CFP: Special issue of Agatheos: European Journal for Philosophy of Religion: "Philosophy of Mind Meets Philosophy of Religion"

CFP: Philosophy of Mind Meets Philosophy of Religion

Special issue on “Philosophy of Mind Meets Philosophy of Religion”

Deadline: 1 March 2027
Editors: Prof. Andrei A. Buckareff and Dr. Mikael Leidenhag

The philosophy of mind and the philosophy of religion were largely siloed sub-disciplines for much of the 20th and early 21st centuries. Insofar as the sub-disciplines made connections, it was mostly in work by traditional theists considering the implications of the ontological commitments of theism for how to think about persons and the afterlife. To the extent that philosophy of mind had an influence on debates in the philosophy of religion, much of the work centered around theists arguing that theistic supernaturalism enjoys an advantage over atheistic naturalism with respect to the hard problem of consciousness. Again, there have been exceptions. For instance, some panentheistic models of the divine mind offered in the 1990s and 2000s were influenced by work on emergentism in the philosophy of mind. And William Alston’s work on religious experience borrowed heavily from his own work and the work of others on direct realism about perception.

In the last twenty years, there has been growing interest in alternative conceptions of an ultimate. Along with this growing interest, we have witnessed a growing body of research exploring how work in the philosophy of mind can bear not only on models of the ultimate, but help shed light on other problems in the philosophy of religion.

This special issue is devoted to essays that explore the intersection between the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of religion. Examples of some topics that may be explored include, but are not limited to, the following:

• How does a theory in the metaphysics of mind, such as panpsychism, open the door for understanding commitments of either a traditional model of God or an alternative (e.g., pantheism or panentheism)?
• Do the problems of mental causation faced by property dualist and substance dualist theories of the mind generalize to traditional theistic conceptions of an ultimate?
• Can enactivist theories of perception help shed light on the differences between the religious experiences of adherents of different religions (and those who eschew any religious commitments)?
• How do theories of emotion bear on debates over the rationality of religious commitments that stem from religious experiences that are affectively-valenced?
• Does work on cognition as embodied and embedded present an obstacle to providing coherent traditional theistic models of God and count in favor some alternative conceptions of an ultimate to traditional theism?
• Are some conceptions of an ultimate found in various religious traditions better poised than others to provide an answer to puzzles about consciousness such as the boundary problem and the hard problem?
• Does accepting a particular theory of intentional agency as providing necessary and sufficient conditions for exercises of agency restrict the range of viable conceptions of an ultimate or constrain what sorts of powers can be ascribed to an ultimate?
• Is there an interface problem posed by the move from the representational contents of a religious experience to the religious beliefs formed on the basis of those experiences?

We welcome submissions on the foregoing topics and any other topics that explore the boundaries of the philosophy of mind and the philosophy of religion for this special issue.

To submit, please visit https://publicera.kb.se/aejpr/about/submissions. Name the file “Special Issue PoMPoR”.