Communications Psychology
May 8, 2026
Ronald Fischer, Giovanna Bortolini, Tiago Bortolini et al.
Nonordinary experiences (NOEs) that are subjectively marked as unusual or special have important implications for our understanding of consciousness but are challenging to quantify. Estimates of their prevalence vary widely across disciplines and research traditions, and the reasons for this variation remain unclear. We address this discrepancy in a series of six studies. In study 1, we...
Zygon
December 3, 2025
Ann Taves
2 citations
There is a kinship between Owen Flanagan's The Really Hard Problem and William James's The Varieties of Religious Experience that not only can help us to understand Flanagan's book but also can help scholars, particularly scholars of religion, to be attentive to an important development in the realm of the “spiritual but not religious.” Specifically, Flanagan's book continues a tradition in...
Religion Brain & Behavior
October 25, 2024
Ann Taves, Elliott Ihm
As a book that seeks to update William James’s The Varieties of Religious Experience (VRE) for a general audience, it has many features to commend. It offers a finely nuanced discussion of James bo...
Perspectives on Psychological Science
February 13, 2020
Ann Taves
127 citations
Although many researchers in psychology, religious studies, and psychiatry recognize that there is overlap in the experiences their subjects recount, disciplinary silos and challenges involved in comparing reported experiences have left us with little understanding of the mechanisms, whether biological, psychological, and/or sociocultural, through which these experiences are represented and...
Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science
June 2, 2009
Ann Taves
13 citations
William James's The Varieties of Religious Experience is one of the world's most popular attempts to meld science and religion. Academic reviews of the book were mixed in Europe and America, however, and prominent contemporaries, unsure whether it was science or theology, struggled to interpret it. James's reliance on an inherently ambiguous understanding of the subconscious as a means of...