Panel: CROSSING THE GAP BETWEEN FAITH AND FAITHLESSNESS: MODELS OF RELIGIOUS BELIEF AND THEIR ANTHROPOLOGICAL PLAUSIBILITY



581.6 - DISTINGUISHING BELIEF-BASED AND BELIEF-LESS SPIRITUALITY IN PHILOSOPHY AND PSYCHOLOGY

AUTHORS:
Byerly T.R. (University of Sheffield ~ Sheffield ~ United Kingdom)
Text:
Philosophers commonly distinguish between beliefs and alternative beliefless states that can play a similar action-guiding role, such as acceptances, assumptions, credences, hopes, or imaginings. In the spiritual domain, this distinction suggests that individuals who lack belief in religious/spiritual claims may nonetheless be able to engage in religious/spiritual practices on the basis of belieflessly accepting, assuming, creding, hoping, or imagining that religious/spiritual claims are true. This talk describes the efforts of a nine-person, interdisciplinary team to identify features which the philosophical literature treats as characteristic of beliefs in order to develop strategies for distinguishing between belief-based and belief-less forms of spiritual practice in psychological research, since psychological research has not yet engaged with this distinction. Among these belief-characteristic features are: a tendency to assert what is believed; to feel surprised on learning what is believed is false; to feel as though one knows what one believes; and an absence of being in significant doubt about whether what is believed is true. We have developed three broad strategies for measuring beliefless spirituality using self-report scales in psychological research. I describe these strategies, and present initial findings using two of them.