Religious/Spiritual Experience and Other Domains of Human Activity \;
\nThe \;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@sophere.org \;before \;August 15 \;with the subject line &ldquo\;Central APA Submission&rdquo\;. 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. \;
\nAlfred 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. \;
\nWe\, 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 &ldquo\;Religious/Spiritual Experience and Other Domains of Human Activity.&rdquo\; 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?
\nSamples of possible questions might be: \;
\n1) \; \; \; \; \;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? \;
\n2) \; \; \; \; \;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? \;
\n3) \; \; \; \; \;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? \;
\n4) \; \; \; \; \;Discuss the place of narrative\, sacred texts\, and literature in ritual and religious/spiritual experience? \;
\n5) \; \; \; \; \;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? \;
\n6) \; \; \; \; \;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? \;
\n7) \; \; \; \; \;What is the relationship between religious/spiritual experience and the natural sciences? Is religion inherently inimical to the natural sciences? \;
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https://sophere.org/apa-participation/central/ \;
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