Davidsonian semantic theory and cognitive science of religion 1

This article investigates the extent to which the cognitive science of religion (CSR) and Donald Davidson’s semantic holism (DSH) harmonize. We first characterize CSR, philosophical semantics (and more specifically DSH). We then note a prima facie tension between CSR and DSH’s view of First-Person Authority (that we know what is meant when we speak in a way that we do not when others speak). If CSR is correct that the causes of religious belief are located in cognitive processes in the mind/brain, then religious insiders might have no idea what they are talking about: only the scholar of CSR would have a chance of knowing what they ‘really’ mean. The article argues that the resolution to this problem is to take seriously DSH’s rejection of semantic bifurcation, specifically rejecting the idea that religious and non-religious language can be sharply distinguished. We conclude by supporting the following claims: (i) common cognitive neural/psychological processes are explanatorily relevant in proposed meaning-theories for any discourse, and (ii) those processes need semantic supplementation with reference to external and naturalistic factors (biological, cultural, environmental etc.). Keywords: cognitive science of religion, cognitive theory, holism, semantics, philosophy of language, religious studies, theory of religion.


RESUMO
Este artigo investiga o quanto a ciência cognitiva da religião (CCR) e o holismo semântico de Donald Davidson (HSD) se harmonizam.Primeiro caracterizamos a CCR, a semântica filosófica (e mais especificamente o HSD).Notamos, então, uma tensão prima facie entre a CCR e a visão do HSD sobre a Autoridade da Primeira Pessoa (que sabemos o que significa quando falamos de uma forma que não fazemos quando os outros falam).Se a CCR estiver correta em afirmar que as causas da crença religiosa estão localizadas nos processos cognitivos da mente/cérebro, então os membros de dentro da religião podem não ter ideia do que estão falando: somente o acadêmico da CCR teria a chance de saber o que eles realmente querem dizer.O artigo argumenta que a resolução para este problema é levar a sério a rejeição do HSD à bifurcação semântica, rejeitando especificamente a ideia de que as linguagens religiosa e não-religiosa podem ser nitidamente distinguidas.Concluímos com as seguintes afirmações: (i) processos neurais/psicológicos cognitivos comuns são ex- The aim of this paper is to explore some of the connections between one particular influential position in philosophical semantics -Donald Davidson's semantic holism -and a relatively sub-area of the study of religion/s, the cognitive science/study of religion (CSR).Our main interests are to understand the extent to which these two positions harmonize and where they stand in tension.
By "the study of religion/s" we mean the academic and empirica ly grounded study of ecific religions along with theoretical and meta-theoretical discussions related to the nature and scope of the category 'religion.'4 Like the study of culture more genera ly, this discipline's central object of study is accessi le only through theoretical reflection.In other words, scholars of religion/s must begin with some sort of theoretical stance on the nature of religion in general, and thus the study of religion/s goes hand in hand with theorizing religion.Theorizing is lan uage dependent, and one of our central thesesthough not ar ued for here -is that theorizing is constrained by how lan uage works.In other words, basic commitments in the philosophy of lan uage impact how one can think or theorize about something.To the extent that CSR can be thought of as one of the more recent and promising theories of religion, or at least a theoretical ap roach to studying religion, the philosophy of lan uage is relevant to it.
Our research question is "to what extent do CSR and DSH harmonize?"The details of our metatheoretical stance on the relation of philosophy of lan uage to social science in general, and to the study of religion in particular, wi l be left largely undeveloped here (for further details see Engler and Gardiner, 2010, 2013, 2015, 2017b;Gardiner andEngler, 2010, 2012).We consider the relationship from only a single per ective in the philosophy of lan uage, namely that of Donald Davidson. 5His overa l theory of lan uage, which we wi l ca l Davidsonian Semantic Holism (DSH), is we l known in philosophy, though less so in the study of religion/s.However, an important set of relatively recent works have emerged which examine the significance of philosophical semantics in general, and of Donald Davidson in particular, for theory of religion. 6Davidson's position is complex, e ecia ly in its details, and we wi l explain its relevant key features as we go along, ignoring many others that are less central.

Cognitive science/Study of religion
In order to consider the interplay between DSH and CSR, we need to chara erize both.We begin here with the latter.Proponents of CSR tend to emphasize its status as an emerging and multi-disciplinary research progra e rather than as a we l-defined or articulated theory.However, the task of raising incisive semantic questions requires that we engage a fairly concrete position.This section of the paper offers an ideal-typical account of CSR, concentrating e ecia ly on those elements which impinge on DSH. 7n general terms, CSR posits that (i) religious beliefs, and so behaviors, are (ii) caused, constrained, made possi le or, in some other sense, chara erized by (iii) normal, innate, domain-ecific, mental or psychological structures, modules, tools, inference systems, or representation systems: e.g., "Religion ensues from the ordinary workings of the human mind…" (Atran, 2002, p. ix); "the adult human brain possesses an ar ay of ecialized tools … [and] these tools are factors that might help account for cross-cultural or recur ent features of human thought and behavior, such a beliefs in gods and God" (Bar ett, 2004, p. 3, 5); On the one hand, CSR holds that religion is constrained by innate factors in the same way as other domains of human thought and a ion; as a result, the explanatory principles that underlie this ap roach to the study of religion are common to a l (normal adult) humans and, hence, are ap lica le to other a ects of culture: e.g., "the mental representation of God and of bu dhas are made possi le by the same mental mechanisms that are used in representing ourselves and our fe low human beings as embodied agents" (Pyysiäinen, 2009, p. vii); "members of the cognitivist school are concerned with showing that innate and therefore universal features of cognitive organization are responsi le plicitamente relevantes em teorias de significado propostas para qualquer discurso, e (ii) esses processos precisam de suplementação semântica com referência a fatores externos e naturalistas (biológicos, culturais, ambientais, etc.).
Ar iving at a more ecific chara erization of CSR involves searching for a common core behind the diverse approaches associated with this sub-field of the study of religion.Scholars in the area claim several distinct names for their field: "cognitive science of religion" (Lawson, 2000;Pyysiäinen, 2001;Bar ett, 2007a); "cognitive theory of religion" (Boyer, 1994;Anttonen, 2000;Whitehouse, 2004); "cognitive study of religion" (Kamp inen, 2001); "cognitive ap roaches to religion" (Boyer, 1990;Geertz, 2004), "cognitive per ectives on religion" (Whitehouse, 1998;Andresen, 2001), or "cognitive foundations of religion" (Whitehouse and McCauley, 2005).As this range of descriptions su gests, there is no broad consensus regarding the status, or the theoretical presup ositions, of CSR.This holds even within the nar ower ' scientific' conception of the sub-field: "'Cognitive science of religion' is now an e a lished term but the field it is meant to cover is by no means homogeneous" (Pyysiäinen, 2008, p. 101).The remainder of this section chara erizes CSR in terms of a minimal core of its claims and concomitants.
CSR is primarily concerned with two ecific a ects of religion: the re resentation and transmis ion of religious concepts: e.g., "the spread of spirit phenomena is in part explained by universal micromechanisms of cognition that generate predispositions and tendencies toward certain patterns of thinking and behavior" (Cohen, 2007, p. 181); "the cognitive science of religion […] [is] a field that emerged in the 1990s as an attempt to explain how the structure of religious rituals is menta ly represented and how religious concepts are cultura ly transmitted" (Pyysiäinen, 2008, p. 101).
CSR is centra ly concerned with explaining the causes of religious belief: "A theory of religion must include a theory of religious belief, and a theory of belief must a dress the source of belief [...]" (Guthrie, 1993, p. 31).CSR tends to use a variety of terms to explain the relation between basic cognitive structures or processes and religious beliefs: 'constrain, ' 'influence, ' ' generate, ' etc.On the one hand, this raises the possibility that at least some work in CSR is not concerned with the basic causal factors of beliefs but rather with the way in which beliefs, whatever their cause, are shaped, channeled, altered or selected for under certain conditions.On the other hand, no work we are aware of clearly and explicitly makes such claims, over against a causal account, and such an alternative non-causal ap roach would sti l face important semantic questions.For the purpose of this paper, we investigate an account that looks to cognitive factors as standing in a causal relation to religious belief.At the very least, this explores the semantic status of at least an important ap roach within a broader conception of CSR.
Thus, for clarity's sake, we wi l attribute the fo lowing two main elements to CSR and treat it as if it were a homogeneous theory: (1) Religious beliefs are an important item of investigation for the study of religion/s.(2) The formulation and transmission of religious beliefs are to be explained as the causal result of (near) universal and innate cognitive/psychological processes in the human mind/brain.
In terms of the role of religious belief for the study of religion/s, we fo low Go love (2002) in identifying two main and antagonistic streams: (i) those that hold that "belief " is an explanatorily important category, and (ii) those that hold it is of no explanatory interest or importance whatsoever.We' l dub the first position "pro-belief " and the second "anti-belief." Thus, one of the central tenets we assign to CSR is the centrality of the category of (religious) belief.8A third common tenet, though not one central to our discussion, has been the idea that there is a definitive element to religious belief involving purported a lusion, at some level, to "supernatural agents."9

Philosophical semantics
This section offers an overview of theories of meaning, fo lowed by a closer look at DSH.The study of religion, and more surprisingly theories of religion, seldom pay explicit attention to issues of semantics, though there are important exceptions (see footnote 6).Our choice to place CSR in dialo ue with semantic theory is not an i le one: no theory of religion can get off the ground without at least an implicit theory of meaning.
We use the expression "theory of meaning" to refer to a broad philosophical theory about the nature of the meaning of particular bits of lan uage, principa ly sentences.We take it for granted that lan uages are, by and large, human artifacts whose core use is as a vehicle for communication and expression of propositional attitudes (beliefs, desires, etc.), or of thought more genera ly.As such, much of philosophical semantics involves elements of the philosophy of mind, of which cognitive psychology has been of particular interest and importance.We point scholars to Jep e Sinding Jensen's exce lent article, "Meaning and Religion: On Semantics in the Study of Religion" ( 2004) for an overview of the positions and history of semantic theory with ecial emphasis on the study of religion.Fo lowing his lead, we reserve the term "meaning" to the semantic contents of sentences -to hat is said by an utterance, what thought is conveyed by a claim, what a listener would need to understand in order to grasp what was said, what particular assertions are about, etc. 10Although the history of semantics is long and varied, and there are many distinct axes in the topology of possi le theories, in this article we wi l concentrate on a triad along just one of them: • Se antic Internalism: The meaning of a sentence is solely determined by the intentions of the eaker -the sentence means whatever she intends it to mean, regar less of whether others are in a position to understand it.Meanings are "in the head." • Se antic Externalism: The meaning of a sentence is solely determined by an objective relation between the sentence and mind-independent entities.The eaker need not have any beliefs about or knowledge of the meaning of her own utterances.Meanings "just ain't in the head"11 and so have a pu lic and empirica ly accessi le dimension.12• Mixed Se antic Theo ies: The meaning of a sentence is given by the intentions of a eaker to report her beliefs, where her beliefs are causa ly related, in part, to external factors.The eaker is in a privileged position via-à-vis knowledge of the meaning of her own utterances, but it must be possi le, in pra ice, for others to cor ectly interpret her sentences.
Theorists of religion can ignore but not avoid taking a stance regarding these semantic options, even if implicit.The adoption or primacy of a semantic theory wi l have substantial methodological implications for the study of religion.Internalism, for example, su gests that the means to understanding a particular religion is to determine the intentional content as far as the believer is concerned.The phonetic vocalizations might perhaps be taken as a synta ic "code" which, if cracked, would a low the researcher access to the norma ly private and hi den mental states of the believer.Phenomenological analy-sis springs to mind here.Externalism, on the other hand, would regard the vocalizations of participants as largely ir elevantthe researcher should concentrate on pu licly observa le factors, such as the social function of the discourse/ritual.Functionalist or structuralist analyses would seem plausi le here.
There is a natural affinity between these semantic theories and the two attitudes, noted above, about the status of belief as a basic category in the study of religion.Pro-belief theorists of religion should favour either internalism or mixed theories.Those who are anti-belief should be inclined towards externalist views.Again, we assert that the issue cannot be avoided: theories of religion are not semantica ly neutral.The rational defensibility of a theory in one discipline rests, in part, on how we l it harmonizes with or finds sup ort from we l-sup orted theories from other disciplines.Ar ua ly, semantic theories are among the most fundamental of theories that should be reckoned with.If, for example, semantic externalism were shown to have significant pro lems, this would have a significant, and negative impact, on theories of religion that discounted the concept of 'belief, ' if these natura ly harmonize in the way we have su ge ed.In other words, denying the importance of 'belief ' in the study of religion does not side ep the need to make sense of meaning.
The take-home point of this topography is that DSH is a mixed semantic theory (details to be fi led in a bit more in the next section) that is pro-belief in orientation.We can thus refine our research question: to what extent does CSR harmonize with mixed semantic theories and with a pro-belief orientation?
We move on now to a closer look at DSH.In contrast to the term "theory of meaning, " Davidson (1990) uses "meaning-theory" as a proposed theory for a given lan uage L which generates meaning-ecifying theorems for any given sentence of the form: The first component of Davidson's project ar ues that Tarski's (1944) "semantic" definition of truth (in terms of ' satisfa ion'), which generates "T-sentences" of the form: 's' is true iff p provides a l the formal and structural elements for a meaning-theory.In other words, Davidson ar ued that a Tar-skian truth-theory is a meaning-theory.Hence, Davidson endorses a truth-conditional theory of meaning. 13 With re ect to CSR, there are a number of vital elements of Davidson's thought needing highlight: (1) On pain of the semantic paradoxes, the "s" and the "p" in the T-sentence must be in different lan uages.
The T-sentences, then, purport to provide translations; translatability, or, for a more familiar Davidsonian term, interpretability, is a precondition for the very possibility of meaning (see LePore and Mc-Laughlin, 1985).(2) A meaning-theory is for ally adequate to the extent that it delivers T-sentences as theorems, but is mate ially a equate iff it delivers the correct T-sentences (i.e., expresses genuine synonymies between "s" and "p").Davidson views each forma ly adequate meaning-theory as a proposal that must then be empirica ly te ed for material adequacy.
(3) Interpretation involves a relation between what we wi l ca l eakers and interpreters.An interpreter is implicitly attempting to construct a cor ect meaning-theory with re ect to some eaker (or community of eakers).Davidson's strategy requires the primacy of what he ca ls "radical interpretation, " where the eaker and interpreter are not presumed to share a lan uage (e.g., Davidson, 1984cDavidson, [1973]], 1974, 1984d [1974], 1980, 2001b [1983]).(4) Speakers do not interpret their own utterances.
Rather, we presume that they have "First-Person Authority" with re ect to their own claims.By this, Davidson does not hold a Cartesian thesis about incor igibility or that meaning is somehow private.
What he means is that we know what is meant when we eak in a way that we do not when others eak.Specifica ly, we must "interpret" the utterances of others, but not our own, by implicit reference to a constructi le meaning-theory. 14 (5) Not only is lan uage the vehicle through which thought is expressed, meaning is cor elative with belief: "  (Davidson, 1984b(Davidson, [1967]], p. 27).Interpretability requires breaking into this "meaning-belief " circle.
Davidson's proposal involves two assumptions: (i) First-Person Authority, and (ii) the Principle of Charity. 15The first assumption a lows the interpreter to break into the 'meaning-belief circle' in her own case, and the second assumption a lows her to bootstrap to the third-person case.In a proposed T-sentence "' s' is true iff p, " the interpreter assumes knowledge of the meaning of 'p' (= First-Person Authority), cor elates her believing 'p' with a set of accessi le causal conditions, presumes that the eaker wi l also cor elate his beliefs with the same causal conditions (= Principle of Charity), and hence have a basis for translating the eaker's ' s' with her own 'p.' Thus, the causal conditions must be equa ly accessile by eaker and interpreter.(6) Davidson identifies the semantic content of utterances in two distinct ways.The most we l-known is the identification with truth-conditions: [To] give the truth conditions is a way of giving the meaning of a sentence.To know the semantic concept of truth for a language is to know what it is for a sentence -any sentence -to be true, and this amounts, in one good sense we can give to the phrase, to understand the language (Davidson, 1984b(Davidson, [1967]], p. 24).
The second is with the causes of belief: "Words and thoughts are, in the most basic cases, necessarily about the sorts of objects and events that commonly cause them […] Our simplest sentences are given their meanings by the situations that genera ly cause us to hold them as true or false" (Davidson, 2001e [1988, p. 45).
This second point is crucial for assessing CSR: a Davidsonian account of the meaning of religious beliefs wi l be insepara le from an account of the causes of those beliefs.
