Public Lecture – “Voices of Madness, Voices of Spirit”

The Department of Philosophy is pleased to co-sponsor the the upcoming public lecture by Dr. Tanya Luhrmann, one of the foremost scholars of religion, the supernatural, and cognition, entitled “Voices of Madness, Voices of Spirit.”

Abstract: They seem like strange experiences—a voice whispered on the wind, a god who speaks from on high—but voices are far more common than we think. In this talk, I argue that voices—the sense of being called by another–are at the heart of the human experience of mind. Our minds are deeply social—less interior inner universes, more like dinner parties with noisy guests. Religion is a way of using that social dimension to your advantage—crafting an inner coach who is not the self and who, by being other, manages the inner cacophony. Sometimes of course this process goes terribly wrong. I hope we open a discussion about how people use social practice to shape inner worlds and moral purpose, and about the complex relationship of spiritual experience and psychosis.

Prof. Luhrmann is the Watkins University Professor in the Stanford Anthropology Department, with a courtesy appointment in Psychology. Her work focuses on the edge of experience: on voices, visions, the world of the supernatural and the world of psychosis. She uses a combination of ethnographic and experimental methods to understand the phenomenology of unusual sensory experiences, the way they are shaped by ideas about minds and persons, and what we can learn from this social shaping that can help us to help those whose voices are distressing. Her books include When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship with God (Knopf). She has written for the New York Times and her work has been featured in the New Yorker and other magazines.

All are welcome, but please RSVP for the reception preceding the talk at https://rgst.arts.ubc.ca/…/voices-of-madness-voices-of…/