Processes of Believing: The Acquisition, Maintenance, and Change in Creditions, Softcover reprint of the original 1st ed. 2017 New Approaches to the Scientific Study of Religion Series, Vol. 1

This volume answers the question: Why do we believe what we believe? It examines current research on the concept of beliefs, and the development in our understanding of the process of believing. It takes into account empirical findings in the field of neuroscience regarding the processes that underlie beliefs, and discusses the notion that beyond the interactive exploratory analysis of sensory information from the complex outside world, humans engage in an evaluative analysis by which they attribute personal meaning and relevance to the probabilistic representations of objects and events.

Beliefs exert a strong influence on behaviour, decision-making, and identifying and solving problems. Despite their importance, beliefs have until recently not been at the centre of scientific interest. In fact, ?belief? is an ill-defined phenomenon. From a transdisciplinary perspective the actual approaches to understanding belief seem incompatible as they attempt to highlight such different topics as ?belief ? religion?, ?belief ? spirituality?, ?belief ? faith?, ?belief ? knowledge?, ?belief ? attitude?, ?belief ? disbelief?, ?belief ? illusion?, and ?believing ? brain function?. This situation contradicts the idea that belief is close to pathological phenomena and that it should be eliminated from scientific discussions. Rather, believing is fundamental for understanding the many problems of every-day life. In fact, the book shows that beliefs are relevant for politics, international affairs, economy, law, or religions also in modern societies. This book presents the increasing scientific interest in beliefs and believing, and reflects the change in focus from the content aspect of belief towards the fluid nature of believing.

Part I. Introduction.- Chapter 1. What we do not know about Believing – Approaching a new Scientific hot Spot (Hans-Ferdinand Angel).- Chapter 2. Credition: From the Question of Belief to the Question of Believing (Hans-Ferdinand Angel).- Part II. Psychology and Neuroscience.- Chapter 3. Believing, Remembering, and Imagining: The Roots and Fruits of Meanings made and Remade (Raymond F. Paloutzian).- Chapter 4. Connections Between Scripts Embedding Motor Schemes and Decision-Making (Gennaro Auletta).- Chapter 5. Beliefs and Believing as Possible Targets for Neuroscientific Research (Rüdiger J. Seitz).- Chapter 6. Neurobiological Factors Underlying Attachment and Trust in the Believing Process (Corina Aguilar-Raab).- Chapter 7. New Concepts on the Motor System: Implications for Emotions and Credition (Giovanni Buccino).- Chapter 8. Neural Underpinnings of the Human Belief System (Irene Cristofori).- Chapter 9. Believing in the Effectiveness of Treatment: From Placebo to Credition and Back (Karin Meißner).- Chapter 10. The Power to Live with Disasters: Adaptive Believing Processes of the Self and the World (Motoaki Sugiura).- Chapter 11. Belief and Belief Formation: Insights from Delusions (Michael H. Connors).- Chapter 12. Functional and Dysfunctional Religious/Spiritual Beliefs in Psychotic Disorders (Human-Friedrich Unterrainer).- Part III. Philosophy.- Chapter 13. The Theory of Credition and Philosophical Accounts of Belief: Looking for Common Ground (Aku Visala).- Chapter 14. Credition and Justification (Anne L.C. Runehov).- Chapter 15. Hume on the Origins of Religious Belief (Anders Kraal).- Chapter 16. The Structure of Credition in Whitehead’s Metaphysics of Experience (Helmut Maaßen).- Chapter 17. Brain and Self – A Neurophilosophical Account (Georg Northoff).- Chapter 18. Creditions and Self-Identity: Embodiment Between Actions and (Life) Decisions (Ivan Colagè).- Chapter 19. A Process Pragmatist Heuristics of Believing (Michel Weber).- Part IV. Theology, Religious Studies, and Anthropology.- Chapter 20. Cognition, Emotion, and the Ethics of Authenticity  (Oliver Davies).- Chapter 21. Recent Scientific Explanations of Religious Beliefs: A Systematic Account (Lluis Oviedo).- Chapter 22. Soul and Body According to “De Fide Orthodoxa” of St. John Damascene (Dorin Oancea).- Chapter 23. Music as a Medium of Personal Motion and Belief: Some Phenomenological Reflections (Peter Ebenbauer).- Part V. Social Sciences.- Chapter 24. Reconciliation After a Protracted Violent Conflict: Do Believing Processes Play a Role, and Which One? a Research Agenda (Joseph Marko).- Chapter 25. Understanding Young People’s Worldview: A Practical Example of how to Work with the Model of Credition (Vasiliki Mitropoulou).- Chapter 26. Approaching Another Black Box: Credition in Economics (Richard Sturn).- Chapter 27. Credition in Business - Innovations with Crowdbusiness (Reinhard Willfort).- Part VI. Natural and Computer Sciences.- Chapter 28. Creditions and Modern Computer Science (Horst Bischof).- Chapter 29. Public and Personal Causations of Creditions (Javier Leach).- Chapter 30. Wave-Particle Duality and Quantity-Quality Complementarity in Natural and Human Sciences: Implications for Credition Research (Sungchul Ji).- Chapter 31. Interoception and Gut Feelings: Unconscious Body Signals’ Impact on Brain Function, Behavior, and Belief Processes (Peter Holzer).- Chapter 32. Decision-Making and Credition Under a Microbial Perspective (Gabriele Berg).- Part VII. Conclusion.- Chapter 33. Structuring Credition (Hans-Ferdinand Angel). 

Hans-Ferdinand Angel, trained in theology, ancient Latin philology, and history, studied in Regensburg (Germany) and Paris. From 1996 he was Professor at the Technical University Dresden (Germany) and, since 1997, is Professor of Catechetics and Religious Education at the Karl-Franzens University Graz (Austria). He is member of the advisory committee of the Initiative of Brain Research in Syria and the scientific director of the global and interdisciplinary Credition Research Project at the Karl-Franzens University of Graz.

Lluis Oviedo, Full professor of Theological Anthropology at the Theological Faculty in Antonianum University in Rome and invited professor in the Theological Institute of Murcia (Spain) for questions of religion, society and science; and invited professor in the Theological Institute of Murcia, Spain, for faith, reason and culture. He is the co-editor for the 4 volumes Encyclopedia of Sciences and Religions, Springer 2013.

Raymond F. Paloutzian received his doctorate from Claremont Graduate School and is Professor Emeritus of experimental and social psychology at Westmont College, Santa Barbara (California). He edited The International Journal for the Psychology of Religion for 18 years and is consultant to the Religion, Experience, and Mind Lab Group at the University of California, Santa Barbara. He co-edited (with A. Kalayjian) Forgiveness and Reconciliation: Psychological Pathways to Conflict Transformation and Peace-Building, Springer, 2010.

Is the first to present broad studies on the processes of believing

Takes an interdisciplinary approach to the subject

Reflects the development in scientific research of beliefs and the underlying processes