1/22 Where is the counterintuitive agent in Judaism? Tamás Biró ACLC, University of Amsterdam Groningen Centre for Religion & Cognition

2/22 Tamás BIRÓ Summer Course in Culture and Cognition CEU, Budapest, Hungary, July 6, 2007 E. Thomas Lawson & Robert N. McCauley Lawson & McCauley, 1990.: Rethinking Religion, Connecting Cognition and Culture – Foundations of the Cognitive Science of Religion – Model of rituals, based on Chomskyan syntax McCauley & Lawson, 2002: Bringing Ritual to Mind, Psychological Foundations of Cultural Forms – Which predicts better the arousal connected to rituals? Ritual form (L&McC, 1990) or frequency (Whitehouse, 1995)?

3/22 Tamás BIRÓ Summer Course in Culture and Cognition CEU, Budapest, Hungary, July 6, 2007 The fate of a scientific model Prediction  corroboration/falsification/improvement Can L&McC 1990 / McC&L 2002 be applied to Judaism? … I am afraid: not very much Open question: what about other religions? Fritz Staal’s ritual structures; Mikhail on UMG

4/22 Tamás BIRÓ Summer Course in Culture and Cognition CEU, Budapest, Hungary, July 6, 2007 Overview Introduction to / own reading of / elaboration on Lawson&McCauley’s model of ritual form – Back to the linguistic model – Introducing new roles, new structures, negation L&McC: Implementation to religious rituals Implementation to Judaism

5/22 Tamás BIRÓ Summer Course in Culture and Cognition CEU, Budapest, Hungary, July 6, 2007 Linguistics: syntax–semantics interface Johnbrokethe window. The hammerbrokethe window. The windowwas brokenby John. The windowwas brokenby the hammer. The windowbroke.

6/22 Tamás BIRÓ Summer Course in Culture and Cognition CEU, Budapest, Hungary, July 6, 2007 Linguistics: syntax–semantics interface subjectverbobjectby-phrase Johnbrokethe window. The hammerbrokethe window. The windowwas brokenby John. The windowwas brokenby the hammer. The windowbroke.

7/22 Tamás BIRÓ Summer Course in Culture and Cognition CEU, Budapest, Hungary, July 6, 2007 Linguistics: syntax–semantics interface subjectverbobjectby-phrase Johnbrokethe window. The hammerbrokethe window. The windowwas brokenby John. The windowwas brokenby the hammer. The windowbroke.

8/22 Tamás BIRÓ Summer Course in Culture and Cognition CEU, Budapest, Hungary, July 6, 2007 Thematic roles (Theta-roles) Semantic arguments of the action: – Agent: (“logical subject”) – Patient: (“logical direct object”) – Instrument Further semantic roles: – Recipient: (“logical indirect/dative object” ; L&McC p125 ) – Location, time – Experiencer – Etc.

9/22 Tamás BIRÓ Summer Course in Culture and Cognition CEU, Budapest, Hungary, July 6, 2007 Frequent confusion: ontological categories – thematic roles human (incl. CIA) agent natural forceagentive categories agentive roles natural force animal patient plantrecipient location artefact natural object instrument

10/22 Tamás BIRÓ Summer Course in Culture and Cognition CEU, Budapest, Hungary, July 6, 2007 Thematic roles for action representation So far: linguistic arguments to introduce them (arguments from specific languages and from cross-linguistic comparison). My hypothesis: Linguistic observations reflect a deeper cognitive phenomenon: the mental representation of actions and states-of-affair in the world. Need to be demonstrated even beyond religion.

11/22 Tamás BIRÓ Summer Course in Culture and Cognition CEU, Budapest, Hungary, July 6, 2007 Axioms of Human Cognition 1 Axiom AHC 1: (1a) (Object Agency Filter) Agentive roles can be filled only by (some!) agentive categories. (1a’) Only agentive categories can bring about changes in the world. (1b) (Agent Overdetection) Agentive roles are preferably filled by ontological agents (humans and CIAs, but not by natural forces).

12/22 Tamás BIRÓ Summer Course in Culture and Cognition CEU, Budapest, Hungary, July 6, 2007 Action representation formalism (Lawson&McCauley, mixture of different linguistic formalisms.) John broke the window.

13/22 Tamás BIRÓ Summer Course in Culture and Cognition CEU, Budapest, Hungary, July 6, 2007 Axioms of Human Cognition 2 The hammer broke the window. The window was broken by the hammer. John broke the window using the hammer. Axiom AHC 2: (2a) Agentive categories being able to perform action X can enable other categories to act as instrument, or as secondary agents in performing action X. (2b) Otherwise, non-agentive categories cannot act as instruments.

14/22 Tamás BIRÓ Summer Course in Culture and Cognition CEU, Budapest, Hungary, July 6, 2007 Action representation formalism The hammer broke the window.

15/22 Tamás BIRÓ Summer Course in Culture and Cognition CEU, Budapest, Hungary, July 6, 2007 Enabling an instrument Presupposition (explicit or implicit): The hammer was moved: – by John (an agent) – by folk-gravitation (an agentive natural force) – by a robot: an object acting as a secondary agent Because the robot was – designed by a human (an agent) – activated by folk-electricity (an agentive natural force)

16/22 Tamás BIRÓ Summer Course in Culture and Cognition CEU, Budapest, Hungary, July 6, 2007 Enabling an instrument The hammer moved by John broke the window.

17/22 Tamás BIRÓ Summer Course in Culture and Cognition CEU, Budapest, Hungary, July 6, 2007 Lawson & McCauley on religious rituals – Religious ritual if and only if at least one slot is filled by a counterintuitive agent (CIA)… – …or an agent/instrument enabled by a CIA. – The shortest chain of enabling counts (PSI). – “Special agent rituals” vs. others (PSA). – Balanced ritual systems need both. – Tedium if no special agent rituals.

18/22 Tamás BIRÓ Summer Course in Culture and Cognition CEU, Budapest, Hungary, July 6, 2007 Application to post-Temple Judaism Special agent rituals in Judaism? – Circumcision? – Bar mitzvah? – Wedding? Special patient rituals? – Ritual bath? What about most commandments? – Positive vs. negative commandments

19/22 Tamás BIRÓ Summer Course in Culture and Cognition CEU, Budapest, Hungary, July 6, 2007 New thematic relations + negation Presupposed enabling action: Cf: Mum told us to take a coat whenever it’s cold.

20/22 Tamás BIRÓ Summer Course in Culture and Cognition CEU, Budapest, Hungary, July 6, 2007 Co-indexing and predication Don’t light fire on Shabbat!

21/22 Tamás BIRÓ Summer Course in Culture and Cognition CEU, Budapest, Hungary, July 6, 2007 Summary An overview of Lawson & McCauley 1990 from a different perspective: – Thematic roles as elements of action representation system. – Axioms of cognition Implementing L & McC 1990 to Judaism: need to improve the model (what about other religions?) – New thematic roles – Negation, co-indexing…

22/22 Thank you for your attention! Tamás Biró Download this presentation from the Archive for Religion & Cognition: