Non-conceptual Religious Experience: Continued

I had started a discussion of non-conceptual religious experience earlier (http://pulpitumvulpei.blogspot.com/2010/09/non-conceptual-religious-experience.html), and started to think of an alternative way around the issues involved. I'm currently working on the paper supporting that conclusion, so I figured that I would post the sequel here as well.

Traditions of any sort, let alone religious traditions, are not actually closed off from each other. They do engage in dialogue, and they do find similarities amongst themselves and occasionally borrow practices and modes of expression. This is as much a part of the formative influence on experience as anything else. We must also look at ways in which the different religions talk about their experiences amongst each other. This will not always lead to similarities - indeed, a good deal of the time such discussions turn polemical - but sometimes it does, and both these elements (of similarity and of dissimilarity) must be preserved in order to do the traditions justice in their own self-conceptions.

Starting from the external aspects of experience, we are not stuck in externals. We can look at the way in which a given tradition shapes both the experience itself and its interpretation, but the experience is no longer interchangeable as it would be under the theory of extrinsic evidence. Once it can be matched up with elements from a different tradition, the experience gains a certain level of independence from the tradition which shaped it and provides some measure of evidence for something in itself. This, however, does not lead to the theory of intrinsic evidence insofar as the experience is not completely independent from the tradition either.

As an illustration, we can look at the Pythagorean theorem. There still can be seen to be some experience associated with "discovering the Pythagorean theorem". Similar enough experiences were encountered in the Greek, Indian, and Chinese traditions, each using different mathematical methods and different standards of rigor. In particular, the Greek tradition focused on strict logical proofs, while the Indian and Chinese traditions resorted to more empirical methods with more of a communal sense of how one goes about doing math. These different practices lead to a different characterization of "discovery of the Pythagorean theorem", to the extent that Indian and Chinese methods may not be appreciated as mathematical by someone steeped with the Euclidean Greek tradition.

One could then quibble with the Indians, and say that their discovery of the Pythagorean theorem could not be the same as that of the Greeks', since an essential element of the former is a strictly rational basis while the former uses empirical methods of proof. The contradictory phenomena would supposedly disprove any similarity of experience. Despite this logical analysis, however, the different traditions have been able to come together and agree that they have something similar in this theorem. Therefore, precisely through the assessments within the traditions and their own practices and not by presupposing some a priori realm of mathematics, we can talk about a shared experience not reducible to any single tradition even though descriptions of it within the different traditions conflict.

The conceptualizable portion of the evidence is still something mediated by the traditions. We still cannot look directly at a non-conceptual experience and have support for concepts. It is only in looking at the ways in which similarities appear across the traditions and as mediated by them that we can have any idea of what evidence the experience itself provides. As a result, the experience itself is never directly rendered conceptual, nor is it ever exhausted - it is always possible that something similar enough would show up in a new tradition with its own sets of practices and beliefs through which it understands the experience.

Proclus and Relativism

In my last post, I argued that relativism may actually entail objectivity. In trying to think through what sort of objectivity would be entailed and how it comes about, I found myself thinking back to Neoplatonic models. So my purposes here are twofold: (1) to analyze the case of spatio-temporal relativity and show in what since space-time exists, and (2) to attempt to rehabilitate Neoplatonic modes of expression to show that they do in fact have sense and are not merely outdated linguistic games.

In Proclus' system, there are triads consisting of Unparticipated-Participated-Participant, or, perhaps better, Unpossessed-Possessed-Possessor. There is some Form, say of human being. It may be helpful to spell out what this Form is not. It is not a human being itself (and so escapes Aristotle's "third man" argument). It is not the universal "human being", which is a concept derived from our abstracting from individual human beings. The Form of human being is called by the name "human being" because it is their (formal) cause, and not because of what it itself is. It is not some abstract Form that could exist without concrete human beings, floating ethereally up in some Platonic heaven. It always exists along with participants; what is at question is the formal priority.

However, this Form itself is Unparticipated/Unpossessed. This is not the humanity of any particular human being; it is the formal cause of humanity as a particular reality. The humanity of any particular human being is the participated/possessed form. Every human being has their own humanity. The concrete human being is then the participant/possessor of the individual form.

