In his book The Existence of God,
Richard Swinburne presents an argument from RE which utilizes an
epistemological principle which is dubbed the Principle of Credulity:
(PC) If it
seems to me that x is present, then it is rational to believe that x is present
unless there are special considerations to the contrary.
SB argues that it is a fundamental
principle of rationality apart from which we cannot provide any noncircular
justification of either ordinary perception or memory. Then using this principle, SB formulates the
following argument for the existence of God:
A) It seems to me that God is present.
B) There is no good reason to think either
God is non-existent or not present.
C) Hence it is rational (at least for me)
to believe that God is present.
In
this essay I would like to look at the criticisms of William Forgie. He has written several articles on RE,
especially mystical experience, & his general approach to experience &
interpretation is markedly different from the PC. In his 1986 article, he explicitly directs
his criticisms against SB's argument.
Forgie Analysis of Experience & his
Criticisms of Swinburne
Forgie's
discussion is confined to perception-like experience. For such an experience, he thinks we can ask
two different questions: "(a) is the experience veridical (genuine,
accurate) or is it hallucinatory?" & "(b) assuming it is
veridical what is its object, i.e., what is it a veridical experience, a
perception, of? Your visual experience
may be entirely veridical, it may accurately "record" what is
"out there" to be perceived, but you may be mistaken in your
identification of its object." (1986, p.146) "Answers to these two questions are
independent of one another. One can try
to identify the object of his experience without knowing whether or not the
experience is veridical. Alternatively,
one can try to decide whether his experience is veridical or hallucinatory
without knowing what the object of the experience is" (1984, p.13). To answer the second question, we need to ask
another one first: "Suppose this experience is veridical & so
constitutes an accurate perception of something X; then given only the
phenomenological content of the experience itself, what would X have to be or
what features would X have to have?"
In this way we can isolate the things which the content of an experience
itself guarantees will be true of anything of which that experience could be an
accurate perception- the "phenomenologically guaranteed" truths about
the object of the experience. "If
one identifies or describes the object of an experience mentioning only
phenomenologically guaranteed truths about that object, let us say he produces
a "phenomenological" account or description of the experience."
(1986, p.147) Let us capture more
formally Forgie's concept of phenomenological description of experience:
(A) For
some perception-like experience E, E is veridical.
(B) E has a
phenomenological content C.
(C) E is of
something X or something which is F.
Then (C) is a phenomenological description
of E iff (C) is entailed by (A) & (B).
An identification will normally not
be a phenomenological account. "It
will typically rely both on the content of that experience & on various
extra-experiential considerations, various beliefs or items of knowledge one
already possesses"- one's "epistemic base" (1986, p.147). In general, he thinks that no SE can be
phenomenologically of an individual.
"Sense experiences are not phenomenologically of individuals, but
at best only of things that appear in certain ways. A visual experience, for example, is at best
phenomenologically of something that looks a certain way. And auditory or tactile experiences are at
best phenomenologically of things that sound or feel certain ways. But numerically distinct individuals can look
the same, or sound or feel the same." (1984, p.17) Similarly, causation, "regarded as
something over & above mere sequence, does not seem to be
"phenomenologically presentable." (1984, p.19) Nor can agency.
He
illustrates his approach with the example of the twins, Tom Tibbetts & Tim
Tibbetts. Suppose you thought you were
seeing Tom. According to Forgie, this
"experience is not phenomenologically of Tom ... for nothing in the
content of the experience guarantees that its object is Tom Tibbetts as opposed
to Tim Tibbetts, or for that matter any of a number of other things- a third
"look-alike", an appropriately made-up dummy, or even a cleverly
devised hologram- an accurate perception[1] of which could be phenomenologically
indistinguishable from the experience in question." (1986, p.147) This identification of the object of
experience then has to base in part on one's epistemic base. Forgie writes: "suppose I am looking
over the fence with you. I identify the
object of my experience as Tim Tibbetts.
