Theoretical Framework Models How Humans Invest Meaning in Binding Material Objects

A theoretical article published in Frontiers in Psychology introduces a candidate cognitive construct termed adṛśyaniveśana, or trans-empirical investment, proposing that the capacity to bind human conduct to physical objects carrying significance beyond present perception may represent a distinctively human cognitive operation. The work addresses an enduring theoretical division across cognitive science, anthropology, and evolutionary psychology, where commitments to deceased ancestors, future generations, deities, and abstract political collectives are typically explained through disparate psychological mechanisms. Drawing upon classical South Asian philosophical vocabulary, specifically the Sanskrit concept of śraddhā as conceptualized in the seventeenth chapter of the Bhagavadgītā, the article formulates a technical model to evaluate whether a single cognitive operation underpins how human communities invest value, identity, and moral obligation into ordinary physical substrates that subsequently regulate social behavior.

The core conceptual model distinguishes four evolutionary levels of behavioral orientation toward non-present referents, isolating species-wide baseline capacities from the proposed human-specific target level. Level A encompasses basic cognitive representations of non-present entities, such as an animal holding an out-of-sight caregiver or spatial landmark in mind, a capacity documented across multiple non-human species including elephants and dogs. Level B introduces valuation, where mental representations carry emotional resonance, grief-like withdrawal, or separation distress. Level C involves normative commitments where an individual behaves as if obligated by a non-present referent, persisting without immediate reinforcement. The primary focus of the theoretical program is Level D, which formalizes trans-empirical investment across five strictly conjunctive criteria: significance extending beyond empirical presence (D1), reliance on a conventional or invested physical substrate as a carrier (D2), normative force demonstrated by unobserved compliance or repair following violations (D3), collective cultural maintenance and transmission to naive individuals who never encountered the initial referent (D4), and temporal extension spanning horizons across generations before birth or after death (D5).

To prevent over-extension, the author delineates strict empirical and functional boundaries separating Level D from neighbouring cognitive and sociological constructs. Scientific hypotheses involve commitments to unverified models, but they are categorized as hypothetical counterfactual constructs governed by institutional norms of empirical revision and fallibility, which operates opposite to the persistent binding obligation characterizing Level D substrates. Similarly, ordinary institutional conventions such as traffic queues or currency systems rely on immediate coordination and mutual instrumental return rather than obligations anchored to ancestral or post-mortem horizons. The paper explicitly differentiates the reconstructed technical definition of śraddhā from traditional Western and Middle Eastern theological concepts including Greek pistis, Latin fides, Arabic īmān, and Chinese xìn, noting that while those traditions primarily define relational trust or personal attitudes directed toward an external person or divine truth, adṛśyaniveśana specifically models an operational action performed upon a material carrier.

The framework contextualizes existing scientific literature across comparative thanatology and animal normativity to identify precise empirical boundaries where documented non-human behaviors currently stop. Long-term field studies show that African elephants demonstrate pronounced tactile interest in the bones and ivory of conspecifics, mother chimpanzees carry mummified infant corpses for months, and dolphins support deceased calves. However, the author emphasizes that existing ethological records document reactions directed exclusively toward actual physical biological remains rather than arbitrary, socially designated material carriers. Furthermore, comparative literature contains no confirmed instances where third-party animals intervene to sanction group members for neglecting a deceased companion’s remains, nor examples of naive individuals adopting ancestral practices through arbitrary symbolic carriers across complete generational turnovers. By presenting these comparative observations alongside controlled transmission-chain studies in primates and corvids, the framework demonstrates that while individual components of social learning and tradition exist across varied taxa, their complete five-fold conjunction in non-present normative investments remains unobserved outside humans.

The proposed measurement architecture evaluates each of the five core dimensions through four targeted indicators, integrating self-report measures with informant ratings and objective behavioral observations collected over twelve-month windows. To minimize bias, the scoring rubric prioritizes observational evidence over subjective self-reports for normative enforcement (D3) and transmission (D4), while prioritizing direct self-reports for personal horizons (D1 and D5). The framework also monitors three non-criterial descriptive dimensions, including carrier-function substitution gaps, persistence following substrate removal, and personal identity incorporation. Dimension scores are calculated from item medians to classify whether an individual or cultural practice achieves full Level D criteria, while continuous composite scores measure overall capacity intensity, establishing a quantifiable basis for testing whether individual investment tendencies behave as a coherent reflective psychological latent factor.

