The Argument from Religious Experience

Inference to the Best Explanation.1. This complaint comes late for Con. Moral cognitivism is implicitly assumed in the definition of God I presented in the first round - by saying go is "all-good" one is is implicitly saying that term has a truth value (moral cognitivism). And moral cognitivists also believe that we can have at least ssome understanding of moral terms (like say, goodness). And with at least partial understanding of goodness we can say that having a relationship with "The Good" itself (God) is a very good thing. A personal relation with that being would necessarily be mediated through religious experience(s). That's just a very probable scenario on the hypothesis of theism. It's the same when someone challenges, say, evolutionary theory with an anomaly that evolutionary theory can not (allegedly) accommodation. Supposing that there is not a satisfactory evolutionary theory yet theorists will nonetheless render a conciliatory story that renders the anomaly not improbable given evolutionary theory and something that we would expect on that hypothesis.2. I didn't concede that solipsism is preferred on the basis of simplicity; I don't believe that at all. What I said is that on the basis of Con's criteria of simplicity he'd have to concede that solipsism is more simple than naturalism and thus to be preferred. And Con is also mistaken on his claim that naturalism will always be more parsimonious than theism. On some analysis of simplicity - like content - theism will be much more simple than naturalism. For example, theism only posits one brute fact - a person with zero limitations (because limitation require an explanation in a way infinity does not)- and in conjunction with necessary truth about values everything flows from that. All contingent truth is explained by this person. On the other hand naturalism posits countless numbers of brute facts of contingent states of affairs: embodied beings like humans and animals, the existence of physical laws, what sets the laws etc. Going by content, theism is much simpler. Con doesn't give us reason to believe his way of assessing simplicity is any better than my way. And the simpler explanation is only to be preferred if they both equally account for the phenomena. But, of course, Con has not established that naturalism equally accounts for the phenomena.3. It is not ad hoc on theism. If a being is transcendent, almost by definition perception could be nothing more than partial, thus rendering different perceptions of the same being expected. And Con overplays the difference between religious experiences in his examples here and falls nicely into what I said last round about many of the differences being merely on the surface. For instance, if one as a religious experience of Allah as a transcendent, holy, being telling them to be good to others and another has much the same experience of Vishnu doing the same then it's reasonable to think it's the same thing under different descriptions. (The sense/referent distinction made famous by Frege.)4. Con simply misses the point, because, unless I'm very much mistaken, Con has not shown that theistic ontology contradicts our pre-existing knowledge. It'd be just as expected on theism that the world behaves "naturalistically" - or I will say in a law-like way most of the time.5. I proposed the specific form of theism in the first round that naturalism is being contrasted with . There's no reason on that form of theism why laws wouldn't describe the processes going on in the mind/brain.Argument from Religious ExperienceOverviewNo, that is not the entire problem. It is established that if an experience is veridical then that means that the content of that experience is true - or if that experience is of an object O - that entails that O exists. If one has had veridical religious experience E then that entails that the object of E exists. If I have good reason for thinking E is veridical, then that is merely saying that E exists. The same with any experience. Con tries to separate the two, but the problem is that the way I framed the debate, it was always the proper justification for belief that God exists on the basis of E.Having PFJ for belief that God exists is sufficient if one does not have defeaters for the belief. Con is attempting to furnish those defeaters, but I argue that they all fail. If they do all fail, then PFJ becomes ultima facie justification for beliefs in God's existence. Prima Facie JustificationPFJ gives one good reason to believe religious experience is veridical in the same way it does for sense experience. The experience is appears to me to be a certain way and I should think that it is that certain way unless I have good reason to think it isn't. Con says PFJ is "primarily" intuitive which is usually incorrect outside of our everyday experience. One, no, what I have argued is that we have to accord PFJ to noetic experiences as matter of necessity and rationality; and, two, for countless of humans religious experience is an everyday experience. And just because some "intuitive" notions are "usually" incorrect about things outside of everyday experience it doesn't follow that this intuitive notion is. For I have argue that is indispensable. Contrasting PFJ to methodologies such as inference to best explanation and inductive/deductive reasoning as if they are are opposed is simply confused. They aren't. Suppose you have some data you observe and you sifting through the data in order to find what best explains that set of data. At some level you have to trust your most basic observations as guilty until proven innocent unless you want to be stuck in an infinite loop of justification. Those basic observations will be noetic experiences. Those are the observations that have PFJ and from there you go on to use the methodologies mentioned by Pro.Type-PCTPremise 4Con says we have no reason to believe this but I think we do. All it says is that it is rational for some to accept their experiences has justified unless that they have good reason to doubt it. For example, if someone had that vivid experience but they also knew that people do no normally fly to the normal operation of physical laws then they have a defeater for that belief. If a primitive person who has no idea about physical laws and doesn't think that they were dreaming ( and has no defeaters) had an experience of flying then it is rational for them to believe they flew. (That doesn't entail that is rational for us people with our background knowledge to believe that however.)Premise 1Con says, logically the most obvious place to start with our own mental content. I can agree to that with some qualifications. But the problem is that Con simply is ignoring human psychology. The way noetic experiences work psychologically speaking is that they are immediate. "The first feature, which we can call immediacy, concerns the way we access consciousness from the firs person perspective. Conscious states are accessed in a seemingly unmediated way. It appears that nothing comes between us and our conscious states. We seem to access them simply by having them—we do not infer their presence by way of any evidence or argument. This immediacy creates the impression that there is no way we could be wrong about the content of our conscious states" [1]We don't infer from our basic experiences like Con describes. The object in the experience - what it "ontologically represents" - is presented immediately in a basic way. I have not merely asserted that the Type-PCT is assumed in everyday life - I have show how we must accord our noetic experiences PFJ (Type-PCT) in order for our reasoning from experience to even get off the ground. Con has not undermined this argument.Premise 2The study is actually in The Evidential Force of Religious Experience by Caroline Franks Davis on pg. 191. In that Davis points out the following common elements to religious experience. And if that that is true than there is a significant core of common to these religious experiences that warrant it being a well-established experience.Con's point about sense experience being generally uniform and having nowhere near this level of disagreement is actually false. For example for was a famous study by the the psychologist Colin Turnbull. He he was a native person and the person, never having seen a buffalo, from further than 30 meters away, when seeing a buffalo on the plains asked what sort of insect it was. Colin perceived and insect but Turnbull perceived a buffalo. It shows how much an effect culture has on even normal, everyday, sense experience. And yet - this still doesn't count against sense experience. So it should not count against religious experience.Premise 5No, it's not a tu quoque fallacy. It's saying just as the subjective, personal, and non shareable nature of sense experience doesn't count against sense experience simpliciter (and it shouldn't) then it also should not count against religious experience simplicter because sense experience suffers from the same "problems" that Con brings up for religious experience. If one accepts that it is not damning for sense experience in general then one should not accept it's damning for religious experience in general. And my objection doesn't rely on epistemological solipsism either - in the case of testimony you accept that things are probably as other people report them unless you have special reason to doubt their claims (which is exactly what the Type PCT endorses). So con's argument actually plays into my hands as that is just another reason to accept the Type PCT. One has to accept that other peoples testimony of their experiences are probably true (absent defeaters) otherwise this eliminates vast swathes of knowledge (including scientific knowledge - when is the last time YOU personally measured the distance form the earth to the sun?). Sources[1] http://www.iep.utm.edu...