Religious Experience and Religious Lives: An Epistemology 9781666922011, 9781666922028, 1666922013

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Religious Experience and Religious Lives

Religious Experience and Religious Lives An Epistemology

Walter Scott Stepanenko

LEXINGTON BOOKS

Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

Published by Lexington Books An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www.rowman.com 86-90 Paul Street, London EC2A 4NE Copyright © 2023 by The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Available ISBN 978-1-66692-201-1 (cloth) ISBN 978-1-66692-202-8 (ebook) The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

For my parents, Walter and Amy

Contents

Introduction 1 1  Rejecting Anti-Experientialism

9

2  Resisting Strong Experientialism

37

3  Defending Moderate Experientialism

57

4  Religious Experience and Religious Lives

79

5  Religious Experience and Cognitive Science

103

Conclusion: Final Considerations

125

Bibliography

147

Index 153 About the Author

157

vii

Introduction

There was no fire, and no light, in the room; nevertheless it appeared to me as if it were perfectly light. As I went in and shut the door after me, it seemed as if I met the Lord Jesus Christ face to face. It did not occur to me then, nor did it for some time afterward, that it was wholly a mental state. On the contrary, it seemed to me that I saw him as I would see any other man. He said nothing, but looked at me in such a manner as to break me right down at his feet. —Charles Finney, from Autobiography of Charles G. Finney1 I retired to a secret place . . . for prayer about four o’clock in the afternoon. I had struggled long and hard, but found not the desire of my heart. When I rose from my knees, there seemed a voice speaking to me, as I yet stood in a leaning posture—“Ask for sanctification.” When to my surprise, I recollected that I had not even thought of it in my whole prayer . . . But when this voice whispered in my heart, saying, “Pray for sanctification,” I again bowed in the same place, at the same time, and said, “Lord sanctify my soul for Christ’s sake?” That very instant, as if lightning had darted through me, I sprang to my feet, and cried, “The Lord has sanctified my soul!” —Jarena Lee, from Religious Experience and Journal of Mrs. Jarena Lee2

Epistemology is traditionally defined as the study of knowledge, but contemporary epistemologists typically, if not always explicitly, endorse a broader construal of epistemology as the study of the normative status of beliefs. This is a book about justification. For many epistemologists, justification is a positive, but weaker value or status than can attach or be attributed to beliefs compared to knowledge. Traditionally, epistemologists have regarded justification as an essential ingredient or prerequisite for knowledge, but perhaps this is not always the case. In any case, epistemologists 1

2

Introduction

are often concerned with examining the conditions in which a belief is justified for a person. This is called doxastic justification. Epistemologists distinguish doxastic justification from propositional justification, or the justification of a proposition in general, rather than for a particular person who consciously or knowingly espouses that belief and/or proposition. In this book, I am primarily concerned about the justificatory status of religious belief, understood as belief in God, particularly in the cases of persons who hold these beliefs in virtue of having had a religious experience, understood primarily as an experience of God. More technically, my concern in this book is with the doxastic justificatory status of theistic belief grounded in religious experience (grounding being a relation I will have more to say about later in the book). For example, the excerpts quoted above are two autobiographical statements of religious experiences as described by two rather famous nineteenth-century Americans, Charles Finney and Jarena Lee. Both Finney and Lee describe their struggle with belief in God and both record the experiences quoted above as if they are turning points in their lives. This being the case, it’s reasonable to say that both Finney and Lee believe in God and both believe in God at least partly on the basis of having had a religious experience. Is this epistemologically legitimate? Many religious believers believe in God for similar reasons to Finney and Lee. Are these believers justified in believing in God at least partly and/or in virtue of having had a religious experience? In some cases, perhaps even in many cases, I think they are. One of my central purposes in writing this book is to defend this claim. However, a few epistemologists today adopt the view that justification is not an objective property of belief(s). For example, William Alston argues that the lack of epistemological consensus concerning the standards involved in justification suggests that there is no fact of the matter, that epistemologists are “chasing a phantom.”3 Alston proposes to drop talk about justification out of epistemology altogether and to instead discuss different dimensions of positive epistemic status. In response, an objectivist about justification might adopt a pluralistic view of what justification involves. I think there is something to be said in favor of this view, but for the majority of this book, I will admit the possibility that justification is not an objective property of belief(s). This is not so serious a problem because, as Alston notes, even if justification is not an objective property of belief(s), it is still possible to stipulate a definition of justification.4 Of course, such a view might mitigate the importance of the project. As Plantinga observes, the justificatory project has often been conceived the way that it has been conceived precisely because many have thought that there are objective epistemic duties.5 If we stipulate a definition of justification, it may seem as if we have cut away the motivation for discussing justification in the first place, but stipulations may be more interesting than this lets on. After all, if someone issues a challenge to you, and stipulates the terms of success, you might still have some interest in determining whether that challenge can be met. Another reason to mention the possibility that justification is not an objective property of belief is that a similar problem arises in the epistemology of religious



Introduction 3

experience. Epistemologists disagree about the evidential value of religious experience. Call the problem of determining the evidential value of religious experiences the problem of evidential force. One could think that the difficulty of solving the problem of evidential force arises precisely because justification is not an objective property of belief(s). Another of my purposes in writing this book is to resist this claim. In fact, one of my central claims in this book is that a religious believer can be justified in holding a religious belief in virtue of having had a religious experience and that this very same experience can have changing evidential value for this same believer throughout the course of their life in the sense that the experience can play several distinct and changing justificatory roles for a believer throughout their life. This suggests an explanation for the disagreement about the evidential value of religious experience: religious believers are diverse and they often, although not always, develop in the religious life, or in a religious tradition. In my view, various epistemologists of religious experience have emphasized different stages or different prototypical religious believers when advocating their specific view of the evidential value of religious experience. In the end, I believe this explanation puts significant pressure on the view that justification is merely a conventional property of belief(s), but I admit that it is possible to provide an explanation for stipulated success. Consider the stipulation “a good college football team wins 9 games in a season.” There is still an objective fact of the matter whether any particular team satisfies this stipulation and thus it is still possible to explain why they satisfied the stipulation. For example, “because they scored more points overall on the season than they surrendered” is a worse explanation than “because they scored more points than their opponent more times than not.” So, ultimately, there are three, primary interrelated claims I defend in this book. The first claim is that some religious believers, in some cases, are doxastically justified in holding a religious or theistic belief at least partly and/or in virtue of having had a religious experience. The second claim is that a religious experience can play several distinct and changing justificatory roles for a single believer throughout the course of their life. The third claim is that the reason religious experiences can play several distinct and changing justificatory roles for a single believer throughout the course of their life is because religious believers are diverse and that they often grow in a religious tradition, or otherwise develop in the religious life. For this reason, one might say that there are several viable epistemologies of religious experience, or that a fully adequate epistemology of religious experience will be expansive and pluralistic. However, this is not to say that every epistemological approach to religious experience is viable. In my view, there are three major types of epistemological approaches to religious experience and two of them are mistaken. In my view, a fully adequate epistemology of religious experience will only be expansive and pluralistic to the extent that it accommodates several different token approaches within the one viable type. The three primary, interrelated claims I defend in this book cover only these token approaches within this one type. What are these types and which do I defend? In my view, there are three primary responses to the problem of evidential value. The

4

Introduction

first suggests that religious experiences are evidentially valueless. Call this position Anti-Experientialism. The opposite type of response to the problem of evidential force suggests that religious experiences have so much evidential value that they constitute something of a proof of the existence of God. What is a proof? Epistemologists recognize three possible responses to a belief or a proposition: affirmation, rejection, or withholding. In my view, a proof of a belief or proposition is an argument or case that makes withholding with respect to that belief or proposition irrational. Of course, an alleged or apparent proof could be countered by another alleged or apparent proof. So, in my view, a proof of a belief or proposition is an argument or case that makes withholding with respect to that belief or proposition irrational for someone who is otherwise in a condition of evidential ambiguity with respect to that belief or proposition. Thus, the extreme opposite view to Anti-Experientialism is the view that it is possible to construct an argument from religious experience that makes withholding belief in God irrational for someone who is otherwise in a condition of evidential ambiguity with respect to God’s existence. Call this position Strong Experientialism. In my view, both Anti-Experientialism and Strong Experientialism are mistaken positions. In this book, I contrast Anti-Experientialism and Strong Experientialism with a position I call Moderate Experientialism. As a type of response to the problem of evidential value, Moderate Experientialism is the view that religious experiences have enough evidential value to contribute to the justification of belief in God in at least some conditions. So defined, Moderate Experientialism is roughly equivalent to the first claim I defend in this book: the claim that some religious believers, in some cases, are doxastically justified in holding a religious or theistic belief at least partly and/or in virtue of having had a religious experience. Of course, the disjunct in this claim suggests that there are several ways to formulate this thesis and Moderate Experientialism is only a type of response to the problem of evidential value. There are several tokens of this type. The first token view is that religious experiences license faith-venturing. Call this position Faith-Venturing Experientialism (FVE). The second token view is that religious experiences justify participation in faith practices and that successful participation in these practices provides reason to believe that the experiences are veridical. Call this position Justifying-Practice Experientialism (JPE). In my view, there are two primary ways to understand JPE. The first is basically pragmatic. According to this simple pragmatic version, the success of a practice is measured solely in terms of the results it achieves. If many (or most) people engaging in the practice achieve an intended result, that is reason for all to regard that practice as reliable and the beliefs it generates as prima facie true. A more subtle and sophisticated version is less pragmatic. Such a version would not simply measure the success of a practice in terms of the results it achieves. This version would take these results, together with the absence of any reason to think the practice is unreliable, and with other considerations, such as the tying of the practice to the greater tradition and/or to historical precedent, as reason for all to regard that practice as rational to engage in and the beliefs motivating and generated by the practice as prima facie justified. A



Introduction 5

third token view has it that appeals to religious experience contribute to cumulative cases for theism. There are two ways to understand this token. The first has it that appeals to religious experience are valueless outside of a cumulative case. Call this position Cumulative Case Experientialism (CCE). If FVE and JPE are defensible, and I think they are, CCE must be mistaken. In its place, I will endorse what I call Modified Cumulative Case Experientialism (MCCE), or the view that appeals to religious experience can contribute to a cumulative case for theism, even if they are not valueless outside of that context. With these tokens in view, it is easy to see why Moderate Experientialism is a type of response to the problem of evidential value. It’s also easy to see that Moderate Experientialism is really a family of views. If Moderate Experientialism is defensible, and I will argue that it is, Moderate Experientialism also brings the plausibility of my second and third claims clearer into view. If the various token approaches are compossible, a justificatory appeal to a religious experience can play distinct and changing roles for even a single religious believer. This may very well be because the believer grows in acquaintance with the ideological and spiritual resources of a religious tradition. In this way, an exposition and defense of Moderate Experientialism amounts to a de facto defense of my primary claims. The plan of the book is to construct this defense. Of course, epistemological matters are rarely so simple. My second primary claim in this book is roughly equivalent to the claim that there are several viable forms of Moderate Experientialism. My third primary claim is that this joint viability is explained by the diversity and development of religious believers in their lives. The easiest way to defend this third claim is to give it the gloss I just gave it above: to suggest that a believer grows in acquaintance with the ideological and spiritual resources of a religious tradition as they develop in the religious life. Epistemologists might think this presupposes an internalist view of justification against an externalist view. Roughly, internalism is the view that S is justified in holding p if and only if S is aware of the positive epistemic status of p. Roughly, externalism denies that this “higher-level” access is necessary for justification. Throughout this book, I will admit that my central claims are easier to defend if internalism about justification is true. However, I will also attempt a defense of my central claims that I hope is consistent with some understandings of externalism. If this attempt fails, I will fall back on an internalist construal of my claims, but I will leave that evaluation up to the reader and strive for neutrality throughout the book. As I have said, the plan of the book is to construct a defense of Moderate Experientialism. This being the case, I first critique the rival responses to the problem of evidential value. In chapter 1, “Rejecting Anti-Experientialism,” I suggest that there are two primary types of cases one can make in support of Anti-Experientialism. The first type is primarily epistemological. Here, the idea is that, for one reason or another, appeals to religious experiences are not viable candidates for claims with evidential force because they are ultimately subjective, purely private claims that have no genuine function in public discourse. I argue that several different ways of

6

Introduction

motivating this view fail because they ultimately rely on controversial epistemological commitments that we have good reason to reject. The second type is primarily metaphysical. This challenge ultimately depends on the claim that experience of an ontologically simple, atemporal being (i.e., God) is impossible. I argue that this view is not problematic for those who reject this conception of God, but that the challenge ultimately fails even with respect to believers who in fact accept this conception. That’s because, in the end, believers have more reason to believe that an omnipotent and omniscient God could facilitate religious experiences than they have to believe that such experiences are impossible. In chapter 2, “Resisting Strong Experientialism,” I argue that while there is a case to be made for Strong Experientialism, there is reason to think that the case is not as strong as proponents regard it. I argue that even if there are typologies of religious experience that do successfully demonstrate the consistency of religious experience across both the historic and contemporary human population, there may be other viable explanations. For example, the ubiquity and persistence of religious experience across the human population may be explained by the fact that human beings inherit reliably similar cognitive equipment and that these experiences are an experiential byproduct of that functioning. I conclude that while there is a case to be made for Strong Experientialism, the position ultimately is too aspirational, and it should be resisted. In chapter 3, “Defending Moderate Experientialism,” I start out by observing that some forms of Moderate Experientialism run counter to a strain of philosophical thinking descending from W. K. Clifford that suggests it is impermissible to hold a belief one does not know to be true. I argue that Clifford’s view is ill-motivated and that it overlooks the possibility of weaker forms of justification. I defend these forms through an exposition and in defense of FVE and JPE. I close with a discussion of CCE and I argue that the viability of other forms of Moderate Experientialism suggests a move away from this position to MCCE. In chapter 4, “Religious Experience and Religious Lives,” I argue that the various forms of Moderate Experientialism are best interpreted as emphasizing the evidential conditions of religious believers at different points in their religious lives. This being the case, I argue that it is unnecessary to choose between them. I construct ideal types of distinct religious life stages and religious believers, and I demonstrate how a single religious believer could be in position to benefit from one form of Moderate Experientialism without being in a position to benefit from another. I suggest that this view is easier to defend given a commitment to internalism, but I explicate a way of framing my view that is consistent with some understandings of externalism. I conclude that the various forms of Moderate Experientialism are jointly viable and that this fact is best explained by the growing evidential access religious believers have as they develop in the religious life. I suggest that this view is psychologically realistic and that it may very well capture the way religious believers actually develop in the religious life. In chapter 5, “Religious Experience and Cognitive Science,” I examine the view that cognitive scientific explanations of religious beliefs provide a systemic defeater



Introduction 7

for the justificatory status of religious beliefs grounded in religious experience. I argue that even if we assume that there is evidential support for the hypotheses of cognitive science of religion, or even if such evidence is ultimately accumulated, religious believers still have reason to believe that their religious beliefs can be justified when grounded in religious experience. That is because debunking arguments motivated by cognitive science of religion rely more on certain methodological commitments than first-order scientific evidence. Because religious believers can plausibly reject these methodological commitments, religious believers can continue to justify their religious beliefs by appeal to religious experience viz. Moderate Experientialism. However, I do suggest that cognitive scientific explanations of religious experience may create problems for Strong Experientialism, and that the cognitive science of religion is better framed as providing defensive support for critics of religion than the debunking work it is often taken to motivate. Finally, in the conclusion, “Final Considerations,” I return to the considerations presented at the beginning of this chapter. I argue that disagreement about justificatory criteria may be better explained by the fact that epistemologists are focused on different aspects of what it means to lead a life in which one has a justified belief than by the supposition that there are no objective criteria at all. I then conclude with a discussion of whether it is possible to go further than justification and suggest that religious experiences ground knowledge of God. I argue that my project provides no reason to think that Pyrrhonian skepticism can ultimately be overcome, but non-trivial points can be scored against the Pyrrhonian insofar as one can be prima facie justified in believing that they possess a prima facie justified belief. As a consequence, I admit that my view is fideistic in a sense, but I argue that in other senses, it is not. I close with a brief discussion of experience and evil. I admit that the evidential problem of evil is a serious problem for theists, but I argue that the epistemic principles I have defended in this project do not exacerbate that problem. I conclude that insofar as there are viable theistic responses to the problem, religious experiences can contribute to justified belief in God. With this plan now in view, I should say a bit more about the scope of the project. My concern here is with religious experience and religious life. However, the scope of my project is practically restricted to the religious experience of monotheists and the lives they lead. I take it that my claims are equally true of all extant forms of monotheism. Nonetheless, most of my examples will draw from my own tradition, the Christian tradition. Thus, one might think the project better described as a concern for Christian experience and Christian life. I will not protest this narrowing of scope, but insofar as I believe that what I have to say of Christian experience and Christian life is applicable to other monotheists and monotheistic traditions, I will continue to speak of religious experience and religious life, even as I draw from the resources of Christian tradition. However, when I speak of religious experience, I mean primarily an experience of God, and when I speak of religious belief, I mean primarily belief in God, unless otherwise stated. I do not introduce any technical definitions of experience here or construct a typology of religious experience and I assume that the

8

Introduction

notion is clear enough. Nevertheless, I do have a bit more to say about kinds of experience and whether religious experiences are perceptual in the conclusion. Because my primary concern is with assessing epistemological approaches to religious experience and synthesizing the viable approaches, I sidestep terminological and stipulative difficulties here. Nevertheless, the following discussion of various epistemological approaches will clarify the working definitions of different philosophers with respect to the nature of experience, religious or otherwise, as is necessary.

NOTES 1.  Charles Grandison Finney, Autobiography of Charles G. Finney: A Lifetime of Evangelical Preaching to Christians Across America, Revealed (Pantianos Classics, 1876), 15. 2.  Jarena Lee, Religious Experience and Journal of Mrs. Jarena Lee Giving an Account of Her Call to Preach the Gospel (Pantianos Classics, 1836), xii–xiii. 3.  William Alston, Beyond “Justification”: Dimensions of Epistemic Evaluation (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005), 21. 4.  William Alston, Beyond “ustification”: Dimensions of Epistemic Evaluation (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2005), 27. 5. Alvin Plantinga, Warrant: The Current Debate (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993).

1 Rejecting Anti-Experientialism

The problem of evidential force is the problem of determining whether appeals to religious experience in defense of religious belief have any justificatory value. If we believe that such appeals have significantly strong justificatory value, then we will believe that religious experiences have great evidential force. If we believe that such appeals have only marginal justificatory value, then we will believe that religious experience has only marginal evidential force. In this sense, justificatory value corresponds with evidential force. The more evidential force an appeal has the more justificatory value that appeal has. Thus, one way of denying that an appeal has any justificatory value is to suggest that the ground of that appeal has no evidential force. Of course, things get more complicated when a belief has multiple grounds. In a cumulative case, for example, some philosophers argue that grounds interact with one another and that their evidential force is not simply additive. This is an important issue, and I will return to it in chapter 3. However, even in this case, if justificatory appeals to religious experience have no evidential force whatsoever, they cannot interact with other grounds in this way. Therefore, if it makes sense to talk of the evidential force of religious experience, there must be good reason to reject the view that such experiences have no evidential force. In the introduction, I labeled the view that religious experience has no evidential force Anti-Experientialism. Constructing a case against Anti-Experientialism is thus a task of first-rate importance in a defense of the view that religious experiences have any evidential force whatsoever. There are two types of cases to make in support of Anti-Experientialism. The first type is primarily epistemological. Here, the concern is specifically for the epistemic status of a religious experience. In the following, I distinguish two ways of arguing that religious experiences have dubious evidential value. The first way suggests that religious experiences are not properly basic and so whatever evidential value they have will derive only from the evidential force of an explanation that they are veridical experiences. 9

10

Chapter 1

The second way suggests that religious experiences are not cognitive and that they are not even the kind of thing that can count as evidence in an explanation. The second type of argument for Anti-Experientialism is primarily metaphysical. Here, the argument is that there are metaphysical reasons to suspect religious experiences cannot possibly be veridical. I argue that none of these cases is ultimately convincing and that there are reasons to reject Anti-Experientialism. Given the failure of Anti-Experientialism, I conclude that religious experiences do have evidential force, although determining just how strong and to what extent they do have evidential force will require two additional chapters.

EVIDENTIALISM AND THE ARGUMENT FROM FOUNDATIONALISM When we inquire into the evidential value of religious experience, we are either accepting or playing along with evidentialism. When philosophers of religion talk about or complain about evidentialism, they usually follow Plantinga in defining evidentialism as the view that religious belief is only justified by arguments.1 However, evidentialism is also defined more broadly as the epistemological thesis that justification of a belief requires a believer to possess evidence in support of that belief, where evidence is not restricted to propositions.2 Philosophers of religion sometimes speak of evidentialism in this sense as well. For example, Trent Dougherty and Chris Tweedt define evidentialism as the view that “for any theistic belief someone justifiably holds, she holds that belief on the basis of adequately supporting evidence she has.”3 When inquiring into the evidential value of religious experience, it is this sense of evidentialism that one is either accepting or playing along with. However, even this sense obfuscates a distinction one needs to make in this context. Dougherty and Tweedt in this definition speak of “adequately supporting evidence.” This definition seems to suggest that justification only emerges or is rationally ascribed to evidence of a particular strength. Epistemologists of religious experience, however, often allow for the possibility of prima facie justification and recognize weaker forms of evidence.4 This possibility suggests a distinction. So, to start, let’s define some forms of evidentialism (in the broader sense): Strong Evidentialism: S is justified in believing p if and only if S has ultima facie reason for p. Moderate Evidentialism: S is justified in believing p if and only if S has prima facie reason for p. Weak Evidentialism: S is justified in believing p if S has pro tanto reason for p.

Now, Weak Evidentialism may seem strange to include as an account of justification. However, Phenomenal Conservatists often recognize something like this bar. Consider, for example, Trent Dougherty and Blake McAllister’s definition of what



Rejecting Anti-Experientialism 11

they call “Reason Commonsensism (RC): If it seems to S that p, then S has pro tanto reason for believing p.”5 Weak Evidentialism is consistent with RC. Of course, Phenomenal Conservatists might argue that justification requires further reasoning and so endorse Strong Evidentialism, but their position nonetheless reveals the bar of Weak Evidentialism. Consider, for example, a detective investigating a murder scene. The discovery of a shell casing at the scene is a pro tanto reason to believe that the murderer used a gun. Is it also a prima facie reason? Perhaps, but suppose next that the detective looks over the body and sees a gunshot wound. Here, it seems the evidence base is stronger. Do these pieces of evidence constitute an ultima facie reason to believe that the cause of death was by gunshot? No, because the victim may have been shot, but perhaps the shot wasn’t fatal, and the victim died of strangulation or a heart attack. Of course, various partisans might claim that the detective is not justified in believing anything about the cause of death until more evidence has been gathered but defending one of these evidential bars is not my present concern, distinguishing them is, and this case seems to show that these distinctions hold some water. In giving this account, one might be tempted to think that I am confused about the meaning of pro tanto and prima facie reasons. After all, if pro tanto simply means “to some extent” and prima facie means “on first impression,” the classes of pro tanto and prima facie reasons will be coextensive. In this project, I want to resist this characterization for reasons that will become clearer in subsequent chapters. Consider, for example, a person who is a) only briefly acquainted with the relevant, ideal evidence; b) acquainted with more of the relevant, ideal evidence than not; and c) acquainted with all of the relevant, ideal evidence, where ideal evidence is defined as the evidence an omniscient observer would consult when assessing the truth of a position. In my terminology, I will say that a person in condition a) has a pro tanto reason to accept a position, a person in condition b) has a prima facie reason to accept a position, and a person in condition c) has ultima facie reason to accept a position. Thus, as I will understand the terms, the classes of pro tanto reasons and prima facie reasons are not coextensive; here, prima facie means something more like “correct until proven otherwise,” rather than merely “on first impression.” (To buttress this conclusion, consider these distinctions in the context of probabilistic reasoning. If we endorse a form of probabilistic reasoning, it will be possible to possess a reason for a position that a) makes a position likelier given its prior probability, b) makes a position much likelier than not, and c) makes a position very likely. In my terminology, I will say that a person in condition a) has a pro tanto reason to accept a position, a person in condition b) has prima facie reason to accept a position, and a person in condition c) is (perhaps asymptotically) approaching ultima facie reason to accept a position. For those who are disinclined to accept this probabilistic picture of reasoning, note that I will primarily utilize the preceding definitions given in terms of evidential access.) Now, the distinction between Strong, Moderate, and Weak Evidentialism is important to note because different forms of Experientialism aspire to one bar or another. For example, Strong Experientialism is concerned with constructing a proof

12

Chapter 1

of the existence of God. This suggests that Strong Experientialism aspires to the evidential bar of Strong Evidentialism. Moderate Experientialism is more diverse. MCCE seems to share the Strong Experientialism commitment to Strong Evidentialism insofar as it suggests that religious experiences contribute to a cumulative case for theism (but remember from the introduction that in this view, religious experiences alone have very little evidential value). However, JPE claims that religious believers are justified in virtue of having undergone a religious experience, but that these experiences do not constitute a proof of God’s existence. Thus, JPE suggests religious experiences have only prima facie evidential value and thus aspires to the bar of Moderate Evidentialism. Finally, FVE suggests that religious experiences only licenses leaps of faith. This suggests that religious experiences only provide pro tanto reason to believe in God. Thus, FVE aspires to the bar of Weak Evidentialism. This variety is also important to note because Anti-Experientialism could be interpreted as making stronger or weaker claims, corresponding to the stronger and weaker forms of Evidentialism. Anti-Experientialism could be interpreted as the view that religious experiences have no evidential force whatsoever because they are not the kind of thing that could be evidence in the first place. In this case, the AntiExperientialist would be suggesting that religious experiences do not even provide pro tanto reason for belief in God. Here, the evidential bar in mind is the bar of Weak Evidentialism. However, the view could also be interpreted as making the claim that religious experiences have no evidential force because they do not count as sufficient sources of evidence. This could be interpreted as the denial that religious experiences have evidential value that does not meet the bar of Moderate or Strong Evidentialism. It is not always clear what critics of the epistemology of religious experience have in mind. Of course, what is important are the arguments one could make in either direction. What possible arguments might one construct in support of Anti-Experientialism? Here is a start. According to William Rowe,6 C. D. Broad once suggested7 something close to the following principle: “when someone has an experience which he takes to be an experience of x, it is rational to conclude that he really did experience x unless we have some positive reason for thinking otherwise.”8 The problem with this principle, in Rowe’s view, is that when we are discussing experiences, we find ourselves in one of two conditions. In the first condition, we know “how to proceed to find positive reasons, if there should be any, for rejecting an experience as probably delusive.”9 In the second condition, we do not know this. In Rowe’s view, we are in such a position, the second condition, with respect to religious experience. God can freely reveal Himself to one person at one time and not to another, or even to one person at one time and not to that person at another time. For Rowe, this complicates the discovery of defeating conditions. For this reason, Rowe concludes that a principle like Broad’s is not applicable in the case of religious experience.10 Now, how exactly should we understand this argument? As I interpret him, Rowe is articulating what I will call an Argument from Foundationalism for AntiExperientialism. I will explain. In this argument, Rowe is advancing an evidentialist



Rejecting Anti-Experientialism 13

objection to theism in the sense that he is arguing that there is insufficient evidence for theism (evidentialist in both senses described above). Plantinga has argued that evidentialist objections to theism are grounded in an antecedent commitment to foundationalism.11 In his view, there are two primary forms of foundationalism: ancient foundationalism and modern foundationalism.12 According to Plantinga, “foundationalism is . . . a thesis about rational noetic structures.”13 “Here the crucial notion is that of believing one proposition on the evidential basis of others.”14 Of course, not every proposition can be held on the basis of others. That would result in an infinite regress. The foundationalist avoids this problem by suggesting that some beliefs can serve as the foundation of a noetic structure. These beliefs are the properly basic beliefs in the noetic structure. The difference between ancient and modern foundationalism amounts to a difference in the conditions each form of foundationalism suggests a belief must satisfy in order to count as properly basic. Ancient foundationalism says that a belief is properly basic “if it is either selfevident or evident to the senses.”15 Modern foundationalism, by contrast, says that a belief is properly basic “only if either self-evident or incorrigible.”16 Here, the modern foundationalist excises the ancient foundationalist’s commitment to the view that sensory experience is properly basic. Following Descartes, the modern foundationalist latches onto certainty as a criterion of proper basicality.17 Because sensory experiences can fail to be veridical, they are not sources of certainty. So construed, modern foundationalism suggests that it is justifiable to believe in the basis of sense experience only if those experiences are legitimated by a properly basic belief or something that follows from a properly basic belief or some combination of the two. Now, Rowe suggests that sense experience, unlike religious experience, is something that we know how to defeat. Thus, his view is clearly that religious experiences are not properly basic. This is evidenced by his commitment to the thought that they do not have evidential value until they are corroborated, or at minimum, not disconfirmed, as he emphasizes. This suggests that his view is that religious experiences only have evidential value when there are rationally acceptable propositions that supports its claim to veridicality, either positively in providing reason to believe that the experience was veridical or negatively in providing no ground for believing that the experience was not veridical, as he emphasizes. So, ultimately, Rowe’s view is that the evidential value of a religious experience must be derived from other propositions one holds on the basis of properly basic beliefs or these in combination with properly basic beliefs. In fact, Rowe says that he wants to set Broad’s argument “on as strong a foundation as can reasonably be constructed.”18 How exactly should we formulate this argument? It seems to follow along these lines: P1. Religious experiences are not properly basic. P2. Some religious believers ground their belief in God in religious experience. P3. These beliefs are not properly basic or entailed by properly basic beliefs (or experiences).

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P4.

 hey must find support from properly basic beliefs, propositions derived T from properly basic beliefs, or some combination. P5. Theistic belief grounded in religious experience does not find such support. C1. Therefore, religious experience provides no evidential support for theistic belief.

For Experientialists, the most controversial premises in this argument are P1 and P4. (Other religious epistemologists might take more exception with P3 or P5.) Clearly, Rowe’s defense of P1 relies on either ancient or modern foundationalism. Both suffice for an acceptance of P1. His remarks about the inability to find defeaters for theistic beliefs grounded in religious experience suggest an acceptance of P5. Experientialists can reject his argument by denying either of these premises. I will return to this argument in a moment, but first I want to explore another argument that the preceding suggests. If religious experiences are not basic and they must find support from properly basic beliefs, propositions derived from properly basic beliefs, or some combination of the two, then it seems as if the evidential force does not derive from the experience at all. In that case, the evidential force derives from the explanation that an experience is veridical. Here, the experience is not the bearer of evidential value. Rather it is various sense experiences and/or other propositions that are the bearers of evidential value. The experience is regarded as veridical solely because the best explanation for the sense experience commitments is that a religious experience occurred. Something like this view has been suggested by Wayne Proudfoot.19 In his view, religious believers “who identify their experiences in religious terms are seeking the best explanations for what [happened] to them.”20 However, Proudfoot also distinguishes between what he calls descriptive and explanatory reduction. A descriptive reduction amounts to “the failure to identify an emotion, practice, or experience under the description by which the subject identifies it.”21 Explanatory reduction, on the other hand, “consists in offering an explanation of an experience in terms that are not those of the subject and that might not meet with his approval.”22 In Proudfoot’s view, the former, but not the latter is unacceptable. However, in suggesting that all of the explanatory work is done by the propositions that populate an explanatory reduction, Proudfoot is suggesting that religious experiences have no evidential value. They count as evidence in the sense that they populate an explanandum: they are to be explained. What they do not do is count as something with evidential value themselves. This view is characteristic of scientific debunking arguments against religious experience and I will return to those in chapter 5. My present concern is to articulate this version of the Argument from Foundationalism. Here, the argument proceeds along the same lines as the above argument. The difference is that where Rowe dismisses the possibility of argumentative support for a theistic belief grounded in a religious experience, this argument suggests that even if there is such support, the experience itself has no evidential value. Thus, we can revise the above argument as follows:



Rejecting Anti-Experientialism 15

P1. Religious experiences are not properly basic. P2. Some religious believers ground their belief in God in religious experience. P3. These beliefs are not properly basic or entailed by properly basic beliefs (or experiences). P4. They must find support from properly basic beliefs, propositions derived from properly basic beliefs, or some combination. P5*. If such beliefs do find support, the justification of that belief depends on the evidential value of that support, not the experience itself. C2. Therefore, religious experiences do not have evidential value. It seems to me that this argument is what Rowe is actually after when he suggests that Broad’s case needs to be set on a better foundation. His point is just that experience itself is no support for anything. This is what I call the Argument from Foundationalism. (In one way, this formulation of the argument is misleading. Many coherentists reject the very notion of properly basic beliefs and noninferential/ nondoxastic justification. Thus, a coherentist could accept the above argument by modifying P4 to suggest that any propositional belief, such as a religious belief, must find support from other propositional beliefs and inserting a premise claiming that no experiences and/or beliefs are basic. I sidestep this coherentist understanding of the argument simply for the sake of the simplicity of exposition, but I believe most of what I have to say in the following could be amended as a response to this version of the argument.) So, what should we say about this argument? Perhaps we might simply mount a case against foundationalism. In the present context, however, this seems unwise. First, the very appeal to religious experience in defense of the justificatory status of a religious belief looks quite a bit like an appeal to a ground and those kinds of appeals are the kind of appeals very much at home in a form of foundationalism. Second, in this context, the move away from foundationalism is not very strategically useful. In what follows, I will argue that Anti-Experientialism is ill-motivated if an argument for the position is just an application of a more general skepticism.23 It would be unfair to then turn around and argue that Anti-Experientialism is ill-motivated because it rests on a commitment to foundationalism and foundationalism is mistaken. That would seem to stipulate the failure of this form of Anti-Experientialism. In this context, it is better to argue that foundationalism does not in and of itself provide support for Anti-Experientialism. So, perhaps it is better to question P1. Here, we could argue that we are not rejecting foundationalism in toto, but ancient and modern foundationalism in particular. This looks like a promising strategy, but it is immediately complicated by the fact that it is not clear how to mount such an argument without begging the question. If we simply prefer a modified form of foundationalism because it allows us to treat religious experience as properly basic, it’s not clear that we have established any noncircular reason to prefer that form in this present context. By contrast, if we prefer ancient or modern foundationalism because it prohibits us from treating religious

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experience as properly basic, it’s not clear that we have established any non-circular reason to prefer that form in this present context either. So, it might seem as if we have arrived at a methodological stalemate. I want to resist this contention. If it is possible to find some reason to suspect either ancient foundationalism or modern foundationalism (or both) are inadequate independent of the convictions one has about religious experience, then it will be possible to develop a case for thinking that a more expansive foundationalism is needed. Given no antecedent reason to think religious experiences cannot be properly basic in an expanded foundationalism, the possibility and desirability of such an expansion would undercut the argument from foundationalism for Anti-Experientialism. In fact, such arguments are not hard to find. Start with modern foundationalism. Plantinga argues that “the history of modern philosophy through Thomas Reid makes abundantly plain [that] it is at best extremely unlikely that there are any decent (noncircular) arguments” that justify believing on the basis of sense experience, given the demands of modern foundationalism.24 William Alston develops a comprehensive survey of the possible means of generating a modern foundationalist argument for the justifiability of sense experience and develops a powerful argument for the conclusion that the task is impossible.25 For brevity’s sake, I can only refer the reader to that volume. However, I think it will help, for present purposes, to recite a cogent analogy developed more recently by Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski. The analogy is as follows: Suppose the thermostat on your air conditioning system is set at 72 degrees Fahrenheit, and imagine that the system can read itself. If it is set at 72, it “knows” it is set at 72, and it knows what it reads when it goes on and off. The system could tell that it is malfunctioning if it failed to go on when the thermostat read above 72, but it would not know that it is accurate if it regularly went on at 73 and off at 72. Accuracy requires a certain relation between the system as a whole and the ambient air temperature. If it gives unstable or inconsistent readings, it “knows” it is unreliable, but it has no way to tell that it is reliable if it gives consistent readings. In the same way, if we regularly had inconsistent memories or unstable perceptions, we would know that something was amiss with these faculties; they could not be trusted. But consistent and stable memories and perceptions are not sufficient to tell that they are reliably accurate.26

I think Zagzebski is right. By regarding only self-evident and incorrigible beliefs as properly basic, modern foundationalism sticks us with only our faculties, but there is no way to validate the reliability of those faculties that detect the outside from the inside.27 Thus, modern foundationalism prohibits us from believing on the basis of sense perception.28 Now, the skeptic might protest here. They might argue that the proper conclusion to draw from the preceding is the conditional, “if we are justified in believing on the basis of sense experience, modern foundationalism is false.” However, a true conditional is true even in cases in which the antecedent is false and the consequent is true. So, perhaps this is the exact case we find ourselves in. If so, we are not justi-



Rejecting Anti-Experientialism 17

fied in believing on the basis of sense experience, but then it seems as if we have no reason to reject modern foundationalism. Now, there is something to this response. Skepticism is a difficult position to vanquish, and perhaps doing so is ultimately impossible, but in the present context, this reply has less bite than it might appear to have. First, if the motivation for Anti-Experientialism ultimately comes down to general epistemological skepticism, then there is nothing especially wrong about justificatory appeals to religious experience. In that case, the Argument from Foundationalism for Anti-Experientialism would flounder. Second, in the context of the foundationalism stalemate regarding the admissibility of religious experience as properly basic, we went looking for an independent reason to prefer a more expansive foundationalism over modern and ancient foundationalism. The assumption that beliefs based on sense experience are justified is a consideration of the sort we went looking for. It is independent of any convictions we might have about the epistemic status of religious experience. So, the preceding leaves ancient foundationalism. Is there any independent reason to reject ancient foundationalism? Well, consider memory. Plantinga argues that in any instance of memory what we remember is not just some sensuous imagery, but this sensuous imagery along with “a sort of sense of pastness.”29 Moreover, Plantinga suggests that memories are “typically formed in the basic way.”30 That is, we do not typically “reason to them from other propositions, or accept them on the evidential basis of other propositions.”31 Of course, we might think that the sense of pastness associated with our memories is best explained by the supposition that they are actually of the past, but Plantinga rightly points out that this will not do. First, we can only count on the very possibility of their being a best explanation by remembering that in the case of other phenomena, there has been a best explanation. Clearly, this exercise involves the use of memory. Second, we can only give a best explanation for our memories by relying on memory. As Plantinga asks, “how can I hold that whole explanation and argument in my mind at once?”32 So, it seems that there is no way to justify the use of our memory by reasoning from self-evident or incorrigible propositions or sense perception. Thus, it seems as if we have good reason to regard memory as properly basic. This being the case, we have reason to prefer a more expansive form of foundationalism than the ancient and modern variants. We also have reason, independent of our convictions about the epistemic status of religious experience, to prefer this expansive form of foundationalism over ancient and modern foundationalism. Therefore, we have reason to reject P1. This reason is given by the fact that experience in general is properly basic. Of course, given the above rejoinder on behalf of skepticism, we haven’t ruled out all routes to Anti-Experientialism. Perhaps AntiExperientialism is best viewed as a specification of a more radical skepticism. This needn’t worry us because in that case, there is nothing specifically defective about justificatory appeals to religious experience. There would be something specifically defective about justificatory appeals to any experience or justificatory appeals in general. As I said above, radical skepticism is a difficult, if not impossible, position to

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vanquish. Nevertheless, most philosophers still go about their business, despite this unfortunate fact. Epistemologists of religious experience may do the same. Before we move on, a complication is worth commenting on. Religious experience can be authentic experience and yet fail to be veridical. In counting religious experience as properly basic, it may seem as if this distinction has been overlooked. To see why it has not, we need to make another distinction. It is not just that we need an expanded form of foundationalism, we also require what we might call a form of modest foundationalism. Alston defines modest foundationalism as the view that “there are fallible and corrigible foundations, beliefs that possess prima facie justification from experience, but where this justification is subject to being overridden by sufficient indications to the contrary.”33 This view is consistent with what Plantinga calls weak foundationalism: “the view (1) every rational noetic structure has a foundation, and (2) in a rational noetic structure, non-basic belief is proportional in strength to support from the foundations.”34 Elsewhere, Plantinga describes this view as Reidian foundationalism after Thomas Reid.35 For the sake of consistency with the above terminology, I will call the view Modest Expanded Foundationalism (MEF). In this view, the properly basic beliefs are more numerous and varied than in ancient and modern foundationalism, but they are fallible and subject to potential defeaters. In this way, MEF can count a religious experience as properly basic without suggesting that all such experiences are necessarily veridical. However, my way of understanding MEF differs from Alston and Plantinga’s in two ways. First, in my view of MEF, religious experiences can be properly basic, although they are fallible and subject to potential defeaters, but unlike Alston, I will treat religious beliefs formed in response to these experiences as nonbasic.36 Second, unlike Plantinga, I will not require a strict proportionality requirement. In my view of MEF, properly basic beliefs and/ or experiences provide at least some reason to adopt a belief, but the belief adopted need not be in proportion to the strength of its foundation. Of course, in adopting MEF, we are rejecting Rowe’s claim that we know of no potential defeaters for a claim that a religious experience was veridical. This is fine enough because Rowe is clearly wrong here. If we have reason to believe that a subject was on psychedelic drugs at the time they had a religious experience, that would be reason to suspect the experience was not veridical. If we have reason to believe that the subject was in a coma at the time they claimed to have had a veridical religious experience, that would be reason to suspect the experience was not veridical. Thus, Rowe is just wrong. We can think of potential defeaters for a religious experience. Now, it might seem that, by adopting MEF, we have set up Anti-Experientialism to fail. I disagree for several reasons. First, insofar as we have independent reason, or reasons independent of our convictions about the epistemic status of religious experience, we have independent reason to prefer MEF. Second, insofar as this view suggests that properly basic beliefs are only prima facie justified and subject to defeaters, this view leaves open the possibility that Anti-Experientialism could be motivated by the view that there are systematic, inevitable defeaters for epistemically basic religious experiences. So, adopting MEF does not in and of itself rule out



Rejecting Anti-Experientialism 19

Anti-Experientialism. Nor does MEF entail any form of Experientialism. MEF is consistent with the possibility that beliefs interact with each other in the way CCE and MCCE suggest. It is also consistent with the possibility that other considerations, in tandem with beliefs grounded in religious experience, provide the resources to construct an argument of the strength Strong Experientialism seeks. MEF is also consistent with the other forms of Moderate Experientialism. In this way, MEF is theoretically consistent with treating religious experience as either sufficient evidence or evidence simpliciter. Thus, MEF is compatible with both Strong and Moderate Evidentialism.37 Insofar as a reason or evidence base provides prima facie justification and prima facie grounding is stronger than the support a belief gets from a pro tanto reason, MEF is also consistent with Weak Evidentialism a fortiori. With this in mind, I want to briefly address one final point in regard to AntiExperientialism. As stated, MEF is consistent with (at least) two popular positions in contemporary religious epistemology: Proper Functionalism and Phenomenal Conservatism. Proper Functionalism is a form of externalism. Briefly, Proper Functionalism suggests that beliefs are warranted when they are products of cognitive faculties aimed at truth, operating in an environment that they were well-designed for. Phenomenal Conservatism is a form of internalism. Briefly, Phenomenal Conservatism suggests that a belief is justified when it is based on a nondoxastic seeming state supporting that belief and there is no reason to think otherwise. Now, these two positions are compossible because the former is a theory of warrant and the latter is a theory of justification. However, if we assume or believe that a warranted belief is also justified, we could just prefer Proper Functionalism over Phenomenal Conservatism.38 In any case, MEF is consistent with both positions. Phenomenal Conservatism clearly makes use of a belief-experience grounding relation, but Proper Functionalism can also suggest that truth-aiming properly functioning cognitive faculties ground beliefs in this way in environments they were well-designed to do so in. It is just that Proper Functionalism can also suggest that beliefs can be warranted even when they do not stand in this grounding relation. Now, what exactly does this have to do with Anti-Experientialism? Well, insofar as MEF is consistent with Phenomenal Conservatism, one can profit from the case Phenomenal Conservatists have developed against factive views of evidence. A factive view of evidence suggests that evidence is only propositional, and that experience is therefore not a form of evidence.39 Adopting the factive view of evidence is one way to motivate P5* above: the claim that when an experience finds support from properly basic beliefs and/or beliefs derived from properly basic beliefs, it is those propositions that have evidential value, and not the experience itself. Logan Paul Gage has argued that there are some serious problems with views of this sort.40 First, Gage points out that if the factive view is true then misleading evidence is not evidence at all.41 For example, a misleading appearance might suggest that a particular object is present that is not in fact present. The appearance seems to be evidence for thinking that it is present, but the factive view suggests that it is not. That seems wrong (and note that this point does not rely on the claim that a misleading appearance is necessarily justificatory,

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only that it counts as evidence). A proponent of the factive view might suggest that the person in question is aware of the proposition “it seems to me that O is present,” and that this proposition is the evidence one has for believing that the object is in fact, present, but Gage argues that it is “psychologically implausible that we typically have beliefs about our appearance states rather than about the world itself.”42 However, even if a person did form a higher-level belief of this sort, it seems as if there are no other propositions a person believes to justify the higher-level belief.43 In this case, the person in question is not even prima facie justified in believing the object to be present. Thus, in this case, the factive view seems to lead back to skepticism. Second, if the factive view is true, then most people are not justified in believing historical facts because most people do not possess access to archaeological or historical evidence.44 That also seems wrong. Most people believe historical truths on the basis of testimony. However, the factive view suggests that it is not testimony that counts as evidence, but the true propositions the testifier testifies to that are the evidence. That also seems wrong. Thus, Gage concludes that the factive view ultimately offers “a revisionist view of evidence.”45 I think there is much to be said for Gage’s conclusion. In defense of the factive view, Trent Dougherty suggests that experience is “that by which we gain our evidence” but that experience is not itself evidence.46 In response, Earl Conee and Richard Feldman suggest that a proposition generated by experience “reports the evidence or represents it [but] . . . is not identical to the evidence.”47 It seems to me Conee and Feldman are right. Consider a first-contact scenario in which a representative of a color-blind population meets a representative of a color-sighted population. Assume that the color-blind representative cannot distinguish between green and blue and they use the term “grue” to refer to both. In a dispute over whether blue and green count as distinct colors using samples, the factive view would suggest that each representative is in respective possession of either the proposition “The two samples are different colors” or “The two samples are not different colors” as each examines the samples. Now, if each proposition were not a representation of the experience that generates it, if each were merely a functional response to the experience, the qualia involved in the experience could differ and the proposition generated could remain the same. That seems bizarre. We not only want to say that what generates the proposition is the nature of the experience, but that the proposition generated is generated specifically because it is an accurate recording or rendering of the experience. Of course, things can go wrong, but that they can go wrong suggests that the proposition generated can have more or less fidelity with respect to an experience and this relation of fit is the kind of thing we would expect when dealing with a representation of evidence. This conclusion strengthens the preceding case for thinking that religious experience can count as evidence. Not everyone will agree. Externalists might find Gage’s second point to rely too strongly on internalist considerations,48 but Proper Functionalists and perhaps others will accept Gage’s first critique of the factive view. Thus, in adopting MEF we can remain neutral between competing accounts of justification



Rejecting Anti-Experientialism 21

and yet have reason to reject the factive view of evidence. This buttresses the case against the Argument from Foundationalism for Anti-Experientialism. Of course, experience (including seemings) could count as evidence in general and there could still be a problem with religious experience in particular. As I mentioned above, there may be systematic, inevitable defeaters for epistemically basic religious experiences. So, one could still mount a case for Anti-Experientialism along these lines. It is to such an argument I now turn.

