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Prosocial aspects of afterlife beliefs: Maybe another by-product

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 December 2006

Pascal Boyer
Pascal Boyer*
Affiliation:
Departments of Psychology and Anthropology, Washington Unversity, St. Louis, MO63130http://artsci.wustl.edu/~pboyer
*
[email protected]
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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
Information
Behavioral and Brain Sciences , Volume 29 , Issue 5 , October 2006 , pp. 466
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2006

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