PHILOSOPHY AND RELIGION

Careful attention to traditions such as Afro-Brazilian religions emphasizes the importance of drawing upon neglected sources such as mythic narratives and ethnographies, as well as recognizing the significance of material culture in cognitive processes and advocating the adoption of an embodied paradigm to facilitate the development of a philosophy of religious practice. I aim to exemplify this approach by exploring phenomena that have been largely overlooked in philosophical discussions of religion, such as sacrifice and spirit possession, by employing thick modes of description and embracing interdisciplinary methods informed by cultural anthropology and cognitive science. By doing so we can foster a global-critical philosophy of religion capable of addressing phenomena that are frequently ignored within the mainstream philosophy of religion. I took the first steps in this direction in ‘Afro-Brazilian Religions and the Prospects for a Philosophy of Religious Practice’ (2023) and, more recently, in ‘The Mythic Narratives of Candomblé Nagô and What They Imply About Its Supreme Being’ (2024). I am now preparing a manuscript for the Cambridge Elements provisionally titled Afro-Brazilian Religions and Philosophical Methodology in which I will touch on other topics as well, such as the role of embodiment and material culture in religious cognition. Here is a booklet with the outline of outputs and activities of my project.

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PHILOSOPHY AND PSYCHOPATHOLOGY

Until recently, my research predominantly centered on psychosis, specifically delusions, and more recently, voice-hearing (or auditory verbal hallucination). I have just finished a paper on epistemic injustices perpetrated toward religious voice-hearers (forthcoming in Philosophy, Psychiatry, & Psychology), and my last paper on the subject dealt with the phenomenon of double bookkeeping, which refers to patients’ ability to separate their delusional world from the everyday socially shared world. I was also invited to write the chapter on double bookkeeping for the upcoming Routledge Handbook of the Philosophy of Delusion, which should be out later this year. In my doctorate and in my first two postdoctoral fellowships, I explored questions about the doxastic and folk psychological status of delusion which are summed up in ‘The Doxastic Status of Delusion and the Limits of Folk Psychology.’