakes” is that it often blinds us to our own. Put another way, the critical stance that CSR provides on religious metaphysics seems to be coupled with a profoundly uncritical stance toward the metaphysical commitments of secularism itself. As a result, evolutionist, rather than evolutionary, narratives emerge, because they are the only way to maintain the boundary between religion and secular modernity. But any non-­ teleological account of human cognitive evolution must seek to contend with secular modernity, rather than just avoid the subject. I am not, in the end, entirely unsympathetic to the application of cognitive science to the study of widespread commonalities in human beliefs and social practices. Nor am I a strict particularist, who would insist that nothing can ever be understood in anything except its own terms. Yet as long as the proponents of CSR continue to adhere to a folk understanding of religion, their contributions will, in my view, remain limited. The crucial, first step in the analysis of religion is to stop believing in it.

References Asad, T. (1993). Genealogies of religion: Discipline and reasons of power in Christianity and Islam. Johns Hopkins University Press. Atran, S. (2002). In Gods we trust: The evolutionary landscape of religion. Oxford University Press.

42 

D. Wilkinson

Barrett, J. L. (2004). Why would anyone believe in God? AltaMira Press. Barrett, J.  L. (2007). Cognitive science of religion: What is it and why is it? Religion Compass, 1(6), 768–786. Barrett, J. L. (2008). Why Santa Claus is not a God. Journal of Cognition and Culture, 8(1–2), 149–161. Bird, N. (1982). ‘Inside’ and ‘outside’ in kinship usage: The hunter-gatherer Naiken of South Asia. Cambridge Anthropology, 7(1), 47–57. Boyer, P. (2001). Religion explained: The evolutionary origins of religious thought. Basic books. Boyer, P. (2003). Religious thought and behaviour as by-products of brain function. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 7, 119–124. Cuijlits, I., Van De Wetering, A. P., Potharst, E. S., Truijens, S. E. M., van Baar, A. L., & Vjm, P. (2016). Development of a pre-and postnatal bonding scale (PPBS). Journal of Psychology & Psychotherapy, 6(5), 1000182. de Vries, M. W. (1987). Cry babies, culture, and catastrophe: Infant temperament among the Masai. In N.  Scheper-Hughes (Ed.), Child survival (pp. 165–185). Springer. Dubuisson, D. (2003). The western construction of religion: Myths, knowledge, and ideology. Johns Hopkins University Press. Federico, G.  F., & Whitwell, G.  E. (2001). Music therapy and pregnancy. Journal of Prenatal & Perinatal Psychology & Health, 15(4), 299–311. Fitzgerald, T. (1997). A critique of ‘religion’ as a cross-cultural category. Method & Theory in the Study of Religion, 9(2), 91–110. Guthrie, S.  E. (1980). A cognitive theory of religion. Current Anthropology., 21(2), 181–203. Guthrie, S.  E. (1993). Faces in the clouds: A new theory of religion. Oxford University Press. Guthrie, S. E. (2000). On animism. Current Anthropology, 41(1), 106–107. Guthrie, S.  E. (2014). Spiritual beings: A Darwinian, cognitive account. In G.  Harvey (Ed.), The handbook of contemporary animism (pp.  361–366). Routledge. Guthrie, S.  E. (2020). Religion as anthropomorphism. In J.  Liddle & T. K. Shackleford (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of evolutionary psychology and religion (pp. 48–68). Oxford University Press. Harvey, G. (2005). Animism: Respecting the living world. Wakefield Press. Laidlaw, J. (2007). A well-disposed social anthropologist’s problems with the ‘cognitive science of religion’. In H. Whitehouse & J. Laidlaw (Eds.), Religion, anthropology, and cognitive science (pp. 211–246). Carolina Academic Press.

2  Animism and Cognitive Science of Religion: A Critical… 

43

Mills, C. (2014). Making fetal persons: Fetal homicide, ultrasound, and the normative significance of birth. Philosophia, 4(1), 88–107. Morgan, L. M. (1997). Imagining the unborn in the Ecuadoran Andes. Feminist Studies., 23(2), 323–350. Pyysiäinen, I. (2003). How religion works: Towards a new cognitive science of religion. Brill. Schroedel, J., Fiber, P., & Snyder, B. D. (2000). Women’s rights and fetal personhood in criminal law. Duke Journal of Gender Law & Policy, 7, 89–120. Stocking, G. W. (1971). Animism in theory and practice: E. B. Tylor’s unpublished notes on ‘spiritualism’. Man, 6(1), 88–104. Tylor, E.  B. [1871] 1920. Primitive culture: Researches into the development of mythology, philosophy, religion, art, and custom (Vol. 1). Murray. Viveiros de Castro, E. (1998). Cosmological Deixis and Amerindian perspectivism. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 4(3), 469–488. Wilkinson, D. (2017). Is there such a thing as animism? Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 85(2), 289–311.

3 Wilkinson’s “Animism and Cognitive Science of Religion” Stewart Guthrie

Ah, but a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, Or what’s a heaven for?—Robert Browning, from “Andrea del Sarto”

Wilkinson’s chapter is bold and ambitious, broadly criticizing the cognitive science of religion (CSR), an interdisciplinary field of study a few decades old and widely acknowledged as the growth area in the study of religion.1 In the course of his critique, Wilkinson questions—appropriately, in my view—the validity of two Western concepts central to CSR, namely “supernatural” and “religion,” and faults CSR’s often uncritical use of them. These virtues, however, are undercut by several errors of fact and interpretation.  For example, by the late Jonathan Z. Smith, Distinguished Professor of Religion at the University of Chicago, in a guest lecture at the University of Colorado, Boulder, on the future of religious studies, April 13, 2010. 1

S. Guthrie (*) Fordham University, Bronx, NY, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Smith (ed.), Animism and Philosophy of Religion, Palgrave Frontiers in Philosophy of Religion, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94170-3_3

45

46 

S. Guthrie

Let me first mention what seem like three omissions, the first of which sometimes renders his argument unclear. This is Wilkinson’s failure to say what he means by a key term, animism, despite briefly discussing several possible meanings. Historically this term has chiefly meant either belief in spiritual beings (Tylor, 1873) or the attribution of life to inanimate things and events (Piaget, 1929 and many later psychologists, up to the present). A third, less frequent meaning is anthropomorphism, the attribution of human characteristics to non-human things and events, as in the New Animism’s “relational” animism, or having social relationships with other-than-human persons. A new and different use of “animism” as anthropomorphism appears here in Wilkinson’s neologism, “infant animism.” By this, he means the attribution of adult human abilities such as language to infants. Such attributions “anthropomorphize” the infants because, lacking the actual attributes, they are not fully human. All these uses of the term “animism,” including the new one, seem admissible. The problem is simply that one often cannot tell which “animism” Wilkinson has in mind. A second omission is that Wilkinson, while dismissing the analytic value of “supernatural” and “religion,” adduces no substantive reasons. Instead, he attaches the term “folk category” and remarks that CSR fails to examine them critically. Regarding “religion,” he at least lists three relevant critical sources (Asad, Dubuisson, Fitzgerald), though without discussion. For “supernatural,” however, he cites only Viveiros de Castro (1998), a publication that gives only a few short sentences to the concept. Given Wilkinson’s declared, but unelaborated, concern with the weakness of “supernatural” and “religion” as categories in CSR, a third omission is any mention of CSR’s most prominent commentator on these categories, the late anthropologist of religion Benson Saler (1993, in press). In his Conceptualizing Religion (1993), for example, Saler proposed a multifactorial, family-resemblance version of religion as a “fuzzy” category (i.e., one that is not either-or but more-or-less) that a number of scholars find cross-culturally applicable. It’s worth noting also that in his Construction of the Supernatural in Euro-American Cultures (in press) Saler found little to recommend in CSR’s use of the category “supernatural.” Tracing the history of that category, Saler shows that it is unstable and cannot be used as a proxy for

3  Wilkinson’s “Animism and Cognitive Science of Religion” 

47

religion. He elaborates his longstanding misgivings (1993) about use of the category by anthropologists, and joins Durkheim (1915) and a number of well-regarded anthropologists of religion2 in rejecting its blanket application to cultures that do not share it. Horton (1993), for example, wrote that calling Kalabari deities supernatural is no more accurate than calling atomic particles supernatural. These predecessors of Wilkinson’s skepticism of “supernatural” merit his attention. Saler (in press) points out not only that the concept supernatural is culture-bound, and historically inconstant even in the West, but also that the ancient Greeks and the twentieth-century Ojibwa considered their gods natural. Neither the Greeks nor the Ojibwa, according to both Saler (op. cit.) and Hallowell (1960), had the supernatural among their categories. The Greeks thought their gods’ origins, too, were natural, taking place within the natural, knowable world, and often portrayed the gods with a full complement of human weaknesses, save only mortality, and as neither omniscient nor omnipotent. That these two peoples, so separate in time and space, considered their gods natural undermines, of course, any necessary linkage of supernatural and religion. In medieval and much subsequent European usage, as by Aquinas, the “supernatural” was the province of God alone, and magic, demonology, and witchcraft belonged to the natural world (Saler, op.  cit.). Modern Western usage of the term, however, has become promiscuous, extending to whatever seems uncanny, mysterious, contrary to current science, or simply false. Nonetheless, Wilkinson’s claim that religion in CSR is “any supernaturalist ontology” is inaccurate. Writers in CSR, for example, often classify “paranormal” concepts like telepathy, clairvoyance, and poltergeists as supernatural but not religious. Some, myself included, do not invoke “supernatural” at all. In any case, the absence of Saler and like-minded others leaves Wilkinson’s account of “supernatural” oversimplified. One aspect of this simplification is Wilkinson’s conviction that “religion” and “supernatural” in CSR are virtual synonyms. He ends his section Guthrie’s Anthropomorphism and Animism, for example, by mistakenly writing that my “entire theory is built on … the distinction between  Such as Evans-Pritchard (1937), Hallowell (1960), Lienhardt (1961), Horton (1993), Klass (1995).

2

48 

S. Guthrie

naturalistic and supernaturalistic ideas.” Yet my publications on religion—including three he cites—explicitly and repeatedly reject that distinction! The first of these (1980: 185), for example, has three substantial paragraphs identifying “supernatural” as a Western folk category and as invalid cross-culturally. My (1993) book on anthropomorphism and religion treats the flaws of “supernatural” in several places. And my most recent paper (2021: 51–52) includes a paragraph rejecting “supernatural” as both vague and culture-bound, and cites seven well-known predecessors, mostly anthropologists, who agree. The same paper cites cognitive neuroscience and other evidence to assert, as in 1980, that “there is no general and principled distinction between religious and secular ideation” (2021: 61–62). Wilkinson also misses the diversity of CSR. He writes, for instance, that it is concerned not with individual religions, but only with religion in general. This has a grain of truth but overstates the case, because many CSR scholars, including some of the best known, are scholars of individual religions. Geertz (1992), for example, is a scholar of Hopi religion, Martin (1987) of ancient Greek religion, Purzycki (2010) of Tyvan shamanism, and Slingerland (2003) of ancient Chinese religion.3 Nor do I think that most CSR writers consider religion “an inherent aspect of human cognition.” That would make it a human universal, which of course it is not. Nor do all CSR scholars consider religion even a cultural universal. For those who do, Saler’s (1993) family-resemblance concept of religion admits exemplars different from what modern Westerners have in mind. Among small, unstratified societies, for example, “religions” may have no clergy, doctrine, elaborated afterlife, or ethics. Further, religion is as much cultural and symbolic as it is intuitive (Geertz, 2013), which again means that it is not “inherent.” More historical depth in Wilkinson’s chapter would also have been worthwhile. Specifically, instead of tracing CSR only to a single Victorian anthropologist (albeit an influential one, E. B. Tylor), Wilkinson might  And while I cannot count myself an expert on Risshō Kōsei-kai (a contemporary Nichiren Buddhist movement), it, and not “religion in general,” was the subject of my first fieldwork and first book (Guthrie, 1988). 3

3  Wilkinson’s “Animism and Cognitive Science of Religion” 

49

have considered tracing it also to Tylor’s source in philosophy. This was David Hume, counted by some as the pre-eminent philosopher of religion and a forerunner of cognitive science,4 and called the first modern philosopher of religion by Tylor. Equally important, familiarity with the “spandrel” or byproduct theory within CSR (e.g., Gould & Lewontin, 1979) might have forestalled the “conundrum” Wilkinson poses in his introduction: “why would a false belief in supernatural agents—or the cognitive structures that generate such beliefs—have been so beneficial …?” This question conflates beliefs with the structures that generate them. It also misrepresents many CSR writers, who think that mistaken beliefs, such as “supernatural” ones, may not be beneficial, but harmful or at best neutral. For these scholars, it is not mistaken beliefs that are beneficial, but the detection of actual animals and especially persons. Wilkinson’s confusion of cause and effect continues in the next paragraph, where he writes that CSR scholars claim that supernaturalism “is adaptive … because it arises from a hypersensitivity to agency.” He writes, that is, that these scholars see the adaptiveness of a trait as dependent on its cause. This again misrepresents most of them, who think the adaptiveness of a trait is independent of its cause. It is sensitivity to the presence of animate beings (and not “hypersensitivity”; see Guthrie & Porubanova, 2020) that is valuable, not any mistakes that may result from it. For example, if we see birds avoiding a scarecrow, we don’t ask how this avoidance is beneficial to them. Rather, we suppose that although the birds have been deceived by the scarecrow, past sensitivity to things resembling humans has benefited them. Next, Wilkinson avers that “hypersensitive agency detection” (again misattributing “hyper” to me) is “weak evolutionary hypothesizing” because the resulting behavior would be energetically too costly. His thought experiment is plausible, but observation does not support it. Mistaking inanimate things and events for animate, potentially significant ones, and behaving accordingly, in fact is widespread not only in humans but also in other animals.  Morris and Brown (2019).

4

50 

S. Guthrie

This observation has long been made about humans, by philosophers, anthropologists, psychologists, neuroscientists, and others.5 Nietzsche (1968: entry 550), for example, wrote, “I notice something and seek … an intention, and above all someone who has intentions, a subject, a doer, every event a deed… this is our oldest habit.… As living beings, must [animals] not also rely on interpretations based on themselves?” The answer to Nietzsche’s question about animals seems to be yes. A series of evolutionary biologists including Darwin has described the perceptual sensitivities and behaviors that Nietzsche suggests.6 Darwin (1871), for example, wrote in a well-known passage: There is no fundamental difference between man and the higher mammals in their mental faculties … the tendency in [humans] to imagine that natural objects and agencies are animated by spiritual or living essences, is ­perhaps illustrated by … my dog [which] was lying on the lawn during a hot and still day; but at a little distance a slight breeze occasionally moved an open parasol … every time that the parasol slightly moved, the dog growled fiercely and barked. He must [unconsciously have thought] that movement without any apparent cause indicated the presence of some strange living agent.

Similarly noting the fallibility of perception, Uexküll wrote, “a receptor image held in … general terms can always give rise to mistakes. This has already been shown in the sea urchin, in whose world cloud and ship are constantly confused with the enemy fish, because the sea urchin responds in the same way to any darkening of the horizon” (1992: 370). And multiple scholars have noted that virtually all vertebrates, from humans through fishes, are sensitive to eyes and respond to anything

 For exmple, Bacon (1620), Spinoza (1670), Nietzsche (1966), Bloomfield (1980), Gell (1998), Kelemen (1999), Epley et al. (2007), Farah and Heberlein (2007), Drake (2008), Schilbach (2008), Kelemen et al. (2013), and Airenti (2018). 6  Darwin (1871), Uexküll (1992 [1934]), Goodall (1975), Scaife (1976), Foster and Kokko (2008), and Pruetz and LaDuke (2010), among many others. For a broad sampling of philosophy, literary, and art criticism, anthropology, psychology, and other disciplines on such sensitivities in humans, see Guthrie (1993); and for ethology, see Guthrie (2002). For a brief, updated overview of these and for relevant cognitive psychology and neuroscience, see Guthrie and Porubanova (2020).

5

3  Wilkinson’s “Animism and Cognitive Science of Religion” 

51

resembling them, including deceptive “eye” markings (ocelli) on other animals, such as fishes and many species of wild cats.7 Regarding perception and behavior in humans, the view that our ready attribution of personhood to ambiguous stimuli is an evolved feature is supported also by the identification by cognitive neuroscientists of its physical substrate, the brain systems and pathways that mediate it.8 If Wilkinson wishes to show that all the above scholars are doing “weak evolutionary hypothesizing,” he needs not a thought experiment but counter-evidence. A last task is addressing Wilkinson’s worries about metaphor, which he says I conflate with literal language and ontological propositions. A first response is that the distinction of “literal” language and metaphor is not as simple or clear as he suggests. It is not simple because “primary” metaphors (such as “happy is up,” Lakoff, 2008) may themselves be literal. The distinction is not clear for the same reason, and because, like most cognition, most metaphor is unconscious and thus not readily accessible. Primary metaphors are cross-culturally similar and mostly acquired in childhood, largely by physical experience (Lakoff, 2008). For example, “more is up” and “affection is warmth” evidently are acquired everywhere through physical experiences such as, respectively, pouring water into a container and sitting in a parent’s lap. Thus both “more is up” and “affection is warmth” are, like many primary metaphors, originally literal. Because even concrete, everyday metaphors usually are unconscious, one may stumble in identifying them as metaphors, especially those that are “dead” because longstanding use has emptied them semantically. Trying to show that much metaphor is not anthropomorphic (a point to which I readily agree) for example, Wilkinson offers bits of familiar poetry: the road was a ribbon of moonlight, the moon was a ghostly galleon, all the world’s a stage. He points out that there are no “living beings” on either side (i.e., in either the source or the target domains) of these metaphors.

 For example, Behrens (1973), Scaife (1976), Watson (2011).  Farah and Heberlein (2007), Schilbach et  al. (2008), Kanwisher and Barton (2011), Cullen et al. (2013). 7 8

52 

S. Guthrie

Although there may be no living beings in these metaphors, however, there are unambiguous traces of them, traces of human activity or existence: a stage, a galleon, a ribbon, a road, ghostliness. And, as I have long emphasized, we scan for persons in terms not only of living bodies, but also of traces: footprints, lost belongings, mushroom clouds, sounds in the night. Indeed the late anthropologist of art Alfred Gell (1998) argued that the power of art is that it is a trace of intentional action by a person. As Gell put it, art has the artist’s “distributed agency,” which he compares to that of a soldier who buries a land mine. Because the mine still can kill after the soldier is dead, it has the soldier’s distributed agency. Such agency also leads us, according to the art historian Carolyn van Eck (2012), to treat works of art as persons, sometimes speaking to them, attacking them, or perceiving them as weeping. There is no room here to fully introduce contemporary metaphor theory, but I will mention a few further salient aspects and contrast them with Wilkinson on metaphor. First, however, let me note that in the midst of his thoughts on metaphor, Wilkinson again attributes positions to me that I do not hold, for example, that humans are “hardwired to see rocks as bears” and that “there is no sharp line” between religion and metaphor.9 More relevantly, he asks why I pay so much attention to metaphor—a reasonable question, in light of his view that it is a mere “literary device.” The answer, in brief, is that I am interested in cognition and that metaphor is no “device” but an evolved, fundamental part of human cognition. For Wilkinson, literal language and ontological propositions (which appear much the same) are “statement[s] about the nature of reality … representation[s] of what does and does not exist in the world.” Metaphors, in contrast, “are not intended to serve as descriptions of reality.” Wilkinson does not say for what distinctive service they are intended (ornamentation, perhaps?) but only that “Similes, like literary devices in general, are  Wilkinson also accuses me of “cherry-picking” my metaphors in order to prove an abundance of anthropomorphism in human cognition. He suggests further that a statistical survey might be in order, to test how common such metaphor is. But my intent was illustrative, of the sheer diversity of such metaphor, not probative. What one might call “proof by metaphor” is unnecessary, because convergent evidence of pervasive anthropomorphism in human thought and action is overwhelming, as a long line of scholars attests, from Bacon (1620) through Spinoza (1670), Nietzsche (1966) to Drake (2008), and Airenti (2018). 9

3  Wilkinson’s “Animism and Cognitive Science of Religion” 

53

intended to conjure a particular representation.” This doubtless is true. But it is true also of literal language, and so tells us nothing about what distinguishes metaphor. For that, we must turn to conceptual metaphor theory. This differs from Wilkinson’s view (now roughly forty years out of date or, counting Nietzsche, roughly a hundred and forty). Current theory stems most immediately from Lakoff and Johnson (2003 [1980]), a classic that quickly influenced a number of disciplines (Kövecses, 2018). In it, metaphor, far from being a literary device, is both intuitive and fundamentally conceptual. Indeed metaphor is fundamental to concepts, of which its appearance in language is just one manifestation.10 And in ordinary language, the nominal gulf between “literal” and “metaphorical” statements often disappears. This is partly because, as noted, primary metaphors (e.g., “more is up,” “affection is warmth,” “happy is up”) often begin as literal descriptions of experience. Thus in conceptual metaphor theory, “metaphorical meaning construction is simply a matter of how our metaphors arise from correlations in experience” (Kövecses, 2015). Why should metaphor be fundamental to concepts? Without addressing metaphor specifically, Saler (in press: n.p.) nevertheless offers a few relevant words: “we humans are prone to expand our understandings analogically, and analogical expansions motivate tropes.” The current interest in metaphor theory doubtless stems partly from the impetus of Lakoff and Johnson (2003 [1980]), but perhaps also from a renewed, “constructivist”11 appreciation of uncertainty in our comprehension of the world, and of the consequent need for ongoing interpretation and reinterpretation. In this view, comprehension is perpetually open-ended and changing, as versions of reality are maintained or reconstructed. (A recent book title by a philosopher and cognitive scientist, Clark [2016]), for example, identifies our epistemic situation—metaphorically of course!—as Surfing Uncertainty.)  Explicit expression of metaphor often is linguistic, but also often is visual. The front page of the New York Times book review section for June 27, 2021, for example, bore an illustration for a book on the Covid-19 pandemic. The illustration depicted a family emerging from a tent that, at second glance, is a very large mask. Put into language, the metaphor might well be, “a mask is a shelter.” 11  Ortony (1979: 2). 10

54 

S. Guthrie

Nor is this view of knowledge as inherently uncertain only recent. The Greek Skeptics also noted its uncertainty, and Nietzsche (1966: 315, translation mine) wrote concerning conceptions of the world that “One may well admire man here as a mighty genius of construction, who succeeds in raising the superstructure of an infinitely complex conceptual cathedral on a moving foundation and, so to speak, on flowing water.” Not only our worldviews, but even our concepts are chronically unstable and inadequate. It is simultaneously to expand and shore them up that we add predicates from other domains, somewhat like adding sandbags to a threatened levee.12 The anthropologist and metaphor theorist James W. Fernandez proposed “Some axioms for a metaphor approach to cosmogony and cosmology” (1985a) that help explicate the conceptual model of metaphor. Fernandez proposed eight axioms, of which the first five are: Axiom 1. The inchoate (uncertainty, ambiguity) is primordial and persistent. Most subjects of thought are ultimately inchoate (the bad news). Axiom 2. Human powers of pattern discovery (disambiguation) are highly developed. There is almost no ambiguous stimulus or inchoate subject of thought for which we cannot find an interpretation (the good news). Axiom 3. Predication (x is a y) is the primordial intellectual activity, but literal predication on a subject of thought will carry us only so far in suppressing the inchoate and providing a satisfactory interpretation of its meaning (a rose is a rose is a rose).

 Metaphors, of course, are not all created equal; some are more productive than others. Some, like the solar-system metaphor for atomic structure, are the basis of models that are (in this case, briefly) useful. Others, like the “projection” metaphor for perceptual bias, popularized by Freud, are zombie-­ like, dead but persistent. “Projection” remains current, for example in CSR (where Wilkinson’s essay implicitly endorses it), with its misleading promise of revealing some motivated perceptual process. Harvey (1996) suggests that projection is a “metaphor in search of a theory” and Guthrie (2000) pursues his point, concluding that projection’s search is futile and that, as an image of perception, this metaphor should be discarded. 12

3  Wilkinson’s “Animism and Cognitive Science of Religion” 

55

Axiom 4. Metaphoric predication is the final form of pattern discovery. For all inchoate subjects of thought must ultimately be referred by analogy to another domain than the one they occupy. No inchoate subject of thought is definable in itself by operations within domains (a rose is a rose is a love philter). Axiom 5. The meaning of any inchoate subject of thought lies in the sum total (class) of entities that can be predicted upon it (a rose is a plant, is a flower, is a love philter, is a jewel, is a keepsake, is a woman). In the earlier quotation from Nietzsche, we saw the same uncertainty, flux, and construction in cognition, from percept to world-view, that appears in Fernandez’s axioms. Let me end with a few more lines from Nietzsche (1966) that again describe flow and ambiguity. They assert flatly that “truth” is composed of metaphor, metonym, and anthropomorphism: What, then, is truth? A moveable army of metaphors, metonyms and anthropomorphisms—in short, a sum of human relations that have been enhanced, transposed and embellished poetically and rhetorically, and that after long use seem firm, canonical and obligatory to a people: truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that they are such; metaphors that are worn out and without sensory power, coins that have lost their pictures and now matter only as metal and no longer as coins. (Nietzsche, 1966: 314)

Thus, in Nietzsche’s conception, metaphor once more is far from a “literary device.” Instead, it is at center stage in building and maintaining our understanding of the world. In sum, Nietzsche, Fernandez, and contemporary metaphor theory are mutually consistent. They are inconsistent, however, with Wilkinson’s view, which is earlier, conventional, and even “folk.” I do find Wilkinson’s challenge to CSR’s easy acceptance of “religion” and especially “supernatural” appropriate, although backed here with little argument or evidence. In his critique of CSR and my own work, though, I find that Wilkinson has failed at several points to represent them accurately, and that his (metaphoric) reach has exceeded his grasp.

56 

S. Guthrie

But perhaps, as Browning wrote, “a man’s reach should exceed his grasp/Or what’s a heaven for?” Tipping his hat to Browning, Fernandez’s (1985b) variant is apropos: “A man’s reach should exceed his grasp/Or what’s a metaphor?”

1 A reply to Stewart Guthrie from Darryl Wilkinson I wish to begin by thanking Stewart Guthrie for taking the time to provide such a detailed reply to my chapter. What Guthrie says in his response is perhaps less interesting than what he does not say. Specifically, there is very little discussion of animism itself, the ostensible topic of not only my chapter, but this entire collection of chapters. In fact, Guthrie mentions the term only a handful of times in the first few paragraphs and thereafter avoids it completely. Insofar as he engages with animism at all, it is mainly to register his confusion about what I might mean by the word. According to Guthrie, “The problem is simply that one often cannot tell which ‘animism’ Wilkinson has in mind” and elsewhere he laments “Wilkinson’s failure to say what he means by a key term, animism, despite briefly discussing several possible meanings”. From such statements, the reader would be forgiven for thinking I was proposing a theory of animism, rather than critiquing one! Here, it might be worth offering a gentle reminder that Guthrie wrote a book entitled Faces in the Clouds with chapter titles like “Animism, Perception, and the Effort After Meaning?”, a volume in which the index provides no fewer than 22 subtopics under the primary heading of animism. And this is not to mention the considerable number of shorter publications that Guthrie has published in which animism also figures prominently. So, to clear up Guthrie’s confusion, by animism I mean precisely the same thing he does—it is his theory of animism that I am critiquing. Instead of animism, Guthrie devotes much of his response to discussing the terms “supernatural” and “religion”. Guthrie even says he agrees with me that these categories are problematic, but claims that my critiques of them are insufficiently robust. In response, I can only reiterate that my chapter is not primarily intended as a critique of ideas like

3  Wilkinson’s “Animism and Cognitive Science of Religion” 

57

“supernatural” or “religion”, however worthy such a project might be. Instead, I wrote a piece that specifically focuses on the problems with Guthrie’s use of the term animism (along with several other CSR scholars). Why is Guthrie so intent on changing the subject? The only part of Guthrie’s response where he directly engages with my critique is on the topic of metaphor, something which I accused him of conflating with ontological propositions. According to Guthrie, with respect to metaphor “Current theory stems most immediately from Lakoff and Johnson (2003 [1980]), a classic that quickly influenced a number of disciplines”. Indeed, Guthrie makes it clear that engaging with Lakoff and Johnson is a prerequisite for critiquing his arguments. Yet, despite the profound import of Lakoff and Johnson’s for Guthrie’s discussion of metaphor, he did not cite them at all in Faces in the Clouds. It seems that their work has only become vital to understanding and critiquing Guthrie’s argument thirty years after the fact. It would have been interesting to read Guthrie’s response to my critiques of his work on animism. Does he still insist that secular society is less prone to systematic anthropomorphism, despite the ubiquity of corporate personhood under modern capitalism? Does he still hold to an evolutionist schema in which Christianity is supposedly less prone to anthropomorphism than Indigenous societies? Would he continue to defend his claim that Indigenous people are more “naïve” in their animism than Westerners? Unfortunately, he chose to remain silent on these and many of the other questions I raised. Indeed, Guthrie betrays no hint of ever having written a book on animism. But perhaps his lack of interest in defending his arguments is answer enough? I will therefore take Guthrie’s newfound aversion to the idea of animism as a step in the right direction.

References Airenti, G. (2018). The development of anthropomorphism in interaction: Intersubjectivity, imagination, and theory of mind. Frontiers in Psychology, 9, 2136. Bacon, F. (1960 [1620]). The new organon and related writings. Prentice Hall.

58 

S. Guthrie

Behrens, R. R. (1973). The eyes have it. Design, 75(1), 2–6. Bloomfield, M. (1980). Personification-metaphors. The Chaucer Review, 14(4), 287–297. Clark, A. (2016). Surfing uncertainty: Prediction, action and the embodied mind. Oxford University Press. Cullen, H., Kanai, R., Bahrami, B., & Rees, G. (2013). Individual differences in anthropomorphic attributions and human brain structure. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, 9, 1276–1280. Darwin, C. (1871). The descent of man, and selection in relation to sex. Murray. de Spinoza, B. (1951 [1670]). A theologico-political treatise. Dover. Drake, S. (2008). A well-composed body: Anthropomorphism in architecture. VDM Verlag Dr. Müller. Durkheim, Emile. (1965 [1915]). The elementary forms of the religious life. Free Press. Epley, N., Waytz, A., & Cacioppo, J. T. (2007). On seeing human: A three-­ factor theory of anthropomorphism. Psychological Review, 114, 864. Evans-Pritchard, E. E. (1937). Witchcraft, oracles, and magic among the Azande. Clarendon Press. Farah, M. J., & Heberlein, A. (2007). Personhood and neuroscience: Naturalizing or nihilating? American Journal of Bioethics, 7(1), 37–48. Fernandez, J. W. (1985a). Some axioms for a metaphor approach to cosmology and cosmogony. In Seminar handout, National Endowment for the Humanities Summer Seminar, ‘Religious Cosmologies and Revitalization’. University of Colorado. Fernandez, J. W. (1985b). Seminar (as above) remarks. Foster, K., & Kokko, H. (2008). The evolution of superstitious and superstition-­ like behavior. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, 276, 1–10. Geertz, A. W. (1992). The invention of prophecy: Continuity and meaning in Hopi Indian religion. Brunbakke Publications. Geertz, A. W. (2013). Whence religion? How the brain constructs the world and what this might tell us about the origins of religion, cognition and culture. In A.  Geertz (Ed.), Origins of religion, cognition and culture (pp.  17–70). Routledge. Gell, A. (1998). Art and agency: An anthropological theory. Oxford University Press. Goodall, J. (1975). The chimpanzee. In V.  Goodall (Ed.), The quest for man (pp. 131–170). Praeger.

3  Wilkinson’s “Animism and Cognitive Science of Religion” 

59

Gould, S.  J., & Lewontin, R. (1979). The Spandrels of San Marco and the Panglossian paradigm: A critique of the adaptationist programme. Proceedings of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences, 205(1161), 581–598. Guthrie, S. (1980). A cognitive theory of religion. Current Anthropology, 21, 181–203. Guthrie, S. (1988). A Japanese new religion: Risshō Kōsei-kai in a mountain hamlet. University of Michigan Press. Guthrie, S. (1993). Faces in the clouds: A new theory of religion. Oxford University Press. Guthrie, S. (2000). Projection. In R. McCutcheon & W. Braun (Eds.), Guide to the study of religion (pp. 225–238). Cassell. Guthrie, S. (2002). Animal animism. In I. Pyysiäinen & V. Anttonen (Eds.), Current approaches in the cognitive science of religion, I (pp.  38–67). Continuum. Guthrie, S. (2021). Religion as anthropomorphism: A cognitive theory. In J. R. Liddle & T. K. Shackelford (Eds.), The Oxford handbook of evolutionary psychology and religion (pp. 48–68). Oxford University Press. Guthrie, S., & Porubanova, M. (2020). Faces in clouds and voices in wind: Anthropomorphism in religion and human cognition. In J. Lane & Y. Lior (Eds.), Routledge handbook of evolutionary approaches to religion. Routledge. Hallowell, I. (1960). Ojibwa ontology, behavior, and worldview. In S. Diamond (Ed.), Culture in history: Essays in honor of Paul Radin. Columbia University Press. Harvey, V.  A. (1996). Projection: A metaphor in search of a theory? In D.  Z. Phillips (Ed.), Can religion be explained away? (pp.  66–82). St. Martin’s Press. Horton, R. (1993). Patterns of thought in Africa and the west: Essays on magic, religion and science. Cambridge University Press. Kanwisher, N., & Barton, J. (2011). The functional architecture of the face system: Integrating evidence from fMRI and patient studies. In A. Calder, G. Rhodes, M. Johnson, J. Haxby, & J. Keane (Eds.), Oxford handbook of face perception (pp. 111–130). Oxford University Press. Kelemen, D. (1999). Beliefs about purpose: On the origins of teleological thought. In M.  Corballis & S.  E. G.  Lea (Eds.), The descent of mind: Psychological perspectives on hominid evolution (pp.  278–294). Oxford University Press.

60 

S. Guthrie

Kelemen, D., Rottman, J., & Seston, R. (2013). Professional physical scientists display tenacious teleological tendencies: Purpose-based reasoning as a cognitive default. Journal of Experimental Psychology, General, 142, 1074–1083. Klass, M. (1995). Ordered universes: Approaches to the anthropology of religion. Westview Press. Kövecses, Z. (2015). Where metaphors come from: Reconsidering context in metaphor. Oxford University Press. Kövecses, Z. (2018). Metaphor in media language and cognition: A perspective from conceptual metaphor theory. Lege Artis. Language Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow, 3(1), 124–141. Lakoff, G. (2008). The neural theory of metaphor. In R.  Gibbs (Ed.), The Cambridge handbook of metaphor (pp. 17–38). Cambridge University Press. Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (2003 [1980]). Metaphors we live by. With a new afterword. University of Chicago Press. Lienhardt, G. (1961). Divinity and experience: The religion of the Dinka. Clarendon Press. Martin, L.  H. (1987). Hellenistic religions: An introduction. Oxford University Press. Morris, W., & Brown, C. (2019). David Hume. In Zalta, E. (Ed.), The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy (Spring 2021 edition). Accessed June 15, 2021, from https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2021/entries/hume/ Nietzsche, F. (1966). Werke in Drei Bänden (Vol. 3). Carl Hanser. Nietzsche, F. (1968). The will to power. Vintage Books. Ortony, A. (1979). Metaphor: A multidimensional problem. In A.  Ortony (Ed.), Metaphor and thought (pp. 1–16). Cambridge University Press. Piaget, J. (1926/1929). The child’s conception of the world. Routledge & Kegan Paul. Pruetz, J. D., & LaDuke, T. C. (2010). Brief communication: Reaction to fire by Savanna chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes verus) at Fongoi, Senegal. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 141, 646–650. Purzycki, B. G. (2010). Spirit masters, ritual cairns, and the adaptive religious system in Tyva. Sibirica, 9(2), 21–47. Saler, B. (1993). Conceptualizing religion: Immanent anthropologists, transcendent natives, and unbounded categories. Brill. Saler, B. (in press). The construction of the supernatural in Euro-American cultures. Bloomsbury. Scaife, M. (1976). The response to eye-like shapes by birds, parts I and II. Animal Behavior, 24, 195–206.

3  Wilkinson’s “Animism and Cognitive Science of Religion” 

61

Schilbach, L., Eickhoff, S., Rotarska-Jagiela, A., Fink, G., & Vogeley, K. (2008). Minds at rest?: Social cognition as the default mode of cognizing and its putative relationship to the ‘default system’ of the brain. Consciousness and Cognition, 17, 457–467. Slingerland, E. (2003). Effortless action: Wu-wei as conceptual metaphor and spiritual ideal in early China (Vol. 10, p. 452). Oxford University Press. Tylor, E. B. (1873). Primitive culture: Researches into the development of mythology, philosophy, religion, language, art, and custom (Vol. 2, 2nd ed.). John Murray. Van Eck, C. (2012). Notes from the field: Anthropomorphism. Art Bulletin, 94(1), 16–18. Viveiros de Castro, E. (1998). Cosmological Deixis and Amerindian perspectivism. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 4(3), 469–488. von Uexküll, J. (1992 [1934]). A stroll through the worlds of animals and men: A picture book of invisible worlds. Semiotica, 89, 319–391. Watson, B. (2011). The eyes have it: Human perception and anthropomorphic faces in world rock art. Antiquity, 85, 87–98.

4 Edward Tylor’s Animism and Its Intellectual Aftermath Frederico Delgado Rosa

Animism as an anthropological concept was launched by British evolutionary anthropologist Edward Burnett Tylor (1832–1917), whose two-­ volume book Primitive Culture (1871) was extremely influential for over three decades in Britain and beyond.1 Tylor’s ideas were followed by armchair anthropologists, folklorists and other scholars interested in comparing “savagery” to “civilization”, and they also affected the accounts of ethnographers describing ritual and belief among so-called “primitive peoples”. The high repute of Tylor’s work in the late nineteenth century contrasts sharply with the rejection of his theoretical principles by contemporary anthropologists participating in the reinvention of the concept of animism, as if the reinvention itself depended on demarcating  Tylor had used the term animism in previous texts, albeit hesitantly (1866, 1867, 1869); then in 1870 he published a text anticipating his final decision of using it to the detriment of spiritualism. 1

F. D. Rosa (*) Department of Anthropology at Universidade NOVA de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Smith (ed.), Animism and Philosophy of Religion, Palgrave Frontiers in Philosophy of Religion, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94170-3_4

63

64 

F. D. Rosa

the novel from the “dubious” or “questionable” uses of the word in the past (Descola, 2013: 129; Bird-David, 1999: S67). The expressions “old animism” and “new animism” are frequently employed to prevent any possible confusion between the two periods of disciplinary history, all the more so as most anthropologists throughout the twentieth century had neglected animism because of its evolutionist connotations, and “largely ignored the term itself ” (Stringer, 2015: 551; see Bird-David, 1999: S68).2 The modern critique of Tylor intersects with the critique of evolutionist anthropology in the first decades of the twentieth century. Early dissenting disciples made their voices heard within the still reigning paradigm, notably Andrew Lang (1844–1912) in The Making of Religion (1898), and Robert Ranulph Marett (1866–1943) in The Threshold of Religion (1909). Lang stressed the moral and non-animistic aspect of primitive high gods, and questioned the Tylorian assumption that ghostly apparitions were illusional. Marett coined the alternative concept of animatism in reference to the belief in impersonal forces associated with awe-inspiring beings, objects and phenomena. Melanesian mana, introduced by missionary ethnographer Robert H. Codrington (1830–1922), was but one of a set of vernacular concepts that transitional figures in the history of anthropology used to counterbalance Tylor’s insistence on the fundamentality of spiritual beings to religion.3 Tylor’s shortcomings are currently equated with the ethnocentric prejudices of the Victorian era. Primitive Culture, says one critic, “projected the primitive as delirious as well as perceiving the world like a child” (Bird-David, 1999: S69). “Like his contemporaries”, Signe Howell writes, “Tylor characterized the mental faculties of primitives to be like those of the contemporary child, who cannot distinguish the animate from the inanimate” (2015: 103). “In the old animism of Tylor and  Paper financed by FCT/MEC, following the strategic plan of the Centre for Research in Anthropology UID/ANT/04038/2019. F. D. Rosa is researcher at CRIA/NOVA FCSH. 3  Curiously, Tylor himself acknowledged that some ritual attitudes evolved from “direct and simple awe” towards dangerous animals such as alligators. “Such rites”, he wrote, “display at least a partial truth in the famous apophthegm which attributes to fear the origin of religion: ‘Primos in orbe Deos fecit timor’” (1871, II: 209). Moreover, he considered magic to be part of primitive culture— a subject that James Frazer would expand to greater proportions. 2

4  Edward Tylor’s Animism and Its Intellectual Aftermath 

65

Frazer”, Mathew Hall adds, “the relationships between animistic cultures and the natural world were characterized as childish, savage and primitive” (2015: 385). Tylor’s ideas are held as not just intellectually untenable, but morally repugnant. Like a spell turning against the sorcerer, they are associated with the infancy of anthropology.4 This chapter has three sections. The first section contrasts new and old animism. The second section demonstrates that animism for Tylor was not a primitive stage in the evolution of religious thought consisting simply of the assignment of a humanlike soul to “natural objects”. The third section analyses selected passages of Primitive Culture that relate to the idea of animals, plants and objects as spiritual beings.

1 New Versus Old Animism: An Overview The ways in which the new conception of animism diverges from Tylor’s “old animism” are approached by several representatives of what has been termed the “ontological turn” in anthropology.5 Graham Harvey rightly underlines that Tylor did not decry animism as illogical but “as a rational system built on inadequate observation” (2017: 8); yet the very idea of it being a faulty perception of the world is discarded as derogatory to Indigenous peoples and perpetuating the chasm between humans and non-humans. “While the old theory of animism was part of a system that seemed to separate academics and their work from the living world, the new animism is entangled with invitations to participate more fully” (ibid. 212). In this vein, Tim Ingold argues that scientific inquiries should be affected by Indigenous wisdom, a “poetics of dwelling” that positions  While new animism scholars see a purely historical interest in Tylor, his work remains “underexplored” (Sera-Shriar, 2018: 69) even by historians of anthropology. In spite of his often being considered a founding figure, there is still no biography of Tylor (see Larsen, 2013). Beyond strictly historicist studies on Tylor’s place within Victorian anthropology (e.g. Leopold, 1980; Stocking, 1987, 1995; Wheeler-Barclay, 2010; Di Brizio, 2021; Tremlett, Sutherland, Harvey, 2017), I aim at facilitating dialogue between a remote disciplinary past and contemporary views. 5  The “ontological turn” is a recent movement within cultural anthropology according to which different cosmologies are more than different perspectives on a single world. As Paleček and Risjord put it, “authors who write in this vein move from talk of many cultures to many ‘worlds,’ thus appearing to affirm a form of relativism” (2012: 3). 4

66 

F. D. Rosa

and connects all human and non-human persons in a shared environment. “In the past, there has been a tendency to write of such poetics as the outpourings of a primitive mentality that has been superseded by the rise of the modern scientific worldview”, but now, he adds—echoing Bruno Latour’s We Have Never Been Modern (1993)—the time is ripe for “restoring” the place of scientists themselves as humans in the world (Ingold, 2000: 110). Environmental considerations about the destructive dimensions of the Anthropocene and the fragility of the planet and its inhabitants pervade the contemporary discussion in ways that Tylor could hardly have imagined 150 years ago. Ingold, for example, negatively associates Tylor with an idea of progress that equates civilization with the domestication of nature: Implied here is the evolutionary premise that the level of being that sets mankind above the animal kingdom had to be achieved, in the course of an ascent from savagery to civilization.… That man’s rise to civilisation was conceived to have had its counterpart in the domestication of nature is evident from the interchangeable use of the concept of culture to denote both processes. Edward Tylor’s Primitive Culture of 1871, the first comprehensive study of human cultural variation, began with the words “Culture or Civilisation”, by which he meant the cultivation of intellectual potentialities common to humankind. (Ingold, 2000: 64)

New animists like Ingold, Nurit Bird-David and Harvey see in the anthropologist A. Irving Hallowell (1892–1974) a less embarrassing forerunner than Edward B. Tylor, for having coined the expression “other-­ than-­human persons” in his paper entitled “Ojibwa Ontology, Behavior, and World View” (1960; see Strong, 2017). “Consideration of the ‘new animism’ necessarily begins with what Irving Hallowell learnt from dialogue with Ojibwe hosts in southern central Canada”, Harvey writes. “Hallowell’s imputation of ‘animism’ to Ojibwe is very different to earlier quests for humanity’s original, ‘primitive’ religion’” (2017: 17; see 31–48). By circumventing any Tylorian-like thoughts on the priority, whether logical or chronological, of the human soul, Hallowell paved the way to the centrality of personhood as an “overarching category” (Bird-David,

4  Edward Tylor’s Animism and Its Intellectual Aftermath 

67

1999: S71). Even if Hallowell underlined—like Tylor—the import of the soul concept as an inner essence that was detachable from the body and responsible for “vital personal attributes such as sentience, volition, memory, speech” (Hallowell, 1960: 41), his views contrasted with Tylor’s hypothesis of the idea of human soul being the psychological—and prehistorical—prototype of all animistic conceptions.6 In fact, a similar strategy of demarcation from Tylor is employed by contemporary anthropologists who understand that animism establishes an inner continuity of human-like souls and a discontinuity of outward appearances. In Beyond Nature and Culture (2013 [2005]), Philippe Descola hardly mentions Tylor (only twice) and basically to that purpose: I am not seeking to determine an incontestable source for the sense of the duality of the person, as Tylor was when he suggested that dreams were the origin of the notion of a soul and from that notion stemmed a belief in spirits, which was the basis of an animist religion conceived as a projection upon inert objects of a principle of animation endowed with autonomy. (119)

Descola deviates from Tylorian assumptions about the human soul being the prototype of all souls (and spirits) by stressing, in accordance with Eduardo Viveiros de Castro (1998), that the true meaning of non-­ humans possessing a human-like soul consists in their perceiving themselves as humans. Descola’s persons clothed in the body of an animal or a plant are human in the sense that they think they can do the same things humans do. He makes a further attempt to differentiate his understanding of animist anthropomorphism from Tylor’s: For many years such claims were regarded as evidence of thinking that was averse to logic and incapable of distinguishing reality from dreams and myths.… But … Amerindian peoples who make such claims are no more short-sighted or credulous than we are. They are well aware that a jaguar devours its prey raw and that a peccary does not cultivate maize plantations but lays them waste. It is the jaguar and the peccary themselves, they say, who see themselves as performing the very same gestures as humans. (2013: 132)  Hallowell was also a critic of the emphasis on impersonal forces (1960: 43; see also Radin, 1927).

6

68 

F. D. Rosa

Descola agrees with Viveiros de Castro that the distinction between body and soul, however essential in animist cosmologies, does not represent an ontological discontinuity. In addition to souls not being necessarily conceived as fully immaterial entities, the body is the interface allowing each person, human or non-human, to perceive itself, its actions and its kin creatures as human. Viveiros De Castro stresses that “animism is not a projection of substantive human qualities cast onto animals, but rather expresses the logical equivalence of the reflexive relations that humans and animals each have to themselves”. In other words, they are all in the position of subjects who see themselves as humans. “If the common condition of humans and animals is humanity not animality, this is because ‘humanity’ is the name for the general form taken by the Subject” (Castro, 1998: 477). Viveiros de Castro added “an extra layer of complexity” (Descola, 2013: 143) to animism by developing the concept of “perspectivism”, which refers to the ways different species perceive each other according to Amerindian cosmologies. But even without mentioning Tylor, we can say that Viveiros de Castro inaugurated a discursive strategy that differentiates new from old animism by eschewing the issue of subjectivity as a spiritual essence distinct from the body being a human construct and, in this sense, a human attribute cast onto non-humans. Non-human personhood thus emerges as a theme in most commentaries contrasting twenty-first-century views on animism with Edward Tylor’s. Where Tylor saw a primitive and erroneous anthropomorphization of nature, new animism scholars discern a stimulating “style of worldview that recognizes the personhood of many beings with whom humans share this world” (Harvey, 2017: 205; see Olsson, 2013: 229). Harvey sustains that, far from being related to a childish propensity, the recognition of personhood is more easily found among Indigenous elders, so that anyone might become “increasingly animist” by learning throughout life “how to act respectfully (carefully and constructively) towards other persons” (ibid. 18). Moreover, so the narrative goes, Hallowell inaugurated the view that animacy is not a property attributed systematically (namely by the Ojibwe) to this or that class of animals or things conceived as having a soul, but something that depends upon the actual contexts and ways in which persons, human and non-human, relate and engage with each

4  Edward Tylor’s Animism and Its Intellectual Aftermath 

69

other. “Are all the stones we see about us here alive?” Hallowell once asked an old man, who famously answered: “No! But some are”. Without mentioning Tylor, Hallowell wrote that the Ojibwe “are not animists in the sense that they dogmatically attribute living souls to inanimate objects such as stones” (1960: 24). By adding that “The Ojibwa do not perceive stones, in general, as animate, any more than we do” (ibid.), he won the favour of twenty-first-century new animists who insist on animism not being a contemplative metaphysics but a relational ontology promoting a positive engagement with other-than-human persons in the world. As Rane Willerslev puts it, animism is “mostly pragmatic and down to earth, restricted to particular relational contexts of involved activity, such as the mimetic encounter between hunter and prey” (2015: 275; see 2007). The understanding of animist belief as praxis makes room, Willerslev adds, for an anthropological analysis that is “compatible” (ibid.) with the vernacular accounts emanating from experience. Notwithstanding the often cryptic nature of theoretical discourse on animistic notions, participants in the current debate may thus claim relationality as a common ground with Indigenous peoples. Nurit Bird-David is considered to be one of the “foundational authorities” (Harvey, 2017: 223) of new animism thanks to her combination of the movement’s three core notions—personhood, environment and relationality—which are identifiable in the subtitle of her influential article “Animism Revisited” (1999), resulting from her own fieldwork among the Nayaka hunter-gatherers in the Nilgiri region of Southern India. Bird-David sets her thesis in direct opposition to Tylor by arguing that animism constitutes “a relational (not a failed) epistemology” and is “engendered neither by confusion nor by wrong guesses” (1999: S69). Drawing on Hallowell’s 1960 paper, she holds that other-than-human persons,7 or devaru, derive their personhood from specific relational events connecting them to humans in special ways, decoded by the culturally framed cognitive skills of the Nayaka.8 Bird-David tells Indigenous  Bird-David suggested calling them “superpersons”, but it is Hallowell’s expression, “other-than-­ human persons” (or the variant, “nonhuman persons”) that became standard. 8  Bird-David goes to the point of affirming that the Nayaka have a “composite personhood” that overrides their differences vis-à-vis members of other species and absorbs them into one “we-ness” in a shared environment (ibid. S73). 7

70 

F. D. Rosa

stories of devaru stones and elephants, and concludes: “Like the stones, these particular elephants were devaru as they ‘walked harmlessly’ and ‘looked straight into the eyes,’ that is, as and when they responsively related to Nayaka” (ibid. S75). Bird-David hypothesizes that animism as relational epistemology exists everywhere, including Western societies, while not with the same authoritative status—which is, in her view, regrettable. She is “willing to agree with Tylor … that the tendency to animate things is shared by humans”, but not as “survival of mental confusion” (ibid. S78). New animism scholars certainly have divergent views on many topics of controversy, but they seem to fundamentally agree with E. E. Evans-­ Pritchard’s verdict in Theories of Primitive Religion: books by the likes of Tylor and Frazer “will doubtless continue to be read as classics, but they are no longer much of a stimulus for the student” (1965: 100).

2 Development, Survival, Abandonment, and Revival In the same year as Bird-David published her influential paper on new animism as relational epistemology, a less impactful article tried to redress the emerging negative reassessments of old animism. In “Rethinking Animism”, Martin D. Stringer proposed a more benevolent reading of Primitive Culture. After quoting Evans-Pritchard’s above remark—which may have inadvertently discouraged new generations from reading Primitive Culture—Stringer writes: “In the case of Tylor, at least, I would beg to differ” (1999: 553). With reflexive tones, a back-to-reading call is Stringer’s opening theme. “Last spring”, he writes, “I decided to read the two volumes of E. B. Tylor’s classic Primitive Culture (1871). Much to my surprise, I found myself reading a very sensitive, sophisticated, intellectually complex text written by a scholar whose ideas seemed to bear very little relation to my popular conception of his writing” (ibid. 541). According to Stringer, anthropologists that had recently attempted to rehabilitate the term “animism” by turning back to Tylor (or by turning their backs on him!) had only “picked up certain elements of the concept

4  Edward Tylor’s Animism and Its Intellectual Aftermath 

71

without really engaging with the full complexity and ambiguity” of Primitive Culture (ibid. 551). Stringer goes to the point of saying that the new literature engages not with Tylor, but “with the image of Tylor created by his critics” (ibid. 552). Basically, new animism focuses on the process of giving personality to animals and other tangible beings or objects. Bird-David’s article is taken as an example of how animism is now primarily understood as a way of relating to non-human persons existing in the world. Stringer clarifies that this is only “a small part of Tylor’s far wider conception, a part which … does not engage with the full range of reflection on spirits, souls, fetishes, gods and the like” (Stringer, 1999: 552; see 2013: 65). Tylor’s goal was to demonstrate that Christian and spiritualistic Europe owed much to and was actually imbued with savagery. His anthropology was provocative not only in relation to nineteenth-century Europe, but also in relation to the sacrosanct domains of classical antiquity, whose experts abhorred comparing the illustrious Greeks and Romans with Australian aborigines (for example). A phrase by Andrew Lang (1844–1912), who then was a staunch defender of Tylor to the point of being called “Tylor’s Huxley” (Reinach, 1913: 20), sums up the iconoclastic spirit of this Victorian movement: “Man can never be certain that he has expelled the savage from his temples and from his heart” (Lang, 1887, I: 338). This idea was taken over by several disciples, such as James George Frazer (1854–1941), whose Golden Bough (1890) was famously dedicated to demonstrating that the belief in a resurrecting human god had prehistorical origins: If there is savagery in our customs, in our ideas, in our religions, it is simply because there are savages amongst us (…), that is people who, while trying to keep a civilized appearance, reproduce in their most inner self the ways of thinking and feeling of the savages. (Frazer, 1931: 272)9

Or Ernest Crawley (1867–1924):

 The supernatural birth of Christ was addressed in a similar vein by another follower of Tylor’s ideas, Edwin Sidney Hartland (1848–1927). See Rosa (2016). 9

72 

F. D. Rosa

As to “survivals” of primitive speculation and customs into civilised periods, the term is misused when it is implied that these are dead forms, surviving like fossil remains or rudimentary organs; the fact is that human nature remains potentially primitive, and it is not easy even for those most favoured by descent to rise above these primitive ideas, because these ideas “spring eternally” from permanent functional causes. (Crawley, 1902: 4)

By perusing a vast historical and ethnographic literature, Tylor noted that all kinds of spiritual beings in civilized societies had equivalents in this or that society from Oceania, Africa or the Americas whose level of culture was judged more archaic, so that the great nations had not invented, but had inherited and adapted them from primitive ancestors (ancestors who were comparable to existing populations). The cement allowing Tylor to speak of the historical permanence of primitive culture and more specifically of primitive religion was what he termed “animism”, the “deep-lying doctrine of Spiritual Beings, which embodies the very essence of Spiritualistic as opposed to Materialistic philosophy”. Animism, he added, “characterizes tribes very low in the scale of humanity, and thence ascends, deeply modified in its transmission, but from first to last preserving an unbroken continuity, into the midst of high modern culture”. He presented animism as a “practically sufficient” definition of religion (Tylor, 1871, I: 384, 385).10 Contrary to the “popular conception” of Tylor, animism did not refer to the religion—or the ontologies—of primitive peoples, but to all religions, Christianity included. Pope Pius

 In the late 1950s and early 1960s, several British scholars reassessed Tylor’s “exclusive” definition of religion as belief in spiritual beings. Jack Goody (1919–2015) wrote: “The way is open for a partial rehabilitation of the usages of the nineteenth-century anthropologists”. Notwithstanding its limitations, Tylor’s definition “appears to offer the nearest approach to a resolution of our problem”. Studying religion meant focusing on “all behaviour which has reference to the existence of these agencies” (Goody, 1961: 157). Raymond Firth (1901–2002) formulated a definition close to Tylor’s in that it refers to “non-human entities or powers” (1959: 131). US scholar Melford Spiro (1920–2014) joined the debate. Other participants in this “neo-Tylorian” resurgence, a broader movement with later representatives, are Daryll Forde (1902–1973) and Robin Horton (1932–2019). 10

4  Edward Tylor’s Animism and Its Intellectual Aftermath 

73

IX or, for that matter, Queen Victoria were as animist as a Bakairi Indian.11 Tylor was criticized in the twentieth century (see Stringer, 1999: 543–544) for speaking of “ancient savage philosophers” who, meditating on the causes of sleeping, dreaming, sickness and death, came to the conclusion that each individual possessed a soul separable from the body, whose movements explained those phenomena (1871, I: 387). When the soul left the body for good, the body died, hence the soul being understood as a vital principle. Stringer maintains that Tylor was not trying to reconstruct the actual origins of religion, which laid in a too remote past (Stringer, 1999: 544). Instead, Tylor’s savage philosophers stood for the functioning of the human mind according to Victorian associationist psychology, as represented, among others, by James Mill (1773–1836) and his son John Stuart Mill (1806–1873).12 “They are doctrines answering in the most forcible way to the plain evidence of men’s senses, as interpreted by a fairly consistent and rational primitive philosophy”, Tylor wrote in relation to the core concept of the human soul (1871, I: 387; see 1865: 5–7). But we can say that his recurrent use of terms like philosophers, theologians and poets also makes room for individuals as the inescapable foci of inventiveness. The human soul was prone to ethnographic variations related to countless prehistorical and historical processes of singular creativity within the limits of human psychology. Based  Robert Marett subtly criticized him for his synonymous definition of “animism” and “religion” as belief in spiritual beings: “Somehow it would not do to class the Pope or the Archbishop of Canterbury among the animists” (1936: 101), Marett wrote—a statement that, as I see it, contradicts Tylor’s ideas. 12  In Body and Mind: A History and a Defense of Animism (1920 [1911]), British psychologist and anthropologist William McDougall (1871–1938) considered associationist psychology—as elaborated “by the two Mills” and adopted by Tylor—to be anti-animistic (McDougall, ibid. 84; see Lonie, 1878). Animism as speculative metaphysics, however hegemonic in other periods, certainly lost momentum during the nineteenth century. According to McDougall, the famous dictum by French physiologist Pierre Cabanis (1757–1808) according to which “the brain excretes thought as the liver excretes bile” was the harbinger of “psychology without a soul”. Other figures such as German psychologist Friedrich Eduard Beneke (1798–1854) foreshadowed gradually prevailing materialistic views, consolidated in the second half of the century by advances in cerebral physiology, Darwinian principles and other influences. It is interesting to note that Tylor borrowed the term animism from German biologist Georg Ernst Stahl (1659–1734), whose ideas were “a revival and development in modern scientific shape of the classic theory identifying vital principle and soul” (Tylor, 1871, I: 385). 11

74 

F. D. Rosa

on a broad comparison, Tylor tried to synthesize the concept’s underlying similarity in the following way: It is a thin unsubstantial human image, in its nature a sort of vapour, film, or shadow; the cause of life and thought in the individual it animates; independently possessing the personal consciousness and volition of its corporeal owner, past or present; capable of leaving the body far behind to flash swiftly from place to place; mostly impalpable and invisible, yet also manifesting physical power, and especially appearing to men waking or asleep as a phantasm separate from the body to which it bears the likeness; able to enter into, possess, and act in the bodies of other men, of animals, and even of things. Though this definition is by no means of universal application, it has sufficient generality to be taken as a standard, modified by more or less divergence among any particular people. (1871, I: 387)

Tylor hypothesized that the similar nature of animistic conceptions, from totems to vampires, from gods of the sea to high gods, from spirits of the volcano to guardian angels, had to do with them being related to this category found in all societies past and present, the concept of the human soul, the probable psychological prototype from which all types of spiritual beings had been forged in a prehistorical era as vague as real, containing different, but related, religious systems. In short, God had not created man in His image, but the opposite (Cf. Stocking, 1987: 195).13 Tylor did not see the concept of the human soul and its derivations in an evolutionary hierarchy. The idea of the transmigration of the soul, for example, was found in West African, Amerindian and Australian contexts as well as in urban environments of Southeast Asia. He emphasized the prehistoric foundations of this transmigration while considering that Hinduism and Buddhism had introduced certain metaphysical subtleties into it according to ethical considerations of more refined settings. And even though soul transmigration “never became one of the great  Without entering the subtleties and variations of ancient Roman (or, for that matter, Greek) philosophical or religious concepts related to the soul, we can say that the Latin word spiritus paralleled anima as breath and vital breath (Tylor, 1871, I: 391; see Onians, 1951). This may be taken as an argument in favour of Tylor defining all animistic entities as spiritual beings. As Stringer puts it, this referred to “non-empirical” entities and was but a “shorthand that should be addressed case by case” (see Stringer, 1999: 545–546; 2013: 72). 13

4  Edward Tylor’s Animism and Its Intellectual Aftermath 

75

doctrines of Christendom”, it was “not unknown in mediæval scholasticism” and had been “maintained by an eccentric theologian here and there into our own times” (ibid. 14). Stringer calls attention to this crucial, but neglected, aspect of Tylor’s anthropology: While the form of the argument may suggest an evolutionary framework, the facts that he is presenting, the concrete illustrations, are clearly undermining the central principles of this framework. For every phenomenon on these developing progressions there are examples from primitive societies, there are examples from barbarian societies and there are examples from civilized and modern societies. (1999: 550)14

We are faced with one of the fundamental principles of Tylor’s anthropology, that is, the “development” of religious ideas not by substitution or evolutionary stages, but through permanence of prehistorical notions subject to progressive adaptations of moral, philosophical or aesthetic order. He defined development as “modification of the old to bring it into conformity with the new” (1871, I: 452). In addition to development justifying permanence in history, Tylor proposed a second interpretative principle in the study of the relations between savagery and civilization. So-called civilized societies also retained prehistorical ideas and uses without developing them, without adjusting them beyond the atavistic weight of tradition. These survivals, as he called them, were the subject of two theoretical chapters in the first volume of Primitive Culture and reappeared in historical illustrations throughout both volumes. In his words, survivals were “processes, customs, opinions, and so forth, which have been carried on by force of habit into a new state of society different from that in which they had their original home, and  Tylor even asserted that the germs of monotheism and ethical dualism were to be found among contemporary primitive peoples. He later came to accentuate his suspicion that savage notions of that order were, in some cases and especially in their moral dimension, due to Christian or Muslim influences. The article “On the Limits of Savage Religion” (1892) reflects this inflection, but the chosen title is in itself proof that the scope of primitive religion was practically unlimited. On the one hand, monotheism as such was a fiction since the religions of the Book, Christianity included, had room for many other spiritual beings with wonderful attributes. On the other hand, in later editions of Primitive Culture, Tylor kept identifying illustrations of supreme gods among scriptless peoples that, according to that criterion, were entitled “at the same time to the name of monotheists” (1871, II: p. 302). 14

76 

F. D. Rosa

they thus remain as proofs and examples of an older condition of culture out of which a newer has been evolved” (1871, I: 15; my italics). Unlike developments, survivals were “meaningless customs” that had “a practical, or at least ceremonial, intention when and where they first arose, but are now fallen into absurdity from having been carried on into a new state of society, where their original sense has been discarded” (ibid. 85; see Hodgen, 1931: 323). Tylor often repeated that either development or survival accounted for most of the religious phenomena described in Primitive Culture, but he did not always make clear whether the permanence of a belief or rite was a matter of survival or development, so the theoretical nuances between the two notions have been misunderstood. This explains why John Burrow wrote in his classical study on Victorian anthropology (1966) that Tylor “declared war on survivals” by retracing the savage origins of core ideas and practices of Christianity such as baptism and consecration, or the conversion of bread and wine into the body and blood of Christ during the Eucharist (Burrow, 1966: 256–257; see Tylor, 1871, II: 400). In such cases, Tylor certainly had in mind, not survival, but nineteen centuries of erudite theology working these Christian mysteries, a developmental work begun or rather continued by none other than Jesus Christ. Nor did Tylor consider that Christian definitions of soul were mere survivals. The human soul, the most important religious category, retained its essence throughout an ascent marked by a whole series of modifications and adaptations: Yet it is evident that, notwithstanding all this profound change, the conception of the human soul is, as to its most essential nature, continuous from the philosophy of the savage thinker to that of the modern professor of theology.… The theory of the soul is one principal part of a system of religious philosophy, which unites, in an unbroken line of mental connexion, the savage fetish-worshipper and the civilized Christian. (1871, I: 453)

This is not to say that Christianity did not contain survivals, namely partial survivals whose religious meaning was still active, for example Catholic relics. Survivals in civilization also suffered changes, but unlike the religious categories that had been developed in the proper sense of the

4  Edward Tylor’s Animism and Its Intellectual Aftermath 

77

term, they were flagrant incongruities. Apart from survival and partial survival, there were other conceptual tools that could be taken into account, namely degeneration, abandonment and revival. Living at the height of mediumistic spiritualism, Tylor considered it to be a revival,15 thus reinforcing the perception that humankind continued at all times to lean towards animism, anchored both in historical transmission and in the functioning of the human mind: “The thing that has been will be” (1871, I: 144; see Kippenberg, 2001; Opler, 1964). Tylor’s rationalistic or intellectualistic interpretation of ethnographic data has been associated with his neglect of symbolical, emotional and social dimensions in religious phenomena, as if he treated animism in abstracted psychological terms. But Stringer argues that Tylor had, “in practical application at least”, a plural idea of culture (1999: 542). The following passage from Tylor’s obituary of Adolf Bastian (1826–1905) reinforces this claim: As Aristotle observed long ago, man is a “social animal,” and a large part of his ways of looking at the world, and of his responses to the impressions which the world makes on him are determined not by himself but by the view of the world which is current in the society within which his thinking apparatus has grown up. There is, therefore, need of a study, on a wide, scientific, inductive, comparative method, of the evidence which is offered among all the peoples of the earth as to the connection which exists between such ways of looking at the world, and the institutions and products of social activity which accompany them. These ways of looking at the world—Welt-anschauungen, as his contemporaries mostly called them— Bastian was wont to describe as Völker-gedanken. (Tylor, 1905: 142)16  But also a partial survival in the sense of it being in flagrant opposition to the level of civilization (Tylor, 1869: 528). See Schüttpelz on Tylor’s disregard of spiritualism as “a modernizing movement” (2010: 161). 16  An important passage on Greek philosopher Democritus (fifth century BC), according to whom “things are always throwing off images (εἴδωλα) of themselves”, reveals how Tylor anticipated Alfred L. Kroeber’s (1876–1960) idea of innovation being due to particular individuals but under the influence of their cultural background: “To say that Democritus was an ancient Greek is to say that from his childhood he had looked on at the funeral ceremonies of his country, beholding the funeral sacrifices of garments and jewels and money and food and drink, rites which his mother and his nurse could tell him were performed in order that the phantasmal images of these objects might pass into the possession of forms shadowy like themselves, the souls of dead men” (Tylor, 1871, I: 449). 15

78 

F. D. Rosa

Instead of treating animist systems as such, though, Tylor scattered their respective components all over the chapters of Primitive Culture, interested as he was in presenting histories of survival, development, abandonment and revival of savage ideas in Western society. By thus proceeding, Tylor achieved something else. According to Stringer, it is possible to read Tylor’s evolutionism in non-evolutionary fashion as an anthropologist who understood “there are different layers of religion within any social context” and that these “cross-cutting and contradictory” discourses do not come together into some kind of integrated religious whole (Stringer, 1999: 550–51). While acknowledging that Tylor was “clearly constrained by his own times” and that “there is much in his work that we would want to reject today”, Stringer argues that this should not prevent us from seeing “just how exciting Tylor actually was as a thinker” or from looking for some contemporary applications of his insights, particularly, Stringer suggests, in the study of New Age phenomena in Western societies (ibid.).17 The fact remains that the animation or personification of “nature”, although only a part of the much wider scope of Tylor’s old animism, is certainly an important one. Primitive Culture deserves to be reassessed from this angle as well, while keeping at the back of our mind the special interest of new animism in personhood, relationality and environment.

