Philosophical Questions concerning Religious and especially Mystical Experience (continued.)

TOPIC 4:what is their cognitive value, their (potential) reality-revealing function - if they have one?

Is this only for the person who has them, or maybe for us also? Evaluating mystical and other religious experience within a tradition. Evaluating mystical and other religious experience independently of commitment to a religious tradition.

This contains the following:
Select Bibliography

(I) Evaluation while standing within a Religious Tradition
Nelson Pike, William Wainwright
Discussion

(II) Evaluation independently of commitment to a Religious Tradition
(A) Religious experience compared to sense perception
(Swinburne, Wainwright, Alston)

(B) Evaluation of Religious Traditions themselves, together with confirming experiences
          Introduction
           First Attempt: religious traditions as analogous to systems of metaphysics
             Some problems with First Attempt , Five Options on Criteria, Relationship with Problem of Other Religions
           Second Attempt: Multi-Faceted/Wide Communal Reflective Equilibrium
             Problems with Second Attempt

Conclusion

See especially:

Nelson Pike, "On Mystical Visions as Sources of Knowledge", pp. 214ff. of the 1978 Katz collection;

Richard Swinburne, "The evidential value of religious experience", in the Peacocke collection (1981), pp. 182--196. Also The Existence of God (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1979), Ch. 13.

William J. Wainwright, "Mysticism and Sense Experience", in Cahn and Shatz collection (1982), pp. 123ff. William J. Wainwright, Mysticism. University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, Wisconsin, 1981. Chapter 3: The Cognitive Status of Mystical Experience, pp. 82-138.

Peter Donovan, Interpreting Religious Experience (Sheldon Press, London, 1979), esp. Ch. 3.

James R. Horne, "Which Mystic has the Revelation?", Religious Studies, Vol. 11, No. 4, Sept. 1975, pp. 283ff.

W.P. Alston, "The autonomy of religious experience", International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, Vol. 31, Nos. 2-3, 1992, pp. 67-88.

K.E. Yandell, "Sensory experience and numinous experience", International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, Vol. 31, Nos. 2-3, 1992, pp. 89-118.

Gavin D'Costa, "Whose Objectivity? Which Neutrality? The Doomed Quest for a Neutral Vantage Point From Which to Judge Religions". Religious Studies, Vol 29, No. 1, March 1993. Pp. 79-95. (= D'Costa, 1993)

Grube, Dirk-Martin, "Religious Experience after the Demise of Foundationalism", Religious Studies, Vol. 31, 1995, pp. 37-52. (Grube, 1995)

Huang, Yong, "Foundation of Religious Beliefs after Foundationalism: Wittgenstein between Nielsen and Phillips", Religious Studies, Vol. 31, 1995, pp. 251-267. (Huang, 1995)

Eddy, Paul R. "Religious Pluralism and the Divine: Another Look at John Hick's Neo-Kantian Proposal", Religious Studies, Vol 30, 1994, pp. 467-478.

Hick, John. "Religious Pluralism and the Divine: A Response to Paul Eddy", Religious Studies, Vol. 31, 1995, pp. 417-420.

D'Costa, Gavin, "The Impossibility of a Pluralist View of Religions", Religious Studies, Vol. 32, 1996, pp. 223-232.

Hick, John, "The Possibility of Religious Pluralism: A Reply to Gavin D'Costa", Religious Studies, Vol. 33, 1997, pp. 161-166.

Curnutt, Jordan, "Huang on Wittgenstein on religious epistemology", Religious Studies, Vol. 34, 1998, pp. 81-89. Alleging that Huang's Wittgenstein is not the real Wittgenstein. But is this relevant??

Dupre, Louis, "Experience and Interpretation: Philosophical Reflection on Schillebeeckx's Theology", in Religious Mystery and Rational Reflection (Eerdmans, Grand Rapids, 1998), pp. 107-117.

A Full Treatment would be divided into three segments:

Preliminary: the 'intentionality' of the mystical quest --i.e. what kind of 'trip' it is; if it is not a truth trip, can we still ask questions about truth value? [Omitted for class - verbose and unnecessary. Answer: mystic quests and religious quests generally are salvation trips. But this does not mean they have no cognitive significance. E.g. sailing around the world.]

(I) on evaluating mystical experiences within a religious tradition; and

(II) on criteria for evaluation of mystical experiences which are independent of
commitment to a religious tradition.

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(I) EVALUATING MYSTICAL EXPERIENCES WHILE STANDING WITHIN A RELIGIOUS TRADITION

Religious traditions promoting mysticism and other kinds of religious experience are usually well aware of the possibility of delusory and invalid experiences, and they take pains to distinguish these from the genuine ones.

NELSON PIKE works it this way, drawing on such classics as Teresa of Avila, John of the Cross and Thomas Aquinas:

if the revelation is produced by God it's a reliable source of information --the revelation therein contained is true;
if the revelation is not produced by God, it is not to be relied on --the revelation therein contained may or may not be true.

Ignoring for the moment the ambiguity of "produced by God", according to Pike appeal is made to two main criteria for determining whether produced by God:

1) apprehensions produced by God result in positive affective states as well as dispositions conducive to spiritual development, including dispositions towards virtue = the spiritual effects sign, or fruits test;
2) the revelations contained in apprehensions produced by God do not conflict with propositions affirmed in Scripture or with propositions included among the dogmas, doctrines or teachings of the church: =the Scripture-Dogma sign or the orthodoxy test.

