mypages.valdosta.edumypages.valdosta.edu/asantas/Capstone Papers/Bennett.docx · Web viewThe word...
Transcript of mypages.valdosta.edumypages.valdosta.edu/asantas/Capstone Papers/Bennett.docx · Web viewThe word...
Robert Bennett
PHIL-4920
Dr. Ari Santas
Radical Empiricism and The Epistemological Status of Mysticism
This paper supports the assertion that, while ground for reconciliation between mysticism
and rationalism will not be found, there is indeed room for compatibility between mysticism and
empiricism – a proposition which is traditionally criticized but made plausible by introducing
William James’ notion of radical empiricism. The paper is laid out into three main sections,
following this introduction to mysticism lead by Abraham Joshua Heschel, Rudolf Otto, Walter
Stace and William James. Firstly, a section on rationalism, utilizing the philosophies of
Pythagoras, Plato, Rene Descartes and Baruch Spinoza, for the purpose of defining and
contextualizing, through negation, mysticism. A section on empiricism will follow, divided into
two subsections: a transition from rationalism, discussing the compatibilist theories of Descartes
and Kant, and an examination of David Hume and William Clifford. Reason for the popular
rejection of mysticism by empiricists will be given here. Lastly, an elaboration of William
James’ radical empiricism, with commentary from C.S Peirce, and an argument for the
admittance of mystical experience into the epistemological realm.
Outline
I. Introduction
II. Rationalism
III. Empiricism
IV. Mysticism
V. Radical Empiricism and Conclusion
I. Introduction/Mysticism
This paper aims to answer the questions of whether there exists any room within
the philosophy of empiricism to allow for the assimilation of mysticism into the domain of
epistemology, and how this can be accomplished without reducing experiences of the divine to
some anomaly of neural malfunction or damaging the cogency of the empirical method. With
respect to the realm of the knowable, are only the objects of sensory experience admissible, or
does all experience, including that of the mystical, carry equal epistemological weight? The
factor which gives an epistemological theory its weight is its ability and readiness to provide the
subject with an apprehension of reality. Thus, the benefit of holding the strict empiricist view is
that it implies an immediate apprehension of reality; one is able to negotiate and understand the
world confidently because it supports the belief that the one’s experience of the world not only
provides knowledge but provides it more readily than reason a priori. Mysticism as well supports
the notion that reality is apprehensible, though it requires one to be in a certain mental state,
which is elusive and fleeting, before the experience provides knowledge; it lacks repeatability or
readiness. It is because of this weakness that the empiricist is traditionally skeptical towards any
notion of an apprehensible reality outside of ordinary experience. For the mystic however, his
state is in fact repeatable and apprehension readily available. I maintain that there is indeed room
for compatibility between mysticism and empiricism – a proposition which is traditionally
criticized but made plausible by introducing William James’ notion of radical empiricism.
The paper is laid out into three main sections, following this introduction to mysticism
lead by Abraham Joshua Heschel, Rudolf Otto, Walter Stace and William James. Firstly, a
section on rationalism, utilizing the philosophies of Pythagoras, Plato, Rene Descartes and
Baruch Spinoza, for the purpose of defining and contextualizing, through negation, mysticism. A
section on empiricism will follow, divided into two subsections: a transition from rationalism,
discussing the compatibilist theories of Descartes and Kant, and an examination of David Hume
and William Clifford. Reason for the popular rejection of mysticism by empiricists will be given
here. Lastly, an elaboration of William James’ radical empiricism, with commentary from C.S
Peirce, and an argument for the admittance of mystical experience into the epistemological
realm.
The definition of mysticism we will be working with throughout the paper goes as
follows: mysticism is the belief that one can, through spiritual discipline or otherwise, come into
union with the divine, or experience a reality transcendent to ordinary existence and gain access
to insight otherwise unattainable. An understanding of mysticism, even to the mystic himself, is
not easily approachable however. Shrouded in the confounding ineffability of the imagination’s
largely unchartered depth, a shadow to the Plato’s light of reason, it cannot be approached in the
strictly logical mode of mind typical of philosophers, and we must depend carefully upon the
trustworthiness of mystics, withholding skeptically our credulity. A sufficient inquiry into the
nature of mystical experience requires a comprehensive collection of the words of mystics like
such given to us in William James’ The Varieties of Religious Experience and Samuel Dresner’s
anthology on Abraham Joshua Heschel called I Asked for Wonder. Rabbi Heschel graces us with
a poetic insight into the nature of the realm he called “the ineffable:”
The search of reason ends at the shore of the known; on the immense expanse
beyond it only the sense of the ineffable can glide. It alone knows the route to that which
is remote from experience and understanding. Neither of them is amphibious: reason
cannot go beyond the shore, and the sense of the ineffable is out of place where we
measure, where we weigh” (Dresner 1).