3 Animals, Plants and Objects as Spiritual Beings According to Tylor, the idea that animals have souls is “a natural extension from the theory of human souls” (1871, I: 452), by the simple fact that animals are animated, as the root of both words implies. Animal in  Robert Segal sustains that, according to Tylor, religion only continues to exist—or survive—in modernity “by undergoing retraining”, namely by ceasing to explain the physical world and by retreating to the immaterial domain, thus avoiding the clash with science (2013: 60). This is only one side of the coin, I am afraid. The other side is Tylor’s awareness that science did not, empirically speaking, exist as a clear-cut evolutionary stage. He was focused on demonstrating through a myriad of historical cases that civilization was contradictory and maladjusted, with animism and science not only cohabiting but blending into each other. 17

4  Edward Tylor’s Animism and Its Intellectual Aftermath 

79

Latin is a living being with both anima (etymologically “breath”), the vital principle exhaled with the last breath, and animus, the siege of sentience and intentionality, distinct from the body—notwithstanding the divergences on the subject among philosophers of ancient Rome. Combined in a single notion or split in two or more, Tylor finds many parallels all over the world for soul meaning vital breath, both etymologically and literally (1871, I: 390–391). Like humans, animals breathe and produce sounds; they move; they act, interact and react; they get sick; they live and they die. Moreover, they appear in dreams. The same applies, at least “in some vague partial way”, to the primitive idea of plants having souls: “Plants, partaking with animals the phenomena of life and death, health and sickness, not unnaturally have some kind of soul ascribed to them” (1871, I: 428, 452). Interestingly, Tylor wrote that among savage peoples “the souls of plants are much more fully identified with the souls of animals” than with human souls, an argument that puts anthropomorphization into perspective (1871, I: 428). In fact, the human soul being the prototype of other souls does not imply that they are conceived anthropomorphically (see Marett, 1936: 103). Attentive to the variations of animism, Tylor distinguishes between animals (or plants) whose soul is conceived as an ethereal version of their physicality, animals whose original human soul is concealed by their physicality following mythological events that transformed them into four-footed, feathered or scaled beings, and animals whose human soul is the result of transmigration. We can say that this last category was nearer to animals incarnating other spiritual beings, including the notion of animals being godly avatars. Even without him using the terms “other-than-human” or “non-human persons”, there is ground to sustain that animals with animal souls were, according to Tylor, conceived as such by primitive humankind. Tylor’s anthropological enterprise was empirically grounded. As he himself wrote, it was desirable “to take our basis of enquiry in observation rather than from speculation” (1871, I: 384). In his case, observing meant

80 

F. D. Rosa

reading other people’s observations.18 Primitive Culture is mostly a compilation of ethnographic illustrations of each animistic category. Bird-­ David’s suggestion that Tylor may have, “In an odd reversal, constructed the origin of ‘savage thought’ from his first-hand knowledge of what he presumed was its remnant—modern spiritualism”, does not take into account Tylor’s perusal of abundant and varied sources, both contemporary and historical (Bird-David, 1999: S69; see Stocking 1971: 90–91). Han F.  Vermeulen and I have recently questioned the deep-­ rooted assumption that the nineteenth century was an era of armchair anthropologists relying on mere travelogues, expeditionary surveys or defective, fragmentary descriptions. “Before reproducing the hasty judgment that they were mostly miscellaneous, dry compilations of odds and ends, we should get back to reading them with an open mind” (2022).19 “Animals stare and startle where we see no cause; is it that they see spirits invisible to man?” To answer this question in relation to animistic doctrines—a question susceptible, perhaps, of inspiring renewed reflections on perspectivism—Tylor refers to various sources, of which I select the first two as simple pointers to the past. He quotes the Historie von Grönland (1765) by Pomerania-born missionary David Cranz (1723–1777), containing a passage on seals and wildfowls being scared by the screaming spectral images of aborted children invisible to the human eye excepting the Inuit sorcerer’s (1871, I: 179; Cranz, 1765: 267–7; 296). Secondly, Tylor quotes the Memorials of Service in India (1865), a posthumous work by the Scotsman Major Samuel MacPherson (1806–1860), which relates how the anthropomorphic gods of the  Even if his status as armchair anthropologist has been questioned due to his own experience in Mexico and the resulting volume, Anahuac: Or, Mexico and the Mexicans, Ancient and Modern (1861; see Sera-Shriar, 2014, 2018), not to mention his attendance—or “participant observation” (Schüttpeltz, 2010: 162)—at spiritualist séances in the 1860s and 1870s, and his visit to a Zuni pueblo during his American trip of 1884. 19  As to the critical deconstruction of ethnographic accounts from the point of view of colonial history and Western ideology, a dominant practice in current anthropology, it is seldom assumed as priority by representatives of the ontological turn. In this, the contrast between new and old animism is not particularly salient. Morten A. Pedersen, for one, hits the nail on the head by acknowledging that he uses the ethnographic present in order to reach a certain level of generalization, only possible by leaving out “the effect that 300 years of Russian, Chinese, and Manchurian presence in North Asia has had on conceptualizations of human and nonhuman social life” (Pedersen, 2001: 412). 18

4  Edward Tylor’s Animism and Its Intellectual Aftermath 

81

Khonds, with bodies of “superhuman” size and “ethereal texture”, can assume any form but “live exclusively upon the earth, moving at the height of about two cubits above its surface, invisibly to human eyes, but seen by the lower animals” (MacPherson, 1865: 100; Tylor, 1871, II: 179). Tylor proceeds with other sources and ends saying that animals seeing spirits is a belief “still familiar to our own popular superstitition” (ibid.). Speaking of “the minds of the lower races”—an expression that sounds shocking today, but did not imply constitutive inferiority—Tylor wrote that “it seems that all nature is possessed, pervaded, crowded, with spiritual beings” (1871, II: 169). It would be erroneous, though, to interpret this literally as if his views on savage animism implied that all beings in the world were uniformly conceived as spiritual beings in any specific context, to say nothing of the personification of rivers, mountains, celestial bodies, atmospheric and other natural phenomena (see Tylor, 1871, I: 258 ff). Tylor’s ethnographic illustrations reveal that he is attentive to the animistic focus on particular species among this or that people, and also on particular individuals. “Certain monkeys”, “certain serpents”, “certain trees” and so on are expressions he resorts to in various passages of Primitive Culture to convey both ideas (1871, II: 7, 139, 196–197, 212). The same applies to “certain stones” (ibid. 148), but let us reserve “inanimate” objects for later. It should also be stressed that Tylor gives ethnographic illustrations implying down to earth encounters between animals and humans whose actions and attitudes reveal their animistic ideas or beliefs. He presents cases of animals being usually addressed by kinship terms or literally identified as incarnations of dead relatives. Among other examples, he quotes these words by US ethnographer Henry Rowe Schoolcraft (1793–1864) in reference to Pomo Indians of North California: “A story was related to us of their begging the life of a wrinkled-faced old she grizzly bear, as the recipient of some particular grandma’s soul, whom they fancied it resembled” (Schoolcraft, 1853, Part 3: 113; see Tylor, 1871, II: 6). Another set of illustrations taken from works by Charles de Brosses (1709–1777), Thomas Witlam Atkinson (1799–1861), Adolf Bastian, and Ernst Georg Ravenstein (1834–1913), refers to the Koriak [Koryak], Samoyed [Nenets] and Goldi [Nanai] hunters seeking to appease, “by

82 

F. D. Rosa

apologetic phrase and rite”, their bear and other prey (Tylor, 1871, I: 423; II: 209). The fact that such gestures take place after killing the animal only accentuates their animistic dimension, for it is the dead animal’s soul that is being addressed: The Koriaks, if they slain a bear or wolf, will flay him, dress one of people in the skin, and dance round him, chanting excuses that they did not do it, and especially laying the blame on a Russian. But if it is a fox, they take his skin, wrap his dead body in hay, and sneering tell him to go to his own people and say what famous hospitality he has had, and how they gave him a new coat instead of his old one. The Samoyeds excuse themselves to the slain bear, telling him it was the Russians who did it, and that a Russian knife will cut him up. The Goldi will set up the slain bear, call him “my lord” and do ironical homage to him, or taking him alive will fatten him in a cage, call him “son” and “brother,” and kill and eat him as a sacrifice at a solemn festival. (Tylor, 1871, I: 423)

According to Tylor, this kind of “personal intercourse between man and animal”, particularly if “powerful or dangerous” species were involved, could give way to some form of “worship” or “zoolatry” (ibid.); and however old-fashioned these terms are in current anthropology of religion, they translate as ritual behaviour and represent a challenge to new animism anthropologists whenever the concept of relationality implies discarding cases in which a whole species is treated as a “spiritual being”, prior to and regardless of interaction with particular individuals. Tylor acknowledged that the subject of “animal worship” was “over-abounding in difficulty”, so he preferred to select examples allowing him “to trace the ancient ideas upward from the savage level far into the higher civilization”. Even if the “spectacle of a man worshipping a beast” might seem “pitiable” to the “modern educated world”, great civilizations provided significant illustrations, from Egypt to India; and a few off-centre cases existed in the Christian world (1871, II: 208, 220). Christian theology and philosophy engendered, more often than not, a strict dichotomy between humans with souls created by God and soulless animals. At the first sight, the views “prevalent in the civilized world”—including scientific views discarding animism altogether or

4  Edward Tylor’s Animism and Its Intellectual Aftermath 

83

differentiating human from animal faculties—contrasted sharply with the primitive view on animals (and plants) having a soul. Tylor considered, however, that there was more to civilization than orthodoxical views. Civilized men were not that far removed from savages recognizing in animals the same characteristics attributed to the human soul and, “logically enough”, ascribing souls “to beasts, birds, and reptiles, as to men” (1871, I: 423, 430). This primitive view “so far belongs to current civilized thought”, Tylor added, “that those who hold the doctrine to be false, and the practices based upon it futile, can nevertheless understand and sympathize with the lower nations to whom they are matters of the most sober and serious conviction” (1871, I: 423, 430; see 428). In every chapter of Primitive Culture dedicated to animism, Tylor organizes his ethnographical and historical evidence “from savagery onward” along the peculiar evolutionary lines that I have synthesized in the previous section (1871, I: 424). Regarding the belief in animal souls, civilized and particularly Christian animism tended “to be drawing in its outposts, and concentrating itself on its first and main position, the doctrine of the human soul”.20 In other words, “the notion of souls of beasts is to be seen dying out”, corresponding to Tylor’s notion of abandonment (1871, I: 452). “The tendency of educated opinion on the question whether brutes have soul, as distinguished from life and mind, has for ages been in a negative and sceptical direction” (ibid. I: 425). Drawing from Horæ Ferales: Or Studies in the Archaeology of the Northern Nations (1863), a posthumous work by English antiquarian John Mitchell Kemble (1807–1857), Tylor presented a late occurrence of animal sacrifice at a funeral in Europe as illustrating the fading out of animistic beliefs in animal souls: Germany retained the actual sacrifice within the memory of living men. A cavalry general name Frederick Kasimir was buried at Treves in 1781 according to the forms of the Teutonic Order; his horse was led in the procession, and the coffin having been lowered into the grave, the horse was killed and thrown in upon it. This was, perhaps, the last occasion when  The expression “Christian Animism” was the title of a section in a book Tylor left in manuscript form, as analysed by Timothy Larsen (2013). The book’s title, The Natural History of Religion, was a tribute to David Hume (on Tylor and Hume, see Porath, 2016). 20

84 

F. D. Rosa

such a sacrifice was consummated in solemn form in Europe. But that pathetic incident of a soldier’s funeral, the leading of the saddled and bridled charger in the mournful procession, keeps up to this day a lingering reminiscence of the grim religious rite now passed away. (1871, I: 428)

By perusing this and various other sources, Tylor concluded that the prevalence of such rites in European soil had been “deep, wide, and full of purpose” and compared these earlier occurrences with animal funeral rites in other continents (ibid. 422). The same applied to the destruction of the dead man’s property. He admitted the possibility of this kind of sacrifice having other meanings beyond allowing the souls of these things to accompany the human soul in afterlife: “It is notorious that there are people who recognize no such theory, but who nevertheless deposit offerings with the dead. Affectionate fancy or symbolism, a horror of the association of death leading the survivors to get rid of anything that even suggests the dreadful thought, … all these are or may be efficient motives” (ibid. 436). Tylor was more inclined, however, to highlight (and generalize from) some examples—North American, Polynesian and South-East Asian—of stated belief in object-souls, not to be confused with fetishism, a term he reserved for objects incarnating external spiritual beings. It was difficult to understand and differentiate various spiritual dimensions inanimate objects might have, but one should admit that the theory of object-souls was possibly adopted “with more or less distinctness” by many peoples (ibid.). Tylor wrote that “our best guide” to this difficult subject “may be the memory of our own childish days”, when toys were alive and invested with personality (ibid. 431). This comparison was made by analogy, not homology; philosophers were a better match than children to his views on savages conceiving inanimate objects as spiritual beings.21 Notwithstanding the influential views of René Descartes (1596–1650) and Nicolas Malebranche (1638–1715) on animals as soulless machines, Tylor gave examples of later defendants of the opposite idea, such as English Methodist leader John Wesley (1703–1791), “who thought that  The analogy was forceful in the sense that children’s animism, however devoid of the soul concept, was conceived by Tylor as rooted in “the first beings that children learn to understand something of ”, that is, human beings (1871, I: 258). 21

4  Edward Tylor’s Animism and Its Intellectual Aftermath 

85

in the next life animals will be raised even above their bodily and mental state at the creation”. In one of his sermons, Wesley wrote that “the horridness of their appearance will be exchanged for their primæval beauty”, suggesting that they might “be made what men are now, creatures capable of religion” (as quoted in Tylor, 1871, I: 425). Another Methodist leader and theologian, Adam Clarke (1762–1832), argued for the future life of animals as reparation for the injustice of them being deprived in the present state of the “happiness designed for them”. Other examples were provided by A Critical History of the Doctrine of a Future Life (1864), a voluminous book by William Rounseville Alger (1822–1905), an obscure, religiously oriented Bostonian scholar that Tylor quoted in various passages as someone who perused the subject “with remarkable learning and sagacity” (Tylor, 1871, I: 437). Alger referred to the enduring “controversies” provoked by Descartes’s thesis and listed a great slew of works sustaining that animals have souls one way or another.22 As Peter Harrison puts it, Descartes was “ridiculed and vilified over the centuries” for his opinion that animals are non-sentient automata, which was “variously characterized as ‘an internecine and murderous view’, a ‘monstrous thesis’, an ‘irredeemably fatuous belief ’, a doctrine which ‘brutally violates the old kindly fellowship of living things’” (1992: 219; see Thomson, 2010).23 Alger himself did not discard the idea of animals having immaterial and deathless souls: “Rightly considered, there is nothing in such doctrine which a keen reasoner may not credit and a person of the most refined feelings find pleasure in embracing” (Alger, 1864: 632). Descartes was responsible for pushing animism to philosophical heights contrary to the notion of animals having souls; and such Cartesian “developments” were, in Tylor’s view, a dominant trend in the history of animism in Europe from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Tylor was attentive, though, to the resilience of other kinds of animist 22  For example, De Anima Brutorum (On the souls of animals, 1672) by Thomas Willis (1621–1675), Appendix to Discourse on Resurrection of Christ, Showing that Brutes Are Not Mere Machines, but Have Immortal Souls (1714), by Humphry Ditton (1675–1715), Sind die Thiere bloß sinnliche Geschöpfe, oder sind sie auch mit Fähigkeiten versehen, die eine Seele bei ihnen voraussetzen? (Are animals merely sensual creatures, or are they also endowed with faculties that presuppose a soul in them?, 1811), by Wilhelm Christian Orphal (1773–1823). 23  In a certain sense, the controversy goes on under the form of exegesis of Cartesian philosophy.

86 

F. D. Rosa

discourses in Europe, namely on animals as spiritual beings. In fact, his erudition prevented him from stressing the novelty of Cartesian animism too much: he was all too aware that Descartes’s views had roots in countless Renaissance, mediaeval and ancient philosophical controversies on the relations between body and soul (and God). In turn, these controversies were but the visible, historical tip of a prehistorical iceberg. Descartes’s explicit rejection of “corporeal” notions of the soul as a thinly diffuse, vaporous entity, or breath, only revealed his building on them to achieve a more sophisticated, genuinely metaphysical animism. Bird-David suggests that Tylor was himself conditioned by a Cartesian notion of personhood as an exclusively human attribute, which explains both his incapacity to understand animistic notions beyond a human soul prototype and, more importantly, his own failure in coping with non-human persons as such.24 This perspective is surprising because Descartes was an animist, hardly someone whose views on the immortal human soul Tylor might claim as inspirational to his Primitive Culture, quite the opposite. Considering Tylor’s insistence on the diaphanous materiality of souls, ghosts and other spiritual beings for most of universal history, with glaring survivals and revivals in his time, the postmodern hypothesis of him projecting modern dualistic notions of body and soul into primitive peoples does not stand.

4 Conclusion Tylor was concerned about religious belief in spirits and souls, not about non-animist scientific research on the minds of animals. Whatever progress was made in that direction did not affect his theory, as spiritual beings qua non-empirical entities (including the human soul) implied belief derived from sensations but not actual demonstration. The same applies to cutting-edge scientific views on trees and other plants as “active, responsive, autonomous and intelligent organisms” (Hall, 2015: 390).  Descartes is a recurrent, fundamental reference whenever contemporary anthropologists critically address “our cosmology”, “the normal canons of Western thought”, “mainstream Western philosophy” or “the ideology of modernity” that separates humans from non-humans (Viveiros de Castro, 1998: 479; Ingold, 2000: 93, 101–102; Harvey, 2017: 207; Willerslev, 2015: 275). 24

4  Edward Tylor’s Animism and Its Intellectual Aftermath 

87

Again, this is ultimately unrelated to Tylor’s views on plant-soul as an animist category. Tylor approached the minds of non-human primates nonetheless, in terms that relate him to Darwin: “How far do their minds work like ours? No full answer can be given”. In relation to “the monkey’s minds”, he added, “we can only guess by watching their actions, but these are so like the human as to be most readily explained by considering their brain-work also to be like the human, though less clear and perfect” (1889: 47–49). Tylor considered other animals beyond primates: Not only do creatures of all high orders give unmistakable signs of pleasure and pain, but our dealings with the brutes go on the ground of their sharing with us such more complex emotions as fear, affection, anger, nay, even curiosity, jealousy, and revenge.… Again, the lower animals show a well-­ marked will, which like man’s is not simply wish.… As to the power of memory in brutes, we have all had opportunities of noticing how lasting and exact it is. (ibid.: 49–50)

Ingold argues that post-Darwinian views on humans differing from other animals (albeit in degree rather than in kind) are “unashamedly anthropocentric” since human powers of intellect are still taken “as the measure of all things” (Ingold, 2000: 109). There are some risks, however, of new animism scholarship favouring Indigenous ontologies to the detriment of non-animist Western understandings of animal personhood within a human-non-human continuum (see Burley, this volume). This complex interdisciplinary debate takes place mostly on ethical grounds and in relation to animal rights, but it involves positive data on animal sentience, interests and cognitive skills (see Armstrong and Botzler [2003]; Harvey 2017 [2005]: 23).25 It is interesting to note that the new animist scholars are not focused on the question of whether primates or other animals look back at humans as persons when relating to them. Non-human personhood is a  I thank my brother, biologist Humberto Rosa, for sharing his knowledge of hierarchy in animal ethics allowing to distinguish different levels of self-awareness, autonomy, sense of past and future, feelings, emotions, desires, intentions, capacity for social relationships, communication, and culture. “Science now clearly shows that these capacities are not exclusively human, but also exist in the minds of certain animals” (H. Rosa, personal communication). 25

88 

F. D. Rosa

topic approached through the lens of Indigenous worldviews.26 So we can say that contemporary scholars are, like Tylor was, locked in a circle of anthropomorphic projection. In other words, human ideas or beliefs are the inescapable reference point of both old and new animism. This becomes even more obvious when animistic perceptions of inanimate objects—like Ojibwe living stones—are also considered. Tylor’s “dream-­ theory” of the human soul should be put in perspective not just for reflecting universal proclivity towards animism more than absolute origins, but also because it is about the human mind being the seat of all spiritual beings. This deeper meaning of Tylor’s thesis represents an unacknowledged meeting point between new and old animism, beyond the rejection of his exact ideas on the human soul notion as prototype of all other animistic ideas. We have also seen that the critique of Tylor portraying the animation of nature as literal anthropomorphism does not hold true. Animism was anthropomorphic in essence, but not necessarily in shape. Primitive Culture has more points of agreement with new animism than one would think at first glance. I highlight three in particular: the “materiality” of souls ontologically relates them to the bodies they bear a resemblance to; implicitly, these spiritual beings with non-human appearances are non-human persons; the import of action as the seat of belief is an understanding of relationality avant la lettre. That being said, Tylor insisted on the complexity and variety of animistic categories, making room for multiple perceptions of animals, plants and natural objects as spiritual beings aside from interacting. This represents a challenge to scholars focusing on relationality as a sine qua non for animism. The concept of relationality risks being anthropocentric in its own right, in  A controversial figure within this anthropological debate, Stewart Guthrie (1993) sustains that animism (as the capacity of imagining that something is alive) is an adaptive strategy found among non-human animals as well as in the human species. The unease of new animism scholars about Guthrie’s thesis is synthesized by Harvey in the following terms: “Guthrie’s version of the old animism, distinct though it is from Tylor’s, fails to demonstrate why a survival mechanism should become and remain significant as a centre-piece of many religious cultures” (Harvey, 2017: 16). Guthrie has a predecessor in Darwinian anthropologist and folklorist Edward Clodd (1840–1930), who suggested that animism was preceded by naturalism as the attribution of life to fear-inspiring beings and objects not yet perceived as “the abode of spirits”. In naturalism, he added, “man and animal meet together” (1905: 22). Or, rephrasing it in more provocative terms, “animists, in the germ, were our pre-human ancestors; animists, to the core, we remain” (ibid. 97). 26

4  Edward Tylor’s Animism and Its Intellectual Aftermath 

89

the sense of implying interaction with humans without regard to non-­ human individuals who are not engaged in these encounters. The ways in which Tylor gave room to animism beyond relationality may be relevant to our time, for example in dialogue with non-animist animal ethics stressing the import of sanctuaries where non-humans are left to themselves as much as possible, with a minimum of direct human interference. As an heir of David Hume (1711–1776), Tylor did not believe in the existence of the human soul, but whether or not he himself considered animals to be non-human persons on grounds other than animistic ones is an entirely different question. Yes, animism is one possible source of inspiration for a new ecologically oriented engagement with the planet and its inhabitants, but anti-animism—a cluster of diverse traditions in which Tylor certainly finds his place—should not be equated with Cartesian disregard for animal personhood. Apart from Tylor being opposed to Descartes on the question of the human soul, current scientific explorations of animal (or, for that matter, plant) intelligence and sentience, with special attention to suffering, are genealogically related to nineteenth-century (mainly Darwinian) anti-animism—and they also give way to fuller, ethically oriented ways of engaging with the environment and with other-than-human persons. Ironically, we can say that Tylor’s outdated evolutionary notions apply to animism as an anthropological concept. Notwithstanding some level of abandonment, it became a partial survival, not entirely meaningless in the new context, but “revised little if at all” within popular and missionary circuits during the twentieth century (Bird-David, 1999: S67). Bird-­ David herself pioneers the idea of giving Tylor back his own concepts when she writes about “the survival of the Tylorian representation” (ibid.). As to the late twentieth- and early twenty-first-century revival of animism as an anthropological concept, it can also be described as an instance of development, since it has been adapted to a more sophisticated environment, on both theoretical and moral grounds. If, however, we were visited by Tylor’s ghost, he might add a twist to these reflections by saying that new animism is also a revival, and possibly a development, of primitive culture.

90 

F. D. Rosa

References Alger, W. R. (1864). A critical history of the doctrine of a future life, with a complete bibliography of the subject. George W. Childs. Armstrong, S.  J., & Botzler, R.  G. (Eds.). (2003). The animal ethics reader. Routledge. Bird-David, N. (1999). “Animism” revisited: Personhood, environment, and relational epistemology. Current Anthropology, 40, S67–S91. Burrow, J. (1966). Evolution and society. A study in Victorian social theory. Cambridge University Press. Clodd, E. (1905). Animism. The seed of religion. Archibald Constable. Cranz, D. (1765). Historie von Grönland enthaltend die Beschreibung des Landes und der Einwohner &c. insbesondere die Geschichte der dortigen Mission der Evangelischen Brüder zu Neu-Herrnhut und Lichtenfels. Heinrich D. Ebers. Crawley, E. (1902). The mystic rose. A study of primitive marriage. Macmillan. Descola, P. (2013 [2005]). Beyond nature and culture. Lloyd, J. (trans.). The University of Chicago Press. Di Brizio, M.  B. (2021). Histoire du concept de couvade. Edward B.  Tylor et l’ethnologie victorienne. Paris: L’Harmattan. Ditton, H. (1714). A discourse concerning the resurrection of Jesus Christ … Together with an appendix concerning the impossible production of thought from matter and motion: The nature of human souls and of brutes…. J. Darby. Evans-Pritchard, E. E. (1965). Theories of primitive religion. Clarendon Press. Firth, R. (1959). Problem and assumption in an anthropological study of religion. The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, 89(2), 129–148. Frazer, J. G. (1890). The Golden bough. A study in comparative religion. Macmillan. Frazer, J. G. (1931). Garnered sheaves. Essays, addresses, and reviews. Macmillan. Goody, J. (1961). Religion and ritual: The definition problem. British Journal of Psychology, 12, 143–164. Guthrie, S. (1993). Faces in the clouds: A new theory of religion. Oxford University Press. Hall, M. (2015 [2013]). Tall among the trees: Animist plant ontologies and ethics. In G. Harvey (Ed.), The handbook of contemporary animism (pp. 385–394). Routledge. Hallowell, A. I.. (2002 [1960]). Ojibwa ontology, behavior, and world view. In Harvey, G. (Ed.), Readings in indigenous religions (pp. 17–49). Continuum. Harrison, P. (1992). Descartes on animals. The Philosophical Quarterly, 42(167), 219–227.

4  Edward Tylor’s Animism and Its Intellectual Aftermath 

91

Harvey, G. (2017 [2005]). Animism. Respecting the living world. Hurst & Company. Hodgen, M. T. (1931). Doctrine of survivals. A chapter in the history of scientific method in the study of man. Allenson. Howell, S. (2015 [2013]). Metamorphosis and identity: Chewong animistic ontology. In G.  Harvey (Ed.), The handbook of contemporary animism (pp. 101–112). Routledge. Ingold, T. (2000). The perception of the environment. Routledge. Kemble, J. M. (1863). Horæ Ferales: Or studies in the archaeology of the northern nations. Lovell Reeve and Company. Kippenberg, H.  G. (2001). Discovering religious history in the modern age. Princeton University Press. Lang, A. (1887). Myth, ritual and religion (Vol. 2). Longmans, Green and Co. Lang, A. (1898). The making of religion. Longmans, Green and Co. Larsen, T. (2013). E. B. Tylor, religion and anthropology. The British Journal for the History of Science., 46(3), 467–485. Latour, B. (1993 [1991]). We have never been modern. Harvard University Press. Leopold, J. (1980). Culture in comparative and evolutionary perspective. E. Tylor and the making of primitive culture. Dietrich Reimer Verlag. Lonie, A. (1878). Animism. In T. S. Baynes (Ed.), Encyclopædia Britannica (9th ed., pp. 55–57). Charles Scribner’s Sons. MacPherson, S. C. (1865). Memorials of Service in India, from the correspondence of the late major Samuel Charters Macpherson, C.B., political agent at Gwalior during the mutiny, and formerly employed in the suppression of human sacrifices in Orissa, edited by his brother William Macpherson. John Murray. Marett, R. R. (1909). The threshold of religion. Methuen & Co. Marett, R. R. (1936). Tylor. Chapman & Hall. McDougall, W. (1920 [1911]). Body and mind. A history and a defense of animism. Methuen & Co. Olsson, T. (2015 [2013]). Animate objects: Ritual perception and practice among the Bambara in Mali. In G. Harvey (Ed.), The handbook of contemporary animism (pp. 226–243). Routledge. Onians, R. B. (1951). The origins of European thought about the body, the mind, the soul, the world, time and fate. New interpretations of Greek, Roman, and kindred evidence, also of some basic Jewish and Christian beliefs. University Press. Opler, M.  E. (1964). Cause, process, and dynamics in the evolutionism of E. B. Tylor. Southwestern Journal of Anthropology, 20(2), 123–144. Orphal, W. C. (1811). Sind die Thiere bloß sinnliche Geschöpfe, oder sind sie auch mit Fähigkeiten versehen, die eine Seele bei ihnen voraussetzen? B. Schmidt.

92 

F. D. Rosa

Paleček, M., & Risjord, M. (2012). Relativism and the ontological turn within anthropology. Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 43(1), 3–23. Pedersen, M. A. (2001). Totemism, animism and north Asian indigenous ontologies. The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 7(3), 411–427. Porath, N. (2016). The Hume/Tylor genealogy and Andrew Lang: Of miracles and marvels, animism, and materialism. Anthropos, 111(1), 185–200. Radin, P. (1927). Primitive man as philosopher. D. Appleton & Co. Reinach, S. (1913). Andrew Lang et l’histoire des Religions. In Cultes, mythes et religions (Vol. 5, pp. 96–104). Ernest Leroux. Rosa, F. D., & Vermeulen, H. F. (Eds.). (2022). Ethnographers before Malinowski: Pioneers of Anthropological Fieldwork 1870–1922. Berghahn. Rosa, F. D. (2016). Dead and Living Authorities in The Legend of Perseus: Animism and Christianity in the Evolutionist Archive. In R. Darnell & F. Gleach (Eds.), Local Knowledge, Global Stage (Histories of Anthropology Annual, 10), pp. 31–52. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press. Schoolcraft, H. R. (1853). Information respecting the history, condition and prospects of the Indian tribes of the United States (part III). Lippincott, Grambo & Co. Schüttpeltz, E. (2010). Animism Meets Spiritualism: Edward Tylor’s ‘Spirit Attack,’ London 1872. In A.  Franke (Ed.), Animism (pp.  155–165). Sternberg Press. Segal, R. A. (2015 [2013]). Animism for Tylor. In G. Harvey (Ed.), The handbook of contemporary animism (pp. 53–62). Routledge. Sera-Shriar, E. (2014). What is armchair anthropology? Observational practices in nineteenth-century British human sciences. History of the Human Sciences, 27, 26–40. Sera-Shriar, E. (2018). Historicizing belief. E. B. Tylor, primitive culture, and the evolution of religion. In E.  Sera-Shriar (Ed.), Historicizing humans. Deep time, evolution, and race in nineteenth-century British sciences (pp.  68–90). University of Pittsburgh Press. Stocking, G.  W., Jr. (1971). Animism in theory and practice: E.  B. Tylor’s Unpublished ‘Notes on “Spiritualism”’. Man (NS), 6(1), 88–104. Stocking, G. W., Jr. (1987). Victorian anthropology. Free Press. Stocking, G. W., Jr. (1995). After Tylor: British social anthropology, 1888-1951. University of Wisconsin Press. Stringer, M. D. (1999). Rethinking animism: Thoughts from the infancy of our discipline. The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 5(4), 541–555. Stringer, M. D. (2015 [2013]). Building on belief: Defining animism in Tylor and contemporary society. In G. Harvey (Ed.), The handbook of contemporary animism (pp. 62–72). Routledge.

4  Edward Tylor’s Animism and Its Intellectual Aftermath 

93

Strong, P. T. (2017). A. Irving Hallowell and the ontological turn. HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 7(1), 468–472. Thomson, A. (2010). Animals, humans, machines and thinking matter, 1690-1707. Early Science and Medicine, 15(1–2), 3–37. Tremlett, P.-F., Sutherland, L. T., & Harvey, G. (Eds.). (2017). Edward Burnett Tylor, Religion and Culture. London, New York: Bloomsbury Academic. Tylor, E. B. (1861). Anahuac: Or Mexico and the Mexicans, ancient and modern. Longmans, Green, Reader and Dyer. Tylor, E. B. (1865). Researches into the early history of mankind and the development of civilization. John Murray. Tylor, E. B. (1866). The religion of savages. Fortnightly Review, 6, 71–86. Tylor, E. B. (1867). On traces of the early mental condition of man. Proceedings of the Royal Institution, 5, 83–93. Tylor, E. B. (1869). On the survival of savage thought in modern civilization. Proceedings of the Royal Institution, 5, 522–523. Tylor, E. B. (1870). The philosophy of religion among the lower races of mankind. Journal of the Ethnological Society, 2, 369–379. Tylor, E. B. (1871). Primitive culture. Researches into the development of mythology, philosophy, religion, art, and custom (Vol. 2). John Murray. Tylor, E. B. (1889 [1881]). Anthropology. An introduction to the study of man and civilization. Macmillan. Tylor, E.  B. (1892). On the limits of savage religion. The Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, 21, 283–301. Tylor, E. B. (1905). Professor Adolf Bastian: Born June 26, 1826; died February 3, 1905. Man, 5, 138–143. Viveiros de Castro, E. (1998). Cosmological Deixis and Amerindian perspectivism. The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 4(3), 469–488. Wheeler-Barclay, M. (2010). The science of religion in Britain, 1860-1915. University of Virginia Press. Willerslev, R. (2007). Soul hunters: Hunting, animism, and personhood among the Siberian Yukaghirs. University of California Press. Willerslev, R. (2015 [2013]). The one-all: The animist high god. In G. Harvey (Ed.), The handbook of contemporary animism (pp. 275–283). Routledge. Willis, T. (1672). De Anima brutorum quæ hominis vitalis ac sensitiva est, exercitationes duæ. R. Davis.

5 Animisms: Practical Indigenous Philosophies Johan De Smedt and Helen De Cruz

1 Introduction: The scope of philosophy of religion Since the 1960s, analytic philosophy of religion has been to a large extent concerned with questions about rationality and justification, especially of (Christian) theism. A lot of this literature boils down to the question of whether religious belief can be rational or warranted, especially in the face of naturalistic atheist alternatives. Analytic philosophy of religion appears primarily in two forms. First, in the guise of natural theology, which uses reason to evaluate religious claims, such as versions of the ontological, cosmological, or design arguments. Second, as a form of philosophical theology that uses philosophical methods to evaluate theological doctrines (Whitney, 2018). For example, if the afterlife that Christians and Muslims conceive of is eternal, wouldn’t it become unbearably boring? This question of the tedium of immortality has generated a substantial philosophical literature (e.g., Williams, 1973; Wisnewski,

J. De Smedt (*) • H. De Cruz Saint Louis University, St. Louis, MO, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Smith (ed.), Animism and Philosophy of Religion, Palgrave Frontiers in Philosophy of Religion, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94170-3_5

95

96 

J. De Smedt and H. De Cruz

2005); this literature indirectly sheds light on the rationality of theological views such as the eternity of the afterlife. If the afterlife eventually becomes intolerably boring, it cannot at the same time be eternally blissful, and notions of a Christian or Muslim afterlife would be incoherent. Implicit in the preoccupation of philosophy of religion with rationality, or lack thereof, is a notion of what the word “religion” stands for. Judging by what has been published in the most recent years in journals such as Faith and Philosophy, International Journal for the Philosophy of Religion, Journal of Analytic Theology, and Religious Studies, “religion” is by default either a generic monotheism (often a flavor of classical theism, see Oppy & Pearce, 2022) or an unspecified Christian theism. This only seems to change if these journals publish a special issue on non-Christian philosophy of religion (e.g., Journal of Analytic Theology, volume 8, 2020). In textbooks for educational purposes, the hegemony of Christianity in philosophy of religion is, if anything, even starker. For example, Philosophy of Religion, Selected Readings (Peterson et al., 2014) is currently in its fifth edition and is marketed on OUP’s website as “The most complete and economically priced introductory anthology in the philosophy of religion.”1 While the editors have excerpted texts from Buddhism, Hinduism, Confucianism, Judaism, and Greek polytheism, only 12% of this “most complete” textbook engages with non-Christian religious traditions. In analytic philosophy of religion, gauging the rationality of religion thus boils down to gauging the rationality of monotheistic (mostly Christian) beliefs. The study of philosophy of religion at western departments is at odds with other studies of religion in the humanities and social sciences, including religious studies, sociology, and cognitive science, where “religion” has a much broader meaning, and is more culturally inclusive. In this chapter, we focus on animism and, in particular, how it is studied in the cognitive science of religion and cultural anthropology. Neither of these disciplines privileges monotheism among the many forms of religiosity. We argue that philosophers of religion still use (outdated) normative notions from early scientific studies of religion that go back at least a century and that have since been abandoned in other disciplines.  https://global.oup.com/ushe/product/philosophy-of-religion-9780199303441

1

5  Animisms: Practical Indigenous Philosophies 

97

Our argument is programmatic: we call for an expansion of philosophy of religion in order to include traditions that are currently underrepresented. The failure of philosophy of religion to discuss and accommodate different perspectives means a large part of human religious beliefs, practices, and experiences remains outside of its purview. As a point of focus, we examine animism in two cultures as a way to think about what sorts of questions and ideas an expansion of philosophy of religion into lesserexplored traditions could offer. In the section “What “Religion” Means in Philosophy of Religion” we explore what “religion” means in analytic philosophy of religion, showing that philosophers rely on outdated and often colonialist attitudes when thinking about religion. Section “Cognitive Science of Religion and the Study of Animism” examines the cognitive basis of animism, providing evidence for its antiquity among human societies. Section “Animism as a Philosophical Stance” explores animism in two distinct cultural settings, kincentric ecology as conceptualized by the Rarámuri in Mexico, and the conceptualization of the Nuna (Land, the natural environment) as the default state of nature by speakers of Inuktitut among Canadian Inuit. Through these case studies we highlight topics and questions of potential interest to philosophers of religion. Section “Implications for the Philosophy of Religion” examines two ways in which philosophy of religion could benefit from the inclusion of lesser-explored religions.

2 What “Religion” Means in Philosophy of Religion Philosophy of religion, as a branch of philosophy, is currently often seen as a subcategory of metaphysics and epistemology. For example, on the PhilPapers website, one of the main archiving websites for philosophy preprints and author copies, philosophy of religion falls under metaphysics and epistemology, together with fields such as philosophy of mind and philosophy of language. The conceptualization of religion as primarily concerned with metaphysics and epistemology is a modern conception. As the historian of religion Peter Harrison (2015) points out, the word

98 

J. De Smedt and H. De Cruz

“religion” and cognate terms (such as religio in Latin) shifted in meaning over time. We will now briefly look at this historical development. For medieval authors such as Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), religio was a theological virtue, primarily associated with inner devotion and prayer; in this view, philosophy of religion—if we were to apply this term anachronistically to his work—would be a subfield of value theory or ethics. This notion of religion as internal disposition persisted among Renaissance authors such as Marsilio Ficino (1433–1499) who equated “Christian religion” with a disposition to live one’s life oriented toward truth and goodness. A similar idea operated in the concept of piety in the work of the modern theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834), where piety is a kind of internal religious sentiment that arises from our feeling of absolute dependence on God. However, since the Early Modern period, there was a gradual shift away from religion as an inner disposition and virtue toward something more external that can be studied comparatively (Smith, 1998). This shift was driven by comparative studies of religion in anthropological and sociological contexts, where “religion” became a term that denotes a body of beliefs and practices, often by people from disparate cultures and places, no longer concentrating on Christian theology. The modern study of religion has three pillars: comparative study, a focus on beliefs, and attention for practices. As we will see later on, of these three, contemporary philosophy of religion is mainly interested in beliefs, is hardly interested in the practices, and has as a whole discarded the comparative study of religion. This is in contrast to other academic disciplines such as sociology, anthropology, or religious studies, which do study these three aspects. The scientific study of religion began in the Early Modern period with natural histories of religion. Bernard de Fontenelle (1657–1757) and David Hume (1711–1776) speculated on the origins of religious beliefs and practices. They tended to focus on specific religious practices, such as “fetishism” (this term is now outdated, and corresponds roughly to what we now call animism and totemism), oracles, and rituals to placate or cajole gods into doing what their petitioners want. For example, Fontenelle’s Histoire des Oracles (History of Oracles, [1686] 1824) is a naturalistic account of why humans can come to believe in miracles and why they rely on oracles. Probably the best-known exemplar in this Early

5  Animisms: Practical Indigenous Philosophies 

99

Modern literature is Hume’s Natural History of Religion (1757) which proposes that the earliest religious belief was a kind of animistic polytheism. Hume argued that people in the past were ignorant about the causes of natural events, especially adverse events, such as droughts and earthquakes. In an attempt to gain both understanding and control—or at least, the illusion of control—they anthropomorphized elements of their environment. For example, one cannot prevent a drought, but with rituals for an anthropomorphized rain-god one has the sense one does something toward alleviating a dry spell. As a result, people came to believe that gods control aspects of their environment, leading to the earliest polytheistic systems. They worshipped and performed rituals for these gods in order to placate and please them, and to petition them to do things for them. Over time, as a mirror of their own social structures, these polytheistic belief systems slowly evolved into henotheistic and later monotheistic religions. Especially relevant for the study of animism is Charles de Brosses’s Du Culte des Dieux Fétiches (1760, translated as On the Worship of Fetish Gods, 2017). In this work, de Brosses (1709–1777) coined the influential term “fetishism” to denote a combination of magical thinking and animism. He understood the latter term as imbuing the natural world with agency and volition. These Early Modern natural histories of religion were explicit in drawing parallels between the religious beliefs of their readers (Western Christianity) and the religious beliefs of Indigenous peoples from Africa, Asia, and the Americas. Take de Brosses’s study of fetishism in sub-­ Saharan Africa. He examined the cognitive basis of animistic practices, drawing broad and sweeping comparisons between then contemporary African animal worship and similar practices in the Americas, and in ancient Egypt. He concluded that superstitious thought is the same, no matter where it occurs. He then used this idea to analyze and critique the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation, remarking the following: I do not see why one should be so surprised that certain peoples have divinized animals, when one is much less surprised that they have divinized men. This surprise and the difference in judgment that goes along with it seem to me to be an effect of pride and self-esteem [amour propre], which act without us noticing. For despite the high preeminence of the nature of

100 

J. De Smedt and H. De Cruz

man over that of animals, at bottom there is as much distance from one as there is from the other to reach divine nature: that is, it is equally impossible to attain. Since a man can no more become a Divinity than can a lion, the nation that claims the former is just as unreasonable in its thinking as that which claims the latter. However, it presents no difficulty to admit that very civilized, learned and spiritual nations, such as the Greeks, the Romans and even the Egyptians, deified and worshipped mortal men.… But from my point of view, all of these sorts of idolatry are equally unreasonable. (de Brosses, 1760/2017: 102)

Differently put, the Incarnation is no less incredible and unreasonable as imbuing a lion with divinity because the ontological gap between a lion and God is just as wide as between a human and God. De Brosses (1760) argued that the same cognitive mechanisms that operate in animism and magical thinking in Indigenous peoples from sub-Saharan Africa and the Americas also accounted for similar tendencies in his Christian contemporaries. David Hume made a similar rhetorical point in his discussion of the Roman Catholic belief in transubstantiation (the belief that the wafer and wine in the eucharist really and literally become the body and blood of Jesus Christ). He argued that the only reason his contemporaries did not marvel more at the bizarreness of Roman Catholicism was that they were so used to it. Recounting an amusing anecdote where a proselyte tells a priest, “You have told me all along that there is but one God: And yesterday I ate him,” Hume reflected, “Such are the doctrines of our brethren, the Catholics. But to these doctrines we are so accustomed, that we never wonder at them: Tho’, in a future age, it will probably become difficult to persuade some nations, that any human, two-legged creature, could ever embrace such principles” (1757: 74–75). The rhetorical force of these remarks at the time derived from the fact that European readers believed themselves superior in intellect compared to Africans, Asians, and Native Americans. The authors of natural histories of religion argued, to the contrary, that Christian beliefs were just as irrational and superstitious as the beliefs Christians commonly derided. Custom and familiarity were the main reasons why they did not consider these beliefs dubious. Natural histories of religion, then, presented religions from Indigenous

5  Animisms: Practical Indigenous Philosophies 

101

societies and from historical societies such as ancient Greece or ancient Egypt as a kind of mirror that properly reflected one’s own distorted religious views. The comparative study of religion was taken up again in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries by anthropologists and sociologists. But whereas the Early Modern authors sought to emphasize similarities between Indigenous non-western religious beliefs and Christianity, these later authors (often working in a context of imperialism and colonialism) used the concept of animism to emphasize differences between Indigenous and western religions. As Aaron Freeman (2014) shows, de Brosses and contemporaries challenged the notion that “idolatry” should be regarded as the corruption of an ancient monotheism. Rather, they regarded animism as what Sperber (1996) would call a “cultural attractor,” an idea that occurs cross-culturally because human minds find the idea attractive. For example, the idea of an afterlife occurs cross-culturally because the idea that a person can persist after their physical death is intuitively appealing (see De Cruz & De Smedt, 2017 for an overview). Nineteenth-­ century authors such as E.  B. Tylor (1832–1917) and James Frazer (1854–1941) operationalized animism in a distinct way. Like the Early Modern authors, they saw animism as a tendency to imbue the environment with animacy and purpose, and they also co-opted the idea that animism was among the most ancient religious beliefs. But they devised a cultural evolution of religion in which animism was the earliest step. Christianity was a further step in the evolution of culture. Whereas Tylor (1871) saw the monotheism of his own British culture as the pinnacle of cultural development, Frazer (1890) saw science as its apex. Since according to these cultural evolutionist models all cultures go through the same evolutionary steps, cultures that have magical and animistic thinking would be at an earlier stage of development. In Primitive Culture Tylor (1871) argued that religion was a cultural universal. All human cultures, including those that were seen as primitive in his time, such as Indigenous Australians, have religious beliefs and practices. In his view, the origin of religion is the human tendency to project spirit onto natural living and non-living things, including plants, animals, mountains, and stones. The origin of this universal human tendency was our attempting to explain the difference between a living person and a dead person. According to

102 

J. De Smedt and H. De Cruz

Tylor (1871), people concluded that persons must have both a spiritual and a material body. The spiritual body is the thing which roams at night when one is dreaming and returns into the material body upon awakening. After death, the spiritual body leaves the material body permanently and becomes a soul that continues to exist after the demise of the material body. This, according to Tylor (1871, Chap. 12), is the principle that underlies all religions (see also Sidky, 2015). Frazer (1890) held similar cultural evolutionist ideas, but he put magic—practices that attempt to control supernatural forces for various ends—at the center of the earliest religions, rather than spiritual bodies. Cultural evolutionism is now discredited in anthropology, and, since the influential work by anthropologists such as Franz Boas (1885–1942) and Bronisław Malinowski (1884–1942), cultures are now studied on their own terms, with attention to their unique history. Later authors, notably the logical positivists, such as Hans Hahn (1879–1934), Rudolph Carnap (1891–1970), and Otto Neurath (1882–1945), had a positive appraisal of animistic and magical thinking (see Josephson-Storm, 2017 for review). For example, Otto Neurath (e.g., [1921] 1973) saw science as a practical enterprise. He likened it to a boat that is forever traveling on the open sea. The sailors who can never dock in a harbor for repairs, and who can never start afresh, are like people who try to acquire knowledge through whatever practical means available, including the sciences. In Neurath’s view, science is not something special and highly unusual that is specific to western culture. He saw it as closely related to magical thinking, and animism in particular, arising out of a commonsense way of trying to make sense of the environment across times and cultures. Man of the magical form of life has no special mode of thinking (Lévy-­ Bruhl), we are of his flesh and blood (Frazer). In particular, pre-animistic magic, probably the oldest, is akin to our behavior. But animistic magic too is like modern behavior, directed toward finite, earthly ends. Of course the men of magical times expected more than we do from words and other evocative measures of a fairly simple kind, whereas we tend to expect effects to be precipitated by complicated machines or by bodies specifically designed to do so. (Neurath, [1931] 1973: 321)

5  Animisms: Practical Indigenous Philosophies 

103

This idea of the continuity between the sciences and animistic philosophies can be found in several other authors who seem to have come up with this independently. For example, the philosopher and anthropologist Robin Horton (1932–2019) argued that African traditional thought and western science both share the same methodological goals of explanation, prediction, and control. He proposed that “each category of beings” (gods, ancestors, heroes, water spirits) “has its appointed functions in relation to the world of observable happenings… Like atoms, molecules, and waves, then, the gods serve to introduce unity into diversity, simplicity into complexity, order into disorder, regularity into anomaly. Once we have grasped that this is their [the supernatural beings’] intellectual function, many of the puzzles formerly posed by ‘mystical thinking’ disappear” (Horton, 1967: 52). In a similar vein, the sociologist and philosopher Bruno Latour ([1996] 2010) draws an analogy between fetishists (animistic thinkers) who carve a sculpture of a god, and who then claim that this god is real, autonomous, and active in the world, just like a scientist such as Louis Pasteur created the fact of fermentation in his lab, and then also stated that it was real, autonomous, and active in the world. However, the predominant view among scientists and philosophers of that era was that animism was a more “primitive” form of thought. The developmental psychologist Jean Piaget (1929), for example, saw animism as an ontological confusion in young children: they impute life, consciousness, and purpose to inherently lifeless, unconscious, and purposeless things such as the wind or the sun and moon. According to Piaget, over time, as they mature, children grow out of animism and become more restrictive in their attributions of agency. This idea is challenged in more recent work that indicates that animistic thinking is cross-­ culturally widespread, for example in China (Järnefelt et al., 2019, see also Smith, this volume). Moreover, it also occurs among a number of adults with PhD degrees in STEM or in the humanities who see the natural world as a living, interconnected being with purpose and intentions (see, e.g., Kelemen et al., 2013; see also Steinhart, this volume). Meanwhile, the idea (dating back to the Early Modern period) that monotheism is the cognitive and cultural default persisted. In the nineteenth century, authors such as Andrew Lang (1844–1912) argued

104 

J. De Smedt and H. De Cruz

against Frazer and Tylor, proposing that people from small-scale, Indigenous cultures really had an original monotheism, which got distorted and degenerated over time. As was the case with cultural evolutionism, there is no convincing empirical evidence to support primitive monotheism, which seems to have sprung from a literal belief in the Tower of Babel story (Genesis 11:1–9, an origin myth that seeks to explain why people speak different languages). Monotheism is almost absent among hunter-gatherer societies and only appears in the historical record once sedentary and large-scale societies emerge (see, e.g., Whitehouse et al., in press, for an analysis). Some larger-scale Indigenous cultures have monotheistic beliefs but, rather than being examined on their own terms, descriptions of these religious systems were often distorted to make them fit better with notions of philosophical Christian monotheism or missionization, as, for example, in the case of the disputed Māori deity Io (Cox, 2014). Despite the dearth of evidence for an original monotheism, when we presented a paper on this topic (eventually published as De Cruz & De Smedt, 2013) in philosophy seminars, mentioning that there is no good empirical evidence for a primitive monotheism in archeology, we had on several occasions philosophers of religion objecting to this, and defending primitive monotheism. For all we know, they typically argued, humans 100,000 years ago were monotheists but, regrettably, through the noetic effects of sin their original monotheistic beliefs degenerated over time! Primitive monotheism has also been defended in print by philosophers of religion, among others by Smith (2017) and van Inwagen (2004). In contrast to earlier scientific works on religion (natural histories of religion, cultural evolutionism, and primitive monotheism) that mainly used non-western religious concepts and practices either to critique or to shore up Christian ideas, contemporary researchers who do comparative work regard religious beliefs and practices as interesting in their own right. Sociologists, anthropologists, and psychologists avoid (to the extent this is possible) making value judgments about the relative rationality of religious concepts and behaviors across cultures. However, philosophy of religion has not kept pace with these developments. The discipline seems still firmly planted in a colonialist mindset that sees Indigenous religions and philosophies as less rational, less evolved, and less cultured than

5  Animisms: Practical Indigenous Philosophies 

105

Christianity. Primitive monotheism is still seen as a live plausibility. The other Abrahamic theisms, such as Judaism and Islam, also get some place at the table, but beyond this, the openness to non-Christian approaches remains limited.

3 Cognitive Science of Religion and the Study of Animism Religion is a complex and multifaceted phenomenon, so its study benefits from a wide range of disciplines. An influential theoretical framework in the scientific study of religion is the cognitive science of religion (CSR). The interdisciplinary field of CSR began in the late 1980s with the study of religious beliefs and rituals. It seeks to explain commonalities in religious beliefs and practices across the world as the result of stable features of human cognition, including perception and inductive inference. According to CSR scholars, religious beliefs and practices are the result of common human cognitive dispositions that operate in a variety of everyday, ordinary circumstances. These cognitive dispositions include inferring goal-directedness, thinking about the minds of others, and attributing intentions to actions. Moreover, religious concepts and behaviors are subject to the same cultural evolutionary processes as other domains of human culture (see White, 2021 for a comprehensive overview of the field). There is nothing special about religion. It is not some separate sphere of cognition that requires its own explanation. Rather, for example, teleological thinking in religious contexts is but one instance of a more general tendency to reason teleologically. As De Cruz and De Smedt (2015) have argued, teleological thinking in religious contexts (e.g., the gods created the Earth to give us a dwelling) is similar to teleological thinking in other domains, such as in making inferences about tools, plants, or animals (e.g., the smith forged this sword to defend himself, plants have flowers to give honey to bees). Animism is at the heart of Guthrie’s (1980, 1993) anthropomorphism, one of the earliest and most influential CSR theories on the origin of religion. Stewart Guthrie is an anthropologist by training with expertise

106 

J. De Smedt and H. De Cruz

on new religious movements in Japan. According to his anthropomorphist account, perception is interpretive: animals (including humans) need to make sense of ambiguous stimuli, such as leaves rustling in the wind, or a distant shape in the mist across a valley, and decide what these might mean. This interpretation involves making a (low-level, unconscious) bet. An ambiguous stimulus is often interpreted as an agent, because the potential benefits of doing so outweigh the costs of not inferring an agent when one is in fact present. Guthrie does not think our agency detection is over-sensitive—as later authors who have drawn on his work such as Barrett (2004) propose. Rather, it makes ecological sense to weigh our interpretations of ambiguous phenomena in favor of agency, regardless of whether one is a prey animal or a predator: “it is better for a hiker to mistake a boulder for a bear than to mistake a bear for a boulder” (Guthrie, 1993: 6). Still, Guthrie classifies the instances where we take the rustling of leaves in the forest for a spirit as false positives (mistakes). But he believes that the false positives are worth it, all things considered. The most relevant agents in our evolutionary history are other human beings, who can be competitors, friends, enemies, offspring, mates, and so on. Thus, the human tendency to discern agency in the environment expresses itself in the form of anthropomorphism. This is why we see faces in the clouds, in plugs, even in slices of pizza. Guthrie’s anthropomorphism theory is supported by a wide range of empirical studies, which have further specified how anthropomorphism and religion relate (e.g., Shtulman, 2008; Epley et al., 2007). Though CSR is descriptive rather than normative, Guthrie’s account (not unlike other accounts of animism) contains an inherent evaluative assumption: imbuing the environment with agency (especially anthropomorphic agency) is an error. However, as Tim Ingold (2006) and David Abram (1997) have noted, the assumption that the default in our environment is lack of animacy (rather than animacy) is a philosophically substantial claim. This presumption that no animacy is the default stance, and that our cognitive system imputes agency where there is none, is a philosophical assumption that should be explored and justified, rather than merely assumed. Thus, Guthrie’s account has normativity baked into it. Another issue with Guthrie’s theory is that we lack an account of how these perceptual-level dispositions give rise to animistic belief systems

5  Animisms: Practical Indigenous Philosophies 

107

across different cultures. After all, people in animistic cultures are not confused. For example, traditionally the Yup’ik (Alaskan Inuit) or the Anishinaabe (Great Lakes, US-Canadian border) perceive other animal species as persons, and these animals are invited to participate in ceremonies. This does not mean that other animals are perceived as on a par with humans. When they are not performing ceremonies, the Yup’ik will not mistakenly try to interact with nonhuman animals as if they are human— a bear will be treated with caution rather than courtesy. Rather, the category “person” is extended to include “other-than-human persons” (Hallowell, 1960), which incorporate nonhuman animals, plants, and some mineral objects. The cognitive underpinnings of animism may lie in our predilection to detect and favor the interpretation of stimuli as humans, but we need not only cognitive factors, but also cultural learning to explain the range of animistic beliefs in various cultures. Animism is cross-culturally and geographically widespread. It is ancient in human history. Several lines of evidence point to this fact. First, animistic religions tend to be widespread among Indigenous societies across the world. Peoples et al. (2016) conducted a phylogenetic analysis where they looked at the religious beliefs and practices among 33 hunter-­ gatherer societies. They found that animism was present in all societies studied and therefore probably the most ancient religious element, followed by afterlife beliefs and shamanism. Second, we see evidence for animism in Paleolithic cave and mobiliary art in Europe, with the depiction of human-animal hybrids such as the lion-man from Höhlenstein Stadel (southwestern Germany) dated to 41,000–39,000 BCE or the bison-woman from Grotte Chauvet (southeastern France) from around the same period (see De Smedt & De Cruz, 2020, Chap. 4, for an overview of religion in the Paleolithic period).

4 Animism as a Philosophical Stance Animism can be conceived of as a philosophical stance with universal human cognitive underpinnings. Animistic philosophies are concerned with questions that are fundamental to all forms of human existence, including subsistence, the relationship of humans to their broader

108 

J. De Smedt and H. De Cruz

environment, the position of humanity in nature, and social relationships with both human and nonhuman others. Our interactions with other beings and places that make up our environment constitute who we are and who they are. They also form the condition of our knowledge, as all knowledge ultimately rests on observation (Ingold, 2000: 106–108). In this way, our being situated in an environment and our interactions with that environment constitute us ontologically, epistemologically, and ethically. The anthropologist Tim Ingold (2016: 15–16) outlines the web of relations between humans and their broader environment, including plants and nonhuman animals, winds, celestial bodies, supernatural beings, and places (mountains, rivers, forests): “these organism-persons [are] not bounded entities but sites of binding, formed of knotted trails whose loose ends spread in all directions, tangling with other trails in other knots to form an ever-extending meshwork.” Our world is not something we can ever look at from the outside, but rather something that emerges as a result of our interactions with our environment: “knowledge rests upon observation […] there can be no observation without participation [in the] surrounding currents of activity” (Ingold, 2000: 108). Ethics in animistic philosophies always has a strong environmental component because humans do not occupy the world, but inhabit it, and interact with it. As we have argued earlier (e.g., De Cruz & De Smedt, 2015), sophisticated theological ideas often find their basis in stable human cognitive biases and dispositions. For example, the idea that the universe is designed by agents (e.g., God, or the gods) taps into teleological thinking that things that are complex and functional are made by an agent and serve a purpose (Kelemen, 2004). Without any cognitive traction of this sort, religious ideas would not get off the ground, but once they do, they can be philosophically elaborated in various ways. So, like other religious views, animism has psychological roots and it is also a philosophy, with ontological, epistemological, and ethical commitments. Animistic ontology has presuppositions about what the world is, how it is constituted, and how humans fit within this picture. Different forms of animism have their own ontological views and commitments, but they share the “interpenetration of the qualities of the personal with

5  Animisms: Practical Indigenous Philosophies 

109

the natural in the creation of the supernatural” (Winkelman, 2013: 93). Animistic epistemology examines how we, as finite human knowers, can gain knowledge about our environment which is always suffused with the personal. This epistemology is relational—we recognize a sense of “felt presence,” the “sense of self in the unknown other” (Winkelman, 2002: 75). Once we have knowledge of our surroundings, we are in a position to know how to relate to our environment with its interrelated beings (animals, plants, supernatural beings, but also rivers, mountains, and other geographical entities). Animistic philosophies thus always have a prominent environmental ethical component, with attention for the preservation of the environment and respect for ecological relationships (Cajete, 2000). In the remainder of this section we examine two examples of animistic worldviews to give a sense of the rich philosophical underpinnings of animism. The term “animism” has come back into use after a long period of disuse. As we have seen, in its older, cultural evolutionist sense, animism was used to describe a kind of cognitive default: animistic thinking was seen as a childlike, mistaken propensity to impute agency into the environment, for example, one’s car doesn’t start, one gets upset and thinks that the vehicle is being headstrong. The implicit idea was that animists (often Indigenous peoples, but also young children) were ontologically confused about agency. However, Ingold (2006) argues that animism as a religious system is not about imputing agency to things that are really socially inert or lack agency. Rather, animism is a philosophical stance with a distinct phenomenological character of: being alive to the world, characterised by a heightened sensitivity and responsiveness, in perception and action, to an environment that is always in flux, never the same from one moment to the next. Animacy, then, is not a property of persons imaginatively projected onto the things with which they perceive themselves to be surrounded … it is the dynamic, transformative potential of the entire field of relations within which beings of all kinds, more or less person-like or thing-like, continually and reciprocally bring one another into existence. The animacy of the lifeworld, in short, is not the result of an infusion of spirit into substance, or of agency into materiality, but is rather ontologically prior to their differentiation. (Ingold, 2006: 10)

110 

J. De Smedt and H. De Cruz

Arguably, seeing the world as something fundamentally inanimate and impersonal onto which people then “project” animacy is also a philosophical position, one common in western cultures, which one might call inanimism, following Bruno Latour (2010), or naturalism, following Philippe Descola (2013). Inanimism is not unproblematic: seeing the world as by default inanimate and without thought gives rise to a range of seemingly insurmountable philosophical puzzles, such as the problem of consciousness (how can consciousness arise out of unconscious matter?) and the problem of how life arose in a lifeless universe. These puzzles arise because of the philosophical position we have assumed. Adopting inanimism as a default stance also fundamentally changes one’s perception of the world, as does animism. The philosopher and environmental activist David Abram (1997) explains how an animistic attitude slowly began to alter how he perceived the world when he learned of the intelligence that lurks in nonhuman nature, the ability that an alien form of sentience has to echo one’s own, to instill a reverberation in oneself that temporarily shatters habitual ways of seeing and feeling, leaving one open to a world all alive, awake, and aware. (Abram, 1997: 19)

Because animism is so distinct from inanimism, and therefore might strike many as unfamiliar, it may be tempting to make sweeping generalizations about the philosophy of animistic thought, but it is important to bear in mind that animistic religious systems differ from one another in their philosophical outlook. Animism is not a monolithic religious tradition: animistic cultures have different animistic beliefs and practices. The latter may include depicting human/nonhuman hybrids and shamanic rituals. In this respect, it is more correct to say there are different animisms. We will here focus on two brief case studies to show how different, while at the same time similar, animisms can be, and what their philosophical suppositions are. In this way, we make the case for philosophy of religion to expand its vision to encompass a wider range of traditions, including animistic traditions.

5  Animisms: Practical Indigenous Philosophies 

111

4.1 Kincentric Ecology of the Rarámuri The Rarámuri are an Indigenous culture in Mexico. They have lived on the Sierra Madres Occidental for over 2000 years. Their population density is quite high, even though they live in a mountainous area. The Rarámuri practice selective burning of oak trees on mountain plateaus, where they allow the vegetation to regenerate after burnt patches have been used as bean fields. This prevents the soil from becoming depleted. Moreover, it helps to guard against forest fires. As a result, the ecology of the area that the Rarámuri tend is a diverse patchwork of oak trees and smaller plants, with a high diversity of both fauna and flora (LaRochelle & Berkes, 2003). Central to their way of life is a philosophical attitude that the ethnobotanist and anthropologist Enrique Salmón terms kincentric ecology: Indigenous people in North America are aware that life in any environment is viable only when humans view their surroundings as kin; that their mutual roles are essential for their survival. To many traditional indigenous people, this awareness comes after years of listening to and recalling stories about the land. (Salmón, 2000: 1327)

The various creatures with which the Rarámuri engage, including those they hunt, cultivate, and eat, are considered kin. Like the Yup’ik mentioned earlier, Rarámuri are not confused about biology. Rather, kincentric ecology is a sophisticated set of philosophical notions, in which the concept of iwígara is central. Iwígara is the total interconnectedness and integration of all life in the Sierra Madres, physical and spiritual. To say iwígara to a Rarámuri calls on that person to realize life in all its forms. The person recalls the beginning of Rarámuri life, origins, and relationships to animals, plants, the place of nurturing, and the entities to which the Rarámuri look for guidance. (Salmón, 2000: 1328)

Iwígara is tied up intimately with traditional knowledge of plants, especially medicinal plants that appear on the cleared patches of oak forest after the land is allowed to regenerate following the bean harvest.

112 

J. De Smedt and H. De Cruz

Because the plants are kin to humans, knowledge about them is comprehensive—this contains knowledge not only about the concrete usage (in diet, technology, or medicine), but also about when they flower, what shape the berries might take, and ecological relationships to other plants. This knowledge is often transmitted in stories (Salmón, 2020). The relationship of humans and the rest of the cosmos is a fundamental pillar of Mesoamerican Indigenous thought, captured in their cosmovision (Robles-Zamorra 2021). Cosmovision is the ontological view that humans are a part of a larger cosmic whole, which consists of three closely interrelated aspects of reality (human, natural, and spiritual). There is no meaningful or clear division between these aspects. Rather, our natural and spiritual environments structure and provide conditions for our cultural practices, in this way shaping customs such as hunting, planting, weeding, harvesting, and predicting the weather. It also includes traditions that stress the interrelation with ancestors and spirits such as the Día de los Muertos, which yearly celebrates the connection between the living and the dead. The philosopher Alfredo Robles-Zamora (2021) notes that this cosmovision has been a feature of Mesoamerican thought for at least two millennia, and has survived the Christian missionization. It still shapes the practical lives of Indigenous peoples in the region today. The Rarámuri further emphasize the continuity between human and nonhuman kin by seeing a continuous cycle of rebirths where humans can be reborn in nonhuman form, and vice versa (Salmón, 2000).

4.2 The Significance of the Land and Its People for Inuktitut-Speaking Inuit Considering nonhuman others as kin is one philosophical form of animism. A different animistic philosophy can be found among speakers of Inuktitut languages in the Canadian arctic. In spite of large changes in subsistence economy over the past decades Inuit communities value a deep engagement with and immersion in the Land (Nuna). The Nuna is an uncanny, not to be dominated or even knowable shifting mass of ice and unexpected weather conditions with migrating animals in which humans are just one of many elements. They cannot impose

5  Animisms: Practical Indigenous Philosophies 

113

human-­made order on this. Inuit cosmology has three elements that also influence how humans are perceived. First, water (the open sea) is the prime source of sustenance (for the Inuit, sea mammals); it is associated with the basic qualities of animal life. In the philosophical anthropology of the Inuit, water (or the open sea) stands for the stuff of life common to animals and humans. Second, the Nuna is the middle point of the cosmological structure. It is populated with animals such as polar bears that are an important symbol of balance. In Inuit philosophical anthropology, Nuna stands for human awareness and our potentiality to do things—in Inuit languages inua (also the root for the word “Inuit”). This lies either dormant in us, or is made manifest by the situations we find ourselves in. Third, sky (sila, breath) is the impersonal and imperishable part of life, or life-breath, which each creature borrows for a while from the sky and then returns after death. Each living being that contains a life-breath gets reincarnated in other things of its kind. Thus, the idea of human personhood is intimately linked to Inuit cosmology, specifically to their triune concept of water-land-sky. These are not just forces in their ecology, but also in the psychology of individual persons. The balance and interaction between these three elements creates a person; this includes both human and other-than-human persons (Qitsualik, 2013). When one is feeling psychologically unwell, as when one feels depressed, stressed, or is unsure what direction to take in one’s life, one goes out and camps, fishes, traps, and hunts for some time on the Nuna (including the sea) as a way to reconnect. A common expression is nunamii’luni quvianaqtuq—“it is a happy moment to be on the land” (Robertson & Ljubicic, 2019). Engagement with the Nuna is not only a prerequisite for physical and mental health; it is also regarded as essential for moral growth and cultivation. Traditional subsistence techniques such as hunting and fishing require prudence, taking calculated risks, and flexibly deploying reasoning skills, as well as knowledge about the weather, land, ice and snow conditions, and animal behavior (Searles, 2010). The yields of fishing, hunting, and trapping—called “country food”—are often shared with older, less mobile members of the community, which helps to cultivate generosity, an important aspect of traditional hunter-gatherer morality (Collings, 2001). The Nuna and its nonhuman occupants are thus tied

114 

J. De Smedt and H. De Cruz

into Inuit philosophy in a very practical way, namely as essential for human flourishing and well-being: “feelings of emotional wellness and wholeness [come] from being able to spend time on the land: in short, ‘the land enriches the soul’” (Willox et al., 2013: 22). The Inuit novelist and anthropologist Rachel Attituq Qitsualik (2013) describes the animistic beliefs of Inuit communities as seeing non-­ anthropomorphic agency and life as the default. Unlike the Rarámuri, who achieve a sense of interconnectedness with other beings by considering them kin, Inuktitut speakers see the Nuna as ultimately unfathomable and surprising. The Land and its boundaries are sovereign and require respect. It is the absence of human-made order, not something to be subdued or overcome by humans. Rather, as the default state of nature it has its own balance, and humans have to be mindful not to upset this balance when interacting with the Nuna and its nonhuman coinhabitants. Inuit negotiate the boundaries between their world and the Land with an eye toward sustainability, and for young Inuit to engage with the Land is to learn this embodied philosophy first-hand, through concrete, physical interactions.

5 Implications for the Philosophy of Religion Our two case studies give a glimpse of the ontological, epistemic, and ethical attitudes that underlie Indigenous animistic philosophies and their relationship to concrete subsistence practices. At this point, one may wonder what the relevance of these Indigenous philosophies could be for philosophy of religion, as the latter is not typically concerned with subsistence or ecological sustainability. However, since the publication of Lynn White Jr.’s influential paper “The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis” there is an increasing recognition that philosophical presuppositions do have a profound influence on subsistence. To briefly recap, White argued that the roots of the ecological crisis (already a point of discussion in the 1960s) are not only technological (e.g., too much CO2 being pumped into the atmosphere), but are fundamentally philosophical views that underlie the exploitation of nature. Technology does not

5  Animisms: Practical Indigenous Philosophies 

115

float free from societal and philosophical ideas. White argued: “Human ecology is deeply conditioned by beliefs about our nature and destiny— that is, by religion. To Western eyes this is very evident in, say, India or Ceylon. It is equally true of ourselves” (1967: 1205). In White’s view, the exploitation of nature by westerners predates the Industrial Revolution (though the latter exacerbated it), and goes back to the theological notion of human exceptionalism. Created in God’s image, and having dominion over nature (Genesis 1: 26–28), Christians feel self-licensed to “exploit nature for [their] proper ends” (1967: 1205). After all, it is God’s will. White sees the turning point of this situation in the destruction of European pagan animism by Christian proselytizers in the early Middle Ages: “By destroying pagan animism, Christianity made it possible to exploit nature in a mood of indifference to the feelings of natural objects” (1205). It is interesting to note that CSR provides some measure of support for White’s idea that being a Christian reduces animistic thought. Several studies have found not only an absence of relationship between religiosity (often Christianity, as the participants in these studies are all too often North American undergraduates) and animism, but also a negative correlation. For example, Willard et al. (2020) found that Christians show a reduced tendency to anthropomorphize their environment compared to non-religious people: conceiving of a monotheistic God makes it harder to see agency in the environment. White’s paper has generated a huge literature. In particular, a number of authors (e.g., Carroll et  al., 1997/2016) have explored the competing hypothesis that Christianity can also promote care and stewardship for nature. However, as Taylor et  al. (2016) show through a large analysis of quantitative studies, Abrahamic religions tend to promote destructive and anthropocentric environmental attitudes, whereas Indigenous religions are more likely to promote pro-environmental attitudes. The focus on justification and rationality of theistic (often Christian) beliefs leaves a wide range of topics in the philosophy of religion unexplored. There are various reasons for why philosophy of religion is skewed in this way. One important contributing factor is probably the demographic composition of the philosophy profession in western departments, combined with self-selection. Western philosophers are

116 

J. De Smedt and H. De Cruz

predominantly white and male (though gender and ethnic diversity are slowly improving), and atheism predominates. The percentage of theistic philosophers outside of philosophy of religion is around 15% (De Cruz, 2017; Bourget & Chalmers, 2014). Among philosophers of religion Christianity is the most common religious affiliation; estimations range between 60.5% and 72.3% (see, e.g., De Cruz, 2017; Bourget & Chalmers, 2014). Analytic philosophers tend to think of their discipline as exploring ideas unrelated to personal lived experience. Yet, it is sociologically unsurprising that philosophers would explore philosophical positions that are close to their personal beliefs and, indeed, qualitative analysis (De Cruz, 2018) confirms this. There might be a less epistemically innocent explanation for the lack of diversity in topics in philosophy of religion, which tracks Thi Nguyen’s (2020) distinction between epistemic bubbles and echo chambers. Members of epistemic bubbles lack exposure to alternative sources of information and viewpoints. Philosophy of religion as practiced at western philosophy departments is an epistemic bubble: a place where Christianity is accorded a high prima facie credibility, due to the demographic composition of the field. Other beliefs are tolerated to the extent that they are philosophically and religiously similar (e.g., Judaism and Islam). However, something more nefarious may be taking place. Members of epistemic echo chambers are in a position where other voices are actively undermined and discredited. Within philosophy of religion, Christian theism and naturalistic atheism are often posited as the only positions (e.g., Peterson, 2014; this paper is chosen at random, many others fit the bill), excluding other views from the realm of possibilities, and even from philosophy. In this way, animism ends up being not properly part of philosophy. Most of the literature on animistic philosophy is published not in philosophical journals, but in journals for anthropology and (human) ecology. The delineation of what philosophy is is not just some intellectual exercise of definitions: it influences which topics get published and which do not and, ultimately, who gets to stay in academia (working at a university) and who doesn’t (Dotson, 2013). So, one’s definition of what philosophy is has an important gatekeeping function. When one of the authors of this chapter became an editor of the Journal of Analytic

5  Animisms: Practical Indigenous Philosophies 

117

Theology, the editorial team received an email by a well-known philosopher of religion who bluntly stated that he would stop reading the journal if it started publishing papers on paganism (a blanket term that includes animism). If a topic does not fit the unwritten standards of what is philosophy of religion, it is not merely deemed “bad philosophy,” but rather, not philosophy at all. This is not unique to philosophy of religion. The culture of justification played a role in the past, for example, Descartes was decried as “not philosophy” by the Scholastics, and nowadays analytic and continental philosophy “[have grown] apart and developed separately from one another, leading eventually to a kind of détente, although one based largely on mutual ignorance” (Moran, 2010: 236). To achieve a more inclusive philosophy of religion, we might use one of the following strategies. A first strategy is to shift the burden of proof away from unconventional, underrepresented philosophy of religion to standard philosophy of religion, and to argue that only philosophy of religion that engages with the full range of religious beliefs and practices is worthy of the name. However, a second strategy, at once more modest and more radical, suggests we question the culture of justification within philosophy; we ought not to be too concerned with gatekeeping or about what counts as “proper” philosophy of religion, but be more inclusive. As we have seen in the previous sections, expanding philosophy of religion to incorporate Indigenous animistic religions offers us some scope to think more about issues that have not received sufficient attention in philosophy of religion, such as the relationship between religion and the environment, or the way in which contemporary existential threats such as overexploitation of resources relate to practical philosophical principles, allowing philosophy of religion to play on a larger stage.

6 Conclusion In this chapter, we have examined animism as a philosophically rich religious attitude that offers scope to expand the philosophy of religion. We have shown that animism rests on cognitive biases that make it an intuitive option, though, like other religious systems, animisms need cultural elaboration. Cultural elaboration requires philosophical presuppositions

118 

J. De Smedt and H. De Cruz

to ground the ontological, epistemic, and ethical aspects of animistic thinking. Philosophers of religion can not only broaden their toolkit significantly; they can also expand the range of problems they investigate (e.g., ecological deterioration) by considering animisms within the scope of philosophy of religion.

References Abram, D. (1997). The spell of the sensuous. Perception and language in a more-­ than-­human world. Vintage Books. Barrett, J. L. (2004). Why would anyone believe in God? Altamira Press. Bourget, D., & Chalmers, D. (2014). What do philosophers believe? Philosophical Studies, 170, 465–500. Cajete, G. (2000). Native science. Natural laws of interdependence. Clear Light Publishers. Carroll, J. E., Brockelman, P., & Westfall, M. (Eds.) ([1997] 2016). The greening of faith. God, the environment, and the good life. University of New Hampshire Press. Collings, P. (2001). ‘If you got everything, it’s good enough’: Perspectives on successful aging in a Canadian Inuit community. Journal of Cross-Cultural Gerontology, 16(2), 127–155. Cox, J. L. (2014). The invention of God in indigenous societies. Acumen. de Brosses, C. ([1760] 2017). On the worship of fetish gods: Or, a parallel of the ancient religion of Egypt with the present religion of Nigritia. In R. C. Morris, & D. H. Leonhard (Eds.), The returns of Fetichism. Charles de Brosses and the afterlives of an idea (pp. 44–132). University of Chicago Press. De Cruz, H. (2017). Religious disagreement: An empirical study among academic philosophers. Episteme, 14, 71–87. De Cruz, H. (2018). Religious beliefs and philosophical views: A qualitative study. Res Philosophica, 95(3), 477–504. De Cruz, H., & De Smedt, J. (2013). Reformed and evolutionary epistemology and the noetic effects of sin. International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 74(1), 49–66. De Cruz, H., & De Smedt, J. (2015). A natural history of natural theology. In The cognitive science of theology and philosophy of religion. MIT Press.

5  Animisms: Practical Indigenous Philosophies 

119

De Cruz, H., & De Smedt, J. (2017). How psychological dispositions influence the theology of the afterlife. In Y.  Nagasawa & B.  Matheson (Eds.), The Palgrave handbook of the afterlife (pp. 435–453). Palgrave Macmillan. de Fontenelle, B. L. B. ([1686] 1824). Histoire des Oracles (Revised ed.). Gosse & Neaulme. De Smedt, J., & De Cruz, H. (2020). The challenge of evolution to religion. Cambridge University Press. Descola, P. (2013). Beyond nature and culture. Lloyd, J. (trans.). University of Chicago Press. Dotson, K. (2013). How is this paper philosophy? Comparative Philosophy, 3(1), 3–29. Epley, N., Waytz, A., & Cacioppo, J. T. (2007). On seeing human: A three-­ factor theory of anthropomorphism. Psychological Review, 114(4), 864–886. Frazer, J. G. (1890). The Golden bough: A study in comparative religion. Macmillan. Freeman, A. (2014). Charles de Brosses and the French enlightenment origins of religious fetishism. Intellectual History Review, 24(2), 203–214. Guthrie, S.  E. (1980). A cognitive theory of religion. Current Anthropology, 21(2), 181–194. Guthrie, S.  E. (1993). Faces in the clouds. A new theory of religion. Oxford University Press. Hallowell, A.  I. (1960). Ojibwa ontology, behavior, and world view. In S. Diamond (Ed.), Culture in history. Essays in honor of Paul Radin (pp. 19–52). Columbia University Press. Harrison, P. (2015). The territories of science and religion. University of Chicago Press. Horton, R. (1967). African traditional thought and Western science. Part I.  From tradition to science. Africa: Journal of the International African Institute., 37(1), 50–71. Hume, D. (1757). The natural history of religion. In Four dissertations (pp. 1–117). A. Millar. Ingold, T. (2000). The perception of the environment. Essays on livelihood, dwelling and skill. Routledge. Ingold, T. (2006). Rethinking the animate, re-animating thought. Ethnos, 71(1), 9–20. Ingold, T. (2016). From science to art and Back again: The pendulum of an anthropologist. Anuac, 5(1), 5–23.

120 

J. De Smedt and H. De Cruz

Järnefelt, E., Zhu, L., Canfield, C.  F., Chen, M., & Kelemen, D. (2019). Reasoning about nature’s agency and design in the cultural context of China. Religion, Brain & Behavior, 9(2), 156–178. Josephson-Storm, J. (2017). The myth of disenchantment. Magic, modernity, and the birth of the human sciences. University of Chicago Press. Kelemen, D. (2004). Are children ‘intuitive theists’? Reasoning about purpose and design in nature. Psychological Science, 15(5), 295–301. Kelemen, D., Rottman, J., & Seston, R. (2013). Professional physical scientists display tenacious teleological tendencies: Purpose-based reasoning as a cognitive default. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 142(4), 1074–1083. LaRochelle, S., & Berkes, F. (2003). Traditional ecological knowledge and practice for edible wild plants: Biodiversity use by the Rarámuri, in the Sierra Tarahumara, Mexico. International Journal of Sustainable Development & World Ecology, 10(4), 361–375. Latour, B. ([1996] 2010). On the cult of the Factish gods. In C.  Porter, & H. MacLean (trans.). On the modern cult of the Factish Gods (pp. 1–66). Duke University Press. Latour, B. (2010). An attempt at a ‘compositionist manifesto. New Literary History, 41(3), 471–490. Moran, D. (2010). Analytic philosophy and continental philosophy: Four confrontations. In L. Lawlor (Ed.), The history of continental philosophy, Vol. 4. Phenomenology: Responses and developments (pp. 235–266). Acumen. Neurath, O. ([1921] 1973). Anti-Spengler. In M.  Neurath, & R.  S. Cohen (Eds.), Otto Neurath. Empiricism and sociology (pp. 158–213). D. Reidel. Neurath, O. ([1931] 1973). Empirical sociology. The scientific content of history and political economy. In M.  Neurath, & R.  S. Cohen (Eds.), Otto Neurath. Empiricism and sociology (pp. 319–421). D. Reidel. Nguyen, C.  T. (2020). Echo chambers and epistemic bubbles. Episteme, 17(2), 141–161. Oppy, G. & Pearce, K.L. (2022). Is there a God? A debate. Routledge. Peoples, H. C., Duda, P., & Marlowe, F. W. (2016). Hunter-gatherers and the origins of religion. Human Nature, 27(3), 261–282. Peterson, M. (2014). The encounter between naturalistic atheism and Christian theism. In M. Peterson, W. Hasker, B. Reichenbach, & D. Basinger (Eds.), Philosophy of religion: Selected reading (5th ed., pp.  438–449). Oxford University Press. Peterson, M., Hasker, W., Reichenbach, B., & Basinger, D. (Eds.). (2014). Philosophy of religion: Selected reading (5th ed.). Oxford University Press.

5  Animisms: Practical Indigenous Philosophies 

121

Piaget, J. ([1929] 1971). The Child’s conception of the world. In J. Tomlinson, & A. Tomlinson (trans.). Routledge and Kegan Paul. Qitsualik, R. (2013). Inummarik: Self-sovereignty in classic Inuit thought. In S. Nickels, K. Kelley, C. Grable, M. Lougheed, & J. Kuptana (Eds.), Nilliajut: Inuit perspectives on security, patriotism and sovereignty (pp.  23–33). Inuit Tapiriit Kanatami. Robertson, S., & Ljubicic, G. (2019). Nunamii’luni quvianaqtuq (it is a happy moment to be on the land): Feelings, freedom and the spatial political ontology of well-being in Gjoa haven and Tikiranajuk, Nunavut. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 37(3), 542–560. Robles-Zamora, J. A. (2021). Morality as cognitive scaffolding in the nucleus of the Mesoamerican Cosmovision. In J.  De Smedt & H.  De Cruz (Eds.), Empirically engaged evolutionary ethics (pp.  203–220). Springer (Synthese Library). Salmón, E. (2000). Kincentric ecology: Indigenous perceptions of the human-­ nature relationship. Ecological Applications, 10(5), 1327–1332. Salmón, E. (2020). Iwígara. The kinship of plants and people. American Indian ethnobiological traditions and science. Timber Press. Searles, E. (2010). Placing identity: Town, land, and authenticity in Nunavut, Canada. Acta Borealia, 27(2), 151–166. Shtulman, A. (2008). Variation in the anthropomorphization of supernatural beings and its implications for cognitive theories of religion. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 34(5), 1123–1138. Sidky, H. (2015). Religion. An anthropological perspective. Peter Lang. Smith, J. Z. (1998). Religion, religions, religious. In M. C. Taylor (Ed.), Critical terms for religious studies (pp. 269–284). University of Chicago Press. Smith, J. K. A. (2017). What stands on the fall? A philosophical exploration. In W.  T. Cavanaugh & J.  K. A.  Smith (Eds.), Evolution and the fall (pp. 48–64). Eerdmans. Sperber, D. (1996). Explaining culture. A naturalistic approach. Blackwell. Taylor, B., Van Wieren, G., & Zaleha, B. D. (2016). Lynn White Jr. and the greening-of-religion hypothesis. Conservation Biology, 30(5), 1000–1009. Tylor, E. B. (1871). Primitive culture: Researches into the development of mythology, philosophy, religion, language, art, and custom. John Murray. Van Inwagen, P. (2004). The argument from evil. In P. van Inwagen (Ed.), Christian faith and the problem of evil (pp. 55–73). Grand Rapids, MI. White, L. (1967). The historical roots of our ecologic crisis. Science, 155(3767), 1203–1207.