The basis of the former is that evil things don't come from God. The basis of the latter is that God's relevation is consistent.

In response to this: there is a third criterion or complex of criteria which readily suggest themselves:

3) some account needs to be taken of the psychic and also moral and spiritual history of the claimant: = the causes or roots test, meaning probably that certain kinds of causes need to be ruled out.

Positively, it is a good sign if the claimant is, in the Biblical phrase, pure of heart, and also psychologically healthy. Negatively, if the vision takes place in the middle of a psychotic episode it is probably to be ignored. That at least is the idea. This is not to say that sinners and mentally disturbed people can't have valid religious experiences and even know that they have had them. It is just that they themselves and the rest of us have to be more careful in such cases. It could in the latter case be just another one of their ordinary everyday psychotic hallucinations, so to speak.

WILLIAM WAINWRIGHT in Cahn and Shatz, pp. 127-128, and also PETER DONOVAN, Interpreting Religious Experience, p. 43, citing Wainwright, mention 6 criteria which in Christian tradition have been required for experience to count as genuine:

(i)the consequences of the experience must be good for the mystic. The experience must lead to, or produce, or reenforce, a new life marked by such virtues as wisdom, humility, charity and so on. (Wainwright subsumes 'sanity' under this criterion --sanity as a necessary condition for a life of extraordinary goodness.)
(ii) the effects of the experience upon others. For example, whether the actions of the mystic, his or her words and example, tend to build up the community or destroy it.
(iii) the depth, the profundity and the "sweetness" of what the mystic says on the basis of his or her experience counts in favour of the genuineness of the experience. On the other hand, the insignificance, or the silliness of what he or she says counts against it.
(iv) we must examine what the mystic says on the basis of his or her experience and see whether it agrees or disagrees with orthodox talk.

Relating the criteria so far to Pike's, criteria (i) to (iii) may be regarded as expansions on Pike's 1), criterion (iv) a version of Pike's 2). Wainwright's first criterion subsumes at least part of my proposed 'causes' test.

Criteria (v)and (vi) as follows:

(v) resemblance of the experience to paradigm cases within the religious tradition will help establish its validity;
(vi) the judgement of spiritual authorities about the experience should be taken into account. Such experts would themselves be supposedly working with criteria (i) to (v), plus their own religious experience and the wisdom that comes with experience as a spiritual director or master or magistra (cf. Aristotle's 'phronesis', and the judgement of a person of practical wisdom in deciding the mean in which virtue consists).

Discussion:

Such criteria, which seem to be pretty standard within at least the Christian tradition, work fine if you are already within the tradition.

To the extent that the criteria for distinguishing valid from invalid explicitly assume the validity of the religious tradition (= Pike 2), Donovan-Wainwright (iv) to (vi)), such experiences cannot be used to support the tradition. Or can they? Seemingly you would have the strange situation of

--if they agree, they support;
--if they disagree, they don't detract, in so far as they are invalid.

Which is to say, heads I win, tails you lose. Experience would not be therefore functioning as it usually is, e.g. in science or common life. Except that scientists frequently operate in the same way-- they are just as likely to question the experiment as to question the theory.

What this probably does show is that the criteria cannot be applied crudely. If a series of otherwise O.K. experiences e.g. among numerous individuals was somehow in conflict with some dogma, or ruled out of order by some spiritual authorities, then maybe it is the dogma or the spiritual authorities that are mistaken. The alternative is to remove mystical experience completely from any evidential function. (Once again, though, we may need to take account of the difference in 'intentionality' between people in the mystic quest and philosophers talking about them. I'm not sure what difference this makes in the present circumstances.)

In addition, in respect of any tradition-related critera there is the already much mentioned problem of the internal interplay of experience and interpretation. Even if the experiences do agree with the tradition, this may be because they happen to people imbued with the tradition. Given this also, it looks like the determination of the evidential value of mystical experiences requires that we have some way of evaluating the complex of religious experience and tradition in which they occur. This is where our story is going to go eventually.

Further to this, even the 'fruits' or effects and 'causes' or roots or context tests are tradition specific in respect of how they are applied in practice. What one religious tradition within a specific culture regards as acceptable another religious tradition or even the same tradition in another culture or at another time may find outlandish. The antics of a Simon Stylites are way off our map of acceptable behaviour, even for a mystic!

There is also the dilemma pointed out by D'Costa (D'Costa 1993). Religious traditions and sub-traditions give one more rather than less in the way of criteria and tend to 'flesh out' the generally available ones in one direction rather than another. The more tradition specific the criteria are, the more discriminating they are likely to prove. Indeed, it seems that when it comes to distinguishing authentic versus inauthentic religious experiences, one may in fact be better off inside a tradition. But let us look firstly at attempts to develop criteria that are not so tradition specific.

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(II) EVALUATION INDEPENDENT OF RELIGIOUS TRADITIONS

(A) Religious Experience compared with Sense Experience

The most straightforward and probably the most common way of approaching the question in a more general fashion is by way of an analogy or comparison with sense experience. For this approach, see especially Yandall, Swinburne, Pike, and Wainwright.