THE NON-COGNITIVE ARGUMENT In On the Nature and Existence of God, the very capable philosopher Richard Gale argues that while sense experience can count as evidence, religious experience cannot. For Gale, the central question with respect to the evidential value of religious experience is whether such experiences “constitute evidence for reality being as it appears to the experients.”49 In Gale’s view, an experience can be veridical without being cognitive, and it is only cognitive experiences that have evidential value. What does it mean for an experience to be cognitive? I will turn to Gale’s view of cognitive experiences in a moment, but first I want to say a bit more about Gale’s implicit view of evidence. Gale suggests that an experience that does not qualify as cognitive “does not constitute evidence or warrant for believing that this object exists and is as it appears to be.”50 Now, there are a couple things to say about this claim. The first thing to say is that it is not clear that evidence is always necessary for warrant.51 Of course, the terrain here is controversial and I will sidestep this issue given that my present concern is for the evidential value of religious experience, but it is an important note to make. The second, and more important point for present purposes, is that Gale assumes Strong Evidentialism. This is evidenced in Gale’s conflation of evidence and warrant. Today, most epistemologists define warrant as whatever must be added to true belief to qualify as knowledge. Warrant is therefore an epistemic status of greater positive value than justification. So, for Gale, an experience counts only as evidence if it provides ultima facie reason to believe in the object of the experience. However, even with respect to warrant, Gale seems to have some very strong internalist inclinations. In his view, an experience with evidential value is an experience of something such that we could know “either that this object exists or that the experience is caused in the ‘right’ way by it.”52 Thus, for Gale, warrant requires an experient to have internal access to the positive epistemic value of the belief grounded in experience. Both of these things are important to keep in mind because they limit the reach of Gale’s argument from the outset. They are also important to keep in mind because they suggest Gale overlooks the argumentative strategies of some versions of Moderate Experientialism. In fact, Gale does say that every argument from religious experience “that I know of is based on an analogy with sense experience.”53 In the next two chapters, we will see that, while this may be a true statement of Gale’s acquaintance with arguments from religious experience, it is not the case that every such argument is based on this analogy.

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Of course, this is not to say that there are no such arguments of this sort. Gale is right to suggest that some arguments follow the general type: 1. Religious experiences are analogous to sense experiences; 2. Sense experiences are cognitive; therefore, 3. Religious experiences are cognitive.54 So, what, in Gale’s view, is the problem with arguments of this type? Gale suggests that “few will venture to challenge premise 2, for this leads to complete skepticism.”55 The problem rather rests with premise 1. To demonstrate this, Gale argues that this premise “must not specify any old analogy between religious and sense experiences . . . but one that is relevant to their cognitivity.”56 In Gale’s view, sense experiences generate existential claims that are “subject to a battery of interconnected tests and checks.”57 Religious experiences, Gale thinks, are not subject to these same tests and checks.58 (This claim is quite similar to Rowe’s claim. Why not think Gale is just offering an Argument from Foundationalism? I think there are a couple reasons to resist assimilating Gale’s argument to these forms. First, Gale’s argument is motivated by a specific critique of a specific argument form. Second, my primary concern in the last section was not with Rowe’s argument, but with the argument Rowe seemed to be gesturing toward. Another way to develop Rowe’s argument is along the lines suggested by Gale. Here the point is not that all experiences get their evidential value from propositions. Sensory checks of sensory experience are not propositional, or at least, they do not need to be translated into propositions. So, Gale’s point that religious experiences are not subject to experiential corroboration does not need to be interpreted as an argument of the form discussed in the last section.) Well, why think that? What sorts of tests are available in the case of sense experience that are not available in the case of religious experience? To start, Gale lists eleven sensory tests,59 but he quickly eliminates the first four because the fourth condition is “parasitic upon the others” and the first three “have very little probative force.”60 The fifth condition, which Gale first focuses on, is an agreement test. Gale defines this test as posing the question “Do the sense experiences had by others under normal or standard conditions agree with the subject’s?”61 Religious experiences fail this test, in Gale’s view, because of the diversity of religious traditions. Different religious traditions suggest that different persons stand in different normal conditions. They are also unclear as to what requisite training is needed for a religious experience.62 So, in the case of religious experience, Gale thinks it is not possible to specify what counts as a normal experiencing condition. Furthermore, Gale suggests that religious experiences are often counted as confirmatory even when specified conditions are not satisfied and that the failure to produce an experience in such conditions is not counted as disconfirmatory. Because of this Gale concludes that other tests concerning whether (8) a subject was in position to have had an experience, (9) whether the subject’s faculties were properly functioning, and (10) whether



Rejecting Anti-Experientialism 23

the subject suffered from other experiential impediments can also not be satisfied in the case of religious experience.63 However, Gale admits that other tests remain. These include the following: 6. Continuity between contents. Does the context of the experience stand in the right sort of lawlike relations to those of the vast majority of the subject’s preceding and succeeding experiences? 7. Prediction. Can future sense experiences of the subject and others be predicted on the basis of the assumption that the experience is veridical? 11. Causal requirement. Did the apparent object cause the experiences in the right way?64 In Gale’s view, religious experiences fail these tests as well. First, God is not the kind of being that could satisfy 6: “God . . . is not one object among others in a nomically determined system.”65 So, God-experiences could not stand in any normative relations to other experiences. With respect to 7, similar problems arise. God is a free being who can freely choose to reveal Himself to some people at some times and not to others at other times, or even the same person at other times. So, in Gale’s view, there is “little basis . . . for making any probabilistic estimates at all in this area.”66 This being the case, religious experiences also fail to satisfy 11. The problem ultimately, in Gale’s view, is that religious experiences are subjective and sense experiences are cognitive. To demonstrate this, Gale considers pain, “a paradigm of a subjective experience.”67 In the case of pain, Gale says, “We accept the cognate accusative (adverbial) analysis of ‘X feels pain’ into ‘Xpains’ (‘X feels painfully’).”68 Something similar can be done with religious experiences. In Gale’s view, “religious experiences are . . . only psychological.”69 They take “cognate rather than objective accusatives.”70 Thus, a cognate accusative analysis of ‘X experiences God” can be given the same as pain. Of course, advocates of arguments from religious experience might disagree. They might reply that a cognate accusative analysis of a religious experience can be given, but that it is not the only analysis that can be properly given. To resolve this dispute, Gale suggests “a criterion for distinguishing between cognate and objective accusatives.”71 In Gale’s view, an objective accusative must meet two conditions. First, the object of the experience must be able to exist when not perceived. Second, the object must “be the common object of different sense perceptions.”72 When the object of the experience meets these two conditions, the experience can be given a cognitive accusative analysis (e.g., analyzing “X perceives O” into “O appearing to X”). When it cannot, it can only be given a cognate accusative analysis (e.g., analyzing “X perceives O” into XO’s or X feels O-ly). For Gale, an object must be a spatiotemporal object to satisfy both conditions. A spatiotemporal object can exist when it is not perceived. In such cases, the perceiver is simply not in a position to perceive it. A spatiotemporal object can also be the common object of different experiences. A spatiotemporal object can stand between two different perceivers. For Gale, these criteria explain why

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there are the tests and checks that there are for sensory experience.73 The spatiotemporal nature of an object explains why the object of a sense experience must stand in the right causal relationship with the perceiver (test 11). The spatiotemporal nature of an object also explains why the object of a sense experience can be checked in other ways. Thus, the other checks Gale counts are treated as “fillings in” for test 11.74 The problem for arguments from religious experience resting on an analogy between religious and sense experience, in Gale’s view, is that religious experiences cannot satisfy these conditions. The reason for this is that the object of a religious experience is God and God is not a spatiotemporal object. Thus, Gale says that “it is conceptually impossible for there to be a veridical perception of God.”75 Now, this claim is clearly mistaken. If a person has a religious experience, their experience is either veridical or not. Gale does not want to deny this. In fact, earlier in his critique of religious experience, Gale does say that “experience could be veridical without being cognitive.”76 What Gale means to say here is that it is conceptually impossible for one to know that they have had a veridical perception of God or to prove to others that they have had a veridical perception of God. The problem is ultimately, for Gale, a problem of individuation. The spatiotemporal world enables perceivers to individuate objects. Two objects can have the same attributes, but they are distinguished in virtue of their spatiotemporal position. Religious experiences do not have this benefit. They claim to be experiences of a being outside of time and space. This being the case, it is impossible to tell whether they are experiences of the same being. It is possible that they are experiences of distinct beings. This being so, it is impossible to say that the object of a religious experience is the same object of another person’s experience. So, religious experiences cannot satisfy the second condition of a cognitive experience: it is impossible to demonstrate that their object is common to different perceivers. Without a spatiotemporal location, religious experiences cannot satisfy the first condition of a cognitive experience either. Because they are experiences of a purely spiritual being, it is impossible to locate this being when it is not being perceived. Now, this last point is comparatively weaker than the first. It is true that we cannot locate a purely spiritual being and therefore offer an explanation for where it was or where it went when we were not experiencing it. However, because God is a free, omnipotent being we could explain the intervening period between religious experience as due to God choosing to refrain from revealing Himself to us. So, the very nature of the object of religious experience, namely, God, does give experients some reason for thinking that it exists when it is not perceived. As Gellman notes, “God is conceived of as having an inner life” and this “suffices to give content to the concept of God’s continued existence unperceived, without having to place God into anything analogous to spatial-temporal coordinates.”77 Moreover, and as Plantinga notes, when it comes to spatiotemporal objects, “there are a wide variety of explanations for my perceiving one thing at one time and not another. I might perceive the thing at t1, but then at t2 have my eyes closed, or be asleep.”78 The stronger, more compelling point is Gale’s former point: that outside of the spatiotemporal con-



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tinuum it is not possible to individuate objects of experience and therefore to know that God is the common object of distinct religious experiences. Is there anything to say in response to this charge? Gellman suggests that Gale’s argument overlooks “the possibility of there being a holistic practice specific to the reidentification of God.”79 First, Gellman notes that “the seeming constancy of God’s character in the mainstream of mystical traditions” provides some reason to think God can be reidentified.80 Of course, Gale would be hardly moved by this suggestion. Remember that for Gale spatiotemporal location enables us to individuate objects with the same attributes. His point is that attributes are not sufficient for individuation, and thus are insufficient for reidentification. However, Gellman makes a better point that it is more difficult to dismiss. He suggests that God may reidentify “to the subject of the experience, as the same one who appeared to others, or to the same subject at a different time.”81 Here, it is not so much the perceived attribute that enables reidentification, but communicated information that supports the reidentification. In my view, this second point is compelling. Gale’s argument hinges on the idea that the attributes of an experiential object are not sufficient to individuate that object. This is a compelling point. However, Gellman points out that when the object of an experience is a person, the experience itself is not limited to an appreciation of that person’s attributes.82 It can extend to conveyed information and this information can provide reason to believe that one is experiencing the same person. Of course, it could be the case that one is being deceived. For example, suppose that Satan overheard an earlier exchange between you and God and later conspired to deceive you into thinking that God had experientially returned to you by reciting a bit of the previous exchange. Bracketing reason to believe or disbelieve in Satan for the moment, such a case is certainly possible. However, this possibility does not help Gale. Gale’s argument is an impossibility argument. In Gale’s view, it is impossible to reidentify God viz. religious experience. The possibility of supernatural deception just provides one with reason to believe that reidentification can be erroneous but suggesting that reidentification can be erroneous is not the same thing as saying that reidentification is impossible. Similar considerations hold with respect to probability and actuality. The likelihood that God self-identifies in an experience could be low, and it might be the case that God has never actually done so. Nevertheless, the very possibility that God could so damages Gale’s argument. Thus, it seems we are forced to conclude that Gale’s argument fails. Of course, even if we think there is something to Gale’s argument, we should keep in mind some points addressed earlier. First, Gale’s argument very much hinges on some specific epistemological presuppositions, presuppositions many philosophers will reject. Second, Gale’s argument is narrower than Gale supposes. Gale’s argument targets arguments from religious experience that rest on an analogy between sense experience and religious experience. As I mentioned earlier, Gale overlooks argument that are not of this form and even misdescribes some arguments that are not of this form as arguments from analogy. For both reasons, Gale’s argument is far

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more limited than it appears. Gale argues that it is impossible for religious experience to have evidential value, but the actual conclusion of his argument is conditional: if various presuppositions are correct and arguments from religious experience take a certain form, then religious experiences fail to have evidential value. Thus, it is open to several responses. First, we might simply reject those presuppositions. In the preceding, I have chosen not to opt for this route, which involves adopting a hard externalist response to Gale’s preferred internalist epistemology. Instead, I have granted Gale his presuppositions. I then pointed out that arguments from religious experience do not need to take the form of an argument from analogy. Of course, further confirmation for this point must wait until subsequent chapters. At present, I have simply rehearsed some reasons for thinking that Gale’s argument for this conditional is flawed. If that is correct, Gale’s argument can be dismissed. My point here is that even if that is incorrect, there are still available responses on behalf of some form of experientialism or another. Thus, I conclude that this argument for Anti-Experientialism is wanting. At this point, it might seem as if experientialists are out of the woods. After all, we have so far investigated two cases for adopting Anti-Experientialism. The first case rested on various contentions revolving around the idea that experiential appeals are not evidential. The second rested on the contention that while experiences are generally evidential, specifically religious experiences are not. In both cases, I have argued that the arguments are wanting. Thus, it might seem as if we have simply dispatched with Anti-Experientialism. However, there is one final case to be made in support of Anti-Experientialism worth considering. This case bears some similarity to the second. Here, the idea is not that experiential appeals are evidentially vacuous, but that there is something specifically wrong with religious experience. In this section, I focused on an epistemological challenge to the evidential force of religious experience. In the next section, I argue that there is a metaphysical challenge to be addressed as well.

THE METAPHYSICAL ARGUMENT Richard Gale argued that there are specific epistemic conditions that religious experiences cannot satisfy, and his case rested on a disanalogy between the objects of sense experience and the object of religious experience: God. However, as we have seen, there are some reasons to reject Gale’s argument. Nevertheless, it might seem as if Gale’s argument points in the right direction. Perhaps there is something suspect about the possibility of experiencing a being like God. Gale argued that religious experiences cannot be cognitive, but perhaps there is reason to think religious experience is just impossible, metaphysically impossible. Call the argument gestured at here the Metaphysical Argument. In this section, I formulate this argument, and I argue that there is reason to reject this argument as well. This being the case, I conclude that there is not much going for Anti-Experientialism and pending further argument, Anti-Experientialism can be dismissed.



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To start, let us first identify what the Metaphysical Argument is not. There are several arguments for thinking that God is not an object of experience. First and foremost, there is the argument from evil or suffering. This argument suggests that God and evil are either logically inconsistent or that the magnitude, distribution, and prevalence of evil in the universe make God’s existence improbable. Second, there is the argument from divine hiddenness. This argument suggests that God’s existence and the kind of widespread nonresistant rational nonbelief in God are either logically inconsistent or that the latter makes the former’s existence improbable. Third, there is the problem of divine foreknowledge and human freedom. This problem suggests that human freedom is inconsistent with divine foreknowledge and that given the reason we have for affirming human freedom, we have reason for believing that the kind of being God is supposed to be does not exist. Of course, this is not an exhaustive list of atheological arguments, but constructing such a list is not necessary here because the Metaphysical Argument is none of these arguments. Obviously, if God does not exist, or if God is a metaphysically impossible being, religious experiences cannot be veridical. These are arguments that one must address and dispense with if one wants to argue that religious experiences provide ultima facie reason to believe in God, as Strong Evidentialism requires. Because I am going to develop a case for resisting Strong Experientialism, which aspires toward the bar of Strong Evidentialism, in the next chapter, I will not address these arguments in this project. Suffice it to say, however, that I believe that there are viable theistic responses to each of these arguments. Nevertheless, because I have not dismissed Strong Experientialism yet, a rejection of Strong Experientialism cannot motivate the sidestepping of these problems. The central reason, at present, for sidestepping these problems is that they are not grounds for affirming Anti-Experientialism. Anti-Experientialism is the position that religious experiences have no evidential value. Atheological arguments do not purport to show this. They only purport to show that there is reason to doubt the existence of God (or even to affirm the nonexistence of God). Second, atheological arguments do not typically conclude that God is not a metaphysically possible object of experience. What they conclude is that God’s existence is either impossible, or unlikely, given other things we know about the kind of world we live in. So, atheological arguments cannot do the kind of work the Metaphysical Argument purports to do. The conclusion of the Metaphysical Argument is that religious experiences have no evidential value. The purported reason religious experiences have no evidential value is that they are metaphysically impossible. This suggests that we are looking for an argument with a conclusion and a subconclusion. It suggests that we are looking for an argument that begins and closes with a formulation like this: C1: Religious experiences are metaphysically impossible. P?: Metaphysically impossibly experiences have no evidential value. C2: Religious experiences have no evidential value.

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What reason can one give, then, in support of C1? Well, recall Gale’s suggestion that God qua purely spiritual being cannot be the object of a cognitive experience. Other philosophers and theologians have expressed similar reservations. For example, Gordon Kaufman suggests that the term “God” “refers to a reality transcendent of, and thus not locatable within, experience.”83 Similarly, Paul Tillich complains that when God is “brought into the subject-object structure of being, he ceases to be the ground of being and becomes one being among others.”84 The Metaphysical Argument takes its cue here. This argument formalizes what both Tillich and Kaufman are gesturing toward. Although both are primarily concerned with language and discourse, their concern has application in the epistemology of religious experience. The Metaphysical Argument is an application of this concern. With these concerns in mind, we can start to fill in the argument as follows: P1: Religious experiences are experiences of a purely spiritual being. P2: It is metaphysically impossible to experience a purely spiritual being. C1: Religious experiences are metaphysically impossible. P3: Metaphysically impossible experiences have no evidential value. C2: Religious experiences have no evidential value. This is a good first approximation of the Metaphysical Argument. The problem with this formalization is that P2 is unclear. Why exactly is it impossible to experience a purely spiritual being? What is a purely spiritual being? Well, as Gale argued, a purely spiritual being is atemporal. However, atemporality is insufficient for being purely spiritual. To see this, suppose the Aristotelian theory of time is correct and time supervenes on change. In that case, a physical object could be atemporal so long as nothing in its world ever happens or changes. So, a purely spiritual being cannot just be atemporal. It cannot be physical. Physical objects have extension. So, a purely spiritual being must be atemporal and lack extension. So, we can revise the above argument as follows: P1: Religious experiences claim to be experiences of God. P2: God is an atemporal, ontologically simple being (a purely spiritual being). P3: It metaphysically impossible to experience a purely spiritual being. C1: Religious experiences are metaphysically impossible. P4: Metaphysically impossible experiences have no evidential value. C2: Religious experiences have no evidential value. Here, we have a fully formed, informative argument. This is the Metaphysical Argument for Anti-Experientialism. The question is “Is it a good argument?” I think there are reasons to reject it. Clearly, the problem here is not with P1. Both anti-experientialists and experientialists of all stripes agree on this point. There is, however, some wiggle room with respect to P2. Many philosophers reject the doctrine of divine simplicity,85 and of



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course, those philosophical heretics, the open theists, advocate a model of God that suggests God is not essentially atemporal.86 In what sense is God a purely spiritual being in these views? Well, in the sense that God is a spiritual substance. In the view that God is atemporal, but not simple God is nonetheless a spiritual substance without extension. Advocates of this view believe that it is possible for a spiritual substance to lack extension and possess some kind of complexity. Open theists believe that it is possible to affirm this view and believe both that God is temporal and that God has a changing, growing knowledge base. Both groups advocate the view that God is a perfect being. However, some philosophers even deny this. For example, Jeanine Diller argues that God need not be perfect.87 To count as God, in her view, a being must simply perform certain cosmic functions, such as answering prayers, sustaining the cosmos, and so on. I won’t comment on the viability of these models of God here. What I will say is that if there is good reason to espouse one of these views, and certainly many capable philosophers do espouse these views, the Metaphysical Argument fails. Nonetheless, the preceding gives us too easy of an out. Besides, there is significant philosophical and theological precedent in support of the conception of God in P2. This conception is especially close to the heart of many religious philosophers and many medieval philosophers affirmed it.88 There may even be some natural theological reasons to affirm it.89 So, we can buttress the case against the Metaphysical Argument by affirming P2 and locating the problem elsewhere. Clearly, the only move left to challenge is P3. In the classical conception of God, God is an atemporal, ontologically simple being. This being the case, there are three possible reasons for affirming P3. It could be the case that a) atemporal entities are experientially inaccessible, b) ontologically simple entities are experientially inaccessible, or c) entities that are both atemporal and ontologically simple are experientially inaccessible. To deny P3, we just need to argue that neither a, b, nor c are ultimately compelling. Start with a. What reason is there to think atemporal entities are experientially inaccessible? I suppose the idea here is that perception is impossible across the atemporal-temporal divide. Is that true? Do we really have a priori reason to think that this is true? I cannot see that we do. Of course, maybe my modal intuitions are wrong. Then again, maybe they are not. The problem with a) is that this very possibility militates against an acceptance of it. The Metaphysical Argument suggests that we have reason to believe that purely spiritual beings are experientially inaccessible. The a priori possibility of perception across the atemporal-temporal divide undercuts this claim. Now, someone might suggest we have a posteriori reason to think atemporal entities are experientially inaccessible, but clearly that will not do. Even if one has never experienced an atemporal object, that is not grounds to conclude that doing so is impossible. The same thing can be said of b. B suggests that ontologically simple entities are experientially inaccessible. This claim seems wrong as well. Isn’t the perception of a point possible? It seems that it is. Now, it might be the case that we do not ever actually perceive points, but again the alleged

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problem here is about possibility, not actuality. This leaves c. Is there anything to say in support of c? Consider the claim “it is impossible to be in location A.” Suppose this claim is false. Now consider the claim “it is impossible to be in location B.” Suppose this claim is also false. It nonetheless could metaphysically be the case that it is impossible for one to be both in location A and B at the same time. This seems to be the idea behind c. The idea seems to leave open the possibility that experiential access across the atemporal-temporal divine and the simple-complex divide is possible, but that matters are complicated when these two divides are combined. Is that true? Does the complex, temporal matrix we live in screen us off from the atemporal-simple spiritual realm outside it? What reason is there to think that? Well, in the case that naturalism is true and atemporal-simple entities are metaphysically impossible, then, sure, experiential access to such entities is metaphysically impossible. The problem here is the problem I noted above. In this case, we are no longer motivating AntiExperientialism, we are simply denying the existence of God. Of course, we don’t need naturalism to motivate this position. We could revert back to one of the nonclassical conceptions of God discussed earlier. If it is metaphysically impossible to be a person and ontologically simple, then, it is metaphysically impossible to experience God, if God is a person. Once again, we do not have an argument for Anti-Experientialism because we are back to denying P2. Is there any other way to salvage c? Well, perhaps the idea is that the complex, temporal matrix is a closed system and the experiential access to the atemporal-simple spiritual realm would involve a violation of that closure. Again, this just sounds like naturalism. Besides, the classical conception of God suggests that God is omnipresent and the ground of all being, the sustainer of that system. Even if it is closed in some sense, it is hard to see how that makes experience of God metaphysically impossible, without relapsing into some nonstandard theistic or naturalistic view. Of course, the preceding is admittedly inconclusive, but that is my point. The Metaphysical Argument suggests something quite strong. It suggests that experience of God is metaphysically impossible. If that were true, the case in support of that claim should presumably be conclusive (or fairly conclusive). It is not. If anything, intuition points in the opposite direction. Besides, there is something more to be said here. Plantinga considers the claim that experience across the finite-infinite divide is impossible but suggests that God’s omnipotence provides reason to think that experiential manifestation across that divide can be facilitated.90 Something similar can be said in defense of P3, but then it seems that if we accept the classical conception of God, we have reason to think God is experientially accessible. Given the failure to provide much reason at all in support of the claim that God is experientially inaccessible for metaphysical reasons, it seems we should conclude that P3 is false. Pending further argument in support of this key premise, we should conclude that the Metaphysical Argument for Anti-Experientialism has failed.



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CONCLUSION In the preceding, I examined two types of arguments for Anti-Experientialism: one primarily epistemological, the second primarily metaphysical. I argued that there are reasons to reject the available tokens of both types. Of course, this leaves open the possibility that a token of either type could be developed in support of AntiExperientialism, but experientialists have reason for optimism. This optimism is grounded in the responses to both types of arguments. In response to the epistemological types, we have seen several reasons to think experiences are typically evidentially valuable and reasons to think religious experiences are evidentially valuable as well. In response to the metaphysical type, we have reason to think religious experiences are metaphysically possible, if God exists. These responses dim the prospects for constructing further arguments in support of Anti-Experientialism. Perhaps such arguments can nonetheless be constructed. Until they are, it seems safe to conclude that the case for Anti-Experientialism is weak and that religious experiences do have evidential value. Of course, the defeat of Anti-Experientialism will be practically hollow if religious experiences do not have enough evidential value to do any justificatory work. After all, the penny has monetary value, but in the contemporary world, it won’t purchase you much of anything. Thus, the next task in our study of the evidential value of religious experience is to determine just how much evidential value religious experiences possess. To move toward an answer, we can start at the opposite extreme of Anti-Experientialism. We can start with the suggestion that religious experiences have so much evidential value that they support an argument that proves God exists.

NOTES 1.  Alvin Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 70. 2.  See: Todd Long, “A Proper de jure Objection to Religious Belief,” Religious Studies 46, no. 3 (2010): 377. 3.  Trent Dougherty and Chris Tweedt, “Religious Epistemology,” Philosophy Compass 10, no. 8 (2015): 547–559. 4.  See: William Alston, Perceiving God: The Epistemology of Religious Experience (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991). 5.  Blake McCallister and Trent Dougherty, “Reforming Reformed Epistemology: A New Take on the Sensus Divinitatis,” Religious Studies 55 (2019): 540. 6. William Rowe, “Religious Experience and the Principle of Credulity,” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 13 (1982): 85–92. 7.  C. D. Broad, “Arguments for the Existence of God II,” The Journal of Theological Studies 40 (1939): 157–167. 8. William Rowe, “Religious Experience and the Principle of Credulity,” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 13 (1982): 85.

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 9. Ibid., 90. 10.  In this article, Rowe addresses both Broad and Swinburne together. I omit discussion of Swinburne in what follows because his principle of credulity will be a matter of debate in chapter 3. 11.  Alvin Plantinga, “Is Belief in God Properly Basic?” Nous 15, no. 1 (1981): 41–51. 12.  Alvin Plantinga, “Reason and Belief in God,” in Faith and Rationality: Reason and Belief in God, ed. Alvin Plantinga and Nicholas Wolterstorff (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983), 58. 13.  Ibid., 52. 14. Alvin Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 82. 15.  Alvin Plantinga, “Reason and Belief in God,” in Faith and Rationality: Reason and Belief in God, ed. Alvin Plantinga and Nicholas Wolterstorff (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983), 58. 16.  Ibid., 59. 17.  Now, obviously, this way of putting modern foundationalism is a bit misleading, as it discounts Locke, who allowed for inductive reasoning, and Peirce, who allowed for abductive reasoning, as Plantinga observes. See Alvin Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 84. 18. William Rowe, “Religious Experience and the Principle of Credulity,” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 13 (1982): 85. 19.  Wayne Proudfoot, Religious Experience (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985). 20.  Ibid., 227. 21.  Ibid., 196. 22.  Ibid., 197. 23.  Fumerton helpfully distinguishes between both strong and weak and global and local skepticism, where a strong skeptic says that justification is impossible and a strong global skeptic says that all beliefs are unjustified. As Fumerton notes, strong global skepticism is self-refuting: if one says “one has no epistemic reason for believing anything at all, then it follows that one has no epistemic reason for believing that one has no epistemic reason for believing anything at all” (Richard Fumerton, Metaepistemology and Skepticism, p. 50). Thus, when I refer to general or radical skepticism, I mean to refer to what Fumerton would call strong local skepticism, or a form of strong skepticism restricted to beliefs about the existence of an external world. 24.  Alvin Plantinga, Warrant and Proper Function (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 97. 25.  William Alston, Perceiving God: The Epistemology of Religious Experience (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991): Ch. 3. 26.  Linda Zagzebski, Epistemic Authority: A Theory of Trust, Authority, and Autonomy in Belief (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 41. 27.  What if perception is ecological? Might direct perception solve this problem? Probably not. Perhaps a Cartesian demon could build a brain-body-environmental vat and deceive us. Thus, whether we supersize our faculties or not, we remain beholden to them. Plus, in that case, there is the concern that what we perceive is not objects, but relations between ourselves and objects. 28.  Again, the prospects for modern foundationalism are better if we adopt a Peircean version and argue that belief in the external world is justified on abductive grounds, but not



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much better. However, for the sake of brevity, I refer the reader again to Alston, note 10, for an expanded case in this direction. 29.  Alvin Plantinga, Warrant and Proper Function (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 59. 30.  Ibid., 61. 31. Ibid. 32.  Ibid., 62. 33.  William Alston, Perceiving God: The Epistemology of Religious Experience (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), 300. 34.  Alvin Plantinga, “The Reformed Objection to Natural Theology,” Proceedings of the American Catholic Philosophical Association: Philosophical Knowledge 54 (1980): 56. 35.  Alvin Plantinga, Warrant and Proper Function (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 183. 36.  I agree with Alston that beliefs formed in response to an experience are not typically reasoned to, but I think they can be justified as if they emerge from experience, upon reflection. Alston might object that this way of putting the matter is internalist, but in chapter 4 I will explain one way of interpreting this view so that it is consistent with externalism. 37.  For a discussion of the compatibility of what Plantinga calls Reidian Foundationalism with Evidentialism, see Alvin Plantinga, Warrant and Proper Function (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 185–193. 38.  For a recent example of applying Proper Functionalism (PF) in this way, see Blake McCallister and Trent Dougherty, “Reforming Reformed Epistemology: A New Take on the Sensus Divinitatis,” Religious Studies 55 (2019): 537–557. Of course, McCallister and Dougherty amend Proper Functionalism so that it is closer to Phenomenal Conservatism, but their work demonstrates the possibility of conceiving PF as a theory of justification even in its externalist form. 39.  See Timothy Williamson, Knowledge and Its Limits (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000) and Clayton Littlejohn, Justification and the Truth-Connection (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2012). 40.  Logan Paul Gage, “Can Experience Fulfill the Many Roles of Evidence?” Quaestiones Disputatae 8, no. 2 (2018): 87–111. 41.  Ibid., 92. 42. Ibid. 43. Here Gage appeals to an argument developed in: Anthony Brueckner, “E=K and Perceptual Knowledge,” in Williamson and Knowledge, ed. Patrick Greenough and Duncan Pritchard (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 8. 44.  Ibid., 94. 45.  Ibid., 93. 46.  Trent Dougherty, “In Defense of Propositionalism about Evidence,” in Evidentialism and Its Discontents, ed. Trent Dougherty (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 229. 47.  Earl Conee and Richard Feldman, “Response to Dougherty,” in Evidentialism and Its Discontents, ed. Trent Dougherty (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 321. 48.  For example, Lyons defends the externalist view that experience is nonevidential and that experiences never justify beliefs; rather, the reliability of the perceptual process is what does the justifying. See, for example: Jack Lyons, Perception and Basic Beliefs: Zombies, Modules, and the Problem of the External World (New York: Oxford University Press), 2009.

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49.  Richard M. Gale, On the Nature and Existence of God (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991|2016), 245. 50. Ibid. 51. See Andrew Moon, “Knowing Without Evidence,” Mind, 121 no. 482 (2012): 309–331. 52.  Richard M. Gale, On the Nature and Existence of God (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1991|2016), 246. 53.  Ibid., 247. 54. Ibid. 55. Ibid. 56.  Ibid., 248. 57.  Ibid., 251. 58.  Here, Gale suggests that “the existential claims based upon sense experience have only a prima facie warrant” because of these tests (Ibid., 251). This might seem to contradict my claim that Gale accepts Strong Evidentialism. However, this interpretation would be inaccurate. For Gale, sense experiences have warrant precisely because they can satisfy these checks. When they do not, they have only prima facie warrant and only serve as proffered evidence, and not as evidence. Thus, in both the case of sense experience and religious experience, Gale endorses Strong Evidentialism. 59.  Ibid., 258–259. 60.  Ibid., 259. 61.  Ibid., 258. 62.  Ibid., 263. 63. Ibid. 64.  Ibid., 258. 65.  Ibid., 264. 66.  Ibid., 266. 67.  Ibid., 267. 68. Ibid. 69.  Ibid., 268. 70. Ibid. 71. Ibid. 72.  Ibid., 280. 73.  Ibid., 281. 74. Ibid. 75.  Ibid., 280. 76.  Ibid., 245. 77.  Jerome Gellman, Mystical Experience of God: A Philosophical Inquiry (New York: Routledge, 2001|2018), 41. 78. Alvin Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 339. 79.  Jerome Gellman, Mystical Experience of God: A Philosophical Inquiry (New York: Routledge, 2001|2018), 43. 80.  Ibid., 49. 81. Ibid. 82.  Here, it seems Gale commits the mistake Lorraine Code describes as the typical epistemological mistake of assuming that more complex epistemologies can be built by starting



Rejecting Anti-Experientialism 35

from considerations of how ordinary agents know medium-sized objects. See: Lorraine Code, “Taking Subjectivity into Account,” in Epistemology: The Big Questions, ed. Linda Martin Alcoff (Malden: Blackwell, 1998), 124–151. 83.  Gordon Kaufman, God the Problem (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1972), 7. 84.  Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology (London: Nisbet, 1953), 191. 85.  See: J. P. Moreland and William Lane Craig. Philosophical Foundations for a Christian Worldview (Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 2003). 86.  Although open theists need not suggest that God is essentially temporal. See: Alan Rhoda, “Open Theism and Other Models of Divine Providence,” in Models of God and Alternative Ultimate Realities, ed. Jeanine Diller and Asa Kasher (New York: Springer, 2013), 287–298. 87.  Jeanine Diller, “Being Perfect Is Not Necessary for Being God,” European Journal for Philosophy of Religion 11, no. 2 (2019): 43–64. 88. See: Mark K. Spencer, “The Flexibility of Divine Simplicity: Aquinas, Scotus, and Palamas,” International Philosophical Quarterly 57, no. 2: 226 (2017): 123–139. 89.  See: Eleonore Stump and Norman Kretzmann, “Absolute Simplicity,” Faith and Philosophy 2, no. 4 (1985): 353–382. Richard Swinburne also suggests that the simplicity of God is necessary for the success of natural theology. See Richard Swinburne, The Existence of God (Oxford: Oxford Clarendon Press, 1979). 90. Alvin Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 34.

2 Resisting Strong Experientialism

The failure of Anti-Experientialism suggests that religious experiences have at least some evidential value, but to claim that religious experiences have some evidential value is not to specify the strength of that value. If the claim that religious experiences have no evidential value is at one end of an evidential value spectrum, then the claim that religious experiences somehow prove that there is a God is at the opposite end of that spectrum. One way to interpret Strong Experientialism is as making this very claim. In the introduction, I defined Strong Experientialism as the view that it is possible to construct an argument from religious experience that makes withholding belief in God irrational for someone who is otherwise in a condition of evidential ambiguity with respect to God’s existence. In chapter 1, I suggested that the Strong Experientialist aspires to the bar of Strong Evidentialism. Recall that Strong Evidentialism has it that S is justified in believing p if and only if S has ultima facie reason for p. Clearly, a single argument cannot alone provide ultima facie justification for anything. So, we should not saddle the Strong Experientialist with the implausible claim that an argument for God’s existence from religious experience is the be-alland-end-all of philosophy of religion. It is not as if the Strong Experientialist thinks that once one has an argument for God’s existence from religious experience that one then has no reason to think through the problem of divine foreknowledge and human freedom or the problem of evil. So, the Strong Experientialist’s idea is not that the argument from religious experience gets you to ultima facie justification of theism alone. The idea is that the argument from religious experience can play a central or pivotal role in arriving at ultima facie justification of theism. The argument must be supplemented with critiques of the atheological case. Together with these critiques (and any other forthcoming critiques), theistic belief can be ultima facie justified. What the strength of Strong Experientialism consists in then is the strong evidential value attributed to religious experience. Moderate Experientialists 37

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agree that religious experience has evidential value. What distinguishes Strong Experientialism is the added idea that the evidential value of religious experience is so strong that any person in a condition of evidential ambiguity with respect to God’s existence is irrational if they think it is permissible to withhold theistic belief in light of the argument from religious experience. In what follows, it is this last claim that I wish to shed some doubt on. To make this case, I first examine examples of philosophers who present the argument from religious experience in terms amenable to Strong Experientialism. I formulate the argument and argue that it depends on the crucial claim that religious experience is cross-culturally ubiquitous. I defend this claim against the objection from religious diversity. Following other philosophers, I argue that there is a common core of all religious experiences and I suggest that the core of cross-cultural religious experiences is not antithetical to theism. I then question the claim that the ubiquity of religious experience suggests that religious experiences are probably veridical. Having challenged this premise, I turn to a rather sophisticated argument developed by Keith Yandell. I argue that it is rational for a person in a condition of evidential ambiguity to withhold belief in God even in light of Yandell’s argument. Given this result, I develop a Bayesian version of my first formulation of the argument. Here, again, I argue that agnosticism is rational even in the face of the argument. This being the case, I conclude that Strong Experientialism is mistaken: the argument from religious experience is not so strong that it provides all rational persons in a condition of evidential ambiguity with decisive reason to believe in God. I concede that it may provide rational persons with reason to affirm the existence of God, and for this reason, I suggest that we should resist rather than outright reject Strong Experientialism. However, I contend that this is not a problem for the theist because in that case Strong Experientialism becomes extensionally equivalent with Moderate Experientialism and the latter leaves believers on solid enough justificatory ground, as I will argue in the next chapter.