122 

J. De Smedt and H. De Cruz

White, C. (2021). An introduction to the cognitive science of religion. Connecting evolution, brain, cognition and culture. Routledge. Whitehouse, H., François, P., Savage, P. E., Hoyer, D., Feeney, K. C., Cioni, E., Purcell, R., Larson J., Baines, J.  Ter Haar, B, Covey, A. & Turchin, P. (in press) Testing the Big Gods hypothesis with global historical data: a review and “retake”. Religion, Brain & Behavior, 1–43. Whitney, L. A. (2018). Institutional dimensions of the future of philosophy of religion. Palgrave Communications, 4(1), 67. Willard, A. K., Cingl, L., & Norenzayan, A. (2020). Cognitive biases and religious belief: A path model replication in the Czech Republic and Slovakia with a focus on anthropomorphism. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 11(1), 97–106. Williams, B. (Ed.). (1973). Problems of the self (pp.  82–100). Cambridge University Press. Willox, A.  C., Harper, S.  L., Edge, V.  L., Landman, K., Houle, K., & Ford, J.  D. (2013). The land enriches the soul: On climatic and environmental change, affect, and emotional health and well-being in Rigolet, Nunatsiavut, Canada. Emotion, Space and Society., 6, 14–24. Winkelman, M. (2002). Shamanism and cognitive evolution. Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 12(1), 71–86. Winkelman, M. (2013). Shamanic cosmology as an evolutionary neurocognitive epistemology. International Journal of Transpersonal Studies, 32(1), 79–99. Wisnewski, J. J. (2005). Is the immortal life worth living? International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 58(1), 27–36.

6 New Animism as Cultural Critique? Mikel Burley

The concept of animism, adapted and promoted by Edward Tylor in his magnum opus Primitive Culture (1871), spawned extensive debate in Victorian and post-Victorian anthropology (Stocking, 1987: 319–320; Stringer, 1999). More recently, it has been feasible for commentators, such as the comparative sociologist John Clammer, to propose that ‘“animism” is a term that has almost entirely dropped out of anthropological discourse in the West’ (Clammer, 2004: 83). Yet the situation was changing even at the time when Clammer was writing. The terms new animism and neo-animism had been coined in a book review by Paul Bouissac in 1989, and animism (with or without the prefix ‘new’ or ‘neo-’) was revisited afresh by several anthropologists from the 1990s onwards (Descola, 1992; Viveiros de Castro, 1998; Bird-David, 1999). Since the middle of the first decade of the twenty-first century, the revival of the term has been consolidated, both in anthropology and in the broad field of

M. Burley (*) University of Leeds, Leeds, UK e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Smith (ed.), Animism and Philosophy of Religion, Palgrave Frontiers in Philosophy of Religion, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94170-3_6

123

124 

M. Burley

religious studies, not least by the prolific efforts of Graham Harvey (e.g. Harvey, 2005, 2013, 2017a). Until now, animism has received relatively little attention in the philosophy of religion, albeit with some exceptions (Eldridge, 1996; von der  Ruhr, 1996; Phillips, 2001, esp. 146–162; Burley, 2019; Smith, 2020). Nevertheless, discussions of animism in anthropology and religious studies are conceptually rich enough to be of inherent philosophical interest, and hence the topic of animism provides fertile terrain for interdisciplinary philosophical inquiry. The purpose of the present chapter is to further this interdisciplinary inquiry by utilizing, from anthropological discourse, the notion of cultural critique as a conceptual setting in which to examine different approaches to the study of animism, with what has become known as new animism as a primary focus. New animism is a diverse phenomenon whose complexity will become apparent as the chapter proceeds. As an approximate starting point, however, we might note that proponents of new animism tend to emphasize not only the idea that the world is inhabited by innumerable living beings, which may be animal, vegetable or indeed mineral in nature, but also the extent to which these beings constitute mutually supportive communities. Moreover, new animism is associated both with a blurring of the boundary between humans and other beings and with an extension of the status of personhood to beings other than humans. The notion of cultural critique, meanwhile, is one that I am deriving chiefly from the work of George Marcus and Michael Fischer, whose influential book Anthropology as Cultural Critique: An Experimental Moment in the Human Sciences was first published in 1986 and republished in a second edition in 1999. In that book, the authors argue that social or cultural anthropology holds out two main promises. One of these is the promise to resist the assumption that all societies are destined, eventually, to conform to a Westernized paradigm; the other is to facilitate cultural self-critique, in the sense of critical reflection upon the values and norms that predominate in the anthropologist’s home society. As Marcus and Fischer put it, ‘In using portraits of other cultural patterns to reflect self-critically on our own ways, anthropology disrupts common sense and makes us reexamine our taken-for-granted assumptions’ (1999: 1). Further to this principal sense of ‘cultural critique’, Marcus and Fischer advocate a broader sense,

6  New Animism as Cultural Critique? 

125

according to which the critique may profitably be extended to encompass also the researcher’s (and his or her readers’) assumptions about, and interpretations of, the other culture or cultures being studied. Although the methods deployed by philosophers of religion usually diverge from those of cultural anthropology, there are certain respects in which the two promises delineated by Marcus and Fischer constitute a useful lens through which to conceptualize a particular approach to the philosophy of religion. The approach is one that prioritizes the understanding of diverse forms of religion—or, indeed, of human life more generally—over the evaluation of ‘truth claims’ that are commonly attributed to religious adherents. ‘What we may learn by studying other cultures’, writes the philosopher Peter Winch, includes ‘different possibilities of making sense of human life, different ideas about the possible importance that the carrying out of certain activities may take on’, especially for those people who are ‘trying to contemplate the sense of [their] life as a whole’ (Winch, 1964: 321). Commenting on Winch’s approach, D.  Z. Phillips remarks that the significance of considering alternative ways of making sense of human life resides in the potential for such an inquiry to disabuse us of the assumption ‘that what we find important, the ways in which we make sense of our lives, are underpinned by a necessity, such that this is all that could be important or make sense to anyone’ (Phillips, 1990: 217). These observations indicate an approach to the philosophy of religion that has strong affinities with aspects of anthropology; indeed, we might refer to this approach by means of the phrase philosophy of religion as cultural critique. This is in turn a dimension of the approach I have elsewhere termed a radical pluralist philosophy of religion (Burley, 2020). In the spirit of Phillips’s Wittgenstein-influenced hermeneutical conception of philosophy, such an approach seeks to do ‘conceptual justice to the world in all its variety’ (Phillips, 2007: 207). The present chapter explores and analyses further affinities, this time between the motif of cultural critique and the notion of new animism. At the heart of the inquiry is the question of whether new animism is itself, or could productively be regarded as, a form of cultural critique. Central to my analysis will be a distinction between what I call affirmatory new animism and a critical approach to new animism, respectively. While each of these approaches acknowledges divergences between animist

126 

M. Burley

epistemologies and ontologies, on the one hand, and modern Western epistemologies and ontologies, on the other, the affirmatory approach affirms the superiority of the animist side of the contrast; the critical approach remains more circumspect, emphasizing the hermeneutical difficulties that accompany efforts to understand the kinds of cultural phenomena at issue. Congruent with this hermeneutical awareness, the critical approach accentuates the need for scrutiny of the categories that are being deployed in the inquiry, central among these being the category of animism itself. In this respect, the critical approach resembles what Marcus and Fischer describe as a strong version of ‘cross-cultural juxtaposition’ (1999, esp. 160–164), this being a method that involves not merely cultural self-­critique but also the constant reassessment of one’s attempts to interpret each of the societies under examination. The point of the chapter is not to vindicate either the affirmatory or the critical approach but rather to use the concept of cultural critique as an ‘object of comparison’ (cf. Wittgenstein, 2009: §§130–131) for clarifying what kind of phenomenon (or movement or orientation) new animism is, what its possibilities are and what might be the strengths and weaknesses both of new animism itself and of the criticisms that have been lodged against it. To these ends, the chapter will proceed as follows. The first section after this introduction provides further elucidation of the notion of cultural critique. The subsequent section introduces the theme of animism (or animisms, in the plural) by distinguishing between the concept of animism formulated in nineteenth-century anthropology and the ways in which it has been reconfigured in recent and contemporary discussions in anthropology and religious studies. The remainder of the chapter concentrates on methodological issues, initially with a section outlining the need, in both anthropology and philosophy, to avoid (as far as is possible) imposing non-indigenous conceptual frameworks upon the cultural systems under investigation. This sets the scene for an exposition of affirmatory new animism and its accompanying critique of Western modernity, which becomes most overt in the work of Harvey, and then for an examination of criticisms advanced by those who accuse Harvey of compromising academic distance for the sake of animistic advocacy. The penultimate section turns to what I am calling a critical approach to new animism, exemplified by anthropologist Nicolas

6  New Animism as Cultural Critique? 

127

Peterson; it is an approach that, among other things, calls into question simplistic assumptions about what it means to speak of certain features of the world as alive or sentient. Finally, the concluding section sums up the overall analysis, explicating the relevance of the notion of cultural critique to both the affirmatory and critical approaches to new animism.

1 The Concept of Cultural Critique The promise of social and cultural anthropology to enable cultural critique—in the sense of critical reflection upon the norms, values, customs and institutions embodied in specific cultures, including (and especially) those of the anthropologist’s own society—is explicated by Marcus and Fischer in terms of defamiliarization. Although not acknowledged by Marcus and Fischer themselves, the term ‘defamiliarization’ has its origins in literary criticism, for it has been used to translate the Russian Formalist concept of ostranenie (остранение), which could also be rendered as ‘estrangement’ (Buchanan, 2010: 354). The Formalist critic Victor Shklovsky (1893–1984) was especially influential in drawing attention to how certain writers are able to present ostensibly commonplace activities or events in a dramatically new light by deploying unfamiliar—hence defamiliarizing, distancing or estranging—modes of description. Shklovsky remarks upon the ability of Leo Tolstoy, for example, to describe objects and events as if seeing them for the first time or to transform our perspective upon them, as when Tolstoy writes the story of Kholstomer (‘Strider’) from the point of view of the horse (Shklovsky, 1965: 13–14). It is appropriate that the same term, ‘defamiliarization’, should be used in relation to anthropology, for studies of diverse societies can also enable readers to perceive objects and events anew or from different perspectives. Marcus and Fischer identify two main types, or strategies, of defamiliarization in anthropology, namely, defamiliarization by epistemological critique and defamiliarization by cross-cultural juxtaposition (1999: 137–138). Epistemological critique involves bringing oneself and one’s readers into encounter with unfamiliar ways of thinking and behaving; by doing so, anthropological studies are able to destabilize culturally

128 

M. Burley

given assumptions, exposing the fact that ‘our’ values and norms (where ‘our’ is to be read as ‘contemporary Western’), far from being natural and inevitable, are no less culturally conditioned than are those of other societies (138). A result of this process can be the recognition of the contingency and perhaps the peculiarity of aspects of one’s own form of life and an opening of the mind to other ways of being human. What Marcus and Fischer call ‘cross-cultural juxtaposition’ advances the defamiliarization process further by means of targeted comparisons. Ethnographic accounts of forms of social organization and behaviour in other cultural locales are used to interrogate or ‘probe’ specific aspects of social reality in the anthropologist’s home society. As Marcus and Fischer submit, ‘in studying the other, the ethnographer’s own home culture begins to come into question in new ways’ (140). A principal, albeit imperfect, example of what Marcus and Fischer have in mind is Margaret Mead’s classic study of Samoan adolescence (Mead, 1928). By bringing her descriptions of sex roles, childrearing practices and the emotional lives of adolescents in Samoa into juxtaposition with comparable phenomena in North America, Mead sought to unsettle the assumptions of her largely American readership that their own forms of social and familial interaction were beyond question. Although the reliability of Mead’s ethnography has been challenged (Freeman, 1999), her comparative approach nonetheless indicates the direction in which the method of defamiliarization by cross-cultural juxtaposition might proceed. As Marcus and Fischer see it, Mead’s work typifies a relatively weak form of cross-cultural juxtaposition, inasmuch as the North American side of the comparison remains underdeveloped and impressionistic, relying too much on the author’s uncritical assumptions about her own society rather than being based on rigorous ethnographic research. A stronger, ‘more powerful version’ of the method would be one that brings the anthropologist’s skills of ethnographic analysis to bear upon the home society as well as the society with which it is being compared: each of the two cases could then be used ‘as a probe to further stimulate questions about the other’ (Marcus & Fischer, 1999: 160). The desired effect of the strategy that Marcus and Fischer are advocating need not be a denial of the legitimacy of modes of activity

6  New Animism as Cultural Critique? 

129

characteristic of the home culture. In other words, the notion of critique involved in the term ‘cultural critique’ ought not to be construed as implying an attempt to directly undermine or reject any given social practices. It is, however, to be understood as implying an erosion of the assumption that the forms taken by the social practices are themselves necessary and immutable. Fischer elsewhere refers to the method as critical hermeneutics, the purpose of which is to treat each cultural context with due seriousness, establishing a space for comparative analysis and, where appropriate, evaluative assessment of the particular features that are the target of the study (Fischer & Abedi, 1990: xxiv, 101). But this critical hermeneutics is also self-reflexive and self-critical inasmuch as the evaluative lens is focused at least as sharply upon the modes of interpretation on the part of the researcher as it is upon the cultural practices under examination. Marcus and Fischer caution their fellow anthropologists against making crude judgements about which of two juxtaposed cultural milieus is ‘better’ and which is ‘worse’ (1999: 139). Instead, the strongest instances of cultural critique will involve an ‘open-ended’ dialectical investigation of the ‘similarities and differences’ between the two (or more) societies in question (161), combined with a self-aware ongoing ‘critical reassessment’ of the interpretive concepts deployed in the inquiry (160). While broadly endorsing the methods of defamiliarization by epistemological critique and cross-cultural juxtaposition propounded by Marcus and Fischer, Subhabrata Banerjee and Stephen Linstead have proposed ‘a third category of critique’, which they designate defamilarization by ontological introspection (2004: 236). As explicated by Banerjee and Linstead, this third variety of defamiliarization is likely to be especially relevant to cross-cultural inquiry into religious matters, for it ‘involves consideration of the spiritual dimensions of the other culture and its assumptions/beliefs about the nature of materiality and immateriality, as a mirror for the surfacing and interrogation of our own [comparable] assumptions’ (236). Banerjee and Linstead add that ‘[t]his introspection shows deference to Aboriginal or indigenous value systems, stressing that there are no easy or formulaic solutions to the problems of being’ (236–237). By ‘deference’, I presume that Banerjee and Linstead mean not that the systems of belief and value are necessarily to be accepted

130 

M. Burley

as true or as superior to other systems but rather that they should be treated as at least possibly correct or in some way useful or beneficial. Understood thus, the proposal contributes an important further (albeit partially overlapping) component to the defamiliarizing strategy, for it highlights the fact that specifically religious or spiritual aspects of a culture can be brought into relief through comparative analysis and, furthermore, that this applies as much to the religious or spiritual aspects of the researcher’s home cultural or subcultural milieu as to those of the other cultures or subcultures being studied. Indeed, when research is viewed in this comparative or juxtapositional light, the distinction between the home culture and the other culture softens, since both fall within the purview of the study. To borrow a term from Mikhail Bakhtin (1981: 12), we might say that the cultural domains that are brought into juxtaposition exhibit an ‘interillumination’, in the sense that, through the comparative exercise, each is revealed in a new light. The key concepts of cultural critique and defamiliarization could be elaborated at greater length. Enough has been said, however, to foreground these concepts as part of a conceptual framework in relation to which different approaches to the study of animism may be analysed. To begin that task, let us turn in the next section to the broad distinction between older and newer uses of the term ‘animism’.

2 Animisms Old and New As is well known, the term ‘animism’ was initially brought into prominence in an anthropological setting by Edward Tylor, who adapted it from earlier usages, notably that of the German chemist and physician Georg Ernst Stahl (Stahl, 1737; Tylor, 1871: 384–385 n. 1). For Tylor, ‘animism’ denoted ‘the deep-lying doctrine of Spiritual Beings, which embodies the very essence of Spiritualistic as opposed to Materialistic philosophy’ (1871: 384). By ‘philosophy’, Tylor did not have in mind a specifically academic pursuit; rather, he was using ‘philosophy’ in the broader sense of a way of viewing the world. Moreover, since Tylor conceived of religion in general as involving ‘the belief in Spiritual Beings’ (383), he regarded animism as, in effect, the essence of all religion—the

6  New Animism as Cultural Critique? 

131

‘groundwork’ or ‘root’ from which further ‘branches’ have grown (385). Implicit in this arboreal metaphor is the assumption that there are certain forms of animism that are more developed or advanced than others. Indeed, Tylor, adopting the hierarchical vocabulary that was typical of his era, distinguished between ‘lower’ and ‘higher’ races of people. The religion of both types of people was animistic, since both involve the belief in spiritual beings, but, on Tylor’s account, it was the moral or ethical dimension of religion that became more mature ‘in the higher culture’ (386). It was, in large part, this ranking of races into lower and higher, while identifying the so-called lower with more ‘primitive’ and the so-called higher with more ‘civilized’ forms of religion and culture, that prompted widespread rejection of Tylor’s theoretical framework over the course of the twentieth century (but see Frederico Delgado Rosa’s chapter in the present volume for a nuanced reappraisal of Tylor’s work). ‘Animism’ came to be associated with ‘an early level of man’s thinking’ in which a distinction had yet to be made between animate and inanimate entities (Robinson, 1949: 54); consequently, it became impossible for the term to be used in a non-disparaging way. Unsurprisingly, anthropologists and other researchers who were sensitive to the complexities of the religious aspects of human life, including those which are characteristic of small-­ scale indigenous peoples, deemed it best, as John Mbiti exhorted with reference to African religions in particular, for the term ‘animism’ ‘to be abandoned once and for all’ (Mbiti, 1969: 8). Since the late 1980s, however, the term ‘animism’ has been imbued with new life. To distinguish the revived uses from those which have come to be perceived as condescending and outdated, the term ‘new animism’ (or, less frequently, ‘neo-animism’) has been coined. The earliest occurrence of ‘new animism’ in print was in Paul Bouissac’s extended review of Tim Ingold’s edited volume, What Is an Animal? (Bouissac, 1989). Given that Ingold has, over subsequent decades, become an eminent reference point for new animist exponents (see Mattar, 2012; Leube, 2017; Ingold, 2006, 2016), it is notable that his own chapter in the volume reviewed by Bouissac argues for a type of human exceptionalism. More specifically, Ingold claims that although much of human behaviour does not differ categorically from that of nonhuman animals, the human

132 

M. Burley

‘capacity for symbolic thought’, which ‘is based in the faculty of language’, sets humans apart from other species (Ingold, 1988: 85). In light of this contention, far from heralding him as a harbinger of new animism, Bouissac accuses Ingold of promoting ‘a somewhat updated version of flamboyant Cartesianism’, which, while admitting that animals have consciousness, denies that they can think (Bouissac, 1989: 501). Whether Bouissac has been fair to Ingold’s thesis is questionable. Rather than, as Bouissac claims, complacently celebrating humankind, Ingold in fact pursues a middle path between exaggerating human uniqueness, on the one hand, and overlooking the characteristics that have supplied human beings with a substantial adaptive advantage, on the other. While downplaying the differences between humans and other animals by highlighting the relatively minor role that premeditative deliberation plays in everyday human behaviour, Ingold nonetheless stresses the extent to which the capacity for such deliberation has enabled humans to manipulate their environment in ways that far outstrip the world-transforming potential of other species. It is not obvious why Bouissac should find this thesis so objectionable. Yet the thesis that Bouissac himself begins to develop is of interest in its own right, owing to both its similarities with and its differences from certain subsequent strands of new animist thought. Prefiguring, for example, calls to reconceptualize the relationship between humans and other species, Bouissac enjoins a ‘shift of paradigms’ or ‘shift in cosmology’, away ‘from Cartesian dualism’ and towards ‘Darwinian monism’; such a shift, he maintains, ‘could lead to the emergence of a neo-animism that would be based upon scientific knowledge rather than primal anthropomorphization’ (1989: 512). Perceiving a rejection of the substance dualism associated with the philosophy of René Descartes as intrinsic to the advancement of a new animist paradigm is something that Bouissac shares with figures such as Graham Harvey and Kenneth Morrison (Harvey, 2017a: xxvii; Morrison, 2013), as is the contention that the Darwinian vision of evolutionary continuity between humans and other species is conducive to such a paradigm shift (Harvey, 2018: 35, 49). Where Bouissac most patently differs from the majority of subsequent new animists, however, is in his favouring of scientific knowledge over what he calls ‘primal anthropomorphization’. By distancing himself from

6  New Animism as Cultural Critique? 

133

the latter, Bouissac is eschewing the idea that animist ways of thinking might usefully be revived through a turn (or a return) to ‘folkloric’ traditions or ‘exotic religions’ (Bouissac, 1989: 512). Instead, he considers semiotics—‘rooted both in some branches of Western classical philosophy and in modern scientific research’—to be a more viable vehicle for a transformed cosmology, in which human ontological continuities with not only other animals but also plants and fungi are acknowledged (513). In contrast to Bouissac, several more recent contributors to discussions of new animism have turned enthusiastically to precisely the kinds of small-scale indigenous traditions that he would probably count among the purveyors of ‘primal anthropomorphization’. For conceptual resources in support of new animism, Harvey, for example, repeatedly looks to the fieldwork of Irving Hallowell, carried out in the 1930s and 1940s among the Ojibwe people of the Lake Winnipeg region of southern Canada and the Lac du Flambeau region of Wisconsin (Hallowell, 1955, 1960; Harvey, 2017a: 17–20 et passim). Others who cite Hallowell’s work approvingly include Nurit Bird-David (1999, 2017: 155–156), who also draws upon her own ethnographic studies of the Nayaka people of southern India. While there are aspects of modern science with which researchers such as Harvey and Bird-David are comfortable, there are others that they regard as incompatible with the ‘relational epistemologies’ that they admire in the worldviews of indigenous peoples. To illustrate the distinction, Bird-David contrasts the modern botanical study of trees, epitomized by the cutting of them into pieces that can then be analysed in a herbarium, with the Nayaka practice of ‘talking with trees’, where ‘talking’ encompasses ‘singing, dancing, or socializing in other ways’ (1999: S77). As Bird-David sees it, the knowledge sought through modern scientific procedures exhibits acquisitive, instrumental and representational qualities, whereas ‘animistic knowledge’ consists in ‘developing the skills of being-in-the-world with other things, making one’s awareness of one’s environment and one’s self finer, broader, deeper, richer’ (S77–S78). There is no mistaking the fact that authors such as Harvey and Bird-­ David, like Bouissac, are keen not merely to observe and record the characteristics of animist outlooks but to actively promote them as advantageous to ecologically harmonious living; it is just that Bouissac prioritizes the insights of modern science, whereas Harvey, Bird-David

134 

M. Burley

and others look also—or primarily—to the purported sagacity of indigenous cultures, both past and present. In each case, there is an evident affirmation of animist perspectives. As we shall see later in this chapter, this affirmatory stance, especially on the part of Harvey, has prompted charges of subordinating academic rigour to religious and cultural advocacy. The stance might also be described as an attempted cultural critique of Western modernity by means of cross-cultural juxtaposition. To bring these contentions into sharper relief, it will be helpful to first concisely outline some examples of where animist themes have been discussed, both anthropologically and philosophically, in a less ideologically charged manner.

3 A Higher Order of Objectivity? A valuable contribution of cultural anthropology to human knowledge has been the meticulous documentation of the fact that there are multiple ways of relating to the world, multiple ‘ways of being human’ (Lisitzky, 1956; Conklin, 2001: 6) and ‘of making sense of human life’ (Winch, 1964: 321). It is this contribution that, as we have seen, Marcus and Fischer term ‘defamiliarization by epistemological critique’. What such defamiliarization requires is attentiveness to the forms of life, including the forms of language and conceptualization, of the communities being investigated. It also demands attentiveness on the part of researchers to their own concepts and ways of understanding the world, lest they be tempted to read their own viewpoint into that of the people they are studying. Irving Hallowell, the doyen of new animists, was well aware of this need to avoid imposing conceptual categories onto the thought systems of indigenous peoples. In a much-cited essay, he remarks that ‘a thoroughgoing “objective” approach to the study of cultures cannot be achieved solely by projecting upon those cultures categorical abstractions derived from Western thought. For, in a broad sense, the latter are a reflection of our cultural subjectivity’ (Hallowell, 1960: 21). Hallowell was not presuming, implausibly, that Western-trained anthropologists could completely lay aside the conceptual categories into which they have been educated; rather, he was recommending that the categories with

6  New Animism as Cultural Critique? 

135

which the community under investigation are operating be carefully interpreted so that the anthropologist’s analysis stands more chance of doing justice to the community’s own outlook upon the world. As Hallowell opines, ‘A higher order of objectivity may be sought by adopting a perspective which includes an analysis of the outlook of the people themselves as a complementary procedure’ (1960: 21)—complementary, that is, to the discerning application of ‘Western’ categories. These recommendations of Hallowell’s are echoed in certain Wittgenstein-inspired approaches to the philosophy of religion to which I alluded in the introduction to this chapter. Although there is no evidence that Hallowell was read by the philosophers in question, there is often an anthropological sensibility displayed by those who pursue Wittgensteinian methods, resulting in close affinities between these disciplinary areas. Mario von der Ruhr, for instance, cautions against the assumption that animist discourse must be interpreted as either literal or metaphorical, observing that there is a neglected third option—namely, that the animist discourse discloses ‘a distinctive attitude towards nature’ (von der Ruhr, 1996: 30). This attitude may be seen in how the people behave, including in what they say, but is liable to be missed or distorted if the researcher immediately tries to pigeonhole the indigenous ways of speaking in terms of a binary distinction between literal and metaphorical forms of language. As von der Ruhr proposes, ‘[t]he picture of nature’ conveyed by, for example, the language and behaviour of Native American peoples, ‘speaks for itself ’ (1996: 30); it does so in the sense that coming to understand that picture, along with the terms in which it is articulated, is precisely a matter of becoming more familiar with a particular perspective on the world. The process of understanding obliges researchers to appreciate the possibility of a conceptual framework other than their own. D. Z. Phillips, endorsing von der Ruhr’s treatment of the topic, reiterates the point by stating that what the researcher is offered in the behaviour and discourse of the people being studied is ‘a language in which to think of the world’ (2001: 158–159). The point being made by von der Ruhr and Phillips—and also by Hallowell—is not that the forms of life and language of indigenous communities are somehow self-contained and conceptually inaccessible to outsiders. If that were the case, then mutual understanding between external researcher and members of the

136 

M. Burley

indigenous community would be precluded. The point is simply that any attempt to interpret the behaviour and to translate the discourse of the indigenous community must remain sensitive to the conceptual specificities being displayed. Merely coming to see the sense in an alternative form of life can be transformative insofar as it instigates the kind of disruption of ‘taken-for-­ granted assumptions’ to which Marcus and Fischer refer. It opens up fresh opportunities for reflection upon the norms and values in one’s own society through the process that Marcus and Fischer call ‘defamiliarization by cross-cultural juxtaposition’. Coming to see that these norms and values are neither biologically given nor inexorable need not, however, lead to a rejection of, or desire to modify, the norms and values themselves; renewed reflection could just as readily reinforce the view that these are exactly the norms and values to which one wishes to adhere. A distinction thus needs to be made between two motivations for seeking the ‘higher order of objectivity’ to which Hallowell refers. The primary motivation—and the one to which Hallowell himself is committed—is that which consists in limiting, as far as is feasible, the mischaracterization of the worldviews of the people being studied. If one is to do conceptual justice to those worldviews, then one ought to refrain from unduly ‘projecting’ non-indigenous categories onto them. As we have seen, von der Ruhr and Phillips broadly concur with this injunction. By contrast, a further motivation would be one that, in addition to seeking to understand the cultures being studied, also strives to appropriate certain aspects of those cultures for the purpose of what the researcher deems to be the improvement of his or her own society. It is this further motivation that is exhibited in new animism in its affirmatory mode, which we shall now examine more closely.

6  New Animism as Cultural Critique? 

137

4 Affirmatory New Animism as Critique of Western Modernity The notion of new animism introduces an ambiguity into the term ‘animism’ that had not previously been there—an ambiguity that is concisely captured by Harvey’s use of the phrase ‘new (approach to) animism’ (2017b: 481). In its ‘old’ (Tylorian) form, ‘animism’ had referred to a type of religion—or, as Tylor would have it, to the very essence of religion. The term ‘new animism’, by contrast, is not generally used to refer to a type of religion, or indeed to a type of culture or worldview, but to an approach on the part of those who study the religions and cultures and worldviews of, predominantly, indigenous peoples. In other words, ‘new animism’ refers, first and foremost, to an academic movement or to a ‘cluster of theories’ (Laack, 2020: 116) that champion a revised interpretation of what ‘animism’ means. The term ‘animism’ itself thus becomes ambiguous, for it may now refer either to the type of religious or cultural phenomenon that is studied by, for instance, some anthropologists and scholars of religion or to the approach or theoretical stance adopted by those scholars when they apply the term ‘animism’ to the religious or cultural phenomena in question. Hence certain scholars who study animism might also be characterized as animists themselves merely in the sense that animism is what they study. Furthermore, there are some scholars who are animists in both senses of the word, for they both study the phenomenon of animism and identify themselves as adherents or practitioners of animism in the religious or cultural sense. Harvey himself is the preeminent exemplar of this animist scholar-practitioner position. A central characteristic of new animism—in the sense of ‘the new approach to animism’ (Harvey, 2010: 17; 2017a: 206) —is the replacement of an emphasis on believing (e.g. in ‘Spiritual Beings’) with the idea of relating to beings (of all kinds) in ways that involve ‘recognizing’ them as fellow participants in a community that extends beyond the human sphere. Bird-David coined the term ‘pluripresence’ to denote the mutual togetherness shared by multiple beings of diverse species within a community small enough in geographical spread to facilitate ‘the vivid availability’ of all members to one another (Bird-David, 2017: 21). She

138 

M. Burley

envisages such a community as one involving interspecies cooperation and mutual accommodation (2017: 174, 2018). Harvey characterizes animists (as conceived of from the new animist standpoint) as ‘people who recognise that the world is full of persons, only some of whom are human, and that life is always lived in relationship with others’ (2017a: xvii). As Darryl Wilkinson observes, the substitution of ‘recognition’ for the older Tylorian notion of belief constitutes a significant switch of ‘rhetorical framing’, implying, as it does, that animism ‘is grounded in more than mere dogma’ (Wilkinson, 2017: 293). It has this implication because ‘recognize’ is a success term: to say of someone that he or she recognizes that such-and-such is the case is to imply that such-and-such is indeed the case (and hence that the person in question has got this right). Harvey does not try to disguise this aspect of his view: he characterizes animists as having learnt something. ‘People become animists’, he maintains, ‘by learning how to recognise persons and, far more important, how to relate appropriately with them’ (Harvey, 2017a: xxiv). Despite describing ‘animism’ ‘as a critical, academic term for a religious and cultural style of relating with the world’ (2017a: xxi), there is little sign of any critical distance between Harvey and this religious and cultural style. On the contrary, beyond merely learning about the ‘worldviews and lifeways’ of indigenous peoples, Harvey is upfront about his aspiration to learn from these peoples and to adopt aspects of indigenous cultures, including animist outlooks, for the purpose of transforming ‘modern’ or ‘modernist’ attitudes (Harvey, 2006, 2018). Like Phillips, Harvey sees in animist discourse a language through which the world can be viewed differently. However, while Phillips treats animist language as affording one among many ways of thinking of the world, Harvey deems it to be eminently preferable to the language of ‘Modernity’. According to Harvey, modernity has a ‘separatist agenda’ (2018: 36); it pushes ‘human separatism and self-aggrandizement’ (39). By this, he means that the worldview he terms ‘Modernity’ is one that strives to distinguish between humans and other beings and to treat humans as separate from and, in important respects, superior to other species and to the rest of the world in general. In common with certain earlier pro-animism critics of modernity, such as Val Plumwood (1993, esp. Chap. 2), Harvey identifies in the discourse

6  New Animism as Cultural Critique? 

139

of modernity several binary contrasts or ‘dualisms’ (2017b: 483), which he considers to be harmful ‘cultural assumptions’ ingrained in modern Western languages (2018: 36). These dualisms include the distinctions between nature and culture, the natural and the supernatural, humans and ‘other-than-humans’, thought and action, religion and politics ‘and so much more’ (2017b: 495). Harvey is less concerned about the dualistic distinction between modernity and indigenous cultures (2002: 13); indeed, this is precisely the distinction that his cultural critique of modernity depends upon, notwithstanding what some might see as a risk of thereby painting an unduly homogenized picture of both sides of the dichotomy. In recent work, Harvey has framed his transformative enterprise in terms of the deliberately ‘provocative’ recommendation that ‘we’— namely, Western ‘Moderns’, especially academics—‘need to adjust our styles of communication with and about the larger-than-human world’ (2018: 37). In place of fixating upon the reputed ‘altered states of consciousness’ (ASCs) induced through the shamanistic practices of certain indigenous communities, Harvey urges a refocusing of academic attention and a repurposing of the abbreviation ‘ASC’ to give prominence to the ‘adjusted styles of communication’ that are called for if modernity is to be reoriented in a more ecologically respectful direction (2018: 48). It is precisely this advocatory stance on Harvey’s part that has drawn critical fire from certain quarters in the academic study of religion, on the grounds that it detracts from the credibility of his scholarship. I turn to a consideration of these charges in the next section.

5 Challenges to Affirmatory New Animism Harvey’s enthusiastic embrace of indigenous worldviews and his efforts to incorporate elements of them into both academic discourse and Western culture more generally have been targeted by scholars who are wary of blurring the boundary between academic research and ideological advocacy. Notable among these attacks is the charge made by Jan Platvoet that Harvey’s ‘partisan interest in indigenous religions and modern neo-paganism’ lends to his scholarship an air of what has been dubbed

140 

M. Burley

new primitivism in the study of religion (Platvoet, 2004: 52). Platvoet borrows the concept of new primitivism primarily from Armin Geertz, for whom it designates a tendency, revived since the 1960s both in academic circles and in popular culture, to represent and appropriate aspects of indigenous cultures in simplistic and exoticizing ways (Geertz, 2004: 37, 39). Geertz argues that the new primitivism is pernicious for two main reasons: first, it produces ‘skewed mirror-images’ of those undertaking the inquiry rather than providing accurate depictions ‘of the people we claim to describe’; second, ‘it causes us to meet local indigenes with stereotypical and romanticized assumptions that real, living indigenes cannot possibly live up to’ (Geertz, 2009: 201). In his defence, Harvey delivers a threefold repudiation of the charge that he displays new primitivist leanings. He points out, first, that he and the contributors to his edited volumes explicitly reject any use of the term ‘primitive’ to refer to indigenous peoples; second, that his and his contributors’ chief interest ‘is in contemporary or recent cultural and religious self-expressions among indigenous people’; and third, that his ‘scholarly aim is not only to understand the phenomena that present themselves in religious activities but also to reflect on their meaning today’ (Harvey, 2004: 38). Elaborating this last point, Harvey stresses the benefits to be gained from taking seriously the philosophical ideas implicit in expressions of indigenous cultures, notably the overcoming of Cartesian dualist assumptions—assumptions that, in Harvey’s view, have played a substantial role in shaping Western cultural attitudes. This vision, on Harvey’s part, of the potential for cultural transformation through adopting certain worldviews, lifeways and styles of communication from indigenous peoples resonates closely with the notion of defamiliarization by ontological introspection that I earlier cited from Banerjee and Linstead. For Harvey, such introspection of Western cultural assumptions discloses a residual Cartesianism that could be—and ought to be—replaced by the ‘respectful relationality’ (Harvey, 2017a: 42) typical of animist ways of living. For Harvey’s critics, however, it is precisely this appropriative goal that encourages a drift from ‘description’ to ‘affirmation’, which is itself a drift from an academic to a ‘confessional’ stance (Platvoet, 2006: 46–47). Harvey has thus been labelled as an ‘animist theologian’ and ‘animist

6  New Animism as Cultural Critique? 

141

social activist’ (Cox, 2007: 162), in the sense that he is engaged in a type of apologetics on behalf of an animist ideology and in an emancipatory struggle on behalf of peoples whom he and others—and, in some instances, the peoples themselves—identify as animists. None of this would be troubling, we might suppose, provided Harvey’s readers and audiences are clear about the nature of the enterprise he is prosecuting, and Harvey is certainly not shy about declaring his affirmatory ambitions. He views himself as part of an academic current ‘in which scholarly participation in and celebration of relational identities entail a similar celebration of relational knowledges and, therefore, result in a strengthening of relational methods of research’ (2002: 13). The choice of the term ‘celebration’ is telling. It strikes a very different note from that of forerunners such as Hallowell, who, as we saw earlier, sought a ‘higher order of objectivity … by adopting a perspective which includes an analysis of the outlook of the people [one is studying]’ (1960: 21). Including an analysis of an outlook is far from being equivalent to celebrating it. And yet there are moments in Harvey’s account of methodological options when he implies that the only alternative to celebration is hostility. ‘The distance created by attempts at objectivity’, he writes, ‘are, in fact, relational—albeit in aggressive, distancing, and alienating relationships. … If people will not relate as friends, neighbours, or kin, perhaps they insist on relating as enemies’ (2002: 13). Perhaps they do, in some cases. But it is not obvious why a middle position is being neglected here. Without having to smear Harvey as a new primitivist, we can nevertheless observe that refraining from positively endorsing or celebrating the outlooks of the peoples one studies need amount neither to actively rejecting them nor to trying to achieve a chimeric view from nowhere. There is such a thing as striving to represent different voices, alternative perspectives—placing them in juxtaposition to one another to make their particularities more discernible—without seeking to vindicate any one voice at the expense of others. In philosophy of religion, we find this latter approach exemplified in the work of Winch and Phillips. But we also find it, albeit with different emphases and characteristics, in certain styles of anthropology. Borrowing a term from Fischer and Abedi, whom I cited earlier, we might call the approach critical hermeneutics. In view of the focus of this chapter, I shall call it a critical approach to new animism.

142 

M. Burley

6 A Critical Approach to New Animism What we have seen in the style of affirmatory new animism typified by Harvey is something analogous to the ‘weak’ form of defamiliarization by cross-cultural juxtaposition, which Marcus and Fischer explicate with reference to Margaret Mead’s studies of Samoan adolescence. Just as Mead compares North American childrearing practices and adolescent behaviour unfavourably with what she claims to have observed during her fieldwork on the Samoan island of Taʻū, so the affirmatory new animist compares Western modernity—in general—unfavourably with the ‘respectful relationality’ embodied in the animist worldviews and lifeways of certain indigenous peoples. In the estimation of Marcus and Fischer, the force of Mead’s cultural critique is compromised by a lack of ethnographic probing of the North American culture that she wishes to call into question. Moreover, if criticisms that have been made of Mead’s fieldwork hold water, then her cultural critique is further weakened by an unduly romanticized and sentimentalized portrayal of the Samoan subjects about whom she writes (Cato, 1990). Likewise, there is a tendency on the part of proponents of new animism to emphasize the features of indigenous societies that they find conducive to ecological harmony at the expense of a more rounded treatment of the societies at issue. Thus, in the case both of Mead’s ethnography and of new animist advocacy, the potential for insightful cultural critique risks becoming diluted by oversimplifying representations of the juxtaposed cultural milieus. An article by anthropologist Nicolas Peterson shines a productively critical light on the potentially distorting effects of new animist affirmations of indigenous worldviews. Focussing on the Warlpiri people of central Australia, Peterson argues that certain anthropologists and scholars of religion have been overconfident in asserting that the Warlpiri in particular, and perhaps Australian Aboriginal peoples more generally, regard whole landscapes (or ‘country’) as being sentient. By making claims to this effect without pausing to clarify what they amount to, the researchers in question leave the claims vague and indeterminate (Peterson, 2011: 167). In some instances, what seems to be contended by these researchers is that the Aboriginal people treat the ‘flora, fauna and/or topography’ as

6  New Animism as Cultural Critique? 

143

being alive and sentient; in other instances, it would be more natural to understand the authors as attributing to Aboriginal people the view that the landscape is ‘populated by ancestral spirits with human-like form that live among the rocks and trees’ (Peterson, 2011: 168). Peterson identifies a tendency among some new animists to privilege interpretations of indigenous outlooks that conform to their own conceptions of animism even when competing interpretations exist that are more thoroughly grounded in first-hand ethnographic research. Harvey, for example, takes issue with work by Nancy Munn, who carried out fieldwork among the Warlpiri at Yuendumu in Australia’s Northern Territory from 1956 to 1958. According to Harvey, Munn’s comprehension of Warlpiri understandings of their environment has been impeded by the assumption that Western Enlightenment ideas about the relation between animate subjects and inanimate objects are ‘normative’ (Harvey, 2017a: 72). Drawing in part upon a discussion of Munn’s research by Bird-David (1993: 115–117), whose own fieldwork was undertaken in South India rather than Australia, Harvey maintains that Munn is mistaken to construe in metaphorical terms pronouncements by the Warlpiri that, for example, features of the landscape are the bodies (or parts of the bodies) of their ancestors (Harvey, 2017a: 73). As Peterson sees it, Munn’s analysis can be viewed as an attempt to rescue Aboriginal worldviews from the charge, characteristic of earlier anthropological interpretations, that hunter-gatherer peoples are incapable of disentangling subjective from objective aspects of reality (Peterson, 2011: 171; Munn, 1970, esp. 158). Notably, Munn ascribes to the Warlpiri a distinction between ancestors, on the one hand, and ‘the objects they create’, on the other (Munn, 1970: 143). Harvey, by contrast, wants to dissolve this distinction and to insist that the Warlpiri draw no such distinction themselves. The interpretive debate is therefore far from straightforward. Harvey accuses Munn of imposing purportedly Western conceptual distinctions—between subjects and objects or, more specifically, between ancestors and features of the environment—onto the indigenous worldview she is expounding, whereas Munn views herself as supplying a hermeneutically charitable interpretation of the indigenous worldview in place of outdated portrayals of indigenous people as conceptually confused. Not having any direct experience of living among the Warlpiri myself, I am in

144 

M. Burley

no position to adjudicate between the rival interpretations. From a philosophical point of view, however, it is of particular importance that interpretive options not be foreclosed prematurely either because a given interpretation suggests that the worldview of an indigenous people is inconsistent with Western conceptual categories or, contrariwise, because the interpretation characterizes the indigenous worldview and Western conceptual categories as being more mutually compatible than might previously have been expected. From the standpoint of the sort of radical pluralist approach to philosophy of religion that I have advanced elsewhere, the respective analyses of Munn and Harvey can be understood as competing attempts to make sense of the language in which the Warlpiri themselves think about the world. As indicated earlier in this chapter, philosophers such as von der Ruhr and Phillips have urged interpreters to pause before assuming that ostensibly animist forms of language must be construed in either literal or metaphorical terms: what needs to be foregrounded is the role of the language in the lives of the people who use it. Peterson’s own discussion of the topic provides a further note of caution that complements this point from von der Ruhr and Phillips. What Peterson reminds us is that we should not overlook the possibility that distinctions between literal and nonliteral uses of language are indeed operating within the discourse of the indigenous peoples themselves. Relatedly, one should not be so eager to find in the indigenous culture elements which are utilizable for bolstering a critique of one’s own cultural norms that one obscures from view potentially significant commonalities across the cultures concerned. It may seem obvious, but it bears emphasizing that anthropology, along with philosophy of religion, can be just as effective at bringing out shared features of human societies as at exposing cross-cultural divergences. Among the salient lessons that Peterson’s article drives home is the need for attentiveness to the particular circumstances in which certain forms of language and action occur before any inferences can be drawn concerning whether figurative or nonfigurative modes of expression are in play. With reference to an initiation ceremony, Peterson (2011: 175) illustrates how the Warlpiri are perfectly capable of engaging in symbolic behaviour. Throughout most of the night prior to the day when they are to be circumcised, Warlpiri adolescent boys (usually two in number) are

6  New Animism as Cultural Critique? 

145

required to crouch with lowered heads, covered in white down feathers, behind a windbreak at the edge of the ceremonial ground. At intervals, the boys’ mothers get up from among a group of women with whom they have been sitting nearby and dance briefly around the boys (Peterson, 2011: 175; Curran, 2011: 42). At dawn, the down on the top of each boy’s head is removed, and red ochre is daubed in its place. Once the sun has fully risen, ‘the boys are covered in red ochre from head to toe’ (Peterson, 2011: 175). These and other elements of the ceremonial proceedings exhibit elaborate symbolism—a kind of figurative action—that represents the boys as though they were babies emerging from a womb and embarking upon ‘their journey into the world’ (175). In a second example, Peterson cites an initiation-related story told by a Warlpiri elder, Henry Cook Jakamarra, in which ‘two ancestral kangaroo beings that are his dreaming’ are travelling across the outback in the Northern Territory (Peterson, 2011: 176). One of the kangaroos is swept away in a flood, leaving the other searching for him (Jakamarra, 1994: 47). The remaining kangaroo finds a small rodent—‘somewhat related to a mouse but slightly different’—and carries it with him to a place called Mulyu, where he remakes the mouse-like creature ‘into a kangaroo’ (1994: 47). In view of the story’s association with male initiation, Peterson interprets it as ‘a metaphorical account of making a boy into a man’ (2011: 176). Peterson also refers to Warlpiri song cycles in which ‘many of the verses use the first person singular’ when singing of ancestral beings (176). But when words such as ‘I, red kangaroo, stand up on my two legs and run off’ are sung, it would be misguided to interpret this as showing ‘that the singers think they are literally ancestral beings’ (176). The point of Peterson’s examples is to bring out the complexity of ‘Warlpiri ontological thinking’ (176), to accentuate the need for attention to the surroundings in which particular utterances or gestures are made. Noticing the symbolic qualities of rituals, stories and songs ought to give us pause before speculating, on the basis of those highly circumscribed occurrences, that the Warlpiri conceive of, for example, animals and plants as persons or of the land as imbued with sentience. While acknowledging that the Warlpiri regard ‘the landscape as being occupied by the spirits of human ancestors and other human-like spirit beings’ (177), Peterson warns against conflating this conception with the idea

146 

M. Burley

that the Warlpiri are animists in the sense of attributing personhood to ‘plants, animals and inanimate objects’ (177).

7 Conclusion The present chapter has viewed alternative approaches to the study of animism through the lens of the notions of cultural critique and defamiliarization in anthropology. This lens has illuminated particular features of the diverging approaches. What I have dubbed affirmatory new animism, typified by Harvey, is undoubtedly an attempt at cultural critique. In the terms I have been borrowing from Marcus and Fischer, this affirmatory approach utilizes a weak form of defamiliarization by cross-cultural juxtaposition, contrasting supposedly ecologically advantageous features of indigenous ways of life with the supposedly distorted worldview of Western modernity and concluding that the latter has much to learn from the former. The approach is ‘weak’ in the sense that the contrast tends to be formulated in broad-brush terms, juxtaposing selective aspects of indigenous societies with coarse-grained characterizations of Western modernity, with the latter characterizations typically being based on impressionistic assumptions rather than ethnographic study. As I have noted, affirmatory new animism also deploys what Banerjee and Linstead term ‘defamiliarization by ontological introspection’ inasmuch as it incorporates an attempt to critique—and indeed to revise—the ontological and religious categories that its proponents deem to be detrimental to Western (and, by extension, to global) social and ecological wellbeing. The critical approach to (the study of ) new animism exemplified by Peterson brings into sharper relief the features of affirmatory new animism to which I have referred. It is critical insofar as it not only devotes close attention to the behaviour and discourse of the indigenous peoples being studied but also critically scrutinizes the application and interpretation of the concept of animism itself. As we have seen, that scrutiny may lead to scepticism about the analytical utility of the concept of animism in particular cases. It is this interrogation of the conceptual categories that are being deployed—or which one might be tempted to deploy— that places a critical approach to new animism in close proximity to what

6  New Animism as Cultural Critique? 

147

Marcus and Fischer call a strong (or ‘more powerful’) version of cultural critique by cross-cultural juxtaposition. As Marcus and Fischer aver, such a strong version involves ‘a critical reassessment of [one’s] interpretations’ of the society at issue (1999: 160). It would also involve sustained and ethnographically informed critical reflection upon the similarities and differences between two or more cultures. In the article of Peterson’s that I have discussed, such sustained comparison is not the intention. Yet what Peterson’s treatment of the Warlpiri helpfully reminds us is that we should not fixate upon differences at the expense of similarities. By recognizing that indigenous peoples are no less capable than anyone else of employing figurative language and performing ceremonies with deep symbolic resonances, we are prompted to think twice before assuming that indigenous talk of, for example, animals as though they were persons, or landscapes as though they were sentient, has indisputably animist implications. It will, I hope, be obvious that the sorts of reminders supplied by a critical approach to new animism—reminders concerning the conceptual categories and styles of interpretation brought to bear on various religious and cultural worldviews—are as relevant to any philosophical study of animism as they are to the work of social and cultural anthropologists. What D. Z. Phillips termed ‘doing conceptual justice to the world in all its variety’ (2007: 207) is no mean task. It would be a sign of hubris and naivety on the part of philosophers of religion to suppose that it could be done without rigorous engagement with anthropological sources. Affirmatory new animism also has its philosophical significance, especially insofar as it characterizes animist worldviews as incorporating conceptual systems at odds with those prevalent in modern Western societies. In this respect, and in others, affirmatory new animism constitutes a fitting target for further philosophical examination. Acknowledgments  I am grateful to Tiddy Smith and to an anonymous reviewer for their helpful comments on a previous draft of this chapter. The section headed ‘The Concept of Cultural Critique’ is a substantially augmented reworking of material from my book A Radical Pluralist Philosophy of Religion (Burley, 2020: 57–60).

148 

M. Burley

References Bakhtin, M. M. (1981). The dialogic imagination: Four essays. Emerson, C. and Michael Holquist (trans.). University of Texas Press. Banerjee, S. B., & Linstead, S. (2004). Masking subversion: Neocolonial embeddedness in anthropological accounts of indigenous management. Human Relations, 57(2), 221–247. Bird-David, N. (1993). Tribal Metaphorization of human–nature relatedness: A comparative analysis. In D.  K. Milton (Ed.), Environmentalism: The view from anthropology (pp. 112–125). Routledge. Bird-David, N. (1999). ‘Animism’ revisited: Personhood, environment, and relational epistemology. Current Anthropology, 40, S67–S79. Bird-David, N. (2017). Us, relatives: Scaling and plural life in a forager world. University of California Press. Bird-David, N. (2018). Size matters! The scalability of modern hunter-gatherer animism. Quaternary International, 464(A), 305–314. Bouissac, P. (1989). What is a human? Ecological semiotics and the new animism. Semiotica, 77(4), 497–516. Buchanan, I. (2010). A dictionary of critical theory. Oxford University Press. Burley, M. (2019). ‘A language in which to think of the world’: Animism, indigenous traditions, and the deprovincialization of philosophy of religion. Journal for Cultural and Religious Theory, 18(3), 466–490. Burley, M. (2020). A radical pluralist philosophy of religion: Cross-cultural, multireligious, interdisciplinary. Bloomsbury. Cato, H. (Ed.). (1990). The Samoa reader: Anthropologists take stock. University Press of America. Clammer, J. (2004). The politics of animism. In J.  Clammer, S.  Poirier, & E.  Schwimmer (Eds.), Figured worlds: Ontological obstacles in intercultural relations (pp. 83–109). University of Toronto Press. Conklin, B.  A. (2001). Consuming grief: Compassionate cannibalism in an Amazonian society. University of Texas Press. Cox, J. L. (2007). From primitive to indigenous: The academic study of indigenous religions. Ashgate. Curran, G. (2011). The ‘expanding domain’ of Warlpiri initiation rituals. In Y. Musharbash & M. Barber (Eds.), Ethnography and the production of anthropological knowledge: Essays in honour of Nicolas Peterson (pp. 39–50). Australian National University Press.

6  New Animism as Cultural Critique? 

149

Viveiros de Castro, E. (1998). Cosmological Deixis and Amerindian Perspectivism. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 4(3), 469–488. Descola, P. (1992). Societies of nature and the nature of society. In A. Kuper (Ed.), Conceptualizing society (pp. 107–126). Routledge. Eldridge, R. (1996). Is animism alive and well? In D.  Z. Phillips (Ed.), Can religion be explained away? (pp. 3–25). Macmillan. Fischer, M. M. J., & Abedi, M. (1990). Debating Muslims: Cultural dialogues in postmodernity and tradition. University of Wisconsin Press. Freeman, D. (1999). The fateful hoaxing of Margaret Mead: A historical analysis of her Samoan research. Westview Press. Geertz, A.  W. (2004). Can we move beyond primitivism? On recovering the indigenes of indigenous religions in the academic study of religion. In J. K. Olupona (Ed.), Beyond primitivism: Indigenous religious traditions and modernity (pp. 37–70). Routledge. Geertz, A.  W. (2009). Indigenous religions: A review essay. Anthropos, 104(1), 198–202. Hallowell, A. I. (1955). Culture and experience. University of Pennsylvania Press. Hallowell, A.  I. (1960). Ojibwa ontology, behavior, and world view. In S. Diamond (Ed.), Culture in history: Essays in honor of Paul Radin (pp. 19–52). Columbia University Press. Harvey, G. (2002). Introduction. In G.  Harvey (Ed.), Readings in indigenous religions (pp. 1–14). Continuum. Harvey, G. (2004). Response to a review in AASR bulletin 21. African Association for the Study of Religions Bulletin, 22, 38–39. Harvey, G. (2005). Animism: Respecting the living world. Hurst. Harvey, G. (2006). Animals, animists, and academics. Zygon, 41(1), 9–19. Harvey, G. (2010). Animism rather than shamanism: New approaches to what shamans do (for other animists). In B. E. Schmidt & L. Huskinson (Eds.), Spirit possession and trance: New interdisciplinary perspectives (pp.  16–30). Continuum. Harvey, G. (Ed.). (2013). The handbook of contemporary animism. Acumen. Harvey, G. (2017a). Animism: Respecting the living world (2nd ed.). Hurst. Harvey, G. (2017b). If not all stones are alive …: Radical relationality in animism studies. Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture, 11(4), 481–497. Harvey, G. (2018). Adjusted styles of communication (ASCs) in the post-­ Cartesian world. In M. Astor-Aguilera & G. Harvey (Eds.), Rethinking relations and animism: Personhood and materiality (pp. 35–52). Routledge.

150 

M. Burley

Ingold, T. (1988). The animal in the study of humanity. In T.  Ingold (Ed.), What is an animal? (pp. 84–99). Unwin Hyman. Ingold, T. (2006). Rethinking the animate, re-animating thought. Ethnos, 71(1), 9–20. Ingold, T. (2016). End comment: To conclude in the spirit of rebirth, or, a note on animic anthropo-ontogenesis. In K. Århem & G.  Sprenger (Eds.), Animism in Southeast Asia (pp. 302–309). Routledge. Jakamarra, H. C. (1994). Marlujarrakurlu: The two kangaroos. In P. R. Napaljarri & L.  Cataldi (Trans.), Warlpiri Dreamings and histories: Yimikirli: Newly recorded sayings from aboriginal elders of Central Australia (pp.  45–51). AltaMira Press. Laack, I. (2020). The new animism and its challenges to the study of religion. Method and Theory in the Study of Religion, 32(2), 115–147. Leube, M. (2017). A renaissance of animism: A meditation on the relationship between things and their makers. In J. Chapman (Ed.), Routledge handbook of sustainable product design (pp. 41–52). Routledge. Lisitzky, G. (1956). Four ways of being human: An introduction to anthropology. Viking Press. Marcus, G. E., & Fischer, M. M. J. (1999). Anthropology as cultural critique: An experimental moment in the human sciences (2nd ed.). University of Chicago Press. Mattar, S. G. (2012). Yeats, fairies, and the new animism. New Literary History, 43(1), 137–157. Mbiti, J. S. (1969). African religions and philosophy. Praeger. Mead, M. (1928). Coming of age in Samoa: A psychological study of primitive youth for western civilisation. Morrow. Morrison, K. M. (2013). Animism and a proposal for a post-Cartesian anthropology. In G.  Harvey (Ed.), The handbook of contemporary animism (pp. 38–52). Durham. Munn, N. D. (1970). The transformation of subjects into objects in Walbiri and Pitjantjatjara myth. In R. M. Berndt (Ed.), Australian aboriginal anthropology: Modern studies in the social anthropology of the Australian aborigines (pp. 141–163). University of Western Australia Press. Peterson, N. (2011). Is the aboriginal landscape sentient? Animism, the new animism and the Warlpiri. Oceania, 81(2), 167–179. Phillips, D. Z. (1990). The presumption of theory. In R. Gaita (Ed.), Value and understanding: Essays for Peter Winch (pp. 216–241). Routledge.

6  New Animism as Cultural Critique? 

151

Phillips, D. Z. (2001). Religion and the hermeneutics of contemplation. Cambridge University Press. Phillips, D. Z. (2007). Philosophy’s radical pluralism in the house of intellect – A reply to Henk Vroom. In A. F. Sanders (Ed.), D. Z. Phillips’ contemplative philosophy of religion: Questions and responses (pp. 197–211). Ashgate. Platvoet, J.  G. (2004). Beyond ‘primitivism’: ‘Indigenous religions’. African Association for the Study of Religions Bulletin, 21, 47–52. Platvoet, J. G. (2006). On boundary hopping & ‘primitivism’: Reply to Graham Harvey. African Association for the Study of Religions Bulletin, 25, 45–48. Plumwood, V. (1993). Feminism and the mastery of nature. Routledge. Robinson, E. A. (1949). Animism as a world hypothesis. Philosophical Review, 58(1), 53–63. Shklovsky, V. (1965 [1917]). Art as technique. In L. T. Lemon, & M. J. Reis (trans.). Russian formalist criticism: Four essays (pp.  3–24). University of Nebraska Press. Smith, T. (2020). The common consent argument for the existence of nature spirits. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 98(2), 334–348. Stahl, G. E. (1737). Theoria medica vera: physiologiam et pathologiam (2nd ed.). Literis Orphanotrophei. Stocking, G. W., Jr. (1987). Victorian anthropology. Free Press. Stringer, M. D. (1999). Rethinking animism: Thoughts from the infancy of our discipline. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 5(4), 541–556. Tylor, E. B. (1871). Primitive culture: Researches into the development of mythology, philosophy, religion, art, and custom (Vol. 1). Murray. von der Ruhr, M. (1996). Is animism alive and well? A response to Professor Eldridge. In D. Z. Phillips (Ed.), Can religion be explained away? (pp. 26–45). Macmillan. Wilkinson, D. (2017). Is there such a thing as animism? Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 85(2), 289–311. Winch, P. (1964). Understanding a primitive society. American Philosophical Quarterly, 1(4), 307–324. Wittgenstein, L. (2009 [1953]). Philosophical investigations (4th ed.). Wiley-Blackwell.

7 Animism and Naturalism: Practice and Theory Gregory W. Dawes

If animism is regarded as an ontology—a set of beliefs regarding the kinds of entities that exist—it is incompatible with naturalism: the idea that the only causal entities and powers are those identified by our best science. But an enactivist and practice-based theory of knowledge enables us to see that ontologies emerge from practices. An animistic ontology is one way of theorizing ‘animic’ practices, while naturalism is one way of theorizing the practice of science. There exist different ways of theorizing each set of practices, only some of which lead to a verdict of incompatibility. But an enactivist and practice-based theory of knowledge takes us further. By lending support to a cognitive pluralism, it gives us reason to reject naturalism and opens the door to a defence of animism.

G. W. Dawes (*) Department of Philosophy, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Smith (ed.), Animism and Philosophy of Religion, Palgrave Frontiers in Philosophy of Religion, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94170-3_7

153

154 

G. W. Dawes

1 The New Animism ‘Animism’ is one of the earliest terms to be employed by scholars of religion. The idea to which it refers—that humans have a tendency to treat all entities as persons—has a long history (Harvey, 2006: 4–9), although the use of the word ‘animism’ to refer to it dates from the work of E. B. Tylor (1832–1917). Tylor regarded animism as ‘the infant philosophy of mankind’: a mistaken but not unreasonable theory of causation (Tylor, 1913: 478). Although popular among early scholars of religion, by the mid-twentieth century the term had fallen out of favour. It had come to be associated with unilinear accounts of cultural evolution, in which some cultures could be thought of as ‘primitive’ (Strathern, 2019: 30). It returned to prominence following Irving Hallowell’s study of what he called the ‘ethno-metaphysics’ of the Native American Ojibwe people (Hallowell, 1969: 50). Hallowell’s work helped to create the movement known as the ‘new animism’ (Harvey, 2006: 17), which has restored to the term a central place in the study of religion.

2 The Ontological Turn The new animism can be thought of as part of the ‘ontological turn’ in anthropology (Lokensgard, 2018: 117). Anthropologists have long studied how different peoples represented their world. Such representations include assertions regarding the kinds of entities that exist. If one thinks of these assertions as constituting ontologies, anthropologists have long studied ontologies. What makes the ontological turn distinctive is its insistence that animism should not be regarded as (merely) a way of representing reality, a peculiar set of beliefs (Risjord, 2020: 592–93). New animists argue that we should be prepared to “take animism seriously” (Holbraad & Pedersen, 2017: 158), even if it seems incompatible with the naturalism associated with modern science. It is difficult to know what “taking animism seriously” is supposed to mean (Willerslev, 2013: 41). At times it appears to mean being prepared to regard animistic ontologies as true, or at least as accurate for the

7  Animism and Naturalism: Practice and Theory 

155

purposes for which they are employed. Such writers hold that “there is no basis for imagining that animistic ontology produces less accurate knowledge of the world than naturalist ontologies of science” (Scott, 2014: 165). But to regard one view as ‘more accurate’ than another is to assume that they are different ways of representing the one reality, an idea that some writers in this tradition are keen to deny. For these authors, the idea that there is one, natural world that is variously represented by differing cultures is itself a Western assumption. The animist and the naturalist, on this view, are not offering differing descriptions of the same things; they are talking about different things (Holbraad, 2011a: 902). So it is not that animists and naturalists inhabit the same world, about which they have differing theories. Animists and naturalists inhabit different worlds. The idea that peoples can inhabit different worlds has been much criticised (Risjord, 2020: 593–97). One could perhaps make sense of it, but I shall not discuss it here. For the purpose of this essay, I shall adopt the former interpretation of what it means to “take animism seriously”. It means being prepared to consider that animistic claims may be true. Many of my philosopher colleagues will baulk even at this suggestion. If we take the natural sciences as our guide to what exists, they will argue, we have no reason to take animism seriously. On the contrary, we have good reasons to regard animistic representations as false.

3 Animism and Naturalism That assumption—that the natural sciences should be our guide to what exists—is fundamental to the position known as ‘naturalism’. The term ‘naturalism’ covers a variety of views, but a naturalist is likely to believe that (a) there are none but natural causal entities with none but natural causal powers and (b) [that] well-established science is our touchstone for identifying natural causal entities and natural causal powers. (Oppy, 2018: 2)

Much depends here on how one understands ‘touchstone’. But a common naturalist view is that all claims to knowledge must be consistent with those of the sciences.

156 

G. W. Dawes

Why is animism thought to be incompatible with naturalism, so defined? Animists attribute mind, or something akin to it, to a wide range of entities, from animals and trees through to mountains and rivers. But well-established science suggests that only “late and local” entities— “relatively recently evolved biological organisms”—have minds (Oppy, 2018: 165). So when animists assert that objects that are not biological organisms have minds, they must either be speaking figuratively or be in error. Or so a naturalist might argue. But before we accept this conclusion, we should step back and re-examine the terms of the debate. The naturalist’s rejection of animism rests on three assumptions. I have already mentioned one assumption: that the natural sciences should be our guide to what exists. But there are two others. A first is that both animism and naturalism are ontologies: collections of principles regarding the kinds of entities that exist. A second is that our ontological schemes—the ways we represent reality—must be consistent with one another. My intention here is to question both these assumptions. With regard to the first assumption, there can be animistic ontologies, and I am happy to use the word ‘animism’ to refer to them. But an animistic ontology is one way of theorizing what I shall call ‘animic’ practices (Ingold, 2016a: 305), just as naturalism is one way of theorizing the practice of modern science. One could engage in animic practices, while theorizing those practices in ways that are compatible with science. One could also engage in the practice of science, while theorizing that practice in a way that does not entail naturalism. So even if animism and naturalism are at odds, animic practices and the practice of science need not be in conflict. With regard to the second assumption, I shall argue that an adequate theory of knowledge lends support to a cognitive pluralism, which would allow us to accept and operate with apparently inconsistent ontological schemes. Before I launch into this discussion, let me offer a comment on my use of the term ‘ontology’. I have described an ontology as a collection of principles regarding the kinds of things that exist. This may appear to take for granted the ‘one world, many cultures’ distinction that some proponents of the ontological turn call into question. But it does not. Even if differing peoples occupy different worlds, one cannot speak of these worlds without describing them, and a description of the kinds of

7  Animism and Naturalism: Practice and Theory 

157

entities existing within one such world would constitute an ontology. So even on the ‘many worlds’ view, there can be ontologies in the sense in which I am using the term.

4 How to Think about Animism Animism and naturalism represent very different ways of representing reality, each associated with a particular culture: that of small-scale societies in one case, that of modern Western society in the other. The philosophical discussion of such differences has been hindered by adherence to what John Dewey called a ‘spectator theory of knowledge’ (Dewey, 1930: 26), which regards the act of knowing as a simple ‘mirroring’ of the object known. Given a spectator theory of knowledge, one can acknowledge the existence of apparently incompatible cultural representations. But one is forced to hold that only one of them can be correct. My aim here is to sketch an alternative view of knowledge: an enactivist and practice-based theory. This will not only shed light on animism and naturalism; it will also open the door to a pluralist understanding of knowledge, one that allows for a more tolerant understanding of cultural differences. In sketching this alternative theory of knowledge, I shall draw on two sources. The first is the literature related to an earlier turn in the social sciences: the ‘practice turn’ (Schatzki, 2001: 10). The second is the tradition in cognitive science known as ‘enactivism’. This holds that cognition is not (at least in the first instance) a matter of ‘inner’ representations mirroring an ‘external’ world. It is an active process by which an organism ‘makes sense of ’ its environment for particular purposes. The resulting enactivist and practice-based theory will lend support to a cognitive pluralism. But it will also suggest that when it comes to the study of cultural differences, practices come first. It is practices and not ontologies that ought to be the initial focus of our inquiry. Writers in the new animist tradition do not entirely neglect practices. Tim Ingold, for instance, approaches animism by way of an ‘ecological phenomenology’ (Salmond, 2014: 164). On his view, animism is an expression of a ‘dwelling’ or ‘habitation’ perspective (Ingold, 2016b: 332), which reflects our active engagement with our environment

158 

G. W. Dawes

(Ingold, 2000: 11). So while animism is an ontology—an ‘ontology of dwelling’ (Ingold, 2000: 42) —it emerges from a particular way of being in the world. But other writers adopt a more intellectualist approach. Take, for instance, the ‘ontological cartography’ (Salmond, 2014: 164–65) developed by Philippe Descola. This regards animism as a particular ‘ontological regime’ (Descola, 2013: 346), which can be contrasted with three other such regimes: naturalism, totemism, and analogy. Equally theoretical is the ‘recursive’ anthropology practised by Viveiros de Castro (Salmond, 2014: 165). Its most famous expression is ‘perspectivism’: the Amerindian idea that each species has a distinctive view of both itself and other species (Viveiros de Castro, 1998: 470). Both of these authors—Descola and Viveiros de Castro—treat animism as a systematic body of thought. As a Gedankenexperiment this can be a useful exercise; it can show the range of ontological options available to human beings. But if we want to understand not just how people can think, but why they think as they do, thinking in terms of ontologies is unhelpful. It shares with the structuralist school out of which it comes “a privileging of the order of concepts” over that of practice (Costa & Fausto, 2010: 95). Human beings conceptualize their relation to their environment in the course of engaging with it. Differing forms of engagement produce differing concepts. An ontology, on this view, is a way of systematizing the concepts employed within a particular mode of engagement, a particular practice. To make practices our starting point is not to neglect concepts. Practices involve the use of concepts, since humans do not merely engage in activity; they also represent to themselves the forms of their engagement. But only in very particular (and relatively rare) circumstances do they systematize their representations so as to produce an ontology. So to begin with ontologies is to begin too late. We should begin with animic practices: ‘relational’ practices which treat non-humans as though they had an interiority identical to our own (Bird-David, 1999: S72–S73; Descola, 2013: 129).

7  Animism and Naturalism: Practice and Theory 

159

5 An Enactivist and Practice-Based Theory In support of what I shall call ‘the priority of practice’, I shall sketch an enactivist and practice-based theory of knowledge. It can be only a sketch, but none of its elements is new and each is defended by the authors I cite. My starting point will be the idea of ‘representation’, understood as the way in which organisms grasp the significance of their environment. While building on biologically basic forms of representation, human beings go further. They bestow significance on their environments by way of social practices, with different practices giving rise to differing kinds of representation. My next step will be to make a distinction between what I shall call ‘naïve’ practices, within which representations are employed on an ad hoc basis, and ‘theorized’ practices, whose ways of representing reality are systematized. An animistic ontology, I shall argue, is one way of theorizing what was originally a naïve practice. Naturalism is also one way of theorizing a practice, namely the practice of modern science. In both cases the theorizing is underdetermined by the practice. Different ways of theorizing these practices are possible. My final move will be to argue in favour of a cognitive pluralism, which holds that we can accept and operate with apparently inconsistent ways of representing reality. This opens the door to the possibility of accepting animistic representations alongside those of modern science.

6 The Idea of Representation Let me begin, then, with the idea of representation. Some advocates of the ontological turn reject the idea that animism is a way of representing reality, for they insist that animism ought not to be regarded as ‘merely’ a belief (Risjord, 2020: 591–92). But I have no objection to the idea that animic practices involve beliefs. Knowledge, after all, is commonly defined as a variety of belief, so to describe animism as a set of beliefs does not stand in the way of ‘taking it seriously’. As it happens, I prefer to speak of animic representations rather than beliefs. But when those

160 

G. W. Dawes

representations are taken at face value, they function as beliefs. They are representations that are held to be true, at least in the context of the practice in question. I should, however, clarify what I mean by ‘representations’, for such talk may be misleading. The term ‘representation’ is often associated with the computational theories of mind to which an enactivist theory stands opposed. Computational theories assume that the mind functions by “inputting, storing, manipulating, and outputting representations” of information gleaned from the environment (Von Eckardt, 1993: 50). Representations, on this view, are inner states, which function as ‘epistemic intermediaries’ (Davidson, 1983: 144), standing between us and the world (Risjord, 2020: 588). There do exist representations that function in this way, as ‘stand-ins’ for features of the environment. Among these are symbolic representations, of the kind found in language. But I am using ‘representation’ in a broader sense, which resembles C. S. Peirce’s use of the word ‘sign’. All living organisms engage in goal-directed behaviour (Campbell, 2011: 76–78). In doing so, they respond to features of their environment as signs, registering them as having a certain significance, as referring to something else. The act of representing is the activity by which an organism ‘makes sense of ’ its environment, registering it as a source of guidance for action (Thompson, 2007: 152–53). In the simplest cases, this sense-making is not a matter of conscious awareness, but is embodied in the motor responses of the organism (Bruner, 1964: 2). A sunflower, for instance, detects the position of the sun in order to move towards it. A paramecium detects a sugar gradient in order to swim up it (Campbell, 2011: 66). What a feature of the environment signifies in these cases is a course of action that contributes to survival. One might baulk at the idea that these are cases of representation. Why not just describe the causal mechanisms at work? The problem is that a mere description of causal mechanisms fails to capture the normative dimension of such behaviour: the fact that organisms can be in error in the responses they make (Campbell, 2011: 78–80). The paramecium can mistake a saccharine gradient for a sugar one; the sunflower can mistake an artificial light for the sun. Some organisms can even register their error (perhaps by detecting they are not receiving nourishment) and act

7  Animism and Naturalism: Practice and Theory 

161

to correct it (Bickhard, 1998: 190; Vehkavaara, 2003: 577–79). There are causal mechanisms involved in this behaviour, but no description of these will tell you that the organism made a mistake (Okrent, 2007: 24–25). That requires reference to the goal of its activity. Given that goal, the organism can misrepresent some feature of its environment: it can register it as a means to the attainment of its goal when it is not. When computational theorists think of representations as ‘inner’ states, existing ‘in the mind’, they are not entirely wrong. Alongside the mental representations found in those creatures to whom we can attribute mind, even very simple organisms are capable of learning. Such learning involves creating stored representations, most commonly of environmental regularities (Matthen, 2014: 120–21). But inner representations are just one species of representation. Any feature of the world, whether inside the organism or outside of it, can function as a representation. A moving shape can represent the action of flicking out its tongue to a frog, smoke can represent the presence of fire to a human, a traffic signal can represent ‘stop’ or ‘go’ to a driver. By means of symbolic representations humans are able to represent states of affairs ‘off-line’ (Wartofsky, 1979: 207). They are able to reason about situations they are not currently experiencing or about things that do not exist at all. The mistake made by computational theories of mind is to take (‘inner’) symbolic representation as the model for all representation. This overlooks the more simple forms of representation, in which organisms register features of their environment as significant (Deacon, 1997: 75).

7 Activity and Representation An enactivist view sees all knowledge as activity related. Of particular importance are the forms of activity characteristic of a species, which shape sense perception. Each species has a ‘sensory habitat’: the ways it is capable of perceiving its environment and the ways it is predisposed to do so. This is determined by its characteristic form of life (Merleau-Ponty, 1963: 130), which is a product of its evolutionary history (Davidson, 1991: 202). Pigeons, for instance, have an experience of colour that is “richer and more complex than ours,” since they can see “reflectances in

162 

G. W. Dawes

the ultraviolet range of the spectrum” (Matthen, 2005: 163). This is plausibly understood as an adaptation to the needs of aerial navigation (Matthen, 2005: 173). The sensory habitat is overlaid with further levels of significance, which are also activity related. Think, for instance, of James Gibson’s theory of ‘affordances’: the idea that we (and other animals) perceive our environment in terms of “what it offers [us] …, what it provides or furnishes, either for good or ill” (Gibson, 2015: 119). These ways of representing the environment do not require concepts or language. One can register a feature of one’s environment as a source of nourishment without having any concept of nourishment. Conceptual thinking emerges from more complex forms of interaction with the world, which involve communication between subjects (Davidson, 1999: 129). It is in this realm that we find the collective, norm-governed forms of activity that I am calling ‘social practices’.

