CFP: Beliefless Spirituality Capstone Conference

The Beliefless Spirituality Project is hosting a Capstone Conference 18-19 March 2027 at Halifax Hall in Sheffield, UK. The conference will feature presentations of research that has been conducted by the project team. We also invite abstract submissions for five presentations of new research on the project theme by individuals beyond the project team.

Submission Details

Abstracts should be no more than 500 words (not including references), suitable for anonymous review, and should be submitted to Ryan Byerly ([email protected]) by 20 November 2026 as word or pdf attachments. The subject line of the email should read “Abstract Submission”, and authors should mention in their email if they are a postgraduate student. Authors will be notified by 15 January 2027 if their abstract has been accepted. The project will fund travel, lodging, and subsistence costs of one author of each accepted submission to attend the conference. There are also prizes available for accepted submissions: $500 for presenting a paper at the conference based on the abstract, and $500 for submitting a paper based on the presentation to a peer-reviewed journal by 30 June 2027. Abstracts will be evaluated based on their academic merit and fit with the Beliefless Spirituality Project themes.

Project Themes

The Beliefless Spirituality Project is concerned with forms of spiritual engagement that are based not on beliefs of religious or spiritual claims but instead on alternative states that may play a similar role to beliefs in contributing to religious or spiritual practices. For instance, several philosophers have argued that beliefs differ in important ways from acceptances, assumptions, imaginings, credences, or hopes, and yet the latter states, directed toward religious or spiritual claims, may enable spiritual practices despite the absence of belief of religious or spiritual claims. For instance, an individual who is in doubt about whether there is a loving God who has benefitted them, and does not believe that there is such a God, might nonetheless hope there is such a God, or assume that there is, and thank God for the good things in their life on the basis of this beliefless hope or assumption. Likewise, an individual might belieflessly imagine, or accept as a working hypothesis, or have a credence of a certain threshold, that their loved ones live on in an afterlife, and seek to communicate with them on this basis.

The potential for such beliefless forms of spirituality may be especially relevant for diverse segments of the population who experience belief-cancelling doubt about religious or spiritual claims, including some religious and spiritual individuals, spiritual-but-not-religious individuals, agnostics, and atheists. For them, beliefless spirituality may be the only pathway to spiritual engagement. Moreover, beliefless spirituality may be related in important ways to aspects of individuals’ well-being. For instance, certain forms of beliefless spirituality may offer a pathway toward enhanced well-being for people who are not capable of engaging in comparable belief-based forms of spirituality that are associated with well-being gains. Or, people who engage in beliefless spirituality may manifest greater intellectual or spiritual humility, or may experience less belonging to a religion or spiritual group, than people who engage in comparable belief-based spirituality.

The Beliefless Spirituality Project seeks to understand which specific forms of beliefless spirituality are available to people, what makes these forms of beliefless spirituality distinct, and how such forms of beliefless spirituality are related to individuals’ well-being. We therefore welcome abstracts for papers addressing these themes. We welcome abstracts using the methods of philosophy, the cognitive sciences, or psychology. We welcome submissions from academics at any career stage, and intend to select at least two submissions from postgraduate students. We aim to select at least one submission addressing psychedelic spirituality.

Questions

Questions about the project or abstract submission process may be directed to Ryan Byerly.