THE PROOF FROM RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE Various arguments for the justified grounding of religious belief in religious experience can be described as arguments from religious experience, including some of the arguments I will examine under the umbrella of Moderate Experientialism in the next chapter. To distinguish these arguments from the apologetic arguments of Strong Experientialism, I will refer to the latter arguments as proofs and not just arguments. The central task before us now consists in identifying these proofs and explaining why a person in a condition of evidential ambiguity with respect to God’s existence could withhold belief even when confronted with them. In the last chapter, I briefly discussed William Rowe’s critique of an epistemic principle of C. D. Broad’s, an epistemic principle that is not unlike one I will have more to say about in the next chapter. However, it is important, for present purposes,



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to note that Broad had quite subtle and sophisticated things to say about religious experience and its evidential value. In his Religion, Philosophy, and Psychical Research, Broad does invoke the epistemic principle “treat cognitive claims as veridical unless there be some positive reason to think them delusive.”1 However, he also constructs a quite different case. Consider for example the following: Finally, I come to the argument for the existence of God which is based on the occurrence of specifically mystical and religious experiences. I am prepared to admit that such experiences occur among people of different races and social traditions, and that they have occurred at all periods of history. I am prepared to admit that, although the experiences have differed considerably at different times and places, and although the interpretations which have been put on them have differed still more, there are probably certain characteristics which are common to all of them and which suffice to distinguish them from all other kinds of experience. In view of this I think it more likely than not that in religious and mystical experience men come into contact with some Reality or aspect of Reality which they do not come into contact with in any other way.2

Here, we see Broad making a case for the veridicality of religious experience, but we do not see him invoke the principle that Rowe criticized him for invoking, as was discussed in the preceding chapter. Broad is not alone in advocating such an argument. In his Philosophy of Religion, D. Elton Trueblood argued along similar lines. There, Trueblood claimed that “[the] fact that a great many people . . . have reported direct religious experience is one of the most significant facts about our world.”3 Like Broad, Trueblood conceded that “[n]ot all religious experience is the same,” but, like Broad, he also claimed that “there are characteristic features which appear with astonishing regularity and which are not especially difficult to describe.”4 In Trueblood’s view, several factors contribute to the argument from religious experience and render it “so strong that it is bound to stand unless it can be shown to have some serious flaw.”5 These include such factors as the “number of reporters . . . character of the reporters . . . [and] agreement of the reports.”6 As we see in the quote from Broad above, the first and third of these factors are emphasized in his argument as well. More recently, T. J. Mawson has suggested a similar case, although Mawson does add several thoughtful caveats.7 Mawson considers a person who is in a “fifty/fifty position.”8 This is a person in a condition of evidential ambiguity, in the position of a person who has no reason to believe or disbelieve in the existence of God. For such a person, Mawson says “the Argument from Religious Experience construed as the Argument from Other People’s Testimonies to Having had Religious Experiences could provide one with reasons for believing that there is a God.”9 To do so, Mawson suggests that the testimonies must satisfy several conditions. Here, Mawson also invokes frequency and consistency of reports, following Broad and Trueblood. On this point, Mawson says, “to the extent that those in receipt of religious experiences are numerous among us and speak with a consistent voice . . . it is reasonable for those of us without religious experience . . . to take their collective testimony as reason for

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believing in the truth of what they say.”10 Of course, Mawson admits that experiences can fail to be veridical and so he concedes that such reasoning “could never amount to a deductively sound argument for the existence of God,” but he insists that such a case could amount to “an inductively sound argument.”11 Now, Mawson does carefully qualify these statements. He suggests that irreligious experiences can rationally ground atheism and that a person who has had an irreligious experience can resist these arguments. Insofar as I am interested in Strong Experientialism, which claims that religious experiences make withholding belief in God irrational for a person in a condition of evidential ambiguity, I can sidestep these caveats on the grounds that persons who had irreligious experiences (if there are any) are not in a condition of evidential ambiguity. What is important about Mawson’s argument, for present purposes, is how closely it tracks Broad’s and Trueblood’s. Though Trueblood does not comment on the form of the argument, it is striking that both Mawson and Broad insist on an inductive reading of the argument. This is appropriate insofar as any argument from religious experience is, to the extent that it relies on claims about what people have or have not experienced, empirical. It is also striking that Broad, Trueblood, and Mawson invoke the same evidential factors. Each is primarily concerned with the consistency and pervasiveness of religious experience. Mawson, in fact, goes so far as to suggest that “[r]esearch reveals that the majority of people in Great Britain would claim to have had at least one experience that they would describe as if of something supernatural, the most common type of experience being one as if of God.”12 What, then, is the argument? How should we formalize the Proof from Religious Experience? In my view, the claim that religious experiences are frequent and consistent suggests that one of the key premises of the argument in question is that religious experience is panhuman or nearly panhuman. Clearly, this premise alone will not get you to the claim that God exists, so, there must be another implicit premise here. The most direct route to that conclusion would involve the claim that panhuman experiences are probably veridical. If that is right, we have arrived at the following argument: P1: Religious experience is (nearly) panhuman. P2: Panhuman experiences are probably veridical. C: God probably exists. Here, we have a premise supported by the considerations Broad, Trueblood, and Mawson introduce and the implicit premise just discussed. In my view, this is a solid candidate form of the Proof from Religious Experience. It does not invoke any first-person epistemic principles that license a move from an appearance to a justified belief and its conclusion is an existential claim. So, this argument form does the kind of work the Proof needs it to do. Now, the first thing to note about this argument is that pace Gale it is not an argument from analogy. This argument does not make any claims about sensory experience. It might seem as if the claim that sensory experience is typically veridical



Resisting Strong Experientialism 41

undergirds P2, but even if the typical veridicality of sense experience supports P2, P2 is not logically equivalent to the claim that sense experience is typically veridical. There well may be other panhuman experiences that enjoy a presumption of veridicality in addition to sense experience, such as desires, pains, and the experience of necessary truths. Of course, not all desires are rational, but desire is typically veridical in the sense that if one experiences a desire, one typically has that desire. Cartesian certainty might be too much to ask for even in these cases, but P2 is hedged enough not to bother with the possibility of error in these matters. Because the argument is inductive, it might be better to formalize it and assess it in Bayesian terms, but before we do that, it will help to examine P1 insofar as P1 does not involve a probabilistic claim. Clearly, P1 is an empirical claim. Nonetheless, there is something to recommend it, as Mawson noted above. A defense of P1 should immediately note the qualification. There are several features of human nature that, while not universally possessed, are nonetheless candidates for panhuman traits. Consider, for example, sexuality. Some people self-identify as asexual, and while there is nothing, in my view, that suggests these people are mistaken about the matter, it still seems reasonable to claim that sexuality is a nearly panhuman trait. Similar comments apply when considering the anthropological record. Symbolic culture is not preserved in the same way that material culture or human material is preserved. Therefore, we should not expect the anthropological record to contain widespread evidence of religious experience. Of course, the existence of totems and other relics might suggest engagement in ritual, which may in turn suggest the preponderance of religious experience, but these considerations remain speculative. The more important point is that even if there is no such evidence supporting this kind of speculation P1 is not thereby defeated. That’s because experiences can presuppose historical, material conditions and when that is the case such experiences remain inaccessible to any persons predating the emergence of those conditions. Consider the capacity for calculus. Many historical human beings have no experience of practicing calculus. Nevertheless, we do not deny the claim that a potential for calculus is a nearly panhuman trait. That’s because many human beings have lived, or continue to live, in conditions wherein the practice of calculus remains inaccessible to them. The more serious challenge to P1 comes not from the historical anthropological record, but from the contemporary, or nearly contemporary, record. This is the challenge all epistemologists of religious experience recognize as the challenge or objection from religious diversity. In the present context, the objection from religious diversity can be leveraged into a denial of P1 on the grounds that there is no core phenomenon of religious experience in general that can be said to support the claim that religious experiences are nearly panhuman. Here, the evidence is easier to assemble. After all, we have access to the religious texts of the world’s great religions. We also have access to the autobiographical statements of many practitioners of these religions. We can add to these surveys of the sort Mawson cites. What does this material suggest? Well, insofar as my present concern in this book is philosophical and epistemological, a comprehensive empirical survey of this material lies outside of the

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scope of my project. However, it is possible to profit from the evaluations of others. I have already cited Trueblood and Broad on this matter. Both are of the opinion that religious experience reports are generally consistent enough to support P1. To these judgments, we can add the work of Caroline Franks Davis.13 In Davis’s view, a common core of religious experience can be identified across traditions. According to Davis, this core involves the following claims: 1. The mundane world of physical bodies, physical processes, and narrow centers of consciousness is not the whole or ultimate reality. 2. In particular, the phenomenal ego of everyday consciousness . . . is by no means the deepest level of the self. 3. Whatever is ultimate reality is holy, eternal, and of supreme value. 4. This holy power can be experienced as an awesome, loving, pardoning, guiding (etc.) presence with whom individuals can have a personal relationship. 5. At least some mystical experiences are experiences of a very intimate union with the holy power. 6. Some kind of union or harmonious relation with the ultimate reality is the human being’s summum bonum, his final liberation or salvation.14 In my view, the identification of this common core rebuts the charge that religious experiences are so diverse that they cannot count as a phenomenon unified enough to regard as (nearly) panhuman. The explanatory value of Davis’s common core consists in its ability to capture the so-called personalistic religions of the West and the allegedly impersonalist religions of the East. Here, a critic might argue that (iv) problematizes the core. If the holy power can be experienced as personal and impersonal, perhaps these are not experiences of the same thing at all. In my view, this objection packs little punch. Suppose that the spiritual realm consists of a plurality of beings and not one all-pervasive Absolute, as William James maintained. In that case, various religious experiences could be of different spiritual beings and yet the nature of the experiences would still be captured by Davis’s common core. For this reason, I take the identification of this common core to constitute strong support for P1. However, my primary concern in this book is with the justification of theistic belief. So, while I think enough has been said so far to rationally support P1, I do think it is important to say a bit more about how a theist should respond to the claim that many religious believers experience the spiritual as impersonal. The first thing to say is, as Kwan does, that “[t]he Personal Ultimate can manifest himself in impersonal ways.”15 There is nothing contradictory about this. After all, it is possible for one human person to experience another person in both personal and impersonal ways. We could easily be conversing with one another, as we watch a late-night television show, when I turn to see that you have fallen asleep. Or I could be your doctor and have a pleasant conversation with you before I place a tongue depressor in your mouth to check your tonsils. The second thing to say is what most Christians typically say



Resisting Strong Experientialism 43

about these matters: God meets us where we are. As Garth Hallett nicely puts it, “[it] seems not only possible but likely that God would . . . accommodate his mode of appearance to . . . needs, possibilities, and expectations. A personal God would deal personally with his creatures.”16 The above point about historical, material preconditions of experience is applicable here. If cultural expectations or preconceptions guide attention, it makes sense that God manifests in a way that makes various forms of identification possible. A critic might suggest that the preceding does not go far enough. After all, many religious experiences are not just of an impersonal God, they are also of a monistic reality. That is, many people who have had religious experiences report a sense of oneness with the entire cosmos. It may seem as if these experiences are experiences the theist must regard as delusory because they posit an ontology that is ultimately inconsistent with theism: a radically monistic ontology. Therefore, it might seem as if the identification of a common core of religious experience is potentially problematic for theists. However, there are reasons to regard these reports as hyperbolic. As Rem Edwards points out, “from the fact that [an individual is] not attending to . . . feelings and thoughts during the moment of absorption, it does not follow that there were no such feelings and thoughts.”17 Second, and as Kwan observes, these claims are inconsistent with sense experience.18 Given these considerations, it is better to regard the reports as sincere, but as descriptions informed by attention or emphasis. Most people, after all, are not phenomenologists carefully trained to explicate the contours of their experiences. For these reasons, P1 is not just rationally acceptable; it is rationally consistent with theism. So, there is no danger in a theist accepting P1. This suggests that we move on to P2. P2 says that panhuman experiences are probably veridical. Here is where I think the Proof from Religious Experience falters. Consider first the discussion in the preceding chapter regarding skepticism. There, I claimed that skepticism is a perhaps impossible position to vanquish and that there is no noncircular way to establish the reliability of sense perception. If that is true, then it does not seem as if we have good reason to accept P2. Mawson claims that “in the practical day-to-day sense anybody who seriously doubted that most of the time the world is as it appears to be . . . would be irrational.”19 However, the skeptic might make a distinction between practical and theoretical rationality. They might suggest that it is rational to engage in the doxastic practice of trusting one’s sense perception with respect to practical matters, but that there is no theoretical reason to believe these perceptions are veridical. I myself am not sure of what to say about the distinction between practical and theoretical reason. I might be inclined to agree with Thomas Aquinas and accept the claim that there are some acts of cognition that are not mediated by the body or the brain, but in my view that is not enough to motivate the distinction between practical and theoretical rationality Aquinas makes. Theoretical activity consists of more than just acts of theoretical cognition. It also requires practical action and the use of instruments. The problem is that this thought does not undermine the skeptic’s contention insofar as this very observation already relies on sense perception.

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Sometimes philosophers argue that skepticism is self-defeating. Rem Edwards argues that all philosophical thought requires the use of a language and that because the function of language is interpersonal communication, “solipsism should be refuted by the sheer existence of language.”20 Suppose that this is so. It still would not prove that our sense perception is veridical. Consider the video game character. The video game character possesses a language, communicates with others, and navigates a world, but the video game character’s world is still not veridical. So, even if philosophical skepticism presupposes language, culture or something else, it does not seem to follow that the world is the way it is perceived to be. Of course, there are other attempts to regard skepticism as self-defeating. There are other responses to those arguments. I won’t wade into these difficult philosophical issues here. Most religious epistemologists today admit, as I have, the difficulties skepticism presents. The trouble for Strong Experientialism is that the Strong Experientialist claims that the Proof from Religious Experience provides all rational persons with reason to believe in God. The skeptic is a counterexample to this claim. So, if the skeptic cannot be shown to be irrational, and I am not willing to claim here that they can be, then the proof is not rationally convincing to all, and Strong Experientialism is mistaken. Perhaps, I am wrong here and skepticism is self-defeating. If you think so, perhaps Strong Experientialism is viable. Nevertheless, the perennial debate over skepticism provides good reason to do exactly what I have said we should do with Strong Experientialism: resist it. Now, the Strong Experientialist might suggest that I am being unfair here. After all, in the preceding chapter, I argued that if Anti-Experientialism comes down to general skepticism, the epistemologist of religious experience need not be very concerned. By stressing the possible rationality of skepticism here, it may seem as if I am being unfair. The first thing to say here is that the asymmetry here derives not from my discussion, but from the evidential aspirations of Strong Experientialism. Strong Experientialism suggests that the Proof from Religious Experience provides all rational persons with reason to believe in God. Counterexamples are relevant here. Skepticism is less relevant in the context of a defense of experientialism in general because the experientialist is someone I define as affirming some evidential value of religious experience. If no experiences have any evidential value whatsoever, then there is no particular problem with religious experience. Thus, the asymmetry in the discussion results from the constitution of the positions in question, not from some bias on my part. However, the point is well-taken. Skepticism is a difficult, perhaps even impossible, position to vanquish. If the case against Strong Experientialism rested solely on the viability of skepticism, perhaps the Strong Experientialism would still have reason to press on. After all, not many people other than philosophers are actually willing to endorse this kind of radical skepticism. Suppose then that we are concerned only with people who accept the veridicality of sense perception, even if they cannot argue for it. Do these people have reason to accept Strong Experientialism? Keith Yandell has argued that they do. According to Yandell, “I do not have to rule



Resisting Strong Experientialism 45

out the possibility that there is an evil deceiver whose task it is to deceive me by providing me with misleading sensory experiences. That is a possibility that I need to worry about if and only if I have some reason to think that an evil deceiver exists.”21 Here, Yandell questions the motivation one might have for the adoption of radical skepticism. However, Yandell also gives an argument for thinking that religious experiences provide reason to believe that there is a God. His argument is more subtle and complex than what I have called the Proof from Religious Experience, so it is worth taking a look at that argument, before returning to the inference from P1 and P2 to the claim that God exists.

YANDELL’S STRONG EXPERIENTIALISM According to Yandell, there are two basic, but competing ideas we have with respect to existential claims grounded in experience. The first is that “if someone seems to experience something, then that is reason to think that this thing exists.”22 The second is that “since sometimes things seem to exist that do not exist after all . . . a type of experience can be evidence for the existence of something only if there is some way to tell whether or not experiences of that sort are deceptive.”23 The first idea Yandell calls “the basic positive idea” and the second idea he calls “the basic negative idea.”24 For Yandell, the task of the epistemologist is to find “the right embodiment—of discovering just the right way to blend the simple positive idea, and the simple negative idea, each appropriately qualified, into a unified principle of experiential evidence.”25 With this principle, Yandell thinks it will be possible to justify existential claims given experiential testimony. Given this strategy, it is easy to see why Yandell should be described as a Strong Experientialist. In his view, the proper epistemic principles license existential beliefs for all rational persons who recognize the principle and the evidential base the principle governs. The principle is not a first-person epistemic principle, but a public, third-person principle or epistemic norm. The kind of justification Yandell is concerned with is also not prima facie justification. So, Yandell is not aspiring to the bar of Moderate Evidentialism. We need not interpret Yandell as making the mistake of thinking that the argument from religious experience is the be-all-end-all of philosophy of religion, but given his argumentative strategy, it makes sense to say that he is developing an argument that he believes could play a pivotal, positive role in the ultima facie justification of theism.26 For these reasons, it seems appropriate to count Yandell as a Strong Experientialist. In Yandell’s view, there are several things to consider when elaborating the basic positive idea. Yandell suggests three important conditions an experience must satisfy to ground an existential claim, or to count as evidence for the existence of something: (i) My seeming to experience X is not evidence that X exists is true if I would seem to experience X whether I actually was experiencing X or not, (ii) my seeming to experience

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X is not evidence that X exists is true if, even if X did not exist, I could not tell that X did not exist; and (perhaps) (iii) if the type of experience to which my experience of at least seeming to encounter X belongs were systematically misleading, I could not tell that it was.27

Given these conditions, Yandell suggests the following principle: (EP) If S has E and E is intentional regarding X, then E is evidence that X exists unless S’s having E occurs in circumstances that satisfy (i), (ii), or (iii).28

The negative idea Yandell elaborates as follows: experience X of kind K can be provide evidence for X exists only if it is logically possible that experience E* (also of kind K) provides evidence against X exists.29

Yandell calls this “the negative evidence alternative.”30 Together with the elaborated positive idea, Yandell thinks experiential evidence passes the test of what he calls “experiential disconfirmation.”31 In his view, there are three forms of experiential disconfirmation: polar disconfirmation, collegial disconfirmation, and lateral disconfirmation. Polar discrimination Yandell defines as: The proposition O has A comes within the scope of polar disconfirmation if and only if there is some condition C such that O’s not being experienced in C is evidence in favor of O does not exist.32

Yandell thinks that polar disconfirmation is too strong and that it would rule out too much.33 Instead, he favors a mix of collegial and laterial disconfirmation.34 He defines both as follows: Collegial disconfirmation The proposition O has A comes within the scope of collegial disconfirmation if and only if it is logically possible (if the proposition O exists but lacks A is contingent) that an experience occur that provides evidence for O lacks A or (if the proposition O exists but lacks A is contradictory) it would be logically possible that an experience occur that would provide evidence for O lacks A were O exists but lacks A contingent.35 Lateral disconfirmation The proposition O has A comes within the scope of lateral disconfirmation if and only if it is logically possible that there be an experience that provides evidence for O* has B (where, of course, O* is different from O) and the truth of O* has B is evidence against the truth of O has A.36

Unlike polar disconfirmation, collegial and lateral disconfirmation do not require that there be some condition wherein the failure to perceive O counts against O’s existence. Rather collegial and lateral disconfirmation loosen this requirement so that



Resisting Strong Experientialism 47

a possibly unexpected perception of something else counts against O’s existence. In collegial disconfirmation, the something else suggests O does not have an expected feature whereas in lateral disconfirmation, the something else is something that is incompatible with the existence of O. Insofar as this is the case, lateral disconfirmation can be brought under the scope of collegial disconfirmation. Thus, Yandell says “[l]ateral experiential disconfirmation and collegial disconfirmation may . . . amount to different portions of a single continuum.”37 Together, these two forms of disconfirmation support what Yandell calls PCPL: (PCPL) S’s experience E that is intentional regarding O provides evidence that O exists only if O exists falls within the scope of both collegial and lateral disconfirmation.38

With this principle in tow, Yandell constructs his argument. To start, Yandell suggests that the claim God exists admits of both collegial and lateral disconfirmation. In support of this claim, Yandell imagines the following cases: Suppose that . . . one has a series of experiences. In one experience, one seems to see a burning bush and upon seeming to investigate has an experience whose phenomenology resembles that described in Exodus until it is interrupted by a horrifying laugh and a voice that tells us that God is an illusion; the experience then ends with a vision of people being tortured by an evil presence that seems to enjoy his evil activity. In another experience, things start out as in Isaiah’s vision in the temple, but end in a torture chamber.39

According to Yandell, “the occurrence of such a series would provide some countertheistic evidence.”40 If that is right, these experiences, if real, would count as collegial disconfirmation. In this instance, we would have an O, a supernatural being, that exists, but it is not omnibenevolent. Supposing the maleficent nature of this being is a contingent and not essential property, this experience supports the claim O exists but lacks A, where A is omnibenevolence. This being the case, the experience would also count as lateral disconfirmation. If we define O as an experience of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob and O* as the God of bizarro Abraham and bizarro Isaac, then the experience of O as B, defined as malevolence, counts as evidence against the existence of God, and thus the truth of O has A, defined as omnibenevolence. From here, Yandell suggests one final principle of experiential evidence. He formulates this principle as follows: (PN*) For any subject S and experience E, if S’s having E is a matter of its (phenomenologically) seeming to S that S experiences a numinous being N, then if S nonculpably has no reason to think that (i) S would seem to experience N whether or not there is an N that S experiences, or (ii) if E is nonveridical, S could not discover that it was, or (iii) if E is of a type of experience such that every member of T is nonveridical, S could not discover this fact, then E provides S evidence that there is an N, provided that (iv) O exists falls within the scope of both collegial and lateral disconfirmation.41

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The principle here is the same as the one given above, now with the additional desiderata that an experience be subject to collegial and lateral disconfirmation. Given this principle, Yandell states his final argument: (1) If persons have numinous experiences under conditions that satisfy all of the conditions specified in (PN*)—if numinous experiences occur that are not prevented from being evidence by their failing any of the tests that (PN*) includes—then there is experiential evidence that God exists. (2) Persons do have numinous experiences under conditions that satisfy all of the conditions specified in (PN*)—numinous experiences occur that are not prevented from being evidence by their failing any of the tests that (PN*) includes.

Hence: (3) There is experiential evidence that God exists.42

Here, in this argument, Yandell takes the fact that many people have religious experiences in conjunction with his principle of experiential evidence to suggest that God exists. Principle (3) may look modest, but Yandell’s elaborate defense of his principle of experiential evidence suggests otherwise. It suggests that an argument from religious experience alone is sufficient to establish the existence of God, all other things being equal. What are we to make of this argument? It is certainly subtle and sophisticated. Religious believers will certainly welcome any argument that establishes the existence of God, and while I am one of them, I think there are some reasons to resist this argument. The first thing to say about this argument is that there is a sort of incongruity here. Earlier I claimed that Yandell seems to be in search of a third-personal principle. However, when he gets around to stating PN* he says that so long as a given experience satisfies his several conditions “E provides S evidence that there is an N.” This looks quite like a first-person epistemic principle. Recall Broad’s principle that one should “treat cognitive claims as veridical unless there be some positive reason to think them delusive.”43 So stated, Yandell’s PN* comes across quite like a rather sophisticated elaboration of Broad’s principle. Of course, this is hardly a problem. However, it becomes slightly more problematic when Yandell embeds it in an argument that suggests all rational persons have experiential evidence that God exists. The fact that someone else is justified in holding a belief does not automatically mean that I am justified in holding that same belief because they are justified in holding that belief. To cross that bridge, one would need to invoke a principle of testimony as well as an epistemic principle like PN*. Yandell does not give such a principle here. A related problem here is that a person who has not had a religious experience may not know whether condition (i) S would seem to experience N whether or not there is an N that S experiences is satisfied. Consider a person in a position of evidential ambiguity with respect to God’s existence. This person does not know whether religious experiences are a veridical response to the manifestation of God or a non-



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veridical effect of some other physiological process. So, such a person would not know whether (i) is satisfied. To say of this person that the above argument provides them with experiential evidence for the existence of God in the strong sense that it justifies their adopting theism seems to me to be far too strong a statement. Yandell considers what he calls nonreligious and nonepistemic explanations and suggests he is “inclined on the whole to view as futile the attempt to settle interesting debates about whether a person is reasonable in accepting a proposition by arguing that his acceptance is nonepistemically explicable.”44 In chapter 5, I will agree with this claim, but note that it is orthogonal to the issue at hand. The question is not whether a person who already holds a belief can be moved off that belief by the charge of irrationality grounded in a nonepistemic explanation of the belief. The question is whether a person who does not hold a belief is irrational in withholding belief because a nonepistemic explanation of that belief is available. I am inclined to suggest that they are. I could be wrong about that, but nothing Yandell has said in defense of his argument suggests that I am. Thus, I think it better to resist this Strong Experientialist argument as well.

A BAYESIAN RETREAD Of course, even if Yandell’s valiant argument ultimately fails, we might revisit the Proof from Religious Experience. Perhaps this proof is ultimately not convincing to radical skeptics, but perhaps it is persuasive to all persons convinced either that it is theoretically rational to engage in sense experience or that there probably is a theoretical argument for the rational engagement in sense experience even if no one knows or will ever likely identify what it is. Does the Proof from Religious Experience provide all such persons with an argument for God’s existence? I am inclined to think not, and for similar reasons I just gave for resisting Yandell’s argument. To see this, let’s approach the Proof from a Bayesian perspective, as promised earlier. Let’s suggest that d refers to our datum, the observation supported by Davis’s identification of the common core of all religious experiences that religious experience is a (nearly) panhuman trait. Let us call k the background information that a person in a condition of evidential ambiguity with respect to the existence of God possesses. Now, let us say that h1 is the hypothesis that God exists. Its rival is the hypothesis that God does not exist. Let’s call this hypothesis naturalism and label it h2. The question then becomes: does the discovery of d make h1 much likelier than h2, likely enough for all persons to rationally adopt theism? I am inclined to suggest not. Bayes’ theorem suggests that the probability of a hypothesis on a given datum in conjunction with our background knowledge equals the probability of the datum given the hypothesis and our background knowledge multiplied by the probability of the hypothesis given our background knowledge divided by the probability of the datum given our background knowledge. Formally, the theorem can be stated as: P (h | d & k) = P (d | h & k) P (h | k) / P (d | k)

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What is the probability of our datum given a condition of evidential ambiguity with respect to the existence of God? Well, if we truly have no more reason to believe in God than not, it might seem that the probability is .5. If it is equally plausible that there is a God as that there is not, it seems as if it is equally plausible that people have experiences of God as that they do not. (Note that I do not need to assume or defend the principle of indifference here because I am stipulating concern for a person in a condition of evidential ambiguity.) What about the other probabilities? What is the probability of theism given our background knowledge? This is a matter of some controversy. C. Stephen Layman suggests that naturalism is a simpler hypothesis than theism.45 The idea here seems to be that naturalism posits only one kind of stuff, natural stuff, and that theism, as a form of supernaturalism, posits two kinds of stuff, natural stuff and spiritual “stuff.” If we think that simplicity is an indicator of truth, then it seems that the prior probability of naturalism given our background knowledge, or condition of evidential ambiguity with respect to God’s existence, is higher than the prior probability of theism, given this same knowledge. How much higher? I am not sure, but the difference is not negligible. Before assigning a probability here, it seems to me that there are two issues that need to be addressed. First, there is the question of whether we should regard simplicity as an indicator of truth. I am not convinced that we should. It seems to me that if we regard simplicity as an indicator of truth, Berkeleyan Idealism has the prior probabilistic advantage. I’m inclined to think that this is wrong. Perhaps that is wrong because the prior probability of Berkeleyan Idealism is relative to k and k makes Berkeleyan Idealism unlikely. Consider Richard Swinburne’s elaboration of the criterion of simplicity: When it is urged that there are grounds for postulating many entities rather than few, or a complex equation rather than a simple, even when a simpler theory yields the data equally well, those grounds will, I suggest, be found to consist in the fact that theories of neighboring fields postulate many entities in similar circumstances, or equations of similar form to the complex equation; and so the overall picture is simpler if we postulate in a new region the same kind of complexity as in others.46

The idea here seems to be that k suggests that we live in a world of a plurality of things. So, even though Berkeleyan Idealism fits the data of our perceiving these things equally well compared to naturalism, naturalism is the simpler theory because it fits better with the other postulates of k. I am not convinced that this is true. If God can pump ordinary objects of sense perception into our minds, it seems equally possible for God to pump microscopes and molecules into our minds and permit our theorizing about the former in the terms of the latter. If that is right, Berkeleyan Idealism fits the other postulates that might populate k just as well as naturalism. If so, Berkeleyan Idealism is the simpler theory, but then if we think simplicity is an indicator of truth, Berkeleyan Idealism has a higher prior probability than naturalism. I am not inclined at all to recommend Berkeleyan Idealism on these grounds. Now, it might be said that if two competing



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astrophysicists were predicting the impending impact of a comet and one suggested that the comet is likely to land on my house and the other suggested that the comet is likely to land on my office, and the former was using simpler equations than the latter, I would be more inclined to avoid my house than my office. While this may be true, I am not sure that it helps here. After all, I might be inclined to avoid both locations and drive to my mother’s house. Of course, we could amend the example so that a third option is unavailable, but even so, I am still inclined to compare my judgment in this case with my trepidation about Berkeleyan Idealism. The easiest resolution would be to suggest that perhaps, in some matters, simplicity rules and, in other matters, perhaps metaphysical matters, it does not.47 This consideration leads to the second issue to be addressed here. I am not at all convinced that naturalism is simpler than theism. There are several varieties of both views. Consider a neo-Aristotelian form of naturalism, like the kind one might find in a powers metaphysical scheme. In that case, it seems as if the naturalist is positing several kinds of brute things, not just natural stuff. Compare this to a kabbalistic form of theism. This form of theism might suggest, along with Gilles Deleuze, that difference rather than identity is a metaphysically primitive notion. If so, perhaps all of the neo-Aristotelian naturalist’s powers can be reduced to different differences. In that case, it seems to me that kabbalistic theism is simpler than neo-Aristotelian naturalism. True, kabbalistic theism may postulate a greater number of things than neo-Aristotelian naturalism, but the latter would postulate many more kinds of things than the former. Of course, the views might be amended so that different results emerged, but that just leads back to the previous concern. If metaphysical matters can be doctored so that prior probabilities are modified in one way or the other, perhaps that is reason to suspect simplicity as an indicator of truth. Now, I may be wrong about all of this. Perhaps simplicity is an indicator of truth. Perhaps naturalism is simpler than theism. I belabor the issue because in the present context, fairness demands that I do not unduly burden any philosophical party. If I immediately discount theism on the grounds of simplicity, it seems that I may have unfairly burdened the Strong Experientialist. If, on the other hand, I immediately dismiss all concerns about simplicity, it might seem as if I have been unfair to the naturalist. A person in a genuine condition of evidential ambiguity might then look upon everything that follows with some suspicion. Fortunately, the issue can be sidestepped by attributing a range of values to the prior probability of theism on k as a gesture of goodwill to all parties given the thorny issue at hand. Suppose then that theism is not a very simple theory given k. The probability of theism given k will therefore be lower than the probability of naturalism given k. So, we should say that naturalism is more likely than theism given k. Nonetheless, it seems to me wrong to suggest that theism is completely unlikely given k, so let’s assign it a minimum value of .4. On the other hand, suppose that theism is the simpler theory for the reasons I gave above. In that case, it is still not much simpler than naturalism. So, let’s assign it a maximum value of .55. Correlating these probabilities with naturalism, let’s assign naturalism a prior probability range of .45–.6.

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What then is the probability of our datum given theism and k? It seems to me that it is much more likely that religious experience is (nearly) panhuman if theism is true than if naturalism is true. Let’s say the odds are 3–1. In that case, the relevant probability is .75. This being so, we get the following result: P (h1 | d & k) = (.75) (.4–.55) / (.5) That being so, the corresponding formula for naturalism is: P (h2 | d & k) = (.25) (.45–.6) / (.5) Given these formulas, we get the following results: P (h1 | d & k) = (.6–.825) P (h2 | d & k) = (.225–.3) Clearly, these results are good news for theists, but this is not the present issue. The present issue is whether these results are good news for Strong Experientialism. I am inclined to suggest that they are not. First, and most obviously, the minimum possible value of h1 is too low to justify the claim that what we have here is a proof that should compel all rational persons. If it is only slightly more likely that a belief is true than its denial, it is rational to withhold belief. Of course, I would not suggest that no one could adopt the belief. It’s just that the adoption of the belief would amount to something close to a faithventure. This is not what we should expect if the Strong Experientialist is right about the alleged Proof from Religious Experience. Strong Experientialism suggests that this argument gives all rational persons in a condition of evidential ambiguity an argument that proves God exists. Given the minimum possible value we just derived, this is not so. Second, it seems to me that a person in a condition of evidential ambiguity with respect to God’s existence could rationally worry that the maximum value is unduly inflated. For all they know, religious experiences may be the result of some physiological process. Perhaps that is why they are (nearly) panhuman. This being a possibility, perhaps it is wise to reduce the probability of d given theism and k. Such a person might still agree that d is likelier given theism and k than it is given naturalism and k, but the reduced value would bring down the maximum possible value of the probability of theism given d and k. The result might be that withholding belief in God is increasingly rational. Now, the Strong Experientialist might protest that if such a person reasoned in this way that they would no longer be in a position of evidential ambiguity: they would be informed by the kind of debunking arguments motivated by the sciences of religion that I will examine in chapter 5. While I am not sure I agree that someone who is aware of debunking arguments motivated by cognitive science of religion is not in a condition of evidential ambiguity with respect to God’s existence, the person



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I am imagining does not know these arguments. They simply have the suspicion that religious experiences might be the product of physiological processes, although they have no idea how this might be so. They are not someone who could sketch a cognitive mechanism that would produce a religious experience and/or religious belief as a product. It seems to me that such a person could rationally have this suspicion, rationally withhold belief in theism, recognize the force of the argument in question, and still accurately be described as thinking through a condition of evidential ambiguity. Finally, the above results represent the range of values indicating the possibility that theism is simpler than naturalism and that naturalism is simpler than theism. It seems to me that one could rationally disregard the criterion of simplicity for the reasons I gave above (or believe that simplicity actually tracks other epistemic goods traceable to inductive practices that are moot here).48 If so, the upper range of the prior probability of theism given k would come down. That being the case, the upper range of the probability of theism given d and k would come down. Given this new upper range, it might be rational to withhold belief in theism, even given an appreciation of the force of the alleged Proof from Religious Experience. If that is right, then whatever we think about the criterion of simplicity and the comparative simplicity of theism and naturalism, it seems as if the argument leaves room for rational withholding of theistic belief. This suggests that Strong Experientialism is mistaken. The Proof from Religious Experience does not make withholding belief in God irrational for a person in a condition of evidential ambiguity. Strong Experientialism aims too high and cannot ultimately deliver on its promises. Of course, I admit that the preceding is far from conclusive. I admit that if a case can be made for the criterion of simplicity and for the simplicity of theism compared to naturalism, there is a compelling argument to be made here. What I have stressed in the preceding is the claim that one can rationally find this argument to be less than decisive. This claim is consistent with the claim that there are some rational persons who find the argument strong enough to justify their belief in God, even in the absence of further argumentation. For this reason, I have spoken and will speak throughout this book of resisting Strong Experientialism rather than rejecting it. I concede that my position may be partly informed by my view that there are preciously few rationally decisive arguments to be found in philosophy. I recognize that there are partisans who disagree. I have simply strived to identify them on many sides of the issue and acknowledge their contentions. My judgment that their various disagreements are rational partly informs my decision to move beyond Strong Experientialism.49

CONCLUSION I have argued that Strong Experientialism aspires to the bar of Strong Evidentialism, to contribute to the ultima facie justification of theism. Of course, theistic belief could possess ultima facie justification by means of a cumulative case. Strong

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Experientialism is the view that theistic belief could possess ultima facie justification even in the absence of further arguments for the existence of God, even if one only advocated for an argument from religious experience. If what I have called the Proof from Religious Experience demonstrates that some people are rationally justified in believing in God on the basis of this argument, then Strong Experientialism is not exactly a mistaken position. However, if we interpret Strong Experientialism as the view that an argument from religious experience proves all rational persons in a condition of evidential ambiguity cannot withhold belief in God, then I believe the preceding demonstrates that Strong Experientialism is mistaken. Given this somewhat ambiguous result, I have suggested that it is better to resist Strong Experientialism than to outright reject it. However, in my view, this is not much of a loss from a theistic perspective. That’s because religious experience does possess enough evidential value to justify theistic belief. The next issue to examine is under what conditions this is the case. The argument of this chapter proceeded from a consideration of the cross-cultural ubiquity of religious experience, but if religious experience is that ubiquitous, then many people who have had religious experiences have had them despite not knowing of this ubiquity. It is important to ask whether these persons are justified in adopting a religious belief in response to these experiences. Some forms of Moderate Experientialism suggest that this is the case. It is to these cases and their defense that I now turn.

NOTES   1.  C. D. Broad, Religion, Philosophy, and Psychical Research (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Company, 1953), 197.  2. Ibid., 173.  3. D. Elton Trueblood, Philosophy of Religion (Grand Rapids: Baker Book House, 1953|1977), 145.  4. Ibid., 148.  5. Ibid., 152.  6. Ibid., 157.   7.  T. J. Mawson, Belief in God: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion (New York: Clarendon Oxford University Press, 2005).  8. Ibid., 177.  9. Ibid., 176. 10.  Ibid., 174. 11.  Ibid., 176. 12.  Ibid., 164. 13.  Caroline Franks Davis, The Evidential Force of Religious Experience (New York: Clarendon Press Oxford, 1989). 14.  Ibid., 191. 15.  Kai-Man Kwan, “The Argument from Religious Experience,” in The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology, ed. William Lane Craig and J. P. Moreland (Malden: WileyBlackwell, 2009), 542.



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16.  Garth L. Hallett, A Middle Way to God (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 62. 17.  Rem Edwards, Reason and Religion: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion (Washington, DC: University Press of America, 1979), 307. 18.  Kai-Man Kwan, “The Argument from Religious Experience,” in The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology, ed. William Lane Craig and J. P. Moreland (Malden: WileyBlackwell , 2009), 544. 19.  T. J. Mawson, Belief in God: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion (New York: Clarendon Oxford University Press, 2005), 166. 20.  Rem Edwards, Reason and Religion: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion (Washington, DC: University Press of America, 1979), 296. 21.  Keith Yandell, The Epistemology of Religious Experience (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 51. 22.  Ibid., 34. 23. Ibid. 24. Ibid. 25.  Ibid., 37. 26.  Yandell is clear that experiential evidence is not exhaustive and that “[t]here is always more relevant evidence than experiential” (Ibid., 234). He is equally clear that “[h]aving evidence that X exists is compatible with being unreasonable in believing that X exists, for it is compatible with having stronger experiential (or total) evidence that X does not exist than one has that X exists” (Ibid.). Nevertheless, it remains the case that, for Yandell, the argument from religious experience counts as a proof, in the strong sense I have been emphasizing, when the other evidence does not undermine or rebut the conclusion of the argument. This is the key difference between Moderate and Strong Experientialism as I have defined these terms. Both partisans believe that theistic belief can be justified when grounded in religious experience, but only the Strong Experientialist regards the evidence of religious experience as amounting to something of a proof. 27.  Ibid., 238. 28. Ibid. 29.  Ibid., 240. 30. Ibid. 31.  Ibid., 245. 32. Ibid. 33.  Ibid., 252–245. 34.  Ibid., 251. 35.  Ibid., 245–246. 36.  Ibid., 246. 37.  Ibid., 273. 38.  Ibid., 252. 39.  Ibid., 248. 40.  Ibid., 249. 41.  Ibid., 274. 42. Ibid. 43.  C. D. Broad, Religion, Philosophy, and Psychical Research (New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Company, 1953), 197. 44.  Keith Yandell, The Epistemology of Religious Experience (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 159.

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45.  C. Stephen Layman, Letters to Doubting Thomas: A Case for the Existence of God (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), 29. 46.  Richard Swinburne, Epistemic Justification (New York: Clarendon Press Oxford, 2001), 96. 47.  Of course, this is a complicated matter I cannot adequately treat here. There is a compelling case to be made for thinking that parsimony considerations are epistemic consequences of inductive practices. However, I am not sure that such a consideration helps here because the issue is precisely what the best explanation of our prior evidence is and that is up for dispute in this context. For a discussion, see: Elliott Sober, “The Principle of Parsimony,” The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 32, no. 2 (1981): 145–156. 48.  See the previous note. 49.  If Permissivism is true, perhaps this conclusion can be strengthened, but a development of that case lies outside the scope of the present project.

3 Defending Moderate Experientialism

The conclusions of the previous two chapters suggest that religious experiences have moderate evidential value. As we have seen, there are good reasons for rejecting the view that religious experiences have no evidential value and there are good reasons for resisting the view that religious experiences provide all rational persons in a condition of evidential ambiguity with reason to believe in God. These reasons leave the possibility that religious experiences have some evidential value and that they may play some justificatory role with respect to religious belief. Of course, there is quite a bit of terrain between evidential valuelessness and proof. This being the case, there are several ways one can formulate Moderate Experientialism. In the introduction, I introduced three forms of Moderate Experientialism. I called these Faith-Venturing Experientialism (FVE), Justifying-Practice Experientialism (JPE), and Modified Cumulative Case Experientialism (MCCE). Given the reasons for rejecting Anti-Experientialism and for resisting Strong Experientialism, a defense of these forms of Moderate Experientialism is called for. This is the task to which I turn in this chapter. Of course, the various forms of Moderate Experientialism complicate this task. In chapter 1, I suggested that the forms of Moderate Experientialism can be distinguished by where they set the justificatory bar. MCCE suggests that religious experiences have evidential value, but that this evidential value is rather weak, although it can contribute to the success of a cumulative case for the existence of God. This position is a bit counterintuitive insofar as the cumulative case it seeks to construct is one that all will, or should, find rationally persuasive and yet the work religious experience does in this case is very minimal. So, for MCCE, religious experiences have weak evidential value, but the justificatory bar in question is Strong Evidentialism: the view that S is justified in believing in p if and only if S has ultima facie reason to believe in p. Contrast this with JPE. Recall that JPE is the view that the reliability and/or social reproduction of religious practice justifies the beliefs of 57

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religious practitioners. This view is also somewhat counterintuitive insofar as it treats religious experiences with sufficient evidential value to justify religious beliefs practically themselves and yet the view does not suggest that successful practices provide all rational persons with reason to believe in God. Thus, JPE appears to treat religious experiences as having a greater evidential value than MCCE and yet JPE aspires to the bar of Moderate Evidentialism: the view that S is justified in believing in p if and only if S has prima facie reason to believe in p. FVE follows this pattern but it lowers the bar to Weak Evidentialism: the view that S is justified in believing in p if S has pro tanto reason to believe in p. Strong Experientialists and Anti-Experientialists will have little reason to quibble with the justificatory bar set by MCCE: all three set the justificatory bar at Strong Evidentialism. Given this consensus, it appears that there is a strong intuitive pull to Strong Evidentialism. If that is right, then a defense of Moderate Experientialism in general must first involve a defense of Moderate and Weak Evidentialism. Fortunately, there is a historical debate one can profit from here. In the introduction, I mentioned W. K. Clifford’s view that it is always wrong to believe anything upon insufficient evidence. It is easiest to interpret Clifford here as advocating Strong Evidentialism. Thus, I begin a defense of Moderate Experientialism with a reconstruction of Clifford’s case for Strong Evidentialism. I then move to one of the most wellknown critiques of Clifford in philosophical history developed by William James in his essay “The Will to Believe.” It is easy to interpret James’s response to Clifford as a defense of voluntarism, or the view that one may adopt a belief without evidence and at will, but I argue that James’s later work on religious experience suggest he did not intend to defend voluntarism and that he is better interpreted as advocating for Moderate and/or Weak Evidentialism. Following Plantinga and Alston, both of whom interpret James in this manner, I argue that there is a case to be made for recognizing multiple forms of evidentialism and several justificatory bars of various strengths. Having made this case, I then move to a defense of JPE. I distinguish two forms of JPE and I argue that many objections to the view fail to distinguish the first form from the latter form. I argue that the latter is unobjectionable and that it is a viable form of Moderate Experientialism. I conclude with a brief discussion of MCCE and I argue that even if one believes that a cumulative case for theism is not ultimately rationally convincing to all, the preceding considerations suggest that the central contention of Moderate Experientilaism, that religious experiences have some evidential value and that they can play a justificatory role with respect to religious belief, stands.

