Abstract

TORRE, Renée de la. Dilemas epistemológicos: el estudio de la religión desde las experiencias simbólicas. Intersticios sociales [online]. 2013, n.5, pp.21-36. ISSN 2007-4964.

This essay approaches an epistemological reflection based on the conceptual dialogue and the experience of the anthropological practice concerning to the dilemmas about the rationality proper to the social-scientific thought (social-anthropological) and the symbolic sensibility of the religious thought (beliefs in supernatural events). Four assumed positions are described in the text: 1) the cognitive atheism, 2) the not exclusivist (sustantive), neither inclusivist (functional) definition of religion, 3) the conception about religion as a socially constructed reality, and 4) the experimental agnosticism of symbol. The author finishes her reflection by sustaining the argument about the anthropological validity that valuating the experience and the mental states provoked by religiosity, as a necessary way to be able to recognize and perceive the deep meanings of religious symbol has.

Keywords : epistemology; religion; anthropology of experience; symbol; mental states.