PALGRAVE FRONTIERS IN PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION Animism and Philosophy of Religion Tiddy Smith Palgrave Frontiers in Philosophy of Religion Series Editors Yujin Nagasawa Department of Philosophy University of Birmingham Birmingham, UK Erik J. Wielenberg Department of Philosophy DePauw University Greencastle, IN, USA Palgrave Frontiers in Philosophy of Religion is a long overdue series which will provide a unique platform for the advancement of research in this area. Each book in the series aims to progress a debate in the philoso- phy of religion by (i) offering a novel argument to establish a strikingly original thesis, or (ii) approaching an ongoing dispute from a radically new point of view. Each title in the series contributes to this aim by utilis- ing recent developments in empirical sciences or cutting-edge research in foundational areas of philosophy (such as metaphysics, epistemology and ethics). Tiddy Smith Editor Animism and Philosophy of Religion Editor Tiddy Smith Philosophy University of Indonesia Depok, Indonesia ISSN 2634-6176 ISSN 2634-6184 (electronic) Palgrave Frontiers in Philosophy of Religion ISBN 978-3-030-94169-7 ISBN 978-3-030-94170-3 (eBook) https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94170-3 © The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology now known or hereafter developed. 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The registered company address is: Gewerbestrasse 11, 6330 Cham, Switzerland Contents 1 I ntroduction 1 Tiddy Smith 2 Animism and Cognitive Science of Religion: A Critical Perspective 23 Darryl Wilkinson 3 Wilkinson’s “Animism and Cognitive Science of Religion” 45 Stewart Guthrie 4 Edward Tylor’s Animism and Its Intellectual Aftermath 63 Frederico Delgado Rosa 5 Animisms: Practical Indigenous Philosophies 95 Johan De Smedt and Helen De Cruz 6 New Animism as Cultural Critique? 123 Mikel Burley 7 Animism and Naturalism: Practice and Theory 153 Gregory W. Dawes v vi Contents 8 S ensible Animism 179 Evan Fales 9 Animism: Its Scope and Limits 199 Graham Oppy 10 S cientific Animism 227 Eric Steinhart 11 Childhood Animism and Innate Belief 257 Tiddy Smith 12 An Epistemic Defense of Animism 285 Hans Van Eyghen 13 Robotic Animism: The Ethics of Attributing Minds and Personality to Robots with Artificial Intelligence 313 Sven Nyholm 14 Towards a Cosmopolitan Animism 341 Kathryn Rountree I ndex 365 List of Contributors Mikel Burley University of Leeds, Leeds, UK Gregory W. Dawes Department of Philosophy, University of Otago, Dunedin, New Zealand Helen De Cruz Saint Louis University, St. Louis, MO, USA Johan De Smedt Saint Louis University, St. Louis, MO, USA Evan Fales Department of Philosophy, University of Iowa, Iowa City, IA, USA Stewart Guthrie Fordham University, Bronx, NY, USA Sven Nyholm Utrecht University, Utrechtm, The Netherlands Graham Oppy Department of Philosophy, Monash University, Clayton, VIC, Australia Frederico Delgado Rosa Department of Anthropology, Universidade NOVA de Lisboa, Lisbon, Portugal Kathryn Rountree Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand Tiddy Smith Department of Philosophy, Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand vii viii List of Contributors Eric Steinhart Department of Philosophy, William Paterson University, Wayne, NJ, USA Hans Van Eyghen Department of Systematic Theology and Philosophy, Tilburg University, Tilburg, The Netherlands Darryl Wilkinson Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH, USA 1 Introduction Tiddy Smith Nobody cares about animism; well, nobody in philosophy departments at least. Search through the archives of a few of the leading philosophy journals and you will be hard-pressed to find the topic as much as men- tioned. Incredibly, this lack of interest persists even within the very sub- discipline that should be most interested: Philosophy of religion. It is an almost paradoxical state of affairs. Most contemporary philosophers of religion find they spend their days debating the existence of a divine being—a god. And let’s face it, this ain’t just any old god, but usually (even if tacitly) the god of Abraham. It may seem unlikely, but the sad truth is that religion in its various forms and with its various commit- ments is not really the study of philosophy of religion at all. What should be a mighty river of critical thought is, on the contrary, a little creek. Where we ought to find depth and breadth and various rapid tributaries, we find instead shallowness, narrowness, and a gentle trickle of progress in one direction. T. Smith (*) Department of Philosophy, Massey University, Palmerston North, New Zealand © The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG 2023 1 T. Smith (ed.), Animism and Philosophy of Religion, Palgrave Frontiers in Philosophy of Religion, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-94170-3_1