Davidson tends to modify these claims with "in the simplest and most basic cases" type of clauses, su gesting that an account of the meaning of more complex or higher-level sentences might be given differently.Although this is a matter of some controversy, we note three possi le views: (i) the identification of semantic content with the observa le causes of belief holds for a l lan uage, including "less basic" cases 16 ; (ii) although the semantic contents of "less basic" beliefs are 13 Although Davidson regards truth-conditions as the core concept in an account of meaning, he denies that truth has any robust or metaphysically-loaded content, as for example that offered by a correspondence theory of truth.See Davidson (1990Davidson ( , 1996) ) and Gardiner and Engler (2010). 14See for example Davidson (2001cDavidson ( [1984Davidson ( ], 1986Davidson ( , 2001dDavidson ( [1987Davidson ( ], 2001e [1988]]).Godlove points out that first person authority with respect to religious discourse is often questioned by scholars of religion, and his analysis of why it is less secure in such contexts as opposed to more concrete discourse plays an important role in his discussion of the nature and use of "frameworks" within theories of religion (Godlove, 1989).We will return to this point later. 15The Principle of Charity involves the presumption an interpreter must make that speakers are as rational as she is.See for example Davidson (1984cDavidson ( [1973Davidson ( ], 1984dDavidson ( [1974Davidson ( ], 2001bDavidson ( [1983Davidson ( ], 1986Davidson ( , 1994Davidson ( , 1999)). 16There are some passages in which this seems to be Davidson's position.See, for example, Davidson (2001e [19881984b[1967], p. 31).
Filosofi a Unisinos -Unisinos Journal of Philosophy -19(3):311-321, sep/dec 2018 separate from their relevant observa le causes, nonetheless they must be "traced back" to that of the "basic cases"; and (iii) the semantic constraints on "less basic" beliefs are substantially different from those on the "basic cases." We wi l return to this point later.
However, with re ect to at least the "basic cases, " Davidson sees the "truth-conditional" identification of semantic content as equivalent to the causal one: [We] are justified in asserting a sentence in the required sense only if we believe the sentence we use to make the assertion is true; and what ultimately ties language to the world is that the conditions which typically cause us to hold sentences true constitute the truth-conditions, and hence the meanings, of our sentence (Davidson, 1996, p. 275, original emphasis).

The core issue: The threat to First-Person Authority
This raises the final refinement of our research question: to what extent do the tri-identifications of truth-conditions = causes of beliefs = semantic content harmonize with CSR?In our view, there is a prima facie incompatibility between (i) CSR, (ii) Davidson's account of semantic content, and (iii) the presumption of First-Person Authority.As (ii) and (iii) seem to be central to Davidson's project, there is a prima facie incompatibility between CSR and DSH.The task in this section is to explain that prima facie tension, explore its resolution, and point at some broad conclusions for the study of religion.

The tension
There ap ear to be counter-examples to Davidson' s tri-identifications.For example, the truth-conditions of my utterance "The sun is shining" presuma ly involve a shining sun, but imagine that I come to believe that as a result of a nocturnal hypnotism.In this case, the cause of my belief and its truth-conditions ap ear to diverge, and we are left in a quandary as to the semantic content of my utterance.We seem to be initia ly faced with a dilemma: either (i) the content of my utterance is given by its cause rather than its truth-conditions, in which case (as I have no beliefs about the cause) I fail to understand the content of my own utterance (i.e., First-Person Authority is lost), or (ii) the content is given by the truth-con-ditions, in which case the causal antecedents are semantica ly impotent (i.e., radical interpretation is imperiled).Both horns are equa ly pro lematic to Davidson' s project.
To be sure, in the example it seems promising to deny that one actua ly does believe what is su ge ed in the hypnotic trance.However, CSR ap ears to provide more compe ling counter-examples.One of its basic tenets is that the causes of religious belief are to be located in cognitive processes in the mind/brain.Therefore, under the "cause = semantic content" identification, an expression of religious belief, say "God lesses this mar iage, " is to be interpreted as being about those cognitive processes; i.e., a cor ect meaning-theory should be constructi le in which the translation would be in the lan uage of cognitive psychology or neuroscience.But, surely the eaker would, if a le to understand the proposed translation, reject it as a translation.She would be much more likely to regard her statement as being about God, mar iages, and benedictions.In other words, CSR + "cause = content" is incompatile with the presumption of First-Person Authority. 17Indeed, the failure of First-Person Authority would be systemic and wholesale; insiders would have no idea what they are ta king about; only the scholar of CSR would have a chance of knowing what they 'rea ly' mean.As Davidson puts the point: [If] the correct determination of an agent's thoughts depends, at least to some degree, on the causal history of those thoughts, and the agent may be ignorant of that history, then the agent may not know what he thinks (and, mutatis mutandis, what he means, intends, etc.).The new antisubjectivism [i.e., the rejection of semantic internalism] is thus seen as a threat to first person authority -to the fact that people generally know without recourse to inference from evidence, and so in a way that others do not, what they themselves think, want, andintend (Davidson, 2001e [1988], p. 48). 18  We wi l deal with the difficulties of this view -e ecia ly for CSR -shortly.
