[Asec] Reminder CFP| Central APA Panel 2023, Religious/Spiritual Experience and Other Domains of Human Activity

[Olga Louchakova-Schwartz]

Religious/Spiritual Experience and Other Domains of Human Activity



The Society for the Phenomenology of Religious Experience invites
submissions of high-quality abstracts of 150-300 words for its group
meeting at the Central APA. The APA Central meeting is planned for
2/22/2023-2/25/23 in Denver, Colorado.  Abstracts should be anonymized and
sent by email to apacentral at sophere.org before August 15 with the subject
line “Central APA Submission”. Notifications of acceptance will be emailed
by Aug 25. Paper presentation time should be no more than 20-30 minutes.
Presenters will have to be registered members of the APA. Selected papers
will be published in the special issue of Religions free of charge.



Alfred Schutz developed a theory of finite provinces of meaning, beginning
with pragmatic everyday life and continuing on to suggest a variety of
finite provinces of meaning that are not pragmatically motivated as
everyday life is and that involve modifications of everyday life. Such
provinces of meaning could include: literature, art, music, play, dreaming,
theorizing, phantasying, telling a joke, or religious/spiritual experience. On
the basis of his analysis of everyday life, he articulated six features of
the cognitive style that would pertain to any province of meaning: a form
of spontaneity, a tension of consciousness, the way one experiences
oneself, a specific epoché by which one distinguishes the province one
inhabits from other provinces, a form of social relationship, and an
understanding of temporality. These features would all be modified from the
way they are found in everyday life as one passes to a different province
of meaning.

We, members of SOPHERE (The Society for the Phenomenology of Religious
Experience), hope to sponsor a session at the meeting of the Central branch
of the American Philosophical Association to be help in Spring of 2023. The
title of the Session is “Religious/Spiritual Experience and Other Domains
of Human Activity.” Submissions need not employ Schutzian methodology, but
the idea would be to compare and contrast religious or spiritual experience
with other domains of human activity.  For example, how is religious or
spiritual experience like or different from play? Is religious experience
like experience of painting or music? How is religious/spiritual experience
like or different from literary experience or from the kind of theorizing
one often finds accompanying religious/spiritual experience, e.g.,
metaphysics or natural theology?



Samples of possible questions might be:

1)     How does theorizing interact with religious/spiritual experience?
Are the standards of philosophical/theological justification altered when
dealing with religious experience as certain views on pragmatic
encroachment suggest? Can an overly theorized approach to
religious/spiritual experience distort it? What does one make of
discussions in the philosophical tradition about the relationship of faith
and reason?

2)     How is religious/spiritual experience like and different from
phantasy?  What would be the implications for a view that
religious/spiritual experience is nothing more than an unfounded
imaginative projection that flies in the face of reality?

3)     Discuss the role of the body in religious experience, e.g. what role
does religious/spiritual ritual play in religious experience? Why do
rituals include art, paintings, music, gesture, incense, light and
darkness, architecture, the spoken word? Does the sphere of art undergo a
transformation when integrated with religious-spiritual experience? Is
ritual like and/or different from play?

4)     Discuss the place of narrative, sacred texts, and literature in
ritual and religious/spiritual experience?

5)     How might one think of religious/spiritual experiences and
experiences of awe (e.g. at the sight of a landscape) or forms of play (eg.
Sports events or political realities) as para-ritual events?  Are there
differences?

6)     Can one develop comparisons or contrasts of how religious/spiritual
experiences interact with other spheres of activity in different religious
communities, e.g. the role of music or narratives in Jewish, Hindu, Muslim,
or Christian rituals?

7)     What is the relationship between religious/spiritual experience and
the natural sciences? Is religion inherently inimical to the natural
sciences?




https://sophere.org/apa-participation/central/

Contact : Michael Barber michael.barber at slu.edu

-- 
Olga Louchakova-Schwartz, MD, PhD,
Professor, UC Davis School of Medicine
Professor, Hult International Business School
Adjunct Lecturer, Jesuit School of Theology, Berkeley
President, Society for the Phenomenology of Religious Experience
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