Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-42gr6 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-24T15:01:03.792Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Prosocial aspects of afterlife beliefs: Maybe another by-product

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 December 2006

Pascal Boyer*
Affiliation:
Departments of Psychology and Anthropology, Washington Unversity, St. Louis, MO63130http://artsci.wustl.edu/~pboyer

Abstract:

Bering argues that belief in posthumous intentional agency may confer added fitness via the inhibition of opportunistic behavior. This is true only if these agents are interested parties in our moral choices, a feature which does not result from Bering's imaginative constraint hypothesis and extends to supernatural agents other than dead people's souls. A by-product model might handle this better.

Type
Open Peer Commentary
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2006

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)