(often processed by different parts of the brain) belong together so we can deal
with an apple instead of individual features (such as shape, smell, color)?
Another“easy”problem is how people can verbalize their mental states.
According to Chalmers, the easy problems can be explained using the tools
of cognitive neuroscience. The hard problem, in contrast, is how physical
processes in the brain give rise to subjective experience, which cannot be
explained by neuroscience.
Francis Crick and Christof Koch (2002) suggested that the notion of
subjective experience can be replaced by the notion ofmeaning. In terms of
brain anatomy, information is represented by networks of neuronal connec-
tions. Some neurons participating in some mental representation, Crick and
Koch suggested, are connected to other networks that represent closely related
aspects or objects. Meaning ultimately derives from the halo of spreading
activations across such neighboring networks. Crick and Koch also proposed
that the private and inaccessible nature of subjective experience derives from
the fact that any information present in the brain goes through a sequence of
transformations until it reaches the brain regions producing motor outputs
that ultimately convey that information to the external world, which neces-
sarily creates a discrepancy between what a subject internally experiences and
communicates, respectively.
It is quite clear that the cognitive and neuroscientificstudyofreligious
experiencehas been burdened by a lack of systematic reflection on the
concept of religious experience. I suggest that scholars have used at least
three different notions of experience, making the respective research para-
digms largely incomparable. (1) Thefirst understanding of religious experi-
ence comes from religious studies (Taves, 2005), especially from scholars
who considered religious experience to be of a special kind (sui generis),
emphasized its unmediated character, and described it as an encounter with
the divine (“the holy,”“the wholly other,”or“the sacred”). The concept of
“experience”in this tradition, according to Ann Taves (p. 7737), originated
in conversion-oriented Anglo-American Protestantism. In German the-
ology, Schleiermacher’snotionofthe“feeling of absolute dependence”can
be pointed out as another starting point. Some neuroscientists, either by
conscious choice or simply due to the influence of the above-mentioned
views, argued that religious experience is a special type of experience medi-
ated by dedicated brain structures or neural mechanisms. Eugene d’Aquili
and Andrew Newberg (1999; Newberg & d’Aquili, 2000) put forward a
complex theory of how brain parts interact to yield an experience of“abso-
lute unitary being.”More recently, Fred Previc (2006) developed a model
that connects religious belief with a particular system of the brain that is
responsible for processing information in the extrapersonal space, that is,
space that surrounds the individual outside of arm’s reach but still close
enough to be immediately relevant for thoughts and actions. Patrick
144 Cognitive Science and the New Testament