On the other hand, consider the "truth-conditions = semantic content" identification.Here we must make a tricky distinction between truth-conditions as they are "in reality" and as they are conceived by some eaker.Consider an example invoking logical behaviourism: what are the truth-conditions for the sentence "Jones is in pain"?We cannot, without vacuity, merely say that they are that Jones be in pain, for there are at least two rival theories about what that amounts to: his 17 There is a logically possible -though courageous -resolution of the tension.One could argue that the cognitive processes are merely intermediary causes, where even they themselves are to be explained by reference to God -i.e., that God ordained it such that we developed the cognitive processes which brought about religious beliefs.In that way, the speaker's opinion that her utterance is about God is correct -it is, as God is the (ultimate) cause of her belief.Thus, a transcendental argument for the existence of God emerges: God's existence is a necessary precondition for the consistency of CSR and semantic holism.We won't even begin to discuss what is wrong with this argument… 18 Although Davidson thinks that this involves a "misunderstanding," his argument is not compelling in the case of religious discourse.undergoing a certain phenomenal experience and his being disposed to manifest pain behaviour.The logical behaviourist could regard the first as the truth-conditions that are normally sup osed by the naïve, whereas the second are the "real" truth-conditions.So, which are the truth-conditions sup lied on the right-hand side of its "cor ect" T-sentence?Analogously, which of the pra itioner's or CSR's assigned truth-conditions provides the semantic content to "God lesses this marriage"; is it about God, mar iages, and benedictions or about cognitive processes?Either (i) the "subjective" assignment of truth-conditions semantica ly trumps the "actual" truth-conditions; or (ii) the reverse holds.
By rejecting a l "substantive" accounts of truth (e.g., correspondence and coherence), Davidson rejects the grounds for drawing the distinction.However, it can be recast in this form: which of the truth-conditions as posited by the naïve or the learned sup ly the semantic content?This display reveals the confusion: a meaning-theory is an attempt to translate from the eaker's lan uage to the interpreter's, and so it is the truth-conditions as intended by the eaker which have primacy.If the interpreter sup lies truth-conditions not intended by the eaker, she simply fails to translate.Davidson chara erizes "meaning" as "a definite cognitive content that its author wishes to convey and that the interpreter must grasp if he is to get the message " (1984e [1978], p. 262).He reinforces this in a later article: "A malapropism or slip of the ton ue, if it means anything, means what its promulgator intends it to mean.[...]An utterance has certain truth-conditions only if the eaker intends it to be interpreted as having those truth-conditions" (Davidson, 1990, p. 310).And most recently: "If we want to understand a particular eaker, we must somehow know or find out or intuit what that particular eaker takes to be the truth conditions of his or her utterance" (Davidson, 1999, p. 33).Of course, determining which truth-conditions a eaker assigns to their utterances just is to interpret their eech.
So, where does this leave CSR with re ect to the "truth-conditions = semantic content" identification?In the first place, it seems we must reject the idea that CSR gives us insight into the truth-conditions of religious claims.Period.Some might be tempted to a d the clause "as they are understood by religious pra itioners, " but we have just ar ued that this clause a ds nothing.We imagine that some, like Bar ett (2007b), wi l not find this pro lematic, but su ect that at least some wi l find this result sobering.In the second place, divorcing truth-conditions from CSR-understood causes leaves the key theses of CSR of virtua ly no semantic explanatory value.This would certainly reduce the aspirations of CSR to give a theory of or to explain religious belief, as beliefs are fundamenta ly semantic entities.
Where does this leave the ap arent tension between the twin identifications of "truth-conditions" = "semantic content" and "causes of belief " = "semantic content?On the one hand, it is tempting to conclude that, as DSH requires that the identifications be equivalent, and CSR shows that they aren't, so much the worse for DSH.Alternatively, as CSR cha lenges only the latter identification, a closer look at that is war anted.Reca l that the primary tension is that, in the case of religious lan uage, CSR coupled with the identification jeopardizes the presumption of First-Person Authority.That is, by offering a reductionist account of the causes of religious belief, CSR undermines insider's claim to know what they mean when they use religious lan uage.