The argument for the cognitive value of religious experience of God along these lines goes somewhat as follows:

Mystical experience is sufficiently like sense perception, especially when the differing natures of the object is taken into account, for it to make it unreasonable for a person to accept one as a source of knowledge and reject the other.

This does not make all mystical experience valid rather than delusory any more than it does sense experience: in both cases we have tests to distinguish the valid from the delusory ones. These tests may be different but their function is the same. In both cases we are confirmed in what we believe when other people agree with us. Though the number of people in a position to agree or disagree is relatively small for religious experience in comparison with sense experience. But only people in a position to experience it count and in any case maybe it's like the sighted (or people who have learned how to see) in the land of the blind.

As you might imagine, there is dispute as to how similar or how different.

The believer in the cognitive value of religious experience is in fact in a rather strong position dialectically here (cf. Wainwright, op. cit., p. 141):

If they are not very similar, not similar enough, it is still open for her or him to say -- O.K., it is not like sense experience, e.g. there are no sense organs involved with different senses capable of correcting and confirming each other. It is a kind of experience all its own, capable of standing on its own two feet as still a variety of experience (= being opened out on something in such a way that what I am opened out onto is given to me), still capable as such of yielding valid knowledge.

People who argue, we know how we perceive things with our senses, nowadays have quite a developing science about it, but we don't know how we perceive in mystical experience, should ask themselves, how do we know about our senses? Eventually, only by means of our senses themselves. Also, as far as senses correcting each other goes, perhaps we could use the numinous experience to validate the mystical variety. There is nothing to stop a prophet being also a mystic. Indeed, such a person would be in a rather strong position.

Given the difference in kind of object after all, you would not expect them to be very similar --you can't experience the divine like you experience an apple. In spite of the difference, the same epistemic principle applies:

In the absence of special considerations, if it seems to a subject that x is present, then probably x is present -- how things seem is prima facie grounds for a belief about how things are. (= Swinburne's Principle of Credulity).

Swinburne then goes on to argue that special considerations are absent in the case of mystical experience, that attempts to restrict the principle in ways designed to rule out its application to religious experience are either unjustified or unsuccessful.

For a strong defense of religious experience as a 'doxastic practice' (practice of belief formation) in its own right, alongside other 'doxastic practices' such as sense perception, introspection and memory, mathematics, see especially:

William P. Alston, "The autonomy of religious experience", in International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, Vol. 31, Nos. 3-4, 1992, pp. 67-87.

Alston is prepared to acknowledge significant differences between religious experience e.g. non-sensuous perception of the divine and sense perception but thinks that people who think this makes a difference are mostly guilty of either:

epistemic chauvinism: treating criteria developed in one practice as relevant for another, different practice; for example, predictability, public verifiability by all reasonable people = criteria established in a circular fashion within the practice itself;

double standards: e.g. regarding circularity or mediation by interpretative structures as a problem with religious experience even though we do not regard them as a problem with sense perception [Katz probably guilty of this latter].

Given (if we give it and it seems reasonable enough, at least for the people who have the experiences) that they deserve to be regarded as possible sources of knowledge either because of their analogy with sense experience or for their own sakes, the question still arises, however, as to what they are experiential evidence for. After all, what they are taken to be evidence for, how they are interpreted, is in large degree tradition dependent; and perhaps even the experiences themselves, what is given in the experience, is to some extent specific to the different traditions.

We might wonder if this fact shows a significant dis-analogy between sensory perception of the everyday world and mystical experience. However, sensory perception also involves the deployment of metaphysical, perceptual and even empirical conceptual sets, and what it also gives depends on the validity of these same sets. The only dis-analogy in this context is that not everyone shares the requisite mind sets for mystic experiences. However, validity is not necessarily a function, certainly not a function solely, of how widely a mind set is shared. Compare, for example, the idiosyncratic, interest and profession determined perceptual sets, and differences in conceptual sets across languages and cultures or the forms of life of which languages are a part. How widely a mind set is shared is only one factor. It is still necessary to work out some general criteria for the evaluation of mind sets, and to apply such criteria in the case of mind sets involved in mystical experiences.

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Topic Four (continued)

(III)Evaluation independent of religious tradition (cont.)

(B) evaluating religious traditions within which mystical experiences happen:

:how to evaluate a belief system together with its confirming experiences some portion of which are made possible by the system itself.

Introduction

The question of evaluating traditions within which experiences occur, as distinct from evaluating experiences while standing within a tradition, is essentially or largely a question of the criteria for evaluating mind sets/ 'bliks' (R.M. Hare) /sets of categorial presuppositions/overall visions.

Different overall views will cause people to have quite different experiences, not only different interpretations of the same facts but different experienced facts, which will in turn re-enforce the overall views. For example, the sense of the reality of God which arises in the course of the believer's daily experience within his/her religious world-view and belief system becomes part of the evidence for and is open to interpretation by the very belief system which evokes it. Such experience is not irrelevant for the evaluation of the belief system that makes it possible. On the other hand the validity of the belief system is not irrelevant to the legitimate interpretation or the evaluation of the experiences which it helps to promote. Good belief systems make for reliable criteria and give the good interpretation.