FAITH-VENTURING EXPERIENTIALISM AND THE ETHICS OF BELIEF W. K. Clifford begins “The Ethics of Belief ” imagining the following scenario: A shipowner was about to send to sea an emigrant-ship. He knew that she was old, and not overwell built at the first; that she had seen many seas and climes, and often had



Defending Moderate Experientialism 59 needed repairs. Doubts had been suggested to him that possibly she was not seaworthy. These doubts preyed upon his mind, and made him unhappy; he thought that perhaps he ought to have her thoroughly overhauled and refitted, even though this should put him to great expense. Before the ship sailed, however, he succeeded in overcoming these melancholy reflections. He said to himself that she had gone safely through so many voyages and weathered so many storms that it was idle to suppose she would not come safely home from this trip also. He would put his trust in Providence, which could hardly fail to protect all these unhappy families that were leaving their fatherland to seek for better times elsewhere. He would dismiss from his mind all ungenerous suspicions about the honesty of builders and contractors. In such ways he acquired a sincere and comfortable conviction that his vessel was thoroughly safe and seaworthy; he watched her departure with a light heart, and benevolent wishes for the success of the exiles in their strange new home that was to be; and he got his insurance-money when she went down in mid-ocean and told no tales.1

According to Clifford, the first thing to say of the shipowner is that he is morally culpable for the death of the emigrants. However, Clifford goes one step further. He suggests that the shipowner would still be morally culpable even if the ship had made it to its destination safely. Even in the case of a successful voyage, the shipowner would have imposed an unnecessary risk on the emigrants, but that is not all. Clifford thinks that in either case the shipowner has done something epistemically defective. To bring this to the fore, Clifford constructs another case. He imagines the following: There was once an island in which some of the inhabitants professed a religion teaching neither the doctrine of original sin nor that of eternal punishment. A suspicion got abroad that the professors of this religion had made use of unfair means to get their doctrines taught to children. They were accused of wresting the laws of their country in such a way as to remove children from the care of their natural and legal guardians; and even of stealing them away and keeping them concealed from their friends and relations. A certain number of men formed themselves into a society for the purpose of agitating the public about this matter. They published grave accusations against individual citizens of the highest position and character, and did all in their power to injure these citizens in their exercise of their professions. So great was the noise they made, that a Commission was appointed to investigate the facts; but after the Commission had carefully inquired into all the evidence that could be got, it appeared that the accused were innocent. Not only had they been accused on insufficient evidence, but the evidence of their innocence was such as the agitators might easily have obtained, if they had attempted a fair inquiry. After these disclosures the inhabitants of that country looked upon the members of the agitating society, not only as persons whose judgment was to be distrusted, but also as no longer to be counted honourable men. For although they had sincerely and conscientiously believed in the charges they had made, yet they had no right to believe on such evidence as was before them. Their sincere convictions, instead of being honestly earned by patient inquiring, were stolen by listening to the voice of prejudice and passion.2

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Following this case, Clifford asks whether the moral disapprobation we feel at the behavior of the accusers would change if the commission had found the esteemed citizens guilty of these crimes. For Clifford, the answer is no. What follows from these cases? Clifford considers the suggestion that what is morally wrong in these cases is not the beliefs of the persons in question, but their actions. Clifford dismisses the suggestion. In his view, “a belief not founded on fair inquiry unfits a man for the performance of his necessary duty.”3 Thus, for Clifford, an ill-begotten belief still prevents a person from discharging their moral duty to inquire into matters without bias or prejudice with respect to the matter at hand. In this way, Clifford suggests that ill-begotten beliefs erode the moral character of a person. Such a belief “lays a stealthy train in our inmost thoughts, which may someday explode into overt action, and leave its stamp upon our character.”4 Clifford thinks such beliefs are also socially pernicious. In his view, they provide others with impoverished exemplars and erode the public spirit of incredulity. Given these moral dangers, Clifford concludes: “it is wrong always, everywhere, and for anyone, to believe anything upon insufficient evidence.”5 Now, my interest here is not with Clifford.6 Today, Clifford scholars question whether Clifford was ever sincerely committed to his oft-repeated principle. For example, Nottelmann and Fessenbecker argue that the principle is “better understood as a rhetorical flourish than an attempt at philosophical precision.”7 This is for good reason. As Nottelmann and Fessenbecker concede, the scenarios Clifford imagines “[don’t] support the claim Clifford implies [they do].”8 This is easy to see. In the first scenario, the shipowner does not just believe on insufficient evidence. He ignores the apparent evidence he has for thinking his ship may not be seaworthy. In the second scenario, the accusers make the same mistake. They ignore the evidence the commission gathers that suggests the innocence of the accused. It is true that the accusers first establish the commission on the grounds of insufficient evidence, namely, hearsay, but this actually undermines Clifford’s conclusion. It is probably wise to investigate such serious accusations even if one does not have sufficient evidence to render a guilty verdict. Finally, to advocate such a strong principle in response to only a few imagined scenarios is to be guilty of hast generalization. In this way, Clifford leaves his principle open to counterexample. In his essay, “The Will to Believe,” this is exactly the critical strategy William James pursues in response to Clifford. There, James says that “Clifford’s exhortation has to my ears a thoroughly fantastic sound.”9 In James’s view, there are “two materially different [epistemic] laws.”10 The first is to believe the truth and the second is to avoid error. As James interprets Clifford, he has enshrined the second at the cost of the first. According to James, this position overlooks the fact that, in some cases, “we obviously are recorders, not makers, of the truth,” but that there are other cases where the opposite is true.11 Of course, James admits that there are cases where the cost of agnosticism is minimal, where the potential loss of truth by is trivial. In these cases, James says, “the dispassionately judicial intellect . . . ought to be our ideal.”12 His view is that these types of cases are not the only cases one confronts. He consid-



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ers, by way of example, personal relations. In these cases, the forging of a friendship or a romantic relationship requires one to meet another “half-way . . . to assume that you must like me, and show you trust and expectation.”13 Thus, James concludes that “where faith in a fact can help create the fact, that would be an insane logic which should say that faith running ahead of scientific evidence is the ‘lowest kind of immorality’ into which a thinking being can fall.”14 Alexander Klein interprets James as advocating the view that faith-venturing is rationally permissible in the context of discovery rather than the context of justification.15 However, William Alston interprets James as articulating a second standard of justification in response to the standard Clifford advocated.16 In Alston’s view, Clifford’s standard suggests that “one is obliged to refrain from engaging in a practice unless one has adequate reasons for supposing it to be reliable.”17 The Jamesian standard, by contrast, is that “one is justified in engaging in a practice provided one does not have sufficient reasons for regarding it as unreliable.”18 As Alston sees it, the difference amounts to believing that practices are guilty until proven innocent or believing that practices are innocent until proven guilty.19 Clifford’s view is the former; James’s view is the latter. Of course, just as my interest here is not with Clifford, my interest here is not primarily with interpreting James either. The important point, for present purposes, is that Clifford’s principle, and thus his preferred standard of justification, is not yet sufficiently motivated. Perhaps there is a better way to secure Clifford’s case. Perhaps Clifford’s principle does not need abductive support from a litany of cases. Perhaps Strong Evidentialism is the only game in town. After all, if even advocates of Modified Cumulative Case Experientialsim advocate Strong Evidentialism, there is support for Strong Evidentialism from Anti-Experientialists, Strong Experientialists, and Moderate Experientialists. Clearly, there is something to Strong Evidentialism. Even James admits that much. It’s just that, for James, different cases call for different standards. The present problem is that insofar as Alston is right to recognize a weaker justificatory bar in James than the one Clifford sets, it is simply wrong to suggest Strong Evidentialism is the only game in town. The very fact that it is possible to formulate Moderate Evidentialism suggests otherwise. Perhaps it might be said that Moderate Evidentialism inevitably leads to Strong Evidentialism, and that the former is not so much setting a justificatory standard as it is describing a temporal or psychological process on the way to a justificatory standard. For example, Thomas Senor defines prima facie justification, which is the core notion at the heart of what I am calling Moderate Evidentialism, as follows: PFJ: A belief is prima facie justified if it bears the appropriate relation to a state or process that will make the belief ultima facie justified if there is no other state or process relevant to the justificatory evaluation of the belief.20

One might think this formula suggests that the true justificatory bar is inevitably ultima facie justification. Senor resists this suggestion. He says that “it is tempting to understand prima facie justification to be that which the agent has before the justification

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for the belief is defeated or that which one has until one’s evidence gathered is complete,” but he adds that to say this is “to misunderstand the nature of the distinction.”21 In Senor’s view, prima facie justification could also be called “ceteris paribus justification.”22 This being the case, Senor thinks it is more accurate to suggest that potential defeaters are defeaters of ultima facie justification not prima facie justification, but if that is right, prima facie justification does in fact set a distinct justificatory bar compared to ultima facie justification. That’s not to say that defeaters are of no interest to the Moderate Evidentialist. If Senor’s formulation of prima facie justification is correct, then a belief will no longer be prima facie justified if there is good reason to think it will not be ultima facie justified. To use Alston’s reliabilism as an example, it is just to say that one might need a defeater defeater: a defeater for the claim that a practice is unreliable even if one has no noncircular way to establish that the practice in question is in fact reliable. In such a case, an undefeated defeater would block the possibility that the prima facie justified belief could rise to the level of ultima facie justification and therefore redound to the prima facie justified belief ’s discredit. Such a belief could not be prima facie justified because it could not possibly be ultima facie justified. If that is right, and I think it is, then the only remaining obstacle to recognizing the justificatory standard of Moderate Evidentialism is Clifford’s idea that there is a moral obligation to aspire to Strong Evidentialism. Susan Haack distinguishes several ways of understanding the relationship between ethical and epistemic appraisal.23 One way is to regard epistemic appraisal as “a subspecies of ethical appraisal.” Haack calls this “the special-case thesis.” Another way is to suggest that “epistemic appraisal is distinct from, but invariably associated with, positive/negative appraisal.” Haack calls this “the correlation thesis.”24 Haack argues that the special-case thesis is false because although a person is epistemically unjustified in holding a belief on insufficient evidence, “he can’t be morally at fault . . . unless his belief is willfully induced” and there are cases where one’s evidence “may not be good enough . . . [and] where his belief is not willfully induced.”25 Haack suggests that the correlation thesis is also false because there may be cases where “believing unjustifiedly is beneficial or harmless.”26 One might think of James’s concern with personal relations as an example of this sort of case. In Haack’s view, there are “two kinds of cognitive inadequacy.”27 The first kind is personal and arises whenever an individual misjudges the evidence. However, the second kind is cultural and “arises because of the perspectival character of judgments of relevance [and] their dependence on background beliefs.”28 In Haack’s view, background beliefs about what is relevant can lead one to discount or ignore evidence. In these cases, Haack thinks it is appropriate to say that a person’s belief is epistemically unjustified, but that it is inappropriate to say that a person is morally culpable for holding the belief in question. For example, a medieval person who believed an illness or misfortune was caused by bad bile will be epistemically unjustified, but it is wrong to say that the person is morally blameworthy for holding that belief. They live at a time when they had no way of knowing otherwise. The epistemic standards of their community lead them to discount or ignore evidence to the contrary.



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In Haack’s view, Clifford is best interpreted as advocating the correlation, rather than special-case, thesis. As Haack interprets Clifford, he “offers no arguments” for the special-case thesis.29 Rather what Clifford does offer is an argument suggesting that “unjustified believing is culpable ignorance.”30 However, Haack argues that this case fails. For example, in Clifford’s shipowner case, the shipowner’s belief is unjustified, but the belief is “of great practical importance” and it “leads to dramatically harmful consequences.”31 However, Haack suggests that the correlation thesis is “false unless the ignorance would still be morally culpable even if all these features were absent.”32 Now, and in fairness to Clifford, Clifford does amend the case so that the shipowner’s vessel makes it to its destination safely, but Haack’s point here is that even in that case, the belief is still of great practical importance and the shipowner has still assumed a position of “special responsibility.”33 For this reason, I believe Haack is right to conclude that even the correlation thesis is false because there are instances where an unjustified belief can be beneficial or harmless. As Lorraine Code also recognizes, this is the strength of James’s critique: James rightly adopts the view that “moral concerns can override epistemic ones” in some conditions.34 Now, this is not to say that Haack endorses James’s critique outright. Haack argues that both James and Clifford fail to carefully distinguish epistemic and ethical justification. She argues that Clifford is wrong to suggest that a person is always morally blameworthy for believing on inadequate evidence, but that James is wrong to suggest that it is epistemically permissible to believe on inadequate evidence.35 According to Haack, “believing on inadequate evidence is always epistemologically unjustified belief.”36 Is this a reason to reject the justificatory bar of Moderate Evidentialism? It is hard to say. Haack does not specify exactly what counts as adequate evidence. If evidence supporting a prima facie justified belief is adequate, then Haack has not given a reason to think that Moderate Evidentialism is epistemically deficient. However, if Haack thinks evidence is only adequate when it provides ultima facie justification for a belief, the situation is different. Nevertheless, I think that this case is far from conclusive. To say that “believing on inadequate evidence is always epistemically unjustified belief ” is to say something almost tautological. If the intention here is to say that a belief based on inadequate evidence is a belief that lacks ultima facie justification, then the statement is true, but no one would deny that. The question is whether Strong Evidentialism is the only important justificatory bar to aspire to, and to say that if one does not aspire to it that one will not meet it is not to say that it is morally or epistemically wrong to aspire to another bar, or to settle for that bar, where ultima facie justification is out of reach. For this reason, I conclude that there is no good reason to discredit Moderate Evidentialism. (There are other interesting, but quite technical epistemological problems in the vicinity here. Some might think that Moderate Evidentialism is wedded to the notion of defeasible justification or inductivism about justification and that such views generate difficult problems.37 Given these difficulties, one might think that Moderate Evidentialism sets an inviable justificatory bar. Unfortunately, there is not space to adequately treat these debates here. However, I can make two brief comments to

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assuage this concern. First, as Comesaña notes, defeasible justification is not equivalent to inductivism and many of the most serious epistemological problems here arise from a commitment to inductivism.38 I will not suggest here that these problems do not have a solution, but I will point out that the above characterization of prima facie as ceteris paribus justification does not require a denial of the view that evidence entails justified beliefs. Second, many of these problems emerge for views committed to the view that experience immediately justifies beliefs.39 However, and as I will note in the conclusion, the view I am defending here does not ultimately require a commitment to immediate justification or what is sometimes described as perceptual dogmatism, and it may even be better to drop that commitment. For these reasons, I sidestep these issues and maintain the view that these related epistemological problems cannot be leveraged into a rejection of Moderate Evidentialism.) Of course, Moderate Evidentialism is not the only alternative to Strong Evidentialism. In chapter 1, I suggested an even weaker form I described as Weak Evidentialism: the view that S is justified in believing in p if S has pro tanto reason to believe in p. Now, it might seem strange to describe a pro tanto reason as justifying a belief. I agree that it is, but I think the strangeness can be relieved if we think of Weak Evidentialism as articulating a standard for faith-venturing, or for fideism. After all, in chapter 1, it was FVE that I described as aspiring to the bar of Weak Evidentialism. Nevertheless, one might still find it strange to describe FVE as consistent with any form of evidentialism. However, this is only the case if one thinks that faithventuring need be voluntaristic. In “The Will to Believe,” William James seems to suggest so. At the outset of his essay, he says that he has “long defended to my own students the lawfulness of voluntarily adopted faith.”40 However, there are hints that suggest a more subtle presentation. For example, James also asks, “Does it not seem preposterous on the very face of it to talk of our opinions being modifiable at will?” and he asks, by way of example, “Can we, just by willing it, believe that Abraham Lincoln’s existence is a myth?”41 The answer it seems is “No,” and yet James goes on to say that it is “only our dead hypotheses that our willing nature is unable to bring to life again.”42 However, when James defines a live and dead hypothesis, he says that live hypotheses make “some appeal, however small, to your belief.”43 This suggests some evidential constraint on faith-ventures. In fact, if we look to James’s mature expression of his view, this constraint is even more explicit. In a letter dated June 16, 1904, James wrote to F. H. Bradley that “The Will to Believe” essay had a “luckless title, which should have been ‘Right to Believe.”44 Moreover, when James was composing his unfinished Some Problems of Philosophy, he added an appendix on the subject entitled “Faith and the Right to Believe.”45 In that essay, James says that the faith-venture “must remain a practical, and not a dogmatic attitude” and that it “must go with toleration of other faiths, with the search for the most probable, and with the full consciousness of responsibilities and risks.”46 The phrase, “the search for the most probable,” suggests that James thinks of the faith-venture as constrained by evidence: one can only permissibly leap toward a conclusion one believes may be true. Thus, I suggest that what evidentially grounds



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a faith-venture, for James, is at the very least what a Phenomenal Conservatist will call a “seeming.” However, James more likely adopted the view that a religious faithventure is grounded in a religious experience. In his Gifford Lectures that became The Varieties of Religious Experience, James catalogued the psychological patterns of religious life, and in Pragmatism, he went so far as to say that “the evidence for God lies primarily in inner personal experiences.”47 Of course, James does not say that this evidence is conclusive, or decisive for all rational persons. Therefore, I think it is most reasonable to interpret James as having abandoned the voluntarism of “The Will to Believe” essay. His mature view is not that faith-ventures are evidentially groundless, but that they are trusting reactions to one’s experiences and are reasonable in certain epistemic conditions. In a helpful commentary on the James-Clifford debate, George Mavrodes distinguishes between two evidentialist requirements: a proportionality requirement and a threshold requirement.48 In his view, Clifford articulates a threshold requirement, although he is silent on exactly where the threshold lies. However, as Mavrodes interprets “The Will to Believe,” James’s concern is with the proportionality requirement. According to this view, James is suggesting that one can hold a belief out of proportion with one’s evidence. C. Stephen Evans has wondered what this might mean.49 In his view, the notion of a degree of belief can mean one of two things. It could mean “the degree of certainty or confidence one has about a belief ” or it could mean “the degree of willingness one might have to abandon a belief in the face of new evidence.”50 The view I am advocating for here suggests that one understand an overbelief in the former sense, but not the latter. As I defined MEF in chapter 1, a nonbasic belief can be held out of proportion with one’s evidence, but as I am insisting now, there are evidential constraints on faith-venturing. According to this view, faith-venturing in the sense of adopting an overbelief is only epistemically permissible in a condition of evidential ambiguity. Of course, even this much is not enough to allay the concerns expressed by Clifford in “The Ethics of Belief.” While epistemic constraints would prohibit Clifford’s shipowner and accusers from leaping against the evidence as they do in Clifford’s examples, these constraints do not prohibit persons from leaping toward morally repugnant beliefs. In a very thoughtful essay on the conditions in which faithventuring is rationally permissible, John Bishop adds that a faith-venture must be morally acceptable.51 One cannot accept a belief on faith if the belief is itself morally repugnant or if it would lead to morally repugnant actions. As evidenced above, this is a constraint which James explicitly adds in later writings on the subject, and one which he did not make quite explicit in “The Will to Believe” essay. Nevertheless, it is an important constraint to emphasize, and it is one even Haack implicitly recognizes, when she adds that epistemically unjustified beliefs are not morally problematic when they are harmless or beneficial, as noted above. However, one might argue that adopting a belief one only has pro tanto reason to believe in is not necessary even if one adds several epistemic and moral constraints. Strictly speaking, this is true. Faith-venturing is not necessary. James’s mature position

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is not that faith-venturing is morally obligatory, but that it may, in some conditions, be morally permissible. Of course, this is not what the objection is after. The objection is asking why it is permissible to adopt the belief that God exists if one’s religious experience only provides one with a pro tanto reason to believe in God. Richard Gale has suggested that faith-venturing can be morally problematic when it involves the adoption of a belief because adopting a belief one does not have sufficient reason to adopt ultimately amounts to a failure to treat oneself as a rational agent and that doing so is morally problematic.52 However, if one adopts the belief fallibly, it is not clear that one is failing to treat oneself as a rational agent, and as we have just seen, this is what James recommends. To the worry that faith-venturing licenses behavior that could be realized even without adopting a relevant belief, one must concede that this is true, but if one’s passional nature (to use James’s term) causally contributes to the adoption of a belief, then so long as there is nothing morally or evidentially problematic about adopting that belief, it is permissible to adopt an over-belief even when there is only pro tanto reason to do so. Nevertheless, many religious believers will think faith-venturing is unnecessary. In the next chapter, I will argue that this defense of faith-venturing is critical to religious initiates and that it may even be critical to religious believers who find their faith waning. The important point, for present purposes, is that there are good reasons to reject the moral argument prohibiting faith-venturing. Combined with the failure of arguments morally and epistemically requiring persons to aspire to the bar of Strong Evidentialism, this suggests a defense of Moderate Evidentialism in general. However, there is quite a bit more to say about the structure of the specific forms of Moderate Experientialism that are not accurately described as FVE, and this is the subject of the next two sections of this chapter.

DEFENDING JUSTIFYING-PRACTICE EXPERIENTIALISM In the introduction, I suggested that there are two potential forms of JPE. The first form I suggested could be described as the crude form, or the basically pragmatic form. I said that form would measure the success of a practice in terms of the results it achieves. An individualistic form of this view would suggest that if an individual engaged in a religious practice and it produced a religious experience or that a religious experience inspired a person to engage in a religious practice and it produced an expected result, including, say, a subsequent experience, perhaps of comfort, peace, or something else, then a belief grounded in the experience, such as a theistic belief, would be prima facie justified. A perhaps more plausible, communal form of this view would suggest something similar, but add the thought that prima facie justification is only conferred on beliefs grounded in experiences if many, or most, people engaging in that practice achieved the intended result of the practice. An immediate objection to this view is that it is possible to achieve an intended result of a practice for reasons other than the effectiveness of the practice. Applied



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to a religious practice, one might say that it is possible to achieve an intended result of a religious practice for reasons other than that the practice put one in effective contact with God. There is no reason to deny this possibility. The more important question is whether one has reason to think one succeeded achieving the intended result because the practice works the way practitioners claim or because some other causal factors contributed to the success. In the absence of good reason to think other causal factors contributed to the practice’s success, it seems reasonable to me to think that the practice is working the way practitioners’ claim. This being the case, it seems reasonable to me to think that an experience produced while engaging in the practice is veridical. Applied to religious practices, this suggests that it is reasonable to think that a religious experience produced in a religious practice is veridical, and if so, this implies that it is reasonable to adopt a religious belief in response to a religious experience and treat it as prima facie justified. Of course, I am aware of how crude this position is, and I will leave well enough alone.53 That’s because, in my view, there is no reason to press this basic pragmatic version insofar as the second form of JPE is far more subtle and sophisticated, and it is not objectionable on the grounds that it overemphasizes the cash value of practices. This version is best represented by the doxastic practice epistemology developed and defended by William Alston. As Alston notes, the “kind of pragmatic defense of religious belief ” I have described as the basically pragmatic version of JPE is very far from Alston’s doxastic-practice epistemology.54 In the introduction, I glossed this view as the view that success of a practice, together with the absence of any reason to think the practice is unreliable, and with other considerations, such as the tying of the practice to the greater tradition and/or to historical precedent, collectively amounts to reason to regard the practice as rational to engage in and the beliefs it generates as prima facie justified. It is now time to expound on this view. In Alston’s view, a practice “stretches over psychological processes like perception, thought, fantasy, and belief formation, as well as voluntary action.”55 So, for Alston, a practice is not primarily a social institution or an organized activity, but a cognitive process one repeatedly engages in. Thus, in Alston’s terminology, a “doxastic practice can be thought of as a system or constellation of dispositions or habits . . . each of which yields a belief as output that is related in a certain way to an ‘input.’”56 This functionalist view of doxastic practices enables Alston to individuate doxastic practices by identifying their respect inputs and outputs.57 For Alston, a mystical doxastic practice is one that takes mystical or religious experiences as an input and produces religious beliefs as an output. Alston calls this doxastic practice the Christian mystical practice, or CMP. CMP is what Alston describes as “a generational practice.”58 These practices are “the source of radically new information coming into the doxastic system.”59 They can be distinguished from transformational practices, which “yield belief outputs from belief inputs.”60 However, and crucially for Alston, there is also “an evaluative side” to doxastic practices.61 This means that each doxastic practice involves distinct ways of “assessing and correcting the beliefs so formed.”62 These evaluative measures contribute to the justificatory status of a belief produced by the generational practice. These measures

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specify the proper output a doxastic practice should produce given a specific input. To this, each doxastic practice also adds what Alston calls an “overrider system.”63 This is a system or “backlog of other justified beliefs and investigative procedures” that a given output can be tested against.64 This system can be called on when an output is called into question or when assessing the reliability of the doxastic practice. This last point is crucial to understanding Alston’s view. According to Alston, the justification of a doxastic practice involves what he calls “practical rationality.”65 Alston says that this is a distinct kind of rationality “from the rationality we would show to attach to a belief if solid grounds for its truth were adduced, or to attach to a doxastic practice if sufficient reasons were given for regarding it as reliable.” That is, Alston thinks the question here is a question of rational engagement. He does not believe that there is an independent ground on which one can stand with respect to doxastic practices where one can deem a doxastic practice reliable. The best one can do is to ask whether it is rational to engage in the practice “if we had a choice.”66 Thus, for Alston, there is no way to externally support a doxastic practice. That’s because each doxastic practice presupposes its own evaluative criteria and overrider system. Therefore, a judgment about the potential reliability of a doxastic practice requires engagement with that practice. Nevertheless, Alston does not believe that there is no way to support a doxastic practice. While there is no way to externally support a doxastic practice, Alston believes that there is a way to leverage self-support into a defense of a doxastic practice. As Alston puts it, “significant self-support . . . [is] a way of strengthening the prima facie claim of a doxastic practice to a kind of practical rationality.”67 In his view, “a firmly established doxastic practice is rationally engaged in unless the total output of all our firmly established doxastic practices sufficiently indicates its unreliability.”68 According to Alston, a doxastic practice is firmly established when it is “a socially established doxastic practice.”69 A doxastic practice is socially established when it is “socially organized, reinforced, monitored, and shared.”70 Thus, we might say that a doxastic practice is socially established when it is generationally reproduced or reproducible and it is tied to a folk tradition or firmly entrenched institution. Thus, we might summarize Alston’s view as follows. In Alston’s view, it is rational to engage in a doxastic practice when it is socially supported and free from inconsistency. Another way of putting this same point is to say that it is rational to engage in a doxastic practice when that practice has been generationally reproduced and there is no reason to believe that the practice is unreliable. When a doxastic practice meets these conditions, Alston suggests that it is rational to suppose that the practice is reliable.71 In Alston’s view, this is not the same thing as constructing “a direct demonstration” of the reliability of a doxastic practice.72 Therefore, it is wrong to suggest that a doxastic practice can be independently vouched for or given external support. Nevertheless, it is equally wrong to suggest that there is nothing to say in support of the practice. One can determine whether it is rational to engage in the practice and thus whether it is rational to suppose the practice is reliable. In such cases, one’s belief that the practice is reliable is prima facie, but not ultima facie, justified.



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Now, this may seem odd. Alston suggests that one’s belief that a practice is reliable is prima facie justified, but that it only gathers a degree of self-support. It may seem as if there is an internal tension here. For example, it sounds as if Alston’s argument could be formulated as follows: P1: CMP is socially supported. P2: CMP is not demonstrably unreliable. C: CMP is rational to engage in. A first glance suggests that this argument is appreciable from a perspective outside of CMP. In one sense, this is right. If we exchange CMP for Buddhist mystical practice (BMP), I can see the rationality of the argument even though I am a Christian philosopher. In the same way, a nonbeliever could appreciate the conclusion of the above argument, even though they are not committed to Christianity. This might suggest external support for a doxastic practice. Alston’s view is that this is a mistake. That’s because while any rational person can recognize the truth of P2, it is not the case that any rational person can recognize the truth of P1. To see this, remember that, for Alston, social support involves “a functioning overrider system.”73 These overriders partly derive from traditional religious texts. For example, when a doxastic practice “output” contradicts the claims of an authoritative text, it is overridden. It seems to me possible to appreciate this much from an external perspective. However, Alston also thinks that the self-support of a practice comes in the form of spiritual progress that results from engagement in the practice, in the form of the fruits of sanctity. This kind of progress is not appreciable from an external perspective. In Alston’s view, “progress in spirituality cannot be spotted without reliance on CMP and its background system of belief,” because doing so “requires a special sort of ‘spiritual discernment’ that is itself one of the fruits of spiritual development . . . in sanctification.”74 So, while a Christian can partly see that the above argument could be run in the case of Buddhism, the Christian cannot see that the Buddhist notion of sanctification is reliable.75 At best, the Christian can see that the Buddhist doxastic practice is partially socially supported, insofar as it has been practiced for centuries, and that it is not demonstrably unreliable. However, a Christian could see that the Buddhist may be privy to information that they are not privy to, and that, for this reason, the Buddhist’s engagement in BMP could be rational, and that what is true of BMP is true of CMP, mutatis mutandis. With this said, we can see how Alston’s doxastic practice epistemology counts as a form of both JPE and Moderate Experientialism. Compared to Keith Yandell’s epistemological approach, Alston’s aims are far more modest. In Yandell’s view, it is possible to elucidate the conditions in which an experience serves as adequate evidence for the object of the experience, demonstrate that religious experiences satisfy these conditions, and conclude that religious experience therefore provides evidence that God exists. In fact, Yandell is critical of Alston’s doxastic practice epistemology. Yandell criticizes Alston’s doxastic practice view on the grounds that “pietist

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doxastic practice is such that neither the occurrence nor the nonoccurrence of any religious experience is permitted to count against the existence of God” and that for this reason “no experience can providence evidence in favor of God’s existence.”76 However, Yandell construes Alston’s argument as an argument from analogy. He suggests that in Alston’s view “sensory doxastic practice is rationally pursued” and that analogously “pietistic doxastic practice is thus rational.”77 In chapter 1, I noted Richard Gale’s claim that all arguments from religious experience rely on an analogy with sense perception.78 I suggested then that this claim is mistaken. We are now in a position to appreciate why: Alston’s argument is not an argument from analogy. As Mark Webb observes, “Alston does not argue ‘CMP is like SP [sensory practice]’; SP is rationally taken to be reliable; therefore CMP is rationally taken to be reliable.”79 Nonetheless, Yandell is right that Alston’s project is apologetically limited, but that limitation derives from its argumentative structure, and Yandell is incorrect about what that structure is. For Alston, there is an analogy between SP and CMP, but it does not motivate Alston’s argument; the analogy falls out of Alston’s argument. In Alston’s view, a practice is rational to engage in because it is socially supported and not demonstrably unreliable. This can be said of both CMP and SP, but that is not to say that CMP is rational to engage in because it is sufficiently similar to SP. CMP is like SP only in the sense that both practices can be similarly justified, because there is a similar relation between the way in which each practice is justified and the practice itself, not because each practice is internally and sufficiently similar when compared to one another alone.

DEFENDING MODIFIED CUMULATIVE CASE EXPERIENTIALISM In the introduction, I defined Cumulative Case Experientialism as the view that justificatory appeals to religious experience only have value in larger apologetic projects. In his philosophical treatment of religious experience, Simon Tugwell defended this view. According to Tugwell, “religious experience may be of value within a given system [but] it probably cannot be expected to give value to a system.”80 That is, for Tugwell, religious experiences may help a community to better understand God, but those experiences play no justificatory role at all with respect to the community member’s beliefs that God exists. I take it that the preceding demonstrates that Tugwell is mistaken. It is possible to articulate an epistemological position that affords religious experience a larger justificatory role in support of theistic belief than Tugwell recognizes. This is exactly what Alston’s doxastic practice epistemology does. However, Alston’s view is entirely consistent with what I also described in the introduction as MCCE. This is a form of experientialism that does not deny the justificatory value of religious experience in faith-venturing or doxastic practice engagement, but nonetheless emphasizes the evidential contribution religious experience makes to a cumulative case for theism.



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In The Evidential Force of Religious Experience, Caroline Franks Davis defends a view not unlike what I am calling MCCE.81 Davis presents her view as an extension of a strategy typical in natural theology: the utilization of several natural theology arguments in the construction of a cumulative case for theism. According to Davis, atheist critics typically employ a divide-and-conquer strategy: they attack each individual argument for failing to establish the existence of God and conclude that natural theology fails as a larger project. In Davis’s view, this strategy overlooks the fact that “these arguments can interact in such a way that their combined weight overcomes individual inadequacies.”82 For example, while a teleological argument might only suggest the existence of an intelligent designer, and thus a personal being, and a cosmological argument might only suggest the existence of a necessary, but not personal being, the arguments might be combined to suggest the existence of a necessary and personal being. This being the case, Davis suggests that cumulative cases do not present “an accumulation of evidence,” but an argument in which the “whole is greater than the sum of the parts.”83 Davis’s strategy is to add an appeal to religious experience to these kinds of cumulative cases. Unlike Tugwell, Davis does not think that religious experiences are only given value by a cumulative case. Rather, Davis thinks that an appeal to religious experiences can form “part of the cumulative case.”84 For Davis, this contribution is governed by a particular understanding of Richard Swinburne’s principle of credulity. Swinburne defines the principle of credulity as: (in the absence of special considerations) if it seems (epistemically) to a subject that x is present, then probably x is present; what one seems to perceive is probably so.”85 Critics of Swinburne suggest that this principle is too permissive. For example, Michael Martin argues that the principle of credulity “leads to gullibilism.”86 Now, a large part of Martin’s case rests on considerations I have already responded to including the claims that diverse religious experiences conflict with one another,87 that it is not possible to recognize God88 and that it is not clear under what conditions God would appear if He did exist.89 However, the claim that Swinburne’s principle is too permissive is worth pausing for and considering. Martin notes that some people have claimed to have seen fairies and that the principle of credulity would lead one to conclude that fairies exist.90 Let us agree that it is epistemically wrong to believe in fairies. Davis is unmoved by the objection. In her view, “the principle of credulity does not by any means guarantee that the probability it confers on an experience will be sufficient for a rational person to believe strongly in that experience.”91 The reason, Davis explains, is that the principle of credulity is to be read as claiming that “experiential claims are (prima facie) ‘more probable than not’—not that they are ‘very likely’ or that they ‘ought to believed, though there is some room for doubt.’”92 Now, whether this is the best interpretation of the principle of credulity or whether Richard Swinburne intended the principle to be interpreted in this spirit is beside the point. This interpretation of the principle of credulity illuminates the kind of cumulative case Davis intends to construct. If the principle of credulity is interpreted as licensing a move from an epistemic seeming to the claim that an object

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of experience more likely exists than not, then a religious experience can lead an individual to believe that God’s existence is more probable than it was before they had the experience. Of course, when the principle is interpreted as Davis interprets it, the experience will not contribute enough evidential value to one’s beliefs to make it rational to believe in God, but the experience can tip the scales if one already has some reason to suspect that God’s existence is more probable than not. For example, if one is convinced that a teleological argument makes God’s existence more probable than not and that a cosmological argument ratchets up the probability that God exists set by that teleological argument, a religious experience can increase that ratcheted up probability, according to this interpretation of the principle of credulity. If the numbers are right, the evidential contribution of an appeal to a religious experience can be the deciding factor in making God’s existence probable enough to believe in. In this way, Davis believes that appeals to religious experience can play a part in a cumulative case for theism. At this point, it is worth pausing and asking how this kind of cumulative case differs from Alston’s doxastic practice epistemology. After all, Alston claims that religious experiences need to be checked against an overrider system. Why shouldn’t this system include natural theology arguments, and if so, why think Alston’s doxastic practice epistemology is not just one way of approaching a cumulative case? To see this, recall Davis’s claim that arguments in a cumulative case interact with one another. Alston agrees here. He says that the total epistemic situation of the Christian is not “an additive one” wherein different independent grounds, with their unique evidential force values, are summed up.93 However, Alston suggests that CMP “has its own contribution to make by way of propositional content as well as by way of force and vividness.”94 He admits that “if postulating a being like the Christian God carried substantial explanatory advantage, that will boost the credibility of claims to perceive such a being,” but he adds that the “converse also holds.”95 This sounds quite a bit like the mutual support Davis speaks of functioning in a cumulative case, but Alston insists that when considering “the total belief system” of a religion like Christianity, any “part of the structure will depend on some grounds and not on others—even though some parts will gain support from more than one source.”96 Thus, Alston suggests that his disagreement with those who would argue that the kind of cumulative case Davis constructs is the only way to make a justificatory appeal to religious experience “is not that the putative support they are discussing is nonexistent or insignificant, but rather that they ignore the possibility of direct perceptual support.”97 So, while it is not possible, in Alston’s view, to assess the evidential force of religious experience in complete isolation, it is possible to identify and assess this evidential force without working up something like a cumulative case. However, when doing so, it is important to keep in mind the lower evidential bar one is aspiring to. Thus, MCCE is to be distinguished from JPE. Of course, that is not to say that the former is defensible. Martin suggests that if one accepts the principle of credulity, one should also accept a negative principle of credulity: “If it seems (epistemically) to a subject S that x is absent, then probably x is absent.”98 Given this, one might argue that the evidential force of religious experience is nullified. True, there are re-



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ligious persons who claim to have experienced God, but there are also many people who have not. Davis rejects this counter. She notes that there is a certain asymmetry between perceptions of something and perceptions of something’s absence. While there is a sense in which the principle of credulity covers the latter, it is “only in a very limited respect: [experiences of the absence of something] are prima facie evidence only for the claim that an entity . . . was not present in the area to which the subject was directing his attention on that occasion.”99 This being the case, Davis suggests that “a failure to perceive [some object or being] is not by itself prima facie evidence for its nonexistence.”100 Moreover, Davis adds that “few people have ‘experiences of the absence of God.’”101 More often people “have an absence of experiences of God.”102 So, it is probably not the case that atheistic experiences are numerous enough to discount one’s own experience in a cumulative case the way this objection suggests. It is true that some atheists may have an experience of a world of disorder, but perhaps that is how things look from below, when the world is not viewed as a creation. After all, this is how things would look to a mouse stuck in the bottom of a bowl of numbered balls in a lottery draw, but to the audience with a different perspective, even this random game of chance has a rhyme and reason. Beyond this, it is hard to see how the view is objectionable. In my view, if there is one deficiency in Davis’s presentation of the view it is as follows. When describing the view, Davis suggests that arguments in a cumulative case interact and that their combined weight makes up for their individual insufficiencies. However, Davis also suggests that cumulative cases do not present “an accumulation of evidence,” but an argument in which the “whole is greater than the sum of the parts.”103 It seems to me that this latter claim does not follow from the preceding claim. To say that a cumulative case contains several arguments that possess a combined weight that makes up for their individual insufficiencies is consistent with thinking that their weight is additive. For example, if a teacher stipulates that a passing score on a test is a 75 and the test contains 100 questions worth one point each, a student’s cumulative score can count as a passing grade even if the score the student receives on each individual question does not. However, in this case, it is wrong to say that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. It is precisely the sum of the parts. Now, with this claim, Davis likely has in mind the kind of Bayesian reasoning we saw in chapter 2. In a Bayesian calculation, a given claim can be made more probable given background evidence, e, than it would be given background evidence, e1. Nonetheless, in my view, it is not clearly accurate to say that the grounds here interact with one another such that the result is greater than the sum of the parts. It is not as if a tested claim also makes the background evidence more probable. This minor quibble notwithstanding, it seems safe to conclude that MCCE is philosophically viable and that religious experiences can be reasonably treated with the kind of evidential value Davis suggests that they can. In fact, MCCE is the least controversial form of Moderate Experientialism. One reason is that MCCE aspires to the bar of Strong Evidentialism. So, those who find faith-venturing epistemically impermissible or who think prima facie justification is not justification whatsoever

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will not have much to complain about with respect to this form of experientialism. Of course, some disagreement might remain. Critics might think that various natural theology arguments fail in their own right, irrespective of whether they are incorporated into a cumulative case. Other critics might argue that proponents of a cumulative case for theism make the mistake of assuming that the entity to which the various natural theology arguments point is the same being. Proponents of cumulative cases will likely fall back on the principle of simplicity discussed in chapter 2 to bridge this gap. Perhaps others will add an argument suggesting that the designer of the universe must be a necessary being. In any case, the details of these debates need not concern us here. In the last chapter, I suggested that there are probably very few philosophical arguments one can construct that are rationally convincing to all. I suspect that this is all the more so with respect to cumulative cases. The longer one’s string of arguments, the more opportunities one presents one’s opponents with for disagreement. The important point, for present purposes, is that even if one has good reason to resist a cumulative case for theism, that is not the same thing as denying that religious experiences have some evidential value and that they can play some justificatory role with respect to religious belief. Fortunately, this is all one needs to suggest that MCCE is philosophically viable.

CONCLUSION The preceding completes the case for Moderate Experientialism. There are several forms of Moderate Experientialism, and these can be distinguished by the evidential bar each form aspires to. FVE suggests that religious experiences provide pro tanto reason to believe in God and that under certain conditions an individual can be rationally justified in adopting a belief in God in response to these experiences. JPE suggests that religious experience is a generational practice, and that insofar as religious practices are socially supported and not demonstrably unreliable, a person is prima facie justified in adopting a religious belief in response to a religious experience. Both forms of Moderate Experientialism aspire to a lower bar than Strong Evidentialism. However, insofar as there are no ethical or epistemological reasons to believe that it is wrong to aspire to a bar lower than Strong Evidentialism, there are no good reasons to reject these forms of Moderate Experientialism. The third and final form of Moderate Experientialism, MCCE, does aspire to the bar of Strong Evidentialism, and for this reason, it is the least controversial form of Moderate Experientialism. Nevertheless, some philosophers press objections even to this form, but insofar as these objections are not ultimately convincing, there is reason to think that MCCE is philosophically viable. Because all three major forms of Moderate Experientialism are philosophically viable, it is acceptable to conclude that religious experiences do have evidential value and that they can play a role in the justification of religious belief.



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Of course, the various forms of Moderate Experientialism posit different evidential roles for religious experiences and this situation suggests that there is more philosophical work to do. One might wonder whether one form of Moderate Experientialism should take precedence over the others. For example, if religious experiences can contribute to a cumulative case for theism, one might wonder whether faith-venturing and/or doxastic practice approaches are philosophically necessary. In the introduction, I indicated my resistance to this conclusion. I suggested instead that the various forms of Moderate Experientialism can be thought of as articulating the epistemic condition of even a single religious believer as they develop in the religious life. This may sound strange, but I believe that staking out this position is not only philosophically possible, but philosophically desirable. Moreover, I think there is reason to believe that this position makes sense of the lives of actual religious persons and their developing religious perspectives. The task of the next chapter is to articulate and defend these cases. The result, I hope, will also extend the defense of Moderate Experientialism given in the preceding.