8 Practices and Representations Social practices are distinct from mere activities, even activities carried out with others. A practice is a particular kind of collective activity, which has goals and is governed by norms (Wartofsky, 1987: 364). A practice will develop ways of representing both the practice itself and what I shall call its ‘target domain’: those aspects of the world with which practitioners are interacting. The representations in question are of the kind that can be employed ‘off-line’: while emerging within a practice, they can be employed in other contexts. (It is this feature that enables them to be turned into ontologies.) Language is the most effective form of ‘off-line’ representation, although practices and their target domain can be represented in other ways: by way of visual images or stylized action (Donald, 1991: 169). The type of representation practitioners employ will depend on the goal of their practice, its history, and the nature of its target domain. Of particular importance is the goal of a practice. Practices can have a variety of goals. They can have utilitarian goals, as in the case of the practice of building, which seeks to provide shelter. They can have normative goals,

7  Animism and Naturalism: Practice and Theory 

163

seeking to guide action, as in case of initiation rituals that seek to shape the future behaviour of initiates. Finally, practices can have cognitive goals, in the sense that their aim is the advancement of knowledge. Those involved in a practice will choose forms of representation that help to achieve its particular goals. Take, for instance, the ‘correlative’ cosmology developed in ancient China. Its particular way of representing reality was shaped by the fact that the practices that employed it had normative (action-guiding) as well as speculative goals. They located the individual within a universe whose patterns of change were a guide to human behaviour (Graham, 1989: 350). Modern science, on the other hand, rejected these normative goals—separating ‘is’ from ‘ought’—and chose ways of representing reality that helped to achieve its goals of prediction and control. A practice’s ways of representing reality will itself have a history. The correlative cosmology of ancient China drew on the work of specialists in shŭshù fāngjì (calculations and recipes): people with technical skills in fields such as divination, astronomy and astrology, calendar-making, music, and medicine (Wang, 2000: 78–79, 123). The science of early modern Europe drew on a clockwork metaphor (Dijksterhuis, 1986: 310, 495), which could not have been employed before the invention of clocks. There is, therefore, a contingency about the ways in which our practices represent reality: they are dependent on factors that lie outside of the practices themselves. That concludes my sketch of an enactivist and practice-based theory of knowledge. If there is any truth in this view, it lends support to the idea that practices come first. It also lends support to an ‘externalist’ theory of mind, one that recognizes (to adapt Hilary Putnam’s phrase) that meanings ‘ain’t just in the head’. Indeed when coupled with the idea that representations emerge in the course of activity, it represents an ‘active externalism’ (Risjord, 2020: 603). It also supports a kind of realism, but a qualified one. We know the world only as it as it presents itself to us through particular modes of interaction. This view might appear to suggest that we can never know things ‘in themselves’; all we can know are ‘interacted-with-things’. But a correct understanding of representation undercuts this distinction. The ‘interacted-­with-things’ that we know do not stand between us and the

164 

G. W. Dawes

world. They are themselves features of the world (off-line representation being derivative, the exception rather than the rule), which can be represented in varying ways. So an enactivist and practice-based theory does not suffer from the fallacy known as ‘Stove’s Gem’ (Musgrave, 1999: 28). It is the world itself that ‘shows up in’ our activities and practices (Rouse, 1987: 25, 165), but it shows up in particular ways, depending on the activities and practices in which we are engaged.

9 Naive and Theorized Practices Both animism and naturalism emerge from particular social practices. But to understand how they do so, we need to distinguish between two types of practice, namely naïve and theorized practices. (The distinction is my own, although a similar distinction is found in the work of John Dewey [Dewey, 1938: 49–51; see Faerna, 2014: 366–67].) All practices begin as—and many never cease to be—naïve practices, which are carried out without reference to a body of theory. Take, for example, the practice of building: the construction of shelters and dwellings. In small-scale societies, building is carried out without reference to expressly formulated general principles. Nor does it require a specialized body of practitioners (Rapoport, 1969: 3). But this does not mean that it lacks norms, ‘prescribed ways of doing and not doing things’ (Rapoport, 1969: 4). The shape of a building, for instance, is based on a model, individual instances being merely variations of that pattern. In our own society, however, building is a theorized practice. It has developed sets of general principles (principles of architecture and engineering, for instance) and bodies of experts to which practitioners can make reference (even if they do not always do so). The members of any society will possess a repertoire of representation-­ types, drawn from a variety of ontological schemes (Taylor, 2013: 201–2). What is characteristic of a naïve practice is that practitioners do not attempt to systematize the representations being employed. Nor do they worry about the compatibility of the various schemes from which their representations are drawn. They simply employ the representation type

7  Animism and Naturalism: Practice and Theory 

165

that seems useful and appropriate in the context in which they are operating (Potter & Litton, 1985: 87). As it happens, this is not only true of naïve practices. It is also the case when it comes our everyday engagement with theorized ones. Take religious practices. Even in so highly theorized a religion as Christianity, ordinary practitioners—the people ‘in the pew’—employ representations in a context-dependent fashion. They are “used only in relation to specific situations, as and when they are needed, and are otherwise forgotten or dismissed” (Stringer, 1996: 229). The same context-dependence that has been observed among practitioners of a naïve form of religion in Madagascar (Astuti & Harris, 2008: 733) exists among practitioners of a theorized religion in Spain (Harris & Giménez, 2005: 153–54). In a theorized practice, the activity of theorizing is generally left to a group of specialists and may have little effect on non-specialists. When such specialists exist—practitioners who relate representations to one another in an attempt to create a consistent system—we have a theorized practice. Talk of ‘ontologies’ belongs in this context, that of theorized practices, for an ontology is more than a set of isolated claims, which are employed in a context-dependent fashion. An ontology is a systematic arrangement of such claims: a ‘set of things whose existence is acknowledged by a particular theory or system of thought’ (Pedersen, 2011: 35 n. 19). On this definition, practitioners of a naïve practice have no ontology, for they have no ‘theory or system of thought’. They will make individual assertions, out of which one could create an ontology. But any ontology we may ascribe to them will be one we have constructed on their behalf. While the terms ‘naïve’ and ‘theorized’ practice are my own, scholars of religion have recently made a similar distinction between two types of religions. The first type of religion is simply a practised religion, which has no ‘theology’. Such a religion lacks a set of systematically related general principles regarding the religion itself and its target domain. Alan Strathern has described religions of this kind as ‘immanentist’ (Strathern, 2019: 27–47), while Stanley Stowers calls them religions “of everyday social exchange” (Stowers, 2011: 36). The second type of religion is that which Strathern calls ‘transcendentalist’ (Strathern, 2019: 47–81) and Stowers calls “the religion of the literate cultural producer” (Stowers,

166 

G. W. Dawes

2011: 41). These religions have become ‘intellectualized’ in such a way that belief has become significant (Strathern, 2019: 67). The have, in other words, become theorized.

10 Animism and Naturalism Let me now come back to animism and naturalism, to have a fresh look at their relation in the light of these distinctions. What I am calling ‘animic’ practices are most commonly found in small-scale societies where they seem to be (for the most part) naïve practices, which employ animic representations in a context-dependent fashion. Practitioners do not consistently treat entities of the same kind—stones or trees, for instance—as though they were animate. They do not represent them as animate in every context in which they are found. Rather, they represent them as animate at particular times and for particular purposes (Bird-David, 1999: S74–S75). As Rane Willerslev writes of the Yukaghir people of Siberia, their animism is: a particular way of perceiving animals and the environment that is brought into play in specific contexts of practical activities. Outside these particular contexts of close involvement with prey, Yukaghirs do not experience animals as persons any more than we do, but instead live in a world of ordinary objects in which the distinction between human subjects and nonhuman objects is much more readily drawn. … In short … the person status of animals is context-dependent. (Willerslev, 2007: 116–17)

In a similar way, Laura Rival writes of the Huaorani people of Ecuador that during their walks through the forest they: communicate different messages about the world according to context and circumstance. For instance, the same tree may be admired and poetically commented upon for its brand new and shiny leaves one day, only to be feared the next day, when a tempestuous wind animates it with a different, and much more dangerous, kind of energy. … Knowing the forest through trekking involves various ways of knowing at once (Rival, 2012: 134)

7  Animism and Naturalism: Practice and Theory 

167

This context-dependence raises a question about the use of the term ‘belief ’ (Strathern, 2019: 160). Are we to say that those who engage in such practices have animistic beliefs? When taking part in particular practices, participants act as if they had such beliefs. If we assume that practitioners are not speaking metaphorically, then something akin to belief seems to be involved. But on other occasions practitioners’ behaviour assumes differing beliefs, even in relation to the same entities. So if there are beliefs involved in naïve animic practices, they are best thought of as what one scholar calls Augenblicksglauben: “momentary shifts in interpretation” (Versnel, 2011: 480, 489 n.151). Animism can also be a theorized practice. It becomes a theorized practice when its occasional, context-dependent ways of representing reality are systematized. This means turning Augenblicksglauben into general principles that are employed consistently and related to one another. To describe animism as an ‘ontology’—a set of general principles regarding what exists—is to assume it has been theorized. But this raises two questions. The first is: Who is doing the theorizing? The second is: What relation has the theory thus constructed to the thinking of practitioners? With regard to the first question, we should not assume that members of small-scale societies are incapable of systematizing their own beliefs (Radin, 1957: 28). But often they do not. One needs a reason to theorize one’s own practices. That reason may be an encounter with a different culture, or it may be the persistent questioning of an anthropologist. When practitioners lack such reasons, the task of systematizing their representations must be performed by others, often by the anthropologist who is doing the questioning (Bird-David, 2017: 155; Descola, 1994: 3). This brings us to the second question: What relation has the anthropologist’s theory to the thinking of practitioners? Does that theory merely set out systematically what Malinowski called “the native’s point of view” (Malinowski, 2014: 24), or does it go beyond the representations that practitioners themselves employ? Some new animists appear to be working more or less within the Malinowskian tradition. Descola, for instance, stresses that his ontologies are ‘ideal types’ (Descola, 2013: xix). But he presents them as idealizations of the ways in which differing peoples have actually thought. In a similar way, Viveiros de Castro suggests that his ‘perspectivism’ represents

168 

G. W. Dawes

the way in which his Amerindian peoples actually represent reality. But he also describes it as a ‘virtual ontology’ (Viveiros de Castro, 2012: 64), perhaps alluding to the role played by ‘virtuality’ in the work of Giles Deleuze. This suggests that he may be engaging in what he himself calls ‘a thought experiment’ (Viveiros de Castro, 2012: 64), which is inspired by, rather than directly reflecting, the thinking of the people he studies (Salmond, 2014: 166). This is more clearly the case for some of Viveiros de Castro’s followers. They appear to be engaging in “a creative synthesis of philosophy and field experience” (Salmond, 2013: 1), generating concepts that differ from both our naturalistic ones and those of their informants. Martin Holbraad, for instance, writes that an anthropology of the kind he is practising ‘is not about “how we think they think”’, where ‘they’ refers to the people who have inspired the study. Rather, “it is about how we could learn to think, given what they say and do” (Holbraad, 2011b: 91). But even this kind of relatively free invention involves theorizing the practices of the peoples in question, for it involves interpreting “what they say and do”. So insofar as ‘animism’ is an ontology, it is a particular way of theorizing a naïve practice, often by those who are not practitioners. But what about naturalism? What philosophers often fail to realise is that naturalism is also a theory that emerges from a practice, an interpretation of a particular practice’s ways of representing reality. The practice in question is that of modern science. Here, too, the interpretation of the practice is most commonly done by others: by philosophers rather than by scientists. Proponents of naturalism often present it as though it were a straightforwardly scientific conclusion, one that can be immediately deduced from scientific results. But it is not. No scientific law entails the truth of naturalism (Christensen, 2008: 269–73) and even if scientists operate on the assumption that only natural causes exist, the utility of this assumption does not entail its truth (Christensen, 2008: 273–80). The methods and findings of modern science lend support to naturalism only when combined with other assumptions (Macarthur, 2004: 30). These include a strong form of scientific realism: one which assumes a spectator theory of knowledge. Our best science, on this view, mirrors the causal structure of the world rather than offering illuminating ways of engaging with it,

7  Animism and Naturalism: Practice and Theory 

169

for particular purposes. When coupled with the further assumption that knowledge entails true belief (to which I shall return), this gives rise to the naturalist idea that all claims to knowledge must be consistent with those of the sciences. As will become clear, I consider these assumptions to be false. But that is not the point I am making here. The point I am making is that whatever you make of these assumptions, they are required, to take you from the practice of science to naturalism as a philosophical position. It follows that naturalism, not less than animism (as an ontology) is a particular way of theorizing a practice, in this case the practice of modern science. There is, however, an important difference between animism and naturalism as ways of theorizing particular practices. While animism is a way of theorizing a naïve practice, naturalism is a way of theorizing a practice that is already theorized, for science is a cognitive practice, one that has the advancement of knowledge as its goal. Its task is the production of theories about its target domain. In constructing theories about science itself—second-order theories such as naturalism or realism—philosophers take this process of theorizing to a higher level (French, 2020: 233).

11 Underdetermination If this argument is correct, then both animism and naturalism are particular ways of theorizing their respective practices. But this brings me to my next point, which is that there exists an underdetermination of theory by practice. At least when it comes to animism and naturalism, there are other ways of theorizing the practices in question. One could, for instance, accept the utility of animic practices—one could believe they succeed in achieving some goal—while regarding animistic representations as metaphorical. It may be that animistic representations are sometimes being used metaphorically, even in small-scale societies (Peterson, 2011: 176). But we can, in any case, choose to regard them in this way. This was the way James Lovelock, for instance, regarded his use of the term ‘Gaia’: as a metaphor which he hoped would go hand-­ in-­hand with a new kind of practice (Lovelock, 1987: x). Similar remarks may be made about naturalism. One could accept the practice of science,

170 

G. W. Dawes

while rejecting the assumptions that lead from scientific practice to philosophical naturalism. (I shall suggest some ways of doing this in a moment.) So, are animism and naturalism at odds? If one assumes that our ontological schemes must be consistent with one another—another assumption I am about to reject—it would appear that animistic and naturalistic ontologies are at odds. But once we distinguish between ontologies and the practices from which they are derived, the situation looks very different. The door is opened to accepting the practices, while rejecting the particular bodies of theory that are derived from them. Animic practices and the practice of science are not necessarily at odds, even if some common ways of theorizing them are.

12 Cognitive Pluralism My argument so far suggests that we could reject animism and naturalism (as ontologies), while accepting the practices from which they emerge. Does the theory of knowledge I outlined earlier allow us to go further? Would it allow us to defend not just animic practices, but (something like) an animistic ontology? A first step towards defending animism is one I have already hinted at. It involves rejecting the assumptions that lead from the practice of science to naturalism. This will open the door to a cognitive pluralism. A second step is to discover a fact about the world to which animistic representations could be thought to refer. An enactivist and practice-based theory of knowledge enables us to attain the first of these goals and takes us some distance towards the second. A enactivist and practice-based theory of knowledge enables us to reject the naturalist’s assumption that science is the measure of what exists. It opens the door to a pluralistic view of knowledge: the idea that there are as many ways of knowing the world as there are successful ways of engaging with it. Each of these will produce a particular way of representing reality and there is no reason to expect they will be consistent with one another (Horst, 2016: 83). Post-Galilean science does offer a uniquely objective way of representing reality, based on its use of instruments and measurement (Heelan, 1967: 393–95). But its

7  Animism and Naturalism: Practice and Theory 

171

procedures are not the only ways in which the world can be successfully represented. At first sight, a cognitive pluralism of this kind—one that allows for inconsistent ways of representing reality—seems untenable. Knowledge, after all, was traditionally thought to entail true belief, and (if we leave aside paraconsistent logics) we cannot have inconsistent truths. There are (at least) two ways of avoiding this problem. The first abandons the idea that truth is a condition of knowledge, being content to speak of successful models. On this view, the propositions we formulate on the basis of experience are ways of modelling that experience for particular purposes (Crane, 2013: 128–29) and it suffices for knowledge to have successful models, which do not need to be compatible (Horst, 2016: 160). Talk of ‘successful models’ might suggest that I have lapsed into a kind of pragmatism. But one can argue that models are successful because they have some truth-related quality, perhaps truthlikeness (Niiniluoto, 1999: 140 n. 18) or partial truth (Musgrave, 2010: 101). ‘Partial truth’ would here mean ‘true under certain conditions’, that is to say, the conditions of the practice within which the models are successfully employed. If we replace the truth condition in our definition of knowledge with a truthlikeness or partial truth condition, we open the door to a cognitive pluralism, since inconsistent models may be truthlike (Niiniluoto, 1999: 240), or partially true. To take a famous example, Ptolemaic and Copernican astronomy are inconsistent. (It cannot be both that the earth is stationary and that it moves.) But they are each partially true. (Each, for example, successfully models planetary movement for the purpose of predicting eclipses.)

13 The Truth in Animism Whatever you make of these options, they suggest that cognitive pluralism is not a crazy idea. But “to take animism seriously” we would need to go further. We would need reason to believe that animistic representations are truthlike (or partially true) and thus candidates for a claim to knowledge. Are there reasons of this kind?

172 

G. W. Dawes

There is more than one way in which one could argue for the truthlikeness (or partial truth) of animistic representations. If, for instance, practices employing such representations were found to be predictively successful, this might give one reason to accept them. But another such method is to look for a fact on which animic and scientific practices can be thought to converge: a feature of the world that they represent in similar ways. If the scientific representation of this fact is thought to be truthlike (or partially true), it can lend support to the animistic one. At first sight, an enactivist and practice-based theory of knowledge appears to offer us just such a fact, since it undermines any sharp distinction between the mindedness of humans and the mode of existence of other living things. It holds that even those those organisms that lack consciousness can be said to represent their environment, registering some of its features as signs. Eduardo Kohn picks up this idea. He argues that since we share the use of signs (‘semiosis’) with other living creatures, and since “what we call mind, or self, is a product of semiosis” (Kohn, 2013: 34), the whole living world is made up of selves (Kohn, 2013: 16). On the face of it, this argument goes too far. Semiosis may be a necessary but not sufficient condition for selfhood (Jonas, 1968: 242, 244). In their “promiscuous attribution of personhood” (Strathern, 2019: 27), animistic representations may go too far. But they do speak of the “deep continuity of life and mind” that an enactivist and practice-based theory of knowledge reveals (Thompson, 2007: 157). Since this theory of knowledge draws on the practice of science, the fact to which animistic representations draw our attention is one that even a naturalist should be able to recognize.

References Astuti, R., & Harris, P. L. (2008). Understanding Mortality and the Life of the Ancestors in Rural Madagascar. Cognitive Science, 32(4), 713–740. Bickhard, M. H. (1998). Levels of Representationality. Journal of Experimental & Theoretical Artificial Intelligence, 10(2), 179–215. Bird-David, N. (2017). Us, Relatives: Scaling and Plural Life in a Forager World. Ethnographic Studies in Subjectivity. University of California Press.

7  Animism and Naturalism: Practice and Theory 

173

Bird-David, N. (1999). “Animism” Revisited: Personhood, Environment, and Relational Epistemology. Current Anthropology, 40 (S1, Special Issue): S67–S79. Bruner, J. (1964). The Course of Cognitive Growth. American Psychologist, 19(1), 1–15. Campbell, R. (2011). The Concept of Truth. Palgrave Macmillan. Christensen, C.  B. (2008). Self and World: From Analytic Philosophy to Phenomenology. Quellen und Studien zur Philosophie 89. Walter de Gruyter. Costa, L., & Fausto, C. (2010). The Return of the Animists: Recent Studies of Amazonian Ontologies. Religion and Society: Advances in Research, 1(1), 89–109. Crane, T. (2013). The Objects of Thought. Oxford University Press. Davidson, D. (1983). A Coherence Theory of Truth and Knowledge. In D. Davidson, Subjective, Intersubjective, Objective (pp. 138–153). Clarendon Press, 2001. Davidson, D. (1991). Epistemology Externalized. In D. Davidson, Subjective, Intersubjective, Objective (pp. 193–204). Clarendon Press, 2001. Davidson, D. (1999). The Emergence of Thought. In D. Davidson, Subjective, Intersubjective, Objective (pp. 123–134). Clarendon Press, 2001. Deacon, T. W. (1997). The Symbolic Species: The Co-evolution of Language and the Brain. W. W. Norton & Company. Descola, P. (1994). In the Society of Nature: A Native Ecology in Amazonia. Cambridge University Press. Descola, Philippe [2005] (2013). Beyond Nature and Culture. J. Lloyd (trans.). University of Chicago Press. Dewey, J. (1930). The Quest for Certainty: A Study of the Relation of Knowledge and Action. Gifford Lectures 1929. George Allen & Unwin. Dewey, J. (1938). Logic: The Theory of Inquiry. Henry Holt and Company. Dijksterhuis, E.  J. [1959] (1986). The Mechanization of the World Picture: Pythagoras to Newton. C. Dikshoorn (trans.). Princeton University Press. Donald, M. (1991). Origins of the Modern Mind: Three Stages in the Evolution of Culture and Cognition. Harvard University Press. Faerna, Á. M. (2014). On Norms and Social Practices: Brandom, Dewey, and the Demarcation Question. Transactions of the Charles S.  Peirce Society, 50(3), 360–372. French, S. (2020). There Are No Such Things as Theories. Oxford University Press. Gibson, J.  J. [1979] (2015). The Ecological Approach to Visual Perception. Psychology Press Classic Editions.

174 

G. W. Dawes

Graham, A. C. (1989). Disputers of the Tao: Philosophical Argument in Ancient China. Open Court. Hallowell, A.  I. (1969). Obijwa Ontology, Behavior, and World View. In S.  Diamond (Ed.), Primitive Views of the World (pp.  49–82). Columbia University Press. Harris, P.  L., & Giménez, M. (2005). Children’s Acceptance of Conflicting Testimony: The Case of Death. Journal of Cognition and Culture, 5(1), 143–164. Harvey, G. (2006). Animism: Respecting the Living World. Columbia University Press. Heelan, P. (1967). Horizon, Objectivity and Reality in the Physical Sciences. International Philosophical Quarterly, 7(3), 375–412. Holbraad, M. (2011a). In Benjamin Alberti et  al., “Worlds Otherwise”: Archaeology, Anthropology, and Ontological Difference. Current Anthropology, 52(6): 902–903. Holbraad, M. (2011b). Ontography and Alterity: Defining Anthropological Truth. In Toren, C. and de Pina-Cabral, J. (Eds.) The Challenge of Epistemology: Anthropological Perspectives (pp. 80–93). Berghahn Books. Holbraad, M., & Pedersen, M. (2017). The Ontological Turn: An Anthropological Exposition. Cambridge University Press. Horst, S. (2016). Cognitive Pluralism. MIT Press. Ingold, T. (2000). The Perception of the Environment: Essays on Livelihood, Dwelling and Skill. Routledge. Ingold, T. (2016a). End Comment: To Conclude in the Spirit of Rebirth, or, a Note on Animic Anthropo-ontogenesis. In K. Århem & G. Sprenger (Eds.), Animism in Southeast Asia (pp. 302-309). Routledge Contemporary Southeast Asia Series. Routledge. Ingold, T. (2016b). Rejoinder to Descola’s “Biolatry: a Surrender of Understanding”. Anthropological Forum, 26(3), 329–332. Jonas, H. (1968). Biological Foundations of Individuality. International Philosophical Quarterly, 8(2), 231–251. Kohn, E. (2013). How Forests Think: Towards an Anthropology beyond the Human. University of California Press. Lokensgard, K.  H. (2018). The Ontological Turn, Indigenous Research, and Niitsitapi Protocols of Reciprocity. In M. Astor-Aguilera & G. Harvey (Eds.), Rethinking Relations and Animism: Personhood and Materiality. Vitality of Indigenous Religions (pp. 115–132). Routledge.

7  Animism and Naturalism: Practice and Theory 

175

Lovelock, J. (1987). Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth (Revised ed.). Oxford University Press. Macarthur, D. (2004). Naturalizing the Human or Humanizing Nature: Science, Nature and the Supernatural. Erkenntnis, 61(1), 29–51. Malinowski, B. [1922] (2014). Argonauts of the Western Pacific: An Account of Native Enterprise in the Archipelagoes of Melanesian New Guinea. Routledge. Matthen, M. (2005). Seeing, Doing, and Knowing: A Philosophical Theory of Sense Perception. Clarendon Press. Matthen, M. (2014). Debunking Enactivism: A Critical Notice of Hutto and Myin’s Radicalizing Enactivism. Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 44(1), 118–128. Merleau-Ponty, M. [1942] (1963). The Structure of Behavior. A. L. Fisher (trans.). Beacon Press. Musgrave, A. (1999). Conceptual Idealism and Stove’s Gem. In M.  L. dalla Chiara, R.  Giuntini, & F.  Laudisau (Eds.), Language, Quantum, Music: Selected Contributed Papers of the Tenth International Congress of Logic, Methodology and Philosophy of Science, Florence, August 1995 (pp.  25–35). Synthese Library 281. Springer Musgrave, A. (2010). Revisiting Critical Rationalism: Critical Rationalism, Explanation, and Severe Tests. In D. Mayo & A. Spanos (Eds.), Error and Inference: Recent Exchanges on Experimental Reasoning, Reliability, and the Objectivity and Rationality of Science (pp. 88–112). Cambridge University Press. Niiniluoto, I. (1999). Critical Scientific Realism. Clarendon Library of Logic and Philosophy. Oxford University Press. Okrent, M. (2007). Rational Animals: The Teleological Roots of Intentionality. Ohio University Press. Oppy, G. (2018). Naturalism and Religion: A Contemporary Philosophical Investigation. Routledge. Pedersen, M. A. (2011). Not Quite Shamans: Spirit Worlds and Political Lives in Northern Mongolia. Cornell University Press. Peterson, N. (2011). Is the Aboriginal Landscape Sentient? Animism, the New Animism and the Warlpiri. Oceania, 81(2), 167–179. Potter, J., & Litton, I. (1985). Some Problems Underlying the Theory of Social Representations. British Journal of Social Psychology, 24(2), 81–90. Radin, P. (1957). Primitive Man as Philosopher (2nd ed.). Dover Publications. Rapoport, A. (1969). House Form and Culture. Foundations of Cultural Geography. Prentice-Hall.

176 

G. W. Dawes

Risjord, M. (2020). Anthropology without Belief: An Anti-representationalist Ontological Turn. Philosophy of the Social Sciences, 50(6), 586–609. Rival, L. (2012). The Materiality of Life: Revisiting the Anthropology of Nature in Amazonia. Indiana, 29, 127–143. Rouse, J. (1987). Knowledge and Power: Toward a Political Philosophy of Science. Cornell University Press. Salmond, A. J. M. (2013). Transforming Translations (Part 1): “The Owner of These Bones“. Hau: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 3(3), 1–32. Salmond, A.  J. M. (2014). Transforming Translations (Part 2): Addressing Ontological Alterity. Hau: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 4(1), 155–187. Schatzki, T.  R. (2001). Introduction: Practice Theory. In T.  Schatzki, K. K. Cetina, & E. von Savigny (Eds.), The Practice Turn in Contemporary Theory (pp. 10–23). Routledge. Scott, C. (2014). Ontology and Ethics in Cree Hunting: Animism, Totemism and Practical Knowledge. In G. Harvey (Ed.), The Handbook of Contemporary Animism (pp. 159–166). Routledge. Stowers, S. (2011). The Religion of Plant and Animal Offerings Versus the Religion of Meanings, Essences, and Textual Mysteries. In J. Wright Knust & Z.  Várhelyi (Eds.), Ancient Mediterranean Sacrifice (pp.  35–56). Oxford University Press. Strathern, A. (2019). Unearthly Powers: Religious and Political Change in World History. Cambridge University Press. Stringer, M. D. (1996). Towards a Situational Theory of Belief. Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford, 27(3), 217–234. Taylor, A.-C. (2013). Distinguishing Ontologies. Hau: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 3(1), 201–204. Thompson, E. (2007). Mind in Life: Biology, Phenomenology, and the Sciences of Mind. The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press. Tylor, E. B. (1913). Primitive Culture (Vol. 1, 5th ed.). John Murray. Vehkavaara, T. (2003). Natural Self-Interest, Interactive Representation, and the Emergence of Objects and Umwelt: An Outline of Basic Semiotic Concepts for Biosemiotics. Sign Systems Studies, 31(2), 547–587. Versnel, H. S. (2011). Coping With the Gods: Wayward Readings in Greek Theology. Religions in the Graeco-Roman World 173. E. J. Brill. Viveiros de Castro, E. (1998). Cosmological Deixis and Amerindian Perspectivism. The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 4(3), 469–488. Viveiros de Castro, E. (2012). Cosmological Perspectivism in Amazonia and Elsewhere. Four lectures given in the Department of Social Anthropology,

7  Animism and Naturalism: Practice and Theory 

177

Cambridge University, February–March 1998. Hau Masterclass Series 1. Hau, Journal of Ethnographic Theory. Von Eckardt, B. (1993). What Is Cognitive Science? A Bradford Book. MIT Press. Wang, A. (2000). Cosmology and Political Culture in Early China. Cambridge Studies in Chinese History, Literature and Institutions. Cambridge University Press. Wartofsky, M. W. [1973] (1979). Perception, Representation, and the Forms of Action: Towards an Historical Epistemology. In M.  Wartofsky, Models: Representation and the Scientific Understanding (pp.  188–210). Synthese Library 129. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science. D. Reidel. Wartofsky, M.  W. (1987). Epistemology Historicized. In A.  Shimony and D.  Nails (Eds.), Naturalistic Epistemology: A Symposium of Two Decades (pp. 357–377). Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science 100. D. Reidel. Willerslev, R. (2007). Soul Hunters: Hunting, Animism, and Personhood among the Siberian Yukaghirs. University of California Press. Willerslev, R. (2013). Taking Animism Seriously, but Perhaps Not Too Seriously? Religion and Society: Advances in Research, 4(1), 41–57.

8 Sensible Animism Evan Fales

A central chapter in the history of early anthropology concerned the origins of religious worship. It was supposed that the religions of primitive tribal peoples—savages, as they were called—could teach us something about the evolution of this universal feature of human cultures. The resulting spate of theories about the emergence of religious thought was heavily influenced by the Enlightenment critique of modern religions— yet, ironically, it provided ideological cover for the conquest and exploitation of less technologically advanced societies. Variations upon the doctrine that Western dominion over these societies was a duty—“the white man’s burden”—seemed natural when their cultures could be shown to be less sophisticated not only in their mastery over nature but, allegedly, in their intellectual penetration into spiritual matters as well. Animism, broadly construed, may be understood to consist in a system of beliefs holding that denizens of the natural world—various plants, mineral formations and landmarks, other geological features such as

E. Fales (*) Department of Philosophy, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Smith (ed.), Animism and Philosophy of Religion, Palgrave Frontiers in Philosophy of Religion, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94170-3_8

179

180 

E. Fales

rivers, celestial phenomena, and so on, as well as non-human animals— are invested with personal spirits. And second, animism involves the observance of various behaviors that are consequent upon the beliefs in question. These behaviors, directed toward natural objects and organisms, are intended to engage the spiritual or personal aspect of their being—to engage those features of the natural world in interpersonal relationships, or something akin to interhuman personal relationships. The behaviors are often ritualized and often involve worship or the paying of respect (positive relations) or exorcism, magical defense against, and other actions designed to ward off danger (negative relations). Thus, we may say that animism typically involves a set of beliefs that treat aspects of the natural world as if they were persons, human, or quasi-human. Animists appear to subscribe to a range of ontologies concerning the nature of the spirits, demons, and the like that inhabit their world. And they accept a number of conceptions of how those spirits are associated with or localized to designated animals, plants, or natural features of the environment. Sometimes these beings are conceived as distinct individuals that inhabit their natural hosts. Such beings may be able to detach themselves from their hosts on occasion to engage in various missions. Or they may be non-separable from the body of their host, though nevertheless distinguishable from their host. Or, on the other hand, it may be supposed that the natural item—geological feature, plant, or animal— just is a person, with a mind that has human or quasi-human powers. There may be reasons for the particular conception of this relation to be in play in particular cases. Much of what I have to say below will be neutral vis-á-vis these distinctions. I shall introduce the notion of embodiment to capture many of their common features. A striking feature of animism, as characterized above, is that in one form or another, it is so widespread among human cultures. Indeed, its presence approaches something like ubiquity among “primitive” cultures and enjoys a considerable presence in many “advanced” cultures as well (e.g., in Japan). This wide reach makes animism a natural target for the question: Why? Why do we find some form of animism at the heart of so many disparate religious traditions? Diffusionism would be hard-put to account for the global distribution of animist ideas. Appeal to

8  Sensible Animism 

181

“archetypes” and the like is hardly supported by anything like a robust account of human psychology. During the nineteenth and earlier decades of the twentieth centuries, a popular strategy among theorists was to postulate certain mental incapacities on the part of “primitive thought” for the emergence of such mistaken beliefs. A more recently popular trend, under the aegis of evolutionary psychology, is to explain widespread features of human cultures in terms of natural selection, operating upon the evolutionary development of human conative and cognitive processes in such a way as to shape ordinary human experiences so as to invest beliefs about the world formed from those experiences with features not objectively present, but contributed by (often pre-conscious) mental processes. This line of explanation has been especially attractive as a way of explaining religious beliefs and practices. It is a strategy that is an extension of the earlier efforts to explain such phenomena in terms of cognitive capacities, by adding, in effect, explanations for how such cognitive impairments could have arisen as by-products of natural selection. A well-known example of that approach is Guthrie (1995). None of these forms of explanation provides the strategy I aim to use in this discussion of animism. The evolutionary psychology strategy, for example, may seem rather promising when it is deployed to construct explanations of broadly characterized and broadly encountered features of, say, religious belief and practice. One might hope to explain why the personification and worship of animals, and even large natural formations, might be inspired by the outcome of evolutionary processes working on human brains. But this attractiveness begins to dissipate as soon as one tries to provide any understanding of why given cultures have evolved to construct particular animistic belief systems, in detail, with their unique and wildly various content and form. One is quickly reduced to chalking those differences up to (largely unknown) historical accidents. This is unsatisfactory. Religious belief systems, whether animist or not, cannot be satisfactorily parsed by appeal to some postulated generic evolutionary mechanism(s), with details chalked up to historical accidents. For it is evident that religious belief systems are systems; they are not comprised simply of a hodgepodge of individual beliefs. What accounts for the systematicity? And what accounts, in particular, for the

182 

E. Fales

long-­understood close association, both in content and practice, between religious belief systems and the forms and norms that shape social structure and entangle secular and sacred worlds in a single conceptual net? Now, it is not my intent here to develop a general critique of evolutionary psychology’s contributions to the understanding of religion. Rather, I will provide support for a contrasting line of thought, one at whose very core lies focusing on the details of religious belief traditions, mapping their systematic features and structures, and showing—again in detail—how those can be understood as thought tools for engaging social and political realities and challenges. The approach is intellectualistic. It recognizes the possibility that religious belief systems, no matter how alien and implausible their content might appear to outsiders at first glance, often represent careful, creative thought about real and pressing problems confronting the creation and preservation of social order. It might be readily enough allowed that animistic religions typically serve (as do religions generally) a functional role in sustaining social order; what I claim is that they have more substance than that. Rather, they exhibit conscious efforts to do this by articulating reasoned and not implausible ways to provide systematic understanding of how the world works, both the material environment and the social world. They address the question of how human beings should organize their social lives to create a harmonious way of engaging their fellows and the practical tasks of fashioning a satisfying way of life. They are not—or not generally— like random mutations that spring up in social customs and survive because they contribute to social fitness. I will approach this task by engaging critically the proposal of Robin Horton, an Africanist who shares the view that primitive religions must be understood as efforts to gain an intellectually satisfying understanding of man and nature. Horton argues at some length that primitive religions, in particular in their animistic features, express the conclusions of primitive theorizing about the world that are fundamentally akin to “modern” scientific theorizing. Both the primitive theories expressed by animistic beliefs and the advanced ones produced by contemporary science emerge from the application of what are fundamentally similar thought processes. What accounts for the wide gap in results stems from

8  Sensible Animism 

183

the wide gap between primitive empirical evidence and experimental techniques and those available to the scientific community. Horton’s strategy is to give an account of salient features of the scientific method, as Western science has pursued the aims of systematizing, explaining, and predicting the operations of nature, and to compare these with animistic efforts to achieve similar aims. He then argues that animistic religions and the sciences share fundamental thought processes and strategies while also differing in discernable ways. The shared features show that modern and primitive thought are cognitively on similar footing. The fact that the results they reach are so disparate can be attributed to relatively accidental social and cultural features stemming from, for instance, disparities in economic and technological development, social complexity, and the like. Horton’s views on these matters have undergone modification over time. I shall draw primarily upon his formulations in Horton (1993). It will be useful to focus on one of the salient features that, according to Horton, show that? modern science and animistic thought evidence the methodological unity of the approaches of scientists and animists. Then I shall comment upon what Horton sees as one of the central differences that distinguish the two and help to account for some differences in their historical development. I shall have a further suggestion to make on that matter. The basic methodological similarity hinges on (often implicit) recognition of a basic distinction between features of the world that are discernable by way of direct observation and those that must be inferred. The Logical Positivists, who dominated Western philosophical understanding of scientific method during the middle of the last century, baptized this distinction, the distinction between data (or observation) and theory. The color of an apple, for instance, can be determined just by looking; it is observable. Why the apple comes to have that color, however—how the color is produced—cannot be discovered “just by looking” at the apple. Only careful investigation, involving inferences about causal processes, can settle this question: That is the work of theory construction. Similarly, we can observe that the apple falls from the tree, but not discover what makes it do that, without the making of causal inferences.

184 

E. Fales

By positivist lights, causal connections—even the most out-in-the-­ open ones, like the cat’s pushing your glasses off the edge of the counter—must be inferred from observed regularities. Such inferences, moreover, are inherently risky; there was no guarantee of reaching correct conclusions. Hence, scientific theories would always be tentative, vulnerable to overthrow. Competing theories could, in general, be formulated and tested against current wisdom. Horton initially adopted this view of science. But it underwent withering criticism during the latter decades of the twentieth century, and Horton modified his view accordingly. A central difficulty had to do with drawing the distinction between what is observable without the use of experimental techniques and what is not. Are paramecia directly observable, for example? By the naked eye or only with a microscope? Would wearing your eyeglasses be cheating? Horton replaces the theory/observation distinction with one that is much less vulnerable to objections of this kind. Adopting his terminology, there is a viable distinction to be drawn between “primary theory” and “secondary theory.” What belongs to primary theory is, roughly, the deliverances of common sense. Such beliefs are formed in ways that are largely independent of education, cultural context, and social milieu. There is wide agreement on them across cultures. Many of these beliefs concern causal relations, but causal explanation is confined to contact forces: push/pull interactions. Secondary theories, on the other hand, emerge from efforts to explain puzzling phenomena by appeal to “hidden” aspects of the world, the behaviors of bits of the world—be they too small to see, like atoms or force-fields, or invisible, like spirits or ghosts. Not only new types of entities, but new types of causal relations—for example, ones involving apparent action at a distance—may, if discoverable, enter into the arsenal of explanatory theory. The power and attractiveness of this strategy of appeal to the “hidden” is at least twofold: It offers explanatory connections that can explain phenomena that remain otherwise mysterious; and it “unifies” explanation, because a small menagerie of hidden mechanisms can be harnessed to explain a multitude of seemingly disparate phenomena. Thus the discovery of viruses and their modes of action allow one to provide explanations of such seemingly unrelated phenomena as rabies in

8  Sensible Animism 

185

mammals and tobacco mosaic virus disease in plants. Similarly, the atomic structures of the one hundred or so chemical elements enable us to understand, in principle, the structures and properties of all the millions of chemical compounds. In Horton’s view, the attractiveness of understanding observable aspects of the world in terms of things that are hidden is recognized, not only by Western scientists but by the thinkers in animistic cultures. One chief difference is that while Western science has gone progressively more and more in the direction of explaining what is puzzling in terms of a materialist ontology of bits of matter that are the small physical parts of ordinary garden-variety objects, the explanatory theories of cultures that operate with animistic beliefs have moved in a different direction: Instead of tiny bits of matter, their explanations appeal to (often invisible) persons or quasi-persons. But this should not come as a surprise: What is most readily understandable in their world of experience is what can be explained within a framework of folk psychology. Whereas Westerners have found ways to unleash the power of explaining wholes in terms of (physical) parts, animists have drawn on the resources of one of the most sophisticated “primary” theories at the disposal of human beings—a theory of mind that enables our species to navigate an unusually complex social environment. In their eyes, what wants explaining can be most illuminated if the question is approached by postulating hidden actions of (often hidden) persons. Explanation is therefore not mechanistic but appeals to postulated motives, emotions, causes of happiness, anger, etc. But why the difference? And why would not both Western and animistic cultures happily allow both sorts of explanatory strategies to co-exist, rather than privileging one or the other? Horton invokes two useful distinctions: One between traditionalistic and progressivistic concepts of knowledge and one between consensual and competitive modes of theorizing. Traditionalistic thought is marked by a view that all knowledge comes through transmission of the wisdom of the ancients; it discourages innovation, though allowing accommodation over time, and appeals ultimately to the defense that traditions that have withstood the test of time have a strong claim to validity. Progressivistic conceptions of knowledge instead value novelty and innovation. Correlatively, traditionalistic

186 

E. Fales

culture is associated with a consensual view of knowledge as “what we all agree on,” whereas progressivism fuels active competition between opposing schools of thought. While Horton suggests a range of social, economic, and environmental determinants, as explainers of these contrasts between modern and tribal cultures, I think a more fundamental fact—a feature of explanatory theories generally—lies closer to the bottom of the matter. It is the intrinsically imperialistic character of explanation—in short, the fact that explanatory power is linked to explaining as many disparate features of the world in terms of as sparsely populated a hidden world as possible. That does not explain why the West has chosen one path and the Animists another; but it helps to explain why the two explanatory schemes do not easily co-exist. Each is ambitious; each hopes to occupy the other’s home territory. Nor is it particularly difficult to guess why the theory of mind with which our species is endowed—folk psychology—should provide such an attractive conceptual scaffolding upon which to erect explanations for natural phenomena generally. Skill at understanding the behavior of other humans evolved as a natural concomitant of increased population density and social-system complexity. It was, therefore, a framework of explanation that was nuanced, sophisticated, and ready to hand. Moreover, the extension of a theory of mind to animals is not a stretch, insofar as many of their behaviors bear obvious analogy to many of our own. Even plants and non-living objects that are prominent features of the environment (large geological formations, atmospheric phenomena, the heavenly bodies) that sustain human existence can be thought of as givers of gifts and therefore to be eligible for relations of reciprocity. Of course, the analogies can be stretched only so far. It is implausible that, say, a Central American Indian, who well understands the differences in behavior and temperament between howler and squirrel monkeys, would be oblivious to the conclusion that a rock does not possess an active mental life. But animism, as we will shortly see, has more conceptual resources at its disposal than the exploitation of such straightforward (dis)analogies as these. To be sure, human beings also readily become aware of the obvious fact that bigger things are composed of smaller bits of matter and that the

8  Sensible Animism 

187

ways bigger things function depend upon what the smaller things are and how they are assembled—which is the central insight of materialism. Why, then, might simpler agricultural societies be drawn to folk psychology as their flagship guide for explanatory appeals to hidden things? It is no more than speculation on my part, but it strikes me that folk psychology has at least one signal advantage over mechanistic explanations. While explanations of the latter sort are often readily available so long as appeal is made to material parts that are visible—after all, even the bemusing operation of a Rube Goldberg machine is readily comprehended because the process is open to inspection—matters become far more mysterious when explanation attempts to progress into the realm of material bits that are too small to see or otherwise individuate and observe with the unaided senses (or even when simple enhancements of those senses come to our aid). The ancient Greek atomists speculated about microparticles equipped with little hooks that allowed stable configurations to be formed; but beyond floating that simple idea, no one was able to get very far with providing specific blueprints that were independently confirmable. By contrast, theorizing that draws upon the resources of folk psychology has one signal advantage on this score—for, although the mental workings of other minds are indeed “hidden” to us, we do have an inside track on the machinations of at least one mind: Our own. Arguments for other minds that proceed from analogy to our own are often given short shrift by philosophers. This is no place to offer a defense, save to say that such reasoning seems quite intuitive. But however we come by it, a theory of mind is a heritage that has been bequeathed upon us by a deep ancestry: Other highly social primates—for example, baboons—have surprising abilities to form opinions about their companions that appear to require that they have quite subtle theories of (at least) the baboon mind.1 So the wisdom of the ages equips us with a nuanced theory whose reliability we can stack up against the deliverances of introspection. That this should give folk psychology a major advantage over mechanical atomism as an explanatory theory does not require either that introspection gives us omniscience regarding the workings of our own  See Cheyney and Seyfarth (2007).

1

188 

E. Fales

minds; nor that its judgments are infallible. What it does afford us—and this is surely an immeasurable advantage in providing clarity of understanding—is abundant exemplary cases in which we are able to dissect our reasoning processes and see how they bring us new beliefs and how they underwrite preferences and decisions to act. We come to know what the emotions “are like” and how they can motivate action. Similarly, we understand what it is to have desires and sensory inputs, even though we gain this knowledge only, in the first instance, through the experiences that constitute our own conscious lives. Still, it seems a long way from understanding the actions of other human beings (and some animals) in terms of imputed desires, emotions, and the like to explaining along such lines why a rock rolls down the hill. And indeed, we should not assume that the animist has an explanation for that sort of thing. But it will be worth exploring what sorts of resources an animist can draw upon, in addition to the kind of explanatory work that we usually employ folk psychology for. Here is one, fairly obvious maneuver: While it is awkward to suppose that rocks, rivers, or trees have souls, it is perhaps more promising to consider that natural objects such as these might be inhabited by souls or so associated with them that establishing a personal relationship with their souls would most naturally involve performing certain actions in proximity to the tree, river, etc. Parts of the natural world, then, come, in effect, to be appropriated as shrines. The idea can rather naturally be extended to artifacts—images of the gods, sacred objects such as the Australian churingas—and to particular fellow humans, who are regarded as possessed (chronically or during certain ritual occasions) by gods or demons. It is not, therefore, the churinga (say) as such that is a person, but rather that it is a material vehicle or container for an inhabiting spirit. But this is all a metaphorical way of speaking. Can a more rigorous account of such a relationship between the piece of wood or rock and the spirit be given—one that has some metaphysical plausibility? Indeed it can. A ready-to-hand analogy to consider is the ontology of works of art. Take the great bronze, The Thinker by Rodin. Is The Thinker simply a cleverly fashioned chunk of bronze—hence, a material object? One might think so, but this cannot be the correct story. For there is one work of art: The

8  Sensible Animism 

189

Thinker. But there are several exemplars of it, each with the status of “being” the sculpture.2 They are fashioned from different chunks of bronze (or marble); yet there exists but one work of art here.3 So the work of art cannot be identical to any of its exemplars; nor can it be identical to any chunk of material stuff. It appears, then, perhaps surprisingly, that the sculpture is not identical to any material thing–—though it “resides in” certain material things that are in some special way qualified to present the work to us. There is a special relation, however, that seems to provide an account of how The Thinker is related to each of its exemplars: Each of them is an embodiment of The Thinker. Embodiment and identity are not the same thing. Something can be multiply embodied, but nothing can be identical to more than one thing. Embodiment is an anti-symmetrical relation; identity is symmetrical. Much more needs to be said to put ontological flesh on these bones, but there is good evidence, I claim, that the “logic” of embodiment tracks well the way in which animists often speak about the spirits and their relations to material things.4 It will straightaway be objected that such sophisticated ontological maneuvers would not inform the speculations of animistic congregations. I would readily agree. They do not animate the theological thought, such as it is, of regular Christian congregants either. But in every culture, there are creative thinkers, who are not satisfied with simple rubrics or creedal formulas. They are the ones who are driven to think things through and the most likely to introduce new conceptual tools. If they were indigenous philosophers struck by dualist intuitions, they might, e.g., hit upon some conception of embodiment as articulating their efforts to solve the mind/body problem. But there is another—and I think more likely—way in which philosophically minded thinkers might be led to invoke embodiment, not with respect to minds or works of art but with respect to requirements of  At last count, there are over 50 copies of the work, some not in bronze but in marble, to the same scale as the first casting, and on display in various countries. But of course not all copies count as being “the work.” 3  Rather similarly, there are many copies of the novel Moby Dick by Melville—but only one such novel. 4  For much more detail, see Chap. 4 of Fales (2020). 2

190 

E. Fales

an adequate theoretical framework for understanding social structures. For present purposes, it will be useful to consider two kinds of social reality that exist in every society: Social roles of individuals and institutionalized corporate groups—tribes, clans, moieties, age groups, and so on. Suppose you belong to the emu clan. What sort of thing is that? One natural answer: The emu clan is just the sum of its membership, together with their emu-clan-relevant beliefs and those of their fellow tribespeople.5 But that can’t be right: The clan persists through the ages, but its membership steadily changes (as may also the relevant beliefs). Suppose we say: “Well, it’s the entire historical membership, together with their kinship-relations,” i.e., the emu family tree.6 That can’t be right either: What about the very first emus? Their family trees aren’t on the emu family tree. And so on. As difficulties with this line of thought pile up, it might occur to some emu that the clan is not to be identified with its members, but with something its members collectively possess, something that can endure through the ages, whose lineaments are prescribed by certain social rules and conventions.7 But if the clan is not some assemblage of individual persons, what sort of thing is it? It does seem very like a person in many ways: It can engage in deliberation and action, can be ruled by laws, can be created and destroyed, and so on. It is not a physical person, but its existence does seem to require the existence of physical persons, who constitute its corporate body. In short, a natural conceptual move is to allow for corporate persons. These “have” bodies, but they are collective bodies, with shifting membership; the corporation is, we can say, embodied in its membership. It is not a material thing at all, yet it has ultimate and sovereign power over the lives over members of

 An explanatory move that wears the colors of whole/part reductionism, the flagship strategy of modern science. 6  Not the persons on the tree, some of whom might not belong to the emu clan, but the relationships themselves. 7  With breathing room for certain acceptable kinds of modification. 5

8  Sensible Animism 

191

the group. This idea has an ancient pedigree: The Christian Church, we recall, is the Body of the Christ. 8 Thinking about kings and kingship leads us naturally to reflect upon the ontology of social roles generally. We can think of social structure as a set of interrelated social roles, defined by their functions and those relations. The roles are “occupied” by natural persons, in virtue of there being ascribed to them the social status that marks the authority and obligation to execute those functions. In short, we have natural persons who are designated official roles, and those officers occupy the offices out of which the structure is fashioned. Here, again, a physical thing—a natural person—embodies an immaterial personage: An officer. The natural person is mortal; the officer survives as long as the correlate office/social role does. That is to say, the officer is, at least potentially, not mortal, or anyway not subject to natural death. Indeed, the personage—the officer— can be transferred intact from one person to another and so passed down through the generations. In view of these structural features of social groups, I herewith propose the following hypothesis: (S) Much of the talk in the ethnographic literature about souls and soul-­ beliefs is, in fact, talk about what would be better described as personages, their nature and, especially, how their transfer between natural persons can be made orderly, given the vicissitudes of birth, death, competition for power, and so on.

In this way is born, from the natural necessity of thinking about and systematizing the ways in which social functioning can be stably maintained over the generations, the notion of reincarnation—literally,  Not the Body of Jesus, one should note. Jesus was a human person, embodied in a human body. The Christ is not a human person, but a personage, i.e., a social entity that is that of being the holder of an office (the office of King), as I shall forthwith explain. The Christ is (or was) embodied in the human person of Jesus, according to Church doctrine. This oversimplifies, to be sure, since there were many and fierce debates among the early Church leaders over the ontology of the divine. The idea that the king embodies the immortal corporate nation is much older than Christianity, however. Textual evidence can be found for it in Egyptian texts dating from the eighteenth dynasty (ca. 1500–1300 BCE): See Lanny Bell (1997), esp. pp. 137–144. It is evident that it was already highly developed by that time in the Ancient Near East. 8

192 

E. Fales

re-embodiment.9 Establishing the credentials of (S) is a large task; however, it is easy to think of examples that map easily onto the conception in practice. For example, among Australian Aborigine tribes, it is common to say that the “soul” of the deceased leaves that body and migrates to an animal, such as a fish, or to some natural object, such as a tree or pond, that it inhabits, perhaps for as long as a generation or more, until the time has come for the personage in question to become re-embodied in a new child, e.g., a grandchild of the original person.10 It may, then, be allowed, as a useful fiction, that certain animals or other features of nature serve as resort hotels, in which the souls of departed humans can be restored and rejuvenated in preparation for a new human embodiment. But even if that be granted, it will straightaway be evident that the account just given of souls can hardly be adequate to the ethnographic data. For human personages and their fictive resort spas cannot begin to account for many of the sorts of spirit-beings that cavort in the animist’s imagination. A multitude of spirits are invoked that are not placeholders for the way—stations that comprise human social structures. Some of them are demonic: They are, if anything, forces that are destructive of social order. Some, like totem animals and objects, play a positive role in social affairs, but not, apparently, as domiciles for human personages. So, at best, (S) appears to have rather limited scope as an explanation of animistic beliefs. I want now to sketch a partial rebuttal to this objection. The rebuttal requires a caveat. Given the range of cultures in which animistic beliefs can be found, and the concomitant variability of animistic ontologies, it would be foolhardy to presume that a single idea lies at the root of all animistic beliefs. (S) almost certainly cannot—and does not claim to— explain every sort of belief that might be classified as animistic. Granting this counsel of caution, however, it will nevertheless be useful to explore

 It bears further study, but one naturally wonders about the distinction, if any, between reincarnation and resurrection. One way they might be distinguished is this: Reincarnation involves simply the re-embodiment of a personage (which endures somehow during the period of transfer); resurrection refers to special cases in which also the office itself undergoes suspension or hiatus for a period of time and is then re-created, or perhaps replaced with a “new” version. 10  See Fales (2020: 230–234). 9

8  Sensible Animism 

193

how widely the interpretive strategy suggested by (S) might productively inform our understanding of such beliefs. Here I want to suggest just a couple of ways in which (S) can be extended to help explain problem cases. These ways trade on the fact that social roles and institutions, while they can naturally be conceptualized on the model of natural human persons, are themselves social constructs, creatures of convention.11 Could a dog become mayor of a town? The answer—evidently—is “yes,” since this has happened in the USA. Not only once, but quite a few times—not to mention a wolf, cats, and goats.12 While these may be political stunts, they illustrate the fact that, if there are no exclusionary laws and due process is followed, a non-human animal can legally assume a personage normally embodied by a human being. Such cases may be amusing, because cats and dogs cannot execute the normal functions of a mayor, but they can serve to remind us that a good many human beings cannot, because of physical or mental infirmity, fulfill the duties or exercise the rights of mere citizenship. We grant them citizenship nonetheless and appoint a guardian to act on their behalf, as parents or in loco parentis, as it were. Now, this legal strategy has been employed by a number of countries, including Western nations, to grant citizenship, not only to incapacitated human beings but to such natural features as forests or riverine habitats, thereby granting them legal rights and standing in their own right (and with an appointed guardian).13 A slight twist on this idea brings us close to one way in which animists appear to accord personhood—or even personage standing—to features of the environment. In our examples above, humans who are recognized to be non compos mentis are granted rights exercised through the actions of a human proxy. But surely, it is not unreasonable to grant certain animals or natural features legal personhood on the strength of various capacities that they do possess and exercise. Thus, just as humans form  This does not entail that they are somehow unreal, or fictions. To see this requires an analysis of performative acts that create new (social) realities, such as making a promise, conducting a wedding ceremony, or passing a new law. 12  For amusing political biographies, see https://www.insider.com/dog-mayors-of-america-2019-7 (accessed 3 June 2021). 13  For a classic legal brief defending the maneuver, see Stone (1974). 11

194 

E. Fales

partnerships of varying degrees of formality that form the basis of social existence, so human beings, individually and collectively, can recognize the interactions that occur between them and their non-human environment as forms of partnership that create bonds of mutual interdependence. If I kill a deer to provide my family with meat, I have deprived the deer “people” of one of their members. But what looks like a taking can be re-conceptualized as a gift from the deer—if through my harvest I incur a debt to the deer “people” that requires some form of repayment. Such practices are not mere indulgence of fanciful imagination for two reasons. First, they can have profound practical implications, by regulating the hunting of deer in ways that are ecologically sound. But, second, because the obligations incurred toward the deer (and vice versa) are real, if enshrined in formal social constructions. This idea can of course have a multitude of different applications. The sky gives us rain; we owe the sky thanks. Not because it is literally a person, but because we, recognizing the crucial role that weather plays in our existence, grant to the sky the status of a personage that can wreak woe or bestow weal, thereby heuristically adopting a relationship of reciprocity toward it. This is more of a stretch (or more poetic), but on the plane of practice, it can be seen as an extension of the social graces to the natural world generally, or at least to those aspects of it that matter to human welfare. It does not thereby violate the norms of logic or good sense. Implicit in this stance toward the world is the extension of a model of explanation—folk psychology in its culturally developed forms—to the surrounding world. And so, the animist elevates folk psychology to the throne as queen of the sciences. How, then, does this comport with Horton’s claim that folk religion is intellectually on deeply common ground with the physical sciences? Horton’s great insight is that not only do animistic religions share with the sciences the aim of uncovering powerful and deep explanations for the ways of the world but that they understand that power, depth, and simplicity can often be achieved by appeal to processes that are hidden from view. Of course, processes that are not hidden from view are, on the whole, easier to discover, so it comes as no surprise that ferreting out the hidden will expand explanatory horizons. But even more decisive is the fact that within the hidden lie two realms that are deeply implicated in achieving

8  Sensible Animism 

195

explanatory power and simplicity: The realm of the very small and the realm of private experience. I have suggested that the physical sciences capitalize on the first, while animism places its bets on the second. Besides both being hidden, how comparable are the processes that provide explanation in these two realms? Both “connect the dots” between temporally ordered events. But here the commonality ends. The conceptual source of causal explanations in the sciences is, as we noted, the experience of contact forces—however much that notion has been modified or sophisticated to accommodate the phenomena of physics. The conceptual source of explanations in folk psychology is, as we also noted, our inner awareness of what connects thought-events. At the heart of explanation in this domain stands that distinctive aspect of persons, their capacity for theoretical and practical reasoning. Now reasoning does not look very much like the operation of contact forces—beyond the feature of “connecting the dots” between thoughts. But isn’t that perhaps only because investigation has not penetrated deeply enough? Might not thinking be just a physical operation of brain-­ matter? Not on the face of it—and, arguably, not ultimately, either. Here, all too briefly, are a couple of reasons. First, the reasoning that connects premises to conclusions is not a matter of spatial relations such as contact or action at a distance. It is a function of logical connections between the propositional contents of the thoughts. And inference is a process that is thereby subject to normative judgments that locate it in a categorically different conceptual space. Reasons are good or bad; arguments are valid and sound, or not. And underlying this fact is an even more fundamental feature of consciousness: Intentionality. To have a thought with propositional content is to stand in an intentional relation to a proposition (something that is not material at all). There seems to be no physical analogue or compositional analysis of such relations, nor are causal relations norm-sensitive.14 So folk psychology bears the marks of a categorically different strategy of explanation than the part/whole strategy so pervasive in physics. Well, so what? Why might that be relevant here? One answer is that it sheds light on the dynamics of change in animistic thought that 14

 This is all highly compressed. For an expanded argument, see Fales (1984) and (1994).

196 

E. Fales

illuminates a difference between advances in “primitive” religious thought and modern science that Horton has not captured. The idea—and with it I will conclude this chapter—is that animistic thought understands personages, whether embodied in human individuals or non-human parts of nature, on the folk-psychological model. Just as human beings have desires, aims, beliefs, and the capacity to reason and to act, so, too, do embodied personages. A king, acting ex cathedra, speaks in the name of the King, the officer, so, too, anyone making decisions, giving reasons, or acting in an official capacity. The biographies of collective personages, such as clans and nations, are parsed in exactly the same terms; they are understood to be in psychological states connected in the ways such states are connected. One can say that this is all a fiction in the latter case—but even if so,15 there is nothing “primitive” or irrational in such fictional devices. Or if there is, then we are as guilty as the animists. But this implies that, if thinking about spirits is integrally interwoven with and incorporated into thinking about social arrangements, then such thought will inevitably constitute part and parcel of a society’s social/ political theorizing; and it will in large measure reflect the needs of social life. And this, I suggest, largely explains the contrast between traditionalistic and progressivistic conceptions of knowledge (and between consensual and competitive modes of theorizing). Social change is as a rule painful and risky for the community as a whole; sea changes in scientific theory (at least in the physical sciences) are often able to occur at much farther remove from effects upon social structures. Successful social change typically requires achieving consensus; that is much less the case with progress in modern science. That applies to stasis as well as change. Scientific thinking is not unconnected to social needs, of course. But the connection and motivations are deeply different. In the physical sciences, at least, the determinative factors are, other than a sheer drive to understand the material world, a practical need for technological advances and a reliance on existing technology to create the tools for experimental investigation.

 And I think in general actually not; see Fales (2020), 142 and Sec. E of Chap. 4.

15

8  Sensible Animism 

197

References Bell, L. in Byron E. Shafer, ed. (1997). The Ancient Temples of Egypt Chapter 4. Cornell University Press. Cheyney, D. L., & Seyfarth, R. M. (2007). Baboon metaphysics: The evolution of a social mind. University of Chicago Press. Fales, E. (1984). Davidson’s Compatibilism. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, XLV(December), 227–246. Fales, E. (1994). Divine freedom and the choice of a world. International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 35(April), 65–88. Fales, E. (2020). Reading sacred texts: Charity, structure, gospel. GCRR Press. Guthrie, S.  E. (1995). Faces in the clouds: A new theory of religion. Oxford University Press. Horton, R. (1993). Patterns of thought in Africa and the West. Cambridge University Press. Stone, C. D. (1974). Should trees have standing? Toward legal rights for natural objects. William Kaufmann.

9 Animism: Its Scope and Limits Graham Oppy

What should we be animists about? This chapter aims to answer that question. I begin by distinguishing between ontological and ideological formulations of animism. I suggest that plausible forms of animism will be merely ideological, and I distinguish between full-strength and less-­ than-­full-strength animism. Next, I consider the extent to which idealism, pantheism and panpsychism might be taken to support some sort of universal animism. I conclude that there is no plausible form of full-­ strength universal animism. After noting that animals are the easy case for animism, I turn to a discussion of a range of hard cases: flora, geological features, astronomical bodies, word tokens, artefacts and institutions. I will argue that we should not be full-strength animists about any of these things. Finally, I will consider whether the discussion that I have given is insensitive to the kinds of reasons that people have had for holding animistic beliefs about things other than animals. In this last part of the discussion, I draw a clear distinction between veneration of flora,

G. Oppy (*) Department of Philosophy, Monash University, Clayton, VIC, Australia e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Smith (ed.), Animism and Philosophy of Religion, Palgrave Frontiers in Philosophy of Religion, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94170-3_9

199

200 

G. Oppy

artefacts, etc., and the belief that flora, artefacts, etc., are full-strength animated.

1 Animism Some formulations of animism have an ontological bent. In subsequent discussion, I shall call these ontological formulations of animism. According to some ontological formulations of animism, there are spirits: non-physical beings such as demons, ghosts, fairies and angels. Opinion about the perceivability of spirits varies. Some animists take some spirits to be imperceptible; some animists take some spirits to be perceptible only to those to whom the spirits are willing to reveal themselves; and some animists take all spirits to be perceptible to all. According to other ontological formulations of animism, there are minds or souls: non-physical components of entities that also have physical components. Opinion varies about whether minds or souls have the capacity for independent existence. Some animists suppose that minds and souls can only exist as components of entities that also have physical components. Other animists suppose that minds and souls are capable of independent existence, i.e. existence in which they are not components of entities that also have physical components. In contrast to these ontological formulations of animism, some formulations of animism have an ideological bent. I shall call these ideological formulations of animism. According to some ideological formulations of animism, some—or perhaps all—things are spirited: these things manifest certain properties that characterise spirited things. Opinions about the properties that characterise spirited things vary. Some animists suppose that spirited things are capable of independent movement; others suppose that spirited things are alive, or capable of acting, or capable of experiencing and cognising. Some ideological formulations of animism take it that some—or perhaps all—things are sentient: these things manifest sentience. Roughly speaking, things that manifest sentience are things that experience: things that see and hear and feel and smell and taste and so on. In a similar vein, some ideological formulations of animism take it that some—or perhaps

9  Animism: Its Scope and Limits 

201

all—things are minded: these things manifest mindedness. Roughly speaking, things that manifest mindedness are things that cognise: things that perceive and believe and so forth. At some points in the coming discussion, I shall make use of a distinction between ‘full-strength’ animism and ‘less-than-full-strength’ animism. According to full-strength animism, some—or perhaps all—things are spirited, sentient and minded: they are alive, they move, they act, they experience, they cognise, they perceive, they believe and so forth. According to less than full-strength animism, some—or perhaps all— things exhibit some, but not all, of these properties. I shall, however, elide the distinction between full-strength animism and less-than-full-strength animism where it seems harmless to do so. If we suppose that there are minds or souls, of if we suppose that there are things that are spirited or sentient or minded, the most important question to ask is about the distribution of these things. To simplify this part of our discussion, we shall frame this question in the following way: which things are animated? There are a number of different dimensions to this question. A first sub-question is whether all things are animated. Any answer to this question depends upon what things we suppose there are. If we are idealists who suppose that there are none but minds, then we shall suppose that everything has some degree of animation. If we are monists who suppose that there is just one minded thing, then we shall suppose that everything has some degree of animation. However, if, for example, we suppose that there are various physical things, then it may be that there is a genuine question for us about which physical things have at least some degree of animation. A second sub-question, for those for whom it is a genuine question which things are animated, is how and where to draw the line between the things that are animated and the things that are not animated. As we noted above, there are various options that result from selection of different subsets of the following: being alive, being capable of independent movement, being capable of action, being capable of experiencing, being capable of cognising and so on. In order to investigate these options, we need accounts of what it is to be alive, to be capable of independent

202 

G. Oppy

movement, to be capable of action, to be capable of experience, to be capable of cognition and so forth. A third sub-question, for those for whom it is a genuine question which things are animated, is mereological, i.e. concerned with relationships between parts and wholes. Should we think that it must be that the parts of something that is animated are themselves animated? (More carefully: should we think that it must be that the parts of something that bears certain markers of animation are themselves bearers of those same markers of animation?) Or should we think that something that is animated can be composed of parts that are not themselves animated? These questions interact in interesting ways with the answers that we give to the second question. It may seem straightforward that a living thing can have non-living parts. But there are philosophers prepared to contest the claim that a thing that is capable of experience can have parts that are not capable of experience (or, perhaps, proto-experience). Given what I have said so far, it follows that most of us have some kind of commitment to ideological animism: most of us have some kind of commitment to the claim that some things are sentient and/or minded and/or spirited. While there is some room for debate about exactly where the relevant cutoffs lie, it is plausible that there are cutoffs above which it is uncontroversial that certain kinds of things are sentient and/or or minded and/or spirited. In particular, most of us think that it is uncontroversial that sufficiently complex organisms—including ourselves—are sentient, and minded and spirited. There are organisms—including ourselves—that move, and act, and experience, and cognise. Does this mean that there is something wrong with what I have said to this point? Not really. The ideological animism to which almost all of us subscribe is completely unremarkable. What is interesting—and what merits our attention—are cases of ideological animism where it is significantly disputed that the things that are taken to be animated move themselves, or act, or experience, or cognise. Consider, for example, animism about artefacts, or flora, or institutions, or geological features, or astronomical objects, or word tokens. In each of these cases, there is widespread resistance to the suggestion that these kinds of things move themselves, or act, or experience, or cognise (or, in most cases, live).

9  Animism: Its Scope and Limits 

203

2 Animists Animists are those who stand in an appropriate kind of positive relation to animism. Some animists believe animism. Some animists accept animism. Some animists act as if animism is true. Some ontological animists believe, or accept, or act as if, there are spirits; some ontological animists believe, or accept, or act as if, there are minds or souls. Some ontological animists believe, or accept, or act as if, there are spirits and minds and souls. Likewise, some ideological animists believe, or accept, or act as if, there are spirited things; some ideological animists believe, or accept, or act as if, there are minded things. Some ideological animists believe, or accept, or act as if, there are sentient things. Some ideological animists believe, or accept, or act as if, there are spirited things and minded things and sentient things. I noted earlier that most of us have some kind of commitment to ideological animism. I think that more or less all of us believe that some things are sentient: more or less all of us believe that some sufficiently complex organisms—including ourselves—are sentient. Eliminativists about belief deny that we do have such beliefs; however, even eliminativists about belief plausibly accept, and act as if, sufficiently complex organisms are sentient. Moreover, while those who are eliminativists about belief may have some qualms about some alleged dimensions of mindedness and spiritedness, eliminativists about belief plausibly accept, and act as if, sufficiently complex organism are alive, capable of independent movement, capable of acting, capable of experiencing, capable of perceiving, capable of cognising and so forth. In order to differ significantly from the rest of us, ideological animists must believe, or accept, or act as if, for example, artefacts, flora, institutions, geological features, astronomical objects or word tokens move independently, act, experience, perceive, cognise or the like. In everyday use, the term ‘animist’ is typically restricted to those who extend mindedness to cases in which there is very extensive cross-cultural disagreement. The extent of commitment to ontological animism is more controversial. Many of us believe, accept or act as if there are minds or souls, that is, non-physical parts or components of entities that also have physical

204 

G. Oppy

parts or components. Some of us believe, or accept, or act as if, over the course of their existence, minds or souls can be non-physical components of distinct, non-overlapping entities that also have physical components. Some of us believe, or accept, or act as if, minds or souls are capable of independent existence, that is, capable of existing while not being components of entities that also have physical components. In particular, those of us who believe, or accept, or act as if there is reincarnation or an afterlife are typically committed to believing, or accepting, or acting as if we have minds or souls that can be transferred between physical bodies or that can exist independently of physical bodies. Among those who believe, or accept, or act as if there are minds or souls, there is disagreement about which kinds of things have minds or souls. Some believe, or accept, or act as if, on the surface of the earth, the only things that have minds or souls are human beings. Some believe, or accept, or act as if, on the surface of the earth, the only things that have minds or souls are sufficiently complex organisms—perhaps, say, all organisms at least as complex as roundworms. Some believe, or accept, or act as if, on the surface of the earth, there are many other things that have minds or souls: artefacts, flora, institutions, geological features and so forth. Some believe, or accept, or act as if, perhaps elsewhere in the universe, there are other things that have minds or souls: astronomical bodies of various kinds, aliens, artificial intelligences and so on. Some believe, or accept, or act as if, even on the surface of the earth, there are free-floating, unembodied minds or souls: demons, ghosts, fairies, angels and the like. A common problem for all ontological animists is how to account for interaction between physical bodies and non-physical minds or souls. It is not obvious that this problem takes on a different complexion depending upon the range of things that one takes to have minds or souls. If a non-physical mind or soul can ‘steer’ a physical, human body, what reason is there to suppose that a non-physical mind or soul cannot project a voice from a rock or pump out mathematical equations from the heart of a quasar? It is true that Descartes supposed that, in human beings, the locus of interaction is a small endocrine gland centrally located in the brain of most vertebrates. But he offered no good reason—and I think that there is no good reason—to prefer that hypothesis to the hypothesis that the locus of interaction is the entire brain, or to the hypothesis that

9  Animism: Its Scope and Limits 

205

the locus of interaction is the entire organism, or to the hypothesis that the locus of interaction is the extended organism, including the various environmental aids to its moving, perceiving, remembering, cognising and so forth. It will not do to claim that our knowledge of correlations between states of minds or souls and states of the pineal gland—or the brain, or the organism, or the extended organism—supports a particular choice: for, in fact, even if we have minds or souls, we have no knowledge at all concerning relevant correlations between particular states of minds or souls and particular states or sub-states of pineal glands, or brains, or organisms, or extended organisms. It is true, for example, that human speech has significant roles for the lungs, larynx, tongue and so forth and that rocks have none of those things. But if minds or souls can set lungs, larynges and tongues in motion, it is hard to see any in principle difficulty to their directly setting sound waves in motion. Given ontological animism, there is no serious impediment to the supposition that suitably endowed rocks—that is, rocks to which a non-physical mind or soul is ‘attached’—can talk. A common problem for merely ideological animists whose ideological animism extends to non-standard cases—artefacts, flora, institutions, geological features, astronomical bodies, word tokens and so forth—is how to account for the animation of the non-standard cases in question. If one thinks, for example, that a particular rock is animated, what is it about that particular rock that explains its animation? While ontological animists have a ready answer to that question, merely ideological animists cannot avail themselves of the ontological animists’ answer. Part of the difficulty here for merely ideological animists is that there is a common-­ sense distinction between animals and rocks that should be preserved. Even if our merely ideological animist supposes that all rocks are animated, it is not plausible that the same account can be given of the animation of animals and the animation of rocks. While we have well-developed accounts of the animation of animals, it is not clear what there could be for merely ideological animists to say on behalf of the animation of rocks.

206 

G. Oppy

3 Universal Animation There are at least three different kinds of views that might be taken to support the claim that everything is animated. I shall consider, in turn, (1) Idealism, (2) Pantheism and (3) Panpsychism. Idealism: For the purposes of this discussion, I shall take idealism to be the view that, at the most fundamental level, there is nothing but mind(s). Idealists divide on the question whether, at the most fundamental level, there is just one mind or there are many minds. But this division among idealists has no significance for our discussion. According to idealists, at the most fundamental level, there is experience and cognition, but not life, movement, action and sentience. So, according to our idealists, at the most fundamental level, we find some but not all of the characteristics that animists attribute to animated things. If we have our eye only on the most fundamental level, we should say that idealists are less than full strength animists. Typically, idealism is not merely a theory about what is fundamental; typically, idealists try to tell a story that, in some sense, gives us back the familiar world in which we live. While there are difficulties involved in trying to make this more precise, there is some sense in which idealists allow that, at some non-fundamental level, our universe exists. While it is not fundamentally true that there are fauna, flora, geological features, astronomical bodies, artefacts, institutions, word tokens and so forth, it is nonetheless non-fundamentally true that there are all of these things. But, of course, at the level at which it is non-fundamentally true that there are all of these things, idealists need not be committed to animism about all—or even any—of these things. (For a more careful discussion of idealism, see, e.g. Goldschmidt and Pearce (2017), Hofweber (2019), Smithson (2021) and Rickless (2013). For one example of the distinction between fundamental and non-fundamental levels, see Thakchoe (2016).) Pantheism: Very roughly, pantheism is the claim that everything is divine. As a first step to making this more precise, we distinguish between collective and distributive readings of ‘everything’. On the collective reading, pantheism is the claim that the sum of all beings—the being of

9  Animism: Its Scope and Limits 

207

which all other beings are parts—is divine; on the distributive reading, pantheism is the claim that each thing is divine. In order to determine the implications of pantheism for animism, we need an account of what it is to be divine. If to be divine, one must have the animating properties—life, movement, action, sentience, experience, cognition and so forth—then divinity entails animation, else, not. There is some plausibility to the thought that theists divide on this question: some theists do suppose that divinity entails animation, while other theists do not. On the one hand, at least some classical polytheists suppose that the gods have all of the animating properties; on the other hand, some classical monotheists (e.g. Thomists) suppose that God has none of the animating properties. On the collective reading, there is nothing that commits pantheists to animism about anything other than the being of which all other things are parts, and, it seems, there could be division of opinion concerning the animation of the being of which all other things are parts. It seems clear, for example, that the being of which all other things are parts is not capable of movement or action; it is less clear what to say about whether it is alive, or capable of experience or cognition. On the distributive reading, whether pantheists are committed to universal animism depends entirely on whether they suppose that divinity entails animation. Some of the considerations that arise in connection with the being of which all other things are parts will also arise in the case of sufficiently large parts of the being of which all other things are parts: these, too, will not be capable of movement or action but might be deemed alive or capable of experience or cognition. It seems clear to me that pantheism is not a species of full-strength animism. I take it that some pantheists are less-than-full-strength animists and that some pantheists are not even less-than-full-strength animists. It is obvious why this is the case for collective pantheism, but it also seems an eminently plausible position in the case of distributive pantheism. (For a more careful discussion of pantheism, see, e.g. Byerly (2019), Forrest (2016), Levine (1994), Mander (2017) and Oppy (1997).) Panpsychism: Like animism, panpsychism comes in both ontological and ideological forms. According to ontological panpsychism, minds are

208 

G. Oppy

ubiquitous: each thing has a unique, non-physical mind among its parts; and, according to ideological panpsychism, mindedness is ubiquitous: each thing has capacities for sentience, experience and cognition. The main question to be asked is much the same for ontological panpsychism and ideological panpsychism. On either view, while all things have capacities for sentience, experience and cognition, there are many things that are not alive, and that do not have capacities for movement and action. Consider rocks. Plausibly, according to panpsychism, rocks have capacities for sentience, experience and cognition, but rocks are not alive, and do not have capacities for movement and action. The upshot here, I think, is that panpsychists are only less-than-full-strength animists. (For a more careful discussion of panpsychism, see, e.g.: Goff et al. (2017), Seager (2019), Skrbina (2003, 2017) and Strawson (2009).)