On Mind Sets:

By way of reminder of distinctions made in Topic 3, we may distinguish three or four levels of mind set which determine, in general, what we will experience.

Firstly, there are perceptual sets. The existence of such has been scientifically established. See above, under topic 3.

Secondly, there are conceptual sets, e.g. substance-accidents, causal connectivity, things don't just completely disappear, persons as well as things in the universe, perhaps ghosts as well as embodied people, the sacred. There are two major types of conceptual mind set, metaphysical sets e.g. the above, and empirical conceptual sets, e.g. the concept of 'table' or 'watch'.

We could divide conceptual and perceptual sets overall into two kinds: the viable ones and the non-viable ones. A viable conceptual set is (i) such that you can live it, and probably (ii) such as frequently to make possible experiences which might in turn be taken as confirming it. For example, a substance-accidents or thing-properties metaphysics: tables, chairs, dogs, cats, human beings --confirmation all over the place, and can be well lived, though you don't need it for doing basic physics or Buddhism or Humean or Process philosophy. Solipsism on the other hand is on the verge of non-viability if not non-viable --it prohibits experience of other people and even other things. Pure objectivism is in practice also non-viable --it prohibits experience of other people, it turns all people into its, lumps of meat or talking robots with nothing 'behind', tries to live always in the I-it pole of consciousness. It also ends up being self-undermining, as the truth game is a game played between people.

It would not seem to be any particular virtue in general to be on the lower limits of viability. This may be regarded as a fairly recent prejudice deriving from an obsession with certainty and a rationalistic over-evaluation of logical coherence and simplicity at the expense of empirical adequacy. Not just any viable mind set will do, though --see some other criteria below.

As well as conceptual and perceptual sets, there probably are something like emotional/passional/ethical sets also of relevance for cognitivity. For example, it is necessary to be got into the correct passional frame of mind if one is to be doing science --not no passion, without passion nothing happens, but e.g. according to Hume in the human sciences like politics or economics to be motivated by a love for the public, a concern for all, a dis-interest in the sense of non-partisan concern. For example, in the natural sciences a passion for truth, perhaps for insight into the mind of God, an almost mystical quest cf. Spinoza, Einstein, rather than love of money or to make a big name. For example, with regard to God, according to many spiritual writers and the gospels also the way to knowledge is via love.

Related to this family of mind sets, though I think not the same exactly since sometimes unconscious, are what might be called 'psychic' mind sets. The R.C. theologian Robert Doran, who draws on Karl Jung as well as Bernard Lonergan for his influences, has a lot to say about possible psychic obstacles to authentic knowing, evaluating and deciding, and the consequent need for what he calls 'psychic conversion'. See, among other works, relevant chapters from Theology and the Dialectic of History.

Perceptual, conceptual and emotional/ethical and psychic sets are rather difficult to get rid of when we are into them, some more difficult than others. Compare Hume: the philosopher outside his philosophical closet mingles with the rest of mankind, in the exploded opinions of the vulgar.

To be in a religious tradition is, among other things, to have, to think and act and perceive out of, certain conceptual and also ethical/passional/emotional sets. In some traditions it may even be thought to require, for its perfection, certain changes in our perceptual sets.

The 'Time' element: traditions of experience and interpretation

What needs still to be added is the time element. Religions typically constitute themselves as more or less vibrant traditions adapting and developing over time. If we group all the relevant mind sets which determine experience under the term, 'interpretation' or 'interpretative structures", we can think of these as various developing traditions of experience and interpretation - as we have been for a while already!

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Evaluating Religious Traditions of Experience and Interpretation

It seems this is where we are now up to. This problem has yet to be solved (compare the disagreements obvious already from select bibliography). We ourselves will have a go from two different angles:

First Attempt: religious traditions as analogous to systems of metaphysics: (Ferre)

Criteria for the evaluation of complexes of mind sets constituting religious traditions might include the following (cf. Esp. A.N. Whitehead)

1) CERTAIN 'LOGICAL' CRITERIA: there is logical consistency, logical coherence and simplicity. Coherence, because we want a mind-set which provides a fairly unified approach to thinking, perceiving and acting. Simplicity, in the sense that it ought not to be too much more complicated or metaphysically luxuriant (e.g. some versions of Neo-Platonism or of Post-Exilic Angelology) than it needs to be in order to do its job re empirical adequacy, viability and valuational adequacy. We might also mention elegance and beauty, related to the logical criteria though perhaps not quite the same. These also are relative to the job, though probably in a more positive sense than simplicity.

2) secondly, the EMPIRICAL CRITERIA: the criteria of empirical applicability and adequacy, roughly, how well based it is in our experience, and how well it does in making our experience as a whole intelligible. Given the interplay between experience and interpretation this is a bit complicated. The main ideas however have been worked out in Topic 3 on experience and interpretation.

Firstly, the conceptual sets ought themselves to have been chiseled out in a dialogue with experience. E.g. the Christian world view as founded on the experience of the prophets and Christ and Mary of Magdela, Mary of Nazareth and the Apostles. The Buddhist world-view, founded in the enlightenment experiences of the Buddha and following Buddhists.

