question of transcendent values is of practical significance for both conducting
our personal lives and deciding on public policies. It has been argued (e.g.,
Weizsäcker, 1949, p. 3; Bolyki, 1999, p. 44) that scientific progress gives us
means to achieve goals but cannot help usfinding the goals to pursue. Because
of their complex cognitive structures that enable the consideration of a wide
range of behavioral options given a set of environmental inputs, humans need
a preference system in order to be able to make decisions about actions
(Sterelny, 2003, pp. 92–6). Preferences are not hard-wired: we can learn
what to want (and even learn to want new things), not only to get what we
want. According to Fred Keijzer (2011), religions are cultural articulations
of“high-level preference structures for human groups or societies”(p. 62). It
has to be noted that Keijzer defines religion in a broad sense that extends to
Marxism, for example. Notably, individuals and societies without explicit
commitments to religious belief nevertheless practice rituals and create civic
religion. As we have seen above in section 8.5, the cultural inheritance of moral
values is based on various biases (such as prestige bias) rather than the
examination of their truth-value. In the transmission of culturally articulated
preference systems, the concept of the canon is essential, as it protects a
body of cultural products (including sacred texts, national writers, and archi-
tectural forms) from change and allows for their transmission across many
generations. In our discussion of morality (Chapter 8), we paid particular
attention to evolved intuitions that are morally relevant. In particular, we
have seen that morality is guided by pro-social as well as Machiavellistic
intuitions. A cognitive approach helps us understand why we need religious
ethics, how it develops, and how we inherit it. A cognitive approach also
makes us aware of the cross-culturally recurrent foundations of morality and
sharpens our critical sense as we observe the moral world behind the window
of the text.
10.2 TEXT AS MIRRORModern literary theory and post-modern philosophy yielded hermeneutical
positions that are at odds with the concept of the text as window. An
important consequence of these developments was the questioning of the
author’s intention as the focus of textual interpretation. Some new approaches
to the text still allowed us to look through the text and see ideologies,
power structures, and timeless psychological or existential realities. Other
approaches, however, emphasized that the text comes into existence only if
it is read by someone; consequently, readers create texts as much as authors.
The resulting hermeneutical model considers the text as a mirror that reflects
the image of the reader. For example, Jaroslav Pelikan (1985) showed that
212 Cognitive Science and the New Testament