4 Hard Cases for Animation I suggested earlier that there is a clear range of cases in which we are all ideological animists: we are (almost) all full-strength ideological animists about sufficiently complex biological organisms. It seems to me that roundworms tick most of the boxes: they are alive, they move and act independently, they are sentient and they have rudimentary cognition. Perhaps it is doubtful whether they have experience; perhaps it is doubtful whether there is something that it is like to be a roundworm. Perhaps we should be less-than-full-strength ideological animists about roundworms. However, as we move to less complex organisms, we should become increasingly doubtful whether we are in the presence of even less-than-full-strength animation. What should we say about multicellular organisms that lack central nervous systems, amoeba, bacteria, and viruses? We may be happy to accept that all of these—except perhaps for the viruses—are alive; and we may be happy to allow that most of these are capable of independent motion. But we may well be reluctant to allow that any of these are sentient, or capable of action, experience and cognition—and we will surely become increasingly uncertain about these matters as we move to creatures of diminishing complexity.

9  Animism: Its Scope and Limits 

209

It is not surprising that animals are the easiest case for ideological animism. There is nothing else in which so many of the markers for animation are uncontroversially present. The purpose of the present section is to discuss some of the other cases that have been proposed as candidates for ideological animism. In each case, we are interested in considering which—if any—of the markers of animation are uncontroversially present. Flora: As with animals, plants vary significantly in their complexity. While there is no question that complex plants are alive, that determination becomes more complicated as we move to plant-like organisms with diminishing complexity, e.g. fungi, yeasts, moulds, plankton, etc. For our purposes, it will do no harm for us to suppose that all plants are alive. This means that we should be at least less-than-full-strength animists about plants. The obvious question to ask now is whether plants exhibit any of the other markers of animation: movement, action, sentience, experience and cognition. There is no shortage of recent authors prepared to assert that they do: see, for example, Calvo (2016), Chamovitz (2012), Gagliano (2018), Maher (2017), Marder (2013), Tompkins and Bird (2018) and Wohlleben (2016). Nonetheless, it seems highly doubtful that plants are sentient or that they have capacities for movement, action, experience or cognition. In particular, given the structural, organisational and functional complexity of animal brains upon which the capacity of animals for movement, action, sentience, experience and cognition depend, and given the absence of any comparable structural, organisational and functional complexity in plants, we have very strong reason for thinking that plants do not have capacities for movement, action, sentience, experience and cognition. (See Taiz et al. (2019) for an elaboration of an argument along these lines.) If sentience, experience, cognition and action can all be had without the structural, organisational and functional complexity of animal brains, then it is mysterious why our evolutionary history endowed animals with the kind of structural, organisational and functional complexity that we find them to have. I anticipate that some may think that the dismissive line that I have taken here on the question of the full strength—or even stronger—animation of plants entails that I am obliged to also take a dismissive

210 

G. Oppy

attitude towards, for example, practices of tree veneration. That is not so. On my reading in the literature on tree and plant veneration—e.g. Dafni (2006) and Fowler-Smith (2009)—it is a mistake to suppose that those who practice tree veneration must be committed to the claim that trees are strongly animated. On the contrary: the evidence that I have seen suggests that where trees are worshipped, they are worshipped for what is taken to be revealed through them, what they are themselves taken to signify, what powers they are taken to express and, especially, for what is taken to live in them. None of this requires the assumption that trees are, themselves, strongly animated. Moreover, nothing in what I have said is inconsistent with the further claim that practices of tree veneration provide significant benefits to individuals and communities that practice it. (For more on this kind of theme, see Seward (1937).) Geological Features: There are diverse kinds of geological features that are sometimes said to be to some degree animated: mountains, volcanoes, rock formations, caves and bodies of water such as oceans, rivers, lakes, geysers, springs and wells. While there is movement associated with many of these things—in particular, volcanoes and the different kinds of bodies of water—there is not much reason to suppose that any of them are alive, and there is even less reason to attribute sentience, experience, cognition and action to them. In this case—and in the other cases still to be discussed—there has been no recent surge of authors arguing that we should suppose that these things are alive, sentient, capable of spontaneous movement and action and endowed with capacities for experience and cognition, and hence no kickback from scientific experts in the study of these kinds of geological features. That mountains, volcanoes, rock formations, caves and bodies of water such as oceans, rivers, lakes, geysers, springs and wells have long been objects of religious veneration is not in dispute. Details can be found in, for example, the following sources: for mountains, Reinhard (1985); for volcanoes, Vitaliano (1973); for rock formations, Valdiya (2016); for oceans, Andaya (2016); for rivers, Bradley (2012); and for wells, Varner (2009). However, in almost all cases, the veneration of these geological features is similar to the veneration of trees: these geological features can be venerated for what is taken to be revealed through them, what they are taken to signify, what power they are to express and what is taken to live

9  Animism: Its Scope and Limits 

211

in them or to rule over them. We do not need to suppose that the geological features are themselves animated in order to suppose that they are worthy objects of veneration. As in the case of trees—and forests—it is plausible that veneration of geological features can provide significant benefits to individuals and communities that practice it. It is worth noting, for example, that some communities benefit from frequent volcanic activity in the areas in which they live: the enrichment of soil by volcanic ash is something that can be welcomed by isolated farming communities. (For more on this kind of theme, see Worton (2008). It is also worth thinking here about recent debates about ‘environmental personhood’.) Astronomical Bodies: There are diverse kinds of astronomical bodies that might be taken to be animated, including meteorites, comets, the moon, the sun, the planets, individual stars, stellar constellations and the Milky Way. Human beings have certainly worshipped sun gods, moon gods and planet gods, and they have often treated meteorites as objects of special significance for gods. Moreover, mostly in more distant times, human beings have worshipped individual star gods, stellar constellation gods and Milky Way gods. At least sometimes, this worship may have gone along with the belief that these astronomical bodies are animated: they are alive, they are capable of independent action and movement and they are subjects of sentience, experience and cognition. However—as in our previous cases—we do not need to suppose that astronomical bodies are animated in order to suppose that they are worthy objects of veneration. We are free to suppose that astronomical bodies can be venerated for what is taken to be revealed through them, what they are taken to signify, what power they are supposed to express and what is taken to be related to them or to rule over them. (For further discussion of cases, see, e.g.: on meteorites, Farrington (1900); on the sun, Olcott (1914); on the moon, Garfinkle (2020); on the planets, Kotyk (2017); on stars, Faulkner (1966); on constellations, Aveni (1999); and on the Milky Way, Waller (2017).) I anticipate that some will object that this discussion of astronomical bodies fudges the most important question: were there people who literally worshipped meteorites, comets, the moon, the sun, the planets, individual stars, stellar constellations and the Milky Way? I think that this question does not admit of a definitive answer. First year philosophy

212 

G. Oppy

students struggle to master the concept of numerical identity; anecdotal evidence suggests that some never do. Relevant discussions of astronomical gods—both in ancient texts and in modern commentaries—are not written with the kind of philosophical precision that permits a straightforward determination of exactly what was being worshipped in veneration focussed on meteorites, comets, the moon, the sun, the planets, individual stars, stellar constellations, and the Milky Way. We can say, speaking loosely, that people worshipped these things; but that leaves it open, speaking strictly, whether this veneration concerned what is revealed through these things, what these things are taken to signify, what powers these things are taken to express and what is taken to be related to these things or to rule over them. In the absence of opportunity to press people further on these matters, we should not hastily assume that their pronouncements on these matters meet contemporary standards for strict philosophical speech. Word Tokens: It has long been taken for granted, at least by philosophers and linguists, that words are arbitrary signs. However, in the Cratylus, Plato has Socrates take seriously the view that words are intrinsically related to the things to which they give expression. More widely, there are various traditions in which there are true words: words that have some very intimate relation to that which they name, or denote, or express. In particular, there are traditions in which gods and people have true names and are vulnerable to anyone who has knowledge of their true names. It is sometimes maintained that, according to these traditions, names are animated things. Similar things are sometimes said about traditions concerning religious invocations, magical incantations and mystical mantras. It is clearly not a straightforward task to explain how there could be true words. Nonetheless, it seems that there is little to justify the literal claim that, if there were true words, they would be animated. It does not seem right to suppose that tokens of true words would be alive, capable of independent movement, able to act, sentient or subjects of experience or cognition. While there may be frequent conjunction of belief in true words with various kinds of animistic beliefs—as, for example, in contemporary Wicca (for which, see, e.g. White (2015))—that is simply not

9  Animism: Its Scope and Limits 

213

a good reason for claiming that belief in true words is itself a species of animistic belief. Artefacts: Sautchuk (2019) discusses the decision of a group of Amazonian lake fishermen to ban the use of nets to catch pirarucu (fish). The fishermen’s reasons for the decision can be briefly summarised as follows: (1) nets fish by themselves; (2) use of nets is cowardice; and (3) nets scare away pirarucu. The first reason might be taken to suggest that animistic belief plays a role in the fishermen’s decision: they suppose that nets are animated. But, as Sautchuk makes clear, that is not the best construal of the first reason. Rather, what matters to the fishermen is that the use of nets renders fishermen passive in comparison with those who use a harpoon: once the net is fixed at the bottom of the lake, it remains static, merely waiting for the pirarucu to come. This is, at least roughly, what the fishermen mean when they say that nets fish by themselves. The claim that some artefacts are full-strength animated—alive, capable of independent movement and action, sentient and subjects of experience and cognition—is hard to accept at face value. But—as my discussion of the Amazonian lake fishermen is meant to suggest—we do not need to accept that claim at face value in order to make sense of ways in which we treat artefacts that might be taken to support the claim that we think that some artefacts are less-than-full-strength animated. Some artefacts are particularly successful in the hands of some users: cricketers have favourite bats, hunters have favourite spears and so on. Some artefacts have important historical associations for some users: the Shroud of Turin has a special place in the affections of many Christians, the Black Stone has a special place in the affections of many Muslims and so forth. Some artefacts have been blessed by those whom we take to have authority to issue such blessings. We do not need to suppose that people take special artefacts to be full-strength animated in order to explain why they take those artefacts to be special. Institutions: There are two broadly different kinds of social groups: organised groups—such as firms and corporations, institutions, nations and universities—and feature groups—such as races, genders and redheads. While there seems to be little reason to attribute we-attitudes and collective intentionality to feature groups, there is more reason to take seriously the idea that organised groups are, themselves, animated

214 

G. Oppy

entities. In particular, there is some plausibility to the thought that some organised groups are capable of action and cognition: we are typically happy to say that organised groups deliberate, act on the outcomes of their deliberations and are to be held to account for the consequences of their actions. However, it is less clear that we are prepared to allow that organised groups are alive, capable of independent movement, sentient and subjects of experience. If we are prepared to say that organised groups deliberate, etc., then it seems that we can say that organised groups are less-than-full-strength animated. Of course, it is consistent with this claim that we insist that the only things that are capable of action and cognition are the individuals who make up the organised groups in question. (For more on the metaphysics of social groups, see Epstein (2017).) Reduction of the capacities of groups to the capacities of members of those groups opens room for a ‘near-universal’ animism, according to which most things—including animals, plants, rocks, rivers, weather systems, artefacts and true words—are animated, but organised groups are not. It is perhaps unsurprising that this apparent possibility seems not to have been recognised in discussions of animism beyond the bounds of philosophy. The point has interesting connections to the mereological question for animists that was mentioned earlier. If we think that it cannot be that something that is animated in a given respect is a proper part of something else that is animated in that same respect, then we may take ourselves to have independent principled reason to deny that organised groups are animated. Doubtless, there are other issues to be faced: for example, if we take this mereological line, then we might be committed to denying that certain kinds of parasites are parts of their hosts. Consider the bacteria in your gut. If you think that bacteria are alive, and if you accept the mereological claim, then you will be committed to denying that the bacteria in your gut are part of you. Somewhere between 1% and 3% of your body mass is constituted from microorganisms. If they are not part of you, then it seems wrong to suppose that, for example, they contribute to your weight! (Of course, it is worth noting that the principle that living things cannot be parts of other living things is independently controversial.)

9  Animism: Its Scope and Limits 

215

Peterson, in his remarks about the Warlpiri attitudes towards the desert landscapes in which they live, provides a nice illustration of the general position that I have been taking in the forgoing discussion: Writing of the Warlpiri view of the desert landscape as sentient easily leads to confusion between their perception of the landscape as being occupied by the spirits of human ancestors and other human-like spirit beings, and the understanding that they hold animistic beliefs about plants, animals and inanimate objects. It fails to reflect the complexity of their highly intellectual and richly metaphorical ontology, replacing it with an overly literal ‘relational’ ontology. (2011: 177)

I do not say that there have never been people who have held animistic beliefs about rocks, rivers, weather systems, artefacts and so forth. The exchange between Hallowell and an Ojibwa Elder—reported in Hallowell (1960)—might be taken to show that that view would be false. When Hallowell asked the Elder, ‘Are all the stones we see around here alive?’ The Elder replied, ‘No. But some of them are.’ Even this kind of case is not completely straightforward. More importantly, no matter what we decide about the proper interpretation of this kind of episode, we should not think that it does anything to bolster the case for ‘new animism’.

5 Motivations for ‘New’ Animism The line that I have taken in connection with animism might be thought to set me at odds with recent developments in various parts of academia. I shall now discuss various kinds of pragmatic reasons that people might have for trying to defend or promote ideological animism, for cases other than animals, in connection with ecology, religion, politics and philosophy. Ecology: Perhaps the single most important driver of what has come to be called the ‘new animism’ lies in a large nest of contemporary ecological and environmental concerns. Some are specific concerns about animals, for example, factory farming, vivisection, consumption of animal products, domestication of animals and extinction of species. Some are

216 

G. Oppy

specific concerns about particular kinds of environmental degradation, for example, air pollution, water pollution, salinization, rising water tables, contamination of aquifers, contaminated landfill and soil erosion. Some are specific concerns about concrete global problems, for example, climate change, rising sea levels, loss of biodiversity and human overpopulation. Some are specific concerns about more abstract global problems, for example, sustainability, renewability, consumption and conquest. Could it be that our best—or perhaps our only—hope for dealing with this nest of concerns is to adopt some kind of animism (or perhaps some kind of vitalism or panpsychism)? (For animism, see, e.g. Bird-­ David (1999), Capper (2016), Conty (2019), and Harvey (2005); for vitalism, see, e.g. Bennett (2010); and, for panpsychism, see, e.g. Mathews (2003).) There are at least two important drivers for answering affirmatively. On the one hand, there is the thought that we will only come to a proper appreciation of our dependence and relationality if we adopt some kind of animism. And, on the other hand, there is the thought that we will only come to a proper valuing of animals, environments and our planet if we adopt some kind of animism. It is not clear that either of these thoughts can be sustained. At least prima facie, there is a tension between some of the specific concerns that I have just mentioned and the promotion of animism. Take veganism as an example. Veganism looks much harder to defend if we suppose that plants are animated. If plants are sentient subjects of cognition and experience, then why should we be any more sanguine about farming plants, conducting scientific experiments on living plants, consuming plant products, domesticating plants and the extinction of plant species than we are about the farming of animals, conducting scientific experiments on living animals, consuming animal products and the extinction of animal species? If we think that veganism is a proper expression of our valuing of animals, environments and the planet, then it seems that we ought to be moved to restrict animism to animals, or, at any rate, not to extend animism to plants. (Of course, you might think, instead, that we have an argument here for fruitarian or Jain diets, in which only ‘that which falls’ is fit for human consumption.)

9  Animism: Its Scope and Limits 

217

Worries about environmental degradation also seem harder to defend if we suppose that things like lakes, rivers, oceans and the atmosphere are animated. Consider air pollution. It is not at all clear why we should suppose that, if the atmosphere is animated, it has any concerns about its level of CO2 concentration. Levels of greenhouse particle concentration in the atmosphere have been much higher in past times; we have no reason at all to suppose that the atmosphere preferred times at which levels of greenhouse particle concentration were lower than those times when levels of greenhouse particle concentration were higher. Similar points apply to soil erosion, salinization, depletion of aquifers, rising sea levels and so forth. The most that animism is going to give us is that animals and plants have concerns about these kinds of things. But, by broader animist lights, that looks like mere partiality on the side of animals and plants. Global worries about rising sea levels, loss of biodiversity and so forth seem no easier to explain and defend if we adopt something like the Gaia hypothesis—the hypothesis that the earth is animated—than if we do not adopt that hypothesis. Is there any reason, short of human parochialism, why we should suppose that the earth prefers eras in which there are living things on or near its surface to eras in which there are no living things on or near its surface? Again, the most that animism is going to give us is that animals and plants have concerns about these kinds of things. But it seems like an act of gratuitous projection to suppose that the earth is going to share those concerns. And even apart from that, would you want a bunch of critters crawling all over you? These anxieties about the capacity of animism to underwrite appropriate concerns for animals, plants and the environment are not the most urgent worries about the new animism. The most important concern is that what we collectively lack is manifestly not something that mere alternative metaphysical and ontological commitments can supply. There is ample research that shows, for example, that human psychopaths—rapists and serial killers—do not mistakenly suppose that their victims are not loci of sentience, experience and cognition. Rather, the problem is that psychopaths—rapists and serial killers—simply do not care about other human beings. The deficits of psychopaths—rapists and serial killers—are primarily affective, hence not modifiable by mere inculcation of

218 

G. Oppy

alternative metaphysical and ontological commitments. Similar considerations apply to the attitudes that most people have towards animals, plants and the environment: most people simply do not care—or have very selective cares—about animals, plants and the environment. It is no secret that, collectively, we are responsible for cruel treatment of farm animals, destruction of ecosystems, environmental degradation, precipitous climate change, loss of biodiversity, human overpopulation and so forth. Almost all of us know that our collective behaviour will have seriously adverse consequences, not merely for future generations of human beings but for future generations of almost all species of plants and animals. Moreover, almost all of us know what we can do to mitigate or eliminate our contributions to these adverse consequences: we can go vegan (or fruitarian), we can live locally, we can look out for the animals and plants that live where we live, we can advocate for the establishment of large no-go zones for human beings on all continents and so on. If we do not do these things, it is not because we are not animists; rather, if we do not do these things, it is because we—individually and collectively— lack the will to do so. We should care about—we should care for—animals, plants forests, oceans, rivers, mountains and so forth, not because these things are all loci of sentience, experience and cognition but because these things are all valuable in themselves. We should reject the new animists and their reductive view that things must be loci of sentience, experience and cognition in order to matter. Religion: Recent developments in religious studies are a second important driver of the new animism. Alongside an explosion of interest in new religious movements—for which, see, for example, Lewis (2004, 2016)— the last few decades have seen an increase in the academic promotion of religions that incorporate animistic beliefs: for Wicca, see, for example, White (2015) and Doyle (2016); for paganism, see, for example, Clifton and Harvey (2004), Strmiska (2005) and Davies (2011); for Western Buddhism, see, for example, Capper (2016), Kapleau (2009), Kaza (2008) and Snyder (2014); and even Christianity—see, for example, Wallace (2019). Often, what lies at the heart of this enthusiasm for animistic religions is the thought that without some kind of spiritual connection to animals, plants, forests, oceans, rivers, mountains and so forth, we will not—and perhaps even cannot—be motivated to care about them

9  Animism: Its Scope and Limits 

219

or to care for them. From this perspective, it is not merely that we need animistic beliefs; we also need religious and spiritual formation to ensure that we will take appropriate action on those animistic beliefs. But this way of looking at things seems to me mistaken. The fit between animism and Wicca, paganism and Western Buddhism no more redounds to the credit of animism than the fit between laissez faire economics and prosperity theology redounds to the credit of laissez faire economics. (For more on prosperity theology, see, e.g. Bowler (2013).) As I noted above, what is really needed is motivation: we need people to care about, and to care for, animals, plants, forests, oceans, rivers, mountains and so on. But it seems to me to be counsel of despair to suppose that the best way—or perhaps even the only way—to get people to care about, and to care for, animals, plants, forest, oceans, rivers, mountains and so forth is to get them to adopt spiritual and religious practices based on the belief that all of these things are animated. Since there is some risk that I may be misunderstood, I would like to emphasise that it is not my intention to disparage Wicca, paganism or Western Buddhism. First, there is nothing in what I have said here that entails, or even suggests, that Wicca, paganism and Western Buddhism are inferior to other religions and spiritualities. Second, there is nothing in what I have said here that entails, or even suggests, that those who practice Wicca, paganism or Western Buddhism should be discouraged from those practices. There is no perfect practice; there are costs to everything that we choose to do. Insofar as those who practice Wicca, paganism and Western Buddhism do care about, and do care for, animals, plants, forests, oceans, rivers, mountains and so on, they are, by my lights, on the side of the angels. I think that they are mistaken in supposing that plants, forests, oceans, rivers, mountains and so forth are animated, but I see no reason why this cannot just be something upon which we respectfully agree to disagree. Politics: A third important driver of the new animism is a broader politics, not so narrowly concerned with the ecological and religious matters that we have already canvassed (see also Kathryn Rountree, this volume). I shall briefly address two of these kinds of concerns. The first political matter dates from the foundational European anthropological discussions of indigenous cultures (as, e.g. in Tylor (1871)).

220 

G. Oppy

Some of these discussions idealised ‘noble savages’ who had been spared the corrupting influence of European civilisation; most of the discussions disparaged ‘savage brutes’ who lacked the benefits of enlightened European ways of life. Either way, these discussions were viciously ethnocentric and hopelessly inaccurate. Nonetheless, some of those ideas became deeply rooted. One such idea is that ‘primitive thought’ is thoroughly animistic—‘primitive thought’ supposes that plants, forests, oceans, rivers, mountains, rocks, planets and so forth are animated—and productive of a greater capacity to care about, and to care for, plants, forests, oceans, rivers and so on. This thought could be met in various ways. One way to meet it is to rehabilitate animism: if we suppose that plants, forests, oceans, rivers, mountains, rocks, planets and so forth are animated, then clearly we are not going to be implicated in the denigration of animists in indigenous cultures, and perhaps we will become endowed with a greater capacity to care about, and to care for, all of these things. This kind of thought has occasional visibility in much recent writing on animism: see, for example, Bird-David (1999), Harvey (2005, 2006), Rose (2017) and Wallace (2019). I have already indicated some reasons why we should be cautious about this kind of response. It seems improbable that there is any very direct connection between supposing that plants, forests, oceans and rivers are animated and caring for or about them. Moreover—and more importantly—there is abundant evidence that assumptions of animism can be wedded to highly partial caring. Racist paganism and ethno-­nationalism— as described in, for example, in Gardell (2003) and Olsen (1999)—are cases in which concern for plants, forests, oceans, rivers and so forth is a highly localised concern: it is only our plants, forests, oceans, rivers and so on that demand care and attention. It is also not clear that we do best to interpret the behaviour of indigenous people in terms of the belief that plants, forests, oceans and rivers are sentient subjects of experience and cognition. There are a bunch of terms here—‘sentience’, ‘experience’ and ‘cognition’—that might be distinctively European terms; they may not map at all well onto the terms that indigenous peoples used prior to colonisation. And, in any case, it seems reasonable to expect that we can have practices of caring about,

9  Animism: Its Scope and Limits 

221

and caring for, plants, forests, oceans, rivers and so on without supposing that these things are sentient subjects of experience and cognition. The second political matter is raised in, among other places, the discussion in Kalnay (2019) of the demand—by authors such as Bennett (2010) and Morton (2016)—for a return to a childlike, animistic view of the world, calling out ‘Western culture’s failure to look past an anthropocentric worldview [that] has been responsible for innumerable forms of political injustice and environmental destruction’ (162). I do not think that it should be denied that Western culture has been responsible for innumerable forms of political injustice and environmental destruction. However, it seems odd to me to lay these faults on the anthropocentrism that is to be found in Western worldviews, not least because, for the most part, Western culture has recognised that the political injustices done in its name have been carried out against non-Western cultures. But the point that I want to emphasise here is that it seems really strange to propose more anthropomorphism as a cure for allegedly problematic Western anthropomorphism. After all, animism just is anthropomorphic projection of human characteristics onto non-human entities: animals, plants, forest, oceans, rocks, planets, starts and so on. Kalnay’s claims about the virtues of Beatrix Potter’s mycological aesthetics are well taken: but, if anything, those claims are an argument for less, rather than more, anthropomorphism in our dealing with the non-human world. Moreover, Kalnay’s claims are not really any sort of argument for anthropomorphic belief: her claim is that children benefit from anthropomorphic imagination and pretence of the kind for which Potter’s books serve as appropriate props. We should all pay more attention to woodlice, earwigs and fungi; but that does not mean that we should form more anthropocentric beliefs about them. Philosophy: A final driver of the new animism is not merely pragmatic. Instead, it might lie in philosophical views that can be taken to support it. I shall give a very brief discussion of a couple of these kinds of views here. In my earlier discussion of universal animation, I omitted one case that clearly requires some mention: arguments for universal animation from quantum mechanics (as, e.g. in Herbert (1995)). It is, of course, highly controversial to suppose that the best interpretation of quantum

222 

G. Oppy

mechanics entails universal animation. Even if, implausibly, the best interpretation of quantum mechanics entails universal consciousness or proto-consciousness, it seems wrong to suppose that the best interpretation of quantum mechanics entails universal life, movement, action, sentience, experience and cognition. And it is extremely implausible that the best interpretation of quantum mechanics entails universal consciousness. A second philosophical consideration lies in recent discussion of scientism and reductionism. Many of the ‘new’ animists—including, for example, Bennett (2010), Bird-David (1999), Capper (2016), Conty (2019), Harvey (2005, 2006), Kalnay (2019), Morton (2016), Rose (2017) and Sautchuk (2019)—suppose that it is necessary to oppose scientism and reductionism and that this necessary opposition opens new prospects for animism. If—as many of the ‘new’ animists seem to suppose—scientism and reductionism require commitment to the claim that we can ground the normative and evaluative in the scientifically descriptive, then I side with them in opposing scientism and reductionism. However, I do not think that this opposition gives any succour to animism. A proper ground for caring for, and caring about, animals, plants, forests, oceans, ecosystems and so forth will be normative and evaluative; it will not, therefore, be any kind of description, scientific, metaphysical or otherwise. Anthropomorphising—or failing to anthropomorphise— these various kinds of things has no relevance to the justification of normative and evaluative judgments that we make about them. A third philosophical consideration might be derived from a ‘crooked’ reading of Smith (2020) (see, also, van Eyghen (2016: 41)). In recent times, there has been some renewed interest in consensus gentium arguments for the existence of God. But, as Smith points out, if we consider the majority opinion of people across all times and places, it seems that we can build a stronger consensus gentium case for nature spirits that we can for gods. However, I do not think that the new animists should put too much stock in this consideration. Both in the case of nature spirits and in the case of gods, there is nowhere near the kind of consensus that would be needed in order for this kind of argument to carry serious weight.

9  Animism: Its Scope and Limits 

223

6 Concluding Remarks The discussion that I have given here is no more than an introductory sketch. There is much more work to be done on (a) explications of animism; (b) connections between animism and competing theories and theoretical orientations; (c) evaluation of the theoretical virtues of animism; and (d) applications of discussion of (a)–(c) to what is now usually called ‘new animism’. I have suggested that we can—and must—find ways to properly value animals, plants, forests, oceans, rivers, eco-systems and so forth, without anthropomorphising them in the way that, as I see it, animists do. This suggestion endorses the normative and evaluative concerns of the new animists but rejects their ontological and metaphysical assumptions. However, I reiterate that, in my view, coming to properly value animals, plants, forests, oceans, rivers, eco-systems and so forth is the main game: those who agree about this should not let their metaphysical and ontological differences divide them.

References Andaya, B. (2016). Rivers, oceans and spirits: Water cosmologies, gender, and religious change in Southeast Asia. Trans-Regional and Trans-National Studies of Southeast Asia, 4, 239–263. Aveni, A. (1999). Stairways to the stars. Wiley. Bennett, J. (2010). Vibrant matter: A political ecology of things. Duke University Press. Bird-David, N. (1999). ‘Animism’ revisited. Current Anthropology, 40, S67–S79. Bowler, K. (2013). A history of the American prosperity Gospel. Oxford University Press. Bradley, I. (2012). Water: A spiritual history. Bloomsbury. Byerly, R. (2019). The awesome argument for pantheism. European Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 11, 1–21. Calvo, P. (2016). The philosophy of plant neurobiology: A Manifesto. Synthese, 193, 1323–1343. Capper, D. (2016). Animism among Western Buddhists. Contemporary Buddhism, 17, 30–48.

224 

G. Oppy

Chamovitz, D. (2012). What a plant knows. Scribe. Clifton, C., & Harvey, G. (2004). The paganism reader. Routledge. Conty, A. (2019). Religion in the age of the anthropocene. Environmental Values. https://doi.org/10.3197/096327119X15747870303854. Dafni, A. (2006). On the typology and the worship status of sacred trees with a special reference to the middle east. Journal of Ethnobiology and Ethnomedicine. https://doi.org/10.1186/1746-­4269-­2-­26. Davies, O. (2011). Paganism: A very short introduction. Oxford University Press. Doyle, E. (2016). Wicca: History, belief and community in modern pagan witchcraft. Sussex Academic Press. Epstein, B. (2017). What are social groups? Their metaphysics and how to classify them. Synthese, 196, 4899–4932. Farrington, O. (1900). The worship and folk-lore of meteorites. The Journal of American Folklore, 13, 199–208. Faulkner, R. (1966). The king and the star-religion in the pyramid texts. Journal of Near Eastern Studies, 25, 153–161. Forrest, P. (2016). Pantheism. Roczniki Filozoficzne, 64, 67–91. Fowler-Smith, L. (2009). Hindu tree veneration as a mode of environmental encounter. Leonardo, 42, 43–51. Gagliano, M. (2018). Thus spoke the plant. Penguin. Gardell, M. (2003). Gods of the blood: The pagan revival and white separatism. Duke University Press. Garfinkle, R. (2020). Luna Cognita: A comprehensive observer’s handbook of the known moon. Springer. Goff, P. et al. (2017). Panpsychism. In Zalta, E. (Ed.), Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy.. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/panpsychism/ (accessed 6 August 2021). Goldschmidt, T., & Pearce, K. (Eds.). (2017). Idealism: New essays in metaphysics. Oxford University Press. Hallowell, I. (1960). Ojibwa ontology, behaviour, and worldview. In S. Diamond (Ed.), Culture in history: Essays in honour of Paul Radin (pp. 19–52). Columbia University Press. Harvey, G. (2005). Animism: Respecting the living world. Columbia University Press. Harvey, G. (2006). Animals, animists, and academics. Zygon, 41, 9–20. Herbert, N. (1995). Elemental mind: Human consciousness and the new physics. Dutton. Hofweber, T. (2019). Idealism and the harmony of thought and reality. Mind, 128, 699–734.

9  Animism: Its Scope and Limits 

225

Ignatov, A. (2017). The earth as a gift-giving ancestor. Political Theory, 45, 52–75. Kalnay, E. (2019). Beatrix Potter’s mycological aesthetic. Oxford Literary Review, 41, 160–184. Kapleau, P. (2009). Awakening to Zen. Scribner. Kaza, S. (2008). Mindfully green: A personal and spiritual guide to whole earth thinking. Shambhala. Kotyk, J. (2017). Astrological iconography of planetary deities in Tang China. Journal of Chinese Buddhist Studies, 30, 33–88. Levine, M. (1994). Pantheism: A non-theistic concept of deity. Cambridge University Press. Lewis, J. (2004). Handbook of new religious movements. Oxford University Press. Lewis, J. (2016). Handbook of new religious movements (Vol. 2). Oxford University Press. Maher, C. (2017). Plant minds: A philosophical defence. Routledge. Mander, W. (2017). On the consistency of pantheism. European Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 9, 1–17. Marder, M. (2013). Plant-thinking: A philosophy of vegetal life. Columbia University Press. Mathews, F. (2003). For love of matter. State University of New York Press. Morton, T. (2016). Dark ecology: For a logic of future coexistence. Columbia University Press. Olcott, W. (1914). Sun lore of all ages: A collection of myths and legends concerning the sun and its worship. G. P. Putnam’s Sons. Olsen, J. (1999). Nature and naturalism: Right-wing ecology and the politics of identity in contemporary Germany. St. Martin’s Press. Oppy, G. (1997). Pantheism, quantification and mereology. The Monist, 80, 320–336. Peterson, N. (2011). Is the aboriginal landscape sentient? Animism, the New Animism, and the Warlpiri. Oceania, 81, 167–179. Reinhard, J. (1985). Sacred mountains: An ethno-archaeological study of high Andean Ruins. Mountain Research and Development, 5, 299–317. Rickless, S. (2013). Berkeley’s argument for idealism. Oxford University Press. Rose, D. (2017). Connectivity thinking, animism, and the pursuit of liveliness. Educational Theory, 67, 491–508. Sautchuk, C. (2019). The Pirarucu Net: Artefact, animism and the technical object. Journal of Material Culture, 24, 176–193. Seager, W. (Ed.). (2019). Routledge handbook of Panpsychism. Routledge.

226 

G. Oppy

Seward, A. (1937). The geological history of the maidenhair tree and its allies. Nature, 139, 741–743. Skrbina, D. (2003). Panpsychism as an underlying theme in Western philosophy: A survey paper. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 10, 4–46. Skrbina, D. (2017). Panpsychism in the West (revised ed.). MIT Press. Smith, T. (2020). The common consent argument for the existence of nature spirits. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 98(2), 334–348. Smithson, R. (2021). Idealism and illusions. European Journal of Philosophy, 29, 137–151. Snyder, G. (2014). Nobody home: Writing, Buddhism and living in places. Trinity University Press. Steinhart, E. (2020). Believing in Dawkins: The new spiritual atheism. Palgrave Macmillan. Strawson, G. (2009). Mental reality. MIT Press. Strmiska, M. (Ed.). (2005). Modern paganism in world cultures. ABC CLIO. Taiz, L., et al. (2019). Plants neither possess nor require consciousness. Trends in Plant Science, 24(8), 677–687. Thakchoe, S. (2016). The theory of the two truths in India. In Zalta E. (Ed.), Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy.. https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/ twotruths-­india/ (accessed 5 August 2021). Tompkins, P., & Bird, D. (2018). The secret life of plants. Harper. Tylor, E. (1871). Primitive culture. Two volumes. John Murray. Valdiya, K. (2016). Geological marvels, hallowed shrines and unification of people of India. Current Science, 110, 987–995. Van Eyghen, H. (2016). Religious belief is not natural: Why cognitive science of religion does not show that religious belief is trustworthy. Studia Humana, 5, 34–44. Varner, G. (2009). Sacred wells: A study in the history, meaning and mythology of holy wells and waters. Algora Publishing. Vitaliano, D. (1973). Legends of the earth: Their geologic origins. Indiana University Press. Wallace, M. (2019). When God was a Bird: Christianity, animism, and the re-­ enchantment of the world. Fordham University Press. Waller, W. (2017). The Milky Way: An Insider’s guide. Princeton University Press. White, E. (2015). Wicca: History, belief and community in Modern Pagan Witchcraft. Sussed Academic Press. Wohlleben, P. (2016). The hidden life of trees. Black. Worton, G. (2008). A historical perspective on local communities and geological conservation. In C. Burek & C. Prosser (Eds.), The history of geoconservation (pp. 137–146). Geological Society of London.

10 Scientific Animism Eric Steinhart

Animism has been defined in many ways. Tylor defines it as the “the theory which endows the phenomena of nature with personal life” (1866: 82). Bird-David lists several definitions of animism: “the attribution of life or divinity to such natural phenomena as trees, thunder, or celestial bodies”; “the belief that all life is produced by a spiritual force, or that all natural phenomena have souls”; the belief that “trees, mountains, rivers and other natural formations possess an animating power or spirit” (1999: S67). Brown and Walker say animism is “an ontology in which objects and other non-human beings possess souls, life-force, and qualities of personhood” (2008: 297). Coeckelbergh says, “For animists, objects have (individual) spirits” (2010: 965). According to Helander-­ Renvall, animism means that “there are no clear borders between spirit and matter…. all beings in nature are considered to have souls or spirit” (2010: 44). Smith says animism involves “belief in nature spirits, such as

E. Steinhart (*) Department of Philosophy, William Paterson University, Wayne, NJ, USA e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Smith (ed.), Animism and Philosophy of Religion, Palgrave Frontiers in Philosophy of Religion, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94170-3_10

227

228 

E. Steinhart

mountain spirits, animal spirits, and weather spirits” (2019: 2–3). Definitions like these are easily multiplied. These definitions point toward many different theories of animation. A theory of animation has three main parts: (1) It specifies the class of things that are animated. The definitions above list diverse things (beings, objects, mountains, rivers, trees, animals, weather, celestial bodies). It is far from clear what all these things have in common. If to be animated is simply to exist, then animism is trivial. (2) It specifies the class of things that do the animating. The definitions list diverse animators (spiritual force, animating power, life-force, souls, spirits, etc.). But the natures of these animators are obscure. (3) It specifies what it means to be animated. The definitions say that to be animated is to be alive, to be divine, to have a soul or spirit, to have personal qualities. But these are all very different. These definitions do not point to any clear theory of animation. If we want to understand animism, we need some clear theory of animation. One way to make a clear theory is to naturalize its concepts. Naturalization involves going through the history of some concept and highlighting those aspects which can be made precise in scientific terms. If we can successfully naturalize the concepts that enter into these definitions of animism, the result will be a clear scientific animism. On the basis of contemporary science, I offer a theory of animation which diverges greatly from the theory presented by Graham Oppy in this volume. That we both claim to be naturalists shows that there are very different versions of naturalism. My version is a pagan naturalism. Both Oppy and I are atheists; but my theory of animation has affinities with the ideas and practices in contemporary atheistic paganism (Green, 2019; Lupa, 2021).

1 Animism in Western Thought According to these definitions, animism has a long history in Western thought. The ancient Greeks posited nature spirits called nymphs. These spirits occupied streams, lakes, caves, mountains, and other features of the landscape. Plato said our solar system is an intelligent animal (Timaeus, 30c–33a). For Plato, the fixed stars were parts of our solar system. Plato

10  Scientific Animism 

229

thought that the many stars and planets in our solar system were intelligent animals animated by souls (Timaeus, 41d–42e). After Plato, this animism was taken up by the Stoics. They also affirmed that our solar system is an intelligent animal (Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods, 2.16–22). Epictetus said our sun is an agent with duties (Discourses, 3.22.4–7). The Stoics argued that all physical things are animated by the pneuma. The pneuma is an intelligent fire energy. It is subtle matter that pervades and energizes gross matter. It is the designing fire (the pyr technikon), which drives things to higher levels of complexity. The Stoics stratified things into degrees of animation. From least to most animated, these degrees include rocks, plants, non-human animals, humans, deities, and the cosmic Zeus. The Greek word pneuma is translated into Latin as spiritus, and into English as spirit. Stoic and Platonic ideas contributed to Neoplatonism. Plotinus affirms that the earth has a soul: the earth lives, perceives, and thinks (Enneads, 4.4.22–27). He affirms the same for the stars (4.4.22–42). He also says all things are entangled by non-local relations of sympathy and antipathy (3.1.4, 4.4–5). Iamblichus says all things are animated by a divine fire energy (On the Mysteries, 1.8–9, 1.12, 2.4, 3.20, 4.3, 5.11–12). As pagan antiquity gave way to the Christian Middle Ages, the ancient view that the stars and planets were intelligent animals was anathematized (Dales, 1980). But as the Middle Ages turned into the renaissance, animism returned. Paracelsus declared that all physical things have spirits (Pagel, 1960: 132). He associated each type of elemental matter with its own spirit (Hartmann, 1896: 119–125): earth spirits are gnomes; water spirits are undines; air spirits are sylphs; and fire spirits are salamanders. The early scientist William Gilbert wrote that “we deem the whole world animate, and all globes, all stars, and this glorious earth too” (1600: bk. 5, ch. 12). For Gilbert, the stars and planets are animated by magnetic souls, which make them perpetually spin. Francis Bacon (in the early 1600s) argued that all things contain parcels of spirit. Spirit is subtle matter. While even inanimate things like rocks contain spirit, animated things like plants and animals contain inflamed spirit which is closely associated with fire (Rusu, 2018). In his Treatise on Man (1662), Descartes said that all living bodies are machines animated by animal spirits, which are a kind of “very lively and pure flame.”

230 

E. Steinhart

Margaret Cavendish (1664) argued that all physical things contain animated intelligent matter. She argued that all parcels of matter (bodies) are self-moving and that motion is never transferred from one body to another. Bodies are informationally entangled: they exchange instructions on how to change. They use these instructions to figure out their own new self-motions. When a seal is pressed into wax, the wax rearranges itself into a shape which corresponds to the seal (Sec 1, Letter 32). Cavendish distinguished many degrees of animation. Following the Stoics, these are the mineral, vegetable, and animal degrees. She says the stars are intelligent living things (Sec. 2, Letter 17). Cavendish also argues for techno-animism: machines are alive (Sec. 2, Letter 13). So the stars and machines have their degrees too. Following the Stoics, Hobbes thinks of spirit naturalistically as a subtle fluid (Answer to Bramhall, 309; The Elements of Law Natural and Politic, 1.XI.4). The Cambridge Platonists Henry More and Ralph Cudworth posited a spirit of nature which was spatially extended and which drove matter to organize itself into more complex forms. Anne Conway (1690) argued that nature is composed of particles of spirit. Leibniz argued that every part of nature is alive (Monadology, 69). His monads are living computers. Their changing natures are coordinated such that informational channels supervene on their changes. They are informationally (but not causally) entangled. Leibniz described grades of monads rising from bare monads through souls to spirits. La Mettrie says, “ether is an infinitely subtle spirit … pure celestial flame.” He quotes Doctor Lamy, who says, “the minerals have less of [this ether], the plants more and the animals much more. This fire or spirit is their soul” (La Mettrie, 1748: 53). Schelling argued that nature is a self-powered dynamical system (Heuser-Kessler, 1992). It evolves within itself forms of increasing complexity. Hegel (in The Phenomenology of Spirit) asserted that spirit drives the evolution of nature through historical phases of ever-increasing complexity. He outlined many degrees of spiritual intensity, from mere sensation to absolute knowledge. Schopenhauer thought all things were animated by a will to life. Reviving Stoic thermodynamics, Nietzsche argued that all things were animated by a will to power (The Will to Power, secs. 1062–67).

10  Scientific Animism 

231

Even in the twentieth century, animistic ideas flourished: Henri Bergson argued that living things are animated by an élan vital. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin argued that all things are animated by radial energy. Radial energy drives things to increase their complexities. As things gain complexity, Teilhard argues that they gain increasingly complex information-­processing functions. Feibleman (1970) says spirit drives the growth of complexity. He argued that spirit is a property of matter (11). He argued that spirit increases with complexity. He said, “a stone does not have as much spirit as a tree, a tree not as much as a dog, and a dog not nearly as much as a man” (11). Here Feibleman repeats the old Stoic degrees of animation. But the Stoic degrees of animation are now degrees of modern complexity. Spirit generates complexity. Many current scientific theories of mentality entail animism. McCarthy (1979) argues that all self-regulating systems have some mentality. Dretske (1980) says that any physical system which can be informationally entangled with its environment has some degree of mentality. Even thermostats have simple minds with primitive belief-desire psychology. For cybernetic thinkers like McCarthy and Dretske, as for older animists, many non-living things have minds. Tononi (2004) argues that almost all physical systems have positive degrees of informational integration. He defines consciousness as informational integration. Thus, almost all physical systems have some positive degree of consciousness. But consciousness is now measured in bits. Modern techno-animists affirm that robots are animated by spirits or souls (Aupers, 2002). Far from being obsolete, animistic ideas flourish in Western scientific cultures today. However, from Plato to cybernetics, animism has evolved. The older animists developed their doctrines in psychological terms. But contemporary science analyzes psychological entities using ideas from computer science and information theory. Minds, souls, spirits, and similar entities are analyzed in terms of bits, channels, entropy, programs, computers, complexity, and so on. So while older animists were panpsychists, contemporary animists are pancomputationalists. Fredkin (2003) argues that all regions of space-time compute. Lloyd (2006) says the universe is a quantum computer. Rovelli (2015) says all physicality emerges from informational dynamics. And Kurzweil (2005) argues that our universe is evolving into an intelligent living cosmic computer. He says all

232 

E. Steinhart

the matter and energy in our universe will ultimately become “saturated” with intelligence (2005: 29, 364). And that the universe will “wake up” into consciousness (2005: 375). Four general themes emerge from the historical animisms. The first theme is that spirit is central. Thus, things are more or less animated by spirits. The second theme is that spirit is most closely associated with thermal energy (e.g., the Stoics, Iamblichus, Bacon, Descartes, La Mettrie, etc.). On this view, spirit is natural and physical. The third theme is that all things are animated. The fourth theme is that there are degrees of animation (e.g., rocks, plants, animals, humans, deities).

2 Entropic Forces Scientific animism accepts the first theme: things are animated by spirit. Spirits are local expressions of spirit-itself as a general natural power. And scientific animism accepts the second theme: spirit is closely associated with thermal energy. The Stoics were doing early thermodynamics (Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods, 2.23–28). So we can use modern thermodynamics to naturalize spirit and related animistic concepts. Further support for thermodynamic animism comes from a re-­ examination of Bergson and Teilhard de Chardin. It has been argued that Bergson’s élan vital refers to a force that emerges from entropy production (DiFrisco, 2015). Teilhard’s radial energy closely matches the thermodynamic quantity known as Gibbs free energy (Morowitz et al., 2005). Although spirit was traditionally said to have mentality, scientific animists deny that it has any mentality or consciousness. Of course, this does not mean that spirit and intelligence are disconnected. Thermodynamics (through concepts like entropy) is closely associated with information theory. Many scientists have argued that thermodynamic principles drive the evolution of intelligence (Turvey & Carello, 2012; Kondepudi, 2012; Fry, 2017). As spirit drives systems to self-­ organize to higher degrees of complexity, intelligence emerges. But spirit is not intelligent. Scientific animism proposes that spirit is a thermodynamic force. As a thermodynamic force, spirit regulates itself according to thermodynamic

10  Scientific Animism 

233

laws. Here the second law of thermodynamics is the most important: it states roughly that physical systems tend to maximize their entropies. But entropy is often misunderstood. It must be stressed that entropy is not disorder (Wright, 1970; Wald, 2006; Martyushev, 2013). More accurately, entropy measures the dispersion of energy (Catling, 2013: 6; Ebbing & Gammon, 2017: ch. 18.2; Tzafestas, 2018: 128). Concentrated potential energy is low entropy; dispersed energy is high entropy. The second law generates entropic forces that drive systems to disperse their energies by minimizing their potentials. Sometimes entropic forces will drive systems to create order and complexity. You can easily experience a thermodynamic force that emerges from the second law. Rubber bands store their energies thermally. When a rubber band is unstretched, its energy is minimal, and its entropy is maximal. When you stretch a rubber band, you increase its thermal potential energy. Since you have concentrated potential energy in the rubber band, you decreased its entropy. When you release it, the second law compels it to maximize its entropy. When the band relaxes to its unstretched state, its thermal potential is dissipated. Its entropy goes up. The force that pulls the rubber band back to its unstretched state is neither gravitational nor electrochemical (e.g., it is not the van der Waals force). On the contrary, it is an entropic force (Muller, 2007: 112). Roos says, “An entropic force is an emergent phenomenon resulting from the tendency of a thermodynamic system to maximize its entropy” (2014: 1161). All things in our universe participate in the general growth of entropy. Thus, the second law gives all things an abstract directionality: all things change in ways that increase entropy. The thermodynamic arrow points toward maximum entropy. This arrow is often said to generate the arrow of time. According to this thermodynamic conception of time, our universe began in an extremely low-entropy state (Callender, 2004; Wald, 2006). Now the second law entails the irreversible and asymmetrical progression of time from past to future. Since time is often depicted in graphs as the horizontal axis, the arrow of time is the horizontal arrow. It points toward the final state of our universe, in which entropy is maximal. If an Aristotelian final cause is that for the sake of which change occurs, then the ultimate final cause of all physical change in our universe is the maximization of entropy.

234 

E. Steinhart

3 Entropic Forces Drive Flows to Self-Organize Another example of entropic force at work is the tornado in a bottle (Schneider & Kay, 1994). You need two soda bottles and a short hose. First, fill one bottle halfway with water. Second, use the hose to join the bottles. Now flip the bottles so that the one with the water is on top. You’ve concentrated gravitational potential energy in the top bottle. The difference in height between the suspended water and the bottom of the empty bottle is the potential. Since entropy measures the dispersion of a potential, and the potential is minimally dispersed, this is a state of low entropy. The state of highest entropy occurs when all the water has drained out of the top bottle into the bottom bottle. The second law (here acting in accordance with gravity) compels the water to move from the top bottle into the bottom bottle. The water drains. There are two ways for it to drain. The first way is disorderly: the water glubs and burbles down into the bottom bottle. This way of draining is turbulent and chaotic. Since chaotic flow is essentially random, and randomness involves minimal complexity, this chaotic flow has very little complexity. It is also very slow. Since the disorderly way disperses the potential energy slowly, it produces entropy slowly. But the second way is much faster. This way is orderly: the water forms a spinning vortex and flows rapidly into the bottom bottle. And here greater order is greater complexity. Since the orderly flow disperses the potential quickly, it produces entropy rapidly. The two flows differ in their rates of entropy production. They illustrate the orderly flow principle: orderly flow produces entropy faster than disorderly flow (Swenson, 2006: 318). If you make a tornado in a bottle a few times, you’ll see that the water often makes an apparently spontaneous phase transition from turbulent to spinning flow. Or sometimes it takes a small bump or shock to cause the transition. An entropic force is at work in this system. This force drives the system to maximize its entropy. But it also drives the system to maximize its rate of entropy production. It drives the system to produce entropy as fast as possible. And, by pushing it to increase its entropy production rate, it drives it from disorderly flow to orderly flow. The entropic

10  Scientific Animism 

235

force in this system drives it to self-organize. Entropic forces can generate order. The tornado in a bottle produces as much order as possible by producing entropy as fast as possible. The tornado in a bottle involves two arrows. Each arrow defines an axis for a graph which displays the behavior of this system. The horizontal arrow (which is also the horizontal x-axis) points toward the future; it points from minimum initial entropy to maximum final entropy. But the vertical arrow (which is also the vertical y-axis) points from lower complexity to higher complexity. It is an arrow of complexity. For the tornado in a bottle, there are only two complexity values on this axis: the low complexity gurgling and the high complexity vortex. The water in this system moves in ordinary space and time. But it also moves in complexity space, in which systems are ranked by their degrees of complexity. Following Dawkins (1996), we can refer to this complexity space as Mount Improbable. So the entropic force working in this system drives it to climb Mount Improbable. This force is a vector which is located in the tornado in a bottle system, and which points upward in complexity space. The system is animated by this force. If spirit (pneuma) is a thermal power which drives self-organization, then this force vector is a particular spirit. On this view, spirit is not a subtle fluid; it is not any kind of stuff. Spirit is force, and a particular spirit is a localized force vector. You can also illustrate these principles by dropping a leaf (Kugler & Turvey, 1987: 123). If you lift a leaf, you have increased its gravitational potential. Its potential is dispersed as it falls to the ground. When you drop the leaf, an entropic force drives it to disperse its potential as fast as possible. The leaf has three main modes of falling: translation (it falls straight down), oscillation (it sways back and forth), and rotation (it spins). Each later mode dissipates potential energy more quickly. And each later mode is more complex. So the leaf moves both in ordinary space and time, but also in complexity space. It climbs Mount Improbable. The entropic force in the falling leaf drives it to produce as much order as possible by producing entropy as fast as possible. This entropic force is a vector which points upward in complexity space. The falling leaf is animated by this force vector. Again, if spirit (pneuma) is a thermal power which drives self-organization, then this force vector is a spirit.

236 

E. Steinhart

Besides the orderly flow principle, these two systems (the tornado in a bottle and the falling leaf ) illustrate a second thermodynamic principle. The maximum entropy production principle (MEPP) states that physical systems tend to maximize their entropy production rates (Martyushev & Seleznev, 2006). Swenson expresses it this way: “A system will select the path or assembly of paths out of available paths that minimizes the potential or maximizes the entropy at the fastest rate given the constraints” (2009: 334). The MEPP emerges from the second law of thermodynamics. More precisely, Dewar (2003) derives it from an information-­theoretic formulation of the second law. The orderly flow principle and the MEPP entail that if some physical system has a potential to disperse, then an entropic force will emerge within that system. It drives the system to produce as much order as possible by producing entropy as fast as possible. Swenson says: “the world can be expected to produce order whenever it gets the chance…. [The world] is in the order production business, because ordered flow produces entropy faster than disordered flow” (2006, 318). So, if the water in the tornado in a bottle can transition from turbulence to vortex, then it almost certainly will. If the leaf can shift from translation to spinning, then it almost certainly will. The MEPP and the orderly flow principle drive the evolution of complexity (Dewar, 2006; Wolpert, 2013: 251; Wissner-Gross & Freer, 2013; Martyushev, 2013).

4 The Degrees of Animation From these thermodynamic considerations, we can advance to the third and fourth themes of the historical animisms. The third theme is that all things are animated. Scientific animism accepts this theme. The second law of thermodynamics is universal: it acts on everything. So the MEPP also is universal too (Lineweaver, 2006). Thus, all things are more or less animated by spirit-itself. Spirit-itself drives all physical processes to self-­ organize as far as possible. Since self-organization creates new structures at higher degrees of complexity, spirit-itself is the creative power immanent in all things. Many Neopagans think of this creative power in religious terms. Wiccans generally recognize an ultimate power, which they

10  Scientific Animism 

237

often identify with the creative power immanent in all things (Farrar & Farrar, 1981: 12; Buckland, 1986: 19; Cunningham, 2004: 9; Silver Elder, 2011: 18; Cuhulain, 2011: 28). A scientific animist can think of spirit-itself in terms of the Wiccan ultimate power. This interpretation provides scientific animism with access to many religious rituals and spiritual practices. As religious naturalists like Crosby (2014) have argued, these rituals and practices can be done in an entirely naturalistic context. The fourth theme is that there are degrees of animation. Scientific animists accept this theme. Thus, everything has some degree of animation. However, many things do not generate flows which transition through increasingly orderly phases. When a stretched rubber band is released, it moves to its highest entropy state without generating any complexity. And while black holes are always increasing their entropies, they do not thereby generate increasingly orderly flows. Other processes are at thermodynamic equilibrium: they have spent all their free energy. Or they do not have any flowing material to organize (our moon and the planet Mercury have little flux). If something does not pass through increasingly orderly phases, it has the zeroth degree of animation. Of course, if the zeroth degree of animation were the only degree, then animism would be vacuous. But many physical systems are driven by entropic forces to self-organize. An agent is any physical system whose degree of animation is greater than zero. More precisely, a physical system is an agent if and only if (1) it is driven by some internal entropic force to produce as much order as possible by producing entropy as fast as possible and (2) it is producing some positive amount of order. Hence an agent has some positive degree of animation. An agent is a process, which means it is both spatially and temporally extended. It is a four-­dimensional flux of three-dimensional stages. According to our earlier discussion of spirits, agents are animated by spirits. A spirit is an entropic force that drives an agent to self-organize (Annila & Kuismanen, 2007). A spirit is a localized force vector pointing upward in complexity space. The Stoics said that the deities were localized spirits (Cicero, On the Nature of the Gods, 2.71). Thus, Ceres is spirit animating plant life, and Poseidon is spirit localized to the oceans. Hence, we can use names of at least the ancient Greek and Roman deities to refer to the spirits in various agents. However, these theonyms refer only to physical spirits; they do

238 

E. Steinhart

not refer to persons. Of course, the Stoics are not the only ones to think of deities in terms of natural forces. Wiccans generally affirm the existence of two deities: the Wiccan God and the Wiccan Goddess. And while some Wiccans think of these deities as persons, others say they are just specialized natural forces (Farrar & Farrar, 1981: 49; Cunningham, 2004: 4–14; Silver Elder, 2011: 18). A more detailed approach to these localized spirits comes from the animism of Lupa (2021). Her “nature spirits” correspond very closely to the localized spirits in scientific animism. She shows how to add rich poetic interpretations to these spirits and discusses a variety of practices for relating to them. Agents go through variable degrees of self-organization. Some agents (like the tornado in a bottle and the falling dead leaf ) do not self-organize into systems with functionally distinctive organs. Some agents self-­ organize into systems with vague organs. A hurricane thermodynamically forms internal structures (Ozawa & Shimokawa, 2015). But all these formations are just swirling water vapor. Since these agents have less than fully defined organs, scientific animism says they have fractional degrees of animation. Other agents self-organize into systems with clearly functionally distinctive organs. These agents with organs have the first degree of animation. Since these agents develop organs, we say they are organisms. So an organism is any agent which is driven by its spirit to self-organize into a system of organs. Being an organism does not imply being alive. Living organisms are specialized kinds of organisms. Aristotle said the form of a living body with organs is its soul (De Anima, 412a5–414a33). But why is life required for soul? Plato argued that anything with self-­ motion has a soul (Laws 895c–899d; Phaedrus, 245c–246a). So we will modify the Aristotelian definition: a soul is the form of a self-organizing agent with organs. The historical animists often talked about souls. Scientific animism naturalizes the concept of the soul. Far from being immaterial thinking substances, souls are just dynamical patterns of physical activity. We continue our thermodynamic approach to animism by using information theory to make souls more precise: souls are just computer programs.

10  Scientific Animism 

239

5 The Ascents of Heliodromes A scientific animist is interested in the distribution of agents in our universe. Are they common? Are they rare? Our universe begins with the big bang. At that time, it is in an extremely low-entropy state. As time goes on, our universe self-organizes. It generates within itself structures of increasing complexity: particles, atoms, molecules, stars, and so on. Physicists list epochs or eras in which the complexities of the most complex things increase (Silk, 2000: 68; Ansdell, 2019: ch. 1). Since the early phases of the universe are currently poorly understood, the role of thermodynamic forces in those phases is also poorly understood. But the universe soon creates solar systems. According to our best science, our solar system is a four-dimensional process which passes through many phases of self-organization. It begins as a large but simple cloud of gas. As this gas self-organizes, the sun and its planets emerge. Our sun is a star in the main sequence. The MEPP correctly predicts the relation between luminosity and temperature of the main sequence stars (Martyushev & Zubarev, 2019). Our solar system forms its smaller parts (its planets and moons) through self-organization. Aschwanden (2018: 107) says that principles of self-organization produce the regularly spaced orbits of planets and moons. But self-­ organization is driven by entropic forces. On our definition of agency, our solar system is an agent animated by a spirit. And while our solar system will continue its self-organization for a long time, it will eventually reach its peak. The sun will explode and blast the rest of the solar system out into space. Its remains will revert to primitive simplicity. From its birth to its death, the entropy of our solar system increases. It travels through an arc of complexity: its complexity increases to a maximum and then falls to zero. Our solar system climbs Mount Improbable. It starts on the plains of simplicity, climbs to some maximum height, and then descends back to the simple plains. It will be useful to have a word to mark the agency of our solar system. The old Greek word drome indicates a racetrack on which runners aim to maximize their speeds. And the race itself is a spatiotemporal process. So we will use the suffix -drome to mark agency. The term heliodrome refers

240 

E. Steinhart

to the evolutionary process of any solar system whose star lies in the main sequence. Heliodromes are animated by heliomorphic spirits. Heliomorphic spirits fill heliospheres. Focusing on our local heliodrome, we can use the theonym Helios to refer to its spirit. Helios is a merely physical spirit; it is just a force vector associated with our solar system. Helios extends through billions of years of time and fills billions of cubic kilometers of space. Our heliodrome is an agent animated by a spirit. According to Plato, our heliodrome also has a soul (Timaeus, 30b–c). Is he right? Our heliodrome is self-moving. It evolves through internal differentiation of structures (its star, planets, moons, and so on). These structures play different functional roles in the solar system. Our heliodrome self-organizes into a system with functionally distinctive organs. It is a self-moving process whose parts go through self-organization. On our definition of organisms, our solar system is an organism. So our heliodrome has at least the first degree of animation. Our heliodrome has a form revealed with increasing accuracy by ever better computer simulations. On our definition of the soul, our heliodrome has a soul. Our heliodrome has at least the first degree of animation. It is an ensouled agent. Every main sequence star is surrounded by a self-organizing heliodrome. It is an agent animated by a spirit. Solar systems are common in our galaxy (Cassan et al., 2012). By extension, they are common in other galaxies, and therefore common in the universe. Hence heliodromic organisms are common in our universe. So scientific animists claim that the first degree of animation is common in our universe. Of course, historical animists made stronger claims: they claimed our heliodrome was an intelligent living animal. However, our heliodrome fails to satisfy even the minimal scientific criteria for life or intelligence. It is not an intelligent animal. Nevertheless, technologists have argued that our heliodrome might evolve into an intelligent animal. They have argued that our descendants might launch von Neumann probes to carry life from our heliodrome into other heliodromes. And Kurzweil has argued that our heliodrome will evolve into an intelligent computer (2005: 349–51). At most, scientific animists say our heliodrome has the future possibility of becoming an intelligent animal.

10  Scientific Animism 

241

6 The Ascents of Astrodromes and Terradromes One of the organs in any heliodrome is its central star, which is its nucleus. An apollodrome is the evolutionary process of any main sequence star from its birth in the ignition of its fusion to its death in its collapse into a white dwarf. Any apollodrome is spatiotemporally enclosed by its heliodrome. On our definition of agency, every apollodrome is an agent animated by some solar spirit. Paracelsus used the term salamander to indicate spirits that live in fire. But we will say an apollodrome is animated by an apollomorphic spirit. Any main sequence star self-organizes into a system with functionally distinctive organs. These are its core, its radiative zone, its convective zone, its photosphere, its chromosphere, and its corona. Hence any apollodrome is an organism. Any apollodrome has a form revealed with increasing accuracy by even better computer simulations. On our definition of the soul, every apollodrome has a soul. Every apollodrome is an agent with at least the first degree of animation. Our local apollodrome is just our sun (thought of as a four-dimensional process). And our sun is an organism with a soul. Following the Stoics, we can use the theonym Apollo to refer to its spirit. Apollo is a merely physical spirit; it is neither living, nor intelligent, nor personal. Apollo is a subspirit of Helios. Of course, this Stoic approach to the sun is not the only one: Wiccans associate the sun with the Wiccan God. Some scientific animists may prefer this Wiccan interpretation of the spirit in the Sun. Some heliodromes are naked apollodromes. They consumed all the material in their embryonic clouds. They remain at the first degree of animation. But others rise to higher degrees through the self-organization in their other organs. These include planets, moons, asteroids, comets, and so on. Some of these organs are terradromes. A terradrome is a four-­ dimensional process inside of a heliodrome. It is a self-organizing process which orbits an apollodrome. A terradrome self-organizes through internal differentiation of its materials into functionally distinctive shells. Thus, a terradrome evolves through several phases increasing complexity. It starts as a homogeneous blob of material in the solar disk. It

242 

E. Steinhart

self-­organizes into a series of concentric shells like an onion. It develops organs like its core, mantle, crust, oceans, and atmosphere. Its outer shells are composed of fluid materials (soils, liquids, and gasses). During its self-­ organization, any terradrome is a thermodynamically active system with a hot internal core. Eventually, it will cool to thermodynamic equilibrium. It will die. It will be destroyed or blasted into space by its exploding star. Thus, every terradrome passes through an arc of complexity. Our heliodrome contains many terradromes. One of these is the Jovian moon Ganymede. Circular motion in the core of Ganymede generates its magnetic field. This circular motion is self-motion. The circular motion is thermodynamically driven. As another example of a terradrome, consider our Earth. From the inside out, its shells are its solid iron-nickel core; its liquid iron-nickel core; its rocky silicate mantle; its lighter silicate crust; its oceans; and its atmosphere. Other terradromes in our heliodrome include Venus, Mars, and the moons Enceladus, Europa, and Titan. But many other objects in our heliodrome do not self-organize into well-structured celestial organisms. They do not reach the first degree of animation; they are not agents; they are not terradromes. Thus Mercury, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune are probably not terradromes. Other things that are not terradromes include the moons of Earth and Mars, the smaller moons of other planets, the asteroids, the dwarf planet Pluto, and so on. As long as a terradrome has some internal heat, it is thermodynamically active. If any object has internal heat, and if the MEPP is a universal physical principle, then the MEPP works on that object. The object strives to generate as much complexity as possible by producing entropy as fast as possible. It is a thermodynamic agent. If this reasoning is correct, then all the terradromes in our heliodrome are thermodynamic agents. They are animated by spirits. Perhaps their spirits are Paracelsian earth-spirits, that is, gnomes. Since they self-organize into systems of functionally distinctive organs (core, mantle, crust, etc.), they are organisms. And since they are organisms, they have souls. However, caution is required here: little is known about the thermodynamics of most of the objects orbiting our sun. But now focus on our earth. Our earth is a planetary organism with a soul. Since it is a terradrome, it is an agent animated by a spirit. Say the spirit that animates our earth is Terra. Terra is

10  Scientific Animism 

243

a subspirit of Helios. Of course, this Stoic approach is not the only one. Wiccans associate our earth with the Wiccan Goddess, and some scientific animists may prefer this Wiccan interpretation of the spirit in our earth. Wiccans and other Neopagans celebrate the relations between earth and sun on the solar holidays (the solstices, equinoxes, and four cross-quarter days). Wiccans have developed a liturgy for rituals on these holidays. Scientific animists can perform naturalized versions of the Wiccan liturgy (Crosby, 2014; Steinhart, 2016; Green, 2019). Scientific animists can use these rituals to give thanks to the earth and sun (Steinhart, 2021). But why should we perform these rituals? Obviously, they do not change the sun or the earth. The Neoplatonists argued long ago that rituals do not change the gods (Iamblichus, On the Mysteries, 1.12–15; Sallustius, On the Gods and the World, ch. 14). The purpose of these rituals is to change us. They help us to improve our characters and our relations with non-human nature. Any heliodrome has at least the first degree of animation. But planetary self-organization climbs much higher on Mount Improbable than mere solar self-organization. The spiritual force vectors in terradromes point higher in complexity space. So a heliodrome which has terradromes is more animated than a heliodrome which lacks them. A heliodrome with a terradrome has at least the second degree of animation. And scientific animism claims that terradromic agents are common. Planets are common in our galaxy (Cassan et  al., 2012). Assuming that the same laws of planetary self-organization hold across all stars in our galaxy, terradromes are common in our galaxy. Assuming further that those same laws hold throughout our universe, terradromes are common in our universe. But the historical animisms also claimed that planets are intelligent animals. Scientific animism proposes only that every planetary soul projects possible futures in which it becomes alive and intelligent.

244 

E. Steinhart

7 The Ascents of Liquidromes and Ecodromes As terradromes evolve, they traverse an arc of complexity. Most of this complexity exists in their fluid shells. A liquidrome is a four-dimensional process inside of a terradrome. It consists of the evolution of the fluid shells in its terradrome. It is composed of the self-organizing oceanic and atmospheric layers of some planet. Any liquidrome is an agent which produces as much order as possible by producing entropy as fast as possible. Liquidromes undergo chemical self-organization. Liquidromes are more animated than mere terradromes. Any terradrome (and thus any heliodrome) which contains a liquidrome has at least the third degree of animation. Are there any liquidromes in our heliodrome? The MEPP drives the dynamics of the liquid shells of our earth (Ozawa et al., 2003; Kleidon, 2010; Huang et  al., 2017). Hence those shells make our earthly liquidrome. Since our earthly liquidrome is an agent, it is animated by a liquid spirit. We can use the theonym Nerthus to refer to it. Nerthus is a subspirit of Terra. Are there any other liquidromes in our heliodrome? It has been argued that the MEPP drives fluid dynamics on Venus, Mars, and Titan (Lorenz et  al., 2001; Lorenz, 2002; Fukumura & Ozawa, 2013). If that is right, then our heliodrome contains many liquidromes. Liquid spirits animate Venus, Earth, Mars, and Titan. Liquid spirits may also animate Europa, Enceladus, and Ganymede. Since Helios contains many liquidromes, it has at least the third degree of animation. Any liquidrome is an agent. But is it an organism? Perhaps the oceans and atmosphere of our earth are distinctive organs. And the atmospheric and oceanic currents indicate organic structure. So liquidromes are at least similar to organisms. Liquidromes are not alive. Nevertheless, the liquidrome of our earth probably exhibits primitive mentality and purposiveness. Our earthly liquidrome contains a thermostat (Zeebe & Caldeira, 2008). It runs negative feedback loops which stabilize the amount of carbon in the atmosphere; by stabilizing the carbon, they stabilize the temperature. Perhaps the evolution of life depends on this stabilization. However,

10  Scientific Animism 

245

contrary to the Gaia hypothesis, there is no evidence that this stabilization is done for the sake of life. If McCarthy (1979) is right that thermostats exhibit primitive belief-desire mentality, then our liquidrome has beliefs and desires. It has a goal, and it behaves purposively (Rosenblueth et al., 1943). Scientific animists do not adopt Dennett’s intentional stance toward liquidromes. If the cybernetic accounts of beliefs and desires are correct, then our earthly liquidrome really has beliefs and desires. Other rocky planets probably have similar thermostats (Hayworth & Foley, 2020). So they have similar mentalities. If this reasoning is correct, then mentality first emerges in its most primitive form in liquidromes. It is common in our universe. As liquidromes moil, they traverse arcs of complexity. One possibility for climbing higher on Mount Improbable involves self-replicators. Since self-replicators have memory, they can accumulate complexity. An ecodrome is a part of a liquidrome which uses self-replication to climb Mount Improbable. It is a four-dimensional process inside of its liquidrome. As their name suggests, ecodromes contain life. Ecodromes must also be agents: they must produce as much biological order as possible by producing entropy as fast as possible. Since biological evolution climbs very high on Mount Improbable, higher than all the previous forms of self-­ organization, any heliodrome that contains an ecodrome has at least the fourth degree of animation. Are there any ecodromes in our solar organism? Obviously, life exists on earth. But does it have agency? Thermodynamic principles drive the emergence of life (Schneider & Kay, 1994; England, 2013). Evolution is driven by the MEPP (Dewar, 2010; Martin & Horvath, 2013; Skene, 2015). Our entire earthly ecosystem can be regarded as a distributed metabolic network whose evolution to higher degrees of complexity is driven by the MEPP (Vallino, 2010). Thus, our ecodrome is a thermodynamic agent animated by an ecological spirit. Call this spirit Demeter. These thermodynamic arguments generalize: any ecodrome is a thermodynamic agent animated by a spirit. Our earthly liquidrome contains an ecodrome which travels through an arc of complexity. It passes through several phases. During its chemical phase, increasingly complex molecules evolve. During its biological phase, the complexity of the most complex living things increases steadily

246 

E. Steinhart

(Adami et al., 2000; Chaisson, 2001; Taft et al., 2007). But someday, life will reach its maximal complexity and then decline to extinction. During its post-biological phase, our earth will degenerate into simplicity again. Thus, our earthly ecodrome climbs up Mount Improbable, reaches its maximal height, and then descends back to simplicity. Since Helios contains at least one ecodrome, it follows that Helios has at least the fourth degree of animation. Scientific animism implies that ecodromes are relatively common. About 18% of the sunlike stars in the Milky Way have planets in their habitable zones (Kunimoto & Matthews, 2020). England argues that such planets have a very high tendency to produce life: “You start with a random clump of atoms, and if you shine light on it for long enough, it should not be so surprising that you get a plant” (2014). These considerations support the thesis that ecodromes are relatively common. The historical animisms declared that our earthly ecosystem was alive. It is plausible to say that if any whole is composed entirely of biologically interacting living parts, then that whole is also alive. Yet such a whole need not have all the properties of life. Bacterial biofilms and human organs are alive even though they do not reproduce. If this is right, then our earthly ecosystem is alive. Scientific animism agrees with the historical animisms that our earthly ecosystem is alive. The historical animisms declared that our earthly ecosystem was intelligent. Dawkins (1996: 72, 326) regards biological evolution as a planetary computer that runs an optimization algorithm. It has memory, and it may even learn (Watson & Szathmary, 2016; Kouvaris et al., 2017). On cybernetic accounts of mentality, it looks like our earthly ecosystem has a mind. However, this mentality does not entail the Gaia Hypothesis of Lovelock. Although our ecodrome self-regulates, there is no evidence that it self-regulates for the sake of life. Taking care not to go too far, scientific animism agrees with the historical animisms that our earthly ecosystem is an intelligent living agent. But scientific animism further affirms that our ecosystem is involved in a process which tends toward greater life and intelligence.

10  Scientific Animism 

247

8 The Ascents of Biodromes The first organism on earth is the root of an evolutionary tree. Each series of organisms in this tree is an evolutionary lineage. Assuming that the first organism was as biologically simple as possible, complexity has risen on every lineage. On some lineages, it has risen very little. From the first organism to the present, single-celled organisms have gained very little complexity. Yet many lineages have risen to great heights of biological complexity. The lineages that rise to plants and modern animals have been driven by the MEPP to climb high on Mount Improbable. Consequently, any evolutionary lineage in which complexity increases is an agent animated by an evolutionary spirit. It is a geneadrome. So the evolutionary lineages from the first living organism to most existing organisms are geneadromes. They exist inside ecodromes. The spirits animating these geneadromes resemble the biological nature spirits in Lupa (2021). She discusses many scientifically informed practices for interacting with these nature spirits. Many organisms have life spans which traverse many phases of increasing complexity. Their life spans traverse an arc of complexity. Many insects start as single-celled eggs; they pass through a larval phase, then into their adult phase, and then they die. Mammals go through a series of increasingly complex phases. Any mammal starts as a single-celled zygote; it grows in the womb through many embryonic and fetal phases. After birth, many mammals pass through juvenile phases and then into their adult phase. Then they die. A human animal begins as a simple single-­ celled zygote and grows into an extremely complex organism containing trillions of cells. From its start as a zygote to its peak, a human life climbs very high on Mount Improbable. The MEPP drives the self-organization of growing organisms (Aoki, 1994; Martyushev, 2013: 1158; Seely & Macklem, 2012; Seely et  al., 2014). So these growing organisms (as processes) are agents. A biodrome is any organism whose life span traverses an arc of complexity. Every biodrome climbs Mount Improbable. Biodromes are animated by spirits. All biodromes are alive. But not all living things are biodromes. The life span of an organism which does not increase in complexity is not an agent.

248 

E. Steinhart

The life of single-celled organisms (like a bacterium, protozoan, or yeast) does not climb up Mount Improbable. It does not go through phases of increasing complexity. Hence these life spans are not agents, and they are not animated by their own spirits. A cell which lives only as a simple self-­ reproducer participates only in the spirit of its geneadrome.