He continues on to liken our mind to a “fantastic seashell,” its lips upon which we can
press our ear and hear the “perpetual murmur from the waves beyond the shore.” This is why, for
Heschel, the mystic sails – not for the sake of some spiritual attainment, but because, in times of
silence, one can hear a call from the unintelligible realm.
‘Ineffability’ is a word commonly associated with the mystical experience, a word whose
connotation, according to his widow, Heschel even worshipped. James names ineffability to be
the handiest of marks for identifying mystical experience, reporting, “the subject of [the
experience] immediately says that it defies expression, that no adequate report of its contents can
be given in words” (James 380). For this reason, it must be experienced directly – “[this
experience] cannot, strictly speaking, be taught, its can only be evoked, awakened within the
mind” (Otto 7). Walter Stace tells us the mystical experience is unintelligible an unutterable to
not only those who have not had the experience, but even to those who have (Runzo 149).
According to Otto, like in James, the subject must be led in contemplation and meditation upon
the silent regions of the mind until the numinous begins to stir within him and he is ripped from
ordinary experience, thrown into The Great Who-Knows.
The numinous represents a mental state of “mysterium tremendum” whereby the subject
feels embraced by some holy Other, completely dependent and powerless to the Other’s
formidable presence. This state is represented by elements of awfulness, overpoweringness,
urgency, fascination and identification with the Wholly Other (Otto 7-31). In James’ words, “it is
as if there were in human consciousness a sense of reality, a feeling of objective presence, a
perception of what we may call ‘something there.’” (James 58). The sense through which one
perceives this transcendent other is one, according to James, beyond the understanding of
contemporary psychology. The mystical experience has other qualities however, besides
ineffability, discussed by James.
The first of these qualities for James is the noetic quality of mysticism, a sense that a
mystical state is not only a state of feeling, but one of knowledge. In James’ words, “they are
states of insight into depth of truth unplumbed by the discursive intellect” (James 380). Though
ineffable and inarticulate to even the mystic, mystic revelation seems to linger in the form of
divinely inspired wisdom. Second is the quality of transiency, of a temporal short-lasting,
fleeting and lacking impressionability upon memory. One feels as though a lifetime of
experience has passed and dispensed its wisdom upon the soul in a matter of minutes, or even
seconds, leaving only the sense that something significant has occurred. The last quality for
James is the state’s passivity, as James calls it – Otto’s identification with the Wholly Other, or
James’ feeling of objective presence, a sense of there being present another power, foreign and
superior to the subject himself. James’ testifies, “the mystic feels as if his own will were in
abeyance, and indeed sometimes as if he were grasped and held by a superior power” (James
380-381). James provides numerous textual examples, in sections XVI and XVII in The
Varieties of Religious Experience, of mystics who have been rapt in this way.
J.A. Symonds writes, “Suddenly… at church, or in company, or when I was reading, and
always, I think, when my muscles were at rest, I felt the approach of the mood. Irresistibly it took
possession of my mind and will, lasted what seemed an eternity, and disappeared in a series of
rapid sensations which resembled the awakening from anesthetic influence” (James 385).
A German idealist named Malwida von Meyensburg articulated her experience, “earth,
heaven, and sea resounded as in one vast world-encircling harmony. It was as if the chorus of all
the great who had ever lived were about me” (395).
A Canadian psychiatrist named Dr. R.M. Bucke describes an “immense joyousness
accompanied by or immediately followed by an intellectual illumination impossible to
describe…” He goes on, “I did not merely come to believe, but I saw that the universe is not
composed of dead matter, but is, on the contrary, a living Presence; I became conscious in
myself of eternal life… I saw that all men are immortal; that the cosmic order is such that
without any per-adventure all things work together for the good of each and all” (399).
After qualifying the mystical experience and providing this thorough collection of
testimonies, James arrives at a series of conclusions: 1) that the experience is usually
authoritative over the subject, 2) that mystics have no right to implore others to explore the same
places and 3) that “the existence of mystical states absolutely overthrows the pretension of
nonmystical states to be the sole and ultimate dictators of what we may believe” (427). However,
the purpose of this paper is not to acknowledge the power of such states, but to argue in favor of
their status as empirically observable and epistemologically respectable – an effort which
requires us to build the philosophical context of mysticism before returning to James.
