From tools to persons: how the mind turns religious artifacts into agents

Abstract

The main thesis of this article is that the attribution of agency and intentionality to material objects is based on various cognitive factors and cannot be reduced to a single mental mechanism. Perceiving material artefacts as agents involves attributing characteristics typically associated with animate beings to these objects. Different types of attribution rely on different mental mechanisms. This paper attempts to identify the mechanisms involved in attributing agency to objects within a religious context. The aim is to demonstrate how religious people understand and deal with some material artefacts as intentional agents that resemble human beings yet possess supernatural characteristics. The article also highlights the semiotic perspective, as material artefacts in religions function as signs whose referential function is determined by the semiotic ideologies shared by believers. It is argued that these ideologies influence the understanding of the agency of material things.