“Evolution and Transcendence:
Philosophical, Scientific, and Religious Perspectives”
2018 Meeting of the Institute for American Religious and Philosophical Thought
Catholic Academy of Berlin, June 18-21, 2018
Program directors: Christian Polke, Nathaniel Barrett, and Stephan Steiner
Monday, June 18th
7 pm
Intellectual Autobiography
Michael Raposa
8 pm
Reception
Tuesday, June 19th
Plenary Lectures – Transcendence
9 – 11:30 am
Robert C. Neville
Evolving Transcendence and the Engagement of Reality
10.00 – 10.30 am
Coffee break
Saskia Wendel
Self-Awareness and Self-Transcendence: The Origin of Religion and the Conduct of Life
11:30–1:30 pm
Lunch
Concurrent Sessions – Transcendence
1:30 pm – 3:30 pm
Section A: Transcendence, Human Imagination, Ineffability
Tyler Tritten, “Ineffability and Cataphatacism or Absolute Transcendence and Peritrope in Damascius”
Lisa Landoe Hedrick, “Whitehead and the Metaphysics of Yearning”
Andrew Irvine, “Arguing God’s Existence as Exercise in Transcendence”
Section B: Robert Bellah and the Evolution of Religion
Danna Hargett, “Religion’s Evolutionary Protection: Defining the upper bounds of biocultural evolution and the blunted impact of the Second Axial Age”
Yair Lior, “Complexity and Self-Organization in Religious Systems”
Daniel Ott, “Transcendence and Death Denial: Historicizing What Is Naturalized in Terror Management Theory”
Section C: Hegel, Idealism, and Transcendence
Till Nessmann, “Hegel and the structural relation of material and ideal as the basis of transcendence”
Annette Langer-Pitschmann, “Constructing the Concept of Transcendence: Evolution and Transcendence in G. Kaufman’s Pragmatist Theology”
James McLachlan, “Hegelian Evolutions in America: August Willich, The St. Louis Hegelians, and George Holmes Howison”
3:30-4 pm
Coffee break
4 – 6 pm
Concurrent sessions
Section A: Social Evolution of the Person, Community, and Ethics
Oren Bader, “First there was a group: The priority of the group level in human evolution”
Robert Smid, “The Transcendence of Community: Emergence Theory, Language, and the Locus of Thought”
Don Viney, “Ethics, Evolution, and Dual Transcendence”
Section B: Michael Tomasello and Naturalizing Morality
Gary Slater, “Ethics without Bodies: The implications of mind uploading for human moral evolution”
Scot D. Yoder, “Updating James: ‘The Moral Philosopher and the Moral Life’ 125 Years Later”
Veenus J. Karamullil, “Transcendence at the Horizon of the Sciences of Man: A Test Case from the Natural History of Morality”
Section C: The Vocation and Home of Philosophy: The Transcendence of the Philosopher’s Work and Place in an Uncertain Future
Randy Auxier, “Philosophy as the New Science: What the Public University Might Have Been”
Laura Mueller, “Education, Philosophy, and Morality: Virtue Philosophy in Kant”
Eli Kramer, “Farewell to the University: Transcending Professional Philosophy”
6.00 pm
Dinner
7.30 pm
Evening Lecture
Hans Joas
(Audi AB)
Transcendence as Reflexive Sacredness: The Axial Age as Turning-Point in the History of Religion
Wednesday 20 June 2018
Plenary Lectures – Evolution
9 – 11:30 am
Volkhard Krech
Theory and Empirical Analysis of Religious Evolution. Preliminary Considerations on a Research Program
10:00-10:30 am
Coffee break
Georg Toepfer
Universal Connectedness and Human Uniqueness: Two Modes of Transcendence in Evolution
11.30-1.30 pm
Lunch and Annual IARPT Board of Directors Meeting
Concurrent Sessions – Evolution
1:30 pm – 3:30 pm
Section A: Nietzsche and the Tradition of Philosophical Anthropology
Christian P. Stritzelberger, “Cracks in reality: How evolutionary anthropology can explain the necessary interrelation of immanence and transcendence”
Gabriele Aleandri, “Transcendence, secularization, and state of nature: An anthropogenic perspective”
Nikolaos Loukidelis, The Concept of Immanent Transcendence
Section B: Process Philosophy, Evolution, and Transcendence
Leslie A. Muray, “The Way We Tell Our Stories”
Roland Cazalis, “Feeling, Believing, Transforming: A Human Landscape of Transcendence”
Marjorie Suchocki, “Evolution and Three Modes of Transcendence”
Section C: F. LeRon Shults and the Evolution of Transcendence & Religion
F. LeRon Shults, “The Birth of Transcendence: A Computational Model”
Brandon Daniel-Hughes, “Transcending Inherited Signs of Transcendence: Religious Narratives after the Birth of God”
Jeffrey B. Speaks, “Safe and Responsible God-Talk: Beyond F. LeRon Shults’ Abstinence-Only Version of ‘The Talk’”
3:30-7:30
Free time for sightseeing (boat trip/museum/etc.) and dinner
7:30 pm
Evening Lecture
Henrike Moll (University of Southern California) (Audi AB)
Human-Unique Forms of Social Learning: The Case of Teaching
Thursday, 21. June 2018
Plenary Lectures – Challenging Religious Naturalism
9 – 11:30 am
Nancy Frankenberry
A Common Faith Today? American Religious Naturalism Since Dewey
10.00-10:30 am
Coffee break
Gesche Linde
A Religion of Science: Charles Peirce on Evolution, Metaphysics, and Theism
11:30-1:30 PM
Lunch
Concurrent Sessions – Challenging Religious Naturalism
1:30 am – 3:30 pm
Section A: Charles S. Peirce and Semiotic Evolution
Rory Misiewicz, “Regressive Progression: How Peirce’s Triadic Account of Evolution Can Inform Cultural Narratives”
David Rohr, “Biosemiosis and the Synechistic Emergence of Mind from Matter”
Walter Gulick, “Understanding Understanding”
Section B: Naturalism, Transcendence and Life in the Antropocene
Nicholas Aaron Friesner, “Perfectionist philosophy contra environmental philosophy: rectifying transcendence”
Thurman Todd Willison, “Personalism beyond Anthropocentrism”
William David Hart, “Atheism, Humanism, and Naturalism as nested relations”
3:30-6:00
Free time for sightseeing (boat trip, museums, etc.)
6.00-7.00 pm
Business meeting
7.00 pm
Conference Dinner:
Schnitzelei Mitte
Chausseestrasse 8
10115 Berlin