Rationalism then is next in what needs to be considered in order to give a full account.
II. Rationalism
An understanding of mysticism becomes more readily approachable when one first
understands what mysticism cannot be – by sharpening through negation the scope with which
one examines. Rationalism represents the antithesis of mysticism; mystical experience is not
rationally intelligible. It is an experience definitively void of concept and number, entirely
unattainable by use of the intellect. We will therefore begin by contextualizing mysticism within
the realm of epistemology and define as the following: rationalism is the belief that knowledge is
founded upon reason; episteme is attained a priori. The degree of certainty with which the
rationalist holds his beliefs is contingent upon his quality of reasoning. While for some
rationalists, like Plato and Descartes for instance, extended reality cannot be apprehended
directly; we can only have knowledge about the ideal, mental world. For others, like Pythagoras
and Spinoza, the extended world is ideal, a harmonious and intelligible organization and so
apprehensible through reason. Our definition can be made more precise however by giving a
philosophical overview of the below, rationalist exemplars – an elaboration which will, again,
give us an understanding of what mysticism cannot be.
The historical roots of rationalism go back as far as the times of ancient Greece – to the
time of the Pythagoreans, who claimed as a motto, “all is number.” This was not however an
attempt to deify number or spiritualize mathematics, but an affirmation of number’s unrivaled
epistemological potency. By the phrase, “all is number,” the Pythagoreans mean that nothing can
exist outside the explanatory capacity of mathematics; all can be explained by number. The
Pythagoreans were in fact such committed rationalists that they would consider the words
‘rationalizable’ and ‘knowable’ to be synonymous. They “reasoned that the entire universe is a
harmonious arrangement, ordered by and so knowable though, number” (Cohen 18). They
likened the world to a musical ballad, the chaos within which, merely illusory, and only apparent
within the stanzas not yet ordered by number. The imposition of number reveals harmony, or
order, within the chaos and knowledge is thus attained.
Plato, only 200 years historically removed from Pythagoras, echoes his rationalism. He
argued for the ideal existence of what he called the “Forms,” or archetypes transcendent to
physical reality. The Forms, defined at 52a-b in his Timaeus, are invisible, indivisible,
immaterial, unchanging, eternal, and ontologically precede physicality – “ungenerated and
indestructible… neither [receive] anything else into [themselves] from elsewhere nor
[themselves] enters into anything else anywhere.” Materiality on the other hand, for Plato, “is
sensible; is brought into existence; is perpetually in motion, coming to be in a certain place and
again vanishing out of it.” Materiality participates in the Forms, or imitates the Forms, existing
within the void, in likeness to the Forms, organized or reasoned into ordered existence by the
demiurge, or craftsman, in English (Plato 52a-b); the demiurge is Plato’s personified
representation of reason. The mediator between the physical and the transcendent, he observes
the Forms and orders the world according to them, out of chaos. The Forms, or the ideal, deal in
truth whereas materiality, because it exists merely in likeness to the Forms, can only be
accounted for probabilistically and is therefore remote from absolute truth. This is where Plato
echoes Pythagoras: one can reason about the Forms – about the ideal – reason about truth, but
there exists no truth outside of the ideal. Materiality before reason, before the Demiurge, is
chaotic; Plato’s light of reason illuminates the knowable.
Modernity’s first rationalist, Rene Descartes, in observing the deceitful nature of the
ever-changing physical world, was skeptical of sensible experience, subjecting it to his method
of systematic doubt. Descartes then sets out to lays his new epistemological foundation upon
what he calls clear and distinct ideas – those ideas which come to the intellect as rational
intuition after reasonable consideration of perception; sensory experience only begets true
knowledge when subjected to pure reason. We will come back to this notion soon. However,
much as in the way the classics seemed argue for the existence of innate ideas bestowed upon the
soul by some transcendent, ideal reality (i.e. through number, Socratic recollection or Platonic
Form), Descartes, in Meditation Three, claims that God is located above reason ontologically and
is the cause of ideas “more perfect” than his mind. While causes such as those found in the
interactions between corporeal things are considered formal causes – causes by which their
effect possesses just as must reality as the cause, by which the effect is just as perfect as the
cause. The idea of a corporeal thing however, the idea of a rock for example, exists within the
mind eminently, as an effect of the rock – the cause of my idea, the rock, possesses more reality,
or is more perfect than, my idea of the rock; the rock is the eminent cause of my idea of the rock
(Cahn 541-542). Implicatively, God is the eminent cause of ideas such as the idea of God, the
idea of infinite or of perfection.
