giraffe that gave birth to an aardvark," this violates expectations about
the ontological category (because of the intuitive principle that ani-
mals are born of other animals of the same species).
Now consider the following sentences:
(26a) We worship this woman because she was the only one ever to
conceive a child without having sex.
(26b) We worship this woman because she gave birth to thirty-seven
children.
(27a) We pray to this statue because it listens to our prayers and helps
us get what we want.
(27b) We pray to this statue because it is the largest artifact ever made. [81]
(3 1 a) Some people suddenly disappear when they are really thirsty.
(3 1 b) Some people turn black when they are really thirsty.
Items (26a), (27a) and (3 1 a) are all bona fide candidates for inclusion
in some religious repertoire. Indeed, two of them are very familiar reli-
gious representations. In contrast the corresponding (b) items, though
they are about the same categories and include some nonstandard con-
ceptual association, are much less convincing. They all include a viola-
tion that is notan ontological violation. That is, they all contradict
some conceptual information, but not that associated with the ontolog-
ical categories. Your mental entries for people's physiology probably
does not include that people generally turn black when thirsty, so this is
clearly an exceptional state of affairs. However, there is nothing in the
mental construal of a person that would rule out the possibility of turn-
ing black. The same goes for the woman with thirty-seven children, a
really exceptional person but still aPERSON, and for the largest artifact
ever made. It is intuitively assumed that artifacts have a size and it fol-
lows from this that some artifacts are larger than others and one of
them has to be the largest. Again, all these associations are strange and
exceptional, but the "special tag" does not contradict the relevant onto-
logicalentry. The memory effects—we find better recall for ontological
violations than for oddities or for standard associations—seem to
explain the anthropological observation that oddities are not found at
the core of supernatural concepts, and ontological violations are.
I must of course nuance this conclusion a little. Religious concepts
do include oddities in this precise sense. Some Mayotte spirits, as we
saw, drink cologne instead of water. If you find this a bit lame, con-
sider a more baroque example, from Charles Stewart's description of
those minor demons one is likely to encounter in isolated places in
WHATSUPERNATURALCONCEPTSARELIKE