Secondly, it is an advantage to have confirming experiences in the present, even though some of these are made possible by the belief system itself. It is after all one of the functions of conceptual sets to enable richer experience than we could have without them.

Thirdly, an open system or mind-set, that is, a vision which is dynamic, self-correcting, on the way, is to be preferred over a closed system. This side of the eschaton, there has to be room for experience, which is always had inside some conceptual set or other, to break through the limits imposed by that particular set within which it takes place. Not that this will be expected to happen often. But to deny it as a real possibility is no longer to be playing the cognitive game. Christ ever old and ever new. Or the spirit moving where it wills...

This third criterion already opens up a problem: religious traditions tend to have a special relationship with certain 'originating' experiences, which constitutes that tradition as the tradition which it is, e.g. Christian, rather than Buddhist or Moslem. To quote again Louis Dupre, "The process would constantly pass through new experiences and interpretations, all of which, however, remain both subjectively and objectively dependent upon the original, interpreted experience." (Dupre, 1998, p. 117.) A religious tradition, to this extent, is more analogous to a 'research program' in science (Lakatos) than to science itself, though only analogous, not the same. At the core of the tradition stands, not a set of fundamental formulae, but a set of originating revelatory experiences including a primary interpretative structure indistinguishable from the experience (Dupre again). We do our best to be faithful to this, whatever else.

We will come back to this later. Before that, one more family of criteria need to be mentioned.

3) PRAGMATIC CRITERIA, including the criteria of VIABILITY and more positively VALUATIONAL ADEQUACY: how well can you live it? We are interested not just in knowing but in successful insertion into the real, a mind-set which promotes successful co-ordination in action of person and total environment. We have an interest in a complex that inserts one in a vigorous fashion in the midst of life.

Of course, we want a way of living life fully which is at the same time congruent with the real. However, for a theory to promote successful co-ordination of person and environment is a good sign even from a cognitive point of view. See Alister Hardy, The Biology of God, talking about the biological value of religious experience in general. For this criterion, cf. especially the pragmatism of William James, or Marx's second thesis on Feuerbach, "...In practice (in the praxis) a person must prove the truth, that is, the reality and power, the this-sidedness of their thinking. The dispute over the reality or non-reality of thinking which is isolated from practice is a purely scholastic question."

Some problems in applying these criteria to religious traditions:

In respect of the application of these criteria, this is unfortunately not a straightforward matter. The concrete application of and bias given to each of the various criteria are not entirely tradition and culture independent. Some cultures are more obsessed than others with certainty and will prefer a simple but certain system to a more complicated and more empirically adequate one. We all believe in Ockham's Razor (it is probably already in Aristotle), but some use it with much more glee than others. There is indeed a story that Whitehead is supposed to have told about him and Bertrand Russell, along the lines of, Bertie thinks I'm muddle headed but I think he is simple minded.

Indeed, a final decision will sometimes depend on very personal factors. What is more important to me: applicability and empirical adequacy, or logical coherence and simplicity? How strongly am I into certainty, or is probability only all that can be expected? Does it fit my own experience and lifestyle? Or promise a better, more 'meaningful' lifestyle more in line with my moral intuitions as well as with reality? Does it charm me? Can I afford it? Compare in the Christian gospels the parables of the king going to battle or the person building a tower. This has the effect of making the final decision a rather personal matter. A lot depends on what Hume refers to in a footnote to Part XII of his Dialogues concerning Natural Religion: habit, caprice, inclination, the influence of education, altogether what the Gadamer inspired Hermeneutical theorists express in the word 'horizon'.

This may mean that decisions here are not 'reasonable' in the strong sense of, what all reasonable people, after sufficient examination, might be expected to agree on. It could still be reasonable however for the person themselves, with his or her background; and even for others in the sense that, while we can or can't go this way, we could still understand how a reasonable person coming from another background might decide this way. It is a little bit like paradigm or research program choice in science or choice between one metaphysics and another, only worse. Conversion rather than proof is the name of the game, which is nowadays said by some people even of paradigm choice in science. Which is not to say that either is irrational.

For an investigation of the problems of developing tradition-neutral criteria for the evaluation of religious traditions together with their confirming religious experiences, see especially:

Gavin D'Costa: "Whose Objectivity? Which Neutrality? The Doomed Quest for a Neutral Vantage Point From Which to Judge Religions", Religious Studies, Vol 29, No. 1, March 1993. Pp. 79-95. (= D'Costa, 1993)

D'Costa argues via a few case-studies that the more tradition-neutral the criteria are, the more vague they are likely to be, and consequently the less useful in uniquely picking out one tradition rather than another. Conversely, the more concrete and specific the criteria for choice are, the more tradition dependent they will be found to be.

In respect of criteria, see also Alston, article mentioned above, pp. 83-84, a brief indication of some of the unchauvinistic considerations that strengthen or weaken a doxastic practice's claim to rational acceptance.

Five plus options in respect of criteria for judging between religious and other traditions:

As it happens there are at least five possible positions one could take in respect of the problem of judging between paradigms, research programs, traditions of enquiry, traditions of experience and interpretation etc. These options would seem to apply also to the question of judging between religious traditions. They are more or less as follows, with two sub-categories corresponding to the first two mentioned:

1. There are both transcendental and neutral criteria for judging between religious traditions:

Keith Ward would be an example of this option - at least as understood by D'Costa.