Arguing for the above conclusion, an effect cannot possess more reality, cannot be more
perfect, than its cause; an idea of the infinite cannot possess more reality, cannot be more perfect,
than that which causes the idea; the infinite contains more reality, is more perfect, than the finite;
the mind is finite, so ideas caused by the mind are finite; an idea of the infinite cannot be caused
by the mind; therefore, in the same way that there can exist no idea of the rock until it is caused
eminently by the rock, there can exist no idea of the infinite unless it is caused eminently by
something outside the mind, possessing as much or more reality than the idea of the infinite
(Cahn 542-543).
This argument however, because it is self-evident that no corporeal object possesses
sufficient reality to cause an idea of the infinite, leaves the question of where the idea of the
infinite comes from. In Descartes’ own words, “although the idea of substance is in me by virtue
of the fact that I am a substance, that fact is not sufficient to explain my having the idea of an
infinite substance, since I am finite, unless this idea proceeded from some substance which really
was infinite” – proceeded from God (Cahn 541-543). We have it then that, for Descartes, God is
placed above reason ontologically. This is not to say that Descartes carried any notion of a
mystical apprehension of reality, but rather that God placed these ideas of perfection and infinity
within us, innate yet dormant until discovered through reason. It is this misplacement of God
over reason, along the fervent devotion to dualism, which his commentator, Benedict Spinoza,
condemns.
Spinoza, likewise to Pythagoras, rationalizes the world according to some ideal construct,
organized geometrically, patterned by logical implication. In Cahn’s words, “Spinoza viewed the
world as possessing an intelligible structure according to which every event was in principle
comprehensible as a necessary part of the whole” – a structure, the framework of which can only
be known through reason (Cahn 592). The word “necessary” is italicized here because it signifies
the importance of Spinoza’s notion of a deterministic whole – a connotation vital to his
conception of a rationally knowable world; the world must be deterministic, all parts absolutely
necessary to the whole, in order for our deductions about the world to be valid. It was this
“whole” for which he used three names interchangeably (i.e. substance, nature, or God) – all
three perfectly synonymous to one another. Spinoza, a thoroughgoing monistic idealist or, more
precisely, an attributive dualist, rejects Descartes’ substance dualism, proposing that, “the order
and connection of ideas is the same as the order and connection of extended things” (Spinoza
II.7). Though he conceives of infinitely many, Spinoza claims that we are aware of two
attributes of substance, or God: the mental and the extended. And, there is no real separation
between the mental and the extended, or between anything for that matter; their separation is
merely an illusion of the intellect, necessary, by logical implication, to our capacity for
rationalizing God. A mode, or an attributive modification, of spatial extension and the idea of
that extended mode are one and the same, only differing attributively. Both extension and idea,
and all things that fall under them, contain the whole, or are of God, the one substance – different
expressions, or different modifications in attribute, of the same substance. Furthering his
monism, no parts of the whole interact because “parts” contain no reality in Spinoza’s
philosophy; individual entities, people, objects, ideas, are not substances of their own, but are
merely modifications of God (Kolak 107-109). God is substance; God is nature; God is the
whole, and the whole is knowable strictly through reason.
Taking from two propositions found in his Ethics, I.18 and I.28, “God is the indwelling
and not the transient cause of all things” (Spinoza I.18) and “every individual thing, i.e., anything
whatever which is finite and has a determinate existence, cannot exist or be determined to act
unless it be determined to exist and to act by another cause which is also finite and has a
determinate existence, and this cause again cannot exist or be determined to act unless it be
determined to exist and to act by another cause,” and this succession of causes continues on into
infinity(Spinoza I.28). God’s existence is immanent rather than transcendent, and finite modes
are conditioned deterministically, ad infinitum, by previous finite modes and by the laws of
God’s nature. There are therefore an infinite number of finite modes acting as modifications of
God’s infinite attributes and these modifications only become differentiated when met by the
intellect’s capacity of rationalization; apparent separation and causal succession are necessary for
conceptualizing the world – separations the boundaries of which are defined by logical
implication, or reason, for the sake of maintaining God’s intelligibility, for categorizing.
