Workshop: January 14 – 16, 2023
New Brunswick, NJ
At this workshop, members of the team got together to establish the conceptual framework for the project, share notes and ideas, and specify their research agendas. The workshop’s main activity consisted of presentations by each attendee in which they outlined their research ideas, plans, and materials. In receiving feedback from the interdisciplinary group, attendees obtained information informed by other disciplines. This not only elevated attendees’ research strategies, but also ensured that they would fit into a coherent overall agenda.
Attendees: Dean Zimmerman (co-PI), Tanya Luhrmann (co-PI), Justin Barrett (Workshop facilitator), Louise Antony, Mark Baker, Philip Corlett, Elliott Ihm, Brian McLaughlin, Joan Ongchoco (postdoc), Tim Perrine (postdoc), Eleanor Schille-Hudson (postdoc), Brian Scholl, Wes Skolits, Ann Taves, James McIntyre (admin)
The Psychology and Epistemology of Religious Experience: April 14 – 15, 2023
New Brunswick, NJ
This workshop hosted the following presentations:
Keynote Presentation
Godehard Brüntrup, S.J. (Munich School of Philosophy): “Jonah, Alienation, and the Meaning of Life”
Other Presentations
Wes Skolits (Rutgers University) “Schizophrenia, Fake Barns, and Knowledge from Religious Experience”
Ting Fung Ho (Duke University): “The Healing Power of Meditative Experience
Kegan Shaw (Anderson University): “Locating the God Faculty: John Henry Newman Versus The Cognitive Science of Religion”
Brian Ballard (Concordia University Irvine): “God Is an Attachment Figure: Whither Religious Epistemology?”
Timothy Perrine (Rutgers University): “On The Possibility of Perceiving God: A Reidean Model”
Andrew Atkinson (University of Bialystok and University of Agder): “The Places of Agency Detection and Predictive Processing in the Ontogenesis of Religion”
Lari Launonen (University of Helsinki): “Does Cognitive Science Undermine Everyday Experiences of God?”
Eliška Wichterlová (Boston University): “From the Dionysian Celebration to Fanaticism”
