Abstract
William Alston proposed an understanding of religious experience modeled after the triadic structure of sense perception. However, a perceptual model falters because of the unobservability of God as the object of religious experience. To reshape Alston’s model of religious experience as an observational practice we utilize Dudley Shapere’s distinction between the philosophical use of ‘observe’ in terms of sensory perception and scientists’ epistemic use of ‘observe’ as being evidential by providing information or justification leading to knowledge. This distinction helps us to understand how religious experience of an unobservable God can be an epistemic practice that satisfies our epistemic obligations and justifies religious belief.
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Notes
Alston correctly notes that perception is a success term and so wishes to qualify it by talking about putative perception. Following his lead, for simplicity we shall drop the ‘putative’ but caution the reader to understand the discussion in terms of putative perception; we are not claiming that advocating a perceptual structure for religious experience means that one has actually experienced God in that experience.
Alston does qualify this, suggesting that “the experience of God … [is] more widely dispersed than is often supposed,” and even references, though not overtly concurs with, D.M. Baillie‟s position that “all (or most) of us are experientially aware of God all (or most) of the time,” for it is possible that we experience God without being aware of doing so (1991, 34; 11 fn. 3). But, he notes, “the tacit is the normal and the explicit is the exception” (200).
Alston notes that one should not overlook the Catholic mystical tradition that includes phenomena that parallel in significant ways the phenomena of sensory experience—touch, smell, and sight, but insofar as this introduces sensory qualia it is somewhat tangential to his concern to develop a direct perceptual model of non-sensorial experiences of God (1991, 51–4).
Toby Linden objects to this account of direct observation on the grounds that it is phrased in terms that allow no possible interference if the observation is to be direct, whereas Shapere discusses the observation of the Sun’s core by means of neutrinos in terms of the likelihood of being interfered with. But, Linden argues, ‘the likelihood of the interference (alteration) is not relevant to whether an observation has taken place on a particular occasion…. Since a determination of whether a direct observation has taken place is not made until several readings have been taken, it is hard for Shapere to claim that the lack of interference on a given occasion is crucial in permitting the conclusion that a direct observation has taken place to be drawn’ (1992, 294–5). Hence, the probabilistic account Shapere gives conflicts with the no interference requirement. However, what Shapere is arguing is that the likelihood is relevant, not to whether or not one has a direct observation, but rather to its directness. If it is unlikely that it has been interfered with, it is likely that it is a direct perception. Whether or not we know this at the time is quite another matter; I might think that an observation is direct when in fact it is not, and vice versa.
This analysis is quite compatible with Alston’s Theory of Appearing. ‘For S to perceive X is simply for X to appear to S as so-and-so’ (1991, 55). In sense experience we do not normally attend to the appearance, but to the object that appears.
Earlier he noted that it would ‘be a mistake to say that there is no connection between the astrophysicist’s use of the term ‘observation’ with reference to this experiment and uses of that term which associate it with sense perception’ (1982, 507).
Although Shapere defines direct observation in terms of no interference, it might be more apropos to talk about no significant interference, that is, not changing the essential information or qualities that is transmitted so that the information is reliably transmitted—the emphasis being on reliability (Linden, 1992, 299).
This is compatible with the role that Alston assigns to background beliefs. For Alston, perceptual beliefs invoke background beliefs; they ‘not infrequently figure in the total basis of perceptual beliefs’ (1991, 93). But it does not follow that the background beliefs constitute the basis for and hence part of the prima facie justification rendered by perceptual beliefs. Hence, they do not detract from the justificatory role of purely immediately justified perceptual beliefs.
‘X is observable if there are circumstances which are such that, if X is present to us under those circumstances, then we observe it’ unaided, for example, by technology such as microscopes (van Fraassen, 1980, 16).
It should be recalled from footnote 2 that Alston does seem to allow for the doctrine of spiritual sensations, according to which ‘mystical perception involves a variety of phenomenal qualia the similarities and differences among which parallel to an important extent the similarities and differences among sensory qualia’ (1991, 51–2). In this context he quotes a passage from St. Teresa regarding perceiving a certain fragrance.
‘I have on a number of occasions felt that I had enjoyed a period of intimate communion with the divine. These meetings came unasked and unexpected, and seemed to consist merely in the temporary obliteration of the conventionalities which usually surround and cover my life…. Once it was when from the summit of a high mountain I looked over a gashed and corrugated landscape extending to a long convex of ocean that ascended to the horizon, and again from the same point when I could see nothing beneath me but a boundless expanse of white cloud, on the blown surface of which a few high peaks, including the one I was on, seemed plunging about as if they were dragging their anchors. What I felt on these occasions was a temporary loss of my own identity, accompanied by an illumination which revealed to me a deeper significance than I had been wont to attach to life. It is in this that I find my justification for saying that I have enjoyed communication with God’ (James 1958, Lecture III).
Alston suggests that the experiences may yield an updating of information about God’s relation to the person (God still loves me), additional grounds for belief, and ‘additional ‘insight’ into facets of the scheme’ (1991, 207). This is consistent with the evidential approach we have suggested to the practice of religious experience.
An earlier draft of this discussion can be found in my contribution to Science and Religion in Dialogue II, Melville Stewart, ed. (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010), chapters 68 and 70.
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Reichenbach, B.R. Religious Experience as an Observational Epistemic Practice. SOPHIA 51, 1–16 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-011-0241-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-011-0241-9