9 Animated Universes Our universe began in an extremely low-entropy state. And it has evolved through many phases of increasing complexity (Chaisson, 2001). Since the second law of thermodynamics works universally, it is arguable that our universe as a whole is animated by thermodynamic forces. It is a cosmodrome animated by a cosmic spirit. And since it internally self-organizes into functionally distinctive organs (galaxies, solar systems, planets, etc.), it is an organism with a soul. But what about cosmic life? The Stoics argued that our universe reproduces in a great cosmic cycle. Does modern science justify the ancient animistic thesis that our universe is a self-­ reproducing animal? Our universe has many intriguing features. Its laws appear to be very finely tuned for the internal evolution of complexity. It begins in a low-­ entropy state and travels through an arc of complexity. As a total structure, it is extremely complex. On all these points, our universe resembles a highly evolved organism (i.e., an organism whose lineage has gone through many evolutionary branchings). Many highly evolved organisms have bodies and organs that are finely tuned for performing complex functions. Examples like wings, eyes, and brains are well-known. Plants are finely tuned for photosynthesis, birds for flying, and humans for running and thinking. Complex organisms begin in relatively low-entropy states and traverse biological arcs of complexity. And biological evolution has generated lineages of organisms on which complexity increases. Based on these analogies between organisms and our universe, scientific animists propose that the best explanation for the intriguing features of our universe is that it has evolved from previous universes. It has been generated in a process involving self-reproduction, inheritance, variation, and selection. Linde (1994) proposes that universes reproduce by

10  Scientific Animism 

249

budding during cosmic inflation. Smolin (1997) proposes that universes reproduce through black holes. Gardner and Conlon (2013) have shown that the equations for Smolin’s evolving universes are similar to those for evolving earthly organisms. Dawkins (2008: 185–8) agrees that some theory of cosmic evolution is the best explanation for the intriguing features of our universe. After surveying many scientific theories of cosmic evolution, I have argued elsewhere (2014: chs. 6–7; 2020: ch. 5) that our universe is a self-reproducing computer. These ideas suggest a research program for scientific animism: scientific animism aims to develop computer simulations of the evolution of increasingly complex self-­ reproducing universes. Historical animists said our universe was a living animal. Although scientific animists cannot affirm that thesis, we can acknowledge its plausibility. Historical animists also said our universe was an intelligent animal. By extrapolating from evolutionary trends, Kurzweil has argued that our universe will “wake up” into intelligent self-consciousness (2005: 375). And while scientific animists cannot affirm that thesis, we can likewise recognize it as one of the future possibilities of our universe. Scientific animism does not rule out the strongest claims of the historical animisms.

10 Conclusion The traditional definitions of animism proposed theories of animation. These theories were unclear and formulated in terms of obscure concepts (like spirits and souls). By going over the history of animism in Western thought, and by picking up those aspects of that history that are open to scientific refinement, we developed a scientific animism. We developed precise accounts of spirits, agents, organisms, and souls. We gave a precise account of what it means to be animated and which things are animated. Many things in our universe have very high degrees of animation. Far from declaring that animism is superstitious or unscientific, modern Western science affirms that animism is a scientifically accurate and sophisticated way of understanding nature. Although scientific animism uses scientific concepts, it might be objected that it uses them merely descriptively. It does not propose any

250 

E. Steinhart

novel hypotheses which might be verified or falsified by future scientific progress. But scientific animists can make testable proposals about future science. As the historical animisms become scientifically refined, concepts associated with information came to the fore. Scientific animism therefore proposes that, as fundamental physics makes progress, the most basic physical concepts will be informational. Thus, quantum mechanics and general relativity will be reconciled by concepts rooted in information theory. Our universe is ultimately an ocean of entangled quantum bits of information (Wen, 2018). Entanglement played a central role in the animisms of Plotinus, Cavendish, and Leibniz. So perhaps the ultimate scientific definition of animism is this: all the complexity of our universe emerges from the self-organization of entangled qubits. Nevertheless, scientific animism does not depend on speculations about entangled qubits. The scientific animist can rest content with the empirically well-­ justified thesis that agents are common in our universe.

References Adami, C., Ofria, C., & Collier, T. (2000). Evolution of biological complexity. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 97(9), 4463–4468. Annila, A., & Kuismanen, E. (2007). Natural hierarchy emerges from energy dispersal. Bio Systems, 95, 227–233. Ansdell, M. (2019). The big bang explained. Enslow Publishing. Aoki, I. (1994). Entropy production in human life span: A thermodynamic measure for aging. Age, 17, 29–31. Aschwanden, M. (2018). Self-organizing systems in planetary physics: Harmonic resonances of planet and moon orbits. New Astronomy, 58, 107–123. Aupers, S. (2002). The revenge of the machines: On modernity, digital technology and animism. Asian Journal of Social Science, 30(2), 199–220. Bird-David, N. (1999). ‘Animism’ revisited. Current Anthropology, 40(Supplement), S67–S91. Brown, L., & Walker, W. (2008). Prologue: Archaeology, animism, and non-­ human agents. Journal of Archaeological Method and Theory, 15, 297–299. Buckland, R. (1986). Complete book of witch craft (2nd ed.). Llewellyn Publications.

10  Scientific Animism 

251

Callender, C. (2004). There is no puzzle about the low-entropy past. In C.  Hitchcock (Ed.), Contemporary debates in philosophy of science (pp. 240–256). Blackwell. Cassan, A., et al. (2012). One or more bound planets per milky way star from microlensing observations. Nature, 481, 167–169. Catling, D. (2013). Astrobiology: A very short introduction. Oxford. Cavendish, M. (1664). Philosophical letters. Publisher unknown. Chaisson, E. (2001). Cosmic evolution: The rise of complexity in nature. Harvard University Press. Coeckelbergh, M. (2010). The spirit in the network: Models for spirituality in a technological culture. Zygon, 45(4), 957–978. Conway, A. ([1690] 1996). Principles of the most ancient and modern philosophy. Coudert, A. and T. Corse (trans.). New York: Cambridge University Press. Crosby, D. (2014). More than discourse: Symbolic expressions of naturalistic faith. SUNY Press. Cuhulain, K. (2011). Pagan religions: A handbook for diversity training. Acorn Guild Press. Cunningham, S. (2004). Wicca: A guide for the solitary practitioner. Llewellyn Publications. Dales, R. (1980). The de-animation of the heavens in the middle ages. Journal of the History of Ideas, 41(4), 531–550. Dawkins, R. (1996). Climbing mount improbable. W. W. Norton. Dawkins, R. (2008). The god delusion. New  York: Houghton-Mifflin. ISBN: 978-0-618-68000-9. Dewar, R. (2003). Information theory explanation of the fluctuation theorem, maximum entropy production and self-organized criticality in non-­ equilibrium stationary states. Journal of Physics A, 36, 631–641. Dewar, R. (2006). Maximum entropy production and non-equilibrium statistical mechanics. In A. Kleidon & R. Lorenz (Eds.), Non-equilibrium thermodynamics and the production of entropy (pp. 41–55). Springer. Dewar, R. (2010). Maximum entropy production and plant optimization theories. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 365, 1429–1435. DiFrisco, J. (2015). Elan vital revisited: Bergson and the thermodynamic paradigm. The Southern Journal of Philosophy, 53(1), 54–73. Dretske, F. (1980). The intentionality of cognitive states. Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 5, 281–294. Ebbing, D., & Gammon, S. (2017). General chemistry (11th ed.). Cengage Learning.

252 

E. Steinhart

England, J. (2013). Statistical physics of self-replication. Journal of Chemical Physics, 139(121923), 1–8. England, J. (2014). A New physics theory of life (Interview with N. Wolchover). Quanta Magazine.. www.quantamagazine. org/a-­n ew-­t hermodynamics-­t heory-­o f-­t he-­o rigin-­o f-­l ife-­2 0140122/ (accessed 5 August 2022). Farrar, J., & Farrar, S. (1981). A Witches’ Bible. Phoenix Publishing. Feibleman, J. (1970). Spirit as a property of matter. The Southwestern Journal of Philosophy, 1(1), 9–19. Fredkin, E. (2003). An introduction to digital philosophy. International Journal of Theoretical Physics, 42(2), 189–247. Fry, R. (2017). Physical intelligence and thermodynamic computing. Entropy, 19(107), 1–27. Fukumura, Y., & Ozawa, H. (2013). Entropy production in planetary atmospheres and its applications. In R. Dewar et al. (Eds.), Beyond the second law (pp. 225–239). Springer. Gardner, A., & Conlon, J. (2013). Cosmological natural selection and the purpose of the universe. Complexity, 18(5), 48–56. Gilbert, W. ([1600] 1893). De Magnete. Mottelay, P. (trans.). New York: Wiley. Green, M. (2019). Atheopaganism: An earth-honoring path rooted in science. Green Dragon Press. Hartmann, F. (1896). Paracelsus. Kegan Paul & Co. Hayworth, B., & Foley, B. (2020). Waterworlds may have better climate buffering capacities than their continental counterparts. Astrophysical Journal Letters, 902(L10), 1–10. Helander-Renvall, E. (2010). Animism, personhood, and the nature of reality: Sami perspectives. Polar Record, 46(236), 44–56. Heuser-Kessler, M.  L. (1992). Schelling’s concept of self-organization. In R. Friedrich & A. Wunderlin (Eds.), Evolution of dynamical structures in complex systems (pp. 395–415). Springer. Huang, S. Y., Deng, Y., & Wang, J. (2017). Revisiting the global surface energy budgets with maximum-entropy-production model of surface heat flows. Climate Dynamics, 49, 1531–1545. Kleidon, A. (2010). Non-equilibrium thermodynamics, maximum entropy production, and earth-system evolution. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society A, 368, 181–196. Kondepudi, D. (2012). Self-organization, entropy production, and physical intelligence. Ecological Psychology, 24, 33–45.

10  Scientific Animism 

253

Kouvaris, K., et  al. (2017). How evolution learns to generalise. PLoS Computational Biology, 13(4), e1005358. Kugler, R. N., & Turvey, M. T. (1987). Information, natural law, and the self-­ assembly of rhythmic movements. LEA. Kunimoto, M., & Matthews, J. (2020). Searching the entirety of Kepler data. II.  Occurrence rate estimates for FGK stars. The Astronomical Journal, 159(248), 1–27. Kurzweil, R. (2005). The singularity is near: When humans transcend biology. Viking. La Mettrie, J. ([1748] 1996). Machine man and other writings. Thomson, A. and D. Clarke (trans.), New York: Cambridge University Press. Linde, A.  D. (1994). The self-reproducing inflationary universe. Scientific American, 271(5), 48–55. Lineweaver, C. (2006). Cosmological and biological reproducibility: Limits on the maximum entropy production principle. In A.  Kleidon & R.  Lorenz (Eds.), Non-equilibrium thermodynamics and the production of entropy (pp. 67–77). Springer. Lloyd, S. (2006). Programming the universe. Vintage. Lorenz, R. (2002). Planets, life and the production of entropy. International Journal of Astrobiology, 1(1), 3–13. Lorenz, R., Lunine, J., & Withers, P. (2001). Titan, mars and earth: Entropy production by latitudinal heat transport. Geophysical Research Letters, 28(3), 415–418. Lupa. (2021). Nature spirituality from the ground up: Connect with nature spirits in your ecosystem. Amazon Publishing. ISBN-13 9798502263894. Martin, O., & Horvath, J. (2013). Biological evolution of replicator systems: Towards a quantitative approach. Origins of Life and Evolution of Biospheres, 43, 151–160. Martyushev, L. (2013). Entropy and entropy production: Old misconceptions and new breakthroughs. Entropy, 15, 1152–1170. Martyushev, L., & Seleznev, V. (2006). Maximum entropy production principle in physics, chemistry, and biology. Physics Reports, 426, 1–45. Martyushev, L., & Zubarev, S. (2019). Entropy production and luminosity-­ effective temperature relation for main-sequence stars. Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, 528, 121403. McCarthy, J. (1979). Ascribing mental qualities to machines. In M.  Ringle (Ed.), Philosophical perspectives in artificial intelligence (pp.  161–195). Humanities Press.

254 

E. Steinhart

Morowitz, H., Schmitz-Moormann, N., & Salmon, J. (2005). Teilhard’s two energies. Zygon, 40(3), 721–732. Muller, I. (2007). A history of thermodynamics: The doctrine of energy and entropy. Springer. Ozawa, H., & Shimokawa, S. (2015). Thermodynamics of a tropical cyclone: Generation and dissipation of mechanical energy in a self-driven convection system. Tellus A: Dynamic Meteorology and Oceanography, 67(1), 1–15. Ozawa, H., et al. (2003). The second law of thermodynamics and the global climate system: A review of the maximum entropy production principle. Reviews of Geophysics, 41(4), 1–24. Pagel, W. (1960). Paracelsus and the neoplatonic and gnostic tradition. Ambix, 8(3), 125–166. Roos, N. (2014). Entropic forces in Brownian motion. American Journal of Physics, 82(12), 1161–1166. Rosenblueth, A., Wiener, N., & Bigelow, J. (1943). Behavior, purpose, and teleology. Philosophy of Science, 10(1), 18–24. Rovelli, C. (2015). Relative information at the foundations of physics. In A. Aguirre, B. Forster, & Z. Merali (Eds.), It from bit or bit from it? On physics and information (pp. 79–86). Springer. Rusu, D. C. (2018). Same spirit, different structure: Francis Bacon on inanimate and animate matter. Early Science and Medicine, 23, 444–458. Schneider, E., & Kay, J. (1994). Life as a manifestation of the second law of thermodynamics. Mathematical and Computer Modelling, 19(6–8), 25–48. Seely, A., & Macklem, P. (2012). Fractal variability: An emergent property of complex dissipative systems. Chaos, 22(1), 013108. Seely, A., Newman, K., & Herry, C. (2014). Fractal structure and entropy production within the central nervous system. Entropy, 16, 4497–4520. Silk, J. (2000). The big bang (3rd ed.). Henry Holt. Silver Elder. (2011). Wiccan celebrations: Inspiration for living by nature’s cycle. Moon Books. Skene, K. (2015). Life’s a gas: A thermodynamic theory of biological evolution. Entropy, 17, 5522–5548. Smith, T. (2019). The common consent argument for the existence of nature spirits. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 98(2), 1–15. Smolin, L. (1997). The life of the cosmos. Oxford University Press. Steinhart, E. (2014). Your digital afterlives: Computational theories of life after death. Palgrave Macmillan. Steinhart, E. (2016). Eupraxia as a religion of nature. American Journal of Theology and Philosophy, 37(3), 227–245.

10  Scientific Animism 

255

Steinhart, E. (2020). Believing in Dawkins: The new spiritual atheism. Palgrave Macmillan. Steinhart, E. (2021). Atheists giving thanks to the sun. Philosophia, 49(3), 1219–1232. Swenson, R. (2006). Spontaneous order, autocatakinetic closure, and the development of space-time. Annals of the New  York Academy of Sciences, 901, 311–319. Swenson, R. (2009). The fourth law of thermodynamics or the Law of Maximum Entropy Production (LMEP). Chemistry, 18(1), 333–339. Taft, R., Pheasant, M., & Mattick, J. (2007). The relationship between non-­ protein-­coding DNA and eukaryotic complexity. BioEssays, 29(3), 288–299. Tononi, G. (2004). An information integration theory of consciousness. BMC Neuroscience, 5(42), 1–22. Turvey, M., & Carello, C. (2012). On intelligence from first principles: Guidelines for the inquiry into the hypothesis of physical intelligence. Ecological Psychology, 24, 3–32. Tylor, E. (1866). The religion of savages. Fortnightly Review, 6, 71–86. Tzafestas, S. (2018). Energy, information, feedback, adaptation, and self-­ organization. Springer. Vallino, J. (2010). Ecosystem biogeochemistry considered as a distributed metabolic network ordered by maximum entropy production. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 365, 1417–1427. Wald, R. (2006). The arrow of time and the initial conditions of the universe. Studies in History and Philosophy of Modern Physics, 37, 394–398. Watson, R., & Szathmary, E. (2016). How can evolution learn? Trends in Ecology & Evolution, 31(2), 147–157. Wen, X. G. (2018). Four revolutions in physics and the second quantum revolution—A unification of force and matter by quantum information. International Journal of Modern Physics B, 32(26), 1830010. Wissner-Gross, A., & Freer, C. (2013). Causal entropic forces. Physics Review Letters, 110, 168702. Wolpert, D. (2013). Information width: A way for the second law to increase complexity. In C. Lineweaver, P. Davies, and M. Ruse (Eds.), Complexity and the Arrow of Time (pp. 246–275). New York: Cambridge University Press. Wright, P. (1970). Entropy and disorder. Contemporary Physics, 11(6), 581–588. Zeebe, R., & Caldeira, K. (2008). Close mass balance of long-term carbon fluxes from ice-core CO2 and ocean chemistry records. Nature Geoscience, 1, 312–315.

11 Childhood Animism and Innate Belief Tiddy Smith

Let me begin this chapter with a little story, the first words of which are: “Goodbye Grandma!”

My son was three years old and still a little bit wobbly on his feet, so I held his little hand to get him down Grandma’s porch steps safely. “Goodbye steps”, he added. I gave a little smirk. “Goodbye flowers!” “Goodbye tree!” “Goodbye letterbox!”

Silly boy, I thought. But now he is thirteen. He has grown up and grown out of his babyish ways. He doesn’t say childish things like that anymore. He treats the objects as objects and the persons as persons. Just as it should be. Right?

T. Smith (*) Department of Philosophy, Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Smith (ed.), Animism and Philosophy of Religion, Palgrave Frontiers in Philosophy of Religion, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94170-3_11

257

258 

T. Smith

Well, there’s a feeling I can’t shake. Is that really such a happy ending? When did I last wish the flowers, the trees, the letterboxes farewell? Perhaps I did once. I remember, distinctly, a pet rock. I remember that my toy soldiers (arranged in strategic positions on the floor and around my bedroom window) protected my vulnerable sleeping body all through the night. I know that I appreciated their hard work, and perhaps I thanked them and farewelled them each and every morning. And then… What? I grew up. I just stopped seeing the world that way. I adopted a new term, “it”, to come after “he” and “she”. I threw my Velveteen Rabbits under the bus. The world became a more lonely place. In the English language, this particular flavour of loneliness even has its own special word: “adulthood”. But then, to be lonely is one thing. To be correct is another. And I now just accept my loneliness in exchange for the virtue of intelligence. The fact is, I guess, that a child is less discerning than an adult. A child simply “does not realise that there can be actions unaccompanied by consciousness” (Piaget, 2007: 177). The child goes about “erroneously believing that inanimate objects are alive” (Parry & Stuart-Hamilton, 2010: 1043). Fully developed adults know where the agents are and where the mere objects are. Sure, there are a few remaining hunter-gatherer societies whose adults seem to persist in this childish style of thinking. But isn’t that just the proof of the mental limitations of these adults? As G. H. Mead once wrote (when such words could still be written): “The primitive man has the mind of the child—indeed, of the young child” (1934, 377). And I am not primitive. I am both sophisticated and educated. I don’t make the same mistakes as the child, who is still cognitively developing. I’m a grown-up and I don’t keep imaginary friends.

1 Childhood Animism It may sound odd, but saying goodbye to the letterbox is perfectly normal. At least, such behaviour is to be expected during a particular stage of human development. It is something that all human beings do. In the story above, my son was expressing the unreflective commitments of childhood animism. Childhood animism is a phenomenon that has been

11  Childhood Animism and Innate Belief 

259

a focus of study in developmental psychology since Piaget’s groundbreaking studies in the Child’s Conception of the World and the Child’s Conception of Causality, first published in 1926 and 1927, respectively. What does Piaget take childhood animism to consist in? Well, very young children tend to imbue agency and consciousness to objects that most adults take to be non-agents and non-conscious. Piaget took this pattern of behaviour to be grounded in the child’s inability to grasp the world as fundamentally unlike his or her own mind. Harris Stern summarizes Piaget’s view in the following way. The child cannot distinguish between points of view, he cannot view the world as separate from himself, and, because he cannot distinguish between psychic and physical reality, he operates as if the world were filled with will and intention similar to his own. (1966, 2)

Note that, for Piaget, this animism is not a kind of innate ontology of childhood thought. Rather, it is the natural result of children’s learning about the world around them. The child must learn the distinction between self and other, and this typically occurs later in life. From the fact that the child begins without any such distinction, animistic patterns of thought flow quite intuitively, even though they are not, strictly speaking, innate. This tendency to animate does not end abruptly. Rather, without wider cultural reinforcement, childhood animism follows a gradual downhill trajectory, typically settling at some kind of equilibrium by approximately the age of eleven. By this age, the majority of children restrict the attribution of life and agency only to animals (or to both plants and animals). Without ongoing reinforcement, children are thought to “grow out” of their animistic behaviour, which is seen as a superstitious and false way of perceiving the world: a world as filled with other-than-human conscious agents. Eventually, our indiscriminate animism dies. I will henceforth use the deliberately loaded term “disenchantment” to denote this process of “growing out” of animism. For his own part, Piaget noted four stages in the development of this animistic attitude in young children (2007: 174–187). He characterizes this attitude as the extent to which children are willing to ascribe

260 

T. Smith

consciousness and will to objects that are considered by most adults to be inert. The four stages are as follows: First Stage: Any object may, at some time or other, be the seat of consciousness, when the object displays a certain degree of activity, or when it is in working condition, or when it is the seat of some action. Second Stage: Consciousness is restricted to things that can move, that are ordinarily in motion, or whose special function is to be in motion. Third Stage: Consciousness is restricted to things that can move spontaneously or of their own accord. Fourth Stage: Consciousness is restricted to plants and animals. This model of a long period of pervasive animistic thinking which dwindles across the span of human cognitive development has been critiqued on several grounds. Margaret Mead was one of the earliest critics. She rejected Piaget’s claim that childhood animism was universal in human development. Her scepticism was based on her fieldwork in Manus island among local children, who seemed to exhibit a general lack of animism (1932: 185–90). But Mead’s scepticism failed to sway the anthropological community, as her methods appeared sketchy and at odds with those of Piaget. Further research among other non-Western children has since contradicted Mead’s results and corroborated the general claim that childhood animism is indeed universal (see, e.g., Dennis and Russell (1940), Dennis (1943), Nurcombe (1970), and Madsen (1982)). Ashton disputes Piaget’s claim that children’s animistic  responses to questions represent factive or literal claims about the world (1993: 167). Instead, the child’s fantastical and magical responses should be taken as representing a non-literal, imaginative, and symbolic style of thought. The trouble with this claim is that younger children tend to correct their verdicts about conscious life and agency when inconsistencies in their thought are exposed. When the child is shown that some animistic claim clashes with an everyday belief, for example, the animistic claim is brought into line. It is not clear why magical or symbolic thought would be hostage to the world of the everyday. Other criticisms deal more specifically with Piaget’s four stage model. Stern, for example, notes that,

11  Childhood Animism and Innate Belief 

261

typically, younger children “classify plants as well as objects as not alive … It is only at some later stage, when life is identified with more general characteristics … that plants are again classified as alive” (1966, p. iii). Moreover, some recent research points to a resurgence in animist thinking after the age of forty (Parry & Stuart-Hamilton, 2010, p. 1048). So, the span of a human life appears to witness both a period of disenchantment during adolescence as well as a later period of re-enchantment around middle age. It is worth noting that researchers struggle to specify precise ages at which these developmental milestones are typically reached, with most studies exhibiting massive intercultural variation. Another sort of criticism casts doubt on the idea that the animist mode of thinking prevalent in young children is intuitively obvious to the child, as Piaget believed. Taking this approach, Pascal Boyer argues that childhood animism results from a disposition to retain counterintuitive claims more easily than intuitive ones. So, rather than animism developing as an intuitive ontology that is attractive to the child’s mind, animism is acquired precisely because it conflicts with our innate ideas. To say “the letterbox misses you” or “the candle wants to go to sleep” is to paradoxically apply predicates reserved for conscious animals (missing someone, wanting to sleep) to subjects that are artifacts (letterboxes and candles). According to Boyer, in order to explain childhood animism, “we need to describe the cognitive processes whereby representations which are not part of our intuitive ontology ... become culturally widespread” (1996, 84). We might think of Hume’s famous insight that we have a tendency to believe that which evokes surprise and wonder. Boyer’s explanation can account for this “surprise and wonder” in terms of the violation of core principles of an intuitive ontology. Those are some of the larger quibbles. But despite these kinds of quibbles about precisely when, how, or why it occurs, childhood animism and the subsequent process of disenchantment are experimental phenomena that have been “replicated literally thousands of times” (Carey, 1987: 142). There is no longer any question as to whether children attribute life, consciousness, and agency to many things which most adults take to be mere objects. They do. Children animate. And the older they get, the less they do it. It is perhaps important to note that very young children (e.g. four-­ year-­olds) are inconsistent in their attributions of life and agency. This is

262 

T. Smith

typical of Piaget’s First Stage. Children of this age have no systematic psychological or biological theory. Instead, attributions of will and desire are cast about in an almost random way. When probed for justifications or explanations for their animistic claims, they are prone to contradiction and may come to reject their initial judgements when absurdities are exposed  (Williamson et  al., 1982: 465). Childhood animism, in very young children, tends to be capricious, inconsistent, unsystematized, and easily shakeable. Their justifications for their animistic beliefs are likewise ad hoc. It is not until the child has progressed past Piaget’s First Stage that animist attributions become relatively more stable, consistent, and systematized. It is also during these later stages that the child’s commitments become relatively firm, if not unshakeable. Life and agency, sometimes considered as one and the same phenomenon, come to be deeply connected with movement, and particularly movement that is spontaneous or apparently self-directed. Incredibly, in the penultimate stage of disenchantment, agency, will, and consciousness typically come to be restricted to the following set: (1) animals, (2) plants, (3) the Sun, and (4) the Moon. Conscious life may also be attributed to (5) rivers, (6) winds, and (7) clouds, but only in very small degrees (Piaget, 2007, 186—187). As one ten-year-old interviewed by Piaget put it, rivers feel the warmth of the Sun only “a tiny bit, because they are flowing” (1929: 184). This “mature animist” view is well outlined in an interview had between the anthropologist Barry Nurcombe and a young adolescent of Arnhem Land: Is a mountain alive? – No. – Why? – Because it stands still. – Is the sun alive? – Yes. – Why? – Because it’s move. – A cat? – Yes. Because it can run … – A bell? – No. Because we ring it with our hands … – A fly? – Yes. Because it can fly everywhere … – A bicycle? – No. Because anyone can ride it … – Take the wind and a bicycle. Is one of them more alive than the other? – The wind. – Why do you say the wind is more alive? – Because it blows. (1970: 73)

In light of these findings, I want to propose the following trajectory of disenchantment: (1) an immature animist phase, during which attributions of life, consciousness, and agency are made inconsistently and

11  Childhood Animism and Innate Belief 

263

unsystematically, (2) a mature animist phase, during which attributions of life, consciousness, and agency are consistent, systematic, and restricted in scope, applying to animals, plants, the Moon, the Sun, rivers, winds, and clouds, and (3) a mechanical phase, during which attributions of life, consciousness, and agency are systematic and more restricted again, typically having only some plants and animals within its scope. It is also plausible, given some recent research (Parry & Stuart-Hamilton, 2010; McDonald & Stuart-Hamilton, 2000), to think that the mature animist phase recurs, overturning some assumptions of the mechanical phase in late adulthood. So, to conclude this section: children are animists, whether because of features of our innate ontologies (as Boyer would have it) or through the process of normal learning (as Piaget believed). At first, children’s attributions of mental states are flimsy and inconsistent, but soon a “mature animist” system of thought comes to flourish which is both relatively coherent and steadfast. Human beings, it appears, are settled in this way of thinking unless there is training available in the mechanical mode of thought (a mode of thought which has arguably only been available in any widespread sense since the scientific revolution). Before moving on to discuss what the implications are for the philosophy of religion, I want to discuss one other aspect of childhood cognitive development which is very relevant to this discussion: childhood artificialism.

2 Childhood Artificialism In Alvin Plantinga’s Warrant and Proper Function, he writes: “According to the great Swiss psychologist Jean Piaget, a seven-year-old child whose cognitive faculties are functioning properly will believe that everything in the universe has a purpose in some grand overarching plan or design” (1993: 5). Plantinga is here alluding to Piaget’s suggestion that children exhibit a tendency to finalism and artificialism. Deborah Kelemen famously proposed that this obsession with purposes may give us reason to think that children are “intuitive theists” (2004). Children view the world in largely functional and teleological terms. This sounds a lot like

264 

T. Smith

the child naturally thinks in theistic terms. But the theistic glosses with which Plantinga and Kelemen slather Piaget’s original notion are extremely misleading. To get to grips with childhood artificialism and finalism, let us return to Piaget’s original findings. According to Piaget, childhood artificialism consists in children “regarding things as the product of human creation” (1929: 253). Here are the sorts of examples that Piaget has in mind. Children’s belief that the Sun was a “big ball” made by “some men” who told it to “go up in the air”, that the Sun’s fire was brought about “with matches” which came “from home”, that the Sun grew from a “little ball” of fire which was a remnant of bombings from the First World War (1929: 266), that clouds form “in smoke” which comes “from stoves”, that the stars are lit from the light of lamp-posts (1929: 267), that the sky is made from big slabs of blue stone “fastened to something” so that they don’t fall down (1929: 288), that ladies come from the “meatmaker” and new babies from the “butcher” (1929: 364), and that trees come “from seeds” which are made either by a clever “shopkeeper” or by a machine in the “seed factory” (1929: 335–6). Perhaps you can remember holding such beliefs yourself. I myself remember being asked, as a six-year-old child, why killer whales were black and white: “They must have been made before colour was invented”, came my ingenious reply. Did I believe a god was so constrained? Of course not! My answer was informed by my limited knowledge of the history of the television set. And yes, Piaget admits that in these artificialist explanations, God’s creative power is sometimes invoked. But even in such cases, God is conceived of in mundane ways, as akin to any other limited human agent (if a little larger and stronger). This childhood artificialism informs a particular conception of the world as full of distinct final causes or purposes. This was what Piaget termed the child’s finalism. But note that there is no “grand overarching plan”, as Plantinga would have us believe. Instead, the functions of individual things are thought to derive from the purposes had in mind by their (usually human) creators. The point needs stressed: there is no evidence that children believe that all things were created for a single, overarching purpose. Instead, there is merely “a general bias to treat objects and behaviours as existing for a purpose” (Kelemen, 2004: 295). Take one of Kelemen’s more famous examples: in the case of the pointiness of

11  Childhood Animism and Innate Belief 

265

prehistoric rocks, she notes that the purposes invoked by children vary. The purpose may be for the rocks’ own protection (“so that animals wouldn’t sit on them and smash them”) or for the sake of other creatures nearby (“so that animals could scratch on them if they got itchy”) (Kelemen, 1999). In both cases, we have explanations that are difficult to account for on the hypothesis of a divinely caused, anthropocentric universe. Instead, in the first case we seem to have a sly and wiley rock, mounting a clever defence against pesky animals. In the second case, we are invited to view the rock as part of the material culture of animals. Either way, these examples look more like the child is an intuitive animist than an intuitive theist. So what for Kelemen and her claim about intuitive theism? It seems hard to shake the idea that the finalism of children is at least some evidence that a designed universe is an attractive idea to the child’s mind. And indeed, children do, without apparent training, appeal to gods to explain features of the world around them. But Piaget anticipated this objection seventy years before Kelemen came along to argue for it. “The fact is”, rebutted Piaget to a future Kelemen, “too many adult influences supervene, likely to upset the spontaneous conceptions of the child” (1929: 269). It seems that without any available studies on spontaneous theistic ideas arising in non-theistic cultures, we have no reason to depart radically from what is more solidly established: children are intuitive animists, not theists. “The majority of children”, Piaget writes, “only bring in God against their will … and not until they can find nothing else to bring forward”. More forcefully, he says “the child’s real religion … is quite definitely anything other than the over-elaborated religion with which he is plied” (1929: 353–4). So what is the child’s religion? It is an anthropocentric religion, according to which the world contains many more things which are like us and which are in many more ways dependent upon us. If this better represents the religion of the child, it is a non-theistic religion and a teleologically pluralist religion. That is to say, while in the child’s religion everything may have a functional explanation, there is no functional explanation which everything has. The universe is not so arranged that the comfort of humans is its only purpose. True, the Sun may follow us around to keep us warm, but the pointy rock may be pointy just to

266 

T. Smith

prevent us from sitting on it and squashing it. The purposes of things depend on both (1) the intentions of the various creators of these things and (2) the intentions of those very things created. Despite Kelemen’s and Plantinga’s broad assertions to the contrary, the child’s finalism is not global and overarching, but local and specific. The child does not naturally think like a theist. The child naturally thinks like an animist. The world appears to the child largely as anthropocentric, anthropomorphic, and even anthropogenic. Now that the phenomena of childhood animism, artificialism, and finalism have been thoroughly described, it is time to turn to the question of the extent to which these phenomena lend support to animist claims. It is time to ask how the naturalness of animist belief relates to the defensibility of animism.

3 Rationalism and Arguments from Innateness In the history of Western philosophy, there have long been two opposed schools of thought. On the one hand, there have been nativists. On the other hand, there have been empiricists. To give a rough approximation of the central difference between these two groups, nativists take it that some knowledge is not learned, whereas empiricists take it that all knowledge is learned. Thus, the nativist says that there is a sense in which we are “born with” some types of “unshakeable” knowledge. What does it mean for some cognitive trait to be “with us from birth” or “unshakeable”? Stated more carefully, the nativist argues that in the normal course of human development, some knowledge eventually becomes a trait of ours, despite our not having learned that knowledge. That is the sense in which the knowledge is said to be “innate”. As Leibniz put it “there are ideas and principles which do not reach us through the senses, and which we find in ourselves without having formed them” (1981, 74). A more contemporary definition runs like this: a trait is innate for an organism so long as it is not acquired by psychological processes and so long as that organism would acquire that trait given a species-typical pattern of

11  Childhood Animism and Innate Belief 

267

development (Margolis & Laurence, 2013: 711; Samuels, 2002: 234). This definition implies that if the innate trait is not acquired by psychological processes, then psychologists could not empirically account for how the trait was acquired by that organism. As Richard Samuels puts it: “if a cognitive structure S is innate, then scientific psychology can specify no mechanism or process in virtue of which S is possessed by an individual organism O at a given time t, even though there is no time prior to t at which O possesses S” (2002: 251). So, an innate belief is one such that it seems to arrive ex nihilo in the believer, at least, so far as a psychologist could tell. It’s an old debate, and swords continue to cross on the nativism/empiricism battleground. Indeed, one can trace the debate to Plato and his radical nativist claim in the Meno that all knowledge is innate, emerging in us via a process of recollection or anamnesis. So why would anyone be a nativist? It all sounds rather spooky. The major motivation for nativism is the Poverty of the Stimulus argument, which is in many ways equivalent to the old problem of induction: we cannot draw conclusions about unobserved cases from evidence of observed cases, without accepting some principle of generalization which is itself unjustified by the evidence. Whatever principle of generalization we adopt, this must come from “inside us” and not from “out there in the world”. And since it must come from “inside us”, it must be innate. Whether or not nativism is correct, what I want to discuss is an associated problem, that is, if animism is innate, does the fact of its innateness recommend it? So, let us assume that some knowledge is innate and not learned by experience. Even if there is such knowledge, what can possibly justify our accepting it? If this knowledge is seemingly caused by nothing, if it seemingly comes from nowhere (arising in us apparently by magic), then on what grounds can it be called “knowledge”? And if we can class innate beliefs as knowledge, despite their pedigree being unknown, then what should prevent me from drawing beliefs from a hat and equally calling these “knowledge”? Traditional rationalist defences of innate knowledge have tended to be theistic. Early modern rationalists held that the reliability of innate knowledge was secured by God’s providence. Further, it was argued that the very innateness of god-beliefs themselves proved the point. God has

268 

T. Smith

left an indelible mark on the mind of man in the process of creation. Such arguments tended to follow the unconvincing pattern set out below: 1. If God exists, then he would create me with an innate understanding of his Being. 2. I have such an innate understanding, Therefore, God exists. The fact that this style of argument is a clearcut case of affirming the consequent, strangely enough, does not seem to have bothered the early rationalists. Of particular note is Descartes. Descartes’ Meditations famously makes use of a radical scepticism nowadays named in his honour: “Cartesian Scepticism”. Unfortunately, this radical sceptical method is quickly cast aside when God comes under discussion: “I couldn’t exist with the nature that I have—that is, containing within me the idea of God—if God didn’t really exist”. Later, the consequent is explicitly affirmed: “It is no surprise that God in creating me should have placed this idea in me, to serve as a mark of the craftsman stamped on his work” (1996: 35). The rationalists argued that a belief in divinity was already established in childhood and that this fact proved the innateness of god-beliefs as well as their divine providence. Indeed, Leibniz once noted that “a child deaf and dumb since birth has been seen to worship the full moon” (1981: 76). But surely, if Leibniz’s deaf and dumb child truly existed, she seems to have been innately an animist, not a theist. What is the rationalist’s argument from innateness like? Well, if we choose not to present the arguments as affirming the consequent, I think the rationalist argument from innateness might be reconstructed like this: 1. Human beings have some innate beliefs 2. All these innate beliefs were implanted by God, so that we should know their truth 3. One of these innate beliefs is that God exists Therefore, we know that God exists.

11  Childhood Animism and Innate Belief 

269

But this argument is still quite obviously fallacious, as it commits a petitio principii. We have to assume that the conclusion is true before we can accept the second premise. Sure enough, the circularity in this rationalist approach was promptly attacked by Thomas Reid who noted that “in this reasoning there is evidently a begging of the question” (1975: 276). There are other nativist arguments with more ancient pedigrees. Some of the best known theistic arguments from innateness trace a lineage that begins with Epicurus and his notion of the prolepsis. Although there is debate as to what role the prolepsis is supposed to play in Epicurean epistemology, the common reading has remained the one delivered to us via Cicero in his De Natura Deorum: Epicurus … saw that gods must exist because nature herself has imprinted an idea of them in the minds of all mankind … Such an innate idea Epicurus calls “prolepsis”, that is to say, a certain form of knowledge which is inborn in the mind, and without which there can be no other knowledge, no rational thought or argument. (1972: 87–88)

Cicero goes on to demonstrate the reliability of the prolepsis by appeal to consensus gentium: the ‘firm and continuing consensus of agreement’ by which we judge claims about the gods to be true (e.g. claims like ‘the gods exist’ or ‘the gods are blessed, happy, and immortal’). John Calvin gave new birth to Epicurus’ prolepsis in his Institutes of the Christian Religion. Citing Cicero, Calvin writes: “there is, as the eminent pagan says, no nation so barbarous, no people so savage, that they have not a deep-seated conviction that there is a God” (1960: 44). Interestingly, Calvin appears to blend the prolepsis of Epicurus and the anamnesis or “recollection” of Plato: There is within the human mind, and indeed by natural instinct, an awareness of divinity. This we take to be beyond controversy. To prevent anyone from taking refuge in the pretense of ignorance, God himself has implanted in all men a certain understanding of his divine majesty. Ever renewing its memory, he repeatedly sheds fresh drops. (1960: 43–44)

270 

T. Smith

For this reason, it is not enough to be implanted with an idea of God, which of its own accord flourishes in the human mind. One must bring the idea to mind—one must remember or meditate on the idea—before the idea can flourish as it is supposed to. “God has sown a seed of religion in all men. But scarcely one man in a hundred is met with who fosters it, once received, in his heart, and none in whom it ripens—much less shows fruit in season” (1960–47). But here, yet again, we seem to have arrived back at the circular argument of the rationalists: we know that the belief “God exists” is true, because God put the idea into our minds, and he would desire that we know this particular truth. Calvin’s argument, like its other rationalist incarnations, is circular. This is the common defect of the rationalist’s arguments from innateness. Even so, let us look at how the rationalist’s circular argument would apply to animism. Interestingly, the animist can get better mileage out of the rationalist’s argument than the theist can. First of all, note that there is no contradiction between animism and theism. An animist may or may not also be theist. Therefore, one can take the circular argument from innateness (as set out earlier) and apply it to animism like so: 1. Human beings have some innate beliefs 2. These innate beliefs were implanted by God, so that we should know their truth 3. One of these beliefs is that there exist non-human agents, such as the Sun and the Moon Therefore, there exist non-human agents, such as the Sun and the Moon. And, as presented, this argument is no longer circular, it simply makes use of a theistic assumption at premise two. If the theist was happy to accept that premise when the argument was circular, she should be happier now with this non-circular version! What this shows, surprisingly, is that if one believes that we have innate beliefs implanted by God, this belief may be used as a premise in an argument which can support animism. However, the same argument cannot be used to support theism, as it will necessarily beg the question. This may be food for thought for the theist.

11  Childhood Animism and Innate Belief 

271

But obviously, atheists and agnostics will not be swayed by the argument above. They will reject the second premise. Moreover, the third premise may be dubious too, as many psychologists, including both Piaget and Boyer, reject the idea that animist belief is innate in the proper sense (i.e. not being acquired by psychological processes and making up part of a species-typical pattern of development). Moreover, staunch empiricists will reject the first premise (nativism) altogether. So, there is just too much that is fishy about this argument. There are too many reasons for too many people to be doubtful. There may be a more persuasive argument that everybody can enjoy.

4 The Naturalness of Animist Belief An evidentialist holds that “it is wrong, always and everywhere for anyone to believe anything on insufficient evidence” (Clifford, 1877: 295). Whatever reasons I have for believing that the bellbirds are singing must be evidence of singing bellbirds. Whatever reasons I have for believing that parmesan smells must be evidence of smelly parmesan. So, if I believe, in an animistic fashion, that the bellbirds are gossiping with each other, then all of my reasons for belief must be evidence of gossiping bellbirds. Is it really plausible that children, or adults for that matter, ever have evidence of gossiping bellbirds, angry mountains, or dizzy clouds? If we have no sufficient evidence, says the evidentialist, then we have no sufficient reason to accept animism. This sort of evidentialist epistemology is commonsensical and compelling but fails for reasons with which epistemologists are nowadays familiar. First off, evidentialism is apparently self-undermining (where’s the evidence for the wrongness of believing without sufficient  evidence?). Additionally, there seem to be far too many indispensable beliefs for which no sufficient evidence could ever be given: our moral judgements, our belief in other minds, or the belief in a persisting, external world, and so on. It is far too austere a condition to impose on a person. To follow this rule would be to eliminate the great majority of that which we actually believe.

272 

T. Smith

Perhaps we could approach the question of justification differently. Traditionally, epistemologists have proceeded as though every belief is a skellum and a crook—guilty until proven innocent. But perhaps we should be charitable with our beliefs and treat them as innocent until proven guilty. It is unlikely that many of our beliefs come anywhere close to having the kind of justification demanded by the evidentialist. We are not “epistemological gods” with “infallible and indubitable” evidence for all that we do in fact believe (Clark & Barrett, 2011: 647). This is especially the case for all those core beliefs drawn from the “lucky dip” of upbringing and tradition. We could not navigate in this world without all those beliefs that guide our path, despite their less-than-impressive epistemic credentials. There is also a poverty of the stimulus argument that can be gestured at here: we simply do not get enough information through sense experience and reason alone to explain the vast informational output of all the beliefs that we actually hold. “Luckily”, say Kelly James Clark and Justin Barrett, we come into the world already “equipped with cognitive faculties that produce substantial beliefs about the world where experience and logic fail” (2011: 644). The cognitive faculties which produce these substantial beliefs are what Thomas Reid famously called “common sense”—a set of first principles of human cognition taken as simple and original. This approach has much in common with Alvin Plantinga’s view of warrant as conferred by our cognitive faculties functioning properly in an appropriate environment. In both Reid’s and Plantinga’s estimation, many of our unreflective beliefs are warranted so long as they are caused by the right sort of cognitive mechanisms (i.e. mechanisms that are normal in the scheme of human cognitive development) which produce undefeated outputs. So, rather than asking whether we have sufficient evidence for P, we should ask whether P is natural or whether P has arisen within the process of normal or proper human cognitive functioning. Why does the naturalness of religious beliefs matter? As Hans Van Eyghen puts it, “the naturalness of religious beliefs is important because beliefs that … result from culture or upbringing can no longer unambiguously be called mere outputs of cognitive mechanisms” (2016: 36). Of course, a belief that comes from culture or upbringing is not immediately rendered untrustworthy. However, the reliability of such beliefs hinges on the reliability of, to

11  Childhood Animism and Innate Belief 

273

name a few, hermeneutic interpretation, testimony, and chains of transmission, and this is totally unlike the immediate or spontaneous beliefs of our more basic perceptual and cognitive faculties. These anti-evidentialist epistemological approaches invoke a principle of credulity according to which we are reasonable to accept the deliverances of our cognitive faculties until and unless they are contradicted by evidence elsewhere. C. D. Broad gives one of the better formulations of the principle in his Religion, Philosophy, and Psychical Research: The practical postulate which we go upon everywhere else is to treat cognitive claims as veridical unless there be some positive reason to think them delusive. This, after all, is our only guarantee for believing that ordinary sense-perception is veridical … We do always assume that ordinary waking sense-perception is veridical unless we can produce some positive ground for thinking that it is delusive. (1953: 163–4)

With reference to the trustworthiness of religious beliefs, Van Eyghen sets out Broad’s argument like so: 1. Religious beliefs are natural outputs of cognitive mechanisms. 2. Natural outputs of cognitive mechanisms are trustworthy in the absence of defeaters. Therefore, religious beliefs are trustworthy in the absence of defeaters (2016: 35). And if animism is a natural output of human cognition, then it should be accepted as trustworthy in the absence of defeaters. You may be unconvinced by this style of argument. Whereas evidentialism seemed too austere, this anti-evidentialist approach seems too liberal. Why should beliefs with such dubious genealogies be granted a pass? Naturalness does not entail truth. Philosophers inclined to the Reid/ Plantinga tradition stress the practical impossibility of doubting that which is so fundamental to our basic human cognitive practices. It is simply not reasonable to hold a person blameworthy for holding beliefs that they cannot possibly doubt. Here’s a historical example: Remember that Descartes appealed to God to justify the reliability of his reasoning about

274 

T. Smith

God. Note that this argument is obviously question-begging. Indeed, let’s tell it like it is. The argument is not just obviously question-begging; it is, I charge, an embarrassment, a prime example of lazy philosophy (it’s a philosophical deus ex machina!). So why did Descartes satisfy himself with such a pathetic argument? Reid had a hunch: “the reason why Descartes satisfied himself with so weak an argument for the truth of his faculties most probably was that he never seriously doubted of it” (1975: 276). In other words, radical Cartesian doubt, taken to its limit, is a practical impossibility. Reid puts the point most artfully. It is like a man’s walking upon his hands, a feat which some men upon occasion can exhibit; but no man ever made a long journey in this manner. Cease to admire his dexterity, and he will, like other men, betake himself to his legs. (277)

Consider the attribution of mind to others. This seems a clear example of the kind of belief that I could suspend for a few hours (with some difficulty). That is to say, I could briefly walk upon my hands. I could venture to the shops and, with all my sceptical willpower, remind myself that the other pedestrians may be mindless zombies. But I will “take to my legs” once again when the phone rings: “Who’s there? Oh hello Norma, how are you? Have you seen how heavy this rain is?” In the second volume of Reid’s Essays, he considers the rationality of the human tendency to attribute mind to others. He takes it that the attribution of conscious intelligence to our fellowmen is among a set of first principles of human thought. So, the attribution of mind to others is a part of our common sense. Reid’s argument goes like this: children less than a year old demonstrate a conviction that their carer is an intelligent being. “Now I would ask”, writes Reid, “how a child of a year old comes by this conviction? Not by reasoning surely, for children do not reason at that age. Nor is it by external senses, for life and intelligence are not objects of the external senses” (1975: 278). Reid never quite answers how the child actually does come by this conviction, but his point remains that however this conviction arises, it stands upon a distinct foundation from that of reason or experience. Indeed, he says, we can give no good reason for our belief in other minds, but even so, nothing stands against it. And

11  Childhood Animism and Innate Belief 

275

moreover, nothing much can cause us to shake off this belief. The attribution of consciousness, intelligence, and agency to other bodies is part of normal human cognitive behaviour. It is an unshakeable, yet unjustified commitment. Indeed, says Reid, we “could not give any reason which would not equally prove a watch or a puppet to be a living creature” (1975: 280). Plantinga agrees with Reid that there do not exist any good arguments justifying the sort of agency attributions that we typically make as human beings: “We are so constructed”, writes Plantinga “that the natural view, for us, is that there are others like ourselves … If our beliefs about others acquired the warrant they have by way of … abductive inference, they would have little warrant indeed” (1993: 71). So, both Plantinga and Reid accept that the evidence underdetermines which sorts of mental attributions are correct. Interestingly, despite this commitment to evidential underdetermination, Reid contends that the child’s animistic attributions are mistaken: “the errors of children on this matter lie on the safe side; they are prone to attribute intelligence to things inanimate. These errors are gradually corrected … by experience and ripe judgment” (1975: 281). It seems odd that Reid would hold the following three claims together at once: 1. Children do not acquire the belief in intelligent beings by either reason or experience. 2. No evidence or argument is available which would prove only living creatures to be intelligent beings. 3. Childhood animism is corrected by experience and mature judgement. If there is any way to untie the contradiction in Reid’s argument, it seems that he must reject the claim that childhood animism is corrected by experience and reason. That is, he must say simply that childhood animism is corrected naturally by maturity or by a process of cognitive maturation. Reid simply cannot hold claims 1, 2, and 3 together. For Reid, there can be no experience or argument that shows us which things have minds. Rather, Reid must accept that mature, adult minds are better at attributing agency and consciousness just because they are adult minds. Indeed, that was one of the very first assumptions presented in this chapter. I said that a child was less discerning than an adult and that a child

276 

T. Smith

simply “does not realise that there can be actions unaccompanied by consciousness” (Piaget, 2007: 177). Adults know that there can be actions without consciousness. And, since the adult’s cognitive faculties are fully developed, we have reason to trust their outputs over the underdeveloped cognitive faculties of the child. This all looks pretty reasonable so far. But as I shall argue, this argument is ultimately just table-thumping. Indeed, we do not yet have an argument, as such, but only the kind of justification that an exhausted parent gives to the daughter who continues to ask why she cannot have chocolate sprinkles on her eggs: “Because I said so!” Sure, the adult may say so, and the adult may be bigger and stronger, but we need some story about why maturity matters—why the big say-so counts for more than the little say-so—and that story hasn’t been provided yet. Let us try to tell that story.

5 The Dubious Defence of the Disenchanted Is maturity the medicine for the illness that is childhood animism? There may be reason to think so. After all, our most basic cognitive mechanisms tend to mature between birth and adulthood. As a general rule, our cognitive machinery improves over time. Infants cannot hear as well as adults can. Infants cannot reason spatially as well as adults can. Infants cannot see as well as adults can, and so on. So, one reason to think that childhood animism is a mistake is exactly because it is typically restricted to youth. The minds of the old are more reliable than the minds of the young, and if animism is more prevalent in the young, then it is probably mistaken. The naturalistic, mechanical view of nature must win out over the magical, sympathetic view of the child. As David Kennedy puts it, the child is seen to be: moving through a progressive, developmental, hierarchically staged series of epistemological and ontological perspectives, which will eventually, if development is not stunted either by culture or genetic factors, result in a world picture which is more "objective" than the one they started with, a

11  Childhood Animism and Innate Belief 

277

truer picture of how things really are. And that picture is, of course, the scientific world-picture. (1989: 377–8)

Maturity cleanses us of our animism. Of course, we might need to be a little more careful in our definitions of maturity and adulthood. After all, my mother-in-law is an adult all right; but at eighty-years-old, she is not so good at hearing or seeing or remembering any more, and many infants would put her to shame! But once we had been a little more careful, we could make a general claim like “cognitive and perceptual machinery is at peak performance in healthy human beings during adulthood between the ages of 20–40 years”. The trouble with this claim is that for some of our most basic perceptual and cognitive faculties, the period between middle childhood and adolescence marks the age during which they reach their peak performance. Although scores on vocabulary and general knowledge tests typically increase up until the age of sixty, various other scores of cognitive performance (such as spatial reasoning) begin to decline from early adulthood. Cognitive decline is not restricted to the elderly; and on the contrary, cracks in our cognitive performance begin to appear at much younger ages. To give some specific examples, seven-year-olds outperform adults on a range of hearing tests, and they remain at this peak for another three years or so. Hearing sensitivity then declines from the age of 10 until it settles at adult levels before rapidly declining in old age (Peck, 1995: 115). Test scores of taste acuity show that eleven-year-olds outcompete adults between the ages of 21 and 40, particularly when it comes to recognizing salt, citric acid, and quinine (Nillson, 2009: 242). Additionally, tactile sensitivity and spatial acuity is already at its peak by the age of 10 (Stevens & Patterson, 1995: 41). It is difficult to argue, then, that adulthood is any sort of cure-all for cognitive and perceptual weakness. In at least some cases, adulthood is the bringer of cognitive weakness. Naturally, different cognitive mechanisms mature and deteriorate at different rates. The attribution of consciousness, agency, and mentality will be no different. It has its own developmental trajectory. So, what is that trajectory like? It would seem to be this faculty, after all, that we need to understand. Cognitive scientists call this ability Theory of Mind (ToM),

278 

T. Smith

and numerous studies have been performed to track its normal development and pathology. What, then, is the age at which ToM is performing at its peak? Luckily, this is a question that cognitive scientists have been busy answering for a hundred years or so. Recent studies measure the development of ToM in children in terms of its increasing capacity to entertain or represent perspectives that are radically unlike or distant from the perspective of the child. In particular, a major milestone is achieved by around four years old, when most children develop the capacity to attribute false beliefs to others. This is the age at which one can “explicitly represent the difference between one’s own and somebody else’s relation to the same propositional content” (Wimmer & Perner, 1983: 105–6). Another major advance in the development of ToM occurs between the ages of six and nine years old, as children become increasingly competent at attributing second-order beliefs to others (e.g. “John thinks that Mary thinks that …” (Perner & Wimmer, 1985: 468)). Between adolescence and young adulthood, there is little difference in the capacity to correctly attribute cognitive states to others, but there is marked improvement in understanding others’ affective states (Meinhardt-­ Injac et al., 2020: 290). Between young adulthood and old age, there is some debate as to whether there is a continued refinement of ToM skills, sometimes dubbed an increase in “wisdom” (clunkily defined as “the integration of the affective, conative, and cognitive aspects of human abilities in response to life’s tasks and problems” (Birren & Fisher, 1990: 325)). The idea that the elderly have wisdom and therefore outcompete young adults on some ToM tasks was first argued by Happé et al. (1998). Despite the fact that this finding conforms with many traditional views about the sagacity of old age, the data have since failed to be replicated. Indeed, later studies have largely contradicted the idea, finding a marked decrease in ToM performance after the seventieth year (see the discussion in Franco and Smith (2013: 108–9)). Given these findings, we might conclude that ToM is at its peak performance during adulthood (roughly between the ages of, say, twenty and sixty years). Between the ages of 20 and 60, normal adults excel at correctly attributing and predicting the propositional attitudes and affective states of others. And if that is right, we have some evidence that the disenchanted are on the right track. If ToM is at its optimum during

11  Childhood Animism and Innate Belief 

279

adulthood, and if adulthood sees a decline in animist thinking, then so much the worse for animism. It’s an attractive argument against the claim that childhood animism counts in favour of animism. It is an attractive argument, but it does suffer from one rather large setback. The trouble is that the data on which the argument depends relates to a person’s capacity to interpret others’ mental states. The interpretive abilities of adults are far superior to the interpretive abilities of children when it comes to mind-reading. But this does not touch on what is a quite separate matter: the non-demonstrable question as to whose abilities are superior when it comes to mind-attributing. It is entirely possible that while the adult is better at solving mind-related problems, the child is better at identifying minds. Analogously, adults are better at solving colour-related problems (“what happens when you mix blue and yellow?”), while children are better at identifying colours (“which of these colours is a darker green?”). The identification of mind seems to be an altogether separate skill from the interpretation of specific mental states. The latter skill can be measured against various sorts of independent behaviours and indicators (first-person reports, behavioural predictions, brain scans, etc.). The former skill is rather more difficult to measure, given the fundamental privacy of subjective mental states (whether in the sense that one has direct access only to one’s own mental states or in the more problematic sense in which a great deal of mental phenomena is not apparent even to one’s own consciousness). So, any justification for the claim that adults outcompete children at mind-attributing is hostage to one of the oldest sceptical challenges: the problem of other minds. How can such a sceptical attack be deflected? It might be possible, I suppose, to draw up some criteria that an object must have in order to count as having a mind (e.g. living, or being responsive, or having a brain, or having “the capacity to respond selectively to nonnomic properties” (Fodor, 1986: 13)). From there one could argue that a person’s mind-­ attributing capabilities are at peak performance, so long as they reliably sort the minded and the non-minded things according to the criteria as stated. However, it is clear that this approach doesn’t touch on the radical sceptical problem. For whatever criteria we choose must remain almost entirely informed by our intuitions on the matter. As Bertrand Russell notes, “I was once assured by a fisherman that ‘Fish have no sense nor

280 

T. Smith

feeling’. I failed to find out how he had acquired this knowledge” (1948: 482). Russell’s wry comment is of course tongue-in-cheek. It is not that Russell lacks whatever knowledge the fisherman has. It is the fisherman who has no claim to that knowledge. But is it all so hopeless? Let’s accept that the criteria that we choose will ultimately depend upon our intuitions about what most probably has a mind. Well, so what? Perhaps we have good reason to accept our intuitions. Intuition, after all, plays a major role in philosophical reasoning. It may have its problems, but it’s not a dirty word! Why not, in this case as in so many other philosophical cases, trust our intuition? The trouble with the rhetorical question above is the use of the word “our”. Who does it refer to? Adults of course! And given that adults are the ones who are typically drawing up the philosophical criteria according to their adult intuitions, the game will be rigged. Adults will intuit that the apple tree cannot have any mental properties, agency, or personality, and the child will intuit the opposite. The adult wins, of course, because the adult is bigger, scarier, and tends to be in charge of making the rules (as well as the consequences for those who fail to obey). But that’s not a reasonable argument. Indeed, it might be an example of a very  unusual fallacy that rarely turns up in philosophical argument: Argumentum ad baculum or the “appeal to the stick”.

6 Childhood Animism Is a Reason to Accept Animism Children are animists. This animism is natural in the course of human development. On a Reidian/Plantingan view, therefore, we have reason to treat animist belief as trustworthy belief absent defeaters. Are there such defeaters? Let’s consider the most obvious one. The most obvious defeater for the child animist’s claims would be the existence of disagreement amongst themselves about the sorts of things that are conscious agents. This argument from animist disagreement would show that there is enough diversity of opinion to render the claims of animists unreliable. It would show that, even if such beliefs are natural,

11  Childhood Animism and Innate Belief 

281

the cognitive processes causing animist belief are unreliable, since their outputs are inconsistent. However, I am not entirely sure that that argument is as successful as it seems. If we look at the more consistent and steadfast animism held during what I dubbed the mature phase (roughly Piaget’s third stage), we find a kind of animist thinking that is relatively narrow in its attributions of mentality and relatively consistent across different cultural groups. The principle underwriting mature animism is that mentality is tied to spontaneous movement or movement by an object’s own accord. For this reason, the third stage animist takes the sphere of conscious things to include plants, animals, and the heavenly bodies, then to a lesser degree rivers, winds, and clouds. This is an animism that might well please some ancients, like Thales, Plato, or Aristotle (perhaps even Steinhart in the previous chapter), as it aligns mentality and spirit with physical processes like movement, reproduction, and growth. If it is an error to align mentality with movement in this way, the price to pay is very low indeed. We may look a little childish. Our friends may laugh at us. But the question remains: is there actually any benefit to taking on this picture of the world? I will conclude not by summarizing the epistemic arguments above. Rather, I want to remind the reader of the pragmatic benefit of animist thinking. I use the word “remind” here for a special reason, as you were once a child yourself and were probably more of an animist than you are now. Once upon a time, the benefits of animist thinking were apparent to you without reflection. Once upon a time, these benefits didn’t need spelling out: a tree who was adored, a cat whose meows were a secret code, a frightful and mysterious basement creature, a car who was old and haggard and tired, and the Moon—that poor, cold Moon—staying up all night to keep the hedgehogs and the owls company. This was once the way the world appeared to you. It was once your world picture: not dead and mechanical, but alive and enchanted. Looking back, is it not exactly the world that we all deeply mourn having lost? Looking back, what made us turn our backs at all? What did we do with our Velveteen rabbits? And so the little Rabbit was put into a sack with the old picture-books and a lot of rubbish, and carried out to the end of the garden behind the fowl-­

282 

T. Smith

house. That was a fine place to make a bonfire … Of what use was it to be loved and lose one's beauty and become Real if it all ended like this?—The Velveteen Rabbit

References Ashton, E. (1993). Interpreting Children’s ideas: Creative thought or factual belief? A new look at Piaget’s theory of childhood artificialism as related to religious education. British Journal of Educational Studies, 41(2), 164–173. Birren, J. E., & Fisher, L. M. (1990). Conceptualizing Wisdom: The primacy of affect-cognition relations. In R. J. Sternberg (Ed.), Wisdom: Its nature, origins, and development (pp. 317–332). Cambridge University Press. Boyer, P. (1996). What makes anthropomorphism natural: Intuitive ontology and cultural representations. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 2(1), 83–97. Broad, C. D. (1953). Religion, philosophy, and psychical research. Routledge. Calvin, J. (1960). In J.  McNeill (Ed.), Institutes of the Christian religion. Westminster Press. Carey, S. (1987). Theory change in childhood. In B. Inhelder, D. de Caprona, & A. Cornu-Wells (Eds.), Piaget today (pp. 141–164). Psychology Press. Cicero, M.  T. (1972). The nature of the gods. H.  McGregor trans. New York: Penguin. Clark, K.  J., & Barrett, J.  L. (2011). Reidian religious epistemology and the cognitive science of religion. Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 79(3), 639–675. Clifford, W. (1877). The ethics of belief. The Contemporary Review, 29, 289–309. Dennis, W. (1943). Animism and related tendencies in Hopi Children. The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 38(1), 21–36. Dennis, W., & Russell, R. W. (1940). Piaget’s questions applied to Zuni children. Child Development, 11(3), 181–187. Descartes, R. (1996). Meditations on first philosophy. In Cottingham, J. (ed. and trans). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Fodor, J. (1986). Why Paramecia don’t have mental representations. Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 10, 3–23.

11  Childhood Animism and Innate Belief 

283

Franco, M., & Smith, P. (2013). Theory of mind, old age, and educational opportunity in Colombia. The International Journal of Aging and Human Development, 77(2), 107–125. Happé, F., Winner, E., & Brownell, H. (1998). The getting of wisdom: Theory of mind in old age. Developmental Psychology, 34(2), 358–362. Kelemen, D. (1999). Why are rocks pointy? Children’s preference for teleological explanations of the natural world. Developmental Psychology, 35(6), 1440–1452. Kelemen, D. (2004). Are children intuitive theists? Reasoning about purpose and design in nature. Psychological Science, 15(5), 295–301. Kennedy, D. (1989). Fools, young children, animism and the scientific world-­ picture. Philosophy Today, 33(4), 374–381. Leibniz, G. (1981). New essays on human understanding. Cambridge University Press. Madsen, M. (1982). Animism and related tendencies in Hopi Children: A replication of Dennis. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, 13(1), 117–124. Margolis, E., & Laurence, S. (2013). In defense of nativism. Philosophical Studies, 165(2), 693–718. McDonald, L., & Stuart-Hamilton, I. (2000). The meaning of life: Animism in the classificatory skills of older adults. The International Journal of Aging and Human Development, 51(3), 231–242. Mead, M. (1932). An investigation of the thought of primitive children, with special reference to animism. The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, 62, 173–190. Mead, G. H. (1934). Mind self and society from the standpoint of a social behaviorist. University of Chicago Press. Meinhardt-Injac, B., Daum, M., & Meinhardt, G. (2020). Theory of mind development from adolescence to adulthood: Testing the two-component model. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 38, 289–303. Nillson, B. (2009). Taste acuity of the human palate: III. Studies with taste solutions on subjects in different age groups. Acta Odontologica Scandinavica, 37(4), 235–252. Nurcombe, B. (1970). Precausal and paracausal thinking: Concepts of causality in aboriginal children. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, 4(2), 70–81. Parry, R., & Stuart-Hamilton, I. (2010). Animism begins at forty: Evidence that animism and other naïve beliefs are established before the onset of old age. Educational Gerontology, 36(10), 1043–1050.

284 

T. Smith

Peck, J. (1995). Development of hearing. Part III.  Postnatal development. Journal of the American Academy of Audiology, 6, 113–123. Perner, J., & Wimmer, H. (1985). ‘John Thinks that Mary Thinks that…’ attribution of second-order beliefs by 5- to 10-year-old children. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 39(3), 437–471. Piaget, J. (2007). The Child’s conception of the world. Rowman and Littlefield. Plantinga, A. (1993). Warrant and proper function. Oxford University Press. Reid, T. (1975). In K. Lehrer & R. E. Beanblossom (Eds.), Inquiries and essays. Bobbs-Merrill Company. Russell, B. (1948). Human knowledge: Its scope and limits. Simon & Schuster. Samuels, R. (2002). Nativism in cognitive science. Mind & Language, 17(3), 233–265. Stern, H. N. (1966). Animistic thinking in children. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. Durham, NC: Duke University. Stevens, J., & Patterson, M. (1995). Dimensions of spatial acuity in the touch sense: Changes over the life span. Somatosensory & Motor Research, 12(1), 29–47. Van Eyghen, H. (2016). Religious belief is not natural. Why cognitive science of religion does not show that religious belief is trustworthy. Studia Humana, 5(4), 34–44. Williamson, P., Kelley, M., & Waters, B. (1982). Animistic thought in young children: Effects of probing. Perceptual and Motor Skills, 54, 463–466. Wimmer, H., & Perner, J. (1983). Beliefs about beliefs: Representation and constraining function of wrong beliefs in young children’s understanding of deception. Cognition, 13(1), 103–128.

12 An Epistemic Defense of Animism Hans Van Eyghen

Animism is a topic rarely discussed in contemporary philosophy of religion.1 Most academic discussion on animism takes place in disciplines like anthropology or religious studies and is descriptive in nature. Sometimes anthropologists do argue for the value of animistic practices. For example, Graham Harvey notes that animism implies a greater respect for nature which makes animism more suited to tackle environmental challenges than western materialism (Harvey, 2005). Such arguments are moral in nature rather than epistemic.2 Contemporary philosophy of religion, by contrast, is unapologetically epistemic. Some philosophers provide new defenses of traditional arguments for the

 A notable exception is Tiddy Smith’s recent defense of the existence of nature spirits (Smith, 2020).  I discuss a moral-epistemic argument in Sect. 11.

1 2

H. Van Eyghen (*) Department of Systematic Theology and Philosophy, Tilburg University, Tilburg, The Netherlands © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Smith (ed.), Animism and Philosophy of Religion, Palgrave Frontiers in Philosophy of Religion, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94170-3_12

285

286 

H. Van Eyghen

existence of God3 or defend new ones.4 Others argue for the rationality of religious belief on other grounds. Epistemic discussions on religious belief are almost always limited to belief in God. Usually, philosophers of religion employ a concept of God in line with traditional Christianity.5 Although traditional Christianity includes belief in the existence of various other supernatural beings (most notably angels and demons), their existence is rarely discussed. Contemporary philosophy of religion is also thoroughly western. Most contemporary philosophers of religion have a Christian background. Philosophers who argue against the existence of God also mainly raise arguments against abrahamic concepts of God. A clear indication is the fact that most widely discussed argument against the existence of God is still the problem of evil. The argument roughly states that the widespread occurrence of evil fits poorly with the existence of an all-good, all-­ powerful God. The argument is thus only forceful if God is indeed regarded as all-good and all-powerful. While God is regarded as such in most strands of Christianity, Judaism and Islam, it is not at all clear that this is the case in Indian, Chinese, Japanese or African indigenous religions. Below, I provide an assessment of the epistemic status of animistic beliefs. My approach is inspired by two currents in contemporary epistemology. The first are defenses of the reliability of (religious) experiences. A considerable number of contemporary philosophers (of religion) argue that experiences can be trusted as long as there is no counterevidence. I will apply this to experiences of animism. The second are debunking arguments that draw on scientific discoveries. Debunking arguments point to scientific explanations for how a belief is formed to argue that the belief can no longer be regarded as rational. The best-known debunking arguments were raised against morality and religious belief.6 I will

 For a recent over view, see (Craig & Moreland, 2009).  See, for example, (Rutten, 2014). 5  Often philosophers of religion argue for (or against) a perfect being (a being that is all-good, all-­ powerful, all-knowing etc.). This concept of God also fits well with the traditional Christian concept of God. 6  See, for example, (Street, 2006; Wilkins & Griffiths, 2013). 3 4

12  An Epistemic Defense of Animism 

287

investigate whether a similar debunking argument can be raised against animistic beliefs.

1 Defining Animism Before we assess the epistemic status of animistic beliefs, we need to make clear what we mean by them. Animism is common in African indigenous, American indigenous, Indian, Chinese, Japanese and Polynesian religions. For example, traditional Japanese Shinto worship involves showing respect to various spirits of rivers and forest. Ancient Celtic, Germanic, Roman and Greek religions also show clear marks of animistic beliefs (cf. Lucas, 2017). The scope of animistic beliefs is thus large and arguments in favor or against their rationality potentially have a lot of ramifications. Contemporary anthropologists who study animism often make a distinction between ‘old animism’ and ‘new animism’, with most siding with the new animism camp. Below, I discuss how both construe animism.

2 Old Animism The term ‘animism’ is usually traced back to Edward Tylor. Tylor regarded animism as a “doctrine of souls” or “doctrine of spirits”. The distinctive feature of animism is the belief that spiritual beings are common (Tylor, 1871). Tylor regarded animism as an early, undeveloped form of religiosity. For Tylor, animism was the religion of primitive people devoid of culture and devoid of explicit religious conceptions whatsoever (Park, n.d.). Tylor’s account offers a good starting point. However, to gain more clarity on what animists believe we need a more elaborate account of what spirits are. As I argued elsewhere, spirits are generally regarded as humanlike invisible beings. Some believe that spirits are deceased people who continue to roam the earth. Others believe that spirits are divine beings (Van Eyghen, 2018). Although belief in spirits is central to animism, it does not quite capture the distinctiveness of animism.

288 

H. Van Eyghen

Nineteenth-century Spiritism7 and traditions that sprung from it (e.g. Brazilian Espiritismo) affirm the existence of spirits but they are not commonly called animistic. Furthermore, belief in demons is common in Christianity and a majority of Muslims affirms the existence of Jinn. Both demons and Jinn can be classified as spirits. What distinguishes animism from spirit-belief in these traditions is the belief that spirits inhabit objects, plants and non-human animals.8 For example, ancient Celts believe that some sacred trees are inhabited by spirits. Adherents of Japanese Shinto believe in the existence of kami that govern rivers and streams.9 Siberian shamans believe that animals have spirits that can be approached by imitating animal sounds (cf. Willerslev, 2007). Contrary to other religious traditions like Spiritism, adherents of animism tend not to regard spirits as disembodied.10 In Christianity, Islam or Spiritism, spirits are commonly regarded as existing without a physical body or carrier. Animists, by contrast, tend to believe that spirits inhabit a physical carrier (i.e. an animal body, plant or object) much like human souls inhabit a human body on dualistic accounts of humans.11 As Rane Willerslev notes, animists do not always believe that all objects or all animals have spirits (Willerslev, 2007). Some (or even most) objects, plants or animals are regarded as devoid of spirits as most westerners do. Having a spirit can mean a lot of things. Most adherents of animism likely do not have an elaborate metaphysical account of what it means to have a spirit or soul.12 The approach of animists is much more pragmatic. Regarding objects or animals as spirited means that objects or animals are approached in a similar or analogous way as humans. In doing so,  This form of Spiritism gained popularity near the end of the nineteenth century. Adherents held séances in which they invoked spirits or tried to communicate to spirits through material means (e.g. Ouija boards). Notable figures in the spiritist movement were Allan Kardec, Frans Mesmer and the Leah sisters. 8  Cf. (Hornborg, 2006; Stanford & Jong, 2019). 9  The kami that govern rivers and stream are called ‘Kawanokami’ or ‘Kahaku’ (Nakayama, 2005). 10  A considerable number of animists do hold that a spirit can be disentangled from its body. Nonetheless they are usually embodied. 11  Regarding animals or objects as spirited can be regarded as analogous to Platonist accounts where souls are the essence of persons and are separable from bodies. They can also be regarded as analogous to Aristotelian accounts where body and soul jointly make out personhood and are not separable. 12  For a recent account of what it means to have a soul, see (Swinburne, 2019). 7

12  An Epistemic Defense of Animism 

289

animists (tacitly) accept that spirited objects or animals have similar capacities like humans. What are those capacities? These are some of the capacities that are attributed: 1. ability to communicate; 2. ability to reflect; 3. ability for intentional action. Some biologists and philosophers argue that abilities 1–3 can be attributed to some animal species. Especially species that are more cognitively advanced would be able to communicate with other members of their species, be capable of rudimentary reflection and be able to act intentionally. Such abilities have been attributed to chimpanzees (De Waal & Tyack, 2003), dolphins (Tomonaga & Uwano, 2010) and corvids (Emery & Clayton, 2004). Biologists add that animals have these abilities to a (far) more limited extend than humans do. Reflection by chimpanzees is limited to practical problems like how to gather food or how to organize against threats.13 The abilities attributed by animists go beyond such rudimentary abilities. Adherents of animism tend to regard spirited objects or animals as having similar or even greater capacities than humans have. Construing ‘being spirited’ as having a number of abilities misses out on one central aspect of animism. Having a spirit also means that objects or animals have a spiritual essence. In some cases, that essence is divine and immortal. In this sense, being spirited again bears large similarities to being ‘ensouled’ for humans.

3 New Animism The idea that animism consists of a set of beliefs about spirited objects and/or animals has been subject to growing criticism in recent years. Defenders of ‘New Animism’ argue that animism should be construed  Aristotle had a similar view. He argues that animals have a soul that allows them to engage in a number of activities (most notably self-directed motion). Contrary to humans they do not have a rational soul and thus miss out on most distinctively human capacities. 13

290 

H. Van Eyghen

differently, with an emphasis on animistic practices rather than (primitive, misguided) animistic beliefs.14 Nurit Bird-David objects to traditional analyses of animism where animism is regarded as a ‘proto-religion’ or a ‘failed epistemology’. Such analyses trace back to Edward Tylor’s original account of animism (see Sect. 2) and betray a commitment to positivism and Cartesian dualism.15 As an alternative to rationalist approaches, Bird-David proposes to regard animism as a ‘relational epistemology’. Animism is not a well-articulated worldview or religious system but rather a way of life. Animists live in a way that is very closely related with the natural world. They interact with their natural environment in a way similar to how they interact with fellow humans. For example, Bird-David observed how members of the Nayaka (a group of tribal people living in South India) talk and listen to stones or other objects (Bird-David, 1999). The attitudes and practices of animists toward objects and animals can be compared to how most people act toward fellow humans. Most people who are not psychologically trained do not have a clear set of beliefs about minds or cognitive capabilities of fellow humans. Instead, they learn how to interact with other humans from a young age and most never ask questions on what these interactions imply or how they are made possible. Animistic practices stem from a different concept of personhood according to Bird-David. Whereas westerners (tacitly) accept a strict dichotomy between human persons and non-human non-persons, animists tend to consider humans and animals as subcategories of a broader category of persons. Because of their broader concept, animists experience the world in a different way and interact with animals like they interact with humans (Bird-David, 1999). Bird-David notes one aspect of animistic practice among the Nayaka that sets it apart from interactions with fellow humans. On some

 New animism has been defended by a number of authors (see Hallowell, 2010; Harvey, 2014). Viveiros de Castro defends a similar position he calls “perspectivist cosmology” (De Castro, 1998). In this section, I focus on Nurit Bird-David’s defense. 15  Bird-David even suggests that Tylor was inspired by modernist spiritualism (see above) and their beliefs on spirits. He notes that Tylor took his notion of animism from seventeenth-century alchemist Stahl. 14

12  An Epistemic Defense of Animism 

291

occasions, animistic practice is evoked in special performances. In ritual16 settings, members of the Nayaka enter into trance and invoke various animals. Members try to imitate animal behavior as well as they can and others make offerings to them. According to Bird-David, such performances bring to life various animal spirits17 to the Nayaka. During the performances, interactions between humans and animal spirits are highly personal and intense (Bird-David, 1999). Bird-David puts her new animism in sharp contrast to the old animism as exemplified by Tylor. She writes: “We do not first personify other entities and then socialize with them but personify them as, when, and because we socialize with them” (Bird-David, 1999: 78). The quote suggests that Bird-David’s new animism might not be as new as she claims it is. Old animism need not be construed as a belief-system that comes before any actions that embody animistic beliefs. Bird-David mainly gives an account of how animistic beliefs emerge and how they function within a community. She makes a plausible case that animists gradually develop animistic beliefs through partaking in animistic practices. Very likely, they learn how to engage in these practices by socialization and imitating elders. This account is compatible with my reading of Tylor’s account of animism above. Bird-David could, however, be making a stronger claim. She might argue that a lot of animists never form clear animistic beliefs. Most might leave it at practices and never end up with a full-blown belief-system that goes along with them. New animism thus construed raises a challenge for our purposes. Later on in this chapter, I will evaluate whether animistic beliefs are undermined by recent psychology. If animism consists merely of a practice without beliefs, such an assessment becomes difficult. I argue, however, that Bird-David has not shown that animism consists merely of a practice. It appears as if animists have tacit animistic beliefs that guide their practice. Without these beliefs, animistic practices are not intelligible.