Hypothesis 1 outlines a prospective cohort study of adults recruited within three months of significant personal losses, comparing bereavement, religious deconversion, ideological disillusionment, and partnership dissolution against low-investment opinion changes. Using domain-neutral adaptations of prolonged grief inventories alongside self-concept clarity indices, the design tests whether baseline investment intensity predicts functional disruption (H1a) and whether this response relationship remains statistically equivalent across religious and secular domains within specified equivalence bounds of plus or minus 0.15 standardized units (H1b). The model explicitly predicts that the three criteria specific to trans-empirical investment—significance beyond the present, cultural transmission, and trans-generational extension—will account for unique variance in post-loss disruption beyond conventional measures of identity centrality, group identity fusion, perceived sacredness, and baseline religiosity.

Hypothesis 2 proposes a within-participant functional neuroimaging paradigm designed to evaluate cross-domain multivariate neural representations using high-resolution fMRI. Healthy adult participants evaluate personalized statements representing high and low investment across spiritual, political, ancestral, and future-generation domains, matched rigorously on autobiographical memory vividness, emotional arousal, self-relevance, and social complexity against present-day control statements. Using cross-classification machine learning algorithms, the study tests whether classifiers trained on neural activation patterns separating high from low investment in one domain can successfully decode investment levels across unrelated domains within default mode network regions, setting an analytical threshold of 55 percent decoding accuracy against a 50 percent chance baseline. The author cautions that the default mode network is not phylogenetically unique to humans, emphasizing that neural decoding generalization across matched task demands would demonstrate an abstract cognitive representation of investment rather than a localized, uniquely human brain center.

Hypothesis 3 outlines a longitudinal cohort tracking capacity transfer over twenty-four months, predicting that when individuals sever an intense primary commitment and subsequently adopt a new domain, their investment intensity toward the new target will correlate with their previous target intensity at r greater than or equal to 0.30. Hypothesis 4 details a five-wave prospective dyadic study of married couples assessing trans-empirical marital commitments using a specialized couple index, predicting reduced dissolution hazards and mitigated satisfaction declines independent of standard religious attendance, homogamy, and demographic covariates. The fifth hypothesis, marked explicitly as an exploratory research direction, investigates the theoretical concept of guṇabhagna, wherein high investment capacity directed toward irreconcilably conflicting targets precipitates self-destructive behavior. Illustrated hermeneutically through the classical narrative of Karṇa in the Mahābhārata, the author emphasizes that historical and textual illustrations serve strictly to clarify theoretical definitions and must not be conflated with empirical verification.

For comparative biology, the author details an experimental paradigm consisting of five sequential components to evaluate whether non-human animals can develop normative attachments toward arbitrary material carriers. The proposed experimental design examines symbolic substitution to an arbitrary object following partner separation, diffusion to naive conspecifics, persistence after demonstrator removal, third-party sanctioning of non-compliant individuals, and transmission survival across replacement iterations. Crucially, the protocol pairs these steps with extinction controls to remove food rewards and matched-convention controls without absent targets, distinguishing normative fidelity from associative conditioning. The author clarifies that laboratory diffusion experiments cannot test multi-generational temporal extension (D5), which requires decadal naturalistic observations across complete troop turnovers in wild populations. A species demonstrating all five experimental components alongside naturalistic trans-generational persistence would definitively refute the hypothesis that Level D trans-empirical investment represents a unique evolutionary specialization of Homo sapiens.

Anticipating ethical misapplications, the article introduces a foundational safeguard rooted in the analytical distinction between lajjā-śūnyatā, the complete absence of internalized evaluative standards, and lajjā-viveka, the reflective capacity to discern which cultural standards merit internal commitment. The author stresses that identifying an evolutionary cognitive capacity must never serve as a normative criterion for assigning moral personhood or social standing. Dissenting individuals, political iconoclasts, atheists, nonconformists, and people living with cognitive disabilities remain fully within the human moral circle regardless of their measured investment intensity. The theoretical framework concludes by prioritizing sequential validation milestones: establishing cross-cultural linguistic measurement invariance across three language communities, executing preregistered clinical loss and longitudinal couple cohorts, and piloting comparative multi-generational paradigms in non-human primates and corvids to determine rigorously whether investing ordinary matter with trans-empirical obligation is indeed a defining signature of human cognition.

Subject of Research: Theoretical cognitive construct of trans-empirical investment and comparative human distinctiveness

Article Title: Śraddhā as trans-empirical investment: a candidate construct and a comparative research programme on human distinctiveness

Article References: Samanta, S. (2026). Śraddhā as trans-empirical investment: a candidate construct and a comparative research programme on human distinctiveness. Frontiers in Psychology, 17, Article 1962611. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2026.1962611

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3389/fpsyg.2026.1962611

Keywords: trans-empirical investment, adṛśyaniveśana, śraddhā, human distinctiveness, comparative cognition, symbolic cognition, norm psychology, shared intentionality, sacralisation, cognitive science of religion, default mode network, cross-domain equivalence, animal normativity, Adṛśyaniveśana Index, thanatology, cultural transmission, Frontiers in Psychology