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Kenny and religious experience

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References

  1. Faith and Reason (NY: Columbia UP, 1983), pp. 59–61, 73–76.

  2. Ibid.Faith and Reason (NY: Columbia UP, 1983), pp. 59–61,

  3. Ibid.Faith and Reason (NY: Columbia UP, 1983), p. 73. The italics are added.

  4. See Fred Dretske,Seeing and Knowing (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1969). And see Robert Audi,Belief Justification and Knowledge (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth Pub. Co., 1988), pp. 8–15.

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  5. “Kenny and Sensing God”Sophia 25 (1986): 15.

  6. Ibid. “Kenny and Sensing God”Sophia 25 (1986): 15.

  7. Ibid. “Kenny and Sensing God”Sophia 25 (1986), pp. 11–16.

  8. The “perceive” of (6) will be taken to designate perceptionsimpliciter since epistemic perception arises only if perceptionsimpliciter has first occurred.

  9. There may be possible counterinstances to (7) similar to those against (6). For example, perhaps one can perceive the electron producing the trail in the cloud chamber, even though electrons cannot be seen. A physicist, when asked what she sees in the cloud chamber, could appropriately respond that she sees the electron producing the cloud trail, even though electronsper se cannot be seen. Or again, (since perception cannot be identified with vision only), one can hear Jones playing the piano in the other room, even though one cannot hear (or see) Jones herself. It is not obvious, however, that these are genuine counterinstances to (7).

  10. Mysticism and Philosophy (London: Macmillan, 1960), pp. 62–81.

  11. The following is greatly influenced by Robert Oakes's “Religious Experience, Sense-Perception and God's Essential Unobservability”Religious Studies 17 (1981): 357–367.

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  12. SeeThe Institutes of the Christian Religion, trans. F.A. Battles (1559; rept., Phil.: Westminster Press, 1960), I. V. 1–12. pp. 51–66. According to Calvin, these marks constitute a good reason (indeed indictable evidence) that God exists.

  13. See Alasdair MacIntyre, “Visions”,New Essays in Philosophical Theology, ed. A. Flew and A. MacIntyre (NY: Macmillan Co., 1964), pp. 257–258.

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  14. This seems true independently of one's view of the ontological status of theoretical entities.

  15. Of course, this argument is a much too brief response to what is, essentially, an objection built upon Hume's scepticism toward induction. See hisEnquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748; rept., Oxford: Clarendon, 1982), sections IV–VI. For a sustained examination and critique of Hume's scepticism toward induction see D.C. Stove,Popper and After: Four Modern Irrationalist s(NY: Pergamon, 1982), pp. 45–85; and hisThe Rationality of Induction (Oxford: Clarendon, 1986).

  16. Faith and Reason, (NY: Columbia UP, 1983), pp. 61, 73–75.

  17. For more on the notion of propositional revelation see H. P. Owen,The Christian Knowledge of God (London: Athlone Press, 1969), pp. 26–70.

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  18. William Temple,Nature, Man and God (London: Macmillan, 1934), p. 322. Concerning the notion of nonpropositional revelation see John Ballie,The Idea of Revelation in Recent Thought (NY: Columbia UP, 1956).

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  19. Faith and Reason, (NY: Columbia UP, 1983), pp. 73–75.

  20. Kenny examines the nonpropositional view of revelation on pages 81–84 ofFaith and Reason.

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Jordan, J. Kenny and religious experience. SOPH 29, 10–20 (1990). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02789878

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