February 27 – March 3, 2023 New Date

Comparative ‘Theory’ of Mind and Spiritual Experience

Comparative ‘Theory’ of Mind and Spiritual Experience brings an interdisciplinary group of anthropologists and psychologists who, through a large comparative project, have been working together for three years on the way ideas about the mind shape the way people seek and experience the supernatural. The hypothesis is that different cultural understandings of the mind—specifically, how separate the mind is from the world, how important inner experience is held to be, and how real the imagination is held to be—shape the way people identify events they deem supernatural, and thus alter their spiritual experience. This seminar is an opportunity for participants to gather again after the end of the grant-funded period, with the goal of putting together several synoptic articles and a team volume that intended to be the definitive volume on comparative theory of mind and comparative spiritual experience.

Tanya Luhrmann, Chair 
Howard and Jessie Watkins University Professor of Anthropology, Stanford University