Spinoza’s mode of the mental attribute, rationalized differentiation, is God’s attempt at
understanding Himself through a process of reasoning about Himself. This potentiality of
knowing reality through a process of reasoning is the common thread between all rationalists,
and it is the notion which stifles any desire to compatibilize rationalism and mysticism. To
rationalize the world is to interpret the contents of the mind and compartmentalize these contents
according to logical implication, according to some ideal construct. Knowledge then becomes
anything which scaffolds the construct without weakening the integrity of its logically ordered
whole – anything which fits the construct without contradiction, a requisite definitively opposed
to the claims of mysticism.
Mysticism asks the question of whether rationality should require of knowledge an
obligatory humbling to the mind’s rational models of reality. It is irrational in itself to assert that
it is man’s imperative to order existence according to the mind’s structural condition of
necessary implication; it is irresponsible to believe that existence should kneel to reason. First to
the Pythagoreans and then to Spinoza: is it true that “all is number –” that all is explainable by
number? Or, is it that all which is explainable by number, is number? Is substance knowable
through reason, or is that which is knowable, about substance, through reason, knowable through
reason? To observe the world through the lens of one model is to see only the truths which aren’t
filtered by that lens. For the mystic, the notion that reason contains knowledge is an illusion
potent over those who fail to understand that rationality is a lens rather than an eye. Mystical
experience forces one, whether a thoroughgoing rationalist or otherwise, to leave their notions of
differentiation and logical necessity behind. There is no room in this experience even for
language. For the mystic, it is exactly the rationally contrived, ideal construct of the intellect,
within which everything is ordered and plays nicely with logical necessity, that keeps us hidden
from truth, from divinity. Truth will never find the one who hides within the intellect. Perhaps
though it will find the one who places experience over reason. Following a transitional
subsection on the relationship between rationalism and empiricism, a determination of what
Hume and Clifford would say about mysticism will be given.
III. Empiricism
Though the same cannot be said of the former philosophies, rationalism and empiricism
do not always find themselves in opposition. Immanuel Kant for example admits both reason and
experience into his epistemology, arguing that a combination of the two is required in order to
gain an accurate understanding of the world. If one conceives of rationalism and empiricism as
an epistemological polarity of varying degrees, moving from Spinoza’s rationalism at one end, to
Humean empiricism at the other, it will become apparent that they meet in the middle with Kant.
At the far rationalist end, one might believe, like Socrates reportedly, that all knowledge exists
innately within the mind and is discoverable through a sort of Socratic recollection, or a
remembering of the contents of one’s soul. In Plato’s articulation as well, knowledge holds an
innate existence within the mind; knowledge exists within the ideal, as Form, and is
approachable through reason. Another articulation of the same idea is found in Descartes’
Meditation Three: ideas “more perfect” than us, such as those of perfection and infinity, are
given to us by God, and discoverable through careful meditation upon the contents of the mind.
There are also, for Descartes, certain truths, in addition to those given to us by God, that are
approachable by use of a natural capacity of our intellect, namely rational intuition, or insight.
Descartes also gives credence eventually, however hesitant in his skepticism, to sensible
experience. Reporting in Meditation Six, “since the ideas perceived by sense were much more
vivid and explicit and even, in their own way, more distinct than any of those that I deliberately
and knowingly formed through meditation or that I found impressed on my memory, it seemed
impossible that they came from myself. Thus the remaining alternative was that they came from
other things” (Cahn 554). It is our capacity of rational intuition which establishes these
perceptions of the senses as vivid and explicit, or clear and distinct, and it is upon clear and
distinct ideas which Descartes founds his argumentation. It follows then, from this admittance of
sensible experience into the epistemological realm, that, if one were to distrust the senses, as
Descartes at first did through his method of systematic doubt, any deductions premised in
sensory perception would so too become weightless to knowledge. It is because of this
considerable authority given to the senses that I place Descartes near the center of our
epistemology spectrum.
Immanuel Kant, as mentioned above, could be called a compatibilist. His Humean
influence becoming apparent here – and many compatibilists share this notion – both rationality
and empirical study are necessary in order to come close to an accurate understanding of the
world. Causation, for example, cannot be observed directly, or empirically, but must be reasoned
about with sufficient consideration given of course to the observed repeatability of succeeding
phenomena. In his Critique however, he did not overlook the apparent fact that rationality loses
its potency when applied beyond the limits of its capacity, when applied without consideration of
experiential evidence. Reason is a capacity of the intellect which plays an important, rather than
an absolute, role in epistemological endeavors; all knowledge must originate in the evidence of
sensory experience.