My identification is not, nor is it offered as, a phenomenological
account of my experience. It is based
not only on the content of my experience but also on elements in my epistemic
base, for example on my reasonable belief that anyone in that yard looking (in
the comparative sense) like the young man I see is very probably either Tim or
Tom, plus my knowledge that Tom is currently out of town. Without these anxiliary resources my identification
would normally be less specific- e.g., "I see one of the Tibbetts
twins" or "I see a young man with blond hair &
sandals"." (1986, pp.147-48)
The idea seems to be that the identification of the object of experience
has to be inferred from the phenomenological description of the experience
together with some auxiliary beliefs in one's epistemic base. Hence for this identification to be
justified, the auxiliary beliefs involved at least need to be reasonable in
themselves & they really justify the above inference. To defeat this identification, several ways
are open to the critic (1986, pp.149-50):
a) to show that the identification is
false;
b) to show that some auxiliary beliefs used
are false;
c) to show that the auxiliary beliefs are
not enough to justify the identification;
d) to show a stalemate: when some other
experiences the same object but makes a conflicting identification & we
have no way of resolving the conflict.
He
then points out that, given his concept, acceptance of PC will commit us both
to the prima facie veridicality of a perception-like experience & to the
prima facie accuracy of the experient's identification of its object. Hence we must also presume both that the
auxiliary beliefs from the epistemic base are true & that they justify the
identification. He argues that it then
follows that there are more possible "spoilers" (i.e. defeaters) than
SB has identified. He then suggests two
spoilers for religious experiences (REs).
1) The Sceptical Challenge:
a) The judgment "this experience is of
God" is always underdetermined by, or is never a phenomenological account
of, the experience it reports. No
experience could be phenomenologically of God.
So the justification for the claim that an experience is of God can't
come solely from the phenomenological content of the experience itself. It will have to come in part from certain
auxiliary beliefs in the percipient's epistemic base. (pp.154-5);
b) the God-experient has no good reason,
beyond the content of his experience, for identifying its object as God, i.e.,
no auxiliary beliefs which are both plausible in themselves & justify that
identification. (It may be added that
the identification derives mainly from his upbringing or tradition.)
c) So there is good inductive evidence for
supposing that the identifications of the objects of the experiences of God as
God are unjustified.
2) Even if we don't accept the sceptical
view above, a spoiler is available "so long as we are merely familiar with
the sceptical view ."(p.155)
a) "it would be utterly arbitrary to
accord a presumption of truth only to auxiliary beliefs which actually enter
into one's identification of the object of his experience but not to extend
that presumption to all the other beliefs in his epistemic base. Any of these beliefs could in principle be
employed in identifying or describing the object of some experience. When they are used they will enjoy a
presumption of truth. Why won't they
also do so even when they are not in fact being so employed?"(p.155)
b) Assuming the PC, we must suppose
(T) There
is prima facie evidence that a God-experient's relevant auxiliary beliefs are
true; &
(J) They
justify his identification of the object of his experience.
c) It would be arbitrary to accept T
without assigning prima facie truth to any belief by any person- including the
belief that J is false. Namely, the fact that "God-experiences occur is
prima facie evidence that J is true, but the fact that Scholem, e.g., believes
that J is false is prima facie evidence that J is false." (p.156) (Scholem is a Jewish scholar on
mysticism.) Hence an epistemological
stalemate results. The PC does not seem
to be able to settle anything.
