By focusing on “experiences deemed religious”, Ann Taves reshaped how religion can be analysed within the cognitive science of religion, encouraging a clear separation between experience and the interpretations through which it acquires religious meaning. Our own research repeatedly points to a similar distinction. We have found that undergoing sleep paralysis hallucinations, for example, is only weakly connected to holding supernatural beliefs.
MASTER LECTURES SERIES
From Experience to Interpretation: Pattern Perception, Ritualisation, and Supernatural Explanation
Speaker: dr hab. Konrad Talmont-Kaminski, prof. UwB
University of Białystok
Date: 23 June 2026, 4:00 PM
Venue: Adam Mickiewicz University, Faculty of Psychology and Cognitive Science, Building D, Room 004
89/AB A. Szamarzewskiego St., Poznań
Abstract
By focusing on “experiences deemed religious”, Ann Taves reshaped how religion can be analysed within the cognitive science of religion, encouraging a clear separation between experience and the interpretations through which it acquires religious meaning. Our own research repeatedly points to a similar distinction. We have found that undergoing sleep paralysis hallucinations, for example, is only weakly connected to holding supernatural beliefs. Such experiences tend to be interpreted in supernatural terms primarily when a person’s thinking style supports such a link. Likewise, in studies of spontaneous ritualisation, patterned and apparently superstitious behaviour emerges directly from attempts to detect and control structure under uncertainty, without requiring any corresponding belief. This distinction maps closely onto the model-free versus model-based reasoning distinction used by Chris and Uta Frith and others: ritualised behaviour can arise from pattern search without engaging interpretive reasoning. Taken together, these findings suggest a broader research programme concerned with how pattern perception and causal inference relate, and in particular with the conditions under which people move from behavioural adaptation to supernatural explanation. In this talk, I outline the argument for this programme and the approach we propose to pursue.
The lecture will be delivered in English. Attendance is open and free of charge.