Kant agrees with Descartes, and with the classics, in that mathematical claims – and I
maintain that mathematical claims are extendable to any claims which deal in logical abstraction
– about the way the world is are necessarily true. However, he does not support Descartes’
notion that mathematical truths are objects discoverable by rational intuition. Rather, he owes
our knowledge of mathematical proportion to the world’s necessary conformity to the mind’s
organization of perception. The mind takes in sensory data and interprets it, organizing the world
rationally into a geometrically proportional, ideal construct, within which truths of proportion
exist necessarily (Cahn 974). “The world is empirically real because… objects are real in that
they exist independently of us [as noumena]. The world is transcendentally ideal because such
objects are, and must be, relative to the a priori forms of experience –” ‘a priori forms of
experience’ meaning phenomenal experience (Kolak 390). The objects of our perception have
reality in that they come to the observer as phenomena, but the world must conform necessarily
to the conditions of a priori experience because the objects of the world are necessarily relative
to the conditions of a priori experience; the world conforms necessarily to the ideal, categorical,
rational construct of the mind. Or, in Kant’s language,
“We have therefore wanted to say that all our intuition is nothing but the
representation of appearance; that the things that we intuit are not in themselves what we
intuit them to be, nor are their relations so constituted in themselves as they appear to us;
and that if we remove our own subject or even only the subjective constitution of the
senses in general, then all constitution, all relations of objects in space and time, indeed
space and time themselves would disappear, and as appearances they cannot exist in
themselves, but only in us” (Kant a42/b59).
Kant refutes strict rationalism because, by his reasoning, no truths, even analytic truths,
can be deduced without working from a priori experience. He refutes empiricism because the
objects of the world must first conform to the necessary conditions of experience before having
any epistemological weight.
Having now discussed rationalism at length, and Descartes and Kant in transition to
empiricism, we will now utilize David Hume and William Clifford to gain an understanding of
empiricism, an account of empiricism sufficient for this paper. Empiricism then is the
epistemological theory that knowledge is founded upon experience, a posteriori. In the terms of
Humean empiricism however, with due consideration given to his thoroughgoing skepticism, we
can give it the following definition: warranted belief is founded upon the repeatability of
conjunctly successive impressions (Santas – Hume On Miracles); beyond that, any
epistemological inquiry into the way the world is fruitless.
In section IV of the Enquiry, Hume draws a distinction between two forms of judgement:
“relations of ideas” are based in logical necessity and their truths are discoverable through reason
alone (e.g. “all effects have a cause”); truths regarding “matters of fact” however are contingent
upon the way the world actually is and, Hume claims, require one to have had prior
impressionable experience of the matter (e.g. “all events have a cause”). A claim that all events
have a cause is not justifiable because 1) it, unlike the proposition, “all effects have a cause,” is
not what Kant would call an analytic truth and 2) it is impossible to observe all events (Kolak
321-322). Furthermore, with respect to claims of causal relation, the observer witnesses nothing
more than a repeating succession of events. Causation is not impressive; to have the impression
of two events occurring in succession is not to have an impression of a necessary connection,
and, because claims of causation are claims of matters of fact, nor are they justifiable through
reason. The repeatability of succession only yields a higher probability of correlation, and a
belief in causal connection is warranted only by this repeatability. Knowledge is an ideal,
incapable of being actualized; Hume deals in warranted belief. A belief that the sun will rise
tomorrow is a warranted belief because I have had the impression of a rising sun on many days
in the past.
What remains then, in our section on empiricism, is the question of why most empiricists
are opposed to mysticism. Hume answers this question for us in his section on miracles, section
X of the Enquiry. A miracle, to Hume, is an event which violates experientially established
patterns of repeatable succession, a supernatural occurrence; in this way, mystical experience is
miraculous experience. To clarify, though ‘miraculous’ and ‘mystical’ are not strictly speaking
synonymous, I maintain that mystical experience can be placed under the umbrella of what is
miraculous. And, given that a warranted belief is a belief based in established patterns of
repeatable succession, it is therefore unjustified to have a belief in miracles, and therefore in
mystical experience (Hume, Section X, Part I). If one accepts Hume’s definitions as well as the
assertion that mystical experience is miraculous, then this claim is true analytically.
So, given that the reader is not a mystic himself, what is left is a belief in mystical
experience through considering the testimonies of others. In Hume’s words, “no testimony is
sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind, that its falsehood would
be more miraculous, than the fact, which it endeavors to establish” (Hume, Section X, Part I).