How does this relate to spatio-temporal relativism? Let's start backwards. There are concrete physical entities inhabiting what we call time and space. These are the participants/possessors. Now, we can talk about their particular locations in time and space, which are the possessed/participated spatio-temporal frameworks. All actual spatio-temporal frameworks are (a) relative, and (b) based on concrete beings. (In addition, there are spatio-temporal frameworks which are purely formal and mathematical, which correspond to other features in Proclus' system which I will not explain here). There is no space-time existing apart from these frameworks, but rather, space-time is always a specific space-time for each being.

However, it is not as if we were purely equivocating on space-time for each individual. There is some reality there which allows for them all to join together in a spato-temporal reality, even though they participate in different frameworks. This would be the unparticipated/unpossessed Form. It itself is not space-time, or spatio-temporal; whatever involves space and time must exist in some given perspective. In other words, space and time are realities that we experience as located in given perspectives and make no sense without being perspectival. Space-time is always space-time as experienced by some entity.

However, there is something which allows all of the different perspectives to be. It cannot be space-time in general (which is merely an abstraction, since real space-time is always in a given perspective), nor can it be the space-time of any individual perspective (since this would only exist for that perspective). Instead, it is the formal cause of the space-time for all perspectives, as a particular formal reality which is not itself space-time. It is that ground upon which relative spatio-temporal frameworks can take place.

Why posit this ground, then? Why not just stop at the different relative positions and be done with it? The different relative positions (as determined by concrete, actually existing entities, and not first and foremost as mathematical forms) are still the only fully concrete realities in the Proclean model. However, they do not explain themselves. There is a community amongst them that needs to be explained, and if we stop at mere individuality, it is difficult to see how we do this. By positing an unparticipated Form of space-time, we can explain the spatio-temporal openness of one entity to another even though space and time can only exist and be described according to individual frameworks.

Relativism vs. Subjectivism

Concerning ethics, I think that there are lot of people who have a knee-jerk reaction to relativism. As far as I can tell, this is because they think that this reduces morality to something subjective, and hence something arbitrary. But this need not be the cause, and perhaps is actually something incompatible with relativism. For an analogy, let us take the case of space-time relativism in physics. This does not mean that there is no space or time; on the contrary, Einstein thought that by showing the relativity of space and time to individual perspectives, he had proven their objectivity. If they truly were subjective, then a single individual perspective should account for them (such as Euclidean mathematics in Kant's system). But the fact that space and time can only be viewed within given perspectives, and yet these perspectives hang together, show that space and time are something real outside of any one given perspective.

Similarly, why is there a problem in saying that moral claims are relative to a given perspective? This is not to say that they are merely individual, but rather that we can only know claims from a given standpoint. Or, to put it another way, we can only be virtuous within our given contexts. For an example, the virtue of generosity requires some sort of wealth to give away. It only makes sense within a certain context of having something to give away. Other contexts demand different virtues. If you don't have any wealth, you can't engage in the same activities as those who are independently wealthy. So in the same way the practices involved in living in a Chinese society may differ from those involved in living in an American society, based on what is available, how things will affect the persons around oneself, etc. It is not clear that there need be general moral rules guiding these practices for them all to be the best ethical practices, other than some basic sense of "the good". (Edit: where "the good" would seem to entail some knowledge of the natures of whatever we are talking about; the good for human beings is what lets human beings be most human, and so on. This may be relative to whatever is talked about, or there may be some general sense of goodness/aesthetic sense applicable to different cases with practice and insight.)

Further, it is not clear that there need to be extrinsic moral principles to say that some systems of ethical behavior are inferior. The Nazi regime doesn't seem to be self-sustaining. What happens when all of the current "others" are sent off to concentration camps? Either a fundamental shift in ethics must take place (which should have existed in the first place), or there will be a need for a new superior race and hence inferior differences. The cycle must continue, and there cannot be a stable society. So the system falls apart internally. Now, psychology and sociology may be able to supply a better story for why this would happen than the naive one I present here, but the point remains the same. A society that exists by setting itself from others cannot exist apart from some sort of others.

If all of this is correct, then relativism is a form of moral realism; in fact, it may be a better form than moral absolutism. Why? Because absolutism (saying that there are these specific moral absolutes) still feels the need to posit the absolutes; there would not be morality unless we take an active stance in making morality exist. Relativism lets things be what they are, and trusts (hopefully rationally and empirically) that morality will really arise from the natures of things. And if it cannot arise from the natures of things, in what sense could it possibly be objective?