CSR and the Centrality of Belief
The cha lenge to First-Person Authority threatens CSR for methodological reasons.Much of the research in CSR has involved these steps: (i) identify a class of religious beliefs in some lin uistic community, and (ii) through social scientific statistical analysis and empirica ly te a le hypotheses, correlate those beliefs with certain universal psychological processes.The psychological processes in (ii) then serve to explain a number of features of the beliefs in (i), in particular of the function, transmissibility and utility of religious belief.As such CSR could be taken as a theory of religion -i.e., as an explanation of religious belief.
The methodological curiosity involves the first stepthe identification of a class of religious beliefs in a lin uistic community.Difficulties in being a le to so identify beliefs would be difficulties in employing the methodological ap aratus of CSR.
How can a researcher identify a class of religious beliefs?One possibility is to have eakers self-classify their beliefs as religious/non-religious.However, this su gestion implausi ly requires that eakers clearly distin uish between their religious and non-religious beliefs, and that the category of the "religious" is understood uniformly between eaker and interpreter.Most seriously, though, it assumes that eakers have First-Person Authority with re ect to their religious beliefs, which CSR cha lenges.Another possibility is to equip the interpreter with some pre-e ablished criteria -such as implicit reference to counterintuitive supernatural agents -and have her classify the beliefs of eakers.But, on what basis can a set of criteria be pre-e a lished?This seems to require a theory of religion as a pre-condition for CSR-inspired research, and hence it would be difficult to see CSR itself as offering a theory of religion.This would also be pro lematic in assuming that the interpreter can understand the utterances of the eaker (at least, enough to classify them) outside of the conditions of radical interpretation.
A third possibility is su ge ed by Go love's "transcendental placing of religious belief " (1989, p. 122).In the case of recognizing a sentence as religious, Go love presents an ar ument similar to Davidson's, that to recognize a vocalization as a sentence requires the presup osition of a number of factors.Go love accepts one over-arching formal condition: that the sentence be "theoretical" as op osed to "observational" (meaning, primarily, it resists cor elation with changes in the observa le environment -i.e., resistance to radical interpretation), and interestingly denies that there can be any "material" constraints, such as those proposed by CSR (e.g., "extrahuman generality" [1989, p. 142]): "Any strategy that tries to set material restrictions on the possi le scope of religious belief must, I think, fail; we can expect at most formal constraints" (1989, p. 145).As resistance to radical interpretation is his primary formal constraint on religiosity, he recognizes that he needs a mechanism for being a le to distin uish between meaningless noise and meaningful expression of religious belief.He proposes the Davidsonian notion that "the basic cases" wi l be the majority, and success in interpretation of them would vindicate the ascription of rationality to the eaker (i.e., move Charity from an initial presumption to get interpretation off the ground to an empirica ly grounded formative principle) (1989, p. 156-157); i.e., difficult-to-interpret vocalizations are more likely to be meaningful than empty noise.In those cases, the presumption of First-Person Authority is indeed jeopardized: religious discourse is typically highly theoretical […] we will, on that account, be pushed towards a naturalistic interpretative strategy.That is, we will be pushed towards an interpretative strategy that frees the meaning of an utterance in ignorance of what the speaker may take to determine its meaning.And so we may find it necessary to interpret an utterance by connecting it with an event (a cause) of which the speaker seems unaware (Godlove, 1989, p. 155).
Go love is essentia ly proposing a semantic bifurcation.In the observational "basic cases" truth-conditions (as posited by believers) and causes coincide, and a Davidsonian semantics is unpro lematic.In theoretical "religious" cases, though, truth-conditions (as posited by believers") diverge, and their semantic content is given by their (unknown-to-the-eaker) causes.Failure of First-Person Authority is simply a causality of this consequence.Methodologica ly, the interpreter should adopt the latter interpretative strategy at the point where the former fails (Go love, 1989, p. 157).
As interesting and rich as Go love's proposal is, it faces difficulties.In the first place, it is difficult to see how, on his account of religious lan uage, interpretation involves translation from one lan uage to another, the lynch pin of the formal ap aratus of theories of meaning according to Davidson's project.Secon ly, it eschews a role for eaker intentionality, reducing the semantics of religious discourse to a purely "externalist" form.Fina ly, it faces a pro lem common to a l forms of "bifurcated" theories of meaning -how to inter-pret lan uage which crosses ecialized discourses."Yahweh ap eared as a burning bush" involves a cha lenging lend of "religious" and "observational" lan uage (Engler and Gardiner, 2010, p. 289). 19n any event, we are sti l left with the pro lem: how can we distin uish religious from non-religious belief, as CSR methodologica ly requires us to do, and do so (i) in a manner consistent with DSH, and (ii) p io to exploring the origin, function, transmission, etc. of those beliefs?