2. There are no transcendental criteria, but there still may be criteria which are neutral between the traditions in question.

This presumes a place to stand which even though culturally and historically bound in itself does not presume commitment to either of the traditions one is judging between, nor any other competitors in the particular realm of enquiry in question, e.g. physics, or religion. It is neutral between the given alternatives, even though not transcendental in the Kantian sense. A judge in a trial might be expected to attain to some such position one might think. It is also what happens within a particular paradigm or research program in respect of alternatives for solution of the problems it sets up.

The difficulty here is in respect of the all comprehensive nature of religious visions. It may be that one is never effectively neutral on the question of religion. There is always already a position taken, or at least a place where I or my community or culture is presently disposed towards. There might be neutrality with respect to particular 'problems' within a tradition, but not between traditions themselves.

D'Costa's argument alluded to above would inspire us to add some sub-categories here:

1') There are transcendental and thus also neutral criteria, but they don't decide very much: the more transcendental, the less useful.
2') There are neutral criteria but they don't decide very much: the more neutral the less useful.

Getting back to our list of options, at least three more:

3.There are neither transcendental nor neutral criteria for judging between traditions etc. but there is still rationality both inside and between traditions of a tradition-constituted variety. This appears to be the position taken by Imre Lakatos in philosophy of science and also Alistair MacIntyre in ethics.

What happens here is that, according to the conception of goals to be approached and rationality criteria in place within ones own tradition, another tradition may be doing better. It then becomes rational to jump into the other tradition - without there being any tradition-neutral rationality at any stage. For example, a Roman Catholic might decide to become an Orthodox after studying the Scriptures and the 'Fathers' and due consideration of the history of the churches etc., all the while with the rationality criteria in place within the enterprise of Roman theology. Or vice versa.

The lack of rationality occurs further down the road, unfortunately, as one gradually absorbs the rationality criteria of the tradition to which one has converted.

4. There are neither transcendental nor neutral criteria for judging between traditions etc., nor is there rationality between traditions, though there is still rationality inside a specific tradition. This seems to be the position of Thomas Kuhn and Paul Feyerabend in the Philosophy of Science.

One might still in fact move from one tradition to another, but the decision is not entirely rational, in any sense of rational tradition bound or not. Eventually one just jumps, a question of conversion, a leap of faith. Enquiry within a paradigm or tradition is pretty rational, but not the jump between paradigm in times of paradigm transition. The youngsters jump into the up and coming paradigm and the old die-hards eventually die out.

5. There are neither transcendental nor neutral criteria, there is no rationality between and no coherent rationality inside also. There may be islands of tradition-constituted rationality here and there but that is about all.

Theology can look a bit this way nowadays, plus also some of the social and human sciences and humanities, different people here and there doing their thing inside their more or less self-enclosed communities of enquiry.

In spite of this, my own perception is that we are in for either 3) or 4), but that the rationality criteria, such as they are, are sometimes rather difficult to make explicit.

Do we in fact need transcendental or neutral criteria anyway?

Criteria do not have to be either transcendental or neutral in order to be right or correct or valid or truth preserving or whatever the goal might be. Indeed, we would expect the good tradition or good traditions to be the ones which, among other things, have the good criteria, e.g. for discriminating between authentic and inauthentic claims to religious experience.

The only problem is, how to know this, except in terms of those criteria themselves, a self-validating or circular rationality. Even worse, if we then apply these criteria to other traditions we are likely to get accused of 'epistemic chauvinism' (Alston, who however uses it of people who apply rationality criteria across e.g. from sense perception or mathematics outside their scope to other 'doxastic practices' e.g. religion). But what if the chauvinistic criteria happen to be the right ones? It appears that we could be right, without being able to justify it in terms acceptable to all reasonable people or even to all people in our particular culture or community.

Things get more and more complicated.

How all this relates to 'The Problem of Other Religions'

We seem now to have reduced the problem of evaluating religious experiences to the problem of judging between religious traditions - though, conceivably, there might be intra-religion disputes as well, e.g. between 'conservatives' and 'liberals', or male chauvinists and feminists or whatever.

Does the three-fold typology in vogue at least since the 80's help at all on this issue, i.e. 'Exclusivism', 'Inclusivism' and 'Pluralism'. (See Alston 1996 for scholarly details.) Briefly, exclusivists think we're right and everyone else is wrong - only one tradition, or perhaps sub-tradition, has the revelation, is true etc. and all other religions are false. Not so long ago we used to think this way even of our fellow Christians and the sister churches within Christianity. Inclusivists think we have the full and definitive truth and salvific revelation, but other religious traditions might have it in a partial and incomplete form. The documents of Vatican II, with the linguistic technology of 'subsists', 'joined to' and 'related to' seem to be 'inclusivist' in this sense. Pluralists think finally that all the great religions anyway are pretty much on a par, with good and bad in each, that all may be paths to salvation for the people inside them but that no religion can claim full and definitive truth. They will still tend to rule out the deadly extremes, Jim Jones, the People's Temple, the Branch Davidians and such like.