Thoughts from Preparing Class Readings

In preparing readings for my Intro to Philosophy course which I am teaching, I noticed that there seem to be two points running through every single thinker, no matter how diverse their views are on other topics. One is that we ultimately need to understand things on our own, and that explanations and teaching can only point us in the right direction; we must utilize our own power to see the truth for ourselves. The other is that the things we encounter in our daily lives are only means and must be treated as such, without attachment. Plato, Aristotle (albeit to a lesser degree), Augustine, the Confucians, the Daoists, and the Buddhists all hold these things. What points does anyone consider to be important, and pretty universal despite different narratives legitimating them? To what extent do the stories we tell surrounding these basic points matter (asked as a legitimate question and not merely as a dismissal of detailed thinking)?

Are there Atoms?

Or, alternatively, what does it mean for something to be false, or explanatory, etc.? Parmenides holds that what is, is, and what is not, is in no way at all. Which seems to be pretty straightforward, and I've been thinking that there is something right on and profound here. It has sometimes been applied to the problem of evil: evil is a privation of being (what "is not") and so does not actually exist. It is like the hole in an umbrella: you feel the rain falling on you, but not because of what is there. Put in another way, any reality evil has is relative, and not absolute. Even a dictator is still pursuing some good in oppressing subjects; pursuing evil purely for its own sake would be nonsensical on this view.

But I don't wish to discuss traditional accounts of the problem of evil; the relation between goodness and being is not straightforward. I am bringing this illustration up for the sake of another issue: what is truth? What does it mean for something to correspond to reality? A statement is true if it says of what is, that it is, and of what is not, that it is not. But what is not, is in no way at all; so how does it even make sense to talk of what is absolutely false?

In order to try to understand the problem here, let us take scientific theories: specifically, are there atoms? On a simple view, we say that atoms exist and make up the world. There are carbon atoms and oxygen atoms and gold and hydrogen, helium, lithium, beryllium, etc. But then we turn around and see that these are constructs, models we make in our understanding to navigate the world, and so do not actually exist in the world, but are merely tools for us in our thinking, arising out of specific historical circumstances.

I am proposing that we take another step, which I've suggested before on this blog. The problem is that both of these views assume that there must be some sort of correspondence for there to be truth. What is explained and the explaining are two distinct things which must match up. But why not say that the explaining, the unifying of experience, is itself the explanation? Insofar as atoms unify our view of the world, they exist. They do not exist because they unify our worldview; this unification is their existence, where this sort of explanation and unification takes place in our ongoing interaction with the world and not with us on one side and the world on another.

If this is right, then falsity is relative as well as non-being. Statements come from a context and speak to that context; some better than others, to be sure, but there is also some explanatory power of statements and so some way in which they have truth, since a contextless and therefore non-unifying statement is meaningless. Even a con artist or conspiracy theorist needs to make statements that resemble the truth, and so to that extent cannot be purely false; it's just that closer examination would find much better explanations (that is, ones that unify experience more and that unify more experiences; namely, the experience that you will lose your money to the con artist and sanity to the conspiracy theorist).

What about fictional characters? They would exist as well, but only in their own fashion. Santa Claus must exist, as a fictional character; the notion of "Santa Claus" pulls together various social narratives and practices and children's games, and so is real precisely insofar as it does this. It is not real insofar as we would expect to come upon a sleigh with flying reindeer on Christmas Eve. Insofar as the notion would include this, it would create disunity with our experience.

Non-conceptual Religious Experience?

I was getting into a conversation the other day about religious experience, and in particular about whether anyone could have a non-conceptual, direct experience of the Trinity (or, if you prefer, God in general, Brahman, Thusness, etc.). I held that it is always an experiencing-as, an experience that also has an interpretation (not that the experience and the interpretation are two different realities), and the response I got back was that this was a result of a Western split between reason and faith/theology/the non-rational, and doesn't come up elsewhere.

But this doesn't seem to work. Just because another group believes in square circles doesn't mean that they exist, and I am holding that a non-conceptual experience that nevertheless legitimates a particular view is similarly nonsensical. If the experience itself is non-conceptual, it does not provide intrinsic evidence for anything articulable. If it could, it would have to already have some conceptual structure to it.

So does it provide any evidence at all? It seems that it could provide extrinsic evidence, by which I mean this: I join up with a group, the group tells me that I will attain a certain experience by following certain steps, and lo-and-behold I have that experience. Considering that the group has been right about this, I have some prima facie evidence for accepting their interpretation of the experience. The experience itself may be non-conceptual, and so there would still be nothing within the experience to give evidence in itself, but there could still some reality that actually occurred during the experience which is articulable about which the group is right.