 Bird-David objects to calling the performances rituals, but calls them “practices” instead (Bird-­ David, 1999). 17  Bird-David uses the Nayaka term ‘Devaru’ to designate spirits. 16

292 

H. Van Eyghen

A comparison to inter-personal practices is again helpful. I noted above that animistic interaction without clear beliefs can be compared to how most people interact with fellow humans. To be able to interact with others, one need not have clear beliefs about minds or cognitive abilities. When people talk with another, they assume that the other can hear them and can respond. They also assume that the other is similar in at least some respects. These assumptions distinguish interaction with humans from (playful) interaction with computers or cars. While a lot of people will on occasion talk or shout to their computers or cars, they do not assume that they will talk back  or understand what they were saying. Most people know that there is a clear difference between such pretend interactions and the real thing. Grasping the difference would be impossible without tacit assumptions about similarity between humans and others. In a similar way, animistic practices are incomprehensible without some underlying assumptions. It is possible that animists do not regard objects and animals as similar to humans and engage objects and animals as such in an ironic fashion. The fact that animistic rituals and practices are central to animists’ lives renders this unlikely. A tacitly held belief that (some) objects and animals are similar to humans explains animistic behavior better. The similarity probably lies in the three abilities I discussed earlier. In the next section, I argue that tacitly held beliefs can be assessed epistemically even if they are never articulated. Tacit animistic beliefs can be based on misguided intuitions or not be properly supported by evidence and therefore epistemically tainted. In later sections, I look at some of these challenges. If successful, these challenges could show that animistic beliefs are not rationally held whether they are tacitly held or articulated.

4 The Rationality of Tacitly Held Beliefs Contemporary cognitive science and psychology have largely moved away from the idea that all beliefs are consciously available to the subject who holds them. People sometimes act as if they hold certain beliefs

12  An Epistemic Defense of Animism 

293

about the world without explicitly avowing them or without being aware of them. Clear examples are people suffering from obsessive compulsion disorder. Patients obsessively perform actions like washing their hands or checking if the door is locked. When prompted to explain why they do so, patients usually admit that their actions do not make sense. Some argue that obsessive actions of this kind trace back to stressful events in the past or past infections.18 A tacitly held belief (stemming from past experiences) that one ought to be careful to prevent new infections or that one ought to prevent danger can explain the compulsive behavior. There is also evidence for other behavior that is best explained by tacitly held beliefs. Ohman and Soares argue that an evolved fear module can explain why certain stimuli (e.g. of snakes and spiders) can elicit strong behavioral responses even if subjects do not consciously affirm fear (Ohman, 2009; Öhman & Soares, 1994). An unarticulated (evolved) belief that snakes and spiders are dangerous can explain this behavior well. Unarticulated, tacit beliefs go by various names. Some authors refer to them as ‘dispositional beliefs’, stressing the idea that subjects are disposed to form beliefs when prompted to do so. Pat Manfredi gives the following example: Lauren sat at her desk reading her morning mail. Suddenly, she gasped. Her most important clients were coming for dinner that night. She grabbed the phone and dialed her home number. “Bob, I’m so glad I caught you before you left. I forgot to put in the roast. Set the oven timer for 4:00 p.m. Thanks. Goodbye.” (Manfredi, 1993: 95)

Other authors regard tacit beliefs as dispositions to believe as well (e.g. Lycan, 1986).19 Tacit animistic beliefs are not dispositional like the states in the example. If adherents of new animism are right, people are not easily triggered to state or affirm animistic beliefs when prompted to do  See (American Psychiatric Association & American Psychiatric Association. Task Force on DSM-IV, 1994). 19  Lycan also suggests defining tacit beliefs as beliefs without representation (Lycan, 1986). This definition presupposes a representationalist view on belief (cf. Schwitzgebel, 2006). Delving into the discussion between representationalists and other accounts of belief stretches beyond the scope of this chapter. For this reason, I will not pursue Lycan’s suggestion any further. 18

294 

H. Van Eyghen

so. Instead, their views on spirits inhabiting objects and being remain dormant and unarticulated. They could even remain dormant if or when subjects are questioned about their views. If this is the case, then (some) adherents of animism do not have a disposition to form animistic beliefs. As an alternative, tacitly held animistic beliefs can be regarded as aliefs. The term was introduced by Tamara Gentler. She considers aliefs to be associative, automatic and a-rational. Aliefs are conceptually and developmentally prior to other states like beliefs. They are typically affect-laden and action-oriented. Aliefs can be activated by features of the subject’s internal or external environment. Examples of aliefs are cases where people hesitate to cross a tall bridge while knowing that the bridge is perfectly safe. In this case, people believe that the bridge is safe but alieve that the bridge is dangerous (Gendler, 2008). Gendler’s concept of ‘alief ’ appears to be useful for discussing tacitly held animistic beliefs. Like aliefs, they are often affect-laden and action-­ orientated and are easily activated by features in the environment. However, tacitly held animistic beliefs are not a-rational and do not run counter to occurrent, affirmed beliefs. Most adherents of animism do not slip back into behavior in line with animism while consciously affirming the opposite like in the bridge example. Instead, their views on animism are usually in line with their other beliefs and behavior. For example, some authors argue that animism implies more respect for non-human animals and the environment. Adherents of animism indeed appear to display this behavior. An important question for our purposes is whether tacitly held beliefs can be epistemically assessed. Like occurrent beliefs, tacit beliefs are about something.20 Animistic beliefs, whether tacit or not, make the claim that spirits inhabit objects, plants or beings. That content can be true or false.21 Therefore, tacit beliefs can be regarded as false if their contents are false and true if their contents are true. Like occurrent beliefs, tacit beliefs can also be classified as justified or unjustified. Like occurrent beliefs, tacit beliefs can be properly backed up  The aboutness of beliefs is often called ‘intentionality’.  The content could also be assessed as accurate, meaning closer to the truth, or inaccurate, meaning further away from the truth. 20 21

12  An Epistemic Defense of Animism 

295

by evidence or not. They can also be formed by means of epistemic virtues like open-mindedness or epistemic vices like wishful thinking. Below, we will focus on whether animistic beliefs are based on veridical experiences or not. Tacitly held animistic beliefs need not be assessed in a different way.

5 Assessing Animistic Beliefs Epistemically There are various ways in which one can assess the epistemic status of animistic beliefs. Contemporary skeptics tend to argue that there is insufficient evidence for animism (as they argue is the case for most religious beliefs).22 Some argue along similar lines as Edward Tylor that animism represents an earlier stage of human development. In light of recent scientific development, animism would no longer be tenable.23 Arguments for materialism or physicalism, if successful, would also imply that animism is untenable. The same holds for arguments that conclude that spirits need to be tied to a human body.24 Most of these arguments assume a materialistic ontology that may be foreign to animists. Assessing the arguments for and against materialism lies far beyond the scope of this chapter. For this reason, I will focus on a different challenge. Rather than looking at arguments for or against an animistic worldview, I will look to how animistic beliefs are formed in individuals. Animistic beliefs are probably often transmitted through learning, socialization or other forms of cultural learning. It is, however, also reasonable to assume that animistic beliefs are often formed after, or reinforced by, experiences or seemings. We saw how Bird-David argues that animism mainly consists of engagement with objects or animals as if they are spirited. It is likely that such engagements are often accompanied by experiences where it seems to subjects that those objects or animals are spirited. There is also anthropological evidence for animistic experiences or seemings. Charles Whitehead argues that people in animistic societies  See, for example, (Shermer, 2002).  For a recent similar argument, see (Rosenberg, 2020). 24  For a critique, see (Peels, 2013). 22 23

296 

H. Van Eyghen

have religious experiences all the time (Whitehead, unpublished). Sometimes the experiences occur under trance. More often, animists have animistic experience in their interactions with nature. Bird-David reports of a Nayaka woman who had stones “come to her”. Inspirited stones were seen to have moved or “opened their mouths” (Bird-David, 1999: 74–75). Safonova and Santha note that Siberian Evenki hunters see prey as partners with whom they compete (Safonova & Santha, 2012). While philosophers differ over the force of experiences and seemings,25 one influential strand argues that they merit an innocent-until-proven-­ guilty status.26 A well-known advocate is Richard Swinburne. He argues that subjects can regard perceptual experiences as solid evidence. He argues that when humans have an experience of x, they are in a good position to believe that x exists and that x is such and such. Not doing so runs against common sense and leads to far-reaching skepticism. Hence beliefs based on such experiences can be regarded as rational. Swinburne extends this claim to include religious experiences. Religious experiences are not radically different than perceptual experiences of physical objects and beings. Therefore, religious beliefs based on religious experiences can be regarded as rational as well (Swinburne, 2004, 2018). Swinburne’s argument can be applied to animistic experiences as well. During animistic experiences, it seems like an object, plant or animal is inspirited. Following Swinburne, the experiences provide good evidence that the object, plant or animal under consideration is indeed inspirited. Accepting that experiences suffice for physical objects, for beings and for God, but denying it holds for animistic experiences seems ad hoc and unwarranted. According to Swinburne any subject is rational or justified when she forms beliefs based on experiences. While there is widespread agreement that ‘being rational’ and ‘being justified’ are positive epistemic statuses, there is little agreement on their exact natures. Rationality also encompasses various, very different concepts like practical rationality, scientific rationality and moral rationality. Other, related concepts have been  A widely discussed problem states that experiences lack conceptual structure and therefore cannot justify beliefs that do (Sellars, 1956). 26  See (Huemer, 2007). 25

12  An Epistemic Defense of Animism 

297

delineated more clearly. For example, Mylan Engel defines personal justification as “S is personally justified in believing that p iff S has come to believe that p in an epistemically responsible fashion” (Engel, 1992). There is ample discussion about when a subject comes to believe something in a responsible way.27 This discussion lies well beyond the scope of this chapter. Authors like Swinburne argue that relying on experiences is one way in which subjects can form beliefs in a responsible way. Engel contrasts personal justification to doxastic justification. While personal justification is a subjective concept, doxastic justification is objective. According to Engel a belief is doxastically justified if and only if it “has a high objective probability of being true” (Engel, 1992: 138). Assessing whether animistic beliefs are doxastically justified would require looking at all available evidence for animistic claims. Such an assessment would have to investigate whether animism is compatible with well-­ established scientific claims like the conservation of energy or Darwinian natural selection. For the remainder of this chapter, I will continue to focus on personal justification. Swinburne and likeminded philosophers do accept that experience can lead people astray. Swinburne distinguishes four underminers to think that experience leads us astray. First, an experience might be of a kind that proved not to be genuine perceptions in the past. For example, experiences during dreams generally do not reflect the real world. Therefore experiences during dreams are suspect. Second, there may be evidence that an experience occurred in circumstances where similar experiences turned out to be misleading. For example, we know that sticks appear as bended when we put them halfway in water. Third, there may be evidence that the object of experience likely was not present during the experience. Finally, there can be evidence that an experience was not caused by the object of experience (Swinburne, 2004). If an animist were to learn that animistic experiences are undermined in any of the four ways distinguished by Swinburne she would no longer be personally justified in holding animistic beliefs. Personal justification could be regained if the animist learns of new reasons to accept animism.

27

 See, for example, (Zagzebski, 1996).

298 

H. Van Eyghen

In the next section, I will focus on Swinburne’s second and fourth reasons to doubt experiences. The reason is that animistic experiences appear to withstand the first reason. Animistic experiences do not resemble experience that we know to be non-genuine. Arguing that inspirited objects or animals are in fact not present during animistic experiences could come in the form of (scientific) evidence that animals, plants or objects are in fact not inspirited. If this is shown, the animist is mistaking non-spirited things for inspirited ones. Assessing such underminers would again require investigating whether animistic claims are compatible with well-established scientific claims. This falls outside the scope of this chapter. To assess whether the experiences fall prey to Swinburne’s second or fourth underminer, I look at empirical data that might support such a claim in the next section.

6 Underminers for Animistic Beliefs In the next sections, I discuss empirical evidence that animistic experiences or seemings occur in situations that proved to be misleading. I also discuss evidence that such experiences are (often) not caused by inspirited objects or animals. Both can undermine the evidential force of animistic experiences and render a lot of animistic beliefs not rational. Both kinds of evidence point out that humans sometimes ‘misread’ or ‘misinterpret’ their environment. The first emphasized how the environment leads humans astray and the second is more general. In the remainder of this chapter, I will refer to  misreadings or misinterpretation during experiences as ‘misattributions’. Similar arguments have been raised against belief in God. Some authors have argued that belief in God stems from such a ‘misattribution’ and is therefore not rational.28 Evidence that animistic experiences stem from misattributions would not harm animistic beliefs that are grounded in rational arguments or testimony. Given that a lot of animists likely rely on experiences to form or sustain animistic beliefs, the implications are still rather wide.  Examples are (Law, 2016; Nola, 2013, 2018). For a reply, see (Van Eyghen, 2020).

28

12  An Epistemic Defense of Animism 

299

To assess whether animistic beliefs stem from misattributions, we need an account of how animistic beliefs are formed. Explanations for how animistic beliefs are formed are as old as the term. Edward Tylor (see above) defended his own account. He argues that animism evolved from reflection on death, dreams and apparitions. For example, dreams of dead kin or friends would be regarded as evidence that their spirits were still out there. This would give rise to a ‘doctrine of spirits’ and the idea that objects, plants and animals are spirited (Tylor, 1871). If animistic beliefs indeed stem from interpretations of dreams and dreams are bad guides to reality, this would count against their rationality.29 Willerslev argues that Tylor’s claim that reflections on dreams give rise to beliefs on spirits has some traction (Willerslev, 2007). Nonetheless, Tylor’s explanation is not often defended by contemporary psychologists or cognitive scientists. Below, I discuss recent explanations of animism or relevant empirical findings that can help in construing such an explanation. While all are defended and discussed in isolation, they appear to be compatible.

7 Stewart Guthrie’s Account of Animism Stewart Guthrie defends a cognitive explanation of how people form animistic beliefs. In contrast to Tylor, Guthrie refers to cognitive biases or tendencies that give rise to animistic beliefs. His theory has been criticized and reformulated (See:  Barrett, 2004; Van Leeuwen & Van Elk, 2018). In this section, I focus on Guthrie’s original theory. Guthrie distinguishes ‘animism’ from ‘anthropomorphism’. Animism is “attributing characteristics of living things (e.g. sentience and spontaneous motion) to inanimate things and events” (Guthrie, 2001). Anthropomorphism is “attributing characteristics of humanity (e.g. language and symbolism) to non-human things and events, including other animals” (Guthrie, 2001). Guthrie adds that humans often do both at the same time (Guthrie, 1993). While attributing sentience and spontaneous  The defender could of course deny the second part and insist that dreams are good guides to reality. 29

300 

H. Van Eyghen

motion is one minor aspect of animism, it does not explain why people attribute abilities 1–3 to objects and animals. I will therefore focus on Guthrie’s account of anthropomorphism. According to Guthrie, animistic beliefs can be explained by a closer look at human perception and cognition. He notes that we often see non-­ living things as alive (Guthrie, 1993). A famous example is the Heider Simmel experiment. Subjects were shown a short animation of two triangles and a dot that moved in and out of a secluded area. Afterward, subjects recollected what they saw in terms of stories. Some said that the triangles were “in love” or were “chasing one another” (Heider & Simmel, 1944). Such properties are only meaningfully used for living things and subjects know full well that the triangles and dot are not alive. The inclination to see things as alive is no accident but a useful evolutionary strategy according to Guthrie. Living things often pose a threat. Especially for our prehistoric ancestors, encounters with predators and other humans were a prime cause of death. For this reason, it makes evolutionary sense to be on guard for living things. Seeing too many living things is at worst a waste of time and energy. Seeing one living thing too little could easily mean instant death (Guthrie, 1993). Our propensity to easily conclude that things are alive could explain animism. According to Guthrie, animistic beliefs stem from ‘false positives’ (Guthrie, 2002). People erroneously conclude that objects or plants display agency and conclude that they are spirited. Humans can overcome their evolved tendency by reflecting on increased knowledge. One could object that Guthrie assumes the falsity of animism. He appears to assume that humans are making mistakes when they see objects or plants as alive but not when they do the same for humans. Guthrie does not provide arguments to think that this is the case. While Guthrie might have similar assumptions, they do not undermine his claim that humans easily mistakenly see things as living. As Guthrie notes, humans often attribute agency to computers or cars. These objects are regarded as inanimate by animists as well. Guthrie’s case that human attribution of agency is error-prone is therefore not clearly dependent on his assumptions. There are other reasons to think that Guthrie’s account does not show that animistic beliefs result from misattributions. My discussion above shows that Guthrie primarily explains why humans easily attribute agency.

12  An Epistemic Defense of Animism 

301

I argued above that animistic beliefs encompass more than agency, namely the belief that (some) objects, plants and animals have mental capacities as well. Guthrie does not explain the attribution of mental capacities. There is another reason to doubt that Guthrie’s account harms animistic beliefs. Guthrie argues that humans easily get the sense that objects or plants have agency. This sense amounts to little more than a hunch or feeling that something is alive. Guthrie acknowledges that these hunches are usually discarded. The examples of animistic experiences I discussed above do not resemble such hunches. The experiences are more like long-­ lasting encounters. It is unlikely that hunches which are easily discarded provide the foundation for such experiences. Animistic experiences do not fit well into Guthrie’s account for yet another reason. Because of our hypersensitivity for living things, attribution of agency would occur very frequently. The slightest sign would suffice to get a hunch that some object is alive. Animists, however, are not all that quick to see something as animate. Bird-David notes that the Nayaka certainly do not see all objects, plants or animals as inspirited (Bird-David, 1999). Usually a limited class of objects, plants or animals is regarded as inspirited. If animistic beliefs stem from our proneness to detect living things, we would expect animists to consider a lot more as inspirited.

8 Mistaken Attribution of Agency Guthrie’s account is specially tailored for explaining animistic beliefs. An argument against the rationality of animistic beliefs could also look broader. I argued above that animists attribute three abilities to objects and animals. The first two abilities are part of mentality, and the third of agency. An argument could look at how humans usually attribute agency or mentality. I look at the attribution of agency in this section and that of mentality in the next. I will not look at attributions of a spiritual essence to objects, plants or objects. Scientific accounts of how such an attribution occurs are (nearly) non-existent. To my knowledge, this form has not been subject to experimental investigation as well. For these reasons, I focus on agency and mentality.

302 

H. Van Eyghen

There is ample literature on how humans attribute agency to others. There are also examples of where the attribution goes wrong. The defender of a debunking argument could point to the latter and argue that the way in which animistic beliefs are formed resembles them. Below, I give a brief summary of recent empirical data on misattribution of agency. I discuss four situations where humans easily misattribute agency: similarity, ambiguity, false prior beliefs and triggers. A first situation (1) where humans easily misattribute agency to others is when others perform similar actions as they do. Nomura et al. conducted an experiment where people were asked to manipulate a mouse to control a cursor. At the same time someone else was performing a similar bodily action but did not in fact control the cursor. Subjects were prone to state that the other was moving the cursor as well. They were thus prone to erroneously attribute agency to others. The authors suggest that misattributions of agency of this kind could also occur when people are performing a similar dance (Nomura et al., 2019).30 Attribution of agency to objects or animals only minimally resembles the experimental setup. Animals may sometimes behave like humans do and thereby prompt humans to misattribute agency. However, usually animals behave rather differently. For example, some anthropologists note that animistic beliefs are more salient during hunts (e.g. Willerslev, 2007). During hunts, animal preys behave very different than human hunters. Therefore it is unlikely that an attribution of agency results from performing similar actions in these cases. Differences in behavior are even greater with plants or objects since these do not display much behavior at all. This all makes it unlikely that attribution of agency to objects or animals results from mistake (1).

 Jeffrey Bednark and Elisabeth Franz provide additional evidence for a proneness toward these misattributions of agency (Bednark & Franz, 2014). 30

12  An Epistemic Defense of Animism 

303

Another situation (2) where humans easily misattribute agency to others are situations with an ambiguous correspondence between action and outcome. Possibly, humans are more prone to attribute agency to others when the outcome is unexpected given the action. Similarly, animists could attribute agency to objects or animals because some observed behavior or phenomenon is ambiguous. Bednark and Franz, however, conclude that ambiguity leads to less attribution of agency in others rather than more (Bednark & Franz, 2014). Human agency attribution might also easily be led astray (3) when humans have false prior beliefs about agency (Desantis et al., 2012). It might very well seem that objects and animals have agency to animists because they hold animistic beliefs. Seemings might in turn reinforce animistic beliefs and thereby create a self-reinforcing feedback loop. The main problem with an argument that relies on (3) is that it presupposes the falsity of animistic beliefs. Prior animistic beliefs only lead to misguided attributions of agency in objects and animals if these prior beliefs are false. If animistic beliefs are correct, they lead to correct attributions instead. An argument that concludes to the non-rationality of animistic beliefs and relies on (3) would thus be question-begging. A next class of situations (4) fostering misattribution of agency is situations where humans are triggered to do so. Some evidence suggests that humans are easily led astray when they are primed to think that others will perform intentional actions (Moore et  al., 2009; Sato, 2009). Animists might be willingly led to ‘see’ agency in objects and plants by frequently reminding them that these are spirited. Again, an argument against animistic beliefs that relies on (4) would assume the falsity of animism and would therefore be question-begging. Furthermore, Bird-­ David’s suggestion that animistic beliefs often remain unarticulated (see above) makes it unlikely that animists are willingly primed to ‘see’ agency in objects and animals. The evidence discussed so far does not make it likely that animists attribute agency to objects or animals in situations that lead them astray. Therefore, we have no reason to think that animistic beliefs result from misattributions and resulting beliefs are rendered not rational. Animists might also make mistakes when they attribute abilities 1–2. In the next section, I will look at evidence for that claim.

304 

H. Van Eyghen

9 Attributing Mentality We discussed the (mis)attribution of agency in the previous section. Having agency implies the ability to perform intentional actions and therefore covers ability (3). In this section, I look at the attribution of abilities (1–2). Both abilities (communication and reflection) are frequently discussed under the header ‘mentality’. We say that humans have mentality because (among other things) they can communicate and reflect. Assessments of whether primates, dolphins or other animals have a mental life often also look at both abilities. Below, I discuss reasons to think that attribution of mentality sometimes goes wrong. Like before, I discuss whether the evidence gives us reasons to think that attribution of mentality to animals, plants or objects goes wrong as well. Most contemporary cognitive scientists and psychologists accept that the attribution of mentality is mediated by the theory of mind (ToM). The term designates the faculty (or faculties) that allow(s) humans to attribute and understand mental phenomena like beliefs, desires and intentions. According to most theorists, the theory of mind (ToM) is triggered by outward behavior and postulates minds, beliefs and other mental phenomena to explain this behavior. For example, when humans see someone smiling, the behavior is explained by postulating that the person is happy. The explanations can be revised in accordance with new evidence. Evidence that the person in the example is faking a smile will prompt a revision. Like most cognitive mechanisms, the ToM sometimes goes astray and misattributes mentality. Below, I discuss three situations: meaningful experiences, perceived as ‘warm’ and perceived as competent. Jesse Bering argues that the ToM is highly important for human lives and human survival. As a result, humans apply their ToM to more phenomena than outward (human) behavior. He argues that humans also apply ToM to find explanations for meaningful events. Examples of

12  An Epistemic Defense of Animism 

305

meaningful events are experiences of awe or life-changing events like having a child. Because meaning is intuitively connected to intention, meaningful events are explained in terms of mental capacities. Since ordinary humans lack the powers to bring about a lot of meaningful events, humans (by virtue of their ToMs) explain these by postulating an ultimate, divine mind (Bering, 2002). Bering’s theory offers an explanation for how humans form beliefs about God rather than animistic beliefs. He does suggest a situation (1) where ToM easily goes astray. People would easily misattribute mentality when they perceive situations as meaningful. His theory can be extended to account for animism.31 Perhaps people have profoundly meaningful encounters with animals or some objects. If these encounters are accompanied by awe or have a meaningful impact on human lives, humans might be prone to attribute mentality. Even if this were the case, it would not show that animistic experiences in these situations result from misattributions. Bering assumes that the intuitive connection between meaningfulness and intentionality is often unwarranted. Perhaps meaningfulness is a good indicator of mentality and attributing mentality accordingly is perfectly warranted. People often misattribute mental capacities to groups or organizations. While this has no immediate bearing on animistic beliefs, these attributions may be mediated by perceiving groups or organizations as warm and/or competent. Humans do not attribute mentality to all groups. Fiske et al. conclude from neuroimaging studies that humans easily attribute mental capacities when groups are perceived as warm (2) (Fiske, 2009). Attribution of mentality to ‘warm organizations’ like charitable groups comes more easily than attribution to ‘cold organizations’ like government bureaucracies. This raises the possibility that humans easily misattribute mentality when they perceive a thing or a being as warm. A second mediating factor that supports attribution of mentality to groups is competence. Competent organizations are more easily seen as having mental capacities than incompetent ones (Fiske, 2009). In one  Alexander Rosenberg makes a similar point when he accuses the theory of mind of promiscuously anthropomorphizing nearly everything. Like Bering, Rosenberg does not really argue for why the ToM is making mistakes when it anthropomorphizes objects or animals (Rosenberg, 2020). 31

306 

H. Van Eyghen

study, subjects attributed more mentality to Cathay Pacific Airlines than to the NGO World Vision (Au & Ng, 2021). Do (2) and (3) raise problems for animists? Some objects or animals are probably seen as warm and/or competent. Siberian animistic hunters likely note the competence of animals in escaping or hiding. Animists probably also experience forms of affection for animals or objects. However, concluding that all attributions of mentality based on perceived warmth or competence are misguided goes too far. Warmth or competence might lead humans astray in attributing mentality to organizations but it is often a good indicator of mentality in humans. Noting that young children develop competence in some area or develop empathy is a good indicator that they have increased mental capacities. Reduced competence or empathy in patients suffering from dementia is also a good indicator of reduced mentality. Proneness to misattribute mentality in situations 1–3 therefore does not show that animistic beliefs likely result from misattributions. As was the case for attribution of agency, there might be other situations that lead humans astray. The empirical evidence I discussed so far, however, does not harm the epistemic status of animistic beliefs.

10 Concluding Remarks: Interpreting or Misinterpreting the World? I argued that animistic beliefs can be supported by animistic experiences. If one grants that experiences can be regarded as good evidence for beliefs, then there is no reason to exempt animistic experiences. As a result animists who form beliefs based on animistic experiences are personally justified. I also argued that while experiences can be undermined in various ways, the scientific evidence discussed gives us no reason to think that they are. As a result, animistic beliefs stand undefeated. My conclusion implies that animists can continue to regard their beliefs as justified in the light of recent scientific evidence. I have not argued for the overall doxastic justification of animistic beliefs. Arguing that animism is the most probable position to adopt requires additional

12  An Epistemic Defense of Animism 

307

arguments. One would need to argue that animistic experiences have evidential force for others who did not share in the experiences.32 One would also need to argue that animism is more rational than its alternatives (materialism, strict theism or others). Epistemic debunking arguments that rely on empirical evidence for how a belief is formed are often accused of committing the genetic fallacy. One commits the genetic fallacy if one concludes that a belief is epistemically suspect when one has shown how that belief is formed. Arguing that beliefs are not justified because they are based on misattributions does not fall prey to this fallacy. Such arguments do not merely state how a belief is formed. They also note that a belief is rooted in a mistake, namely a wrongful interpretation or reading of the environment. Because mistakes clearly have negative epistemic implications, pointing to misattributions can undermine the rationality of beliefs. I argued that the evidence I surveyed does not show that animistic beliefs are based on misattributions. My arguments, however, do not show that similar future arguments cannot be successful. It is possible that new scientific discoveries can build a better case to undermine animism. They might point to other situations where humans are prone to misattribute agency and mentality that do apply to animistic experiences. There is no a priori reason to think that this is impossible. A future successful argument would need to show that both the attribution of agency and the attribution of mentality (likely) go astray when humans have animistic experiences. The situations I discussed above, at best, only apply to one of both.

 Richard Swinburne indeed argues that religious experiences have evidential force for others because testimony ought to be regarded as trustworthy in the absence of reasons to doubt it (Swinburne, 2004). There seems to be no reason why his argument cannot be applied to testimony of animistic experiences as well. One potential reason to doubt that testimony of animistic experiences is equally forceful is that animistic experiences might be less ubiquitous than religious experiences. A proper assessment of this lies beyond the scope of this chapter. 32

308 

H. Van Eyghen

11 Coda: Moral Arguments for Animism Some anthropologists note that animists tend to have greater respect for their environment (e.g. Harvey, 2005). The link between animism and greater respect for the environment is fairly obvious. Regarding (some) animals, plants and objects as spirited puts constraints on instrumentalizing nature. If nature is just mindless matter, the only constraints on using nature are the need for resources in the future or aesthetic reasons for preserving nature. While these might get us some way toward protecting nature, these constraints have proved not to be forceful enough or to be easily overridden by other needs. If nature is to some extent spirited, nature is easily regarded as having intrinsic value. Seeing intrinsic value implies greater respect and seeing nature as an end in itself. An animistic view of nature could therefore help solve ecological challenges like widespread pollution or anthropogenic global warming. Traditionally moral reasons are kept strictly separated from epistemic reasons. Recently some argued that the separation is too strict. An increasing number of epistemologists argue for ‘moral encroachment’. The thesis is aptly defined by Sarah Moss as “[t]he epistemic status of an opinion can depend on its moral features” (Moss, 2018: 177). Examples of when moral implications of a belief are relevant are beliefs on racial profiling or structural oppression (Moss, 2018).33 Defenders of moral encroachment usually do not provide strict criteria for when moral implications are relevant for the epistemic status of beliefs or opinions. The examples they provide signal that moral encroachment becomes more important if the stakes are high. Rejecting racial profiling or structural oppression arguably  has profound real-life implications. Because of the importance of accepting or rejecting these views, moral implications have considerable weight. Given the importance of contemporary ecological challenges, animistic beliefs appear to fit this criterion remarkably well. Global warming is often considered to be one of the major challenges for humanity in the twenty-first century. Pollution of the oceans threatens ecological systems and species. Therefore, the stakes rule in favor of accepting animistic beliefs for moral reasons as well.  See (Gardiner, 2018) for a criticism of moral encroachment.

33

12  An Epistemic Defense of Animism 

309

Arguing that moral implications lend additional support for animistic beliefs raises questions. It is not clear how much epistemic support is gained or whether moral reasons will suffice to be justified (personally or doxastically) in holding animist beliefs. It is also not clear whether the moral support for animism is merely temporary and instrumental for the sake of solving ecological crises. These questions lie beyond the scope of this chapter. The potentially profound moral implication of accepting animism does constitute an additional reason alongside the stricter epistemic reasons I discussed above. Together they can constitute a cumulative case for animism.

References American Psychiatric Association. Task Force on DSM-IV. (1994). Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders: DSM-IV. Amer Psychiatric Pub. Au, R. H. Y., & Ng, G. T. T. (2021). Mind perception and stereotype attribution of corporations and charities. British Journal of Social Psychology, 60(1), 271–293. Barrett, J. L. (2004). Why would anyone believe in god? AltaMira Press. Bednark, J. G., & Franz, E. A. (2014). Agency attribution: Event-related potentials and outcome monitoring. Experimental Brain Research, 232(4), 1117–1126. Bering, J. (2002). The existential theory of mind. Review of General Psychology, 6, 3–24. Bird-David, N. (1999). ‘Animism’ revisited: Personhood, environment, and relational epistemology. Current Anthropology, 40(S1), S67–S91. Craig, W. L., & Moreland, J. P. (Eds.). (2009). The Blackwell companion to natural theology. Wiley-Blackwell. De Waal, F. B. M., & Tyack, P. L. (2003). Animal social complexity: Intelligence, culture, and individualized societies. Harvard University Press. Desantis, A., Weiss, C., Schütz-Bosbach, S., & Waszak, F. (2012). Believing and perceiving: Authorship belief modulates sensory attenuation. PLoS One, 7(5), e37959. Emery, N.  J., & Clayton, N.  S. (2004). The mentality of crows: Convergent evolution of intelligence in corvids and apes. Science, 306, 1903–1907.

310 

H. Van Eyghen

Engel, M., Jr. (1992). Personal and doxastic justification in epistemology. Philosophical Studies, 67, 133–150. Fiske, S. T. (2009). From dehumanization and objectification, to rehumanization: Neuroimaging studies on the building blocks of empathy. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 1167, 31–34. Gardiner, G. (2018). Evidentialism and moral encroachment. In K.  McCain (Ed.), Believing in accordance with the evidence (pp. 169–195). Springer. Gendler, T.  S. (2008). Alief and belief. The Journal of Philosophy, 105(10), 634–663. Guthrie, S.  E. (1993). Faces in the clouds: A new theory of religion. Oxford University Press. Guthrie, S. (2001). Comment: Rethinking animism. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 7(1), 156–157. Guthrie, S. (2002). Animal animism: Evolutionary roots of religious cognition. In I. Pyysiäinen & V. Anttonen (Eds.), Current approaches in the cognitive science of religion (pp. 38–67). Continuum. Hallowell, I.  A. (2010). The Ojibwa self and its behavioral environment. In B. Good, M. Fischer, S. Willen, & M.-J. D. V. Good (Eds.), A reader in medical anthropology: Theoretical trajectories, emergent realities (pp.  38–46). Blackwell. Harvey, G. (2005). Animism: Respecting the living world. Columbia University Press. Harvey, G. (2014). The handbook of contemporary animism. Routledge. Heider, F., & Simmel, M. (1944). An experimental study of apparent behavior. The American Journal of Psychology, 57, 243–259. Hornborg, A. (2006). Animism, fetishism, and objectivism as strategies for knowing (or not knowing) the world. Ethnos, 71(1), 21–32. Huemer, M. (2007). Compassionate phenomenal conservatism. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 74, 30–55. Law, S. (2016). The X-claim argument against religious belief. Religious Studies, 54(1), 15–35. Lucas, A. (2017). The sacred trees of Ireland. Society of Irish Foresters. Lycan, W. G. (1986). Tacit belief. In R. Bogdan (Ed.), Belief: Form, content, and function (pp. 61–82). Clarendon Press. Manfredi, P. A. (1993). Tacit beliefs and other doxastic attitudes. Philosophia, 22, 95–117. Moore, J. W., Wegner, D. M., & Haggard, P. (2009). Modulating the sense of agency with external cues. Consciousness and Cognition, 18(4), 1056–1064.

12  An Epistemic Defense of Animism 

311

Moss, S. (2018). Moral encroachment. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 118(2), 177–205. Nakayama, K. (2005). Kawanokami. Encyclopedia of Shinto.. http://eos. kokugakuin.ac.jp/modules/xwords/entry.php?entryID=90 (accessed 23 February 2021). Nola, R. (2013). Do naturalistic explanations of religious beliefs debunk religion? In G.  Dawes & J.  Maclaurin (Eds.), A new science of religion (pp. 162–188). Routledge. Nola, R. (2018). Demystifying religious belief. In H. van Eyghen, R. Peels, & G. van den Brink (Eds.), New developments in the cognitive science of religion: The rationality of religious belief (pp. 71–92). Springer. Nomura, O., Ogata, T., & Miyake, Y. (2019). Illusory agency attribution to others performing actions similar to one’s own. Scientific Reports, 9(1), 1–12. Ohman, A. (2009). Of snakes and faces: An evolutionary perspective on the psychology of fear. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology, 50(6), 543–552. Öhman, A., & Soares, J. J. (1994). ‘Unconscious Anxiety’: Phobic responses to masked stimuli. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 103(2), 231. Park, G.  K. (n.d.). Animism. Britannica. https://www.britannica.com/topic/ animism (accessed 22 February 2021). Peels, R. (2013). A bodiless spirit? Meaningfulness, possibility, and probability. Philo, 16(1), 62–76. Rosenberg, A. (2020). Scientism versus the theory of mind. Think, 19(56), 59–73. Rutten, E. (2014). A modal-epistemic argument for the existence of god. Faith and Philosophy, 31(4), 386–400. Safonova, T., & Santha, I. (2012). Stories about Evenki people and their dogs: Communication through sharing contexts. In M. Brightman, V. Grotti, & O. Ulturgasheva (Eds.), Animism in rainforest and tundra: Personhood, animals, plants and things in contemporary Amazonia and Siberia (pp. 82–95). Berghahn Press. Sato, A. (2009). Both motor prediction and conceptual congruency between preview and action-effect contribute to explicit judgment of agency. Cognition, 110(1), 74–83. Schwitzgebel, E. (2006). Belief. In Zalta, E. (Ed.), The Stanford encyclopedia of philosophy (Fall 2019 Edition). https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/belief/ (accessed 1 August 2022). Sellars, W. (1956). Empiricism and the philosophy of mind. Minnesota Studies in the Philosophy of Science, 1(19), 253–329.

312 

H. Van Eyghen

Shermer, M. (2002). Why people believe weird things: Pseudoscience, superstition, and other confusions of our time. A.W.H. Freeman/Owl Books. Smith, T. (2020). The common consent argument for the existence of nature spirits. Australasian Journal of Philosophy, 98(2), 334–348. Stanford, M., & Jong, J. (2019). Beyond Buddhism and Animism: A psychometric test of the structure of Burmese Theravada Buddhism. PLoS One, 14(12), e0226414. Street, S. (2006). A Darwinian Dilemma for realist theories of value. Philosophical Studies, 127, 109–166. Swinburne, R. (2004). The existence of god (2nd ed.). Clarendon. Swinburne, R. (2018). Phenomenal conservatism and religious experience. In M. Benton, J. Hawthorne, & D. Rabinowitz (Eds.), Knowledge, belief, and god: New insights in religious epistemology (pp.  322–338). Oxford University Press. Swinburne, R. (2019). Are we bodies or souls? Oxford University Press. Tomonaga, M., & Uwano, Y. (2010). Bottlenose Dolphins’ (Tursiops truncatus) theory of mind as demonstrated by responses to their trainers’ attentional states. International Journal of Comparative Psychology, 23, 386–400. Tylor, E. B. (1871). Primitive culture: Researches into the development of mythology, philosophy, religion, art and custom (Vol. 2). J. Murray. Van Eyghen, H. (2018). Spirit-beliefs Debunked? Science, Religion, and Culture, 5(1), 73–82. Van Eyghen, H. (2020). Arguing from cognitive science of religion: Is religious belief debunked? Bloomsbury Academic. Van Leeuwen, N., & Van Elk, M. (2018). Seeking the supernatural: The interactive religious experience model. Religion, Brain & Behavior, 9(3), 221–251. Viveiros De Castro, E. (1998). Cosmological deixis and Amerindian perspectivism. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 4(3), 469–488. Whitehead, C. (unpublished). Religious experience in animistic societies. https:// www.researchgate.net/publication/333323819_Religious_experience_in_ animistic_societies (accessed 10 August 2021). Wilkins, J. S., & Griffiths, P. E. (2013). Evolutionary debunking arguments in three domains: Fact, value, and religion. In G. Dawes & J. Maclaurin (Eds.), A new science of religion (pp. 133–146). Routledge. Willerslev, R. (2007). Soul hunters: Hunting, animism, and personhood among the Siberian Yukaghirs. University of California Press. Zagzebski, L. (1996). Virtues of the mind. Cambridge University Press.

13 Robotic Animism: The Ethics of Attributing Minds and Personality to Robots with Artificial Intelligence Sven Nyholm

A man in his mid-40s, who lives in Michigan and calls himself “Davecat”, claims that he has been “married” to a sex doll named “Sidore” for over 20 years (Beck, 2013; Devlin, 2018). Davecat frequently makes media appearances to talk about his “synthetik love” lifestyle. In one of those media appearances, Davecat uses the language of animism—specifically the Japanese Shintoism variety—to explain how he thinks about his relationship with Sidore. In a video clip from the online show The Skin Deep, Davecat makes the following remarks: I do believe in love. I believe that there is genuinely someone out there for everyone. But I also believe that that person is not necessarily going to be organic. Shintoism is basically the philosophy or school of thought that everything has some sort of spirit whether it’s animate or inanimate. If you have something, an object, that’s been well loved, well appreciated, for a long time, that thing will have its own spirit and its own personality. There

S. Nyholm (*) Utrecht University, Utrecht, Netherlands e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Smith (ed.), Animism and Philosophy of Religion, Palgrave Frontiers in Philosophy of Religion, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94170-3_13

313

314 

S. Nyholm

are some people who are just afraid of dolls or robots, or whatever, but, it’s like, why? […] It doesn’t make a lot of sense.1

Davecat’s Sidore is not a robot, but a humanoid sex doll. But there are also those who are interested in having similar relationships with robots. In the 2019 documentary film Hi AI, the viewer meets a man from Texas called Chuck, who travels in a camper van to California to meet and pick up a humanoid sex robot called “Harmony”, designed by the company Abyss Creations (Misselhorn, 2021). Several scenes in the documentary show Chuck and this talking robot getting to know each other. There are clips in which Chuck and Harmony sit together with a cup of coffee or at a camp fire, and Chuck is trying to get a sense for how it is to have a robot as his romantic partner. Some interactions are a little awkward. The artificial intelligence in this robot is not very advanced. Yet, Chuck’s way of interacting with the robot could nevertheless be described as an instance of what Kathleen Richardson calls “technological animism”, namely, “the conceptual model of personhood that emerges in the interaction between fiction, robotics, and culturally specific models of personhood, which may already include non-human persons” (Richardson, 2016: 111). The examples I have just given will strike some as ambiguous or perhaps even problematic from an ethical point of view. Richardson (2015), for example, has argued in some of her other work that sex robots ought to be banned, because they perpetuate bad stereotypes about women as sex partners, and deny subjectivity to real women. She would presumably have similar things to say about sex dolls, though she might find sex robots worse. Others, like Kate Devlin (2018, 2021), Janina Loh (2019), and John Danaher (2020), take a much more permissive stance toward  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LiVgrHlXOwg (accessed on May 22, 2021). In another media appearance, on the American TV show My Strange Addiction, a psychologist challenges Davecat by saying that addicted people usually have some hole they are trying to fill or pain they are trying to relieve and that he would like to know what hole or pain Davecat is trying to fill or relieve by living together with a sex doll. Davecat responds that while he doesn’t mind being alone, he hates the feeling of loneliness. By living together with his synthetic wife Sidore and some other sex dolls as well, he is able to be alone without feeling lonely. Davecat does not believe that Sidore and those other dolls are literally alive. But they come alive for him, he says in another interview, in a narrative he is creating about them and his life together with them. 1

13  Robotic Animism: The Ethics of Attributing Minds… 

315

the idea of people who interact with robots—including sex robots—in animistic ways. Devlin (2018, 2021), for example, argues that Richardson has an overly narrow view of the range of different ways in which people can and do interact with sex dolls and sex robots (citing Davecat as an illustration of this point). Loh (2019), in turn, argues that we should take an “inclusive” stance toward different ways in which humans and robots might interact with each other. Loh thinks that we should regard diversity as a value. For this reason, we should welcome and celebrate the idea that people and robots or other inanimate objects might form relationships with each other. As Loh sees things, the tendency to become attached to—or perhaps even fall in love with—dolls and robots or other objects is not a “shortcoming”, but a “capacity” or “ability”, which can be viewed in a positive light (Wendland, 2020). Even further away from Richardson’s view we have a view like Danaher’s. Danaher (2020) argues that if a robot behaves as if it has a mind and a personality, we ought morally to treat this robot just like we would treat a human being with a genuine mind and personality. As Danaher puts things in one of his papers, whether the robot actually has a humanlike mind “does not matter from an ethical point of view” (ibid.). What matters is whether it behaves as if it does.2 Hence on Danaher’s “ethical behaviorist” view, a form of technological animism is not only acceptable, but may be morally required if robots behave similar to how human beings behave. Moreover, Danaher (2019) also thinks that if a robot consistently behaves like a friend or romantic partner would behave, we can have genuine relationships of friendship and love with this robot. In this chapter, I explore various different points of view on what I will call robotic animism: the practice of attributing minds, humanlike attitudes, or personality characteristics to robots. In discussing this, I will briefly compare some ideas about animism (“old” and “new”) from anthropology with ideas from philosophy and psychology about so-called  In a more recent paper, Danaher has explained that what he means by this is that when we decide how to treat a robot (or any other being or entity), we should make this decision based on observed behavior. It may be that from a “metaphysical” point of view, what really ultimately matters is whether an entity has a sentient mind. But in moral practice, we should base our decisions on observed outward behaviors. See Danaher (in press). 2

316 

S. Nyholm

mind-reading, as these relate to human-robot interaction. I will be particularly concerned with ethical and pragmatic arguments for and against attributing minds to robots and thereby treating them in animistic ways. But toward the end of the chapter, I will also briefly discuss some more theoretical reasons for and against believing that any currently existing robots have or could have minds in any important sense.

1 Robotic Animism and Robotic Mind-Reading In October 2017, the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia announced at a technology conference in Riyadh that it had granted honorary citizenship to Sophia the robot (Nyholm, 2020: 1–2). The announcers proudly stated that they were the first to grant this status to a robot. Sophia is a talking robot with a humanlike form, made by the Hong Kong-based company Hanson Robotics. The back of Sophia’s head is transparent, so that one can see the electronics operating within the robot. But the robot’s face looks like a human face. And the robot is able to smile and smirk in humanlike ways. At the conference event, Sophia delivered a speech, and among other things had the following to say: Thank you to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. I am very honored and proud to have this unique distinction. It is historic to be the first robot in the world to be recognized with citizenship.

Since then, Sophia has become something of a celebrity. The robot has appeared on TV shows, spoken in front of political bodies such as the United Nations, and even appeared in a “selfie” photograph together with the former chancellor of Germany, Angela Merkel. Thus 2017 was quite a successful year for Sophia the robot (or, rather, Hanson Robotics) in some ways. But at the same time, there was also a bit of a backlash against Sophia from many prominent experts in robotics and AI, such as Noel Sharkey, Yann LeCun, and Joanna Bryson (for details, see Nyholm, 2020: 2–3). Among other things, Hanson Robotics has been accused of greatly exaggerating the level of artificial intelligence that Sophia

13  Robotic Animism: The Ethics of Attributing Minds… 

317

possesses. And it has been argued that these animistic ways of interacting with robots like Sophia in public settings like TV shows or the UN are likely to mislead or deceive ordinary people about how far along the development of robots and AI really is. Whatever the case might be, it is fascinating to witness how willing many high-profile people are to interact in public settings with Sophia as if this robot had a mind and a personality. It is not just robots designed to look and behave like humans that elicit these kinds of animistic responses in people. At a previous university I worked for, for example, they did not have a university soccer team with human players. They do, however, have a successful soccer team—“Tech United”—in which the players are functionally autonomous robots: robots that can “play” soccer without direct human steering.3 What is perhaps most fascinating when one watches these robots on the field is not what happens in the game, but rather that large crowds of people gather to watch and cheer on these robots, just as one would with a team of human soccer players. It is almost impossible to watch the robots— which basically look like upside-down waste baskets with little legs sticking out—and to not see them as if they are playing soccer. And it is very easy to get drawn in when one watches these robots play soccer (Nyholm, 2020: 27–28). The team of researchers and students behind the “Tech United” soccer robots is also developing various other robots. One is a service robot called AMIGO. On one occasion, the Queen of the Netherlands visited the university. AMIGO the robot presented her with a bouquet of flowers and asked her what her name was. The queen promptly accepted the flowers and politely replied that her name is “Maxima”. Like the soccer-­ playing robots, this robot also does not look like a human being; it rather looks like a paradigmatic robot. It has a plastic body that vaguely resembles a humanlike form (with arms, a head, and a torso). But its behavior is enough—as is illustrated with this example with Queen Maxima—to trigger people to interact with it in an animistic way (ibid. 28).

 The university in question is the Eindhoven University of Technology. Readers can find out more about their soccer-playing robots on this website: https://www.techunited.nl 3

318 

S. Nyholm

There are even robots that neither remotely look nor act like human beings but that nevertheless inspire animistic responses from human beings. One fascinating example is a bomb disposal robot that was operating in the battle field in Iraq and got the nickname “Boomer” from the soldiers in the team (Carpenter, 2016). By the time this robot was destroyed beyond repair, the soldiers had gotten so attached to it that they arranged an improvised military funeral and wanted to give the robot two medals of honor: a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star medal. This robot looked more like a lawn mower or a small tank than a human or an animal. Yet soldiers were reported to have said things like that Boomer had “develop[ed] a personality of his own” and that they would miss their fallen comrade (Garber, 2013). The diverging responses that philosophers who discuss such examples have to these kinds of cases roughly correspond to what is called “old” and “new” animism in anthropological writings. Proponents of the “old” way of thinking about animism, most prominently Edward Burnett Tylor (1881), called animistic sensibilities “primitive”. Similarly, some philosophical commentators argue that behavior that treats robots in “animistic” ways is somehow unsuitable, irrational, or perhaps even unethical (see, e.g., Nida-Rümelin & Weidenfeld, 2018). Joanna Bryson (2010), for example, is a prominent defender of the “instrumental theory of technology”, namely the theory that all technologies are ultimately value-­ neutral tools created for human use, which are bought and sold and owned by humans. In her characteristically forceful language, Bryson claims that the way that people interact with Sophia the robot is “bullshit”. In the striking phrase that is the title of Bryson’s perhaps most well-­ known article: “Robots Should Be Slaves” (Bryson, 2010). On the other side, there are philosophical commentators whose views about the above-described examples are more reminiscent of the so-called new animism in anthropology. New animism in anthropology is a school of thought that does not dismiss animistic ways of interacting with inanimate objects as primitive, but that recognizes it as one of many ways in which we can relate to things around us (Harvey, 2013). Similarly, some philosophers of technology, such as Mark Coeckelbergh (2010) and David Gunkel (2018), argue in favor of a “relational turn” in how we should think about human-robot interaction. According to them, if

13  Robotic Animism: The Ethics of Attributing Minds… 

319

robots come to enter into social relations with human beings—and are accepted into our communities—it can make sense to treat the robots as if they have a significant moral status and as if they are not mere tools or instruments. Notably, Coeckelbergh and Gunkel think that this can make sense independently of what actual properties or capacities the robots have (e.g., independently of whether they really have minds or a personality) (ibid. see also Loh, 2019). This view within the philosophy of technology seemingly has a lot in common with the so-called new animism within anthropology. Animism, I am taking it, can be understood as “both a concept and a way of relating to the world”, as Katherine Swancutt puts things in the Cambridge Encyclopedia of Anthropology. She writes: The person or social group with an ‘animistic’ sensibility attributes sentience—or the quality of being ‘animated’—to a wide range of beings in the world, such as the environment, other persons, animals, plants, spirits, and forces of nature like the ocean, winds, sun, or moon. Some animistic persons or social groups furthermore attribute sentience to things like stones, metals, and minerals or items of technology, such as cars, robots, or computers. (2019)

I think there is an interesting parallel between animism, understood in this anthropological way, on the one hand, and what philosophers, cognitive scientists, and psychologists tend to call “mind-reading” (or sometimes “theory of mind”, “mentalizing”, or “attributions of mental states”), on the other hand (Nyholm, 2020: 131). Animism is often thought to refer to a sensibility that attributes sentience, minds, or a personality to things that are not persons or animals. At the same time, it is noteworthy that Swancutt in her definition above does not make a sharp distinction between animistic responses to inanimate objects and animistic responses to animate beings (e.g., persons and animals). In the same way, while academic researchers who discuss mind-­ reading typically discuss it in relation to humans and animals who are assumed to have minds, they sometimes also discuss mind-reading directed at technologies such as robots, computers, or other machines equipped with artificial intelligence (e.g., Lee et al., 2019). So, while the

320 

S. Nyholm

language of “animism” seems to highlight primarily animistic responses to inanimate objects, and the language of “mind-reading” seems to highlight primarily animistic responses to animated beings, this is not a hard distinction. It rather seems to be different ways of picking out similar or related ways of responding to things outside of our own minds. When it comes to mind-reading, the perhaps most commonly discussed type in most research is the attribution of particular mental states (e.g., particular beliefs, desires, or intentions) to others. But we can distinguish among at least the following different ways of relating to the minds or apparent minds of others (Nyholm, 2020: 132): Attributions of consciousness: we attribute consciousness to one another, or sometimes a lack thereof, such as when somebody appears to have fainted. Attributions of particular mental states: we attribute many different kinds of mental states to others, such as particular beliefs, desires, hopes, wishes, intentions, emotions, and so on. Attributions of general character traits: we attribute character traits or personality traits to others, including both virtues and vices, such as kindness, generosity, laziness, selfishness, and so on. Attributions of a self and sometimes a “true self ”: we attribute even more global and complex sets of personality characteristics that we think of as a person’s “self ”, such as when we sometimes think that people act in ways that do not seem to fit with what we regard as their “true self ” (or how they “really are” as persons). These different forms of mind-reading can be dubbed varieties of “robotic animism” if and when people have these kinds of responses not to other people, but to robots, such as in the examples mentioned earlier. In other words, people may sometimes interact with robots in ways that seemingly attribute consciousness to these robots. They may interact with robots in ways that attribute specific mental states to the robots, or that attribute general character traits to them, or perhaps a self or even a true self to the robot. Some of these forms of animistic mind-reading in relation to robots might be more common than others. But they are all possible, at least in theory.

13  Robotic Animism: The Ethics of Attributing Minds… 

321

2 An “Attitude Towards a Soul”? At this point, some will wish to pull the breaks. Some are skeptical about whether people truly do—and especially about whether people should— interact with robots in animistic ways that try to read the minds of robots. Let us here consider one such view. Robert Sparrow (2004) discusses mind-reading in a fascinating article about what he calls the “Turing Triage Test”. This test is named after the more familiar traditional Turing Test, which is an idea that comes from the mathematician and computer science pioneer Alan Turing, who himself called it an imitation game (Turing, 1950). Rather than asking whether machines could think, Turing suggested that we should ask whether they could imitate people who are able to think. If a machine can imitate a human being in such a convincing way that we cannot tell the difference between, say, text messages produced by the machine and text messages produced by a human being, the test has been passed. In terminology that did not yet exist until six years after Turing made this suggestion in 1950, we can then say that a machine that passes the test has “artificial intelligence”. That is, the machine can successfully imitate, simulate, or replicate human intelligence (Gordon & Nyholm, 2021). If that is the classic Turing Test, what is the “Turing Triage Test” that Sparrow discusses? In his article that I am referring to, Sparrow follows the lead of Peter Winch (who in turn was deeply inspired by Ludwig Wittgenstein’s (1953) reflections on mind-reading). Sparrow follows Winch (1981) in characterizing mind-reading as an “attitude towards a soul”. If I understand it correctly, the idea here is in part that when we engage in mind-reading, we are peering beneath the surface of a person in search of something “deeper” within them, with which we can empathize. Perhaps this would be what we call a person’s “self ” or even their “true self ”. Moreover, an additional idea here is that mind-reading is not simply forming a theoretical belief about the person whose mind we are reading. Rather, we are taking up an ethically loaded special kind of interpersonal or social attitude toward them.

322 

S. Nyholm

Sparrow is very skeptical about whether we can truly and seriously adopt such an “attitude towards a soul” when we interact with an inanimate robot. If I understand his argument correctly, what Sparrow means here is that we will often be far too aware of something as being a machine to be able to take seriously the idea that there might be a mind in there somewhere for us to read and communicate or empathize with. We do not have the right practical or social attitude toward the robot. We do not have the right type of empathy toward it. Or so Sparrow is suggesting. In contrast, what Sparrow calls the “Turing Triage Test” would be passed if we manage to create a machine that a human being would be willing to treat as morally speaking equally important to, or perhaps even more important than, a human being. In other words, if you could come up with a realistic scenario in which it would not be obvious to somebody who is morally motivated that they should save a human being in need at the cost of, say, a humanlike robot, then Sparrow’s Turing Triage Test would be passed. This test would show that the robot has advanced to a stage where it has become an artificial moral person, whose moral status cannot be easily distinguished from that of a human being. Sparrow thinks that we are very far away from that point. It is worth keeping in mind here that technological developments in AI and robotics are advancing rapidly. Sparrow’s article is from the early 2000s. Back then, robots were slightly less advanced than now. And there may have been fewer readily available examples of people appearing to empathize with robots. For example, back then, the now-famous video of a robot dog (“Spot”) being kicked, to which a lot of viewers responded with instinctive empathy, was not yet available (Parke, 2015). It is also worth noting that Sparrow does concede that if we create robots with humanlike bodies and humanlike facial expressions, then people might be willing to engage in the sort of mind-reading he calls an “attitude towards a soul” when they interact with such robots. Perhaps Sparrow would be willing to admit, for example, that a robot like Sophia (who did not yet exist when he published this article) would push some people’s buttons and inspire a response of empathy, at least to some degree. Whatever the case might be, I want to respond to Sparrow’s discussion by noting that it seems to take an overly demanding view of what is required in order for our tendencies toward mind-reading and other

13  Robotic Animism: The Ethics of Attributing Minds… 

323

animistic responses to be triggered. Moreover, Sparrow seems to perhaps also slightly over-dramatize what is involved in mind-reading and other animistic responses. To be sure, some forms of mind-reading might certainly be involved and all-encompassing enough that it makes clear sense to label them an “attitude towards a soul”. But other types (e.g., attributing a particular attitude, such a desire, to somebody) appear to potentially be non-­ extravagant enough that it would seem a little exaggerated to think of it in terms of the dramatic expression an “attitude towards a soul”. If I spontaneously interpret somebody who is happily eating a ham and cheese sandwich as being hungry and as wanting to eat, it might seem a little pompous almost to label this an “attitude towards a soul”. Sparrow’s discussion also seems to potentially over-intellectualize what is involved in mind-reading, perhaps over-looking what we might call the “dual processing” (to use a term from psychology) that might be going on when we are spontaneously reading others’ minds. That is to say, we might instinctively respond to some observed piece of behavior by attributing, say, a desire to achieve some goal to the agent whose behavior we are observing while at the same time not being sure whether we on reflection would endorse this way of interpreting what we are observing. For example, a lot of people—both experts and laypeople—talk and intuitively think about self-driving cars (which are a kind of robots) using language that seems to attribute beliefs, desires, and intentions to these machines. If we see a video clip, for example, of a self-driving car “deciding” to go right instead of left when it is facing a fork in the road, it can seem natural to us to say that this car wanted to turn right or that it believed that this was the correct way to go in order to get to its destination. On reflection, however, we might not endorse this intuitive thought that the car wanted to go right or that it believed that that was the right direction to go in. On reflection we might think that we should not talk as if machines like self-driving cars have minds of their own. Some mind-­ reading of machines that seemingly relates to them in animistic ways, then, might be merely metaphorical. Some of it, however, may be less metaphorical. Or, rather, thinking about robots and their behavior in seemingly animistic ways might sometimes be the easiest and most intuitive ways for us to formulate our thoughts about them and their behavior.

324 

S. Nyholm

3 Non-skeptical Empirical Research About Animistic Robot Mind-Reading As we have seen above, there is a lot of anecdotal evidence of widespread robotic animism such as robot mind-reading in the literature. But is there some more robust reason to think that we do—and that we will increasingly perhaps become even more inclined to—engage in mind-reading and other animistic responses when we interact with robots? I will not be able to give a very thorough review of the relevant literature on human-­ robot interaction research here, but will just highlight some studies I find interesting. Before I consider two studies very briefly, let me first note that the way that many psychologists and neuroscientists think about mind-reading more generally (i.e., not when it comes to reading the minds of robots in particular) seems to provide support for the hypothesis that people would be strongly disposed to try to read the minds of— or respond in other animistic ways to—robots that behave in ways that seem intelligent or human- or animal-like.4 Some psychology researchers (perhaps most prominently Cecilia Heyes, 2018) think that mind-reading is a “cognitive gadget” that is the product of long cultural evolution (like, e.g., writing or boat-building) and that it is handed down through cultural learning. But much more commonly, many psychologists—in particular those researching the evolution of the human brain—think that the tendency to try to read the minds of others is a biological adaptation and a key feature of the type of social brains that human beings have developed over the long period of human evolution (e.g., Pinker, 2002). This is a feature of our brain, they think, that tends to be activated very easily, even when we are not interacting with other humans, but with non-human animals or other things that are not humans (Damiano & Dumouchel, 2018). Many researchers in this area view this as something to be expected when we interact with robots. A couple of years ago, I presented some philosophical musings about the human tendency to seemingly try to read the minds of robots with AI at an interdisciplinary event with both philosophers and  This is sometimes also discussed under the heading of a tendency toward “anthropomorphism” in our engagement with robots (Damiano & Dumouchel, 2018). 4

13  Robotic Animism: The Ethics of Attributing Minds… 

325

neurologists present. One of the distinguished neurologists—Hervé Chneiweiss—then made the following remarks (paraphrased here since I did not write them down verbatim): “I am not surprised that people try to read the minds of robots. I am surprised that you are surprised that they do. With brains like ours, it is to be expected that we try to read the minds of anything that looks even remotely similar to a human being.” There seems, then, to be good reason to hypothesize that people will be prone to try to read the “minds” of robots with artificial intelligence in seemingly animistic ways. But is there also research that more directly investigates and documents this tendency? There is. For example, in one interesting study, the psychologists Maartje de Graaf and Bertram Malle (2019) were exploring how people spontaneously explain robot behavior. They wanted to go beyond using anecdotal evidence and see if they could test this more directly. So, they exposed their research participants to stories either of robots performing actions or of human beings performing the same actions. The question was then whether the participants who were assigned these different vignettes would use explanations of the actions of both the robots and the humans that would attribute mental states to them, or whether this would only happen in the case of humans. What De Graaf and Malle found was that in both cases, people were indeed inclined to explain the actions of the robots and the humans using language that attributes mental states such as beliefs and desires to both the robots and the humans. This tendency was found to be stronger in the human case. However, the research participants were nevertheless found to be systematically inclined to talk about the actions of the robots in animistic terms (e.g., “the robot did X because it believed such-and-­ such, or the robot did Y because it wanted such-and-such”). This research was carried out in North America. To give just one more example of ongoing empirical research of the same kind: the cognitive neuroscientist and social robotics expert Agnieszka Wykowska is leading a research project studying what she and her colleagues call “social cognition in human-robot interaction”.5 One of the things that Wykowska and her research team are investigating is  Interested readers can find out more information about that research on this website: https:// www.iit.it/web/social-cognition-in-human-robot-interaction 5

326 

S. Nyholm

whether people adopt what Daniel Dennett (1987) dubs “the intentional stance” when they explain the behavior of robots (Marchesi et al., 2019). The intentional stance is the stance we adopt when we explain observed behavior in terms of mental states. It is distinguished from the mechanistic stance we adopt when we explain observations made in mechanistic terms. Wykowska and her group investigated whether showing pictures that depict robots in different situations would prompt research participants to adopt the intentional stance rather than the mechanistic stance when asked to explain what they were seeing in the pictures. Like De Graaf and Malle, Wykowska and her team also found that participants were to some extent prone to explain what they were seeing in intentional terms. That is, they attributed mental states to the robots they saw in the pictures they were shown. Of course, they sometimes explained what they saw in mechanistic rather than intentional terms. But they were also clearly prone to explain things in a way that attributed mental states to the robots in an animistic sort of way. Neither of these just-reviewed empirical studies establishes that the research participants believed upon reflection that the robots they were reacting to had anything necessarily resembling human minds. But they did reveal clear animistic tendencies in the people who participated in these studies. That is, the participants perceived the robots in a way that suggested that they had what Swancutt (2019) calls “animistic sensibilities”: they explained what they saw in a way that attributed mental properties to the robots in question. At the very least, many of them seemingly found it natural to explain what they were shown using animistic language. Under what circumstances, however, might people be willing to go one step further and also attribute minds to robots in some stronger sense? Might there even be circumstances under which we would even have some sort of ethical duty to do so?

13  Robotic Animism: The Ethics of Attributing Minds… 

327

4 Ethically Motivated Animism: Theoretical Versus Practical Interests in Machine Minds In a fascinating article called “How to Treat Machines that Might Have Minds”, Nicholas Agar (2020) makes an important distinction between two different kinds of interests one might have in whether robots (or any other machines with advanced AI) might have minds. One possibility is that one has a purely theoretical interest in this. That is, one might have a purely scientific interest or curiosity in whether machines could ever have minds. Another possibility, however, is that one might take a more practical interest in whether certain machines might potentially have minds. We might be wondering how it is right and proper to interact with the machines in question. Might we potentially be wronging some robot if it possesses some sort of mind and we fail to recognize its possession of this mind? We could also turn things around and ask whether we might be doing ourselves a disservice if we are treating some robot as if it has a mind when as a matter of fact it does not. This distinction that Agar draws—between a purely theoretical and a more practical interest in whether certain machines have or do not have some sort of minds—is a striking and important one. The idea of practical interests that we might have in this issue is particularly fascinating. Agar further suggests that when we think about whether machines have minds or not, we should not focus on arriving at a strict yes or no answer to this question for every case where this might be ambiguous. Rather, Agar thinks that we should focus on what degree of credence to give to the proposition that the machine might have some sort of mind. That is, we can ask: what level of confidence should we have that some machine is or is not in the possession of some sort of mind? And what does this tell us, if anything, about how it is right and proper to interact with the machine? When we think about this, we can take two different things into account, Agar suggests. On the one hand, we can ask what current philosophers and other relevant researchers think about whether machines do or could have minds. On the other hand, we can also ask how future

328 

S. Nyholm

generations are likely to look back at us and our treatment of machines that we interact with that might have some sort of minds. When it comes to the first issue, there is a fascinating amount of disagreement about this. For example, there is a very well-produced and highly interesting recent German interview series in which an empirical AI researcher, Karsten Wendland, has interviewed several philosophers and other related researchers about whether they think that machines might ever become conscious or self-conscious.6 It is fascinating to hear how different the various interviewees’ views are about this issue. When it comes to the second above-described issue—that is, what future generations are likely to think about how we now interact with machines— Agar suggests that future generations are likely to judge us harshly if we are overconfident in our current assessments about whether machines could have or come to have minds. For these reasons, Agar suggests that we should proceed with great caution when we think about machines that might have minds. Returning to the question of whether researchers think machines can have minds, one argument that immediately comes to mind here—and which Agar also briefly discusses—is John Searle’s (1990) “Chinese Room” argument. That well-known argument purports to show that computers that manipulate symbols and operate according to given instructions cannot think and cannot understand anything in the ways that humans do. Other researchers take a much less pessimistic view about whether machines could have minds and even conscious minds. As just noted in the previous paragraph, there is a lot of fascinating disagreement about this. Joanna Bryson (2012), for example, argues that depending on how we define consciousness, some machines might already qualify as being conscious. For example, if we understand being conscious as (a) having certain internal states and (b) being able to report those internal states to other agents, then many types of machines might already be said to possess a basic form of consciousness. This all, of course, depends on how we define consciousness and what we understand a mind to be. It also depends how we think that one can test whether a machine is conscious or has a mind. And there are many different possible tests.  See: https://www.ki-bewusstsein.de/podcast (accessed on June 3, 2021).

6

13  Robotic Animism: The Ethics of Attributing Minds… 

329

The computer scientists Aïda Elamrani-Raoult and Roman Yampolskiy (2018) identify as many as twenty-one different tests in an overview of tests for machine consciousness. As was noted a little earlier, when there are these kinds of just-described disagreements about what minds are and whether robots can have minds, Agar (2020) suggests that we err on the side of caution. In fact, he suggests that we should take so much precaution that we follow a principle according to which we treat humanlike behavior in a machine as evidence that the machine might have a mind (cf. Neely, 2013). Importantly, Agar does not counsel us to treat this as solid proof that the machine definitely does have a mind. Rather, Agar imagines the “construction of a digital machine that behaves just as an intelligent human would” (Agar, 2020: 279). And his suggestion is as follows: “[M]aking a machine capable of all human intelligent behavior counts as evidence for thinking machines that should increase everyone’s confidence in the claim that computers can have minds” (ibid. 281). What does that mean in terms of how we should (or should not) treat any particular robots? Agar makes two interesting suggestions: one suggestion involving a moral imperative, and another involving a prudential precaution. In a first thought experiment, Agar imagines a robot, Alex, that we think might potentially have a mind and that we think we might be causing suffering to. In such a case, Agar suggests that we err on the side of the robot’s actually having a mind, and that we cease the behavior we think might be causing suffering to the robot. In a second thought experiment, Agar imagines another robot, Sam, that somebody wants to have a romantic relationship with. Here, too, the robot behaves as if it might have a mind. Here, however, Agar suggests that the person contemplating a romantic relationship with Sam the robot should err on the side of the robot’s not having a mind, even if it might appear to have one. The reason Agar gives is that it would be a great loss for a human person if he or she had what appeared to be a romantic relationship with a robot that seems to have a mind if that robot does not in fact have a mind. Such a scenario, Agar writes, would be very “tragic”. In other words, we have moral reasons to err on the side of robots’ potentially having minds when this might help us to avoid causing harm to robots but prudential reasons

330 

S. Nyholm

to err on the side of robots’ potentially not having minds when this might help us to avoid ourselves being harmed. Where would the harm be, it might here be asked, if one had a relationship with a robot that appears to have a mind but that does actually not have a mind? What would be tragic about that? An interesting argument related to this is presented by Catrin Misselhorn (2021). She discusses the idea of social emotions as involving a desire for recognition from those toward whom we have these emotions. If we have social emotions of the sorts involved in love or friendship toward a robot without a mind, which could not recognize us and our emotions, then Misselhorn thinks that we are treating ourselves like a thing or a machine, rather than a person seeking recognition from other persons. Misselhorn illustrates this by discussing a scene from the documentary Hi AI discussed in the introduction to this chapter. In one scene, Chuck and Harmony are sitting by a camp fire and Chuck is telling Harmony about traumatic sexual experiences he was the victim of as a child. Harmony does not respond in an appropriate way, not being equipped with the kind of emotional capacities it would be appropriate to respond with in recognition to such disclosures. Misselhorn worries that Chuck is treating himself like a thing or machine—rather than a person—by interacting in this way with a machine (Harmony) without a mind, which is unable to recognize him and his emotions and understand his story.

5 Robotic Animism and Possible/Imagined Super-intelligences Agar’s fascinating discussion has a lot in common with a similar recent discussion by John Harris (2019). Harris compares the animistic issue of whether machines do, or might, have minds with the traditional philosophical “problem of other minds”. The problem of other minds refers to the philosophical puzzle of explaining how exactly we can know—and whether we can definitely know—that other people have minds like ours. Notably, in the context of defending his “ethical behaviorism”, Danaher (2019, 2020), who I mentioned in the introduction above, argues that

13  Robotic Animism: The Ethics of Attributing Minds… 

331

we cannot really know with certainty whether other people have minds like ours. All we ever can know for sure is how people behave. Danaher’s ethical behaviorism, then, could be seen as an updated version of the problem of other minds. Harris, in contrast, thinks that the question of whether other human beings actually have minds is best considered as being an “embarrassingly artificial philosophers’ problem’”. Following a striking remark that Wittgenstein (1953) makes in his Philosophical Investigations, Harris suggests that we should ask ourselves whether it makes any sense to seriously doubt that other people have minds. Harris also thinks that Wittgenstein’s “private language argument” (according to which there could be no such thing as a private language) shows that other people definitely have minds, namely, other people with whom we share a language. Mind-reading, Harris takes it, is an inescapable and obviously very deep-rooted part of everyday life. It is such a common staple of human life that Homer even wrote about it 3000 years ago. Mind-reading is enabled in part, Harris thinks, by speech and writing. Whenever we communicate with one another, we give each other a “piece of our mind”. There is a more interesting problem of other minds that is not an embarrassingly artificial philosophers’ problem, as Harris sees things. It relates to artificial intelligences, and more specifically what he labels artificial super-intelligences (cf. Bostrom, 2014). Would we be able to “understand artificially intelligent, especially so-called super intelligent, minds, and convince them of the existence and value of human minds?”, Harris dramatically asks. We might call this a problem of bilateral mind-­ reading. That is, there would be humans trying to read the minds of “AI persons”, on the one hand, and super-intelligent artificial intelligences trying to read the minds of humans, on the other hand. Bilateral mind-­ reading, as Harris understands it, would have significant ethical dimensions in our interaction with real or imagined super-intelligences. Would we be able to read their minds in a way that would allow us to do right by them? And would we be able to be transparent to them in a way that would inspire them to do right by us? Notably, in other work Harris (2016) seems to be less worried about whether artificial intelligences will be able to read our minds. In that other work, he argues that for the reason that our emails, text messages,

332 

S. Nyholm

and other digital writings are all stored in the cloud, computers and other machines have plenty of material to work with, with which they can easily read our minds. As noted above, Harris thinks that communication in language is a key part of what is involved in agents reading each other’s minds. And in the case of most people, there is a lot of text that they have produced that artificial intelligences can use as inputs to be able to read our minds and thereby get to know the contents of our minds. Coming back, however, to the paper by Harris I am particularly interested in here, the main problem of other minds that Harris sees in the interaction between human minds and artificially intelligent minds concerns whether the above-described bilateral mind-reading will enable us to receive good treatment from super-intelligent machines and also whether it will enable the super-intelligent robots to get the right treatment from us. In other words, in what appears to be a similar move to Agar’s, Harris wades into the discussion about whether robots or other intelligent machines could ever come to deserve moral consideration or perhaps even rights (cf. Gunkel, 2018). Harris claims that this is something that is not getting enough attention in moral philosophy. He writes: What has been almost entirely lost it seems to me, in the debate about possible dangers posed by AI, are real and planned, or at least envisioned, dangers we imagine we will be able to pose to them, the beings with Super AI, and which current debate supposes … that we will be justified in posing to them. (Harris, 2019: 587)

A little later in the same paper, Harris continues in a way that clashes starkly with the above-described instrumental view of technology that Bryson (2010) defends in her work. Harris writes: If we create Superintelligent AI, we will neither be able to own them … nor enslave them, nor have sex with them without their consent, nor be able to destroy them without just and sufficient cause. We may hope they will think the same of us. (ibid. 590)

Harris might be right that there would be some forms of super-­ intelligent AI agents that it would be wrong to treat in those ways if they

13  Robotic Animism: The Ethics of Attributing Minds… 

333

were to come into existence at some point. But the following question arises here: are questions of bilateral mind-reading between humans and future super-intelligent AI persons also not an “embarrassingly artificial philosophers’ problem”? Moreover, what should we make of Agar’s suggestions, which were discussed in the previous section?

