Bridging Belief and Social Practice: Connecting the Participatory Dimension of Religious Belief to an Account of Socially Extended Mind

The theory of extended mind has been applied by some to the study of religious cognition. Past efforts have mainly centered around how material culture, like bibles and rosaries, functions in the perspective of extended cognition. In the present paper, I shift focus to unite these works with research on socially extended mind and participatory theory and discuss the additional role of living and nonmaterial culture, including cultural norms, customs, institutions, social ritual, and social others in capturing a full-bodied view of extended religious cognition. I apply these areas of theory to the study of dispositional belief, affective states and processes, and the self and defend their application within this religious context