So my experience of God may itself be non-conceptual, the experience itself not giving me grounds for saying that it is of God as opposed to of a tree, but it could still be that I had actually experienced God rather than a tree and I would now have some extrinsic evidence of this because of the methods of practice and interpretation of the group at hand.

However, different groups have their own non-conceptual experiences, and offer different interpretations. An interpretation of the experience as one of the Triniarian life is not the same as a recognition of divine Tawhiid (unity/unification) or of ultimate Shunyata (emptiness). The experience doesn't validate the group; the group simply helps to give an interpretation to the experience (although, this is not something separate from the experience and is part of the prerequisites for experiencing it at all).

So, to what extent could religious experience actually give evidence that a given religious group is right? It appears that the only thing that it can do is to suggest that a group with its traditions, etc. has a sort of efficacy. It says absolutely nothing about whether that group is right compared to other groups. Experience can tell us that a given path is worthwhile, but says nothing about whether there are other paths. In fact, if we take other people's experiences seriously and not be ad hoc about our own, religious experience would seem to entail the positive conclusion that there are multiple worthwhile paths.

How to Stay Excited about Pointless Stuff

Continuing from the last post, how is it that we hold excitement for any given idea, culture, or whatever? I remember starting off in philosophy, thinking about all the grand ideas and the exoticness of it all. I was enthralled. But I gradually started losing that fervor when I saw it in perspective. Maybe we can't actually get metaphysical knowledge, and maybe it isn't really all that important anyhow. And maybe we need to be concerned with the little things and not always with the big questions.

This perspective is good, I think, but I also became pretty apathetic about what I do. I started churning out work because it was what I do, not because I had any love left for it; after all, what in the material actually made it worth that love? Beauty always seems to be something which exceeds that which we call beautiful; there is no explanation for it in the subject matter (or the pretty face) itself.

But I think that view is wrong as well. We can realize that our favorite subjects aren't really as important as we make them out to be. However, why shouldn't we get excited about what we can? There may be absolutely nothing objective about this excitement, but who cares? Let someone get excited about it, so that someone may devote their time and attention to making that portion of our discourse better.

How is it that we can hold to our own ideas, to make our own philosophical arguments? We hold our positions in order to give them their dues. Think of a sports game: two teams are playing, and what really matters is that there is a good game. But there cannot be a good game unless each team is trying their best to win, even though the goodness of the game is not dependent on any specific team winning. We can attach ourselves to our philosophical theories in a like spirit. We could be wrong; what really matters at the end of the day, though, is that the truth is found, and perhaps the "team" for which we are rooting will lose. Nevertheless, if there are no advocates of a given position, or no advocates who sincerely argue for it, it cannot be be given its due, it cannot put up a fair fight. So we hold to what portion of reality we can see and we articulate it as well as possible so that on the whole the truth may be discovered. We attach ourselves to the position for the sake of the whole and not for the sake of the part.

To some extent, I think this is what the mystics mean who say that love/the good/the beautiful is beyond being and reason. Now, they are considering some absolute beauty/goodness, but an absolute that must of necessity shine through in every individual thing. Reason itself, and pragmatism itself, gives no ultimate basis. We must take a step and simply want something for its own sake before we have anything about which to reason or be practical. Without something pulling us forward, there would be no world in which we could work.

One issue that remains: this is all well and good, but it is still the musings of a priveleged white male with the leisure to write a philosophy blog. Maybe some of us can devote our time to pursuits such as metaphysics, but what about those starving on the streets or fighting for basic rights? And this is a terrible situation, one which we must not make light of. If we are caught up in our ecstatic visions and someone needs a cup of water, give them the water. But there is also the respect in which we feed people and secure rights for them not as ends in themselves, but so that we can shore up the deficiencies of our society and procure for all of its inhabitants the most authentic human life possible, one which can be concerned with the matters I'm talking about here and not with worrying about basic needs. So we must take care of those who need care, but without some final goal in sight for why we are doing such, we will dissolve into aimlessness and bickering.