The same claim can be made about the establishment of mystical experience. In the opening
paragraphs of part II, Hume gives us four reasons why no sufficient testimony has been given: 1)
history yields no example of any miracle attested to by a sufficient number of credible and
trustworthy men, so as to warrant belief. 2) “The passion of surprise and wonder, arising from
miracles, being an agreeable emotion, gives a sensible tendency towards the belief of those
events, from which it is derived.” 3) Belief in miracles is “observed chiefly to abound among
ignorant and barbarous nations,” or is inherited from ignorant and barbarous ancestors. 4) Most
of whom attest to miracles attest out of vested interest (Hume, Section X, Part II). Hume then,
because a warranted belief in mystical experience is self-contradictory by definition and no
sufficient testimony regarding the reality of the experience has been given, finds no room in his
empiricism for mysticism.
William Clifford, a skeptic of the same vein as Hume, comments as well on the credulous
tendencies of the religious, going so far as to say that a belief in God, or any notion of a
supernatural realm, is not only unwarranted but immoral. He analogizes to a negligent ship-
owner. The ship-owner knows his ship is old and poorly built, in need of repairs, but repairs are
expensive. Either the voyage is successful – a lucrative outcome – or it fails and he collects his
insurance on the ship – also a lucrative outcome. The doubts of her safety weigh on him though
and disturb his peace of mind; so, he suppresses them, rationalizing his desire to overlook the
expense of repairing her by considering all the many times she has returned safely in the past,
and sends her out to sea, dozens of emigrant families aboard. The ship-owner dismisses all
suspicion eliciting discomfort to the point of self-deception and she leaves the shore with his
confidence. Inevitably, the ship fails the voyage and all those aboard die at sea. Though in the
end he truly believes in the ships ability to complete the journey safely, according to Clifford, the
ship-owner “had no right to believe on such evidence as was before him” (Clifford 1). Further,
the ship-owner’s misplaced belief is immoral regardless of its consequences; even if the ship
completes her voyage, the ship-owner is just as guilty.
Clifford asks that we extend this analogy to its religious application. Consider the ship-
owner to be a priest or some mystic in whom thousands of followers place their trust. The
mystic, Clifford would defend, in this case, represents an authority of great moral import; he has
the power to shape the beliefs of thousands. And, he would add, the mystic shapes the beliefs of
his followers according to his own rationalized self-deception. Is it the mystic’s belief in his
experience, though, which is immoral, or is it the action of leading others?
Clifford acknowledges moral value to apparently lie in the action. He deals with this
however by making the claim that it “is not possible so to sever the belief from the action it
suggests as to condemn the one without condemning the other;” a belief “is stored up for the
guidance of the future. It goes to make a part of that aggregate of beliefs which is the link
between sensation and action at every moment of all our lives, and which is so organized and
compacted together that no part of it can be isolated from the rest” (Clifford 3). Even a belief, not
only the action of leading others, in mysticism, by virtue of its being based on lacking evidence,
is immoral.
The majority of history’s empiricists would agree that, because evidence for the reality
mystical experience has not been established in repeatability of sensory experience, a belief in
mysticism is unwarranted. Hume would owe a belief in mystical experience to the human
tendency towards aggrandizing the contents of the imagination – the contents of which are
constituted by the increasing complexification of interacting ideas (e.g. the idea of a unicorn
combines our ideas of majesty, a horse and a horn). An experience which a mystic might call
divine is reduced by Hume to the result of deified imagination or a paradoxical confusion of
proto-ideas not yet fully developed by the conscious mind. I use the phrase ‘proto-ideas’ to
convey the sense that these ideas have surpassed the state of impression, while not yet having
been the objects of thorough contemplation.
William James’ response to such a reduction however, as founded upon his notion of
radical empiricism, would ask the question of whether it is responsible to believe that these
moments of mystical experience – moments of such profound insight whereby the subject is left
so completely confounded by the readiness of truth, that he can attribute the experience to
nothing other than God – should be discarded in the way Hume and Clifford discard of them.
James argues not. Furthermore, should not all experience – the experience of a sensible
particular, of a cause, of a mental object, or otherwise – be taken into consideration if one is to be
a true empiricist? I think that, in A World of Pure Experience, Varieties of Religious Experience,
and The Will to Believe, is has been made clear that James would not only find it permissible, but
responsible to believe the claims of mysticism, and that his commentator, C.S. Peirce, would
agree.
