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Can the cognitive basis of the apprehension of transcendence be mapped to cerebral structure and function?

ABSTRACT As a “Hilbert question” in the field of the naturalistic study of religion, I ask, “Can the cognitive basis of the apprehension of transcendence be mapped to cerebral structure and function?” I suggest that this is an empirically tractable problem that can be addressed using concepts from the field of semiotics, specifically the notions of diagrammatic reasoning and hypostatic abstraction. I suggest a collaboration between psychologists and semioticians to design experiments in which these modes of cognition can be discriminated and investigated. Functional brain imaging could then be used to map these capabilities, giving rise to a naturalistic approach to the nature and evolution of self-transcendence.