NOTES   1.  William Kingdon Clifford, “The Ethics of Belief,” in The Ethics of Belief: Revised Edition, ed. A. J. Burger (Middletown, DE: A. J. Burger, 2008), 9–10.  2. Ibid., 10–11.  3. Ibid., 13.  4. Ibid.  5. Ibid., 18.   6.  For an exposition of Clifford’s view, see: Timothy J. Madigan, W. K. Clifford and “The Ethics of Belief ” (Newcastle upon Tyne: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010).   7.  Nikolaj Nottelmann and Patrick Fessenbecker, “Honesty and inquiry: W. K. Clifford’s Ethics of Belief,” British Journal for the History of Philosophy 28, no. 4 (2020): 800.  8. Ibid., 799.   9.  William James, The Will to Believe, edited by Frederick Burkhardt, Fredson Bowers, and Ignas Skrupskelis (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1897|1979), 25. 10.  Ibid., 24. 11.  Ibid., 26. 12.  Ibid., 27. 13.  Ibid., 28. 14.  Ibid., 29. 15.  Alexander Klein, “Science, Religion, and the Will to Believe,” HOPOS: The Journal of the International Society for the History of Philosophy of Science 5 (2015): 72–117. 16.  William Alston, “Christian Experience and Christian Belief,” in Faith and Rationality: Reason and Belief in God, ed. Alvin Plantinga and Nicholas Wolterstorff (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983), 103–134. 17.  Ibid., 116. 18. Ibid. 19. Ibid.

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20.  Thomas Senor, “The Prima/Ultima Facie Justification Distinction in Epistemology,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 56, no. 3 (1996): 554. 21. Ibid. 22. Ibid. 23.  Susan Haack, “‘The Ethics of Belief ’ Reconsidered,” in Knowledge, Truth, and Duty: Essays on Epistemic Justification, Responsibility, and Virtue, ed. Matthias Steup (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 21–33. 24.  Ibid., 21. 25.  Ibid., 23. 26.  Ibid., 24. 27. Ibid. 28. Ibid. 29.  Ibid., 26. 30. Ibid. 31. Ibid. 32. Ibid. 33. Ibid. 34.  Lorraine Code, Epistemic Responsibility (Albany: SUNY Press, 1987|2020), 80. 35.  Susan Haack, “‘The Ethics of Belief ’ Reconsidered,” in Knowledge, Truth, and Duty: Essays on Epistemic Justification, Responsibility, and Virtue, ed. Matthias Steup (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 28. 36. Ibid. 37. Michael Huemer, “The Problem of Defeasible Justification,” Erkenntnis 54, no. 3 (2001): 375–397. 38.  Juan Comesaña, “There Is No Immediate Justification,” in Contemporary Debates in Epistemology: Second Edition, ed. Mattias Steup, John Turri, and Erenest Sosa (Malden: Wiley Blackwell, 2014), 232. 39. Stewart Cohen, “Bootstrapping, Defeasible Reasoning, and ‘A priori’ Justification,” Philosophical Perspectives 24 (2010): 141–159. 40.  William James, The Will to Believe, ed. Frederick Burkhardt, Fredson Bowers, and Ignas Skrupkelis (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1897|1979), 13. 41.  Ibid., 15. 42.  Ibid., 18. 43.  Ibid., 14. 44.  Ralph Barton Perry, The Thought and Character of William James (New York : Harper, 1948|1964), 208. 45.  William James, Some Problems of Philosophy, ed. Frederick Burkhardt, Fredson Bowers, and Ignas Skrupkelis (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1911|1979). 46.  Ibid., 113. 47.  William James, Pragmatism, ed. Frederick Burkhardt, Fredson Bowers, and Ignas Skrupkelis (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1907|1978). 48.  George Mavrodes, “Intellectual Morality in Clifford and James,” in The Ethics of Belief Debate, ed. Gerald McCarthy (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1986), 205–219. 49. C. Stephen Evans, Faith Beyond Reason: A Kierkegaardian Account (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans Publishing, 1998). 50.  Ibid., 51.



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51.  John Bishop, “How a Modest Fideism May Constrain Theistic Commitments: Exploring an Alternative to Classical Theism,” Philosophia 35 (2007): 392. 52.  Richard Gale, On the Nature and Existence of God (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991|2016), 327. 53.  For a discussion of the role sanctification plays in the justification of mystical experience, and thus a discussion of what I am calling a cruder pragmatic strategy, see: Mark Owen Webb, “Does the Sanctity of Christian Mystics Corroborate Their Claims?” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 37, no. 2 (1995): 63–71. 54.  William Alston, Perceiving God: The Epistemology of Religious Experience (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), 253. 55.  Ibid., 153. 56. Ibid. 57. However, Alston suggests that there is “no one uniquely right way” to individuate practices and that such practices have only “‘conceptual’ reality” (Ibid., 165). 58.  Ibid., 157. 59. Ibid. 60. Ibid. 61.  Ibid., 158. 62. Ibid. 63.  Ibid., 159. 64.  Ibid., 158. 65.  Ibid., 168. 66. Ibid. 67.  Ibid., 174. 68.  Ibid., 175. 69.  Ibid., 182. 70.  Ibid., 163. 71.  Ibid., 183. 72.  Ibid., 180. 73.  Ibid., 224. 74.  Ibid., 253. 75.  Of course, for Alston, neither the Buddhist nor the Christian can see that their respective notion of sanctification is reliable, ultima facie, but only that it is prima facie reliable. 76.  Keith Yandell, The Epistemology of Religious Experience (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1993), 208. 77.  Ibid., 207. 78. Ulf Zackariasson suggests a similar, but equally mistaken reading and critique of Alston. See: Ulf Zackariasson, “A Problem with Alston’s Indirect-Analogy Argument from Religious Experience,” Religious Studies 42, no. 3 (2006): 329–341. 79.  Mark Webb, A Comparative Doxastic-Practice Epistemology of Religious Experience (New York: Springer, 2015), 43. 80.  Simon Tugwell, “Faith and Experience III: Experience and Its Interpretation,” New Blackfriars 59, no. 702 (1978): 511. 81.  Caroline Franks Davis, The Evidential Force of Religious Experience (New York: Clarendon Press Oxford, 1989). 82.  Ibid., 109. 83. Ibid.

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 84. Ibid., 110.  85. Richard Swinburne, The Existence of God (New York: Clarendon Press Oxford, 1979), 254.  86. Michael Martin, “The Principle of Credulity and Religious Experience,” Religious Studies 22 (1986): 91.  87. Ibid., 86  88. Ibid., 89.  89. Ibid., 91.  90. Ibid., 92.   91.  Caroline Franks Davis, The Evidential Force of Religious Experience (New York: Clarendon Press Oxford, 1989), 102.  92. Ibid., 102–103.   93.  William Alston, Perceiving God: The Epistemology of Religious Experience (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), 292.  94. Ibid., 293.  95. Ibid., 297.  96. Ibid., 293.  97. Ibid., 288.  98. Michael Martin, “The Principle of Credulity and Religious Experience,” Religious Studies 22 (1986): 83.   99.  Caroline Franks Davis, The Evidential Force of Religious Experience (New York: Clarendon Press Oxford, 1989), 98. 100. Ibid. 101.  Ibid., 99. 102. Ibid. 103.  Ibid., 109.

4 Religious Experience and Religious Lives

In the preceding chapter, I discussed the objection that prima facie justification is merely a temporal or psychological phase one reaches before one achieves ultima facie justification of a belief and I suggested that this view misunderstands the nature of prima facie justification. It may seem as if this response creates a difficulty for the view defended in this chapter: the view that it is not necessary to choose between the forms of Moderate Experientialism insofar as it is possible to regard them as articulating the positive epistemic status of different religious believers’ beliefs or even the same religious believer’s beliefs at different points in their life. For example, one natural way to understand this view is to suggest that religious believers first take leaps of faith, then learn a religious practice, and later become able expositors of religious doctrines. According to this way of thinking about the development of a religious life, Faith-Venturing Experientialism (FVE) precedes Justifying-Practice Experientialism (JPE) and is later succeeded by Modified Cumulative Case Experientialism (MCCE). However, I do not think it is necessary to understand the view defended in the chapter this way. One reason is that this temporal view creates an immediate problem, and this is the problem of one view taking epistemic precedence over the others. If prima facie justification is just a temporal or psychological phase leading to ultima facie justification, a strong commitment to externalism could lead us to believe that a stronger form of experientialism redounds to the credit of all religious believers. Of course, one way to resist this conclusion is to reject externalism. This is not the approach I will take, but, and as I mentioned in the introduction, I do believe that the view suggested in this chapter is easier to defend if internalism is true. It is just that in this chapter I wish to articulate a defense consistent with the possibility suggested in the introduction: the possibility that justification is not an objective, but a stipu79

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lated property of beliefs. To allow for this possibility, I also strive to remain neutral between internalism and externalism. Of course, this does not explain why I am not essentially advocating the view that different forms of justification are not just psychological or temporal stages with respect to one another. After all, if I want to avoid the claim that one form of Moderate Experientialism redounds to the credit of all religious believers, the cheapest way to do so is to take FVE as a temporal or psychological stage on the way to both JPE and MCCE. In response, I believe that what has been said about prima facie and ultima facie justification can also be said about prima facie justification and the pro tanto reason one has to adopt a belief: here we are talking about sections and subsections of evidence and not temporal or psychological processes of belief. In my view, different religious believers, or even the same religious believer at different points in their life, have different access to different pieces of evidence. Sometimes this access is a result of temporal or psychological development, but sometimes it is not. One reason it is sometimes not is that the development of the religious life is not always an upward slope. Sometimes there is regression, doubt, and tribulation. Sometimes this access is a result of failing capability, emotional or psychological. Of course, this way of putting the view has a particular ring to it. It sounds especially as if it presupposes a commitment to internalism. However, I will argue that the view need not be read this way. To make this case, I first examine the suggestion that religious experience need not play a role in the justification of religious belief because there are authorities in the religious community that an individual believer can look to. In response, I construct some ideal types of religious believers and/or religious life stages. I argue that some types, such as the type I call The Convert, may not know whom to look to for guidance. I discuss the objection that this response presupposes a commitment to internalism. To remain neutral between internalism and externalism, I articulate a notion I call a justificatory route. According to this way of understanding the proposal, the various forms of Moderate Experientialism can be understood as articulating the positive epistemic status of even the same religious believer’s beliefs at different points in their life because this believer can be in a different epistemic condition at different times: they can possess or fail to possess one justification route at one time or another. They need not know that they do so, but so long as they do so, their belief is justified. I then move to an exposition of the central view of the chapter. I argue that the notion of a justificatory route illuminates the extent to which even the same religious believer can have access to different sections of an evidential base at different points in their life and that insofar as the various forms of Moderate Experientialism operate on different sections of an evidential base, it makes sense to conclude that they are compossible because they can be interpreted as articulating the positive epistemic status of even the same religious believer’s beliefs at different stages in their life. I conclude by suggesting that this is not a bare theoretical possibility and that there are some concrete examples of religious believers who exemplify this developmental pattern.



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RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE AND RELIGIOUS BELIEF Linda Zagzebski has called for “a reorientation in the epistemology of religion.”1 In her view, “firsthand experience gets too much attention in discussions of the rationality of religious belief.”2 In its place, Zagzebski suggests a greater concern for tradition and epistemic authority. Similarly, Stephen Wykstra has argued that an individual religious believer can be justified in holding a religious belief “[if ] an evidential case . . . [is] available to the theistic community.”3 However, it is Zagzebski who has most explicitly formulated principles of epistemic trust in authority. Consider the following formula Zagzebski describes as: Justification of Communal Epistemic Authority 2 (JCEA2): The authority of my community is justified for me by my conscientious judgment that if I believe what We believe, the result will survive my conscientious self-reflection better than if I try to figure out what to believe in a way that is independent of Us.4

This principle suggests that it can be rational for an individual religious believer to adopt a belief on the basis of the authority in a community. Given such a principle, Zagzebski thinks that an epistemological emphasis on religious experience is misplaced. If a person forms the judgment that an epistemic authority is more likely to arrive at a true belief than they are if they tried to figure out what to believe themselves,5 then they are justified in adopting the authority’s belief and they no longer need to ask whether their belief is justified given their religious experience(s). Now, I do not wish to reject this principle outright. My view is that religious beliefs can be justified given religious experiences. That view is entirely consistent with thinking that there are other nonexperiential routes to the justification of a belief. However, I do have some concerns about interpreting the principle to have such a large scope that it calls for a reorientation in the epistemology of religion. First, it is not at all clear to me that the authorities in a religious community have expertise relevant to the question of whether God exists. This may seem strange but consider the fact that many religious authorities have expertise relevant to the interpretation of creedal statements, liturgical forms, and church precedent. These forms of expertise are not automatically philosophical. It is not as if every religious authority is a philosopher of religion. Of course, this reply is rather weak. Zagzebski could easily maintain that these authorities presuppose or themselves rely on the authority of philosophers and theologians in the community. That seems right to me. However, I think this concern can be pressed in the direction of a more forceful objection to Zagzebski’s proposed reorientation of epistemology of religion. Many religious believers today live in pluralistic, multicultural societies. Because of this, they are members of several communities. If the religious authorities in the communities to which they belong rely on the epistemic authority of philosophers and theologians in their community, it might just as well be the case that the epistemic authorities in the other secular communities to which they belong rely on the epistemic authority of

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philosophers in those communities. It could very well be the case that these authorities disagree. Here, Zagzebski can fall back on her epistemic principles. She suggests that “it reasonable to resolve . . . conflict in favor of what I trust the most when I am thinking in the way I trust the most, that is, conscientiously.”6 I wholeheartedly agree, but it seems to me that in the absence of a religious experience, I could conscientiously judge matters to be rather ambiguous. If I conscientiously judge that the authority in the religious community to which I belong is probably right about the existence of God and that the philosophical authority in the secular community to which I belong is probably wrong, that may very well be because I conscientiously judge my religious experience to be more indicative of the way things are than not. If that’s right, then even if we recognize good principles of epistemic authority, we need not claim that these principles lead to a reorientation in epistemology of religion away from an investigation of religious experience. It may very well be the case that these principles help us identify the epistemic importance of firsthand experience. The next thing to say in response to Zagzebski’s proposed epistemological reorientation is that it overlooks diverse forms of religious life. Zagzebski’s principles work well when a person already belongs to a community or when they know to whom to look for epistemic guidance, but the principles do not work well when these conditions do not hold. To see this, consider the following ideal type I call The Convert: The Convert. A person new to a religious tradition. Prior to conversion, they have led a life outside of that tradition. Post conversion, they find themselves a beginner with respect to the practices of their newly adopted tradition.

Of course, this ideal type can be more or less exemplified. It is just that: an ideal type. For example, C. S. Lewis very imperfectly exemplified this type at one point in his life. Although a convert, someone like Lewis would know to whom to look for epistemic guidance. Thus, someone like Lewis could implicitly, or explicitly, use Zagzebski’s principles to justify the adoption of a particular community’s beliefs. However, others may not be in this position. To see this, consider those persons who have had what Travis Dumsday refers to as “counter-cultural experiences.”7 These are experiences had by persons in one culture that run counter to the predominant religion of that culture. One example Dumsday gives is of “Gulshan Esther, a Pakistani former Muslim, [who] originally knew of Christianity only through the references to it in the Koran. She converted after having seen an apparition of Jesus.”8 Another example is “Rabindranath Maharaj, at one time a Brahmin who accepted the doctrine of non-dualism [who] started on a gradual process of conversion from Hinduism to Christianity upon distinctly hearing a voice tell him ‘You are not God.’”9 These are examples of persons who better exemplify The Convert than C. S. Lewis. These are also examples of persons who, at the time of their experience, did not belong to the community to which they would convert and, given their historical-cultural location, likely would not know or be capable of identifying the proper authority to whom to look for epistemic guidance. It is therefore difficult to see how they could adopt a justified belief about the existence



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of God on the basis of forming a conscientious judgment that a relevant epistemic authority is more likely to arrive at a true belief on the matter than they would, if they tried to figure it out themselves. Perhaps it is simply the case that these persons are not justified in adopting belief in God. Dumsday rejects this suggestion. In fact, Dumsday suggests that “countercultural experiences [may] carry some greater evidential weight over against the intracultural variety.”10 This suggestion relies on the implicit claim that countercultural experiences are more likely to be veridical than intracultural experiences. However, this claim would only be true if we accepted the claim that cultural training makes it less likely that an experience is veridical because it increases the probability that the experience is overinterpreted. Most religious epistemologists would reject the suggestion. Consider the role training plays in scientific education and practice. I have no training in optometry. I could examine an eye, but I would probably miss the early signs of macular degeneration. However, a trained optometrist would see those signs right away. This suggests that training does not make it less likely that an experience is veridical, but if that is the case, then countercultural experiences are not more likely to be veridical than intracultural experiences. Thus, it is wrong to claim that countercultural experiences carry greater evidential weight compared to intracultural experiences. Of course, to say this is not to specify the evidential weight that these experiences do carry. The entire point of this project is to suggest that any given religious experience can play distinct justificatory roles depending on one’s access to other evidence. If I know of several arguments for God’s existence, an appeal to an experience can contribute to a cumulative case for theism. If I know that these types of experiences are shared by others and that there are practices that lead to similar practices, an appeal to an experience can contribute to the claim that the experience is prima facie veridical. The point that I am emphasizing in this section is that many persons who exemplify The Convert ideal type will not know these things or know to whom to look for epistemic guidance. If that is right and The Convert adopts a belief in God on the basis of a countercultural experience, that belief looks a lot like an overbelief. Fortunately, in the last chapter, I suggested that faith-venturing can be rationally permissible. So, to call such a belief an overbelief is not to epistemically condemn it or evaluate it as in some way improper or defective. It is just to suggest that the belief is an overbelief at the time of the conversion experience. Now, it might seem as if this verdict problematically relies on the idea that justification is always synchronic. Against this charge, I am inclined to simply bite the bullet. Perhaps there is nothing over and above synchronic justification, but perhaps this is not a problem. Nevertheless, the verdict in question is consistent with the recognition of some notion of diachronic justification. For example, Richard Swinburne defines diachronic justification as the justificatory status of a belief when “it is synchronically justified and its acquisition . . . has been based on adequate investigation of its truth.”11 In my view, it is slightly misleading of Swinburne to speak of diachronic justification because, given this definition, a belief can only be diachronically

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justified at any given time, but, besides this, I have no problem with recognizing this form of justification. However, in the present context, it does nothing to change the verdict that a person who adopts a belief in God on the basis of a countercultural experience has adopted an overbelief. Such a belief is not adopted on the basis of adequate investigation of its truth. Swinburne may find that problematic, but in my view, it is just to say that the person in question is faith-venturing. Faith-venturing can be problematic, but given certain epistemic and moral constraints, even faithventuring can be justified, as I argued in the last chapter.

A JUSTIFICATORY ROUTE In my view, the strongest objection to the preceding is that it relies on a commitment to internalism. As I interpret it, internalism is the view that S’s belief p has positive epistemic status if and only if, and because, S is aware that p has that epistemic status. This definition of internalism builds in the widely recognized higher-level requirement that is characteristic of internalism. It is not the case that S’s belief p has positive epistemic status in virtue of the process that produced it. S’s belief p has that status if and only if one also has a belief about p’s epistemic status and that belief is a higher-level belief. Now, clearly, this way of putting things threatens an infinite regress, and those committed to externalism might reject internalism for this very reason. However, if one’s higher-level belief about p is properly basic, the regress can be prevented. Perhaps the higher-level belief is incorrigible: it is not something S would likely or could be wrong about. Now, it might seem as if my critique of Zagzbeski’s proposed reorientation of religious epistemology hinges on a commitment to internalism. After all, I argued that The Convert might not know to whom to look for epistemic guidance. Perhaps the natural reply to this claim is to argue that The Convert can be justified in adopting a religious belief simply because they are a convert to a religious community wherein the epistemic authority of some persons redounds to their epistemic credit. This is after all what externalism suggests. As I interpret it, externalism is the view that S’s belief p can have positive epistemic status even if S is not aware that p has that status. Here, I am prepared to bite the bullet. In chapter 1, I provisionally accepted a form of modified foundationalism, and I suggested there that this view is consistent with both Phenomenal Conservatism and Proper Functionalism. Now insofar as the former is a form of internalism and the latter is a form of externalism, the provisional acceptance of modified foundationalism is consistent with an acceptance of internalism. In fact, in my view, it is easier to endorse and manage the three forms of Moderate Experientialism I discussed in chapter 3 by accepting Phenomenal Conservatism. According to this view, the various forms of Moderate Experientialism are consistently endorsable because any rational agent can be more or less aware of an evidential base a religious experience forms a part of. Given that this is the case, the same religious experience can play distinct justificatory roles for a religious believer



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over the course of their life. It is not so much that some forms of justification are temporal or psychological antecedents to other forms, but that temporal and psychological development often, but not always, coincide with a greater awareness of and access to an evidential base. If my argument in this section fails, I am happy to fall back on this view of the matter. However, doing so comes at the cost of neutrality between objective and stipulative accounts of justification. To endorse Phenomenal Conservatism outright would be to suggest that one view of justification is the correct one and this could only be the case if justification is an objective property of belief. Nevertheless, if the argument in this section fails, perhaps there is something to be said in this direction. This is a topic I will return to in the conclusion. For now, I want to argue that there is a way to interpret the arguments of the preceding and succeeding sections of this chapter that is consistent with externalism. To get at this interpretation, I want to follow a recent philosophical strategy developed by Andrew Moon.12 Moon develops his strategy with a discussion of Norman, a person who finds himself with the belief that the president is in New York, and who forms this belief viz. a clairvoyant faculty he does not know he has. What could justify Norman in holding this belief? To start, Moon proposes the following requirement: Higher-Level Evidence Requirement (HLE): S justifiedly believes that p only if S has good evidence for p* and is thereby in a position to justifiedly believe p*. (255)

Here p* denotes the proposition “S’s belief that p was formed reliably.”13 Thus, p* is what I earlier described as a higher-level belief: it is a belief about a belief. It might seem as if HLE requires S to have a belief of this sort. However, Moon points out that this is not actually the case. He notes that “HLE does not require that S actually believe p*.”14 All HLE requires is that S have good evidence for p*. It does not require S to attend to this or even to be aware that S has this evidence. What HLE does require is that “S be in a position to justifiedly believe p*.”15 In other words, what HLE does require is that S be in possession of evidence such that if S reflected on that evidence S could justifiably believe in p* and thus justifiably believe in p. To apply HLE to the Norman case, Moon supposes that over time Norman begins to accumulate evidence that his spontaneously generated beliefs are true and therefore begins to suspect that perhaps they are not spontaneously generated. Perhaps they are the products of an operating faculty he did not know he had: a clairvoyant faculty. If so, Moon suggests that Norman could justify his clairvoyantly produced beliefs if he reflected on these matters. Of course, reflecting on these matters would result in Norman believing that his clairvoyant faculty is reliable. However, HLE suggests that Norman could be justified even if he has not yet reflected on this matter, and HLE suggests this even as it suggests that Norman is not justified in holding his belief that the president is in New York the first time he unconsciously used his clairvoyant faculty. That’s because at the time of the first operation of the clairvoyant faculty, Norman would not have

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been in a position to justifiably believe that his faculty is reliable whereas later, after he has accumulated evidence that suggests the faculty might be reliable, he may be in such a position, even if he does not realize it or reflect on the matter. Nevertheless, matters are a bit more complicated than this suggests. That’s because Norman is also a member of a species of beings that do not typically have clairvoyant faculties. So, although HLE might plausibly suggest Norman is justified in trusting his clairvoyant beliefs over time, Norman also faces a potential defeater for the claim that his clairvoyant faculty is reliable. To capture this thought, Moon endorses the following: No Higher-Level Defeater Requirement (NHD): S justifiedly believes that p only if it’s not the case that in virtue of her background beliefs or knowledge, S should withhold or disbelieve p*. (256)

Even with accumulated evidence that his clairvoyant faculty may be reliable, HLE is plausibly trumped by NHD. Norman might have reason to think he has a reliable clairvoyant faculty, but he also knows that he is the kind of being that typically does not have such a faculty. Of course, there may be some human beings who count as the exception rather than the norm, but given the odds, Moon suggests Norman should withhold the belief that he has a reliable clairvoyant faculty. One might quibble with Moon’s conclusion here. Perhaps the more impressive Norman’s track record becomes, the more Norman should count himself among the exceptions. After all, most human beings cannot run the 40-meter dash in 4.5 seconds, but certainly some people do and certainly some people are justified in believing that they can. While this is true, this objection misses Moon’s point. HLE suggests Norman could be justified in believing that his clairvoyant faculty is reliable, even if he has not reflected on the matter. However, NHD blocks this because Norman has a belief he is aware of: the belief that humans do not typically have clairvoyant powers. When an athlete runs a 40-meter dash in 4.5 seconds, they have experiential evidence for doing so. This is a matter they will have reflected on. Therefore, the epistemic situation is disanalogous compared to Norman’s. Appreciating this disanalogy is key to understanding how HLE and NHD are, as Moon notes, “neutral between internalism and externalism.”16 NHD “only specifies conditions for blocking defeat.”17 These are conditions that a person can satisfy without knowing that they satisfy them. In this way, NHD is consistent with externalism. If a person has no background beliefs or knowledge that suggest one of their faculties is unreliable, it may very well be because the faculty is reliable. Externalism suggests that a person can be justified in holding a belief in these conditions. Second, and to return to a point made earlier, HLE only requires that S be in a position to justifiably believe p*. It does not require that S actually believe p*. This too is consistent with externalism. As I defined it above, externalism is the view that S’s belief p can have positive epistemic status even if S is not aware that p has that status. HLE is consistent with externalism so defined.



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To reinforce this contention, I want to extend Moon’s analysis here by proposing an interpretation of the clause “in a position to” as meaning “possesses a justificatory route.” By clarifying the notion of a justificatory route, I hope to buttress the suggestion that my claim that The Convert is not in a position where they are capable of identifying relevant epistemic authorities is consistent with externalism. If that is right, then I hope to demonstrate that one can consistently endorse the various forms of Moderate Experientialism while remaining committed to externalism. According to this view, the various forms of Moderate Experientialism are consistently endorsable because any rational agent can be in an epistemic condition where they can justifiably adopt a religious belief, even if they are not aware of this fact. Given that this is the case, the same religious experience can play distinct justificatory roles for a religious believer over the course of their life. It is not so much that some forms of justification are temporal or psychological antecedents to other forms, but that temporal and psychological development often, but not always, coincide with the possession of a greater number of, or different, justificatory routes, even if the agent is not aware of this fact. How should we define a justificatory route? Well, consider again what Moon means when he formulates HLE to suggest that when S has good evidence for p* S is thereby in a position to justifiably believe p*. The natural way to read this suggestion is to take Moon to mean that if S were to assemble the evidence and if S had sufficient capacity to assess that evidence, S would form the belief p*. In this way, S’s belief p* would be what Swinburne called diachronically justified: that belief would be based on an adequate investigation. Now, remember that I said diachronic justification presupposes synchronic justification. In fact, for Swinburne, synchronic justification is a necessary, but insufficient part of diachronic justification. However, I pointed out that even diachronic justification will be true of a given belief at a given time. This suggests that a justificatory route holds between two times. It also suggests significant evidential assessment occurring between these times. Given this, let’s tentatively propose the following definition: Justificatory Route (JR): S possesses a justificatory route for a belief p at t if and only if S could articulate a justification of p at t1 with the addition of philosophical training and/or reflective consideration that modifies S’s epistemic state at t in no other way than one that facilitates S’s defense of p at t1.

The central idea here is that S is in a positive epistemic position at t with respect to p because S could hypothetically articulate a defense of p at a later time. For Moon, this hypothetical defense is possible given reflective consideration. I add philosophical training to this definition because I am trying to remain neutral between objective and stipulative accounts of justification, and only a philosopher would be interested in the latter. However, JR will clearly not do. It is far too permissive. To see this, consider the fact that JR would suggest that S is in a position to justifiably adopt a belief so long as there are good arguments for which that belief is a conclusion even if S possesses

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absolutely nothing at t to suggest such an argument. This seems wrong, and it would also threaten the synthesis I am proposing in this chapter. If we accept JR, then the success of a cumulative case for theism would redound to the credit of even The Convert. In that case, the epistemic authority of philosophers and theologians in a religious community would also redound to the credit of persons who have had countercultural religious experiences, contrary to what I suggested in the last section. This would also suggest that Norman is justified in adopting the belief that the president is in New York on the basis of future psychological studies of clairvoyancy. Surely, present-day beliefs are not justified on the basis of the science of the future. This being the case, the above definition must be modified. Let’s consider a second possible definition: Justificatory Route 2 (JR2): S possesses a justificatory route for a belief p at t if and only if S could articulate a justification of p at t1 with the addition of philosophical training and/or reflective consideration that minimally modifies S’s epistemic state at t but facilitates S’s defense of p at t1.

This definition is more restrictive than JR. By recommending only minimal modifications to S’s epistemic state t, JR2 suggests a move from S’s epistemic state at t to the nearest possible defense of p. This recommendation prevents S from benefiting from massive amounts of information S is not at all in possession of, unlike JR. However, even JR2 is too permissive. It does not explicitly restrict the addition of evidence into S’s possession at t. This runs counter to the spirit of HLE, which suggests that S is in a position to justifiably believe p* and thereby p because S is in possession of evidence, even if they are not aware of this fact. For this reason, another modification must be made. Consider a third possible definition: Justificatory Route 3 (JR3): S possess a justificatory route for a belief p at t if and only if S could articulate a justification of p at t1 with the addition of philosophical training and/or reflective consideration that minimally modifies S’s epistemic state at t but facilitates S’s defense of p at t1, and adds no new relevant evidence to S’s possession at t.

Here, the stipulation that the intervening philosophical training and/or reflective consideration minimally modifies S’s epistemic state at t rules out S benefiting from any possible defense of p. However, unlike JR2, the stipulation that philosophical training and/or reflective consideration adds no new relevant evidence that S does not already possess at t, prevents S from benefiting from evidence that S had no possession of at t. Of course, the passing of time will certainly introduce new evidence into S’s possession at t1 because it will not be possible for S to turn off their perceptual faculties, but if this incoming perceptual evidence does not help S justify p then it is not relevant and so does not violate JR3. JR3 is more clearly consistent with the spirit of HLE. JR3 also helps us to see why a person who has had a countercultural religious experience cannot benefit from the epistemic authority of the community to which they are converting. At the time of



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their conversion, they possess no evidence that enables an identification of those authorities. More importantly, for present purposes, JR3 enables us to see that this claim does not presuppose a commitment to internalism. JR3 is consistent with externalism, at least as I have defined it. JR3 suggests that S can be justified in holding a belief at a given time even if they do not know that they are justified in holding that belief. So, while JR3 is consistent with HLE and HLE does specify a higher-level requirement, HLE does not require a person to know that they satisfy the requirement, as I explained earlier. Thus, JR3 supports a take on the view that the various forms of Moderate Experientialism are consistently endorsable that is equally consistent with externalism. According to this view, the various forms of Moderate Experientialism are consistently endorsable because a rational agent who has undergone a religious experience is in an epistemic condition where they could, with philosophical training and/or reflective consideration, articulate a defense of a belief grounded in that experience while adding no new relevant evidence to their possession and otherwise minimally modifying their epistemic state at the time in question. In closing, I should admit that the preceding argument will surely be found unsatisfactory to some epistemologists. The internalism/externalism divide can be parsed in different ways and on some accounts, I must concede that the view I am advocating here is inconsistent with externalism. For example, Steup has suggested that evidentialism is “full-fledged internalism” and that an evidentialist can admit that “somebody whose belief that p is supported by undefeated evidence is justified in believing that p even if she does not know that she is justified in believing that p.”18 This is the exact condition I have suggested JR3 facilitates and it is the exact condition I have suggested is consistent with externalism. In response, I should say that I disagree that evidentialism is full-fledged internalism. Consider Proper Functionalism. Our cognitive faculties could be designed to arrive at true beliefs in some cases only when they are based on various forms of evidence. This is exactly how the Proper Functionalist should understand perceptual faculties, and yet Proper Functionalism is a paradigmatic form of externalism. A better objection to my proposed understanding of a justificatory route emphasizes the extent to which externalist justification is parasitic on hypothetical-internalist-type justification. This objection will be more forceful depending on how one interprets what it means for S to possess evidence. If S’s evidential possessions only include mental states, JR3 will look quite internalist. In my view, evidential possession should include at least partial conscious awareness of a piece of evidence. I am not sure that this notion can be made more precise, but it clearly won’t be externalist on all accounts. For example, Fumerton has suggested that externalist epistemologies are fundamentally reductive epistemologies that attempt to reduce “epistemic concepts to nomological concepts.”19 Clearly, JR3 is not externalist in this sense. Nonetheless, insofar as JR3 suggests that a person need not have ever reflected on the evidence they possess for a belief to have positive epistemic status, JR3 is consistent with what I take to be the spirit of externalism, as Moon maintains. However, and to repeat, I admit that my view is easier to defend if internalism is true, and I am willing to fall back on that position, if necessary, for the sake of defending the central claims of this project.

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RELIGIOUS EXPERIENCE AND RELIGIOUS LIVES If the preceding is right, one can consistently endorse the various forms of Moderate Experientialism and remain neutral between internalism and externalism and objective and stipulative accounts of justification. However, much more remains to be said about this proposal. Because this proposal is more difficult to defend given a commitment to externalism than internalism, I want to use JR3 to explain how it is possible for a given religious experience to play distinct justificatory roles for the same religious believer throughout their lifetime. With the help of some additional ideal types, I will argue that the development of one’s religious life can coincide with the possession of a greater number of, or different, justificatory routes and that, for this reason, the development and diversity of religious life explains why there are several accounts of the evidential value of religious experience and why one need not choose between them. In the last section, I argued that a person who has had a countercultural religious experience cannot benefit from the epistemic authority of a religious community. This suggests that someone who exemplifies the ideal type The Convert is not in a position where their religious belief, should they adopt one, can be justified by either JPE or MCCE. This being the case, it seems most appropriate to suggest that their belief is an overbelief, a product of faith-venturing. If JR3 explains why such a person cannot benefit from the epistemic authority of a religious community, it also explains why their belief is not prima facie or ultima facie justified. For this reason, I will pass over The Convert here and move to two ideal types that are possible life outcomes for such a person. I define these ideal types as follows: The Practicing Convert. A person practicing a religious tradition they were not born into. Prior to conversion, they had little experience with the tradition’s practices. Since their conversion, however, they, and others, consider them well-initiated. The Distant Convert. A person practicing a religious tradition they were not born into. However, they have been practicing the tradition for so long, they scantly remember what it was like to have been anyone else. With their experience, they, and others, consider them able expositors of the faith.

I now want to explain why JR3 suggests that The Distant Convert but not The Practicing Convert can benefit from MCCE. This is rather easy to see. The difference between The Practicing Convert and The Distant Convert is that the latter, but not the former, is an able expositor of the faith. Insofar this is the case, one might expect The Distant Convert, but not The Practicing Convert to be capable of articulating rudimentary arguments for the existence of God. After all, one can intuitively be well-initiated in a faith without being able to argue for the truth of particular commitments of the faith. For example, one can go through various rites of initiation without being able to articulate an argument for God’s existence. Many students in my philosophy of religion classes fall into this category. Now, it is true that many of these students know who the epistemic authorities in their religious community are.



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In their cases, they could rightly be said to benefit from that authority. However, it is theoretically possible for a person to exemplify The Practicing Convert and not be in such a position. Consider a person who has had a countercultural religious experience and manages to find a small countercultural community of practitioners. If such a person joined that community and went through various rites of initiation, they could still be unaware of any epistemic authorities in that tradition from which they can benefit. It might be the case that no person in that countercultural community is an authority in this sense. This might be the case for religious practitioners in upstart churches in regions where the religion they are practicing has recently been introduced. Such a person could benefit from JPE and yet not benefit from MCCE and JR3 explains why. Such a person is not in an epistemic state where, with reflective consideration and/or philosophical training, they could articulate a justification of their religious beliefs that makes use of natural theological arguments without making an addition to the relevant evidential base they have access to at that time. However, with reflective consideration and/or philosophical training, they could articulate such a justification that minimally modifies their epistemic state at the time in question while adding no new relevant evidence to their possession at that time, and benefit from JPE. That is because they could explain and are aware of the fact that they are the practitioner of a tradition that others practice, that their religious tradition has been practiced by many people over several generations, and that they are a person who reports having an experience similar to the experiences other report having. They could also rightly argue that they are aware of no reasons to think that the tradition is internally inconsistent or that their experience was produced by some unreliable process. Thus, JR3 suggests that their religious beliefs can be justified by JR3 with the aid of JPE: at the time in question, they are in a position where they could advocate a rudimentary doxastic practice defense of their beliefs, even if they have not reflected on this fact. Moving on to The Distant Convert, JR3 explains why such a person can benefit both from JPE and MCCE. First, such a person can benefit from JPE for the same reasons The Practicing Convert can. However, unlike The Practicing Convert, The Distant Convert is an able expositor of the faith. Though, they may be unfamiliar with Bayesian reasoning and unable to identify the cosmological and teleological arguments by name, they may know of rudimentary patterns of reasoning that could be worked into such arguments. Thus, with significant reflective consideration, they could articulate a case for theism that runs these arguments together. If they are a person who has had a conversion experience, then they are someone who may believe that such experiences make the combined conclusion of their reasoning even likelier. If so, they are a person capable of articulating a cumulative case for theism that makes some appeal to religious experience. Therefore, at whatever time they exemplify The Distant Convert ideal type, they possess a justificatory route to MCCE. That’s because they occupy an epistemic state that supports a justification of their theistic belief by cumulative case that they could articulate if they engaged in a reflective process that minimally modifies their epistemic state at that time while making no additions to their evidential base.

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Now, here, it may seem as if I am advocating the view that the various forms of Moderate Experientialism are consistently endorsable because some forms of justification are inevitable temporal or psychological antecedents to other stronger forms. However, a careful reading of the preceding suggests that this is not the case. As I just argued, JR3 suggests that The Distant Convert is in an epistemic condition wherein they can benefit from both JPE and MCCE. Therefore, it is not the case that the former is simply a temporal stage on the road to the latter. Rather it is more accurate to say that The Distant Convert possesses more justificatory routes for their religious beliefs than The Practicing Convert. This is because they are more developed in the religious life, and thus have greater evidential access, but this explanation does not reduce to temporal sequences. To reinforce this suggestion, consider another possible life outcome and ideal type. Take for example: Questioning. An at least second-generational practitioner of a faith or a Practicing or Distant Convert. This person has consistently practiced the faith but wonders whether the faith is true or whether they will continue to practice.

A person who exemplifies the Questioning ideal type is a person who may have had more time practicing in a tradition than either The Practicing Convert or The Distant Convert. However, they may be a person who has begun to doubt the veracity of the natural theological arguments. They may think there is no conclusive reason to believe that the tradition’s commitments are incoherent or that their experience is not veridical, but their confidence in intellectual defenses of the faith may have waned. Now, it could still be the case that such a person benefits from MCCE. Perhaps their worries are due to the noetic effects of sin or some emotional loss of nerve. In such a case, JR3 might still suggest that they are in a position to benefit epistemically from a cumulative case for theism that makes some appeal to religious experience. Perhaps calmer heads do prevail and all they really need is a moment’s reflection on the evidence that they do possess but have simply failed to rightly attend to. If so, this suggests that greater evidential access is not an inevitable product of temporal and/or psychological development and that it cannot be identified with it. Nevertheless, it is still true to say that the forms of Moderate Experientialism are consistently endorsable because the various forms spotlight different epistemic conditions even the same religious believer can be in throughout the course of their religious life. This being the case, it is true to say that the development and diversity of religious life explains why the various forms of Moderate Experientialism are defensible and why it is unnecessary to choose between them. This conclusion could be reinforced by a further consideration of other ideal types. Consider the following two types: Apostate. A person once committed to a faith tradition, who no longer practices nor identifies with that tradition.



Religious Experience and Religious Lives 93 Returning. A person who previously abandoned a faith tradition but has since returned to that tradition and now both practices and identifies as a member of that tradition.

A person who exemplifies Apostate is a person who has presumably lost confidence in natural theology, the reliability of a tradition, and perhaps even their own religious experiences, if they have had any. Now, insofar as JR3 is consistent with externalism, it could still be the case that such a person benefits from a cumulative case for theism. Perhaps what was said of Questioning can be said here: perhaps this is a person suffering from the noetic effects of sin or some emotional loss of nerve. If that is right, then clearly access to justificatory routes cannot be reduced to temporal or psychological development. It might seem strange to suggest that Apostate could epistemically benefit from a cumulative case benefit. It might seem as if this suggestion renders my proposal too permissive, that it suggests all persons are justified because there are good arguments out there to be had. That, it might seem, undermines the very notion of a justificatory route I have developed. I think this objection misses the point. Consider Returning. Someone who exemplifies Returning may have forgotten a lot of what they learned some time ago. We all know what it is like to have mastered a game we no longer play and to pick it up again years later. It’s true that skills can come back to us quicker than they came when we learned the game, but it’s false to say that, in every case, we pick right back up where we left off. Someone who exemplifies Returning may be in this very epistemic condition. Thus, it is false to say that at the moment they first exemplify Returning, they are a person in a position to articulate a cumulative case for theism, if they reflected on the matter, without adding any additions to their evidential base and by only minimally modifying their epistemic state at that time. Thus, JR3 suggests that Returning is a person who cannot benefit from MCCE. In fact, and for the very same reason, Returning may not be a person who can benefit from JPE either. This being the case, I think it could be appropriate to say that Returning is faith-venturing. For these reasons, I conclude that greater evidential access and the possession of a larger number of justificatory routes cannot be identified with temporal and/or psychological development in the religious life. Nevertheless, in my view, it is still true to say that the diversity and development of religious lives explains why one need not choose between the forms of Moderate Experientialism. In fact, if it is right to say that Returning is faith-venturing, attention to the diversity and development of religious lives suggests that epistemologists of religion should not choose between the various forms of Moderate Experientialism. If the arguments of chapter 3 succeed, there is no reason to think that faith-venturing is necessarily epistemically and/or morally impermissible. Thus, there is a sense in which even faith-venturing is justifiable. This being the case, I think it is safe to conclude that one can consistently endorse the various forms of Moderate Experientialism, and if one can do that, then it is true to say that a religious experience can play distinct justificatory roles, even for a single individual, at different times in their life. If that’s right, then the three

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central claims I set out to defend have been corroborated: religious belief can be justified insofar as it is grounded in religious experience, such belief can be justified in a plurality of ways, and the diversity and development of religious lives explains why.