Reply to Forgie
There are many problems with Forgie's whole
scheme. It is terribly vague at many
points & many of his terms are left undefined. For example, what does he mean by the 'content
of experience'? Is this supposed to
include the propositional content or not? We have to bear in mind that this content is
supposed to be prior to the identification of the object of the experience
& also the phenomenological description of the experience. Now Forgie takes it that "the content of
sense experiences (SEs) & ... of mystical experiences is exhausted
by their phehomenological content." (1984, p.27) And "in a non-dream experience any
relevant epistemic base is not thought of as something one possesses within
that experience. It is thought of
instead as something extrinsic to that experience & so not part of its
content at all. ... It might be that at
the very moment that one has a mystical experience he also suddenly acquires
the conviction that its object is such & such. But such a case is best described as one in
which one has both a mystical experience & a sudden addition ... to his
(extrinsic) epistemic base. There is no
reason to think one has an experience which includes
"non-phenomenological" content." (1984, p.30, n.23) But what then is meant by "phenomenological
content"? Forgie does not give
explicit elucidation of this concept.
However, from the above comments, a reasonable guess is that Forgie
intends to exclude all propositional element from the content of an experience. In other words, an experience is individuated
by its phenomenological, i.e. non-propositional, content alone. Any propositional content then is extrinsic
to any experience. Now Forgie does not
give us any clue as to how he intends to describe such content. For example, we don't know whether he would
approve of the sense-data language.
Perhaps the content is supposed to be described by how it looks or
sounds or feels to the subject. For
example, when I look at a chair, I have a visual experience whose content is
described by "it looks chairly to me." Typically, this experience is accompanied by
a conviction that "there is a chair" but this is just a belief
suddenly added to my extrinsic epistemic base.
This belief is no part of the visual experience.
Now
various problems arise in relation to such analysis of experience. Firstly, if we take the word
"phenomenological content" in the narrow sense, it may just mean
"sensory content". Forgie
seems to take this interpretation.
However, if it is taken in the broad sense, it may mean "the
characteristic of an experience which is accessible to one by
introspection", i.e. that which is "on the surface". Then the above characterization of the visual
experience of the chair can be doubted.
Isn't it true that if we examine introspectively that experience, we
would also be inclined to think "it seems (epistemically) to me I am
seeing a chair" is also an integral part of the experience? In this sense why can't it be part of the
phenomenological (broad sense) content of the experience? The awareness of the presence of the chair,
though it might be illusory, seems also given[2] in the visual experience. It should be noted that the adverbial
description of the content of the experience can be understood in different
ways. "It looks chairly to me"
can mean either
a) the sensory content of my present
experience is similar to the sensory content of those experiences which are
usually accompanied by my belief that "I am seeing a chair." or
b) it seems (epistemically) that I am
seeing a chair or
c) both (a) & (b).
Clearly
(b) consists of propositional content & hence on Forgie's account can't be
part of the content of that experience.
So for Forgie, "it looks chairly to me" can only mean (a) or
something similar. Now a problem arises:
Forgie proposes that we can separate the question of veridicality & the
question of the object of the experience.
The problem is: given his understanding of the content of experience,
what is meant by "an experience being veridical"? It can't be a matter of the truth of the
propositional content because the latter, according to Forgie, isn't part of
the experience at all. It is a pity that
Forgie again gives no explicit elucidation of this concept. I again can only guess. "An experience being veridical"
can't be just the matter of the sensory content being caused by something
external to the person because this understanding would render veridical the
experiences caused solely by the evil demon.
Perhaps for Forgie, an experience is veridical if & only if the
content of that experience accurately records this something. Now the problem is: what is meant by this
"accurate recording"? This
cannot be the correspondence of a proposition to a fact. Perhaps it means that the sensory content is
accurately recording the appearance of that something. But does a thing has an appearance
intrinsically? It seems not. The appearance of a thing depends on all
sorts of things: the nature of the thing, the perceptual conditions, the
sensory modality used, the perceptual equipment & so on. "What is the appearance of a
thing?" does not admit of any objective & non-relative answer. For all we know, when I have a veridical
experience, in Forgie's sense, of "it looks chairly to me", this may
be of any number of things. This concept
of 'veridicality' is very puzzling & it is difficult to see how one can
decide whether any experience is veridical.