A final response and concluding remarks
A fourth possibility is to eschew any semantic distinction between religious and non-religious discourse.In such a case, there is no question of the methodological need to identify a range of "religious" beliefs for which CSR would seek explanatory causes in terms of cognitive psychological processes.Either such processes would be semantica ly neutral with re ect to a l forms of discourse, or else would be equa ly potent with re ect to a l.Religious lan uage would be "as pu lic as mar iage and as observa le as agriculture" (Geertz, 1973, p. 91).Jensen expresses the point nicely: The question seems to be whether there really is any such specific entity as 'religious language' and/or whether the semantics of religious systems are just 'plain' semantics of an order similar to other specialized terminological systems, those of, say, politics, sports or economics (2004, p. 220).
Jensen clearly opts for unity of discourse: "[It] makes no sense to say that religious lan uage has its own ecial truth conditions not commensurate with or translata le into other forms of lan uage.Religious lan uage is an a ect-ecific extension of ordinary lan uage" (1999, p. 421).
We end with some brief reflections about the pro ects of this possibility, e ecia ly with regard to CSR.
In our view, Davidson's programme is antithetical to bifurcated theories of meaning: meaning is meaning; and the conditions of radical interpretation, if they have any force, sup ly the basic constraints on the interpretation of any discourse.Hence, Davidsonians should find this proposal promising.To be sure, though, it continues to face the pro lem of ap lying those conditions beyond "the basic cases." Perhaps the pro lem, however, is in giving a rather narrow reading to the causes of religious belief, or of viewing CSR as overly reductionistic.By widening the lens, perhaps a number of issues can be made clearer and pro lems dissolved.Davidson insists on the pu lic or observational conditions involved in radical interpretation. 20However, in the "basic cases" observation seems reduced to pe ce tual observation, and this raises the difficulty of how mere perception can play a role in detecting changes in the observa le environment in cases which are non-perceptual (e.g., religion, math, logic, and perhaps ethics).But, if by "observational" we mean "naturalistic" in the sense of accessi le to investigation by natural means, which includes the natural and social sciences, this might offer a way out.The pu lic conditions in which, for example, religious lan uage is used seemingly must involve social or institutional elements.Interpretation of "God lesses this mar iage" is seemingly impossi le without some reflective ap reciation of purely perceptual elements (e.g., the movements of the priest with re ect to the betrothed), but also such things as the social context of the ritual movements, the attitudes of others involved, the semantic interpretation of other bits of lan uage (e.g., liturgy), etc.This is another a ect of "holism" -one area of lan uage cannot be interpreted in isolation, but only as part of connections to others, which must be understood as filtered through (largely shared) canons of rationality and against a large background of (mostly true) shared beliefs.Traditional ap roaches to the study of religion/s, including textual hermeneutics, anthropology, sociology, psychology, discourse analysis, etc., would have important roles to play.
Where does this leave CSR?The growing evidence seems to be that there are common cognitive psychological processes involved in the formulation and transmission of "religious" beliefs.These are amongst the "causes" of religious belief, but cannot be identified as the sole causes.In an analogous vein, the social contexts also provide causal factors in the formation and transmission of "religious" belief, but they cannot be identified as the sole causes either.Both might play important causal roles, and thus are semantica ly relevant within a Davidsonian ap roach. 21n our view, this seems reasona le for a l bits of lan uage.The cause of my belief that the sun is shining is not just the shining of the sun (and that I am responsive to changes in the environment with re ect to the shining of the sun), but also that, for whatever reason, I emerged as a creature having the neurological/cognitive capacities to observe my environment (i.e., to formulate beliefs on the basis of observation).That you and I can both believe that the sun is shining -i.e., that we can share the same belief -presup oses both a commonality in our cognitive processing as we l as a commonality in our access to and responsiveness to an "external" world.
We conclude with optimism about the pro ects of these claims: (i) there are common cognitive neural/psychological processes which are explanatorily relevant in proposed meaning-theories for any discourse, and (ii) those processes need semantic sup lementation with reference to "external" and "naturalistic" factors.Religious discourse, as much as any discourse, requires interpretation by "connecting c ognition and culture" (Lawson and McCauley, 1990).

Filosofi
a Unisinos -Unisinos Journal of Philosophy -19(3):311-321, sep/dec 2018 We do not know what someone means unless we know what he believes; we do not know what someone believes unless we know what he means"