THE EXAMPLE OF AUGUSTINE The conclusion of the preceding section is normative: it suggests that religious beliefs can be justified insofar as they are grounded in religious experiences and that this can happen in several ways. To say that religious beliefs are not in fact justified in such a manner is to mount no objection to this conclusion. The claim that something has not been done is no objection to the claim that it can be done. Nevertheless, in the preceding section, I have tried to remain neutral between externalism and internalism. Many philosophers who are committed to externalism may also be committed to what is called naturalized epistemology. (In fact, some epistemologists might think that naturalizing epistemology is the essential feature of all externalist epistemologies.) Naturalized epistemologists typically prize epistemological accounts that are realistic and that explicate the implicit justificatory patterns and processes of actual persons. So as not to offend these partisans, the goal of this section is to argue that the central claims of this book are realistic and that there are examples of religious persons for whom a religious experience has played distinct justificatory roles throughout their life. One central example, in my view, is Augustine. In Confessions, Augustine describes his faith journey. As Augustine tells his story, it begins with the foils and follies of a youth that eventually culminates in engagement with the Manicheans. At first, Augustine describes being taken in by the Manichean doctrines. He says that he “did not even know that God is a spirit” and that he was “further ignorant what is the principle in us by which we are; and what Scripture meant by saying that we are made to the image of God.”20 In fact, at that time, Augustine was aware of the fact that the Manichean doctrines were controversial. He tells of the time that his mother asked “a certain bishop reared up in the Church . . . to have some discussion with me, to refute my errors.”21 Augustine says that the bishop refused and “rightly as I have since realized.”22 According to the bishop, Augustine was “not ripe for teaching” but “puffed up with the newness of my heresy.”23 Here, Augustine is acutely aware of the epistemic authorities within the Church, but standing outside it, he has no concern for their expertise. For the next nine years, Augustine says that he was “astray myself and led others astray.”24 He even describes a brief flirtation with astrology, thrown asunder when he receives an instruction that helps him understand the art of cold reading.25 Still, throughout this time, Augustine suggests that he was misled by Manichean doctrine and his inability to understand the nature of God.26 Augustine says that, at this time, he “still held the view that it was not we that sinned, but some other nature sinning in us.”27 However, Augustine tells of applying for a position as professor of rhetoric in Milan and moving there, where he ultimately becomes an acquaintance of “the



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bishop and devout servant of God, Ambrose.”28 Hearing Ambrose speak, Augustine says that he “came to feel, though only gradually, how truly he spoke.”29 Yet, Augustine says that while he “began to realize . . . that the Catholic faith . . . could be maintained on reasonable grounds,” he was not entirely convinced. In his view, at that time, “the Catholic side was clearly not vanquished, yet it was not clearly victorious.”30 Thus, Augustine says that he “determined . . . to go on as a catechumen in the Catholic Church—the church of my parents—and to remain in that state until some certain light should appear by which I might steer my course.”31 However, even in this state, Augustine says that he “walked through dark and slippery places.”32 He tells of his desire “to be as certain of things unseen as that seven and three make ten.”33 Yet, Augustine says that he came to find himself “preferring the Catholic doctrine, realizing that it acted more modestly and honestly in requiring things to be believed which could not be proved.”34 Nonetheless, Augustine says that while “I was in love with the idea of happiness, yet I feared where it was, and fled away from it in my search for it.”35 And so, Augustine struggled with incontinence, persisting in his philosophical studies,36 ruminating on the nature of evil as a privation,37 and the nature of free will,38 but struggling nonetheless—struggling, that is, until his conversion. At age thirty-one, Augustine describes himself as “sick at heart and in torment.”39 His philosophical investigations had freed him from Manicheanism, but he still suffered from what he describes as “a sickness of the soul.”40 Despairing from his inability to free himself from sin and pursue the path of righteousness, Augustine describes hearing a “voice from some nearby house,” saying, “Take and read, take and read.”41 Augustine says that he “arose, interpreting the incident as quite certainly a divine command to open my book of Scripture.”42 The passage “upon which my eyes first fell,” Augustine says, read as follows: “Not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and impurities, not in contention and envy, but put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ and make not provision for the flesh in its concupiscences.”43 Upon reading this, Augustine says, “in that instant, with the very ending of the sentence, it was as though a light of utter confidence shone in all my heart, and all the darkness of uncertainty vanished away.”44 After this experience, Augustine says that he “no longer wished any increase of earthly goods,” and describes living with a peace that had escaped him.45 Now, in treating philosophically of Augustine’s experience, we need not determine whether the voice Augustine heard was a part of the experience or whether it was simply a coincidence that the children nearby happened to be playing and singing such a song. What is most important is the experience of confidence Augustine reports upon reading Scripture. This is a rather mundane experience and yet for Augustine it was momentous. Many religious believers will recognize such an experience. It may not have the shock value of an apparition, and it may be underdescribed by Augustine in Confessions, but Augustine clearly perceived the event as an experience of God’s love and mercy. For Augustine, it preceded his leaving the profession of rhetoric46 and it precipitated his own baptism.47

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Now, what is most important, for present purposes, is the confidence Augustine describes feeling come upon him with this experience. This may seem to contradict his earlier claim about the importance of faith and believing in things that cannot be proven. To resolve this tension, I suggest Augustine’s confidence be interpreted as an overbelief. His experience affords him no sufficient reason to have such confidence and yet Augustine cannot help adopting his belief in God. Thus, it seems right to say that Augustine’s conversion and his decision to be baptized amounts to a faith-venture. In fact, Augustine says later, “I tasted Thee, and now hunger and thirst for Thee: Thou didst touch me, and I have burned for Thy peace.”48 This language suggests a partial, but not complete acquaintance with God. It is as if Augustine is confessing to having some reason to believe in God on the basis of his experience but admitting that this reason is only partial. In the language of epistemology, we might say that Augustine’s experience gives him a pro tanto, but not sufficient reason to believe in God. If that is right, Augustine’s adopted belief at the time of conversion is an overbelief. Now, it is true that Confessions describes a journey of philosophical struggle. However, in my view, one can interpret this struggle as Augustine arriving at a condition of evidential ambiguity. Consider, for example, his claim that, in his view, “the Catholic side was clearly not vanquished, yet it was not clearly victorious.”49 Thus, while Augustine is clearly invested in philosophical inquiry, it is not the case that, at the time of his conversion, he had been won over by intellectual debate. For him, various arguments in favor of Christian doctrine were not decisive, although they did wrench Augustine from the hold of Manichean positions. Therefore, I suggest we read Augustine as describing his intellectual journey from disbelief in classical theism to a condition of evidential ambiguity, a condition that he is moved within upon his conversion experience. In other words, though Augustine is clearly concerned with the intellectual acceptability of theism, he does not describe being intellectually convinced of its truth. In the language of epistemology, we might say that Augustine is unknowingly describing the epistemic constraints on acceptable faith-venturing. That Augustine is so concerned with incontinence and moral depravity also suggests that Augustine satisfies moral constraints as well. To be morally acceptable, a faith-venture must result in improved moral compliance, or at least not hinder that compliance. Augustine’s faith-venture seems to satisfy this constraint as well. Of course, this is not to say that Augustine’s faith-venturing is the end of his story. It is, for Augustine, only the beginning. As Augustine says, at this time he was “but a novice in [God’s] true love.”50 There are indications throughout Confessions that, by the time he is composing the volume, Augustine is aware that his experience belongs to a pattern of experiences shared by the Catholic community across generations. For example, when describing his mother’s request that the bishop confront him about his Manicheanism Augustine says that the bishop, “losing patience, said: ‘Go your way, as sure as you live, it is impossible that the son of these tears should perish.’”51 Now, this is hardly a description of a religious experience, but Augustine reports his mother’s perception of it as if it is a religious experience. He says that “[in] the conversations we had afterwards, she often said that she had accepted this answer as



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if it had sounded from heaven.”52 This description suggests a possible perception of the bishop’s answer as if it was God speaking through the bishop. This is a common experience among religious believers. Now, it is true that Augustine does not describe the experiences of others in much detail in Confessions, but he does mention several conversions and baptisms. For example, he tells of the conversion of Verecundus who claimed “that he would not be a Christian in any other way than the way that was beyond his power.”53 He tells also of the baptism of Alypius who “had brought his body so powerfully under control that he could tread the icy soil of Italy with bare feet.”54 He writes of bishop Ambrose’s vision of “the place where the bodies of the martyrs Protasius and Gervasius lay hid.”55 And he tells of a young man named Evodius who “had been converted and baptized before us.”56 Now, it is not clear that each of these persons Augustine describes was converted by an experience, but it is reasonable to infer that the conversions were precipitated by something, and that this may well have been an experience. If so, it seems safe to conclude that Augustine is well-aware of the fact that many persons have had experiences similar to his. He is also aware of the fact that these experiences belong to a tradition that has enumerated and codified its understanding in textual authority and the teachings of bishops. Thus, I suggest that, at the time of writing Confessions, Augustine is in a position where his belief in God could benefit from JPE. He is aware of the fact that Christian mystical practice has been generationally reproduced, that it is tied to a body of beliefs, and that it is socially supported, even if he would not put these matters in these words. He is also aware of no reason to think that his or other person’s experiences are delusory. Thus, he has no reason to believe that Christian mystical practice is unreliable. This being the case, his belief in God is prima facie justified by the lights of JR3 and Alston’s doxastic practice epistemology. However, one might wonder whether Augustine was in a position to benefit from this sort of justification at the time of his conversion. If so, it would be incorrect to describe his belief as an overbelief at the time of his conversion, as I suggested above. Now, there is certainly a fact of the matter. Augustine, unlike many converts, is a person whose parents practiced the tradition to which he converted. For this reason, he may better exemplify Returning than The Convert. In that case, it is possible that he was in a position to benefit from JPE at the time of his conversion. Nonetheless, it is also possible that he was not. In Confessions, we get a description of the conversions I listed above as occurring after his own conversion. Augustine also suggests that he only learned of his mother’s encounter with the bishop after the fact. Now, Augustine knows of Church practices before his conversion, but perhaps he could not identify the religious experiences of others until he had one himself, until he knew the kind of thing to look for. In that case, it would be right to say that his belief in God was an overbelief at the time of his conversion, but that it was prima facie justified later when he was no longer a novice in God’s love. What of other forms of justification? In Confessions, Augustine does not develop anything explicitly like Thomas Aquinas’s Five Ways. However, Augustine does ruminate extensively on the nature of God, time, and God’s relation to the universe.

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For example, Augustine says that when we “look upon the heavens and the earth . . . they cry aloud that they were made.”57 The reason is that “they change and vary.”58 In Augustine’s view, something that does not change and was not made must have been there before. However, if a thing “was not made and yet exists, there is nothing in it that was not there before.”59 Given this, Augustine suggests that the things of the earth “did not make themselves.”60 Here, it seems we have something of a rudimentary cosmological argument or a rudimentary form of Aquinas’ De ente argument: Augustine is suggesting that some things have a contingent nature or a nature that does not exist by its essence and that they must depend on something necessary or something that exists by its very nature, or essence. The argument is admittedly underdeveloped, but JR3 does not require Augustine to have a conscious awareness of its elaboration. JR3 only requires Augustine be in a position where he could elaborate and defend the argument if he reflected on the matter. Thus, I suggest that at the time of writing Confessions, Augustine’s belief in God could be justified by the lights of JR3 and MCCE. Now, it’s true that a cosmological argument is only one argument in a cumulative case, but in that very same passage, Augustine suggests that one can conclude that God made the heavens and earth because God is beautiful “and they are beautiful.”61 This suggests something like a teleological argument. If that’s right, then it seems that, at the time of writing Confessions, Augustine was in a position to articulate something like a cumulative case for theism, at least as defined by JR3. Of course, and as before, this is not enough to suggest that Augustine’s autobiography as described in Confessions exemplifies the thesis that a single religious experience can play distinct justificatory roles for a religious believer throughout their life and that this is explained by the development of that believer in the religious life. To suggest this much, one would need to argue that Augustine could not have benefited from such a case at the time of his conversion. Here again, one can only speculate. Given Augustine’s wide reading of philosophy at the time of his conversion, it seems possible that he could articulate a cumulative case for theism wherein an appeal to religious experience makes some contribution. However, given Augustine’s struggle with Manicheanism and his claim that around the time of his conversion, he was not convinced of the truth of Christian doctrine, it is possible that he was not in a position to articulate such a case. Of course, what was said of Apostate above, might be said here. Perhaps Augustine’s incontinence is an intellectual stumbling block here and while he did not recognize the truth of that case, he nonetheless possessed all the evidence he needed to construct one at the time of his conversion. At the beginning of this chapter, I suggested that the central thesis of this book is easier to defend if we endorse internalism and here we can see why. If we endorse internalism, we can perhaps suggest Augustine can only benefit from an argument he is more keenly aware of. However, I think there is one thing to be said in support of the claim that Augustine was not in possession of the evidence needed to construct a cumulative case for theism at the time of his conversion. In Confessions, when suggesting that God made the heavens and the earth, Augustine says, “These truths, thanks to You, we know.”62 Insofar as Augustine describes his conversion experience as leading him to God, perhaps Augustine can be interpreted here as claiming that these are con-



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siderations he benefits from at the time of his writing, but not earlier. After all, a reading of Plato would not lead one to belief in God as conceived by Christians any more than a reading of Aristotle’s first-mover argument would. A cumulative case is a cumulative case. Augustine may have been aware of some arguments that could partially contribute to a cumulative case at the time of his conversion, but that is not to say that he was in possession of enough of them to construct a cumulative case for theism at that time. Nonetheless, the preceding is, admittedly, inconclusive. However, this investigation of Confessions need not be conclusive to serve a purpose. In this section, I set out to do two things: to suggest that the central claims of this book are realistic and that the third of my central claims explicates the implicit justificatory patterns and processes of actual persons. Even if my claim that Augustine’s autobiography describes the development of a person evolving through epistemic conditions such that he ends up possessing a greater number of justificatory routes than he did at the beginning is inconclusive, this claim is inconclusive only with respect to my second aim in this section. It is inconclusive whether the third of my central claims explicates the justificatory pattern and process Augustine actually went through. The very fact that my third claim possibly describes the justificatory pattern and process Augustine actually went through suggests that the claim is psychologically realistic. Proving that this is a process persons have actually gone through is difficult. After all, JR3 allows for persons to not have complete awareness of their evolving epistemic conditions. All I can say here is that it seems to me that persons who have had countercultural religious experiences may be the most likely candidates for having actually gone through such processes, but in the end, no person needs to perfectly exemplify an epistemic movement through every form of Moderate Experientialism to suggest that this is a movement people actually go through. It is enough if many persons actually exemplify part of that movement and several persons together collectively complete the movement to rightly suggest that this a movement persons actually go through.

CONCLUSION I have argued that epistemologists of religion are not wrong to think that religious experiences can and do play important justificatory roles with respect to religious belief. In fact, I have argued that even the same religious experience can play a distinct justificatory role for the same individual with respect to a religious belief throughout the course of their life. For this reason, I have argued that it is unnecessary to decide between the various forms of Moderate Experientialism. This is because the various forms of Moderate Experientialism emphasize distinct epistemic conditions a single individual can occupy at different points in their life. In fact, I suggested that there is some reason to think that individuals do occupy these different conditions at different points in their life. For this reason, I suggested that epistemologists of religion may not only want to endorse the various forms of Moderate Experientialist, but that perhaps they should endorse these various forms, if they intend to maintain the view that many religious believers are justified in holding religious beliefs.

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NOTES  1. Linda Zagzebski, Epistemic Authority: A Theory of Trust, Autonomy, and Authority in Belief (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 202.  2. Ibid.  3. Stephen Wykstra, “Toward a Sensible Evidentialism: On the Notion of ‘Needing Evidence,’” in Philosophy of Religion: Selected Readings, ed. William Rowe and William Wainwright (Harcourt, 1989), 433.  4. Linda Zagzebski, Epistemic Authority: A Theory of Trust, Autonomy, and Authority in Belief (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 155.  5. “Likely arrival at true beliefs” is how Zagzebski understands “conscientious selfreflection.” See: Linda Zagzebski, Epistemic Authority: A Theory of Trust, Autonomy, and Authority in Belief (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012), 133.  6. Ibid., 214.   7. Travis Dumsday, “Counter-Cultural Religious Experiences,” Religious Studies 47, no. 3 (2011): 317–330.  8. Ibid., 319.  9. Ibid. 10.  Ibid., 325. 11.  Richard Swinburne, Epistemic Justification (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 166. 12.  Andrew Moon, “How to Use Faculties You Never Knew You Had,” Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 99, Spring (2018): 251–275. 13.  Ibid., 254. 14.  Ibid., 255. 15. Ibid. 16.  Ibid., 259. 17. Ibid. 18.  Mattias Steup, “Epistemic Duty, Evidence, and Internality,” in Knowledge, Truth, and Duty: Essays on Epistemic Justification, Responsibility, and Virtue, ed. Mattias Steup (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 138. 19.  Richard Fumerton, Metaepistemology and Skepticism (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 1995), 66. 20. Augustine, Confessions: Second Edition, trans. F. J. Sheed (Indianapolis: Hackett, 2006), 44. 21.  Ibid., 50. 22.  Ibid., 51. 23. Ibid. 24.  Ibid., 55. 25.  Ibid., 58. 26.  Ibid., 71. 27.  Ibid., 86. 28.  Ibid., 90. 29.  Ibid., 91. 30. Ibid. 31.  Ibid., 92. 32.  Ibid., 95.



Religious Experience and Religious Lives 101 33.  Ibid., 99. 34.  Ibid., 100. 35.  Ibid., 110. 36.  Ibid., 135. 37.  Ibid., 121. 38.  Ibid., 119. 39.  Ibid., 157. 40.  Ibid., 155. 41.  Ibid., 159. 42. Ibid. 43. Ibid. 44. Ibid. 45.  Ibid., 170. 46.  Ibid., 167. 47.  Ibid., 171. 48.  Ibid., 210. 49.  Ibid., 91. 50.  Ibid., 168. 51.  Ibid., 51. 52.  Ibid., 51. 53.  Ibid., 165. 54.  Ibid., 171. 55.  Ibid., 173. 56.  Ibid., 174. 57.  Ibid., 236. 58. Ibid. 59. Ibid. 60. Ibid. 61. Ibid. 62.  Ibid., 237.

5 Religious Experience and Cognitive Science

In chapter 4, I defended a view of justification that I argued is neutral between internalism and externalism. However, in doing so, I also accepted the qualification that a person is not justified in holding a belief if they have a defeater for that belief. This requirement is also consistent with both internalism and externalism. In fact, many externalists argue that the reason internalists (wrongly, in their view) emphasize the importance of forming higher-level beliefs is that it is true that to be justified in holding a belief one must have a defeater for any alleged defeater of that belief, and that, in these cases, a foray into higher-level believing is epistemically necessary.1 In other words, many externalists believe that internalists mistake an occasionally necessary higher-level requirement for a generally necessary higher-level requirement. In their view, it is true that a defense of a belief may involve the formation of a higher-level belief, but believing does not generally require that formation. Fortunately, I need not settle this dispute here. That’s because, if both parties recognize the no higherlevel defeater requirement (NHD), then it is safe to move on and argue that there is no systemic reason to believe that persons who hold religious beliefs grounded in religious experiences have somehow been deceived, and this is what I would like to accomplish in this chapter. Now, it may seem as if some forms of Moderate Experientialism are not subject to NHD, but I think this is mistaken. Consider, for example, Faith-Venturing Experientialism (FVE). In chapter 3, I argued that epistemically permissible faith-ventures must satisfy certain epistemic and moral constraints. For present purposes, we might crudely say that the epistemic constraints can be summarized in the slogan: it is not epistemically permissible to leap against one’s evidence. For this reason, I have suggested that faith-venturing is only epistemically permissible in a condition of evidential ambiguity. In a condition where the evidence strongly points one way or the other, faith-venturing is either epistemically impermissible or epistemically unnecessary. 103

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This being the case, it is wrong to say that an advocate of the view that faith-venturing can be epistemically permissible is a person who can reject NHD. If an agent was in violation of NHD, they would not be in a condition of evidential ambiguity, and so faith-venturing would not be epistemically permissible. Something similar can be said for the other forms of Moderate Experientialism. Clearly, a belief is not ultima facie justified if one has a defeater for it, and so Modified Cumulative Case Experientialism (MCCE) is consistent with NHD, but if prima facie justification is ceteris paribus justification, as I argued in chapter 3, then JPE is also consistent with NHD. Of course, it is impossible, and indeed unnecessary, to claim that every person who holds a religious belief grounded in a religious experience satisfies NHD. It is not possible to make that assertion because it is not possible to know the condition every person who has had a religious experience was in at the time they had that experience. Perhaps some people who have had religious experiences were on hallucinogenic drugs at the time they had their experience. If so, these persons have a defeater for the claim that their experience was veridical: they were on a substance known to produce non-veridical perceptions. At the same time, it is not necessary to claim that every person who holds a religious belief on the grounds that they have had a religious experience satisfies NHD because the claim that some persons who hold religious beliefs grounded in religious experiences are not justified in doing so is no objection to the claim that some persons who hold religious beliefs grounded in religious experiences are justified in doing so. The epistemologist of religion should not be saddled with the task of proving that every religious believer is justified. The epistemologist of religion can be satisfied with the demonstration that it is possible for religious believers to be justified in holding their religious beliefs. Of course, it would be better if the epistemologist of religion could show that some persons are actually justified in holding these beliefs, and in chapter 4, I developed a tentative argument for thinking that this is the case, but this is ultimately an empirical matter that lies outside the scope of the present project. Nevertheless, some critics of religion might argue that there are systemic reasons to believe that most persons who have religious experiences do not satisfy NHD. That is, some critics of religion argue that there are good scientific reasons to believe that religious experiences are produced by the brain or by the subconscious and that insofar as this is the case, religious believers who hold a religious belief on the grounds that they have had a religious experience do not satisfy NHD and so are not justified in holding that belief because these persons would have had these experiences whether they were veridical or not. Now, the first thing to say in response to this claim is that it in no way undermines the positive epistemic condition of a person in a position to benefit from MCCE. That’s because a person in that condition possesses independent reason, apart from having had a religious experience, to believe in God. It is true that an appeal to religious experience contributes to their confidence in their belief in God, but the independent reason they do possess puts them in a position where they can justifiably believe that it is more likely than not that a given experience is veridical. So, the force of the critic’s claim will be dramatically blunted



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by their antecedent and independent beliefs. However, the criticism will be felt more forcefully by a person who is only in an epistemic condition to benefit from FVE or JPE. That’s because such a person’s positive epistemic condition is resting solely or primarily on the evidential weight of a religious experience and so they possess no antecedent or independent reasons that blunt the force of the criticism. If that’s right, then a defense of Moderate Experientialism in general does call for a response to criticisms of this sort. My response comes in three parts. First, I examine the Freudian objection that religious experiences are the product of the activity of the subconscious. I argue that even if we bracket the plausible concern that the scientific basis for this claim is shoddy, this debunking case relies on other implicit claims that we have good reason to reject. Following this argument, I move to examine a more plausible scientific challenge motivated by the cognitive science of religion (CSR). I introduce some of the more popular theories that populate CSR and I explain why critics believe that these theories support the claim that people would have religious experiences whether they were veridical or not. I then examine some challenges to these popular theories, and I introduce some alternative, non-canonical proposals in CSR. I compare the canonical case to the non-canonical case, and I argue that the only way to use CSR to support the claim that these theories suggest that persons would have religious experiences whether they are veridical or not already relies on an implicit commitment to naturalism. I contend that a person in a condition of evidential ambiguity will not have an antecedent commitment to naturalism and so faith-venturing is epistemically permissible for such a person even in the face of CSR. Similarly, I argue that without independent reason to accept naturalism, a person can be in an epistemic position to benefit from JPE. Thus, I conclude that debunking arguments motivated by CSR are of no real challenge to Moderate Experientialism. However, I do admit that CSR can decrease a person in a condition of evidential ambiguity’s confidence in the claim that panhuman experiences are probably veridical, and that, insofar as this is the case, CSR provides additional reason to resist Strong Experientialism.

FREUDIAN EXPLANATIONS In chapter 2, I considered the claim that religious experiences are panhuman: that humans in every culture, both historical and contemporary, have religious experiences. In that chapter, I accepted this claim, although I resisted Strong Experientialism. I argued that it was wise to do so because a person in a condition of evidential ambiguity could reasonably wonder whether the panhuman character of religious experience could be due to some panhuman biological or psychological feature. Debunking arguments motivated by scientific considerations attempt to elaborate this thought. A critic of religion who suggests that there is systemic reason to regard religious experience as unreliable and/or epistemically defective is a person who believes that religious experience is panhuman and that this feature of religious experience is

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not due to the fact that human beings are actually registering a supernatural realm, but that they are experiencing the effects of some routine biological or psychological process. In this way, such a critic attempts to build in or support a presumption against the veridicality of religious experience. In the language of epistemology, such a critic is arguing that a scientifically informed person should or does possess a higher-level defeater for the claim that a given religious experience is veridical, and thus should or does possess a higher-level defeater for a religious belief in God, so long as that belief is grounded in a religious experience. I will look more closely at the general structure of these cases in the coming sections, but first I want to introduce a now rather antiquated way of constructing such an explanation. This is the psychoanalytic debunking argument first motivated by Sigmund Freud. Now, it’s worth mentioning that Freud did not exactly claim that religious beliefs were grounded in religious experiences. In The Future of an Illusion, Freud says that religious beliefs are “illusions, fulfillments of the oldest, strongest and most urgent wishes of mankind.”2 However, one might extend this criticism into an explanation of religious experience. Consider Augustine’s religious experience as described in the last chapter. As Augustine describes it, his experience was precipitated by an episode of despair. A Freudian explanation might suggest that this despair somehow produced a perturbation of Augustine’s subconscious, which in turn produced the sense of peace and confidence that Augustine perceived as divinely bestowed upon him. Now, how exactly should we understand this hypothesis? In one of the most extensive philosophical treatments of psychoanalytic debunking arguments ever published, George Wall distinguishes several versions of this hypothesis.3 A weak version of the hypothesis suggests that “[a] necessary condition for the content of a religious experience is that the content be present within the cultural experience of the subject.”4 The countercultural religious experiences discussed in the last chapter rebut this hypothesis, but this hypothesis also makes no mention of the emotionalprecipitation of experience. Thus, a better interpretation of the hypothesis would fit what Wall calls “the explanation from desire.”5 According to this hypothesis, “[consciously] having a fairly intense desire to experience a religious Object is a necessary or sufficient condition for our experiencing that Object.”6 This version of the hypothesis seems to fit the bill. The critic suggests that Augustine’s desire for God ultimately produced his religious experience. Insofar as this was a conscious desire, this hypothesis seems to be what the skeptic is suggesting better explains Augustine’s experience than the suggestion that the experience is veridical. Wall suggests that the hypothesis has rather poor credentials. That’s because “many people have strong belief in God without ever having had an experience of God’s presence,” and that even if people have a desire for God, “desire for faith is not equivalent to, does not reduce to, is not even usually, a desire to encounter or experience God.”7 Now, it seems to me that these are empirical matters: whether people have a desire to experience God or whether people generally believe in God without ever having had a sense of the presence of God. As such, I see no need to speculate



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about the relevant numbers. Anecdotally, I would suggest that the popularity of experiential forms of worship, especially among evangelical churches, suggests the opposite conclusion, but I need not argue the point. My concern in this project is with the epistemic condition of persons who do believe in God because they have had a religious experience, or to put the point in terms of possibility, with the epistemic condition of a person who would believe in God if they had a religious experience. Fortunately, there is another reason not to adjudicate this dispute. This reason stems from the empirical evidence that we have already presented. Countercultural religious experiences also rebut this hypothesis. That’s because a countercultural religious experience arises in a condition in which we would not expect a person to have had a conscious desire for such an experience. Now, perhaps the hypothesis could be revised to include both conscious desires and unconscious desires for a particular experience. Perhaps persons who have had countercultural religious experiences do not have a conscious desire for such experiences, but perhaps they have a general longing for a religious object as understood by their culture and this longing is fragmented and reconstructed in their subconscious, such that it is transmuted into an unconscious desire. Wall, rightly, in my view, resists this suggestion. He says that if it is acceptable “to introduce an unconscious desire for God in those who encounter God but give no evidence of any desire for God,” then it is equally acceptable to “introduce an unconscious desire for God in those who do not encounter God . . . thereby voiding desire for God as a sufficient condition for religious experience.”8 Clearly, in that case, we would have a defeater for the hypothesis. Thus, this hypothesis would fare no better. Perhaps there are alternative ways of construing the psychoanalytic hypothesis. Wall suggests that psychoanalysis has very shoddy scientific credentials, and that “we have little reason to put much stock in any psychoanalytic theory of the unconscious.”9 In his view, laboratory science is characterized by the testing of hypotheses that specify variables one can quantify and control.10 However, Wall suggests that psychoanalytical hypotheses satisfy neither condition.11 He suggests instead that psychoanalysis be treated as “more of a social science than a natural science,”12 but even here Wall suggests the prospects for psychoanalysis are not much brighter. For one thing, construed as a qualitative social science, “therapeutic success may [still] be plausibly considered a result of other factors than psychoanalysis.”13 Moreover, Wall suggests that in many psychoanalytic theories, “the unconscious is given the same function as God, [and] we seem to be confronted with little more than a semantical difference.”14 Here, Wall is suggesting that in many psychoanalytic theories, the unconscious is an unobserved theoretical postulate that follows no law-like regularity, and insofar as that is the case, psychoanalytic theories are hardly more naturalistic than theistic hypotheses. I am perfectly happy to question the scientific credentials of psychoanalytic theory, but I do not think that this is necessary. As we have just seen, there are several counterexamples to the relevant psychoanalytic hypotheses. So, even if psychoanalysis counted as good science, it might not be capable of supporting the kind of

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skeptical work critics of religion are looking for. In addition to these concerns, there is also a more philosophical concern I have with psychoanalytic theory. As Plantinga observes, Freud’s critique of religion appears to rely on the implicit claim that “religious belief has a source distinct from those of our faculties that are aimed at truth.”15 However, it is not clear to me whether there is a non-question-begging and/or plausible way to ground this assertion. To see this, consider the fact that Wall’s framing of the psychoanalytic hypotheses is rather mild. He frames one interpretation as a hypothesis from desire. However, Freud’s original commentary suggests something deeper. It suggests that religious belief arises as a response to need. It is really need, not desire, that the critic of religion needs to emphasize in this context. That’s because desire is not a good candidate for psychological process appeals when trying to account for the fact that religious experience is panhuman. After all, different human beings have different desires. What human beings do not really differ with respect to is need. All human beings have the same needs. Thus, the psychoanalytic hypothesis in question is really offering an explanation from need. The problem is that it is not self-evidently true that beliefs originating from need are not aimed at truth. For example, I have the belief “I need to drink water to survive.” This belief arguably arises from one of my needs. A Pyrrhonian skeptic might argue that this belief is not necessarily aimed at truth, and that might be right, but that reasoning won’t help the psychoanalyst, as Pyrrhonian skepticism would also undermine psychoanalysis. If that is right, then the psychoanalyst will need to argue that there is something especially wrong about religious needs, but in that case, it seems as if the psychoanalyst will be arguing in a circle. Religious beliefs will not be aimed at truth because they arise from religious needs and the problem with religious needs is that they arise from faculties not aimed at truth.

COGNITIVE SCIENTIFIC EXPLANATIONS Many critics of religion might share Wall’s concerns for the scientific credentials of psychoanalysis. However, that is not to say that they cannot avow themselves of other scientific explanations when trying to account for the apparent ubiquity of religious experience. Today, many critics of religion do not endorse psychoanalysis, but look to the cognitive science of religion (CSR) when motivating a debunking case. Some practitioners in CSR are religious believers. Others argue that CSR need not be used to motivate any skeptical conclusions. For example, Aku Visala suggests that CSR be simply interpreted as a scientific attempt to “pursue explanatory theories from the cognitive and biological sciences,” and apply them to religion.16 Some practitioners of CSR even argue that CSR theories have such a wide scope that they ultimately say very little about individual religious believers. For example, Claire White defines the ultimate explanandum of CSR as “the presence, prevalence, and persistence of religion.”17 Nevertheless, some practitioners take their work to have implications for the epistemic status of religious beliefs. For example, Paul Bloom argues that CSR does



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not refuse theism, but that it can “still tell us something about the rationality, or lack thereof, of religious believers.”18 To use Alvin Plantinga’s language, we might say that some practitioners of CSR believe that CSR can be used to motivate a de jure rather than a de facto objection to religious belief. Here, the idea is not that CSR proves theism is false, but that it can be used to prove some religious beliefs lack positive epistemic status. As I described earlier, one might think that CSR provides some religious believers with a higher-level defeater for the claim that religious experiences are veridical. Why might someone think that? What are the theoretical postulates of CSR? To elucidate some popular CSR postulates, consider the following account, which follows along lines suggested by Pascal Boyer19 and Ara Norenzayan.20 According to this account, human beings are animals just like any other animal, and just like every animal constrained by evolutionary processes of natural selection, human beings must survive long enough to reproduce and pass down their genes to the next generation. However, survival is no easy matter. Threats abound in most environments and every animal needs to be prepared to fend them off or evade them. Therefore, an animal will be well-suited for its environment if it is prone to identify threats. This makes agency detection very important. If an animal fails to detect a threat, it will be eaten and therefore unable to reproduce and pass down its genes to the next generation. However, if an animal is very sensitive to possible threats, it might flee more times than it needs to, but the only cost would be calories. Therefore, natural selection would favor trigger-happy animals over agency-insensitive animals, but the trigger-happy animals would be likely to overattribute agency. They would possess minds tailored to identify agents where there are none. If these animals are social animals, they would also possess minds tailored to attribute mental states wherever they detect agency. These animals would be prone to identify agents where there are none and to attribute various goals or desires to these agents. Therefore, these animals would be predisposed for belief in invisible, but imaginary, persons. The existence of such persons is surprising, given that they are like other persons these animals know in most respects except for the fact they are invisible, but the concept of an invisible agent is not so extravagant that it is difficult to remember. Therefore, the recognition of surprising invisible agents would be easy to transmit because the concept is captivating and easy to remember. Thus, belief in such agents could spread across a population. As it does, this belief could ratchet up the solidarity among the members. Belief in these invisible agents could then become a sign of one’s group affiliation, but it could also become a way of keeping people in line. Group members cannot always monitor one another’s behavior, but an invisible agent can stand in for them. The more that agent knows and sees, the more it can police, but it can only police that behavior if it has the intention and power to do so. Therefore, a group that believed in one invisible agent with as much power, knowledge, and goodness as possible might be able to coerce cooperation in a way that another group without that belief could not. Groups with such beliefs might therefore outcompete groups without such beliefs, and as a result, they could more successfully reproduce and

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spread across various regions such that over time and space, an entire race of progeny would exist with the genetic predisposition for their belief system.21 This account contains an implicit reference to many of the more popular postulates of CSR (although it suggests that CSR is wedded to evolutionary psychology, which is not strictly speaking true). First, this account begins with implicit reference to various cognitive processes producing belief in supernatural agents. The most central process here is the trigger-happy agency detection process, or what CSR theorists call HADD, the hyperactive-agency-detection device. HADD is responsible for producing the belief that an agent is present. It is expanded by processes subtending what CSR theorists call Theory of Mind, or ToM. Theory of Mind is what enables individuals to attribute mental states to an agent. For example, if you were watching a squirrel digging in your backyard, ToM is what facilitates your belief that the squirrel is either burying or digging for food. Some CSR theorists argue that HADD and ToM predispose people to believe in supernatural agents. According to these theorists, HADD produces the belief that an agent is there and ToM attributes mental states to that agent. Thus, even if a person is not actually there, HADD and ToM can lead an agent to believe that an agency is there. If there are no physical signs of a person, these two faculties might lead a person to believe in an invisible agent. Thus, according to CSR theorists, HADD and ToM can generate belief in gods or spirits. However, the account above does not end there. According to this account, human beings are not only predisposed to believe in supernatural agents, they are also predisposed to streamline the agents they posit. For example, in the account above, supernatural agents are easy to believe in because they resemble other known agents in very many respects, except they are invisible. According to some CSR theorists, supernatural agents are minimally counterintuitive (MCI): they exemplify a particular category, in this case “rational agent,” but they violate the concept expectations in one or a minimal number of respects. For some CSR theorists, this is important. MCI concepts are captivating, and therefore, they are easy to remember and easy to transmit: they captivate everyone with those categorical expectations. Together with HADD and ToM, this predilection for minimal counterintuitive concepts can lead from a belief in spirits to a belief in a single supernatural agent. If agency detection processes trigger belief in a supernatural agent, and ToM processes trigger the attribution of mental states to that agent, individuals in a community might come to see similarities between perceived agents. If so, they might come to believe that they are actually perceiving the same agent acting in different places or conditions. Given a predilection for minimally counterintuitive concepts, these agents might come to believe that this invisible agency can be in multiple places at one time. Because it is less counterintuitive to suggest that the agent is omnipresent than present at, say, seventy-six locations, these individuals might come to believe that the agent is omnipresent. From here, and for similar reasons, they might conclude that the agent is all-powerful rather than very powerful and all-knowing rather than very knowledgeable and so on.



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If that is right, cognitive scientific processes could explain the human predilection for monotheism. However, at this point, we have only given what CSR theorists call a by-product account of monotheistic belief. According to this account, monotheistic belief does not confer an evolutionary advantage on individuals. It is simply an evolutionary consequence of faculties that do confer a selection benefit, such as agency detection and mind-reading. This raises questions about the persistence of religious beliefs. One wonders why religious beliefs would not be selected against over time. Here, some CSR theorists subsume by-product theories under what are called adaptationist accounts. An adaptationist account suggests that religious beliefs do confer an evolutionary advantage, that they do contribute to the fitness of individuals. The account outlined above is an example of such a theory. According to this account, shared beliefs can serve as a signal of group affiliation. These signals can promote group solidarity. This solidarity is reinforced by the content of the belief when that content promotes cooperation. In this case, so the account goes, it does. The more powerful and morally responsible the supernatural agent posited, the more individuals are likely to cooperate. That’s because they are less likely to believe that they can escape punishment. According to this account, a group that accepts monotheism will believe that bad behavior will be noticed, that it can be punished, and that it would be punished insofar as it believes in a God who is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnibenevolent. Thus, this account suggests that what started as a by-product, namely, belief in a supernatural agent can come to have adaptive value in the right context. Now, the first thing to say in response to this kind of account is that it is controversial. Some, including some atheist philosophers and scientists, argue that the science underpinning this account is dubious. For example, Kim Sterelny argues that “the evolutionary case for a HADD is unpersuasive.”22 Sterelny challenges the error management theory that underpins the case for HADD. According to this theory, false positives (identifying a presence that is not in fact there) are less costly than false negatives (identifying the absence of an agent that is in fact there). The alleged reason is that, from an evolutionary perspective, false positives might involve behaviors such as fleeing, which costs calories. However, false negatives can lead to death. From an evolutionary perspective, death is not bad in and of itself, but it does signify the end of a genetic line, and that is very costly. It is this line of reasoning Sterelny finds dubious. According to Sterelny, the “intuitive case for the HADD imagines our ancestors as timid, anxious victims tip-toeing through their terrifying environment, rather than as the efficient apex predators that they were.”23 In Sterelny’s view, false positives are rather costly, especially for predators. If a predator was disposed to flee, they could give away their presence and lose out on game, a loss that could have deadly consequences. These comments reveal a concern for the evolutionary science underpinning the most popular CSR theories. Other philosophers and scientists have expressed concern for the cognitive science underpinning the theories. For example, Konrad Szocik and Hans van Eyghen question the model of cognition a theory like HADD

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presupposes.24 In their view, “CSR assumes that the cognitive modules used in the ancestral environment to cope with survival challenges, later continued to produce religious contents.”25 This assumption suggests an implicit commitment to modular theories of mind. Szocik and van Eyghen define such theories as the view that “the human mind consists of distinct mechanisms of functions that operate in relative independence.”26 However, in their view, such mechanisms “do not appear to exist outside of cognitive or psychological theories.”27 Instead, Szocik and van Eyghen prefer a predictive processing view of cognition. According to these models, “all perception is heavily shaped by top-down processes.”28 The problem with modular theories of cognition, according to this model, is that they miss the way culture shapes perception.29 As Leon Turner says, the problem with this model is “occasional decoupling of particular . . . habits of mind from the interpretation of the environment.”30 Given this oversight, CSR theories have some difficulty explaining how human ancestors, without preexisting beliefs in supernatural agents, would come to “attribute events to supernatural invisible agents.”31 However, if all perception is shaped by top-down processes, perception can be shaped by expectations and an individual can perceive something they are culturally attuned to, even if it is not there. Now, my intention here is not to adjudicate these scientific disputes. Perhaps there is something to be said in response to these concerns. One might question Szocik and van Eyghen’s assertion that modules exist nowhere outside of cognitive theories. Consider a cat’s response to a coil-like object. Such a response is a prime candidate for a modular model of cognition: it is immediately triggered. Immediately triggered responses are plausibly modeled as modules because they suggest that the trigger is not informed by slower, reflective processes. If a cognitive response is not informed by other informational processing, the trigger is plausibly regarded as informationally encapsulated, a trademark of modular models of cognition.32 This cat example is also revealing because a cat is a predator, and yet it displays signs of world-wariness. Now, Sterelny could rightly argue that cats are not apex predators, unlike human beings. However, human beings have evolved from ancestors who were not apex predators. Perhaps a human HADD is more like a vestigial organ than a working heart. If so, humans could still be predisposed to overdetect agents, even if doing so is not crucial to their niche success. Now, Sterelny might suggest that overdetection could still detract from foraging success if it made foragers paranoid or overly wary, but perhaps cultural training of foragers overrides these creeping sensibilities. Of course, all of this is speculative, and many theists might simply dismiss CSR theories as overly speculative. It is not my intention to do so. Rather I believe that an epistemological discussion of the positive epistemic status of religious beliefs grounded in religious experiences can profit from this debate. The preceding debate suggests that CSR theorists are divided along typical scientific partisan lines. First, the most popular accounts in CSR presuppose a commitment to Darwinian evolutionary synthesis. According to this theory of evolution, the gene is the primary unit of evolution and the locus of natural selection. A commitment to this theory is best seen in the error management theory underpinning the most popular CSR accounts.



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According to this theory, false negatives are particularly costly because they could spell the end of a genetic line. Second, the most popular accounts in CSR presuppose a commitment to what McCauley calls massive modularity, or the view that “the human mind is composed of dozens, perhaps hundreds, of specialized mental modules each of which evolved to handle some distinct challenge to our ancestors’ survival.”33 A commitment to massive modularity is best evinced in the package of cognitive processes the popular CSR account posits. The scientific critics of canonical CSR appear to question these presuppositions. For example, Sterelny’s criticism of the error management theory underpinning HADD suggests that traditional CSR theories overlook the role of the niche in evolution. Consider again Sterelny’s worry about the way HADD could diminish foraging performance in a particular environment and the way that the evolutionary narrative CSR presupposes overlooks the fact that humans are apex predators. Clearly, apex predation is niche relative. An organism could be an apex predator in one niche and not in another. Thus, Sterelny appears to be committed to what some philosophers and biologists called the Extended evolutionary synthesis.34 In fact, Sterelny does propose a theory of religion that suggestions religion is “a dynamic mosaic of coevolving individual and social factors.”35 Consider also Szocik and van Eyghen’s criticism of HADD. This critique suggests Szocik and van Eyghen are concerned about CSR’s implicit commitment to massive modularity. Massive modularity suggests that the human mind is composed of distinct and discrete information processors. When they argue that this view overlooks the way culture influences perception, Szocik and van Eyghen are suggesting that the human mind is not composed of discrete information processors. Thus, they are rejecting massive modularity in favor of another theory of cognition.36 Now, what is interesting about this dispute from an epistemological point of view is that it suggests a parallel between debunking cases motivated by CSR. If two completely different scientific paradigms lead to the same debunking conclusion, this suggests the possibility that both rely on shared, further implicit commitments. Thus, the theist may suggest that what is actually doing the work in these cases is not a commitment to any particular scientific paradigm, but these commitments. In this case, the theist might argue that what is primarily functioning to the detriment of theism here is a commitment to methodological and/or ontological naturalism. Consider the two evolutionary paradigms discussed above. Neither is particularly detrimental to theism. Both may be detrimental to young Earth creationism, but a theist need not endorse that view. Consider also massive modularity and the predictive processing theories of cognition. Neither is particularly detrimental to theism. In fact, in other work, van Eyghen suggests that the predictive processing model does not lead to the conclusion that HADD is unreliable, but that false positives are simply cases of overfitting data to a theory that mostly works well. In that case, van Eyghen suggests one could believe that religious beliefs are “sensitive to truth.”37 Perhaps proponents of massive modularity might disagree, but to claim that HADD is massively unreliable is to say one of two things. First, it could be to say that HADD

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is so unreliable that it gets agency detection wrong more often than not. However, in that case, positing HADD results in unrestricted skepticism, not just for supernatural agents, but for agency detection in general.38 To avoid this conclusion, one could argue that HADD is mostly reliable when detecting physical agents, but that it is hyperactive specifically because it detects supernatural agents, and these agents do not exist. In that case, one is clearly presupposing the truth of naturalism. Now, naturalism, if true, is, by definition, detrimental to theism, but a commitment to naturalism is a commitment theists reject. So, the theist could argue that CSR alone is hardly damaging to theism. It may be damaging when combined with a commitment to naturalism, but then it is really that commitment, not the scientific evidence, that is the problem. Thus, one could drop the CSR story altogether and go on arguing against theism. Of course, that is not to say that CSR may not be important to naturalists. It very well may help the naturalist synthesize their worldview and account for the presence of religion in a naturalistic cosmos. There is nothing altogether illicit in that effort. There is nothing improper in arguing that the naturalistic worldview is more explanatorily powerful than the theistic worldview. However, in that case, CSR will have left the foreground and the philosophical debate will turn to the terrain natural theologians are most at home on. At that point, one can put aside questions of religious experience and cognitive science.