Suppose
we waive these misgivings. Another
problem is that how we actually proceed to identify the object & justify
the identification. Forgie thinks that
to do this normally we need to depend on auxiliary beliefs which are true &
justifying. Now how do we identify the
object of my experience "it looks chairly to me"? From the phenomenological description, we
only know that the object of experience is something which looks chairly
to me. But again this notion of
"something that looks chairly to me" is again a difficult one. If it is construed as the object which causes
me to have an experience which can be described as "it looks chairly to
me", then it might even be the evil demon or the evil scientist. Perhaps Forgie's way out is to argue that the
sensory content has an intrinsic structure, e.g. shape which can correspond or
fail to correspond with that of the object of experience. In this way he might try to anchor his cpt of
'veridicality'. For example, if the
sensory content consists of a round appearance & the object of experience
is also round, then this exemplifies the 'accurate recording' relationship. However it is dubious that this strategy can
work. Forgie states that the
phenomenological description of a visual experience is at best "of something
looks in certain ways". Well, the
crucial word "something" here is ambiguous. It may mean some sort of physical entity but
it may also mean some mental entities which do not need to be mind-independent,
e.g. sense-data. As long as there is no
stipulation that this "something" has to be physical, then the
traditional account of sense-data can also satisfy Forgie's requirement of a
phenomenological account. If it is the
case then the identification of any physical thing depends on auxiliary
beliefs & the familiar sceptical questions inevitably raise their ugly
heads.
Consider
his example: there are two identical twins, Tom Tibbetts & Tim
Tibbetts. Suppose I saw a person &
think "I saw Tom Tibbetts".
According to Forgie, this judgment "is not a
phenomenological account of my visual experience, but I may well have auxiliary
beliefs which make it entirely plausible." (1986, p.153) I do not dispute this distinction as such but
just wonder where does this lead. In
this example, what is the phenomenological description? Try this one: "I saw a person who looks
exactly like Tom or Tim." However
did the content of the experience guarantee that the person I saw is exactly
like Tom or Tim? No. I suppose Tom or Tim has a backside but I didn't
see the backside. So some auxiliary
beliefs here. Hang on. Did the content of the experience guarantee I
saw a person? I suppose a person
can think, feel, act, etc. But I saw
none of these! So again auxiliary
beliefs here. One of this may be:
"When I saw a humanoid, it probably was a person." But it is not the end: did I see a body
which exists independently & endures?
Not really, I only saw some color patches in a visual space. So again some auxiliary assumptions. But did I really see a particular color
patch, i.e., did the content of the experience guarantee that I recognized
correctly that particular color? What is
the end of this kind of query? How could
we justify the myriad of auxiliary beliefs mentioned above? It is difficult to avoid in the end falling
into the "sceptical bog", I think.
It does not seem to be the case only because Forgie's examples draw on a
lot of auxiliary beliefs which look innocent & he doesn't pursue his own
approach thoroughly enough. However, if
we really adopt his approach, then those auxiliary beliefs themselves can
hardly be justified. For example, Forgie
gives these examples of auxiliary beliefs: " my reasonable belief that
anyone in that yard looking (in the comparative sense) like the young man I see
is very probably either Tim or Tom" & "my knowledge that Tom is
currently out of town". These we
all naturally take to be non-problematic but it is not so on Forgie's account. If in this case, identification of Tim is so
complicated, how then he gains the knowledge that Tom is out of
town? This knowledge presupposes the
correct identification of Tom & the town.
I would think no phenomenological description can be of such things
& such identifications need to be inferred from some other auxiliary
beliefs. But presumably those beliefs
would depend on other experiences & the same problem occurs once again
& so on ad infinitum. The
consequence is that the most ordinary identification cannot be made at
all. This can be regarded as the reductio
of his scheme.
Perhaps
Forgie can respond to this problem by such a stipulation of the meaning of
'veridicality':
(D) A
perception-like experience E is veridical iff its phenomenological content C
accurately records some physical thing which causes appropriately E.
Then in this case (A), (B) & (D) would
entail
(E) E is of
something physical.