The only trouble is, there does not seem to be any one-to-one correspondence between position on criteria and option for one or other of these alternatives in the problem of other religions. Exclusivists may self-consciously use tradition specific criteria to justify their position. But they may also strive to justify it via reference to (allegedly) neutral criteria (e.g. Netland - see D'Costa, 1993). Pluralists may use neutral or even transcendental criteria (once again, 'allegedly' neutral or transcendental criteria if you like), e.g. Keith Ward. On the other hand, John Hick appears to approach a similar, pluralist position via the consistent deployment of criteria which he explicitly derives from a particular religious tradition, namely in his case Christianity (see Hick, 1997). One starts with a belief in the real presence of God within the Christian community, and one sees as a confirmation of this the 'self-evidently valuable and desirable 'fruit of the Spirit', which St Paul for example lists in Galatians 5:22. One sees similar fruit in the other great religious traditions, in spite of their differing conceptions of the Divine/Ultimate/Real. One then extends to them the basic faith that their religious experience also is a cognitive response to a transcendent reality, and employs the hypothesis that the differences in conception derive basically from differences in the receiver. (See Hick 1997, pp. 164-165.)

D'Costa himself has recently come out against this three-fold typology, while being one of its foremost advocates in earlier writing. See D'Costa 1996. He now thinks pluralism is in fact a species of exclusivism, in so far as pluralists do regularly exclude such phenomena as Jim Jones and co. To do this they must be employing criteria of their own. In addition, the pluralist move in and of itself tends to undermine the self-conception of all the great religious traditions. Exclusivists exclude all religions except their own. Pluralists, in effect, exclude all religions, period, at least as far as their own self conception is concerned.

I tend to agree with Hick's response to this (Hick 1997). It goes much too far. Even if we banished the word 'pluralism' from the discussion, "the two rival views would remain so manifestly different that we would still need different names for them" (Hick 1997 161). Also, if we followed on this line, in so far as to make judgements at all is to deploy criteria, everything would end up exclusivist, which would then rob the word of all useful meaning. (Ibid., 162) The question of from where to derive the criteria still remains to be asked and answered. But that challenge can be met - as we've seen in various ways, including that of Hick himself.

The bottom line appears to be: if we could solve 'the problem of other religions' we could probably solve the issue of evaluating religious experiences, but that the problem of other religions while connected is not the same as the problem of developing neutral criteria.

Can we possibly do better than this? Maybe, maybe not, but let us have a go, working in from another direction.

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Second Attempt: multi-faceted communal reflective equilibrium applied to traditions of experience and interpretation.

Let us begin our second attempt with a recall from before, as to one significant feature that distinguishes religious traditions from traditions of enquiry e.g. in science. Religious traditions tend to have a special relationship with certain 'originating' experiences, which constitutes that tradition as the tradition which it is, e.g. Christian, rather than Buddhist or Moslem. To quote again Louis Dupre, "The process would constantly pass through new experiences and interpretations, all of which, however, remain both subjectively and objectively dependent upon the original, interpreted experience." (Dupre, 1998, p. 117.) A religious tradition, to this extent, is more analogous to a 'research program' in science (Lakatos) than to science itself, though only analogous, not the same. At the core of the tradition stands, not a set of fundamental formulae, but a set of originating revelatory experiences including a primary interpretative structure indistinguishable from the experience (Dupre again). We do our best to be faithful to this, whatever else.

This is probably a bit too strong in respect of our distinction. Research programs or paradigms in science consist in more than formulae. Also included are ways of doing science and implicit conceptions of what science is, which can change from one research program to another. On the other side, revelatory experiences are very soon turned into various core 'dogmas', which typically go beyond the primary interpretation in the originating experiences. This tends to make relativise our distinction a little bit, but let us not throw it away altogether.

(Another problem is that certain religious traditions e.g. Hinduism, may not have originating experiences in quite the same sense as the so-called 'historical' religions, such as Judaism, Islam and Christianity. Though certain sub-traditions such as Sankara Vedanta may be more in this line. The bottom line may be that the relationship with experience in the case of religions is different, that if anything they are rather closer to their experiential base, whether guided by a definitive originating experience or not.)

Cross-traditional ways of proceeding rather than cross-traditional criteria?

We can now get to the substance of our 'second attempt'. Instead of looking for cross-traditional criteria, is there any cross-traditional manner of proceeding to study the various traditions which is independent of our membership in any particular one?

One way to compare and contrast various species of traditions of experience and interpretation scientific and religious might be to utilize the notion of multi-faceted communal equilibrium. This is a notion taken from epistemology, philosophy of science and especially philosophical ethics (after its introduction by Rawls in Theory of Justice) and already applied to good effect within theology (Francis Fiorenza) and Philosophy of Religion (esp. Huang) with something similar elsewhere. (For an example from feminist theory, see : Anne Seller, "Realism versus Relativism: Towards a Politically Adequate Epistemology", in Feminist Perspectives in Philosophy, edited Morwenna Griffiths and Margaret Whitford (Indiana Univ. Press, Bloomington and Indianapolis, 1988) pp.169-186.)

For the purposes of the exercise, we can abstract the notion from its context in the search for a good way to do ethics in practic, or for an epistemological place to stand beyond foundationalism, and correspondence versus coherence notions of truth. We can use it as an analytic tool, for the purpose of investigating how a particular tradition works. We are particularly interested in how it works to put constraints on theory making, so that people inside the tradition can't just say anything.