IV. Mysticism and Radical Empiricism
A. Radical Empiricism
i. Section I in A World of Pure Experience: “Ordinary empiricism, in spite
of the fact that conjunctive and disjunctive relations present themselves as
being fully co-ordinate parts of experience, has always shown a tendency
to do away with the connections of things, and to insist most on the
disjunctions.” While rationalism works from universals to deduce
particulars, and thus ordering the whole over the parts in both logic and
existence, according to James, the empirical method traditionally works
from particulars, a collection of disjunctive individuals, to arrive at an
abstract universal induction (McDermott 195-196). However, a radical
empiricism is one by which conjunctions are real respected.
ii. Section I: “the relations that connect experiences must themselves be
experienced relations, and any kind of relation experienced must be
accounted as real as anything else in the system” (McDermott 195).
Empiricism therefore should include all experience, be it of a particular or
of a relation of particulars.
iii. To be radical, he says, “an empiricism must neither admit into its
constructions any element that is not directly experienced, nor exclude
from them any element that is directly experienced” (McDermott 195).
iv. Section III: “On the other hand, if I can lead you to the hall, and tell you of
its history and present uses; if in its presence I feel my idea, however
imperfect it may have been, to have led hither and to be now terminated; if
the associates of the image and of the felt hall run parallel, so that each
term of the one context corresponds serially, as I walk, with an answering
term of the others; why then my soul was prophetic, and my idea must be,
and by common consent would be, called cognizant of reality” (Dermott
201). Testimony, contrary to Hume’s notion, is admissible into an
empiricist account. On the same token, one can be lead by testimony
through a series of steps in order to bring that person to a similar, if not the
same, location as he who did the leading.
B. The Will to Believe – response to Clifford (Santas – Notes on Clifford and James)
i. Some things must be believed before evidence. Clifford wants certainty
ii. Not all beliefs suspended until after all facts are in
iii. Can’t will to believe something that is unbelievable to us
iv. Passion due to upbringing rather than intellect
v. Options in decision: forced, avoidable, momentous, trivial
vi. Should will to believe if the option is genuine (must choose in order to
know truth) and evidence is unhandy
vii. Belief in God meets above criteria (avoidable but momentous) and
evidence is unhandy
viii. Belief in mysticism is avoidable and momentous and is such that truth
depends on belief
C. C.S. Peirce
i. God as Love = God as experienced by the heart through meaning and
order, or “Thirdness” (Peirce). Heart as an organ of perception.
Experiences of God can be observed in this way.
D. Argument for mysticism
Works Cited
Cahn, Steven M. Classics of Western Philosophy. Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 2012.
Cohen, S. Marc, et al. Readings in Ancient Greek Philosophy: from Thales to Aristotle. Hackett
Publishing Company, Inc., 2016.
Clifford, William, The Ethics of Belief.
Heschel, Abraham Joshua, and Samuel H. Dresner. I Asked for Wonder: a Spiritual Anthology.
Crossroad, 1983.
Hume, David. “Section X: Of Miracles.” An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding.
James, William, and John J. MacDermott. The Writings of William James. Univ. of Chicago Press,
1993.
James, William. The Varieties of Religious Experience: a Study in Human Nature. CreateSpace
Independent Publishing Platform, 2017.
Kant, Immanuel, and J. M. D. Meiklejohn. The Critique of Pure Reason. Pantianos Classics, 2018.
Kolak, Daniel, and Garrett Thomson. The Longman Standard History of Modern Philosophy.
Pearson/Longman, 2006.
Otto, Rudolf. Idea of The Holy: an Inquiry into the Non-Rational Factor in the Idea of the Divine and
Its... Relation to the Rational (Classic Reprint). FORGOTTEN BOOKS, 2015.
Peirce, Charles S., and Justus Buchler. The Philosophy of Peirce; Selected Writings. Routledge & K.
Paul, Ltd., 1956.
Plato, and Francis Macdonald Cornford. Plato's Cosmology: the Timaeus of Plato. Martino Publishing,
2014.
Runzo, Joseph. Global Philosophy of Religion: a Short Introduction. Oneworld, 2001.
Santas, Aristotle. “Dr. Ari Santas’ Notes on: Clifford and James on Religious Belief.”
Santas, Aristotle. “Hume On Miracles.”
Santas, Aristotle. “Notes on C.S. Peirce”
Stace, W. T. Mysticism and Philosophy. Macmillan Press, 1989.