Hence (E) is a phenomenological description
of E. Now it looks that this stipulation
is very artificial & ad hoc. This
definition would rule any veridical perception of non-physical thing out of
court just by fiat. Also we notice that
(B) is idle here, i.e., the phenomenological content C of the experience has
nothing to do with why E is of something physical. As far as I can see, the phenomenological
description should not include "an experience of something physical"
since it is clearly propositional. Hence
E is phenomenologically indistinguishable from another non-veridical, according
to the new stipulation, experience E' of something non-physical which have same
content C. Now Forgie's general strategy
is that if two identifications of an experience cannot be arbitrated by
considering the phenomenological content alone, then one or the other has to
be justified by auxiliary beliefs. Now
if I think I have an veridical experience E & then I realize that E is
phenomenologically indistinguishable from a corresponding non-veridical
experience E', in accordance with Forgie's strategy, shouldn't I appeal to
other auxiliary beliefs to justify my claim of veridicality? Again the sceptical problem arises. It can be noted that this demand is rejected
by the Credulity Approach & hence in the end Forgie's approach is
incompatible with the Credulity Approach.
Forgie raised his 'spoilers' by assuming that the PC is valid. But then he proceeds with his own analysis of
experience & epistemological principles which are not really compatible
with the PC. So his way of interpreting
his objections seems confused.
Now
of course Forgie can press his objections by elaborating his own
epistemological approach to experience & criticizing the Credulity
Approach. He has not done the
latter. As for the former, I have tried
to argue above that Forgie's crucial concepts of 'veridicality' &
'phenomenological description' are very obscure & they naturally lead to
awkward sceptical questions. Without
further elucidation, I doubt that his whole scheme can be put to work at
all. If this is the case, then his
suggested spoilers which depend on such scheme also fail.
CTA's Analysis of experience
In contrast the CTA individuates an experience both by
its propositional content & non-propositional content. They can in principle be distinguishable
but in our actual experiences, they are sometimes hardly separable. In our basic experiences, the former is fused
with the latter. This means that by
introspection we judge that if the propositional content were removed, then the
whole phenomenology of that experience would be drastically changed. It is a hopeless strategy to separate the two
in dealing with experiences & especially their epistemic status. Of course there is no intention to suggest
that interpretive experiences never occur.
By these I mean those experiences which have some propositional content
that can be removed without much effect on the phenomenology of the experience. In this case, this propositional content can
be regarded as an interpretation of the core experience. However, it is to be noted that normally the
core experience by no means contains no propositional content, just
less. This should be clear from the
Tibbetts case discussed above. Consider
Forgie's less specific identification: "I see a young man with blond hair
& sandals". It is as
propositional as the more specific one.
If
this account is correct, then we can see more clearly why Forgie's objections
fail. I have argued that
phenomenological content (broad sense) may include some propositional content[3]. If
so then the phenomenological content of a theistic experience may include
"it seems to be of God". Then
the first premise of his objection is falsified. It is apt to quote Peter Moore here: "Mystical experience is often treated as
if it consisted of mental images which are then made the basis for unwarranted
& unverifiable inferences concerning the existence of entities or realities
not themselves the immediate objects of the experience. Not only does this kind of analysis not ring
true when we turn to examine the writings of the mystics themselves; in
addition it invents a difficulty for mystical claims where none exists, or at
least raises objections which have no more force in the context of mysticism
than in non-mystical contexts. To adduce
universal problems of perception as the grounds for doubting the validity of
the mystical claim in particular is a case of playing the same card twice
over"(quoted by Taber, p.59, n.38)
Similarly
the use of PC does not presuppose that any auxiliary beliefs are used to
identify the object. Furthermore it just
applies to the actual epistemic seemings embedded in the experiences. It does not apply to all merely possible
epistemic seemings. Even if we concede
Forgie's scheme, there is still no reason why the PC has to apply to every
possible auxiliary belief. Forgie's
second criticism effectively charges that the PC would lead to negative
coherentism. In earlier chapter I have
resisted this move. The auxiliary
beliefs which are involved in experiences do indeed have an important
difference from those which are not: they are covered by the PC in so far as
they are embedded in our actual experiences. There is no reason to think that the PC
should cover any belief of any person.