EPISTEMOLOGICAL IMPLICATIONS REEXAMINED While I do not intend to retract the conclusion of the previous section, I do believe that there is a case to made for thinking that the preceding treatment of CSR moves too fast. After all, it is not clear exactly what the critic of the religion is trying to prove or how they understand the reach of a debunking argument. If the critic of religion is suggesting that CSR proves that God does not exist, they are surely mistaken for the reasons I have just given. If the critic of religion is suggesting that CSR proves that religious belief in God lacks warrant, they are also mistaken. As I mentioned earlier in this chapter, the religious believer might believe in God on grounds independent of religious experience. Nonetheless, many practitioners who take CSR to have negative epistemic implications for religious believers do not make these mistakes. Consider again Bloom’s claim above that CSR suggests some religious believers are irrational. In the introduction to this section, I suggested that CSR may have negative epistemic implications for believers in a position to benefit from FVE and/or JPE. That is because these believers rest the justification of their belief in God on religious experience. Thus, we might interpret Bloom as implicitly recognizing the negative epistemic implications for these believers. In this section, I argue that these believers can still be justified in holding religious beliefs grounded in religious experience, even in the face of CSR. A venerable tradition in philosophy suggests that the etiology of a belief is irrelevant to the truth of that belief and that to criticize a person for holding a belief



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because that belief originates from a spurious source is to commit the genetic fallacy. Justin McBrayer argues that the problem with this tradition is that “there’s no such thing as a genetic fallacy.”39 That’s because, as McBrayer rightly notes, “the cause of a belief and the reason for a belief ” can be identified.40 In these cases, one can properly critique a person for holding a belief by pointing out that the belief was spuriously caused. In McBrayer’s view, the genealogy of a belief can be relevant in one of three ways: the processes that produce the belief can be truth-tracking, falsehood-tracking, or neither.41 In the latter case, the genealogy has “no epistemic implication whatsoever.”42 That’s because “the genealogy provides no new information, and only information can provide new evidence or serve as a defeater.”43 This leaves the other two options. Clearly, a genealogy will “be vindicating if the source of the belief is discovered to be truth-tracking.”44 That’s because the belief will result from a reliable process aimed at truth. However, in the other case, when the genealogy is found out to be falsehood tracking, McBrayer suggests that one has a rebutter.45 Now, in my view, I think McBrayer is too quick to suggest that there is no such thing as a genetic fallacy. I would prefer to say that fallacies are defeasible. Consider the fallacy of division. It suggests that it is improper to conclude that the parts of a whole possess the same property that the whole possesses. In most cases, that is right. It is wrong to say that the cells of the liver have the same function as the liver itself. However, in a few cases, the fallacy gets the wrong result. Consider the claim ‘Boston is in the state of Massachusetts.’ It is not improper to infer from this claim ‘Every borough of Boston is in the state of Massachusetts’ and thus conclude ‘Allston is in the state of Massachusetts.’ Nevertheless, it would be wrong to suggest that there is no such thing as a fallacy of division. It is just that the fallacy of division is defeasible. The same can be said about the genetic fallacy. In many cases, criticizing the origin of a belief will not have any negative epistemic implication for that belief. That’s because the belief can always be held on other grounds. However, when the cause and the reason for holding a belief are identified, the criticism has more bite. Thus, it is more accurate to say that the genetic fallacy is defeasible. This being the case, we can now appreciate why CSR might have negative epistemic implications for a person in a position to benefit from FVE and/or JPE: such a person holds a belief where the cause and the reason for the belief are identified. This being the case, it might seem as if CSR suggests that such a person holds a belief on unreliable grounds. The claim here is not that the mechanisms responsible for the production of the belief are falsehood-tracking. In that case, as McBrayer notes, the belief would be rebutted. However, as I mentioned above, many practitioners of CSR are careful not to claim this much. Rather the claim here is that the unreliability of the CSR mechanisms blocks the claim that the belief-productive mechanisms are truth-tracking. Thus, the claim is that CSR blocks the vindication of the belief in question. In the language of epistemology, the idea is that CSR undercuts, rather than rebuts, the positive epistemic status of the belief. It removes the justification that the experience confers on the religious person’s belief in God. What exactly is the argument here? I suggest we formulate the above line of reasoning as follows:

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P1: CSR mechanisms produce religious experiences. P2: CSR mechanisms produce religious experiences, even if God does not exist. C: CSR mechanisms produce religious experience, whether they are veridical or not. This argument captures the above idea that the belief-productive mechanisms CSR identifies are neither truth-tracking nor falsehood tracking. Of course, the argument is only valid if we assume a third, implicit premise suggesting that a belief-productive mechanism that produces a belief irrespective of whether the object of that belief actually exists produces that belief whether the experience is veridical or not. Insofar as that premise contains an analytic truth, it seems reasonable to conclude that the above argument is valid. The question is whether the argument is sound. Well, we have already seen some reasons to be skeptical of the science behind CSR. So, perhaps, the theist can ultimately argue that P1 is false. However, for the sake of argument, let us assume that P1 is true. If P1 is true, P2 might seem to follow. That is, if CSR mechanisms do in fact produce religious experiences, then it seems safe to say that they can produce religious experience, even if God does not exist. However, a theist might question this inference. Perhaps the theist believes that God is the ultimate explanation for why there is something rather than nothing. If so, the theist will have reason to deny P2. That’s because they will have reason to believe that CSR mechanisms cannot produce religious experiences even if God does not exist because CSR mechanisms could not exist if God did not exist. While this may be true, notice that it changes the subject. The question we are asking right now is whether a person who has no other reason for believing in God other than that they have had a religious experience holds a belief whose epistemic status is threatened by CSR. The preceding response is not available to them. So, for the sake of argument, let us assume the truth of P2. What follows from here? Must we conclude that a believer who holds in a belief in God grounded in a religious experience lacks justification for that belief? Liz Goodnick suggests so.46 In Goodnick’s view, such a person should wonder why God did not use other more reliable routes to produce belief in God. Insofar as they have no reason to believe that there are other more reliable routes, Goodnick suggests such a person has more reason to accept naturalism than theism.47 However, this conclusion is arrived at hastily. If a person is truly in a condition of evidential ambiguity and the only reason they have for believing in God is that they have had a religious experience, but they are now confronted with the findings of CSR, it seems wrong to suggest that they know God does not use other more reliable routes to produce belief in God. If they are truly in the epistemic position we are describing, they have no more reason to believe God has done so than that God has not. Goodnick suggests that CSR provides a de jure criticism of theism, but it seems that Goodnick’s de jure criticism relies on the de facto belief that the only route God has in fact used to produce belief in God is CSR. Thus, it seems as if Goodnick’s case ultimately relies on an implicit commitment to naturalism.



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McBrayer suggests that the problem with concluding that CSR undercuts the positive epistemic status of religious beliefs grounded in religious experience is that it is not exactly clear how to “draw the boundaries of the module.”48 If that is right, then it might be the case that the conclusion that CSR does undercut the positive epistemic status of religious beliefs grounded in religious experience does depend on a commitment to naturalism. As McBrayer notes, “HADD has a pretty good track record with other human agents.”49 On the other hand, McBrayer suggests that HADD could be responsible for all kinds of supernatural beliefs, including beliefs in spirits and entities that do not exist. Given this discrepancy, McBrayer ultimately concludes that it is nearly impossible to specify “which of the many candidate mechanisms are actually playing a causal role.”50 Thus, McBrayer concludes it is not clear whether CSR actually undermines the positive epistemic status of religious beliefs grounded in religious experience. However, I would revise this conclusion to something less modest. Belief in fairies and goblins is far less widespread than belief in God. Thus, even if HADD produces belief in these kinds of beings, it is not clear that HADD is massively unreliable. It would only follow that HADD is sometimes wrong. To suggest that HADD is just as reliable as not, one would need to argue that HADD is responsible for the production of belief in God, and God does not exist, but then one is clearly presupposing the truth of naturalism. If that’s right, then even more modest claims about the negative epistemic implications of CSR presuppose the truth of naturalism. Perhaps Plantinga was right then to conclude that there is not “a sensible de jure question or criticism that is independent of the de facto question” of whether theism is true.51 I suspect that Plantinga was right, and there is one more thing to say about the above argument that dovetails with this suspicion. Consider again the conclusion of that argument: CSR mechanisms produce religious experience, whether they are veridical or not. The conclusion of this argument gives us an implicit disjunction. To see this, note that the conclusion is not counterfactual: it is not the claim “if God did not exist, CSR mechanisms would produce religious experiences.” Clearly, that claim could do no debunking work. The conclusion is “If God exists or not, CSR mechanisms would produce religious experiences.” Now, every disjunction is true so long as one of the disjuncts is true. This being the case, a disjunct can be true even if one of the disjuncts is false. Now, in this case, we have two disjuncts: one suggests that CSR mechanisms produce religious experiences that are veridical and a second that suggests that CSR mechanisms produce religious experiences that are not veridical. The former is consistent with theism and the latter is consistent with naturalism. Insofar as this is the case, the conclusion in question is consistent with both theism and naturalism. Therefore, as stated, the conclusion of this argument does not actually establish the reliability or unreliability of the CSR mechanisms. To believe that this conclusion does establish the unreliability of the CSR mechanisms, one would need to believe that naturalism is true. Thus, the alleged de jure criticism of all religious believers who ground their belief in God in a religious experience motivated by CSR ultimately depends on a de facto commitment to naturalism.

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In fact, this observation helps us to identify why CSR does not have epistemic negative implications for believers in a position to benefit from FVE and/or JPE. Consider the former first. A person in a condition of evidential ambiguity with respect to the existence of God who considers the conclusion of the above argument, C, will be a person in a condition of evidential ambiguity with respect to both naturalism and theism. Therefore, they will be a person who does not know whether the religious experiences produced by the mechanisms identified by CSR are veridical or not. This being the case, such a person will satisfy the epistemic constraints of acceptable faith-venturing. They will have no conclusive reason to believe that their experience is not veridical. For all they know, the experience is veridical because God uses CSR-mechanisms to produce belief in God mediated by awareness of the presence of God. Of course, the experience might not be veridical, but CSR does not prove that. The only way one could conclude that is if one is committed to both CSR and naturalism. This person is not committed to naturalism. Of course, they aren’t committed to theism, either. They are in a condition of evidential ambiguity. They simply find themselves compelled, on the basis of having a religious experience, to adopt a belief. Their belief is an overbelief, but it is a justifiable overbelief. CSR does not prove otherwise. The same thing can be said of the person in a position to benefit from JPE. C is consistent with both theism and naturalism. Therefore, C alone does not show that mystical practice is unreliable. To benefit from JPE, a person need only be in a position to appreciate, after careful reflection, the fact that mystical practice is socially supported and not demonstrably unreliable. Such a person will be in possession of evidence that mystical practice is socially supported. However, even when they are confronted with CSR, they are not confronted with a decisive case for thinking that religious experiences are not veridical. To suggest otherwise would be to suggest that naturalism is true. CSR alone cannot prove that naturalism is true. Just like the faithventuring person above, this person can rightly wonder whether mystical experiences are veridical precisely because God uses CSR-mechanism to produce them. To repeat, C suggests that this might not be the case, but this person is not a person with a commitment to naturalism. They are a person who might, after careful reflection, believe that their belief in God is prima facie justified. Of course, it might not be. Naturalism might be true, but they do not know that, and in their view, no one may have rightly proven that it is true. Thus, further evidence might suggest that naturalism is false and theism is true. In that case, this person’s belief would be ultima facie justified, were they privy to that evidence. If that’s right, this person’s belief is ceteris paribus justified, and thus, prima facie justified. CSR does not prove otherwise. What CSR may do is provide further reason to resist Strong Experientialism as I suggested is wise to do in chapter 2. In chapter 2, I defined Strong Experientialism as the view that the argument from religious experience counts as proof of God in the sense that the preponderance of religious experience makes withholding belief in God irrational for a person in a condition of evidential ambiguity. I suggested that this claim is false because such a person could reasonably wonder whether the preva-



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lence of religious experience is not due to some shared biological or psychological feature of human beings. CSR theories suggest one way of articulating this possibility. As I have been emphasizing, C is consistent with both theism and naturalism. To suggest that religious experiences provide a person in a condition of evidential ambiguity with respect to God’s existence with sufficient reason to believe in God is to suggest that the best explanation for the prevalence of religious experience is that the experiences are veridical. CSR undermines this claim. That’s because CSR supports an argument leading to C, and C is consistent with both naturalism and theism. To suggest that religious experiences count as proof of God’s existence for a person in this condition is to suggest that there is reason to accept theism rather than naturalism in this condition. However, to say this is to contradict the claim that this person is in a condition of evidential ambiguity with respect to God’s existence. If that’s right, then what CSR does do is undermine Strong Experientialism and what CSR does not do is undermine Moderate Experientialism. Critics of religion who suggest otherwise have overreached. As I said above, CSR can help naturalists synthesize their worldview. In this way, CSR can provide a naturalistic explanation of the preponderance of religious belief and behavior. Thus, CSR provides the naturalist with resources that help them resist the theistic contention that religious experiences somehow prove God exists. Religious experiences do not have that much evidential value, but as I have argued, theists overreach when they suggest otherwise. However, naturalists also overreach when they go on the offensive. CSR cannot be used to undermine the positive epistemic status of religious belief. Therefore, for the most part, both theists and naturalists should leave CSR alone. A scientific investigation of religious belief and behavior is important, but it does not have the epistemic implications some partisans think it has. Of course, that is not to say that CSR has no epistemic implications whatsoever. Matthew Braddock argues that CSR can provide “a non-trivial epistemic boost to theism.”52 Braddock’s case hinges on the thought that CSR suggests we have a disposition to accept supernatural beliefs and that this disposition is “comparatively less surprising and more probable given theism than naturalism.”53 Consider, for example, the fact that together HADD, ToM, and our penchant for minimally counterintuitive concepts leads us to adopt theistic beliefs. This being the case, Braddock argues that CSR suggests that “our supernatural disposition is theistically biased.”54 It is not just that we have a disposition for belief in supernatural agents. CSR suggests we have a disposition for belief in theism. This is comparatively less surprising and more probable given theism than naturalism. If we were observing Earth tens of thousands of years ago and we were considering whether we occupy a theistic or naturalistic universe, we might reasonably conclude that the emergence of creatures with a theistically biased disposition counts more in favor of theism than naturalism. Braddock considers the objection that God may have or could have given us “a more precise accurate, and/or reliable supernatural disposition.”55 However, Braddock suggests “God might have sufficiently good reasons for permitting a degree of inaccuracy.”56 Perhaps, a loving relationship with God is more valuable when there is

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some degree of freedom involved in choosing it, or perhaps God wants to leave open the possibility of salvation for persons “who are naturally unable to acquire [theistic] belief during their earthly lives.”57 In the latter case, God might produce faculties that leave some room for inaccuracy because God has no interest in demanding explicit ante-mortem belief as a prerequisite for salvation. I am inclined to agree with Braddock. In chapter 2, I spoke of resisting rather than rejecting Strong Experientialism. That’s because I do believe that a Bayesian argument can be constructed along the lines Braddock suggests. In chapter 2, I developed a rudimentary form of that argument. This argument suggests that religious experiences can, to use Braddock’s language, provide a nontrivial epistemic boost to theism. What I have resisted is the claim that this epistemic boost is so strong that no rational person who is otherwise in a condition of evidential ambiguity with respect to God’s existence could withhold belief in God. I believe that the same can be said about Braddock’s argument. CSR may very well provide a nontrivial epistemic boost to theism. CSR may very well make theism more probable than naturalism, all other things being equal. However, this could be true, and it could still be reasonable for a person in a condition of evidential ambiguity with respect to God’s existence to withhold belief in God. Of course, the combined evidential force of religious experience and CSR might make it rational to adopt a belief in God. In that case, one would have the start of a cumulative case for theism, from CSR and religious experience. However, I am of the opinion that a person could be rational and think that even this kind of cumulative case does not make theism probable enough to believe in. Thus, once again, I speak of reason to resist rather than outright reject Strong Experientialism. In any case, the discussion has come quite far from validating the thought that CSR somehow systematically undermines the positive epistemic status of religious beliefs.

CONCLUSION I have argued that scientific explanations of religious experience do not provide systemic defeaters for the claim that any given religious experience is veridical. This being the case, I have suggested that scientific explanations of religious experience do not undermine the positive epistemic status of religious beliefs grounded in religious experience. Of course, this is not to say that every single person who has had a religious experience and forms a religious belief in response to that experience has a belief with positive epistemic status. There may very well be idiosyncratic defeaters for the claim that a given religious experience is veridical. For example, if a person had reason to believe that they consumed a series of medications with hallucinogenic effects around the time they had a religious experience, they may very well possess a defeater for the claim that their religious experience is veridical. That’s because they would have reason to believe the process that produced their experience was falsehood-tracking. To ascertain whether this is the case, there is no other option but



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to examine the conspecifics of a particular case. Fortunately for religious believers, scientific explanations of religious experience do not attempt this much. It is therefore safe to conclude that scientific explanations do not amount to systemic defeaters for the positive epistemic status of religious beliefs grounded in religious experience.

NOTES   1.  See: Michael Bergmann, “Defeaters and Higher-Level Requirements,” The Philosophical Quarterly 55, no. 220 (2005): 419–436. See also: Tyler Dalton McNabb, “Proper Functionalism and the Metalevel: A Friendly Reply to Timothy and Lydia McGrew,” Quaestiones Disputatae 8, no. 2 (2018): 155–164.  2. Sigmund Freud, The Future of an Illusion, trans. and ed. James Strachey (New York: W.W. Norton, 1960), 30.  3. George Wall, Religious Experience and Religious Belief (New York: University Press of America, 1995).  4. Ibid., 43.  5. Ibid., 89.  6. Ibid., 91.  7. Ibid., 94–95.  8. Ibid., 97.  9. Ibid., 207. 10.  Ibid., 211. 11.  Ibid., 211–218. 12.  Ibid., 218. 13.  Ibid., 221. 14.  Ibid., 235. 15. Alvin Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 151. 16. Aku Visala, “Pro-Science Rhetoric or a Research Program?—Naturalisms in the Cognitive-Evolutionary Study of Religion,” in New Developments in the Cognitive Science of Religion: The Rationality of Religious Belief, ed. Hans van Eyghwen, Rik Peels, and Gijsbert van den Brink (Springer International Publishing, 2018), 52. 17.  Claire White, “What does the cognitive science of religion explain?” in New Developments in the Cognitive Science of Religion: The Rationality of Religious Belief, ed. Hans van Eyghwen, Rik Peels, and Gijsbert van den Brink (Springer International Publishing, 2018), 40. 18.  Paul Bloom, “Religious Belief as an Evolutionary Accident,” in The Believing Primate: Scientific, Philosophical, and Theological Reflections on the Origin of Religion, ed. Jeffery Schloss and Michael Murray (New York: Oxford University Press, 2009), 126. 19.  Pascal Boyer, Religion Explained: The Human Instincts that Fashion Gods, Spirits, and Ancestors (London: Vintage, 2002). 20.  Ara Norenzayan, Big Gods: How Religion Transformed Cooperation and Conflict (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013). 21.  See also: Walter Scott Stepanenko, “The Epistemic Parity of Religious-Apologetic and Religion-Debunking Responses to the Cognitive Science of Religion,” Religions 12 (2021): 466.

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22.  Kim Sterelny, “Religion Re-Explained,” Religion, Brain & Behavior 8, no. 4 (2018): 416. 23. Ibid. 24.  Konrad Szocik and Hans van Eyghen, Revising Cognitive and Evolutionary Science of Religion: Religion as an Adaptation (Switzerland: Springer, 2021). 25.  Ibid., 23. 26.  Ibid., 13. 27. Ibid. 28.  Ibid., 90. 29.  Ibid., 22. 30. Leon Turner, “Neither Friends nor Enemies: The Complex Relationship Between Cognitive and Humanistic Accounts of Religious Belief,” in Evolution, Religion, and Cognitive Science: Critical & Constructive Essays, ed. Fraser Watts and Leon Turner (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 163. 31.  Konrad Szocik and Hans van Eyghen, Revising Cognitive and Evolutionary Science of Religion: Religion as an Adaptation (Switzerland: Springer, 2021), 19. 32.  Jerry Fodor, The Modularity of Mind (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1983). 33. Robert McCauley, Why Religions Is Natural and Science Is Not (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 52. 34.  Kevin Laland, Tobias Uller, Marcus Feldman, Kim Sterelny, Gerd B. Müller, Armin Moczek, Eva Jablonka, and John Odling-Smee. “The Extended Evolutionary Synthesis: Its Structure, Assumptions, and Predictions.” Proceedings of the Royal Society B Biological Sciences 282 (2015): 2015–2019. 35.  Kim Sterelny, “Religion Re-Explained,” Religion, Brain & Behavior 8, no. 4 (2018): 410. 36.  Of course, one could reject massive modularity and still affirm the existence of some mental modules. See, for example: Fraser Watts, “Religion and the Emergence of Differentiated Cognition,” in Evolution, Religion, and Cognitive Science: Critical & Constructive Essays, ed. Fraser Watts and Leon Turner (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 113. 37.  Hans van Eyghen, “Religious Belief as Acquired Second Nature,” Zygon 55 (2020): 202. 38.  See: Justin Barrett and Ian Church. “Should CSR Give Atheists Epistemic Reassurance? On Beer-Goggles, BFFs, and Skepticism Regarding Religious Beliefs,” The Monist 96 (2013): 311–324. 39.  Justin P. McBrayer, “The Epistemology of Genealogies,” in New Developments in the Cognitive Science of Religion: The Rationality of Religious Belief, ed. Hans van Eyghwen, Rik Peels, and Gijsbert van den Brink (Springer International Publishing, 2018), 160. 40.  Ibid., 161. 41.  Ibid., 162. 42. Ibid. 43. Ibid. 44. Ibid. 45. Ibid. 46.  Liz Goodnick “A de jure Criticism of Theism,” Open Theology 2 (2016): 23–33. 47.  Ibid., 31.



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48.  Justin P. McBrayer, “The Epistemology of Genealogies,” in New Developments in the Cognitive Science of Religion: The Rationality of Religious Belief, ed. Hans van Eyghwen, Rik Peels, and Gijsbert van den Brink (Springer International Publishing, 2018), 166. 49. Ibid. 50.  Ibid., 167. 51. Alvin Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 191. 52. Matthew Braddock, “An Evidential Argument for Theism from the Cognitive Science of Religion,” in New Developments in the Cognitive Science of Religion: The Rationality of Religious Belief, ed. Hans van Eyghwen, Rik Peels, and Gijsbert van den Brink (Springer International Publishing, 2018), 173. 53.  Ibid., 172. 54.  Ibid., 179. 55.  Ibid., 183. 56.  Ibid., 193. 57.  Ibid., 194.

6 Conclusion Final Considerations

I have argued that a single religious experience can play distinct justificatory roles even for the same religious believer throughout the course of their life. One might be tempted to take this to mean that a single religious experience can have changing evidential value even for a single believer. However, I think there is room to question whether the view I have defended in the previous chapters truly suggests religious experiences change evidential value. To suggest that a single religious experience can perform distinct justificatory roles might mean nothing other than that a justificatory appeal to a religious experience can be made alone or in conjunction with other appeals. Insofar as this is the case, the evidential value of a religious experience may be static. In any particular case, a religious experience simply provides some evidence. As it is combined with other evidence, the positive epistemic status of a belief licensed by that evidence may change, but the evidence does not. For example, according to Faith-Venturing Experientialism (FVE), a religious experience only provides pro tanto reason to believe in God. I have often spoken of JustifyingPractice Experientialism (JPE) as if a religious experience can later provide prima facie reason to believe in God, but perhaps this is not quite right. After all, Alston’s doxastic practice epistemology subtends JPE, and one might say it is really the claim that Christian mystical practice (CMP) is socially supported that is doing the extra justificatory work. This is best seen when we consider Modified Cumulative Case Experientialism (MCCE). Here, an appeal to a religious experience more clearly provides only pro tanto reason to believe in God. It is just that this reason is functioning in conjunction with other arguments and reasons. Thus, it is false to say that even a single religious experience can have changing evidential value. A single experience always has the same evidential value; it is simply worked up into different arguments. In response, I will simply say that I am sympathetic to this view. However, I would add that this view of the matter may simply call for an Aristotelian response. In one 125

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sense, it might be said that an experience does not have changing evidential value, for the reasons just given. Nevertheless, this can be true, and a given religious experience can still have changing evidential value in the sense that appeals to that experience can play distinct and changing justificatory roles. Even if a religious experience only provides a pro tanto reason to believe in God, that pro tanto reason can first do the justificatory work of grounding faith-ventures, contributing to doxastic practice defenses, and later cumulative cases. Thus, the pro tanto reason that religious experience can still function in distinct justificatory ways. So, there is still a sense in which a single religious experience can have changing evidential value even for a single individual. Thus, the Aristotelian response: in one sense, religious experiences can have changing evidential value; in another sense, they may not. Nevertheless, I suspect there may be a case to made for the contention that a single religious experience can have changing evidential value in both senses. Consider the difference between FVE and JPE. An advocate of JPE, Alston argues that religious experiences provide prima facie reason to believe in God. As I have interpreted FVE, a religious experience only provides pro tanto reason to believe in God. For Alston, the social support of a doxastic practice internally increases one’s confidence in the veridicality of the religious experience. This increased confidence strengthens the justificatory appeal to a religious experience. As a result, the experience can provide prima facie reason to believe in God, not just pro tanto reason. Now, I suspect that someone strongly committed to the view that the religious experience cannot have changing evidential value in both of the above senses might reply as follows. They might suggest that social support for CMP ultimately consists in the testimonial evidence others can provide for their experiences. This being the case, one might think that an individual’s own religious experience still only provides pro tanto reason to believe in God. It is just that when one possesses additional testimonial evidence, one’s own religious experience is combined with this evidence. As a result, one’s belief in God can be prima facie justified, but that is precisely because the pro tanto reason they have to believe in God is functioning in conjunction with the pro tanto reason one has to believe in God provided by this testimonial evidence. In such a case, one’s belief in God might have ceteris paribus justification, but that’s precisely because one’s evidential base is enlarged. (Notice that, if this is the right way to interpret the thesis of this project, my view does not amount to a form of what is often called perceptual dogmatism, if it is also interpreted in an internalist fashion.1 That’s because, according to this view, experiences do not provide prima facie justification; at best, they only ever provide a pro tanto reason to accept a belief. Such a view would also deny that experience provides what Siegel calls immediate justification.2 According to this view, experiences cannot justify beliefs alone; they could only ever justify beliefs in combination with other held propositions. Such a view might seem inconsistent with foundationalism, but so long as one holds that basic experiences provide some rational support for held beliefs independent of any other support those beliefs might have, the structure of such a view would remain foundationalist. One might even think that such a view



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deals more effectively with the problem of cognitive penetration3 and that for this reason, it represents an improvement on some forms of Phenomenal Conservatism.) To repeat, I am sympathetic to this view of the epistemic matter. However, I am inclined to argue that social support does not solely consist in the testimonial evidence of others. Social support can simply involve traditional witness or commitment to a specific conception of sanctification. A tradition can theoretically possess a conception of sanctification even if it is not constituted by practitioners who have testified to having had similar religious experiences. In such a case, there can be a tradition-internal test that a religious experience must pass in order for the resources of that tradition to vouch for the veridicality of the experience. As a result, one’s confidence in that experience can be increased and the pro tanto reason the experience previously provides one could be strengthened, strengthened enough perhaps to provide a prima facie reason to believe in God. Of course, there is an easy reply to this way of putting the matter. If a person’s growth in sanctification increases one’s confidence in the veridicality of their experience, it may very well be the case that one’s belief in God is prima facie justified, but that is precisely because, in this case, the pro tanto reason one’s own experience provides is combined with the pro tanto reason one’s sanctification provides for that same belief. However, in this case, one’s own religious experience still only provides pro tanto reason to believe in God. It is just that JPE works this reason up into a case where it is functioning in accordance with other reasons. Once again, I am sympathetic to this view of the matter. However, I wonder whether the appeal to sanctification is meant to be understood in another way. Perhaps the appeal to sanctification is instrumental rather than substantive. That is, perhaps what sanctification actually provides is a stronger or clearer perception of one’s own experience. In that case, an increasingly sanctified individual will have more reason to believe in God as they grow in sanctification. That’s because it will increasingly seem to that person that God exists. Now, one might object that this changes the evidential base. In this case, the sanctified seeming constitutes one’s evidence whereas I have been speaking as if it is the original experience that constitutes one’s evidence. I am unmoved by the objection. In order for an experience to do any justificatory work for a person at a time later than the time at which they had the experience, it will need to be stored and recalled. Thus, a justificatory appeal to an experience will always depend on a seeming directed at that experience. However, there are two potentially stronger objections to this line of thought. First, it might seem as if this way of putting the matter is quite internalist insofar as it depends on a seeming one would have to be aware of. In response, I can only repeat what I have mentioned before: the thesis I am defending here is easier to defend if internalism is true. In fact, one natural way of interpreting the basing relation I am advocating here is as a species of what Pollock called direct realism (keeping in mind the above qualification which suggests that I need not endorse Pollock’s commitment to immediate justification nor his strategy for refuting skepticism).4 According to this view, nondoxastic states, such as perceptual states, can serve as the ground for

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doxastic beliefs. The result is what Pollock calls a “nondoxastic internalist theory.”5 Nonetheless, I think something can be said about the consistency of this proposal with externalism. Consider again JR3. JR3 suggests that a person need only be in a position whether they can benefit from a particular justificatory appeal if they were to reflect on the evidence they possess at a given time. It seems to me that the present proposal is consistent with JR3 and insofar as JR3 is consistent with externalism, the proposal is consistent with externalism. A sanctified individual is in a position to form a sanctified seeming and therefore in position to benefit from it, even if they have not reflected on their experience yet. The second objection suggests that memory does not need to be directed at an experience at all. For example, a person can form a belief about what they have had for lunch spontaneously and without any accompanying imagery. As Plantinga says, for some people, “memory seems to work with no sensuous phenomenology at all.”6 This objection raises some important issues concerning the nature of the beliefexperience grounding relationship I have assumed throughout this project. The view I provisionally adopted in chapter 1, the view I have described as MEF, is quite close to the view Plantinga advocated for before he developed Proper Functionalism. In his early essay, “Is Belief in God Properly Basic?” Plantinga actually suggests that belief in God is not properly basic. Rather what is properly basic are religious experiences that ground belief in God.7 Indeed, a few years later, in an essay entitled “Justification and Theism,” Plantinga seems to double down on this view. There, Plantinga suggests that even a priori beliefs are “formed in response to experience.”8 However, when Plantinga began advocating Proper Functionalism, he appears to have changed his tune. According to Plantinga’s Proper Functionalism, belief in God can be properly basic. Here, Plantinga often speaks as if an experience is an occasion for a belief, but not the ground of the belief. For example, Plantinga says that the “sensus divinitatis is a belief-producing faculty” and that “a person who acquires belief by way of the sensus divinitatis need [not] have any well-formed ideas about the source or origin of the belief.”9 In fact, Plantinga explicitly asks “Would it follow that our knowledge of God comes by way of perception?” and answers, “Not necessarily.”10 This is not because Plantinga doubts that religious experience is perceptual. Rather Plantinga suggests that religious experiences can be described as perceptual “in an analogically extended sense of that term.”11 That’s because, for many people, “the presence of God is often palpable.”12 Nevertheless, Plantinga concludes that “the operation of the sensus divinitatis will always involve the presence of experience of some kind or other.”13 However, Plantinga suggests that these experiences that accompany the operation of the sensus divinitatis may just be the “occasion of its operation.”14 If a belief can be both properly basic and grounded in other beliefs, I need not reject Plantinga’s later view. Such a view might seem contradictory, but perhaps JR3 permits justificatory double-dipping. That is, perhaps I could be in a position where, upon reflection, I could articulate two defenses of my belief: one in which I argue that the belief in question is properly basic, and another in which I argue that the belief is adequately grounded in other beliefs or properly basic experiences.15



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The second argument might seem apologetically unnecessary, but perhaps potential interlocutors will have doubts about the first argument. In any case, if the preceding is correct, a memory belief could be both properly basic and grounded in a sensory image. Of course, this is not to say that the belief is usually reasoned to. As Alston says, beliefs grounded in experience are based on an experience “directly, rather than through being based on other beliefs.”16 In this sense, I agree that an experience is an occasion for a belief. Psychologically, a belief is typically a part of an experience, or in more epistemological language, experiences typically automate a doxastic attitude. For example, when I see a vase on the table, I automatically form the belief “there is a vase on the table” and the latter is a component part of the former vision. However, epistemologically, it is the sensory imagery that is the ground of the belief. Now, to return to the case of memory, I am of the view that, in some cases, we do reason to a belief on the basis of recalled imagery. For example, if I am wondering whether my brother was at a party I threw in high school, I might recall images of the party and peruse them for a vision of my brother. If that’s right, we can and sometimes do mull an experience over again and look for details we may have missed or have forgotten. Thus, what I am suggesting here is a parallel to the optometry example I discussed in chapter 4: increased training can lead one to notice or see things clearer than they were seen before. However, when this is the case, it is not just the present seeming that provides evidence, although it may do that as well. When this is the case, the inspected imagery is also evidence. Of course, one could reply that the reason why a sanctified person now possesses a prima facie justified belief in God in this case is because the past experience is now being combined with the present seeming. I agree that the past experience could be combined with the present seeming in this way, but what I am suggesting here is that the sanctified person may very well possess a prima facie justified belief even when the present seeming is discounted or ignored. In the end, I admit that the preceding is inconclusive. Perhaps the most one can say is that a religious experience can have changing evidential value only in the sense that it provides a pro tanto reason to believe in God that can be worked up into different justificatory cases at different points in one’s religious career. In that case, I still believe that the second central claim of this book is defensible, although it is perhaps less sexy. However, even in this case, there is still an important epistemological upshot. That’s because, even in this case, it remains true to say that one need not choose between many of the competing epistemological approaches to religious experience. Many of the most popular approaches can be harmonized in the way I have suggested and it will still be true to say that this harmonization is possible because of the diversity and development of religious lives. I concede that defining the strength of reasons in terms of ideal evidence, as I did in chapter 1, suggests this more modest view, but I am not certain that ideal evidence should be understood strictly quantitatively. If there is a sense in which evidence can be qualitatively improved, then perhaps evidence can change evidential value along the lines I have suggested in the preceding.

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CLOSING THE BOOK ON JUSTIFICATION? Throughout this book, I have strained to give an account of the evidential value of religious experience that is neutral between both internalism and externalism and between objective and stipulative accounts of justification. I now want to add a few comments on the latter controversy. In the introduction, I argued that even when we stipulate a definition, we can still offer an explanation for why something satisfies that definition. This being the case, it is not possible to argue that the explanation of the epistemological synthesis I have proposed throughout this book counts as decisive support for the view that justification is an objective property of beliefs. However, one might wonder whether the successful carrying out of the synthesis does provide support for this view. Consider again the issue I have just been belaboring regarding the evidential value of religious experience. Someone who resisted my contention above, that the same religious experience can generate both pro tanto and prima facie reason to believe in God, might think that the synthesis I have advocated for provides some support for the view that justification is an objective property of belief. That’s because such a person might think that what this proposed synthesis ultimately accomplishes is the disclosing of the fact that even in distinct epistemological approaches, religious experience has a static evidential value. If the possession of a static property indicates that the property in question is a real property, then, this could be taken to indicate that justification is an objective property. Consider the atomic makeup of water. Water has the same molecular structure irrespective of whether it is a solid, liquid, or gaseous state. Without wading into the vexed philosophical question of whether water is essentially H2O, I take it that every reasonable person will believe that the molecular structure of water is an objective property of water. Perhaps the same could be said about justification. If a belief in God can be justified at least in virtue of an appeal to a religious experience, and this appeal always provides pro tanto reason to believe in God, perhaps justification is an objective properly of belief. That’s because what the preceding chapters will have demonstrated is that whenever a religious belief is justified and it is not just an overbelief, it will have the support of similar component parts: pro tanto reasons working in increasing conjunction to move the belief from a prima facie justificatory status toward an ultima facie justificatory status. What if religious experiences have changing evidential value in the sense that they can generate both pro tanto and prima facie reasons to believe in God? In this case, one might wonder whether the success of the proposed synthesis in this book provides support for the view that justification is not an objective property of beliefs. I suspect that this would be true only if the changing evidential value in question did not follow a predictable pattern. Perhaps one could take the view I have defended here as evidence to the contrary. For example, if a sanctified person does possess greater insight and it is this insight which enables them to perceive the value of an experience more clearly than a religious novice, then the changing evidential value of the experience will follow a slightly predictable pattern. After all, if the optometry



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analogy is apt, this might be what we would expect. We do not believe that optometrists are not seeing objective properties of eyes, even though we novices cannot see some of those same properties. We take training to put optometrists in contact with an objective reality. Perhaps sanctification does the same thing here, except in this case, we are not so much concerned with the objective reality of God, but an objective property of an experience. Now, according to this view, it is true that when we consider how the appeal to a religious experience functions in MCCE, it only provides pro tanto reason to believe in God, but perhaps here the pattern is predictable as well. After all, when we consider the way appeals to religious experience function in MCCE, they function much more like a single data point among many others. When an experience is treated in this way, the sanctification of a person may be irrelevant to the construction of the cumulative case. Thus, we might say that as sanctification increases in relevance to the justification of a belief, an appeal to experience grows in evidential value. A person can develop in the religious life in both sanctification and knowledge and that is why an appeal to a religious experience can have changing evidential value. Generalizing, we might say that expertise (of some form or another) can instrumentally strengthen the evidential value of a reason, and that as expertise becomes more or less relevant to the assessment of a datum that datum may possess more or less evidential value. If the preceding is right, then however we understand the claim that religious experiences have changing evidential value, whether we take this to mean that religious experiences generate both pro tanto and prima facie reason to believe in God or whether we take this to mean that appeals to religious experience can simply function in distinct justificatory cases, perhaps there is a case to be made for thinking that the synthesis proposed in this book lends some support to the view that justification is an objective property of beliefs. Perhaps one might even argue that this synthesis provides another reason to accept this view, irrespective of how we understand the evidential value of religious experience. Consider again the choice we confronted in the introduction. There, Alston noted the wide discrepancy in accounts of justification. In his later view, this controversy suggested that epistemologists are after a phantom. I suggested that perhaps epistemologists are simply emphasizing different dimensions of justification and that what is ultimately required is a pluralistic view of justification. Perhaps the synthesis I have proposed here ultimately approaches this form of pluralism. Consider again JPE. What JPE stresses is the importance of reliable belief formation. That is, after all, why an advocate of JPE is concerned about the demonstrable unreliability of a doxastic practice. Only when a doxastic practice is not demonstrably unreliable can one rationally engage in that practice. Consider also MCCE. What MCCE ultimately approaches is a systemization of the religious worldview. In this sense, MCCE captures the extent to which coherence is an epistemic desideratum. This being the case, one might argue that the synthesis proposed in this book ultimately points toward a pluralistic approach to epistemology: a person with a justifiable belief is ultimately a person leading or beginning a life in which they are in increasing position to reliably construct and defend a systematic

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worldview to which that belief contributes. This, one might argue, is essentially how I managed to bring together distinct approaches to the epistemology of religious experience. However, one could argue that this is just one concrete instance of how this kind of harmonization could be accomplished. It’s just that, in this case, I have been concerned with the epistemology of religion. However, what applies here may apply, mutatis mutandis, to other beliefs. I am sympathetic to this way of approaching the issue of justification. I suspect that the success of this project, assuming it is successful, provides some reason to believe that justification is an objective property of beliefs. Nonetheless, one must proceed with some caution with respect to this matter. The preceding line of thought takes a success in the epistemology of religion as an indicator of potential success in epistemology in general. As such, the preceding line of thought could very well be guilty of making a hasty generalization. To construct a more compelling case, one would need to examine beliefs other than religious beliefs and demonstrate that the synthesis I have proposed here works in those cases. How one suspects that this case will fare probably depends on one’s epistemological proclivities in some contested contemporary terrain. For example, some epistemologists endorse immediate justification and perceptual dogmatism while others do not. Those who endorse immediate justification will think perceptual beliefs do not need to be worked into a coherent worldview to be justified. Suppose for example that I look outside and see what appears to be a squirrel. Many epistemologists think I am immediately justified in believing there is a squirrel outside. The view I am considering now is in tension with this approach. The view will still be foundationalist if it recognizes a class of a priori beliefs that suggest coherent packages of beliefs one has pro tanto reason to accept because they are grounded in perceptual experiences increase in strength in virtue of their contribution to the package, but it will not recognize immediate perceptual justification. In that case, the justificatory strength of the belief will still derive from the justificatory strength of the a priori foundational belief, but many advocates of moderate foundationalism will think the point of the view is to carve out a firmer place for experience in the foundation. If there is good reason to reject immediate justification, perhaps this view is more promising, but an adequate investigation is a task for another time. Nonetheless, I do think it is right to say that the view I have defended in this book provides some reason to think that justification is in fact an objective property of beliefs, although, once again, my contribution here is admittedly inconclusive.