In each case we would need to ask such questions as:

What are the various 'facets' to be kept in equilibrium? For example, theory on one side, experience and experiment on a second, various background theories background both to the theory and to the experimental apparatus and to the interpretation of experimental results on a third.
Who constitutes the community, how is this determined, according to what criteria and typically by what process? Does everyone and every institution count equally in this community, and if not why and how is this determined?

As an important element within this second question: how do people get excluded from the community, put into the category of heretics and schismatics, so that their contributions no longer count?

By what processes is equilibrium typically achieved between all these people and institutions and in respect of all these facets? How does one know that reflective equilibrium has been restored?

Traditions in theology can be just as complicated as traditions in the various sciences, sometimes more so. Indeed one of my colleagues (Dr Ormond Rush) has recently analyzed Roman Catholic theology in terms of the striving for a five-fold equilibrium (five 'facets') between and within a total of twelve loci receptionis. At least this is the ideal, the way things should be - which raises other problems, such as how to get from description to what ought to be. The answer will be, presumably, in terms of criteria implicit in the tradition of experience and interpretation that one is analyzing. The problem is rather similar to that of Heidegger in Being and Time, interpreting Dasein with the goal in mind, among other things, of determining the character of authentic interpreting.

This all might lead to some very interesting results. For example, it could turn out that in respect of processes for inclusion and exclusion, the contemporary analogues to the Holy Inquisition are to be found in university-based secular sciences and philosophy rather than in our ecumenical colleges of theology. The question then might be, why is this, and what is its epistemological significance.

Whatever about this, when it comes to analysis of what actually goes on, it is now all something close to a 'level playing field'. If we want to know what goes on we look and see, we do not make assumptions of superiority - in any direction. And we get all this without destroying the specificity of Faith. Or Faiths. Or of Reason, for that matter.

Does this solve our problems?

Probably not.

We will come to a better understanding of the various different doxastic practices, of their actual differences and similarities. This might have some very interesting consequences in respect of overturning prejudices and assumptions as to how different practices work, including the ones we espouse and the ones we tend to look down on. So it will increase our store of data and clear the decks for a more well-based judgement.

Also, the analytic procedure is capable of being done in each case from within the tradition in question. Compare the work of Francis Fiorenza in Christian/Roman Catholic foundational theology. In fact, it is probably best done by people operating inside the tradition. We are dealing with 'craft-bound' discourses after all, and in respect of such, full understanding is possible only for people inside the craft. This is the case at least so long as the question is, how the tradition works.

But what happens after it is all done? To make any preferences for this tradition over that, we would have to be employing some criteria. These criteria will be either tradition-specific in origin or not, either neutral or not. We may well be back in the same position as at the end of our 'First Attempt' - only that we might have a lot more data to go on, with fewer prejudices, and this is surely an advantage.

Conclusion:

So where does this leave us? Philosophy can bring greater clarity, and it may be, greater charity, to our choosing. But it can't make religious choices for us. We are still like the person building the tower or the king going to war in the Christian gospels, weighing up alternatives. Mind-sets and interpretative structures determine experiences and vice versa. Constraints on theory making and theory choice which determine such mind sets can be very complicated and ill understood. Even when better understood, we are still not home and hosed. And either there is no way of getting out of mind sets or else, just in case there is 'pure experience', the good interpretation of such phenomena depends critically on the mind sets into which it is taken.

Once we start getting reflective, the choice is never between a mind-set and no mind-set but between one mind-set and another,1 one more or less coherent, more or less luxuriant, more or less viable, more or less empirically adequate belief system to live by rather than another. The difficulty here is that as soon as we become reflective on the matter, we realize that we are already operating out of one or more such views, more or less vaguely, more or less explicitly held. To this extent, once we start thinking things through more deeply beyond the taken for granted it may be that we do have to choose or direct ourselves towards some kind of choice, it least in a preliminary prima facie fashion. Of course this choice may be to stay where we find ourselves to be located already, but we now begin to become responsible for it. And there may even be some cognitive, ethical and passional advantage in choosing in an almost 'playful' manner, combining friendliness, flexibility and tolerance to the doubt, caution and modesty which aught for ever to accompany a just reasoner. Not to make a 'god' out of it.

Note that all the so-called "Ways", religious and not so religious (Cosmological, Design, Truth-Goodness-Beauty-Duty-Love, Ontological), and anything equivalent in other traditions, can be construed as players in this game, as also may the classic problems e.g. Problem of Evil:

either

1)as partial cost-benefit analyses of choices of one overall vision rather than another (cf. Hartshorne, Creative Synthesis and Philosophic Method, chapter on "Six Theistic Proofs");

2)as a series of converging probabilities (Swinburne, J.H. Newman) in favour of a particular overall view.

But such rationalization or calculation, while it may clarify our deciding, cannot make it reasonable in the strong sense of what all reasonable people, under pain of being unreasonable, would be forced to accept. Eventually it is up to us, under God's grace (if one is permitted to speak like an orthodox Christian).

End Note

1. or perhaps a number of others, one for home, another one for work bench or lab or philosophical closet, yet another one for church on Sunday.

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