The belief of Scholem that J is false is obviously an inferential
judgment. So the PC does not cover
this & the alleged stalemate is non-existent. So Forgie's second criticism again
fails.
However
despite Forgie's confusions, his discussions do raise some important
problems. At least we may still feel
that without further support my identification of the person on the other side
of the fence as Tom rather than Tim is unjustified. This intuition needs to be accounted for in
the framework of the PC.
Taking
Forgie's example. If I say to you I saw
Tom, you can ask me how I can be sure it is not Tim. I may on reflection discover that I really
couldn't distinguish Tom or Tim & the identification is extrinsic to the
experience. Then I can retract my
original interpretation & retreat to a less committed one. I guess most of us would do that. This retraction would suffice as a defeater
of the original experience & this in no way contradicts the PC. This is based on the subject's reflection on
his own experience & discovery that his identification is entirely based on
his perception of the physical appearance.
Furthermore, he recognizes that an undermining defeater is available
in this case. Hence the
retraction. Now it is very important to
point out that the ground for retraction is not a sheer possibility of a
defeater but the actual availability of the defeater: we do not just
hypothesize about a twin of Tom but we know that Tom has a twin. It would be very different from the following
case: now suppose you came to know John
& then saw 'John' the next day.
Then suddenly you 'realized' that it is possible that John has an
identical twin Jones & you cannot actually distinguish ./. John & Jones. So you retract your identification. Now some philosophers indeed would recommend
such a procedure. They & Forgie seem
to operate with such a principle:
Whenever an
experience can be decomposed into a core experience & a upper layer of
interpretation, then a possible alternative interpretation of the core
experience is a defeater of the original interpretation.
Now this principle, I submit, would only
lead us to the sceptical bog. If so, to
defeat scepticism, we need another principle:
A spontaneous
interpretation embedded in an experience is not defeated by the mere possibility
of an alternative interpretation.
If this principle is a sounder one, then
Forgie's counterexample fails.
However it might also be the case that I am convinced
that I really saw Tom & I thought I can distinguish them though I can't say
how, i.e. I have a basic or direct awareness of Tom rather than an inferential
judgment that Tom is there. It is
possibly justified because if I know them well, I might be able to distinguish
them by their subtle behaviour patterns & the like. However the way Forgie sets up his example
tends to make it look unlikely. Perhaps
it could also be claimed that it is a direct intuition into their personal
identity, say, by telepathy. Such a claim
is not impossible. We can't prove in
every case of recognition that we have the capacity to recognize that
kind of thing, e.g. a face, a color, a necessary truth, a memory as a record of
past. However, if the above example is
interpreted in this way, Forgie has chosen a capacity which from our past
experiences we know to be dubious & uncommon. The reason for you to challenge my
description is then not that it is not phenomenological but that if my claim is
correct, it would imply that I have a certain ability which you have reasons to
think dubious. So on both this
interpretation & the earlier one, the example does not demonstrate that my
claim deserves no initial credulity: the claim is not justified because
the initial credulity is defeated & this is consistent with the PC.
So
although Forgie's distinction between the phenomenological description &
the auxiliary beliefs is rejected, the CTA still allows the distinction between
a less ramified description of an experience & a more ramified
description. It is only made when
defeaters are available. Then
re-interpretation is needed & a less ramified description of the content of
the experience is used instead. This
possibility allows us to deal with the unjustified over-interpretive experiences. By assuming the PC, we have rough knowledge
of our world & this can serve as a check on the reliability of our
experiences. Then it might be discovered
that a certain type of interpretations, even if they are spontaneous, are
typically unreliable. In this way we
decide which sorts of interpretive experiences are unjustified
over-interpretations & which aren't.