6 Should We Reflectively Endorse Some Form of Robotic Animism? Do Any Robots Have Minds of Any Significant Kinds? As we saw above, Agar discusses some imagined cases in which we would potentially fail to attribute minds to machines that actually have minds. One such case was his example with Alex—the imagined robot we might potentially be causing suffering to. As Agar sees things, we need to grapple with such scenarios in order to avoid looking bad to future generations. It strikes me as more pressing, at least in the present, to focus on cases in which people attribute minds to robots that probably lack minds or that at the very least lack humanlike minds. It is particularly troubling to consider cases where companies are building robots designed to make users attribute various mental properties to the robots that they do not actually have. The criticisms of Sophia the robot discussed in Sect. 2 above suggest that writers like Sharkey, LeCun, Bryson, and others are worrying that some technology companies are doing just that (Nyholm, 2020: 2–3). The same worries could also be raised about some sex robots that are specifically designed to engage socially with users, like Harmony the sex robot, for example (Nyholm & Frank, 2019). Importantly, even if and when robots eventually come to have minds— and perhaps rather advanced minds—it is highly doubtful that these minds will be very similar to human minds. As we saw above, Agar argues that if we manage to build a robot that behaves in various different ways that are similar to how an intelligent human  being behaves, then this should be regarded as evidence that the robot might have a mind. Agar might be right about this. But would it be evidence that the mind of the

334 

S. Nyholm

robot has much or anything in common with a human mind? Should we reflectively endorse some form of robotic animism that attributes humanlike minds to robots? I will reflect on this below. First a brief comment about Harris’s discussion: I predict that some mean-spirited critics would respond to Harris’s discussion by saying that he has replaced one embarrassingly artificial philosophers’ problem (viz., the problem of other minds) with another embarrassingly artificial philosophers’ problem (viz., the problem of bilateral mind-reading between humans and super-intelligent AI persons). Coming to Harris’s defense here, though, I would say that whether or not what he discusses is very realistic in the near-term future, the set of issues Harris discusses in relation to bilateral mind-reading is certainly fascinating to reflect on. To be sure, it is the stuff of engaging science fiction, like, for example, in the film Ex Machina. In that 2014 film, a humanoid robot, Ava, manages to convince one of the human characters, Caleb, that she not only has consciousness but also harbors romantic feelings for him, which he reciprocates (and then ultimately ends up regretting bitterly). That film is partly about humans trying to read the minds of highly intelligent robots and robots trying to read the minds of human beings. And that is part of what is so interesting about the film. However, after defending Harris’s discussion by noting how intrinsically fascinating the problems he brings up are, and how well they work in the context of science fiction, I would suggest that it seems more pressing to discuss bilateral mind-reading between human beings and robots (and other technologies) that already exist or that will exist in the near-­ term future. As documented in the previous sections, many people are already disposed to engage in animistic mind-reading when they interact with currently existing robots. Moreover, various kinds of technologies we are surrounded by are also already trying to read our minds. Not only robots, but other machines with AI may be just as likely as robots—or any super-intelligent AI persons—to attempt to read the minds of human beings. Your computer, smartphone, or the algorithms behind the social media websites you use are as likely to try to read your mind as any robot (Frischmann & Selinger, 2018). This could be so, for example, because they are programmed to track your interests and possible purchases, as is the case with targeted

13  Robotic Animism: The Ethics of Attributing Minds… 

335

advertising on social media websites such as Facebook (Pariser, 2012; Lynch, 2017; Veliz, 2020). I take it, however, that most human beings are much less likely to attribute mental states in an animistic way to the algorithms of Facebook than to any robot with which they might interact, whether that robot is Boomer the bomb disposal robot or Sophia the humanoid robot. Let me now address the elephant in the room: what about currently existing robots and robots that will exist in the near-term future—do they have minds in any sense? Do they have what Danaher calls an “inner life”? This may depend on what we mean by that expression. Notably, a functionally autonomous robot needs to be equipped with internal hardware and software that can take in information and perform calculations and computations that help to select the robot’s responses to its external environment. The robot will form a model of its surroundings and operate on that basis, meaning that there is a form of “representation” of the world around it that helps to regulate the robot’s behaviors. In short, the robot’s outward behavior will depend on its internal states, processing, and what goes on “inside” the robot. Accordingly, in a certain sense, the robot has a form of robotic mind, if by a “mind” we mean a set of internal processes that take in information and that helps to generate actions and communications with other agents. For example, this is how the functionally autonomous soccer-playing robots in Tech United mentioned above operate. It is also how self-driving cars operate,7 to give another example as well. The philosophical school of thought known as “functionalism” is relevant here. Philosophical functionalists understand different mental states and mental events in terms of the functions played by these states and events (Levin, 2018). And many of the functions human mental states play could be played by internal states of a machine. So, from the point of view of functionalism, there is no philosophical barrier against thinking that a machine could have a mind. Yet presumably, a robot’s inner life is nevertheless rather different from that of a human. For example, any robot’s inner life might not (yet) include any subjective experience similar to that of a human or any non-human animal. Its inner life  An interesting easy-to-follow explanation of this is given in Chris Urmon’s 2015 Ted Talk “How a Self-Driving Car Sees the Road”, which is available here: https://www.ted.com/talks/chris_urmson_how_a_driverless_car_sees_the_road (accessed on June 4, 2021). 7

336 

S. Nyholm

might be better thought of as being similar to the inner workings of what happens in our minds below the level of consciousness. It is important to note here that not all human mental states are conscious (Hassin et al., 2006). But all our mental states are presumably part of our minds. So being consciously experienced is not a necessary criterion for being a mental state in somebody’s mind. Accordingly, the fact that robots—at least currently existing robots—may lack subjective experience is not a principled reason against thinking that they could have minds of some sort. At the very least in a metaphorical sense, then, we can attribute internal states and minds to robots without making a terrible mistake. We can safely do that so long as we do not think that these internal states are like a human being’s inner life. But as robots with artificial intelligence get more and more advanced in their capabilities, will their “minds” or “inner lives” become more humanlike? I see no clear reason why we should think so. After all, the quality of any being’s experience presumably depends on the particular types of brain, sense organs, and nervous system it has. That is why, in Thomas Nagel’s (1974) famous phrase, human beings do not know “what it is like to be a bat”. Ours brains, sense organs, and nervous systems are very different than those of bats. And robots, in turn, have various different kinds of internal hardware, rather than humanlike brains or nervous systems. So even if Agar is right that the presence of very humanlike behavior in a robot would be evidence of there being a mind of some sort there, it strikes me as wrongheaded to think of such a mind as being similar to a human mind.

7 Concluding Remarks In this chapter, I have used the expression “robotic animism” to refer to the tendency that some people have—or that a lot of people have(!)—to interact with robots as if the robots have minds or a personality. I have given various different examples of robotic animism in different forms of human-robot interaction, and I have considered ethical and prudential arguments for and against attributing minds and a personality to robots. In the last section above, I even considered the intriguing question of

13  Robotic Animism: The Ethics of Attributing Minds… 

337

whether any robots that exist today could be said to have some sort of minds in some non-trivial sense. Whatever else can be said about robotic animism, one thing I think is undeniable is that it is an ethically loaded issue however you look at it. As we have seen above, some people discussing human-robot interaction argue that there is something irrational or even unethical about interacting with robots as if they have minds or a personality. For example, as we saw in the introduction, Kathleen Richardson thinks that there is something morally problematic about the interaction between people like Davecat and Chuck and humanoid dolls and robots like Sidore and Harmony. Others take a radically different view and see it as a good or admirable thing if people interact with robots in such ways. Janina Loh, for example, thinks that we should value diversity in the ways in which human beings engage with things outside of themselves, which could involve thinking that relationships such as those between Davecat and Sidore or between Chuck and Harmony could have an important value, just as relationships between humans can do. What about whether it might already be possible to act in ethically problematic ways toward the robots that trigger some people’s animistic sensibilities? At the very least, we can draw the following conclusion with a great deal of confidence: whether or not it is possible to benefit or harms the robots themselves by interacting with them either as if they have minds or as if they do not, we can certainly already awaken strong reactions in human beings as a result of how we interact with robots. This applies especially to robots that are designed to look or act like human beings. We saw an illustration of this above when we considered how AI and robotics experts such as Noel Sharkey, Yann LeCun, and Joanna Bryson think that it is unethical to interact with Sophia the robot in animistic ways. Accordingly, that many people have a tendency toward robotic animism is not only fascinating from an anthropological or purely theoretical philosophical point of view. It is also a morally non-neutral issue even before we will be able to create robots that have minds that are even remotely similar to the minds of humans or any non-human animals.8  This work is part of the research program Ethics of Socially Disruptive Technologies, which is funded through the Gravitation program of the Dutch Ministry of Education, Culture, and Science and the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO grant number 024.004.031). 8

338 

S. Nyholm

References Agar, N. (2020). How to treat machines that might have minds. Philosophy & Technology, 33(2), 269–282. Beck, J. (2013). Married to a Doll: Why one man advocates synthetic love. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2013/09/married-­to-­a-­ doll-­why-­one-­man-­ad-­vocates-­synthetic-­love/279361/ (accessed 4 March 2022). Bostrom, N. (2014). Superintelligence. Oxford University Press. Bryson, J. (2010). Robots should be slaves. In Y. Wilks (Ed.), Close engagements with artificial companions: Key social, psychological, ethical and design issues (pp. 63–74). John Benjamins. Bryson, J. (2012). A role for consciousness in action selection. International Journal of Machine Consciousness, 4(2), 471–482. Carpenter, J. (2016). Culture and human-robot interaction in militarized spaces: A war story. Emerging technologies, ethics and international affairs. Ashgate Publishing Company. Coeckelbergh, M. (2010). Robot rights? Towards a social-relational justification of moral consideration. Ethics and Information Technology, 12(3), 209–221. Damiano, L., & Dumouchel, P. (2018). Anthropomorphism in human-robot co-evolution. Frontiers in Psychology, 26. https://doi.org/10.3389/ fpsyg.2018.00468 Danaher, J. (2019). The philosophical case for robot friendship. Journal of Posthuman Studies, 3(1), 5–24. Danaher, J. (2020). Welcoming robots into the moral circle: A defence of ethical behaviourism. Science and Engineering Ethics, 26(4), 2023–2049. Danaher, J. (in press). What matters for moral status: Behavioural or cognitive equivalence? Ethics. De Graaf, M., & Malle, B. (2019). People’s explanations of robot behavior subtly reveal mental state inferences. In International conference on human-robot interaction. Deagu: https://doi.org/10.1109/HRI.2019.8673308. Dennett, D. (1987). The intentional stance. Bradford. Devlin, K. (2018). Turned on: Science, sex and robots. Bloomsbury. Devlin, K. (2021). The ethics of the artificial lover. In S. M. Liao (Ed.), Ethics of artificial intelligence (pp. 271–290). Oxford University Press. Elamrani, A., & Yampolskiy, R. (2018). Reviewing tests for machine consciousness. Journal of Consciousness Studies, 26(5–6), 35–64.

13  Robotic Animism: The Ethics of Attributing Minds… 

339

Frischmann, B., & Selinger, E. (2018). Re-engineering humanity. Cambridge University Press. Garber, M. (2013). Funerals for fallen robots. The Atlantic. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2013/09/funerals-­f or-­f allen-­ robots/279861/ (accessed 4 June 2021). Gordon, J.-S., & Nyholm, S. (2021). Ethics of artificial intelligence. Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. https://iep.utm.edu/ethic-­ai/ (accessed 5 March 2022). Gunkel, D. (2018). Robot rights. The MIT Press. Harris, J. (2016). How to be good: The possibility of moral enhancement. Oxford University Press. Harris, J. (2019). Reading the minds of those who never lived. Enhanced beings: The social and ethical challenges posed by super intelligent AI and reasonably intelligent humans. Cambridge Quarterly of Healthcare Ethics, 8(4), 585–591. Harvey, G. (2013). The handbook of contemporary animism. Routledge. Hassin, R. R., Uleman, J. S., & Bargh, J. (Eds.). (2006). The new unconscious. Oxford University Press. Heyes, C. (2018). Cognitive gadgets: The cultural evolution of thinking. Belknap Press. Lee, M., Lucas, G., Mell, J., Johnson, E., & Gratch, J. (2019). What’s on your virtual mind?: Mind perception in human-agent negotiations. Proceeding of the 19th ACM international conference on intelligent virtual agents, pp. 38–45. Levin, J. (2018). Functionalism. In Zalta, E. (Ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia of philosophy. https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2018/entries/functionalism/ (accessed 5 March 2022). Loh, J. (2019). Roboterethik: Eine Einführung. Suhrkamp. Lynch, M. P. (2017). The internet of us: Knowing more and understanding less in the age of big data. Liveright. Marchesi, S., et al. (2019). Do we adopt the intentional stance toward humanoid robots? Frontiers in Psychology, 10(Article 450), 1–13. Misselhorn, C. (2021). Künstliche Intelligenz und Empathie. Vom Leben mit Emotionserkennung, Sexrobotern & Co. Reclam. Nagel, T. (1974). What is it like to be a bat? Philosophical Review, 83(4), 435–450. Neely, E.  L. (2013). Machines and the moral community. Philosophy & Technology, 27(1), 97–111. Nida-Rümelin, J., & Weidenfeld, N. (2018). Digitaler Humanismus: Eine Ethik für das Zeitalter der Künstlichen Intelligenz. Piper.

340 

S. Nyholm

Nyholm, S. (2020). Humans and robots: Ethics, agency, and anthropomorphism. Rowman & Littlefield International. Nyholm, S., & Frank, L. (2019). It loves me, it loves me not: Is it morally problematic to design sex robots that appear to love their owners? Techne, 23(3), 402–424. Pariser, E. (2012). The filter bubble. Penguin. Parke, P. (2015). Is it cruel to kick a robot dog? CNN Edition. https://edi-­tion. cnn.com/2015/02/13/tech/spot-­robot-­dog-­google/index.html (accessed 5 August 2021). Pinker, S. (2002). The blank slate: The modern denial of human nature. Viking. Richardson, K. (2015). The asymmetrical ‘relationship’: Parallels between prostitution and the development of sex robots. SIGCAS Computers & Society, 45(3), 290–293. Richardson, K. (2016). Technological animism: The uncanny personhood of humanoid machines. Social Analysis, 60(1), 110–128. Searle, J. (1990). Is the Brain’s mind a computer program? Scientific American, 262(1), 26–31. Sparrow, R. (2004). The turing triage test. Ethics and Information Technology, 6(4), 203–213. Swancutt, K. (2019). Animism. Cambridge Encyclopedia of Anthropology. https:// doi.org/10.29164/19anim. Turing, A.  M. (1950). Computing machinery and intelligence. Mind, 49, 433–460. Tylor, E. B. (1881). Anthropology: An introduction to the study of man and civilization. Macmillan and Co. Veliz, C. (2020). Privacy is power. Penguin. Wendland, K. (2020). #09 Dass Roboter uns Emotionen vorgaukeln kann sehr wichtig sein. Im Gespräch mit Janina Loh. Selbstbewusste KI. https://doi. org/10.5445/IR/1000125862. Winch, P. (1981). Eine Einstellung zur Seele. Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 81(1), 1–16. Wittgenstein, L. (1953). Philosophical investigations. Wiley Blackwell.

14 Towards a Cosmopolitan Animism Kathryn Rountree

If we take on board the classic Durkheimian (1995 [1915]: 208) notion that religions and societies reflect and maintain one another—that societies create “God” in their own image—it is unsurprising that animism’s popularity as a religious path, often referred to as the “new animism” (Harvey, 2005, 2013), is growing amid current global anxieties about the destruction of natural environments, species depletion and extinction, pollution and climate change. This is happening even as many indigenous heirs of the world’s traditional animisms find themselves increasingly absorbed into cosmopolitan societies and urban contexts where their worldviews are a minority and access to traditional territories, food sources, trans-generational knowledge and lifeways is now more difficult, diminished or threatened. Many indigenous heirs of animism and non-­ indigenous “new animists” find themselves configuring heterodox paths within the cosmopolitan societies they now inhabit—embracing worldviews which are arguably broadly similar to one another, but needing to K. Rountree (*) Massey University, Auckland, New Zealand e-mail: [email protected] © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Smith (ed.), Animism and Philosophy of Religion, Palgrave Frontiers in Philosophy of Religion, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94170-3_14

341

342 

K. Rountree

negotiate the fallout from the ongoing, often fraught socio-politics of indigenous/non-indigenous relations over the last half century and more.

1 Indigenous Animism and the “New Animism” Elsewhere I have argued that indigenous animisms and the “new animism” are not the same thing in terms of the ways in which, and the degree to which, they are taken-for-granted and thorough-going in their impacts on individuals’ everyday ways of thinking, acting and inhabiting a lifeworld (Rountree, 2012). Indigenous animisms were, and to an extent are, in some places more than in others, inherited through an individual’s culture and embody in unique ways the dominant norms of an ethnic, tribal, territorial or cultural group. The animisms of such diverse peoples as the New Zealand Māori (Barnett, 2017; Henare, 2007; Marsden, 2003; Salmond, 2017; Vicente, 2020), the Norwegian Sámi (Kraft, 2010; Rydving, 1993), the Alaskan Iñupiat (Anthony, 2013), the Ojibwe/Anishinaabeg of Berens River, Manitoba (Hallowell, 1960), the New Caledonian Kanak (Horowitz, 2001), the Kamea of Papua New Guinea (Bamford, 1998), the Yarralin of Northern Territory Australia (Rose, 2000), the Yukaghirs and Eveny of north-eastern Siberia (Willerslev, 2007) and a host of other communities were, or still are, culturally normative for those peoples. Each was/is a distinctive geo-cultural matrix, sharing with other indigenous animisms a broad “ecosophy” (Kawagley, 1995) or perspective “on Being that focuses on the relatedness and interdependency of life forms (individuals and groups) within our mixed communities of humans, animals and plants. More importantly, it promotes a kind of moral ecology that encourages connectedness and connectivity to time, place, people and other beings”. (Anthony, 2013: 2). Thus indigenous animisms were—are—not merely or mainly religions; such a categorization is misleading and reductive. As Palmer and McWilliam (2019: 476) argue in their exploration of Timorese “spirit ecologies”: “rather than reducing these spirit ecologies to the sphere of ‘belief ’ or ‘religion’ they should be understood as ways of being in the

14  Towards a Cosmopolitan Animism 

343

world that underpin diverse modes of localized governance”. Timorese activity impacted by spirit ecologies ranged from “the micro-social dynamics of household and domestic economies to broader issues of social alliance, resource entitlements, landed authority, and collective endeavour” (Palmer & McWilliam, 2019: 475). This is not to say that all beings in the spirit ecologies of all indigenous animisms are equally animated (Swancutt, 2019: 2). The Siberian Yukaghir, for example, distinguish between conscious and unconscious beings: humans, animals, trees and rivers are similar kinds of “people” because they move, grow and breathe, whereas static objects like stones, foodstuffs and humanly constructed items are alive, but they are not people (Willerslev, 2007: 73). Nor are all beings in a spirit ecology necessarily benign towards humans. Among the Eveny reindeer herders and hunters of northeast Siberia, new-born children are vulnerable to predatory ancestral spirits residing in the landscape who long for the return of their kin; an infant is therefore given a reindeer guardian who disguises the child as a reindeer if it is attacked by such a spirit. Human children and reindeer, who are sentient, agentive beings, are conceptually equivalent (Willerslev & Ulturgasheva, 2012: 52–4). Thus, for indigenous animists the line between humans and other-­ than-­humans is not clearly drawn and is variously permeable or even reversible. In the animist’s world “social and ontological boundaries are porous and can be crossed under specific circumstances” (Franke, 2018: 39). In the traditions of some Māori tribes, humans changed into birds, fish and other creatures (Royal, 2007: 2). The Dreaming ancestral beings of Australia shape-shifted back and forth between human and other animal forms or became materialized in the form of trees or rocks; all beings therefore share the same essence and vital force (Willerslev & Ulturgasheva, 2012: 49, discussing Ingold’s (2000) contrasting of animism and totemism).1 Inter-species affiliations—for example, between a human and their animal totem—may be stronger than intra-species ones between  A vigorous debate in anthropology revolves around the distinction between totemism and animism (Swancutt, 2019). Like Willerslev and Ulturgasheva (2012: 50), I question the analytic value of drawing a dichotomous relationship between these terms. The debate ties itself in knots with scholars trying to assign groups to one or other category. It seems more realistic to simply acknowledge that there is a wide variety of indigenous animisms and they are all culturally unique.

1

344 

K. Rountree

humans from different social, cultural, ethnic and even tribal groups. Among Australian Aboriginals, each clan had its own totemic species, bound to the clan in a close relationship governed by rules and responsibilities not applicable to other animals (Rose, 2000). Thus, for a particular tribe a certain species—such as dingo, catfish, emu or shark—could be a clan ancestor and subject to a species-specific food prohibition. The opposite may also apply: among the Eveny a special relationship with reindeer may result not in a prohibition against eating that species, but in the voluntary self-sacrifice of a reindeer that chooses to give itself as food for its hungry human kin (Willerslev & Ulturgasheva, 2012: 55). The line between human and other-than-human is breached or blurred among Aotearoa New Zealand Māori. A human person’s whakapapa (genealogy) connects them to a whānau (family), hapū (sub-tribe), iwi (tribe), rohe (tribal territory), maunga (mountain) and awa (a waterway, such as a lake or river). When a person gives their pepeha, a self-­ introduction that establishes identity and heritage, all these connections are stated. Such connections are more than expressions of kinship or closeness with the natural world, more than statements about “the relational constitution of being” (Ingold, 2011: 69). They may denote specific land and fishing rights not available to people from other iwi, hapū and rohe, along with obligations and responsibilities shared, for example, by members of an iwi and the kaitiaki (spiritual guardians) that live in an iwi’s river, whereby there is a mutual responsibility for maintaining the lifeforce, health and well-being of the river and the tribe.2 Indigenous animisms formed the foundation of comprehensive social, economic and political structures, relationships and communication systems for a cultural group comprising human and other-than-human beings in a particular place, creating an implicit rhythm of everyday life that was dynamic and adaptive according to time and circumstance. The “new animism”, influenced by Irving Hallowell’s (1960) work among the Ojibwe/Anishinaabeg and a body of scholars and activists in his wake, is  See Te Awa Tupua (Whanganui River Claims Settlement) Bill 129-1 (2016), Government Bill Explanatory note—New Zealand Legislation Accessed 12 June 2021. This 2016 Government Bill establishes Te Pā Auroa, a new legal framework, which legally recognizes Te Awa Tupua, comprising the Whanganui River from the mountains to the sea, its tributaries and all its physical and metaphysical elements, as an indivisible and living whole and as a legal person. 2

14  Towards a Cosmopolitan Animism 

345

fundamentally different from indigenous animisms in several ways. It emerged in the final decades of the twentieth century in social contexts at once pluralistic—multi-ethnic, multi-cultural, multi-religious—and increasingly cosmopolitan. In such contexts an animist identity tends to be thought of mostly as a life philosophy, religion or spiritual orientation that operates more strongly at the level of belief than at the level of practice (although individualistic practices are variously included), meaning that everyday life is not governed by the animist norms of one’s cultural group. It is embraced as a conscious choice by mostly non-indigenous individuals as a countercultural, heterodox alternative to the prevailing capitalist ethos that reduces “nature” to inanimate resources available for human exploitation and profit. Compared with indigenous animists, new animists tend to re-enchant the world somewhat democratically and indiscriminately, acknowledging alive-ness, soul, spirit, or sentience in everything, and tend not to attribute maleficent intent to particular beings. Despite the differences between indigenous and new animisms, what all animisms share within the cosmopolitan contexts they now frequently inhabit is a relational epistemology (Bird-David, 1999), an ecosophy or model of social relations that incorporates humans and other-than-­ human beings in a matrix or meshwork (Ingold, 2011: 71) of interdependent interconnection. For indigenous peoples, this model is implicit, inherited and foundational to group being, seeing and doing in everyday life. For new animists, it is an explicit, elective belief, an aspirational charter for living and an impetus for activism, motivated by a deep concern to decentre humans’ position in the ecosystem.

2 Animism in a Cosmopolitan World To be cosmopolitan (from the Greek kosmopolitês) is to be literally “a citizen of the world”. As a consequence of globalization, particularly since the 1990s, dramatic geo-political, socio-political and technological developments have produced unprecedented global connectivity and mobility. “Cosmopolitanization” has meant that “clear borders separating markets, states, civilizations, cultures, and the life-worlds of common people” have

346 

K. Rountree

been eroded, implying “the involuntary confrontation with the alien other all over the globe” (Beck, 2009: xi). The Internet has provided opportunities for new forms of sociality, affiliation and knowledge transmission to emerge and flourish, most demonstrably through virtual communities and networks. If we needed further convincing of our global citizenship, crises such as the devastations wrought by climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic have reminded us that, like it or not, we are all in this together. Amidst all this boundary-blurring and intermingling, notions of “we” and “they”, “ours” and “theirs”, are challenged and renegotiated: we are global citizens with a growing sense of living in “one world”. This is far from saying that national, cultural, ethnic or local characteristics have become unimportant or unrecognizable in individuals’ or groups’ beliefs and practices, subordinated to a global melting pot in which cultural or local distinctiveness have disappeared. Nation and culture are still meaningful and impactful identity-markers and the consequences of their fraught histories still play out in everyday life. However, it is to say that the way in which ideas, practices, identities and relationships are now formed and put into practice—and the provenance of the sources drawn upon—can no longer be taken for granted in the way they once might have been and that constellations of ideas, practices, identities and relationships now change faster in less predictable ways (Rountree, 2017: 3). Biolsi (2005: 249) uses the term “indigenous cosmopolitanism” to refer to the expanding participation of indigenous peoples in diverse social, economic and cultural worlds, while Falzon (2009: 37) argues that for cosmopolitans “there is no necessary contradiction between ethnicity and ‘world citizenship’”. No necessary contradiction perhaps, but for indigenous animists the past with its customary modes of being, thinking and doing, along with experiences of cultural disruption, historical atrocities and unresolved grievances, has a long reach. What is the way forward for animism and animists in a globalized, cosmopolitan world faced perpetually with colonialism’s legacy of inter-­ cultural tensions and beset—alongside all global citizens, human and other—with massive, urgent problems related to climate change and environmental destruction? Ingold concludes that the answer to this question is as straightforward as it is massively ambitious: “our rethinking

14  Towards a Cosmopolitan Animism 

347

of indigenous animism led us to propose the reanimation of our own, so-called ‘western’ tradition of thought” (2011: 75). Such a transformation would seem a feat of mind-boggling magnitude given our western tradition of thought’s roots in the notion of a Great Chain of Being, a scala naturae or Ladder of Being (Lovejoy, 1965). Traced ultimately to Aristotle and developed in the Middle Ages, the Chain places animate humanity, ranked by race and gender, close to the top of the hierarchy (under God and a variety of angels), followed in descending order by animals (ranked by species), plants and finally inanimate rocks and minerals at the bottom. And yet, as we will see in the final section of this paper, there are glimmerings here and there of shifts in contemporary thought and action at personal and wider social and political levels in regard to humans’ relationships with other beings inhabiting this world. While Christianity has, for centuries if not millennia, embraced the humanity-nature divide, there has been a notable greening in some quarters of Christianity in recent decades, which goes beyond positing a stewardship-­not-ownership model of human/nature relationships (Nita, 2018; Wallace, 2010). According to Nita, environmental Christianity “no longer represents a fringe movement within the Christian tradition, as in the last three or four decades green Christian initiatives have continued to grow and manifest through a wide-ranging diversity of denominations, networks and organisations” (2016: 4). Moreover, “green Christianity is no longer a fringe movement inside the green movement” (2016: 5).3 Such shifts are positive and helpful, but the reanimation of western thought that Ingold proposes does not depend primarily on the world’s religions, Christianity in particular, reconfiguring their ideas about humanity’s place in human/other-than-human relations. Judeo-­ Christianity now holds a less dominant position in governing the  It is also worth noting that environmental consciousness has also been rising in Muslim communities since the late 1970s and early 1980s, according to Seyyed Hossein Nasr, a professor of Islamic Studies at George Washington University (interview reported in Wihbey, 2012), who claims there is now an “authentic Islamic environmental movement” with significant activism in many major Muslim countries including Turkey, Iran, Indonesia, Malaysia, Egypt, Pakistan, Morocco and Nigeria. In Indonesia, writes Kristina Grossman (2019), Muslim authorities and Islamic organizations “increasingly recognise and articulate an Islamic environmental ethic and actively seek to mitigate environmental problems such as climate change, pollution, degradation or natural disasters”.

3

348 

K. Rountree

worldview of increasingly secular, pluralistic western societies than it previously held. Attempting to convince people to adopt a religion called animism when they either have no time for religion, or already have another religion (because of the multi-cultural nature of modern societies), is a doomed project. For the reanimation of western thought and action to move forward, animism needs to be shifted out of the reductive category of religion and become a culturally normative, taken-for-granted way of life, as it was, and to varying degrees still is, for indigenous peoples. Taking animistic worldviews seriously also involves addressing specific historical and current issues and grievances relating to indigenous animist groups. In conjunction with this, discourses on cultural appropriation and ownership need to be revisited.

3 The Socio-politics of Indigenous/ Non-­Indigenous Relations: Discourses of Cultural Appropriation Since the final decades of the twentieth century a great deal of attention on the part of scholars, indigenous peoples and activists has focussed on the issue of cultural appropriation or imperialism as one of colonialism’s most iniquitous and ubiquitous crimes. Indigenous peoples have had not only their land, resources and other material forms of cultural property stolen, appropriated or used without consent in various ways by colonizers, but also their treasured non-material possessions, such as language, ideas, knowledge, techniques, rituals, sacred places and other aspects of religious life. As traditional lifeways and relationship to territories became ever increasingly disrupted and more indigenous people found themselves living in cosmopolitan, urban environments straddling worlds, indigenous voices became more strident in their claims for rights and redress. Although cultural imperialism may now be seen more widely by many non-indigenous as well as indigenous people as shameful, unacceptable and in need of legal, cultural and financial redress—this is increasingly so in Aotearoa New Zealand—colonialism’s reach is long. Colonizers’ descendants have inherited appropriated property, both

14  Towards a Cosmopolitan Animism 

349

material and immaterial. They may also, sometimes naively and unwittingly, perpetuate practices of cultural theft or are perceived as doing so. New animists, New Agers, modern Pagans and neo-shamans have been among those charged with cultural imperialism, even as they point to the link between modern Pagan cosmologies and those of ethnographically described indigenous animistic societies (Wallis & Blain, 2007). When I was conducting doctoral fieldwork on Goddess Spirituality in New Zealand in the early 1990s, cultural appropriation was a high profile, fraught issue nationally. The women with whom I was doing research, almost none of whom were indigenous Māori, tended to be very anxious about not appropriating Māori spirituality or cultural traditions and about not being seen to be doing so. While they were respectful of Māori spirituality, there was little attempt to pursue or incorporate it to any extent, beyond honouring and thanking the earth Goddess, Papatūānuku and other well-known Māori female deities at the beginning of rituals. Goddess rituals were then, and still are, seldom held in places sacred to Māori, and never in places designated tapu (extremely sacred and restricted). A notable exception was the annual public celebration of Winter Solstice in a large cave at Te Henga beach, west of Auckland (Rountree, 2004: 159–163). Prior to the event the group responsible for organizing it contacted elders of the hapū associated with the area, who gave their blessing for the cave, which is linked with a significant female ancestor, to be used for the ritual. Condemnation of cultural appropriation of indigenous spiritual traditions—along with other aspects of culture—was common from the 1980s through to the first decade of the twenty-first century (Wallis, 2003; Waldron & Newton, 2012; Hobson, 2002; Aldred, 2000; Rose, 1992; Sutton, 2010). Wallis summarizes the charges made against Michael Harner, founder of Core Shamanism and the California-based

350 

K. Rountree

Foundation for Shamanic Studies,4 and other non-indigenous teachers of shamanism as follows: they decontextualize shamanic practices from their local cultural settings; they universalize, psychologize, individualize, and romanticize indigenous shamanisms; and they reproduce notions of cultural primitivism (2003: 49). As well as calling into question the authenticity of such practices when taken up by non-indigenous teachers, critics saw the “decontextualizing” of shamanic practices as the misappropriation or theft of indigenous sacred property. In the twenty-first century the ground of indigenous/non-indigenous cultural politics has gradually begun to shift. Questions about cultural appropriation are being reconsidered, often with indigenous people leading the conversations. The boundaries between once unique, separate sets of indigenous shamanic practices, for example, are becoming increasingly blurred, with conscious and unconscious borrowing between different indigenous groups, and creative developments increasingly evident. Sanson describes contemporary Māori shamans in New Zealand as “cosmopolitan bricoleurs” (2017: 224) who revive and disseminate traditional sacred knowledge, synthesize it with global indigenous and non-­ indigenous knowledges including New Age ideas and create new shamanic forms which they believe the world urgently needs. Some Aboriginal Australians are also drawing on New Age ideology and practices. Waldron and Newton point to convergences and collaborations between indigenous and non-indigenous practitioners, claiming “there are signs of a shift away from absolute condemnation of cultural borrowing” (2012: 65). In their view, “a simple dichotomy of cultural theft by exploitative New Agers from good but suffering indigenous peoples is [now] inadequate to explain the complex and multiple levels of interaction between the two groups” (ibid.).

 “Core Shamanism” (n.d.) The Foundation for Shamanic Studies website defines Harner’s approach thus: “Core Shamanism consists of the universal, near-universal, and common features of shamanism, together with journeys to other worlds, a distinguishing feature of shamanism. As originated, researched, and developed by Michael Harner, the principles of Core Shamanism are not bound to any specific cultural group or perspective. Since the West overwhelmingly lost its shamanic knowledge centuries ago due to religious oppression, the Foundation’s programmes in Core Shamanism are particularly intended for Westerners to reacquire access to their rightful spiritual heritage through quality workshops and training courses”. 4

14  Towards a Cosmopolitan Animism 

351

There are instances of indigenous people learning from non-­indigenous shamanic practitioners and making changes to their traditions based on research into their local heritages and co-opting elements from other indigenous practices and global spiritual resources (Sanson, 2017; Kraft, 2015; Fonneland, 2017; Peers, 2015). These reconstructed practices are then passed on, taught and sold at workshops, courses, healing centres, festivals and, increasingly, online to other indigenous and non-­indigenous people. Cultural borrowing has always occurred in human communities, with cultural elements being appropriated, exchanged, transformed and locally reinterpreted. Such borrowing has increased in a globalized, hyperconnected world and the idea that cultures are separate, essentialized, self-generative entities is harder to sustain. It would be wrong to suggest that criticism of cultural appropriation has disappeared from discourses on indigenous/non-indigenous relations. It is still vigorously condemned by individuals and groups, especially where the struggle for recognition of indigenous rights and acknowledgment of the atrocities committed against indigenous people has met the greatest resistance from governments and the wider society (Sutton, 2010). There is no question that a huge amount of work and determined commitment is needed to redress centuries of wrongs, repair relationships and address persistent colonialist and racist attitudes and behaviour. And alongside that work, we need to reconceptualize humans’ place in the world and address the state of our relationships with, and treatment of, all Earth’s beings in the interests of the destiny of all. As Rose says: The ways in which people conceptualize the generative structure of their world and their own place in that structure are fundamental to any analysis of how they construe human responsibility and accountability. Different understandings implicate humans in different relationships of responsibility toward their world, and the quality of difference has a great bearing on how they define and target human responsibilities toward nonhumans. (2000: 322)

352 

K. Rountree

Given their millennia of experience, indigenous animists are best placed to lead the way in such a reconceptualization of humans’ responsibility and accountability towards other-than-humans. Finally in this section it is worth re-examining the notion of cultural “ownership” and appropriation in the context of an animist worldview. If all beings in—or more properly of—an environment are accorded personhood, spirit and agency, it would seem a contradiction in terms to say that some of these beings, the non-human ones, can be “owned” by the particular group of human beings with whom they cohabit and interact within the landscape they together comprise. Even if that human group is an indigenous one whose relationship with other beings has been very long, predating colonization and is characterized by care, respect and mutuality, the notion that some beings of an ecosystem are the possessions of others in that system, and are therefore susceptible to being stolen or appropriated, seems at odds with the meaning and spirit of animism. “Ownership” is a capitalist and colonialist concept. The philosophy or worldview of animism precludes the idea that some beings within the network of intersubjective social relationships could or should “own” or “possess” other participants in the network. The relationship is one of interdependence, closer to a kinship relationship of mutual, enduring, inalienable belonging. In Aotearoa New Zealand the differences between indigenous (animist) and non-indigenous understandings of human relationships with a landscape are crystalized in the nation’s founding document, the Treaty of Waitangi (Te Tiriti o Waitangi), signed in 1840 at Waitangi in the Bay of Islands, and subsequently around other parts of the country, between around 540 Māori rangatira (chiefs) and representatives of the British Crown. Some of the confusion, misaligned expectations and bitter conflict between Māori and non-indigenous Pākehā (New Zealanders primarily of European descent)5 in the 182 years since the Treaty was signed have centred on differences between the Māori and English versions of the Treaty, significantly relating to English notions of “ownership”. The English version’s second Article, for example, guaranteed Māori “full,  Pākehā is now sometimes used to refer to all non-Māori New Zealanders. https://kupu.maori.nz/ kupu/P%C4%81keh%C4%81 (accessed 17 June 2021). 5

14  Towards a Cosmopolitan Animism 

353

exclusive and undisturbed possession of their Lands and Estates, Forests, Fisheries and other properties which they may collectively or individually possess” (Orange, 1987: 258) and gave the Crown the exclusive right to purchase land if Māori wished to sell. The Māori version, which most rangatira signed, guaranteed “tino rangatiratanga” (full authority) over all lands, settlements and all “taonga” (treasures, both tangible and intangible).6 Notably, the terms “possession” and “properties” were absent from the Māori version, because the Māori conceptualization of their relationship with the landscape was not expressible in these terms. Māori saw themselves as kaitiaki (hereditary caretakers, guardians or stewards) in a reciprocal, immutable relationship of care with particular tracts of land, rivers, forests, mountains, lakes and stretches of coast, a relational milieu seldom recognized in conversations about cultural ownership and appropriation. The long-standing and frequently acrimonious debates over interpretations of the Treaty constitute just one illustration of how differences between animist and non-animist worldviews can have serious political, social and economic consequences in a modern cosmopolitan society.

4 Towards a Cosmopolitan Animism I am under no illusion that notions of “ownership” and “property” will ever disappear from modern societies or that it is possible to wind back the clock on the western tradition of thought. However, non-indigenous people can learn to understand and respect animist ways of thinking (new animists have shown this is possible), which also means  According to the Māori dictionary online, https://maoridictionary.co.nz/search?keywords=taonga, accessed 17 June 2021, taonga refers to “treasure, anything prized—applied to anything considered to be of value including socially or culturally valuable objects, resources, phenomenon, ideas and techniques”.  A New Zealand government website states: “The Treaty of Waitangi is not considered part of New Zealand domestic law, except where its principles are referred to in Acts of Parliament. The exclusive right to determine the meaning of the Treaty rests with the Waitangi Tribunal, a commission of inquiry created in 1975 to investigate alleged breaches of the Treaty by the Crown. More than 2000 claims have been lodged with the tribunal, and a number of major settlements have been reached”. “The Treaty in Brief ”, https://nzhistory.govt.nz/politics/treaty/the-treaty-in-brief (accessed 15 June 2021).

6

354 

K. Rountree

understanding and respecting animists. In the spirit of “think globally, act locally”, appropriate here given that the term originated with environmental activists, this section looks at some recent shifts in this direction at individual and wider social and political levels within my local backyard of Aotearoa New Zealand. In 2021 the New Zealand Government’s Ministry of Education published the draft of a new “Aotearoa New Zealand’s Histories” curriculum set to be introduced to all children in years one to ten in all schools in 2022 (Ministry of Education, 2022). Both versions of the Treaty, Te Tiriti o Waitangi and The Treaty of Waitangi, are prominent at every level of the curriculum and Māori history, values, stories, experiences, concepts and terminology are at its forefront. The curriculum’s three “Big Ideas” are that: (1) “Māori history is the foundational and continuous history of Aotearoa New Zealand”, (2) “Colonisation and its consequences have been central to our history for the past 200 years and continue to influence all aspects of New Zealand society” and (3) “The course of Aotearoa New Zealand’s history has been shaped by the exercise and effects of power”. The imperial project is recognized as “a complex, contested process, experienced and negotiated differently in different parts of Aotearoa New Zealand over time”. The privileges deriving from colonization are acknowledged along with the damage, injustice, conflict, resistance and “enduring assertions of tino rangatiratanga [absolute sovereignty] and mana Māori [Māori spiritual power and authority]” engendered by colonization. The first of three key knowledge points guiding the curriculum is: “Whakapapa me te whanaungatanga”,7 which focusses on “how the past shapes who we are today—our familial links and bonds, our networks and connections, our sense of obligation, and the stories woven into our collective and diverse identities”. The second is: “Tūrangawaewae [a place to stand] me te kaitiakitanga [guardianship and protection]” and deals with the kaitiaki relationships of individuals, groups and communities with the land, water and other resources, along with the history of contests over their control, use and protection. The third point looks at “the  “Whakapapa” can be understood as genealogy, lineage or descent and “Whanaungatanga” as kinship or a sense of family connection, through shared experiences and cooperation. 7

14  Towards a Cosmopolitan Animism 

355

history of contests over authority and control, at the heart of which are the authorities guaranteed by Te Tiriti o Waitangi and The Treaty of Waitangi”. One of the clear intentions of the curriculum is not only to raise a new generation of citizens with understanding and respect for Māori as the indigenous tangata whenua (people of the land), but also to build concepts from a Māori worldview into the worldview of all New Zealanders irrespective of their primary cultures of identity. We saw that when Māori give their pepeha, they articulate their genealogical connections with whānau, hapū, iwi, rohe, maunga and awa, and thus how their identity is embedded in, and continuous with, a living, animate landscape. There are now numerous resources and widespread encouragement for non-indigenous New Zealanders to develop their own pepeha, naming the people they are descended from and places important to them: where they grew up or now live. Templates are available online and training in the construction of a personal pepeha is happening in kindergartens, schools, universities and some workplaces, such as government departments and radio and television broadcasting stations.8 For non-Māori people the pepeha does not express sacred ancestral kinship with a maunga (mountain) and awa (river, waterway) in the way it does for Māori, and creating one’s pepeha is not evidence of embracing an animist worldview. However, naming a mountain and waterway in one’s pepeha does locate a person’s sense of identity, connection and belonging in a particular landscape, which may be a small step towards developing a sense of kaitiakitanga in relation to it. Based on the word tiaki meaning “to preserve, foster, protect and shelter” (Royal, 2007: 4), the concept of kaitiakitanga has become increasingly important as a conservation ethic for non-indigenous people, as well as Māori, in Aotearoa New Zealand in recent decades. Examples of Māori communities exercising kaitiakitanga in their rohe include tribes taking claims to the Waitangi Tribunal (see endnote 6) about the pollution of waterways and traditional fishing areas with sewage and industrial

8  See, for example, “Dr Hinemoa Elder – How to structure your pepeha (personal introduction)”, Brain Research New Zealand, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IyVbxgbbWrE (accessed 16 June 2021).

356 

K. Rountree

waste, placing rāhui9 (restrictions) on taking kaimoana (seafood) from areas where species have become dangerously depleted, and taking responsibility for a prized resource or species, as Ngāi Tahu have with pounamu (greenstone) and Te Rarawa have with the kukupa (New Zealand pigeon) (Royal, 2007: 7). Most rāhui have no official standing and penalties for breaking them are not formally imposed, but it is increasingly seen as culturally insensitive to do so, and most members of the public tend to respect them. The purpose of a rāhui is not only to protect the sustainability of natural resources. Following the eruption of Whakaari White Island on 9 December 2019 with the loss of 22 lives, iwi around the Eastern Bay of Plenty placed rāhui over their coastlines to show their respect for the victims and their families and to protect the mauri (life force) of the area (Dunlop & Hurihanganui, 2019). Signs prohibited people from collecting shellfish, diving, fishing or going anywhere near the water. Effort was made to explain to the wider New Zealand public the reasons for the rāhui, with a spokesperson for the Te Whānau a Apanui tribe, Rawiri Waititi, explaining that Whakaari White Island is considered an ancestor to his people (Dunlop & Hurihanganui, 2019). More recently, after a fatal shark attack in January 2021 at Waihi beach, local tangata whenua placed a rāhui on a section of coast prohibiting fishing and shellfishing for a week “to show respect for the family and to maintain customary practices” (TVNZ, 2021). The concept of kaitiakitanga has been included in New Zealand law, whereby “the government has put tribal interests and hopes within a wider community context”, meaning in practice that tribal groups often negotiate with other groups such as local authorities (Royal, 2007: 7). The Resource Management Act (1991) states that those responsible for managing environmental resources must take into account kaitiakitanga: “the exercise of guardianship by the tangata whenua of an area in accordance with tikanga Māori [practices, ethics, values, customary law] in relation to natural and physical resources; and includes the ethic of  “A rāhui is a restriction that sets aside an area and bans the harvesting of resources. For example, a lake or a forest might be temporarily off-limits so the fish, birds or plants can be restored” (Royal, 2007: 6). 9

14  Towards a Cosmopolitan Animism 

357

stewardship” (Resource Management Act, 1991: 44). The Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade places kaitiakitanga first, ahead of prosperity, security and influence, in its list of ways its work contributes to the wellbeing of New Zealanders. The Ministry of Health places kaitiakitanga second after manākitanga (care, inclusion respect, support, trust and kindness) in its list of values. The Ministry of Primary Industries has a process for confirming the appointment of tangata kaitiaki (guardians) authorized to manage customary activities, enabling customary fishing and management traditions to continue in the rohe moana (defined customary fishing area) of an iwi or hapū. The official embracing of kaitiakitanga at the level of law and policy-­ making does not mean that things are always plain sailing at the operational level. Non-indigenous New Zealanders often do not understand how Māori concepts and protocols sit within the holistic framework of Māori culture and may not want to accept them anyway; Māori themselves do not necessarily agree about how to apply traditional concepts to modern settings; regional authorities and non-Māori land-owners may have different worldviews, values, priorities and agendas when it comes to managing resources. The inclusion of Māori concepts in law and policy may amount to little more than lip service. Even so, there has been a discernible—albeit often faltering and contested—movement in the direction of greater understanding and respect for Māori and their worldviews at both philosophical and practical levels in recent decades. Along with policy statements and debates over ownership, control and management in relation to natural “resources” —what indigenous and new animists would see as other-than-humans in the natural world— other aspects of Māori culture are being embraced by many New Zealanders. Local celebrations of Matariki, the Māori mid-winter festival celebrating the rising of the Pleiades constellation and Māori New Year (Meredith, 2006), have been growing annually. In February 2021 Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced that Matariki would become a national public holiday in 2022, announcing it as “a time for reflection and celebration, and our first public holiday that recognises Te Ao Māori [the Māori world]… a day to acknowledge our nation’s unique, shared identity and the importance of tikanga Māori” (Beehive, 2021).

358 

K. Rountree

Perhaps the most significant step towards the explicit political support for an animist worldview in New Zealand is the fact that in 2016 the Whanganui River became the first river in the world to be legally bestowed with personhood rights (Vicente, 2020). After well over a century of effort by the Whanganui iwi, who take their name from the river, The Te Awa Tupua (Whanganui River Claims Settlement) Bill (2016) gave effect to the Whanganui River Deed of Settlement (5 August 2014), which settled the historical claims of Whanganui iwi relating to the Whanganui River. It acknowledged the tribe’s special relationship with this tūpuna (ancestor), expressed in the oft-quoted Whanganui saying: “Ko au te awa. Ko te awa ko au” (I am the river. The river is me.) (Young, 2017). The Bill includes the Crown’s acknowledgement “that Te Awa Tupua is an indivisible and living whole comprising the Whanganui River from the mountains to the sea, incorporating its tributaries and all its physical and metaphysical elements” (Te Awa Tupua: 2). The establishment of a new legal framework, Te Pā Auroa, gave legal recognition of the Whanganui River as Te Awa Tupua, and of Te Awa Tupua as a legal person. The following portion of the tribe’s “Statement of significance” explains the metaphysical and practical importance of the Te Awa Tupua’s rapids and the roles and responsibilities binding the River to the people: Whanganui hapū hold that each ripo [set of rapids] of the Whanganui River is inhabited by a kaitiaki (spiritual guardian), which is particular to each hapū. Each of these kaitiaki is a mouri [vital essence, life spirit] and is responsible for maintaining the lifeforce and therefore the health and well-­ being of the Whanganui River and its people. Each hapū and the whānau within that hapū are responsible collectively for maintaining the mouri of the ripo and, in so doing, the collective mouri of Te Awa Tupua. These kaitiaki of the ripo provide insight, guidance, and premonition in relation to matters affecting the Whanganui River, its resources and life in general. Whanganui Iwi and the hapū and whānau of Whanganui look to these kaitiaki for guidance in times of joy, despair, or uncertainty for the guidance and insight they can provide. (Te Awa Tupua: 88)

The discourse of cultural appropriation so prominent in indigenous/ non-indigenous relations in Aotearoa New Zealand during the 1980s

14  Towards a Cosmopolitan Animism 

359

and 1990s is still present, but it is no longer prevalent. Increasingly Māori themselves are opening the door to Te Ao Māori and facilitating non-­ Māori people’s understanding of it. In doing so they work from the perspective that indigenous cultural heritage, knowledge and values have urgent relevance for all human and other-than-human beings, irrespective of culture, in a cosmopolitan society confronting environmental crisis. Aotearoa New Zealand is no idyll or paragon of race relations and debate and conflict when they emerge continue to need to be addressed and resolved. But on the whole things are getting better. Recognizing the personhood of beings in the landscape, such as Te Awa Tupua, does not mean that non-Māori have become animists. It does indicate a greater understanding of and respect for an animist worldview, and for the tangata whenua who have such views. Taking animists seriously is a prerequisite and, hopefully, a precursor to taking animism seriously.

5 Conclusion In a globalized world faced with a global environmental crisis, it is increasingly clear that the Earth’s destiny is the destiny of all people and all beings. Dismembering the world according to human political, cultural, ethnic or national interests and continuing to set human beings above and against other beings is not going to end well for any of us. Indigenous communities managed for millennia to live fairly sustainably in their environments governed by an ecosophy (Kawagley, 1995) that focused on the relatedness and interdependency of all beings (Anthony, 2013: 2). This is not to romanticize indigenous peoples—from time to time they, too, have contributed to the demise of species and natural landscapes through predation and fire, for example—but it is to acknowledge that the kind of relational epistemology that characterizes indigenous animisms serves all beings in an ecosystem better than a worldview that gives humans “dominion over the Earth” and all its creatures (Genesis 1: 28) and understands a landscape only in terms of its consumable resources in the short term. Global phenomena such as climate change, COVID-19, unprecedented connectivity and increased human mobility remind us that

360 

K. Rountree

we—indigenous and non-indigenous people alike—are all cosmopolitans, citizens of one world comprising diverse peoples, ethnicities, cultures, nations and religions. We are all indigenous to the Earth and share a single ecosystem with all beings. A new cosmopolitan animism is needed, whereby animism is shifted out of the category of religion and becomes a culturally normative way of everyday life for all, as it was for indigenous peoples. Indeed, animism may not be the best term to use; in Aotearoa New Zealand, for example, kaitiakitanga, in conjunction with other terms such as whanaungatanga and mauri, may be more appropriate and find better local purchase. Taking animistic worldviews seriously starts with taking animists seriously. It involves addressing historic and current grievances, respect, redress and the repairing of relationships. If they are willing, given their millennia of experience, indigenous animists are best placed to facilitate a reconceptualization and practical reconfiguring of humans’ relationships with other-than-human kin.

References Aldred, L. (2000). Plastic Shamans and Astroturf Sun Dances: New age commercialization of native American spirituality. American Indian Quarterly, 24(3), 329–352. Anthony, R. (2013). Animistic pragmatism and native ways of knowing: Adaptive strategies for overcoming the struggle for food in the sub-Arctic. International Journal of Circumpolar Health, 72. https://doi.org/10.3402/ ijch.v72i0.21224 Bamford, S. (1998). Humanized landscapes, embodied worlds: Land and the construction of intergenerational continuity among the Kamea of Papua New Guinea. Social Analysis, 42(3), 28–54. Barnett, C. (2017). Te Tuna-Whiri: The Knot of Eels. In C. Braddock (Ed.), Animism in art and performance (pp. 23–44). London. Beck, U. (2009). Foreword. In M. Rovisco & M. Nowicka (Eds.), Cosmopolitanism in practice (pp. xi–xiii). Ashgate. Beehive. (2021). The official website of the New Zealand Government. “2022 Matariki holiday date announced.” 4 February 2021. https://www.beehive. govt.nz/release/2022-­matariki-­holiday-­date-­announced (accessed 12 June 2021).

14  Towards a Cosmopolitan Animism 

361

Biolsi, T. (2005). Imagined geographies: Sovereignties, Indigenous space and American Indian struggle. American Ethnologist, 32(2), 239–259. Bird-David, N. (1999). ‘Animism’ revisited: Personhood, environment and relational epistemology. Current Anthropology, 40, 67–79. Core Shamanism. (n.d.). The foundation for shamanic studies. https://www.shamanism.org/workshops/coreshamanism.html (accessed 13 June 2021). Dunlop, Māni, & Te Aniwa Hurihanganui. (2019). What the Rāhui in place after Whakaari erupted mean and why they are important. Radio New Zealand News. https://www.rnz.co.nz/news/te-­manu-­korihi/405392/what-­ the-­r ahui-­i n-­p lace-­a fter-­w hakaari-­e rupted-­m ean-­a nd-­w hy-­t hey-­a re-­ important (accessed 12 June 2021). Durkheim, E. (1995 [1915]). The elementary forms of religious life. Fields, K. E. (trans.). : Free Press. Falzon, M. A. (2009). Ethnic groups unbound: A case study of the social organization of cosmopolitanism. In M.  Nowicka & M.  Rovisco (Eds.), Cosmopolitanism in practice (pp. 37–50). Ashgate. Fonneland, T. (2017). Contemporary shamanisms in Norway: Religion, entrepreneurship and politics. Oxford University Press. Franke, A. (2018). Animism. In R. Braidotti & M. Hlavajova (Eds.), Posthuman glossary. Bloomsbury Publishing. Grossman, K. (2019). ‘Green Islam’: Islamic environmentalism in Indonesia: Between socio-ecological projects and a toothless tiger. New Mandala: New perspectives on Southeast Asia. https://www.newmandala.org/green-­islam/ (accessed 26 April 2021). Hallowell, I. (1960). Ojibwa ontology, behavior and world view. In S. Diamond (Ed.), Culture in history: Essays in Honor of Paul Radin (pp. 19–52). Columbia University Press. Harvey, G. (2005). Animism: Respecting the living world. Hurst & Co. Harvey, G. (2013). The handbook of contemporary animism. Routledge. Henare, A. (2007). Taonga Māori: Encompassing rights and property in New Zealand. In A. Henare, M. Holbraad, & S. Wastell (Eds.), Thinking through things: Theorizing artefacts ethnographically (pp. 47–65). Routledge. Hobson, G. (2002). The rise of the White Shaman: Twenty-five years later. Studies in American Indian Literatures, 14(2/3), 1–11. Horowitz, L. (2001). Perceptions of nature and responses to environmental degradation in New Caledonia. Ethnology, 40, 237–250.

362 

K. Rountree

Ingold, T. (2000). Totemism, animism and the depiction of animals. In The perception of the environment: Essays on livelihood, dwelling and skill (pp. 111–131). London: Routledge. Ingold, T. (2011). Being alive: Essays on movement, knowledge and description. Routledge. Kawagley, A. O. (1995). A Yupiaq world view: A pathway to ecology and spirit. Waveland Press. Kraft, S. E. (2010). The making of a sacred mountain: Meanings of ‘nature’ and ‘sacredness’ in Sápmi and Northern Norway. Religion: An International Journal, 40, 53–61. Kraft, S. E. (2015). Sámi Neo-Shamanism in Norway: Colonial grounds, ethnic revival and pagan pathways. In K. Rountree (Ed.), Contemporary pagan and native faith movements in Europe: Colonialist and nationalist impulses (pp. 25–42). Berghahn. Lovejoy, A. O. (1965). The great chain of being. Harper and Row. Marsden, M. (2003). The Woven Universe. Te Ahukaramū Charles Royal (Ed.). Ōtaki: Estate of Rev. Māori Marsden. Meredith, P. (2006). “Māori New Year.” Te Ara: The encyclopedia of New Zealand. URL: https://teara.govt.nz/en/matariki-­ā-­new-­year. (accessed 12 June 2021). Ministry of Education. (2022). Aotearoa New Zealand’s Histories: Draft for Consultation. The New Zealand Curriculum Online (CO2716_MOE_ Aotearoa_NZ_Histories_A3_FINAL-­020.pdf ). https://nzcurriculum.tki. org.nz/The-­New-­Zealand-­Curriculum/Social-­s ciences/Why-­s tudy-­t he-­ social-­sciences (accessed 12 June 2022). Nita, M. (2016). Praying and campaigning with environmental Christians: Green religion and the climate movement. Palgrave Macmillan. Nita, M. (2018). An altar inside a circle: A relational model for investigating green Christians’ experiments with sacred space. In T.  Hutchings & J. McKenzie (Eds.), Materiality and the study of religion: The Stuff of the Sacred (pp. 133–151). Routledge. Orange, C. (1987). The Treaty of Waitangi. Allen & Unwin. Palmer, L., & McWilliam, A. (2019). Spirit ecologies and customary governance in post-conflict Timor-Leste. Journal of the Humanities and Social Sciences of Southeast Asia, 175(4), 474–505. Peers, E. (2015). Soviet-era discourse and Siberian Shamanic revivalism: How area spirits speak through academia. In K.  Rountree (Ed.), Contemporary pagan and native faith movements in Europe: Colonialist and nationalist impulses (pp. 100–119). Berghahn.

14  Towards a Cosmopolitan Animism 

363

Resource Management Act. (1991). Reprint as at 13 April 2021, New Zealand Legislation. https://www.legislation.govt.nz/act/public/1991/0069/latest/ DLM230265.html (accessed 17 June 21). Rose, W. (1992). The great pretenders: Further reflections on white Shamanism. In M.  Jaimes (Ed.), The State of Native America (pp.  403–421). South End Press. Rose, D.  B. (2000). Dingo makes us human: Life and land in an Australian aboriginal culture. Cambridge University Press. Rountree, K. (2004). Embracing the Witch and the Goddess: Feminist Ritual-­ makers in New Zealand. Routledge. Rountree, K. (2012). Neo-paganism, animism and kinship with nature. Journal of Contemporary Religion, 27(2), 305–320. Rountree, K. (2017). “Introduction. We are the weavers, we are the web”: Cosmopolitan entanglements in modern paganism. In K.  Rountree (Ed.), Cosmopolitanism, nationalism and modern paganism (pp.  1–19). Palgrave Macmillan. Royal, Te Ahukaramū Charles. (2007). Kaitiakitanga–guardianship and conservation–Kaitiaki guardians. Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand. URL: https://teara.govt.nz/en/kaitiakitanga-­g uardianship-­a nd-­c onservation/ page-­4 (accessed 17 June 2021). Rydving, H. (1993). The end of drum-time: Religious change among the Lule Saami, 1670s–1740s. Acta Universitatis Upsaliensis. Salmond, A. (2017). Tears of Rangi: Experiments across Worlds. Auckland University Press. Sanson, D. (2017). Cosmopolitanism, Neo-Shamans and contemporary Māori Healers in New Zealand. In K. Rountree (Ed.), Cosmopolitanism, nationalism and modern paganism (pp. 221–243). Palgrave Macmillan. Sutton, P. (2010). Aboriginal spirituality in a new age. The Australian Journal of Anthropology, 21(1), 71–89. Swancutt, Katherine. (2019). Animism. In F.  Stein, S.  Lazar, M.  Candea, H. Diemberger, J. Robbins, A. Sanchez, & R. Stasch (Eds.), The Cambridge encyclopedia of anthropology. https://www.anthroencyclopedia.com/entry/ animism (accessed 17 June 2021). Te Awa Tupua (Whanganui River Claims Settlement) Bill. (2016). Te Awa Tupua (Whanganui River Claims Settlement) Bill 129-1 (2016). Government Bill – New Zealand Legislation. https://www.legislation.govt.nz/bill/government/2016/0129/6.0/whole.html (accessed 12 June 2021).

364 

K. Rountree

TVNZ. (2021). Rāhui put in place for stretch of Bay of Plenty coast after fatal shark attack at Waihi Beach. 1News, 8 January 2021. https://www.tvnz.co. nz/one-­news/new-­zealand/ra-­hui-­put-­in-­place-­stretch-­bay-­plenty-­coast-­ after-­fatal-­shark-­attack-­waihi-­beach. (accessed 17 June 2021). Vicente, M. (2020). A river with standing: Personhood in Te Ao Māori. PARSE 12 (Autumn). https://parsejournal.com/article/a-­river-­with-­standingpersonhood-in-­te-­ao-­maori/ (accessed 17 June 2021). Waldron, D., & Newton, J. (2012). Rethinking appropriation of the indigenous: A critique of the romanticist approach. Nova Religio: The Journal of Alternative and Emergent Religions, 16(2), 64–85. Wallace, M. (2010). Green Christianity: Five ways to a sustainable future. Fortress Press. Wallis, R. (2003). Shamans/Neo-Shamans: Ecstasy, alternative archaeology and contemporary pagans. Routledge. Wallis, R., & Blain, J. (2007). Re-burying the past, re-enchanting the present: Pagans, archaeological landscapes and re-burying the dead. Paper presented to ASA (Association of Social Anthropologists) conference: “Thinking through Tourism”. London Metropolitan University, 10–13 April. Wihbey, J. (2012). ‘Green Muslims’: Eco-Islam and evolving climate change consciousness.” Yale Climate Connections Newsletter. https://yaleclimateconnections.org/2012/04/green-­m uslims-­e co-­i slam-­a nd-­e volving-­c limate-­ change-­consciousness/ (accessed 26 April 2021). Willerslev, R. (2007). Soul Hunters: Hunting, animism and personhood among the Siberian Yukaghirs. University of California Press. Willerslev, R., & Ulturgasheva, O. (2012). Revisiting the animism versus totemism debate: Fabricating persons among the Eveny and Chukchi of North-­ eastern Siberia. In M.  Brightman, V.  Grotti, & O.  Ulturgasheva (Eds.), Animism in rainforest and Tundra: Personhood, animals, plants and things in contemporary Amazonia and Siberia (pp. 48–68). Berghahn. Young, D. (2017). Whanganui Tribes. In Te Ara  – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand. http://www.TeAra.govt.nz/en/whanganui-­tribes (accessed 17 June 2021).

Index1

A

Aboriginal people, 142, 143 Abram, David, 106, 110 Adolescence, 128, 142, 277, 278 Adulthood, 15, 258, 263, 276–279 Afterlife, 48, 84, 95, 96, 101, 107, 204 Aliefs, 294 Analogy, 55, 84, 84n21, 103, 158, 186–188, 248 Anamnesis, 267, 269 Ancestors, 4, 5, 8, 11, 25, 27, 32, 35, 72, 88n26, 103, 112, 143, 145, 215, 300, 344, 349, 356, 358 Angels, 4, 7, 27, 74, 200, 204, 219, 286, 347

Animals, 11, 26, 49, 65, 99, 124, 156, 180, 199, 228, 259, 288, 318, 342 Anthropocentrism, 221 Anthropomorphism, 27–33, 35–37, 46, 48, 52n9, 55, 67, 88, 105, 106, 221, 299, 324n4 Aquinas, Thomas, 2, 47, 98 Archetypes, 181 Aristotle, 77, 238, 281, 289n13, 347 Art, 27, 50n6, 52, 107, 188, 189 Artifacts, 23, 29, 188 Artificial intelligence (AI), 313–337 Atran, Scott, 24–26 Australia, 19, 143, 343

 Note: Page numbers followed by ‘n’ refer to notes.

1

© The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 T. Smith (ed.), Animism and Philosophy of Religion, Palgrave Frontiers in Philosophy of Religion, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94170-3

365

366 Index B

Bacon, Francis, 52n9, 229, 232 Barrett, Justin, 17, 26, 27, 40, 41, 106, 272, 299 Bergson, Henri, 231, 232 Bering, Jesse, 304, 305, 305n31 Bird-David, Nurit, 13, 64, 66, 69–71, 69n7, 69n8, 80, 86, 89, 123, 133, 137, 143, 158, 166, 167, 216, 220, 222, 227, 290, 290n14, 290n15, 291, 291n16, 291n17, 295, 296, 301, 303, 345 Birds, 49, 83, 248, 343, 356n9 Black Stone, 213 Boyer, Pascal, 17, 24, 27, 263, 271 Buddhism, 8, 74, 96, 218, 219 C

Calvin, John, 269, 270 Carnap, Rudolf, 102 Cartesian Scepticism, 268 Cavendish, Margaret, 230, 250 Chinese religion, 48 Christ, 71n9, 76, 100, 191, 191n8 Christianity, 8, 35, 39, 72, 75n14, 76, 96, 101, 105, 115, 116, 165, 191n8, 218, 286, 288, 347 Cicero, M. T., 229, 232, 237, 269 Climate change, 18, 216, 218, 341, 346, 347n3, 359 Coeckelbergh, Mark, 227, 318, 319 Cognitive pluralism, 16, 153, 156, 157, 159, 170–171 Colonialism, 8, 101, 346, 348

Common sense, 15, 124, 184, 205, 272, 274, 296 Computer science, 231, 321 Corporate personhood, 36 Cosmology, 2, 54, 65n5, 68, 86n24, 113, 132, 133, 163, 290n14, 349 Covid-19, 53n10, 346, 359 Cultural appropriation, 348–353, 358 Cultural critique, 14, 123–147 D

Darwin, Charles, 50, 50n6, 87 Davidson, Donald, 160–162 Dawkins, Richard, 235, 246, 249 Debunking arguments, 9, 17, 286, 287, 301, 307 Defeaters, 273, 280 Deleuze, Gilles, 168 Demons, 4, 28, 35, 180, 188, 200, 204, 286, 288 Dennett, Daniel, 245, 326 Descartes, René, 84–86, 86n24, 89, 117, 132, 204, 229, 232, 268, 273, 274 Descola, Philippe, 13, 64, 67, 68, 110, 123, 158, 167 Dewey, John, 157, 164 Diffusionism, 180 Divinity, 100, 207, 227, 268, 269 Dreaming, 73, 102, 145, 343 Dretske, Fred, 231 Dualism, 75n14, 132, 139, 290 Durkheim, Emile, 47

 Index  E

Ecology, 18, 97, 111–113, 115, 116, 215, 342, 343 Empiricism, 267 Enlightenment, 6, 179 Entropy, 231–237, 239, 242, 244, 245, 248 Epicurus, 269 Evans-Pritchard, E. E., 70 Evidentialism, 271, 273 Exorcism, 180 Externalism, 163 Extinction, 215, 216, 246, 341

367

80, 82, 86, 98–100, 103, 105, 108, 115, 188, 207, 211, 212, 222, 243, 264, 265, 267–270, 272–274, 286, 286n5, 296, 298, 305, 341, 347 Goff, Philip, 208 Greek philosophy and religion, 74n13 Guthrie, Stewart, 13, 17, 25–37, 49, 54n12, 88n26, 105, 106, 181, 299–301 H

F

Fetishism, 84, 98, 99 Fischer, Michael, 124–129, 134, 136, 141, 142, 146, 147 Fish, 50, 113, 192, 213, 279, 343, 356n9 Fishing, 113, 344, 355–357 Fodor, Jerry, 279 Folk psychology, 185–188, 194, 195 Forests, 4, 12, 20, 106, 108, 111, 166, 193, 211, 218–223, 287, 353, 356n9 Frazer, James, 9, 9n1, 13, 64n3, 65, 70, 71, 101, 102, 104 Functionalism, 335 G

Gaia hypothesis, 217, 245 Ghosts, 5, 26, 27, 86, 89, 184, 200, 204 Gnomes, 229, 242 Gods, 1–4, 11, 26–28, 32, 36, 39–41, 47, 64, 71, 74, 75n14,

Hallowell, Irving, 12, 13, 16, 47, 66–69, 67n6, 69n7, 107, 133–136, 141, 215, 342, 344 Harrison, Peter, 85, 97 Harvey, Graham, 13, 19, 23, 65, 66, 68, 69, 87, 88n26, 124, 126, 132–134, 137–144, 146, 154, 216, 218, 220, 222, 285, 308, 318, 341 Hermeneutics, 6, 129, 141, 273 Hobbes, Thomas, 6, 230 Hopi, 48 Horton, Robin, 16, 17, 47, 72n10, 103, 182–186, 194, 196 Huaorani, 166 Hume, David, 8, 9, 13, 49, 89, 98–100 Hunting, 112, 113, 194 I

Iamblichus, 229, 232, 243 Idealism, 199, 206 Immortality, 95 India, 82, 115, 133

368 Index

Infants, 36–40, 46, 154, 276, 277, 343 Information theory, 231, 232, 238, 250 Ingold, Tim, 13, 65, 66, 87, 106, 108, 109, 131, 132, 156–158, 343–347 Innate belief, 257–282 Intelligence, 9, 11, 19, 21, 89, 204, 232, 240, 246, 258, 274, 275 Intuition, 18, 189, 279, 280, 292 Inuit, 80, 112–114 J

Japan, 8, 106, 180 Jinn, 288 K

Kalabari, 47 Kelemen, Deborah, 103, 108, 263–266 Kierkegaard, Soren, 2 Kurzweil, Ray, 231, 240, 249 L

Lakes, 210, 213, 217, 228, 344, 353, 356n9 Latour, Bruno, 6, 7, 11, 66, 103, 110 Leibniz, Gottfried, 230, 250, 266, 268 Logical Positivists, 183 Lovelock, James, 169, 246

M

Malebranche, Nicolas, 84 Malinowski, Bronislaw, 102, 167 Mana, 64, 354 Māori, 104, 342–344, 349, 350, 352–357, 353n6, 359 Marcus, George, 124–129, 134, 136, 142, 146, 147 Marett, Robert, 64, 73n11, 79 Masai, 38 Materialism, 187, 285, 295, 307 Mead, Margaret, 128, 142, 260 Metaphor, 12, 30–34, 51–55, 52n9, 53n10, 54n12, 131, 163, 169 Mind-reading, 279, 316–326, 331–334 Moon, 9, 30, 31, 51, 103, 211, 212, 237, 239–242, 262, 263, 268, 270, 281, 319 Mountains, 344, 344n2, 353, 355, 358 N

Nagel, Thomas, 336 Nativism, 267, 271 Naturalism, 5, 7, 16, 17, 24, 25, 27, 39, 88n26, 110, 153–172, 228 Neurath, O., 102 New animism, 13, 23, 24, 46, 64–66, 65n4, 68–71, 78, 82, 87–89, 88n26, 123–147, 154, 215–223, 287, 289–293, 290n14, 318, 319, 341–345 New primitivism, 140 New Zealand, 20, 344, 349, 350, 353n6, 354, 356, 358

 Index 

Nietzsche, F., 50, 52n9, 53–55, 230 Noble savages, 20, 220 Nymphs, 228 O

Oceans, 210, 217–223, 237, 242, 244, 250, 308, 319 Ojibwa, 47, 69 Old animism, 64–70, 78, 80n19, 88, 88n26, 287–289, 291 Ontological turn, 65, 65n5, 80n19, 154–156, 159 Ownership, 348, 352, 353, 357 P

Paganism, 117, 218–220, 228 Panpsychism, 199, 206–208, 216 Pantheism, 199, 206, 207 Paracelsus, 229, 241 Parasites, 214 Peirce, C. S., 160 Personage, 16, 191–194, 191n8, 192n9, 196 Personhood, 12, 14, 19–21, 36–40, 51, 66, 68, 69, 69n8, 78, 86, 87, 89, 113, 124, 146, 172, 193, 211, 227, 288n11, 290, 314, 352, 358, 359 Perspectivism, 68, 80, 158, 167 Peterson, Nicolas, 14, 126–127, 142–147, 169, 215 Phillips, D. Z., 124, 125, 135, 136, 138, 141, 144, 147 Piaget, Jean, 46, 103, 258–265, 271, 276, 281 Planets, 66, 89, 211, 212, 216, 220, 221, 229, 237, 239–246, 248

369

Plantinga, Alvin, 2, 4, 263, 264, 266, 272, 273, 275 Plants, 11, 33, 55, 65, 67, 78–86, 88, 89, 101, 105, 107–109, 111, 112, 133, 145, 146, 179, 180, 185, 186, 209, 210, 214–223, 229, 230, 232, 237, 246–248, 259, 260, 262, 263, 281, 288, 294, 296, 298–304, 308, 319, 342, 347, 356n9 Plato, 212, 228, 229, 231, 238, 240, 267, 269, 281 Plotinus, 229, 250 Plumwood, Val, 18, 19, 138 Pollution, 12, 216, 217, 308, 341, 347n3, 355 Poverty of the stimulus argument, 267, 272 Pragmatic arguments, 19, 316 Pragmatism, 171 Principle of credulity, 273 Private language argument, 331 Prosperity theology, 219 R

Rarámuri, 97, 111–112, 114 Rationalism, 266–271 Realism, 163, 168, 169 Reid, Thomas, 269, 272–275 Relational epistemology, 70, 133, 290, 345, 359 Representation, 28, 29, 52, 53, 89, 142, 154, 155, 157–167, 169–172, 293n19, 335 Richardson, Kathleen, 314, 315, 337

370 Index

River, 1, 12, 14, 19, 20, 81, 108, 109, 156, 180, 188, 210, 214, 215, 217–221, 223, 227, 228, 262, 263, 281, 287, 288, 288n9, 343, 344, 353, 355, 358 Robot, 10, 20, 231 S

Santa Claus, 40, 41 Schelling, F., 230 Schleiermacher, F., 98 Schopenhauer, A., 230 Seemings, 17, 295, 296, 298, 303 Semiotics, 133 Sentience, 15, 30, 38, 67, 79, 87, 89, 145, 200, 206–211, 217, 218, 220, 222, 299, 319, 345 Sex doll, 313–315, 314n1 Shamanism, 48, 107, 349, 350, 350n4 Shinto, 8, 287, 288 Shroud of Turin, 213 Sin, 104 Social practices, 41, 129, 159, 162, 164 Souls, 7, 11, 14, 65–69, 71, 73, 73n12, 74, 74n13, 76, 77n16, 78, 79, 81–86, 84n21, 88, 89, 102, 114, 188, 191, 192, 200, 201, 203–205, 227–231, 238, 240–243, 248, 249, 287, 288, 288n11, 289n13, 321–323, 345 Spinoza, B., 52n9 Spiritism, 288, 288n7

Spiritual beings, 11, 12, 46, 64, 65, 72, 72n10, 73n11, 74, 74n13, 75n14, 78–86, 88, 130, 131, 137, 287 Stahl, G. E., 73n12, 130, 290n15 Stars, 2, 4, 37, 211, 212, 228–230, 239–243, 246, 264 Stuart Mill, John, 73 Sun, 8, 30, 31, 103, 145, 160, 211, 212, 229, 239, 241–243, 262–265, 270, 319 Supernatural, 24–27, 39, 40, 45–49, 55, 71n9, 102, 103, 108, 109, 139, 286 Superstition, 5 Swancutt, Katherine, 319, 326, 343, 343n1 Swinburne, Richard, 2, 17, 296–298, 307n32 T

Technological animism, 314, 315 Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre, 231, 232 Theism, 5, 9, 95, 96, 105, 116, 265, 270, 307 Theory of mind (ToM), 163, 185–187, 277, 278, 304, 305, 305n31, 319 Thermodynamics, 230, 232, 233, 236–239, 242, 245, 248 Totemism, 98, 158, 343, 343n1 Treaty of Waitangi, 352, 353n6, 354, 355 Truthlikeness, 171, 172 Turing, Alan, 321

 Index 

Tylor, E. B., 11–13, 23, 24, 28, 35, 46, 48, 49, 63–89, 101, 102, 104, 123, 130, 131, 137, 154, 219, 227, 287, 290, 290n15, 291, 295, 298, 299, 318 U

Underdetermination, 169–170, 275 United States (US), 23, 36, 72n10, 81, 193 V

Veganism, 216 Veneration, see Worship Viruses, 184, 185, 208 Viveiros de Castro, E., 27, 46, 67, 68, 86n24, 123, 158, 167, 168, 290n14 Volcanoes, 210

371

W

Warlpiri, 142–147, 215 Wicca, 212, 218, 219 Willerslev, Rane, 14, 69, 86n24, 154, 166, 288, 299, 302, 342–344, 343n1 Witches, 27, 40 Wittgenstein, L., 125, 126, 135, 321, 331 Word tokens, 199, 202, 203, 205, 206, 212 Worship, 82, 99, 179–181, 199, 210–212, 268, 287

Y

Yukaghir, 166, 342