EXPERIENCE AND SKEPTICISM In chapter 1, I claimed that radical skepticism is a difficult and perhaps impossible position to defeat. However, I also suggested that radical or Pyrrhonian skepticism is mostly irrelevant to my project. That’s because Pyrrhonian skepticism can be interpreted as a position about the justification of perceptual beliefs in general and I am



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not interested in defending perceptual beliefs in general. My concern in this project is to defend the positive epistemic status of at least some religious experiences. If it turns out that Pyrrhonian skepticism cannot be defeated, that would be bad news for everyone, not just religious believers, but given that most people continue to go on talking about justification despite the looming specter of Pyrrhonian skepticism, I have suggested that religious believers may do the same. However, a Pyrrhonian might argue that this problem cannot be so easily sidestepped. In his deftly crafted treatise on skepticism, Richard Fumerton distinguishes between several forms of skepticism.17 The first important distinction he makes is between strong and weak skepticism. The weak skeptic simply dismisses the possibility of knowledge. However, the strong skeptic “maintains that one has no epistemically rational beliefs about anything.”18 By focusing on justification rather than warrant in this project, I have evaded the concerns of the weak skeptic, but Fumerton might argue that the threat of strong skepticism looms over this project. What can be said in response to the strong skeptic in defense of this project? First, it is true that many of the epistemological approaches I have endorsed in this book make no claim to knowledge. FVE suggests that religious beliefs are justifiably adopted overbeliefs, not that they are knowledge. Similarly, JPE suggests that religious beliefs are prima facie justified, but clearly prima facie justification does not amount to knowledge (although fallibilists will disagree). The only position I have advocated for that might bump up against weak skepticism as Fumerton defines it is MCCE. That’s because, as I explained in chapter 1, MCCE aspires to the bar of Strong Evidentialism, of ultima facie justification, and one way of interpreting Pyrrhonian skepticism is as the view that no bare assertions meet this bar. However, insofar as my concern in this project is with justification, not knowledge, I could consistently advocate for MCCE and make a concession to the weak skeptic. I can do this because I can concede that MCCE cannot make ultimate good on its aspirations. After all, it is possible to aspire to a bar one cannot achieve. In such a case, one could just pass a bar lower than the bar one is aspiring to. Thus, I could simply claim that cumulative cases for theism justify religious belief and resist the claim that they transform justified beliefs into knowledge. Richard Swinburne, an advocate of cumulative cases and thus MCCE, considers a contextualist response to skepticism.19 According to contextualism, standards of knowledge change or vary with context, or in Swinburne’s terms “with the context of utterance.”20 The relevant idea here is that in ordinary contexts of utterance, perceptual claims do not need to satisfy Pyrrhonian skeptics in order to pass muster, although they might in epistemological contexts. However, Swinburne balks at the latter suggestion. In his view, “the mere fact of the context being one of epistemological discussion” does not require one to take the Pyrrhonian seriously.21 In order to do that, Pyrrhonian suggestions that there may very be evil deceivers projecting experiences into our minds “would need to be true, or many people would need to say that it is . . . before ignorance of such facts . . . could defeat a claim to knowledge.”22

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Harvey Wettstein has advocated a similar position.23 In his view, Pyrrhonian worries are “thankfully rare.”24 However, Wettstein laments the fact that in philosophy, “it is as if a Pyrrhonian homunculus were perched on one’s shoulder, repeatedly whispering in one’s ear, ‘How do you know? Are you certain?’”25 As a response, Wettstein suggests simply dropping the Pyrrhonian concern. In his view, it is better not to put questions about religious beliefs “in terms of justification, warrant, intellectual duty/ obligation and the like.”26 To do so, Wettstein suggests is to put less confidence in the religious life “than in any philosophical interpretation of what it all comes to.”27 What Wettstein seems to be suggesting here is that there is no reason to put that kind of confidence in philosophy. In fact, Wettstein explicitly says that to “proceed in this direction is to dethrone philosophy as the provider of foundations.”28 In this way, Wettstein advocates for a more radical response to Pyrrhonian skepticism than Swinburne, but both share the conviction that the Pyrrhonian should be laughed at or dismissed rather than engaged with. However, in both Swinburne and Wettstein’s response, there seems to be a call for a ground for skepticism and this is exactly the kind of call the Pyrrhonian delights in. In Swinburne’s response, this call is elaborated as a call for testimonial support for Pyrrhonian skepticism. In Wettstein’s response, this call is elaborated as a call to philosophy in general. In both cases, therefore, it seems that the question is whether there are grounds for Pyrrhonian skepticism. However, the Pyrrhonian concern is for the adequacy of one’s grounds. For this reason, Richard Fumerton has described the Pyrrhonian position as a form of metaepistemological skepticism.29 It is not clear at all to me that Swinburne or Wettstein have said anything to refute this position; they simply seem to ignore it and move on. Of course, there is nothing wrong with ignoring the Pyrrhonian and moving on. That, after all, is what I have done in this project. Weak skepticism probably cannot be refuted. We might not have knowledge of anything. Of course, I have suggested that we still may have justified beliefs and this is exactly what Fumerton qua strong skeptic would deny. Fumerton’s case rests on what he calls the principle of inferential justification: To be justified in believing one proposition P on the basis of another proposition, E, one must be (1) justified in believing E and (2) justified in believing that E makes probable P.30

Now, in assessing this principle, it is important to keep in mind another distinction Fumerton makes between global and local skepticism.31 A global skeptic is a person who believes there are no justified beliefs whatsoever. Fumerton resists this position because he worries it is self-defeating: if one says, “one has no epistemic reason for believing anything at all, then it follows that one has no epistemic reason for believing that one has no epistemic reason for believing anything at all.”32 Instead, Fumerton endorses local skepticism or the view that only some restricted class of beliefs lack justification. For Fumerton, these beliefs are primarily beliefs about the external world. The reason can be traced back to the above principle. A foundation-



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alist can take the belief that they are having such and such an experience to satisfy clause 1 of the principle of inferential justification: one can be justified in believing that they are undergoing an experience because they are directly acquainted with that experience. They could also take this direct acquaintance as reason to think clause 2 is satisfied. However, if one were to adopt a perceptual belief grounded in a perceptual experience things would be different. In this case, one would be grounding the proposition “There is a tree” in the proposition “I am experiencing a tree.” The former proposition can satisfy clause 1 for the reasons given above, but in Fumerton’s view nothing could enable one to satisfy clause 2. That’s because one needs some reason to believe that one’s perceptual experience makes one’s perceptual belief probable and there are no forthcoming reasons. The skeptical scenarios prove otherwise. For all we know, we are brains in a vat or the victim of some other elaborate illusion. Now, my response to this problem is complicated by the fact that I have tried to remain neutral between internalism and externalism in this project. So, for brevity and clarity’s sake, let me adopt a semi-Pollockian internalist interpretation of my view as I gestured at above. The first change the direct realist must make to Fumerton’s principle is to allow for one proposition to be grounded in a nondoxastic state. This can be easily done. However, the view that I have advocated for in this project recommends a second change. Fumerton’s principle is silent on the question of evidential strength. So, we might reinterpret Fumerton’s principle in the language of Strong Evidentialism. This being the case, we can distinguish Fumerton’s principle from a weaker principle given in the language of Moderate Evidentialism. This gives us the following two variants of Fumerton’s principle of inferential justification: PIJ1: To be ultima facie justified in believing one proposition P on the basis of a mental state, M, one must be (1) ultima facie justified in believing M and (2) ultima facie justified in believing that M makes probable P; and PIJ2: To be prima facie justified in believing one proposition P on the basis of a mental state, M, one must be (1) prima facie justified in believing M and (2) prima facie justified in believing that M makes probable P.

Now, as we have just seen, Fumerton is primarily worried about the ability to satisfy clause 2. So, let us assume a religious believer who grounds a religious belief in a religious experience satisfies clause 1 for reasons given above. The important question is whether such a person can satisfy clause 2. I am inclined to suggest that such a person could not be in position to satisfy clause 2 of PIJ1, but that they could be in a position to satisfy clause 2 of PIJ2. Why? Because such a person is in possession of no evidence suggesting that they are a brain in a vat or otherwise the victim of some elaborate illusion. Of course, they might be, but this just means that they cannot satisfy clause 2 of PIJ1. In response, Fumerton might argue that the possibility that a person is a brain in a vat suggests that no one can be prima facie justified in believing that their nondoxastic state makes their perceptual belief probable because then they will not be in possession of more of the relevant ideal evidence than not. I

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find this response hard to accept. If we are brains in a vat, we are massively mistaken about many things and the world is much different than we imagine, but when we consider any one perceptual belief, the relevant ideal evidence is just the datum that we are brains in a vat. Thus, even if we are brains in a vat, we are in possession of more of the relevant ideal evidence than not with respect to any particular perceptual belief. In my terminology, this means that we are prima facie justified in believing that our nondoxastic perceptual states make our doxastic perceptual beliefs probable. Nevertheless, one might think that the preceding response comes too cheap and too easy. After all, the internalist who is also a foundationalist, the epistemologist whom Fumerton calls an “inferential internalist,”33 needs some positive reason to even be prima facie justified in believing that M makes P probable. Prima facie justification does not emerge simply because a person possesses no defeater for a claim. Foundationalism requires some positive evidence for that claim. This is surely right. However, the internalist interpretation of my view has the resources to meet this demand. Recall that MEF is consistent with Phenomenal Conservatism, which is a form of internalism. Phenomenal Conservatism suggests that an epistemic seeming counts as a pro tanto reason for a claim. Thus, one could say that a religious believer is prima facie justified in believing that a religious experience makes religious belief probable because it seems to them that it does. Of course, in my terminology, a pro tanto reason does not automatically purchase a person prima facie justification, but this positive reason the religious believer does have in conjunction with the fact that they have no reason to think otherwise can increase their confidence in the probabilistic relation between nondoxastic states and doxastic perceptual beliefs and thus satisfy clause 2 of PIJ2. That’s because, to invoke a consideration presented last chapter, the foundationalist might maintain that there are a priori beliefs that suggest when such a seeming is combined with an epistemic condition in which it seems there are no defeaters, the belief in question is prima facie justified. In the end, such a view is not unlike the Keynesian view Fumerton suggests is the best possible alternative to skepticism: the view that suggests that the epistemic principles that govern “nondeductive epistemic probability . . . [are] synthetic necessary truths knowable a priori.”34 Fumerton resists this view because he does not think he is “phenomenologically acquainted with [the] internal relation of making probable” the Keynesian relies on.35 However, the Phenomenal Conservatist will disagree: the idea that nondoxastic states make probable perceptual beliefs is at the heart of their view. Of course, they could be wrong. Some epistemic seemings are false. That is why I suggested PIJ1 may not be satisfiable. However, by the rules of internalist foundationalism and as I have defined MEF, I do think there is a case to be made for thinking that matters are different with respect to PIJ2. Of course, much more could be said about this, but the preceding gives some indication of my response to skepticism. First, the view I have defended in this project is unharmed by any concession to weak skepticism. The view is potentially threatened by strong skepticism, but I believe the view can be defended against strong



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skepticism in one sense, but not another. I admit that a strong local skeptic, such as Fumerton, cannot ultimately be defeated, but I do not think that this is as important as the strong local skeptic thinks it is. That’s because one can make a partial concession to the strong local skeptic. One might not be ultima facie justified in believing anything, but that is just what the weak skeptic insists on. The strong local skeptic says that no one has any rational beliefs about anything external to oneself (natural or supernatural). This is the position I reject. According to PIJ2, I can be prima facie justified in believing that I have a prima facie justified belief. What I cannot say is that I am ultima facie justified in believing that I have an ultima facie justified belief. Nothing changes when we move up a level, as Fumerton argues.36 Of course, this raises questions about whether the distinction between PIJ1 and PIJ2 collapses Fumerton’s distinction between strong and weak skepticism, but if Gettier has shown that knowledge cannot be identified with justified true belief, the conceptual distinction might still hold water. As I mentioned, much more can in fact be said about all of this, but the preceding should give some indication of one way one can make a concession to both the weak and the strong skeptic without undermining any of the claims I have defended in this project.

FAITH AND REASON These concessions to skepticism might seem to problematize the view I have defended here. That is, it might seem as if by conceding an inability to vanquish skepticism I have rendered my view thoroughly fideistic. This could be a problem for my view insofar as I have suggested that distinct epistemological approaches to religious experience can be synthesized. However, it now seems as if I am forced to retreat to the suggestion that all religious beliefs are taken on faith. Moreover, it might seem as if I am now guilty of advocating what Terence Penelhum describes as a kind of conformist fideism.37 According to this form of fideism, one simply conforms to a religious lifestyle, but holds its commitments at arm’s length and in a less than wholehearted way, believing that they cannot ultimately be vouched for. By making a concession to the skeptic, it might seem as if this is the position I am left advocating for. However, if the preceding section is correct, and it is possible to score a nontrivial point against the skeptic in the way I have described, then the view I am advocating for is not what Penelhum describes as conformist fideism. The concession I have made to skepticism is that none of our beliefs might be ultima facie justified and thus none of our beliefs might count as knowledge. The point I made in the previous section is that this position is consistent with the view that some of our beliefs can be prima facie justified. This being the case, I can still maintain the view that some beliefs are overbeliefs in the sense that they are held with the kind of confidence one can justifiably hold a prima facie justified belief with even when one only

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has a pro tanto reason to hold that belief. Insofar as this is the case, I can consistently make a concession to the radical skeptic without suggesting that all religious beliefs grounded in religious experiences amount to faith-ventures. In my view, some religious beliefs are grounded at least partly in religious experiences in the ways described by JPE and MCCE. To reinforce this conclusion, consider the following two pathways to justified belief in God. The first pathway is the path of pure fideism. Call this the one-track pathway. According to this pathway, the only way to come to justified belief in God is by faith. Contrast this pathway with the path of faith and reason. Call this the two-track pathway. According to this pathway, there are two ways to come to justified belief in God: one by faith and another by reason. This second pathway could be understood in one of two ways. Call the first interpretation the noncombinatorial view. According to the noncombinatorial view, reason and faith are both ways of coming to justified belief in God, and if you took one rather than other, you would arrive at the same belief. In other words, according to the noncombinatorial interpretation of the two-track pathway, neither track is necessary to adopt a justified belief in God and both are sufficient. The second interpretation of the two-track pathway denies this. Call this the combinatorial view. According to the combinatorial view, reason and faith are both necessary for coming to justified belief in God, but neither is sufficient; rather the two are jointly sufficient. The view that I have been defending is closer to the two-track than the one-track pathway. That’s because I have defended both the rational permissibility of faithventuring and the rational cogency of cumulative cases. Faith-venturing fits well with the path of pure fideism and the one-track pathway, but faith-venturing along with a cumulative case fits better with the two-track pathway. Of course, this is not to say that an advocate of the one-track pathway would have no use for a cumulative case. As C. Stephen Evans argues, the fideist “does not have to deny that there is any such thing as a natural knowledge of God,” they need only deny “that there is any knowledge of God . . . that can be had independently of faith.”38 Of course, in the present context, I am concerned with justification, but one can make the same point about justification that Evans is making about knowledge. Nevertheless, nothing I have said in the preceding chapters requires me to affirm the point Evans is making here. In chapter 2, I did express my pessimism about rationally decisive or compelling arguments. However, my point was that there are precious few philosophical arguments that one can construct such that anyone confronted with the argument would have to assent to its conclusion or accept a charge of irrationality. In that sense, I may be a fideist, I admit, but that is not the sense Evans has in mind. That’s because, in my view, a person could accept a religious belief when confronted with a cumulative case for theism, even if they had not previously adopted an overbelief in God. Evans wants to deny this. Insofar as I belabored the point in chapters 3 and 4 that prima facie justification is not a temporal or psychologically antecedent necessary phase in a sequence toward ultima facie justification, but a matter of evidential access, I affirm the possibility.



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Now, in making this case, I have conceded that the view I am advocating is fideist in at least one sense. For this reason, I said above that the view I have been defending is closer to the two-track than the one-track pathway. In the sense in which I am not a fideist, however, the view I am advocating for is closer to the noncombinatorial interpretation of the two-track pathway. That’s because, in my view, JPE can get one to a justifiable belief in God just as much as MCCE can. The two need not be combined for one to arrive at a justifiable belief in God. Of course, confusion here partly arises from a stipulation I made in the introduction regarding my use of the terms religious experience and religious belief. In this project, I have understood both terms in a thin sense to refer to experience of God and belief in God. Defined in this way, JPE and MCCE can independently get one to this sort of belief. However, if I defined belief in God in a thicker, traditional sense, it is not clear that MCCE could do this. Perhaps it could in virtue of the appeal MCCE makes to a religious experience. Compared to natural theological arguments, religious experiences are more likely to generate a belief such as “God is love.” Perhaps then MCCE, unlike an ordinary cumulative case, can do the same work as JPE with respect to justifying thick belief in God. If so, then the view I am advocating is even closer to the noncombinatorial interpretation of the two-track pathway. However, it is not at all obvious that religious experiences will always get a person contemplating a case like the ones that constitute MCCE from a justifiable thin to a justifiable thick belief in the God of Christian theism. In that event, the view I am advocating might come closer to the combinatorial interpretation of the two-track pathway. In either case, the view I am advocating for is quite compatible with the approach Paul Helm has described as faith seeking understanding.39 According to Helm, this approach has it that “the intellectual and evidential basis of faith is capable of being augmented by a process of reflection and investigation in which reason is necessarily employed.”40 Above I suggested the adoption of a pluralistic approach to epistemology. According to this view, I said that a person with a justifiable belief is ultimately a person leading or beginning a life in which they are in increasing position to reliably construct and defend a systematic worldview to which that belief contributes. Helm’s faith seeking understanding approach is one way of satisfying this description. Helm rejects what he describes as an Enlightenment approach to natural theology that suggests “reason must precede faith.”41 Insofar as I have defended the rational permissibility of faith-venturing, I agree. However, like Helm, I do not think that the religious life ends there. According to Helm, the understanding sought in the faith-seeking understanding approach is “generally available, public property so to speak, and not only church property.”42 Insofar as I have defended the rational cogency of cumulative cases, I agree. A religious believer such as The Convert can start with a private, religious experience and through growth and development in a religious tradition become a capable expositor of the faith, even the kind of apologist who publicly advocates and perhaps even evangelizes with a cumulative case.

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SELF-VALIDATION AND EXPERIENTIAL KINDS By way of conclusion, I would like to briefly revisit William James’s conclusions regarding the evidential value of religious experience in The Varieties of Religious Experience. James’s account of religious experience is one of the earliest accounts of religious experience and it will help to consider some of the ways the present account differs from the one James developed over a century ago. In Varieties, James’s primary interest is with establishing psychology of religion as a fledgling discipline and viable scholarly pursuit. Throughout the Gifford lectures that became Varieties, James is primarily concerned with documenting psychological patterns in religious life. His work in this direction is tremendously valuable and scholars interested in religious experience will surely find The Varieties of Religious Experience an indispensable resource for years to come. However, some of the more epistemological conclusions James comes to are harder to defend. In his discussion of mysticism, James recommends one arrive at three specific conclusions regarding the “warrant for the truth” of mystical experience, by which James seems to mean something like positive epistemic status or claim to veridicality, rather than anything like the technical definition of warrant epistemologists have recently introduced to account for whatever it is one must add to justified true belief to make it knowledge.43 First, James says that mystical experiences “usually are, and have the right to be, absolutely authoritative over the individuals to whom they come.”44 In support of this claim, James says that “[as] a matter of psychological fact, mystical states . . . are usually authoritative over those who have them.”45 As a descriptive claim about how people regard religious experience, this may very well be true. However, James also goes on to make a normative claim about this authority. He says that “‘rational’ beliefs are based on evidence exactly similar in nature to that which mystics quote for theirs.”46 As I discussed in chapter 1, this is not quite true. Sense experience and religious experience may have some things in common. They are, after all, both experiences, but there are important differences. However, James goes on to overlook the distinction. He suggests that just as sense experiences “assure[s] us of certain states of fact . . . mystical experiences are as direct perceptions of fact for those who have them as any sensations ever were for us.”47 This contention seems to rest, at least partly, on James’s strict understanding of mysticism as a religious experience of unity with the divine. I do not think there is any reason to affirm this view of mysticism, and so, in my view, it makes more sense to follow Alston’s distinction between immediate experience and mediated experience.48 Absolute immediacy, according to Alston, is experience of something one is aware of “not through anything else, even a state of consciousness.”49 The mystical experiences James is concerned with are examples of such states, as Alston notes.50 However, many religious experiences are better counted as examples of what Alston calls mediated immediacy. Alston defines mediated immediacy as experiences in which, “[o]ne is aware of X through a state of consciousness that is distinguishable from X, and can be made an object of absolutely immediate awareness, but is



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not perceived.”51 In either case, it seems wrong to conclude, as James does, that the mystic is “invulnerable, and must be left, whether we relish it or not, in undisturbed enjoyment of his creed.” The view I have defended does not suggest that religious experiences are authoritative in this sense. In fact, James’s comments here seem to anticipate Steven Cahn’s view that religious experiences count as “self-validating” experiences.52 George Mavrodes has defended a similar view.53 Nevertheless, it is difficult to see how any experience could be self-validating. It seems to me that it is always possible to undermine the claim that any particular experience was veridical by drawing attention to etiological conditions that it make it very unlikely that an experience was veridical. This being the case, I have adopted the view that while experiences can be properly basic, they are provisional and subject to defeat. Therefore, even if James qua psychologist is correct to say that people typically treat their religious experiences as authoritative, I conclude that James is incorrect in making the normative epistemological claim that mystical states have the right to be authoritative. In fact, it seems as if James retracts this claim when developing his mature view, as I explained in chapter 3. The second claim James makes when discussing the epistemic value of mystical experience is that “[no] authority emanates from them which should make it a duty for those who stand outside of them to accept their revelations uncritically.”54 With this last qualification, this claim is easier to defend. Even if we accept a principle of epistemic authority, as I discussed in chapter 4, we will not be saddled with the claim that others have an authority we must accept uncritically. Thus, James is surely right to say that the claims of others “must be sifted and tested, and run the gauntlet of confrontation with the total context of experience.”55 However, there is one other comment James makes in support of this claim that I do not quite agree with. When discussing the claim that the testimonial agreement among mystics, establishes “a presumption” and forms “a consensus,” James says that “this would only be an appeal to numbers . . . and the appeal to numbers has no logical force.”56 I disagree. In chapter 3, I discussed the principle of credulity and I adopted Davis’s interpretation of the principle as suggesting only that we have more reason to think appearances are veridical than they are not. However, I did not, and certainly an exhaustive philosophical account of religious experience should, discuss the principle of testimony. If we take Davis’s interpretation of the principle of credulity to cover the principle of testimony, then James is wrong to suggest that agreement among mystics does not establish a presumption in favor of the claim that their experiences are veridical. Of course, the presumption might just amount to a presumption, but the agreement might also be reason to think that the doxastic practice of mysticism is socially supported, and this can make an epistemological difference, as I have argued. The third comment James makes about the epistemic value of mystical experience is that it “break[s] down the authority of the non-mystical or rational consciousness” and shows it “to be only one kind of consciousness.”57 Clearly, this comment involves two distinct claims. The latter comment is perhaps less controversial, but its truth depends upon how one wants to individuate kinds or states of consciousness.

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In this project, I have remained silent on this issue. I am happy to adopt Alston’s definition of perceptual consciousness as an experience in which “something (or so it seems to the subject) presents itself to the subject’s awareness as so-and-so.”58 In this sense, religious experiences count as perceptual experiences. However, I have not taken, and so far as I can see do not need to take, a stance on the issue of whether religious experiences count as a different kind of consciousness compared to sense experience or other experiences. In defense of his third comment, James says that “the existence of mystical states absolutely overthrows the pretension of non-mystical states to be the sole and ultimate dictators of what we may believe.”59 Nevertheless, it is not clear to me that this claim is true. If what James means is that one must not believe anything that has not been delivered by sense experience, then I suspect he is right. However, it is not clear that one needs to have any confidence in the epistemic value of religious experiences to resist that suggestion. If, on the other hand, James means that religious experiences do not need to pass any kind of rational test whatsoever, then surely James is wrong. As I explained in chapter 3, even faith-ventures must satisfy certain epistemic constraints. In any case, it is not clear at all how the authority or supremacy of reason bears on the subject of whether religious experiences count as a distinct form of consciousness. Perhaps religious experiences are the product of a sixth sense, but perhaps God simply appears in some way to our other senses or co-opts them somehow. This is surely a topic worth exploring further, but the epistemologist concerned with the evidential value of religious experience need not settle the issue to make many compelling claims.

EXPERIENCE AND EVIL Finally, I would like to say a brief word about other potential defeaters for the claim that a given religious experience was veridical. A critic might be inclined to agree that religious believers are prima facie justified in grounding belief in God in a religious experience but believe that this justification is overridden by other considerations, such as the kinds of considerations that motivate the problem of evil. In one sense, this kind of criticism is outside the scope of my project here. The problem of evil is a perennial problem for theists, as I mentioned in chapter 1. I do not disagree that some forms of evil are potential defeaters for theism. However, it is open to the theist to advocate for a defeater for this defeater. If that project is successful, then whatever prima facie justification religious experiences help a theist with respect to belief in God will go undefeated. In that case, the problem of evil will not undermine the positive epistemic status of a religious belief grounded in religious experience, but because that case would largely consist of a defense that need not touch upon epistemological issues concerning religious experience, I leave commentary on that project for another time. Nevertheless, there is one way in which this discussion of the epistemology of religious experience might be brought to bear on the problem of evil. Contemporary philosophical discussion of God and evil is primarily concerned with what is often described as the evidential problem of evil. The argument is rather straightforward. It can be formulated as follows:



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P1: If God exists, there would be no pointless evils. P2: Probably, there are pointless evils. C: Probably, God does not exist. Unlike the so-called logical problem of evil, this argument does not suggest that God and evil are logically inconsistent. Rather the conclusion is that the kind of evil that exists in this world makes God’s existence less likely, or rather, unlikely. Compared to theistic arguments, like the argument from religious experience I examined in chapter 2, I find this argument equally successful. In my view, this argument is compelling enough to make atheism a rational position to adopt, but it is far from decisive. The argument is not so compelling that it smokes out all theists as hopelessly irrational. Like many philosophical arguments, it meets a bar of rationality, even as it fails to meet the bar of proof. To see why, it will help to consider and apply some of the epistemological commitments I have advocated for to the discussion of this argument. Clearly, here P1 is not so much relevant. Perhaps there is a way for theists to deny P1, but many theists are happy to accept it. However, many theists question P2. Of course, it is hard to deny that there is any evil in the world, although maybe a Hegelian would make this suggestion. What many theists want to deny is that there is sufficient reason to accept the claim that there are pointless evils. There are two typical ways for theists to deny P2: either identify a point to the evil we see in the world or argue that there may be a point, although one is unable to identify it. The first way involves the development of a theodicy, or a story about God’s purposes and/or interactions with the world that identifies all apparent instances of pointless evil as first-order evils subtending to a larger, but perhaps often occluded, greater good. The second way is the way of skeptical theism. Skeptical theists are theists who are skeptical of P2, the claim that there are probably pointless evils in the world. The reason skeptical theists are skeptical of P2 is that they think it is unlikely that we are in a position to know and/or reasonably believe that there are pointless evils in the world. Skeptical theism has raised some interesting epistemological issues. Consider the way skeptical theists challenge P2. Some philosophers interpret the skeptical theist as challenging an inference from the apparent pointlessness of evil to the claim that evils are in fact pointless. In its original formula, this is the version of the view first developed by Stephen Wykstra.60 However, an atheist could, in principle, argue that P2 is not arrived at by inference, but experientially. That is, an atheist could argue that the evidence they have for P2 is just the fact that it seems as if there are pointless evils. Thus, the ground of P2 is not so much an inference as it is an experience, a seeming. In this way, an atheist might dodge the criticisms leveled by the skeptical theist by appealing to similar epistemological principles I have defended in this project. Thus, they might argue that anyone who advocates the principles I have defended in this project must concede that the evidential problem of evil undermines the positive epistemic status of religious beliefs grounded in religious experience. That’s because, the atheist might argue, the evidential problem of evil rebuts the theist’s claim that God exists.

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The debate here is a complicated one and an adequate treatment of this issue would require more time than I am capable of devoting to it at the conclusion of this project. However, I draw attention to this debate simply to argue that the view I have defended in this project provides some resources to help the theist resist this contention. In chapter 3, I endorsed the principle of credulity in the context of advocating for MCCE. However, I adopted Davis’s understanding of this principle. According to this interpretation, the principle of credulity states that appearances are more likely indicators of the way things really are than not. Thus, in my view, an atheist can run the evidential argument and suggest that its conclusion is more likely true than not, but that is not equivalent to the claim that the conclusion is very likely, or highly probable. For this reason, I have suggested that the evidential argument may very well meet the bar of rationality and thus rationally ground atheism, but that the theist can rationally resist the suggestion that it proves God does not exist. Keeping this in mind, let’s return to the varieties of Modest Experientialism I have defended in this project. FVE suggests that a religious belief adopted in response to a religious experience is an overbelief. In chapter 3, I argued that overbeliefs are only epistemically justifiable in a case of evidential ambiguity. Clearly, if the conclusion of the evidential argument is only more likely than not, but one has also had a religious experience that suggests God’s existence is more likely than not, then one is still in a condition of evidential ambiguity, and so faith-venturing is still permissible. Moving on to JPE, we can see that the same reasoning applies here. JPE suggests a religious belief is prima facie justified so long as a doxastic practice is not demonstrably unreliable. However, if the conclusion of the evidential argument is only more likely than not, then one can reasonably continue to believe that Christian mystical practice is not demonstrably unreliable. In fact, if the Christian mystical practice contains resources that block the seeming supporting P2, such as compelling theodicies, a person in a position to benefit from JPE can just rationally reject the evidential argument from evil because they possess reasons for rejecting P2. If that is right, then a person in a position to benefit from MCCE may also be in possession of resources that help them rationally reject the evidential argument from evil. Of course, interesting philosophical questions remain here. Some philosophers, even some theists, have argued that the support one has for P2 can still problematize some theistic responses to the evidential argument.61 Philosophers of religion should continue to explore the advantages and disadvantages of specific responses to the evidential problem of evil. I do not claim that this topic has been adequately treated here. What I am claiming is that the epistemic principles I have defended in this project do not exacerbate problems for theists. I am not claiming that the evidential problem of evil can be easily dismissed. It cannot. However, I do believe that there are compelling responses to this problem and that religious believers can profit from them. If am right, and the view I have advocated for in this project is defensible, then religious believers can be justified in holding religious beliefs, despite this problem, and in virtue of having had a religious experience.



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NOTES   1.  Harmen Ghisjen, “The real epistemic problem of cognitive penetration,” Philosophical Studies 173 (2016): 1459.   2.  Susan Siegel, “The epistemic impact of the etiology of experience” Philosophical Studies 162 (2013): 702.  3. Susan Siegel, “Cognitive Penetrability and Perceptual Justification” Nous 46, no. 2 (2012): 201–222.   4.  John L. Pollock, Contemporary Theories of Knowledge (Totowa: Rowman & Littlefield, 1986), 175.  5. Ibid.  6. Alvin Plantinga, Warrant and Proper Function (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993), 59.   7.  Alvin Plantinga, “Is Belief in God Properly Basic?” Nous 15, no. 1 (1981): 47.   8.  Alvin Plantinga, “Justification and Theism,” Faith and Philosophy 4, no. 4 (1987): 406.  9. Alvin Plantinga, Warranted Christian Belief (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000), 179. 10.  Ibid., 180. 11.  Ibid., 181. 12. Ibid. 13.  Ibid., 183. 14. Ibid. 15.  Of course, the question here will be how do I justify a belief that is properly basic? Perhaps by engaging in a critique of evidentialism and warding off potential defeaters, as Plantinga has done. 16.  William Alston, Perceiving God: The Epistemology of Religious Experience (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), 78. 17.  Richard Fumerton, Metapistemology and Skepticism (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 1995). 18.  Ibid., 30. 19.  Richard Swinburne, Epistemic Justification (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 197. 20. Ibid. 21.  Ibid., 199. 22. Ibid. 23.  Howard Wettstein, The Significance of Religious Experience (New York: Oxford University Press, 2012). 24.  Ibid., 59. 25.  Ibid., 143. 26.  Ibid., 142. 27.  Ibid., 149. 28. Ibid. 29.  Richard Fumerton, Metaepistemology and Skepticism (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 1995), 8. 30.  Ibid., 36. 31.  Ibid., 30. 32.  See chapter 1, note 23.

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33.  Ibid., 67. 34.  Ibid., 198. 35.  Ibid., 218. 36.  Ibid., 30. 37. Terence Penelhum, God and Skepticism (Dordrecht: Reidel Publishing Company, 1983). 38. C. Stephen Evans, Faith Beyond Reason: A Kierkegaardian Account (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1998), 116. 39.  Paul Helm, Faith and Understanding (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1997). 40.  Ibid., 15. 41.  Ibid., 33. 42.  Ibid., 75. 43. William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature, ed. Frederick Burkhardt, Fredson Bowers, and Ignas Skrupskelis (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1902|1985), 335. 44. Ibid. 45. Ibid. 46.  Ibid., 335–336. 47.  Ibid., 336. 48.  William Alston, Perceiving God: The Epistemology of Religious Experience (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), 21–22. 49.  Ibid., 21. 50.  Ibid., 23. 51.  Ibid., 22. 52.  Steven Cahn, “The Irrelevance to Religion of Philosophical Proofs for the Existence of God,” American Philosophical Quarterly 6, no. 2 (1969): 170–172. 53.  George Mavrodes, “Real v Deceptive Mystical Experiences,” in Mysticism and Philosophical Analysis, ed. Steven Katz (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), 235–258. 54. William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature, ed. Frederick Burkhardt, Fredson Bowers, and Ignas Skrupskelis (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1902|1985), 335. 55.  Ibid., 338. 56.  Ibid., 336. 57.  Ibid., 335. 58.  William Alston, Perceiving God: The Epistemology of Religious Experience (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), 36. 59.  Ibid., 338. 60.  Stephen Wykstra, “The Humean Obstacle to Evidential Arguments from Suffering: On Avoiding the Evils of ‘Appearance,’” International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 16 (1984): 73–93. 61.  For example, Dougherty argues that the seeming that supports P2 can partially undercut one’s confidence in skeptical theism. See: Trent Dougherty, “Phenomenal Conservatism, Skeptical Theism, and Probabilistic Reasoning,” in Skeptical Theism: New Essays, ed. Trent Dougherty and Justin McBrayer (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), 21–31.

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Index

agent, rational, 35n82, 66, 84, 87, 89, 104, 109–12, 114, 117 Alston, William, 2, 16, 18, 33n28, 33n36, 58, 61–62, 67–70, 72, 77n57, 77n75, 77n78, 97, 125–26, 129, 131, 140–41 ambiguity, evidential, 4, 37–40, 48–54, 57, 65, 96, 103–105, 116, 118–20, 144 Anti-Experientialism, 4–5, 9, 10, 12, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 21, 26, 27, 28, 30, 31, 37, 44, 57 Aquinas, Thomas, 43, 97–98 Aristotle, 99 atheism, 40, 143–44 Augustine, 94–99, 106 authority, epistemic, 81–84, 88–91, 97, 141 Bayesian reasoning, 38, 41, 49, 73, 91, 120 belief, theistic, 2–4, 7, 10, 14, 27, 30, 37–38, 42, 53–54. 55n26, 66, 70, 73, 91, 111, 114, 119–20, 143–44 Broad, C. D., 12–13, 15, 32n10, 38–40, 42, 48 Christian, 7, 43, 67, 69, 72, 77n75, 82, 96–99, 139, 144 Christianity. See Christian Clifford, W. K., 6, 58–63, 65

CMP. See mystical practice, Christian Code, Lorraine, 34n82, 63 cognitive science, 6, 111, 114 cognitive science of religion (CSR), 7, 52, 105, 108 coherence, 131 coherentism, 15 conversion, 82–83, 99–91, 95–99 counterintuitive, minimally, 110, 119 Cumulative Case Experientialism (CCE), 5, 70 Davis, Caroline Franks, 42, 49, 71–73, 141, 144 debunking, 7,14, 52, 105–106, 108, 113–14, 117 de facto, 5, 109, 116, 117 de jure objection, 109, 116–17 development, 99; psychological, 80, 85, 87, 92–93; spiritual, 5, 69, 79, 90, 92–94, 98, 129, 139 diversity, religious, 3, 5 divine simplicity, 28 Dougherty, Trent, 10, 20, 33n38, 146n61 doxastic practice, 43, 67–70, 72, 75, 91, 97, 125–26, 131, 141, 144. See also justification, doxastic duty, 2, 60, 134, 141 153

154 Index ethics of belief, 58, 65 Evans, C. Stephen, 65, 138 evidence, factive view, 19–21 evidential force, problem of, 3–5, 9 evidentialism, 10, 58, 64, 89, 145n15 Evidentialism, Weak, 10–12, 19, 58, 64 Evidentialism, Moderate, 10, 12, 19, 45, 58, 61–64, 66, 135 Evidentialism, Strong, 10–12, 21, 27, 34n58, 37, 53, 57–58, 61–64, 66, 73–74, 133, 135 evil, 7, 27, 47, 95, 142–44; problem of, 7, 37, 142–44 evolution, 109, 111–13 evolutionary adaptation, 111 evolutionary by-product, 111 evolutionary science, 110–13 expertise, 81, 94, 131 externalism, 5–6, 19, 33n36, 79–80, 84–90, 93–94, 103, 127–28, 130, 135 faith, 12, 61, 64–66, 90, 96, 106, 137–39; practice, 4, 90–95, 139 faith-venturing, 4, 57, 58, 61, 64–66, 70, 73, 75, 83–84, 90, 93, 96, 103–105, 118, 138–39, 144 Faith-Venturing Experientialism (FVE), 4–6, 12, 57–58, 64, 66, 74, 79–80, 103, 105, 114–15, 118, 125–26, 133, 144 fallacy, genetic, 115 fideism. See faith Finney, Charles, 1–2 foundationalism, 10, 12–18, 21–22, 33n37, 126, 136; ancient, 13, 16–17; modern, 13–18, 32n17, 32n28; modified, 84 Foundationalism, Modest Expanded (MEF), 18–20, 65, 128, 136 Freud, Sigmund, 105–108 Fumerton, Richard, 32n23, 89, 133–37 Gale, Richard, 21–26, 28, 34n58, 34n82, 40, 66, 70 God, 2, 4, 6–7, 12–13, 15, 23–31, 38–40, 43–45, 47–50, 52–54, 57–58, 65–67, 69–74, 81–84, 90, 94–99, 104, 106– 107, 110–11, 114–20, 125–31, 138–39, 142–44

Haack, Susan, 62–63, 65 hallucination, 104, 120 hyperactive-agency detection device (HADD), 110–14, 117, 119 internalism, 5–6, 79–80, 84, 89–90, 94, 98, 103, 127, 130, 135–36 James, William, 42, 58, 60–66, 140–42 justification, 1–7, 10–11, 15, 18–21, 32n23, 33n38, 37, 42, 45 53, 61–64, 66, 68, 73–74, 79–81, 83–85, 87–92, 97, 103– 104, 114–16, 126–28, 130–36, 138, 142; diachronic, 83, 87; doxastic, 2–3 (see also doxastic practice); immediate, 64, 126– 27, 132; objective, 2–3, 130–32; prima facie, 10, 18–19, 45, 61–62, 66, 73, 79– 80, 104, 126, 133, 136, 138, 142 (see also Moderate Evidentialism); propositional, 2; synchronic, 83, 87; ultima facie, 37, 45, 53–54, 61–63, 79–80, 133, 138 (see also Strong Evidentialism); route, 80, 84, 87–93, 99 Justifying-Practice Experientialism (JPE), 4–6, 12, 57–59, 66–67, 69, 72, 74, 79–93, 104–105, 114–15, 118, 125–27, 131, 133, 138–39, 144 knowledge, 1, 7, 21, 27, 29, 49, 50, 53, 86, 109–110, 128, 131, 133–34, 137–40 Lee, Jarena, 1–2 Mavrodes, George, 65, 141 MEF. See Foundationalism, Modest Expanded memory, 17, 128–29 metaphysics, 6, 10, 26–31, 51 Moderate Experientialism, 4–7, 12, 19, 21, 38, 54, 57–58, 66, 69, 73–75, 79–80, 87, 89, 90, 92–93, 99, 103–105, 119 Modified Cumulative Case Experientialism (MCCE), 5–6, 12, 19, 57–58, 61, 70–74, 80, 90–93, 98, 104, 125, 131, 133, 138–39, 144 modular theory of mind, 112–13, 122n36 module, 112–13, 117, 122n36



Index 155

mystical practice, 67, 69, 97, 118, 144 mystical practice, Christian (CMP), 67, 69, 70, 72, 125–26 mysticism, 140–41 naturalism, 30, 49, 50–53, 105, 113–20 naturalized epistemology, 94 no higher-level defeater (NHD), 86, 103– 104 non-cognitivity, 21–24 overbelief, 65, 83–84, 90, 96–97, 118, 130, 133, 137–38, 144. See also faithventuring panhuman, 40–43, 52, 105, 108 parsimony, 56n47 Permissivism, 56n49 Phenomenal Conservatism, 10–11, 19, 33n38, 65, 84–85, 126, 136 Plantinga, Alvin, 2, 10, 13, 16–18, 24, 30, 32n17, 33n37, 58, 108–109, 117, 128, 145n15 pluralism, 2–3, 81, 131, 139 Pollock, John, 127, 135 prima facie, 4, 7, 10–12, 18–20, 34n58, 45, 58, 61–64, 66–69, 71, 73–74, 77n75, 79–80, 83, 90, 97, 104, 118, 125–31, 133, 135–38, 142, 144 proof, 4, 11–12, 38, 40, 43–45, 49, 52–54, 55n26, 57, 118–19, 143 Proper Functionalism, 19, 33n38, 84, 89, 128 pro tanto, 10–12, 19, 58, 64–66, 74, 80, 96, 125–27, 129, 130–32, 136–37 psychoanalysis, 107–108 reliabilism, 62, 68–70, 77n75, 85–86, Rowe, William, 12–15, 18, 22, 32n10, 38–39 sanctification, 1, 69, 77n53, 77n75, 127–31

seeming, 19, 21, 25, 45–47, 65, 71, 127– 29, 136, 143–44, 146n61 self-validation, 140–142 sense experience, 13–14, 16–17, 21–26, 34n58, 41, 43, 49, 140, 142 Skepticism, 15, 17, 20, 22, 43–45, 114, 127, 132–37; global, 32n23; local, 32n23, 134; Pyrrhonian, 7, 108, 132–34; strong, 32n23, 133–37; weak, 32n23, 133–37 social support, 69, 126–27 Strong Experientialism, 4, 6–7, 11–12, 27, 37–40, 44, 52–54, 55n26, 57, 105, 118–20 supernatural, 25, 40, 47, 50, 106, 110–12, 114, 117, 119, 137 Swinburne, Richard, 32n10, 35n89, 50, 71, 84, 87, 133–34 theism, 5, 7, 12–13, 37–38, 40, 43, 45, 49–53, 58, 70–75, 83, 88, 91–93, 96–99, 109, 111, 113–20, 133, 138–44; skeptical, 143, 146n61 theory of mind, 110. See also modular theory of mind ultima facie, 10–11, 21, 27, 37, 45, 53–57, 61–63, 68, 77n75, 79–80, 90, 104, 118, 130, 133, 135, 137–38 veridical, 4, 9, 10, 13–14, 18, 21, 23–27, 39–48, 67, 83, 92, 104–106, 109, 116– 20, 126–27, 140–42 voluntarism, 58, 65 warrant, 19, 21, 34n58, 114, 133–34, 140 Webb, Mark Owen, 70 Yandell, Keith, 38, 44–49, 55n26, 69–70 Zagzebski, Linda, 16, 81–82, 100n5

About the Author

Walter Scott Stepanenko is assistant professor in the Department of Arts and Humanities at York College of Pennsylvania.

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