For example, though our experience are never phenomenologically (in
Forgie's sense) of individuals, in our actual lives we frequently make
identification of individuals by a single experience. This is not found to be reliable &
we continue to rely on such identifications.
However, some of us find out that if we rely on our visual experience
alone, our identification of twins could well be mistaken. By such inductive evidence we conclude that
the above sort of identification is unreliable & hence any token of
that sort is thrown into doubt automatically.
This is taken into granted by us when we come to Forgie's examples &
this is what renders his analysis plausible.
His error is to generalize his analysis.
My contention is that the PC is the more fundamental principle but then
the first order application of the PC may produce a second order critical
principle in certain cases, e.g. in over-interpretive experiences.
Similarly, it is by the first order
employment of the PC that we can decide what conditions are conducive to
hallucinations or illusions & then formulate the corresponding critical
principles, e.g. "any unusual perceptual claim of a heavily drunk person
has to be treated with initial scepticism." (The above principle is useless if we can't
rely on our SEs to find out who is heavily drunk.) The PC is compatible with such second order
critical principles which typically have limited scope. Any generalization of these would be
disastrous.
Conclusion
Forgie’s criticisms of Swinburne are not
successful.
Reference
Corcoran, Kevin. 1998. "Is Theistic Experience
Phenomenologically Possible?" Religious
Studies 32:449-61.
Forgie, William. 1984. "Theistic Experience & the Doctrine
of Unanimity." International
Journal for Philosophy of Religion 15:13-30.
Forgie, William. 1988. "The Principle
of Credulity and the Evidential Value of Religious Experience." International
Journal for Philosophy of Religion 19:145-159.
Forgie, William. 1994. "Pike's Mystic Union & the
Possibility of Theistic Experience."
Religious Studies 30:231-42.
Forgie, William. 1998. "The Possibility of Theistic
Experience." Religious Studies
34:317-23.
Pike, Nelson. 1992. Mystic Union- An Essay in the
Phenomenology of Mysticism. Ithaca:
Cornell University Press.
NOTES
"my view t/ for an expp to be
phenomenologically of N (or an X) it would have to, if eridical,
constitute a perception of N (or
an X) instead of something else that could appear just the same. If an expp could constitute a veridical of
something other than N then it is not phenomenologically of N"
(Forgie 1998, p.322)
This is "best understood as stating a
criterion which attempts to capture what is meant when someone says that
an expp is phenomenologically of this or that. More specifically, it attempts to cpature
what philosophers like W. T. Stace & Ninian Smart have in mind when they
maintain, in opposition, e.g. to R. C. Zaehner, that claims by mystics t/ this
or t/ expp is an expp of God are never warranted merely by the
phenomenological content of the expp in question (i.e. are not
phenomenologically of God), but instead 'interpretations' which reflect the
reliance on extra-experiential
background beliefs. There is no
doubt that someone could offer another account of what is emant by the claim t/
an expp is phenomenologically of such & such. There is also no doubt that on some such
alternative account, expps could be phenomenologically of inividuals (or kinds
of things), & in particular phenomenologically of God.... need to show that
that account better captures the notion t/ is at the centre of the disputes ./.
Smart & Stace on the one side & Zaehner & other on the other"
(Forgie 1998, p.323).
[1] Note here Forgie's use of the words
"accurate perception" is idiosyncratic: when I thought I was seeing
Tom & it was actually a dummy, the experience is still an 'accurate
perception'. I'll explore later what it
means.
[2] My use of this word "given"
should be dissociated from the use by the classical foundationalists. It has no implications of incorrigibility or
infallibility or the like.
[3] If someone is unhappy with my use of the
words 'phenomenological content', then he can read me as saying that the
intrinsic content of an experience includes both phenomenological content &
propositional content. It doesn't affect
my argument.
