Signaling theories of religion: models and explanation

ABSTRACT

The signaling theory of religion has many claimed virtues, but these are not necessarily all realizable at the same time. Modeling choices involve trade-offs, and the available options here have not traditionally been well understood. This paper offers an overview of signaling theory relevant to the signaling theory of religion, arguing for a narrow, “core” reading of it. I outline a broad taxonomy of the choices on offer for signaling models, and examples of how previous and potential approaches to modeling religious signaling meet or fail to meet the initial promise of the theory. A pluralist approach to religious signaling seems possible, but this would require a high level of detail and specificity with respect to both formal models and target systems.

KEYWORDS:

• Religion
• signaling
• evolution
• modeling
• explanation

Acknowledgements

My thanks to Kim Sterelny and Justin Bruner for extensive comments and advice on this paper an associated material, to two anonymous referees for greatly improving the manuscript, and for other helpful comments and discussion including from Martin Lang, Stephen Mann, Matt Spike, Pierrick Bourrat, and participants at the ANU School of Philosophy’s workshop on the Evolution of Religion and the Ettore Majorana Foundation’s workshop “Future Directions on the Evolution of Rituals, Beliefs and Religious Minds”.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Additional information

Funding

Research in this paper was funded through the Australian Research Council Laureate Fellowship project (FL130100141). This publication was made possible through the support of a grant from the John Templeton Foundation (Grant ID 60811). The views expressed in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the John Templeton Foundation or the Australian Research Council.