Contra the Symposium

I'm back, and hopefully will start posting more often again now that I'm not stuck in Arabic prison. I have been putting together readings for my Philosophy of Human Nature class, and in re-reading Diotima's speech in the Symposium I was struck by something which I would like to discuss. Here's a nice summary paragraph given toward the end of the speech:

He who, ascending from these earthly things under the influence of true love, begins to perceive that beauty, is not far from the end. And the true order of going, or being led by another, to the things of love, is to begin from the beauties of earth and mount upwards for the sake of that other beauty, using these as steps only, and from one going on to two, and from two to all fair bodily forms, and from fair bodily forms to fair practices, and from fair practices to fair sciences, until from fair sciences he arrives at the science of which I have spoken, the science which has no other object than absolute beauty, and at last knows that which is beautiful by itself alone.

There are two ascents here: one from the physical to the intellectual, and another from what is particular to an individual to what is universal and general. Now, I'm not sure that I need to quibble too much with the first ascent. I can imagine two women, for example, the first of whom I find merely physically beautiful, and the second whose character I admire. Even when I find the latter physically beautiful (and I may even find her strikingly so), this is mediated by my appreciation of who she is, which is primary in value and (for me at least) is part of what makes me consider her physically beautiful. Overall, this makes her an order of magnitude more beautiful than the woman I merely consider to be physically beautiful. And from reading through the Symposium and the Phaedrus, I think that Plato likewise allows for lower orders of beauty being caught up in the higher, even if the higher are valued more. Socrates never does seem to get over his appreciation for pretty young things, after all.

My problem is with the ascent from the individual to the universal, or at any rate with stopping at the universal as Diotima appears to do. I think that this first step makes a lot of sense: it is silly to pretend that one person is the only truly beautiful person in the world, either in looks or in character. That's merely blindness. So we can recognize that there are many beautiful people (and societies, etc.) out there, and this is in itself a healthy step: your own local circumstances and your own loved ones are not the only reality.

But at this point, I'm reminded of the Elder Zosima in The Brothers Karamazov, or perhaps a woman he was talking to. In either case, the point was that it is easy to love "humanity", but those who love "humanity" in the abstract can find it all the more difficult to love particular human beings. So I think that we need a descent as well on Diotima's ladder of beauty: we need to rise up out of our particular circumstances, recognize that we and our loved ones are not the center of the world, but then also realize that this is our portion of the world to tend. We take care of particular, concrete human beings, and we serve this and that segment of a real society. Rather than avoiding attachment to anyone in particular, we attach ourselves to individual people in light of the whole, as our specific way of helping out the whole shebang (to use Fr. Jones' technical phrase) and our own specific recognition and contemplation of beauty.

Does Seeking Truth Lead to Understanding?

The second idea I wanted to jot down while I remember it is this: Does truth-seeking always lead to the truth? I've been thinking through a counter-example recently, in which seeking an accurate assessment of the world in the short-term hinders long-term understanding, and I think it raises interesting questions.

I've been taking up dancing. First, I started with east coast swing about three months ago. Now, I hadn't really danced at all before this, so I was blissfully ignorant of how bad I was when I started. Because I didn't realize this, I was better able to be confident, to keep going through mistakes, and to actually learn and understand the dance better. By contrast, once I started understanding what I was doing, and also when I started taking up blues dancing, I have found it harder to progress because of a more accurate assessment of where I am.

So it seems that, by understanding where I am currently better, I have trouble progressing in the understanding of this particular art form. Seeking the truth prevents me from reaching the truth, as it were. As a friend pointed out to me, William James seems to have a similar example: If I have to jump over a precipice, and I believe that I can make it, this belief changes the world. My confidence that I can make the jump helps me actually make the jump, while a lack of belief may keep me from doing so.

I think that the situation that I raise is different from James' in an important way, though. Once you jump over the precipice, you are done. In dancing, by contrast, I have danced many dances and have had the opportunity to see my ability. It is not merely a matter of having confidence, but of inaccurately assessing my current state which helps me to improve, of at least ignoring bad dances if not telling myself they were good. Now, too much inaccuracy also hurts; we can all think of truly inept people who cannot assess themselves at all in their given fields. But too much accuracy also keeps one from moving forward.

Perhaps one could say that I am equivocating on "truth". An accurate assessment of where I am right now is what is true, whereas it is merely a matter of practical concerns and my desires as to whether or not I reach my goals. So truth may not be practical, and not merely for Machiavellian reasons. This would still be an interesting question, though: is a short-term disregard for truth a prerequisite for attaining certain worthwhile ends? Is it a worthwhile means to such ends?

But there is also the problem that there is a certain sort of understanding involved, which I can only get if I put aside the concern for truth to an extent. Seeking understanding now gets in the way of it later. If we truly want to understand, there are some things it may be better to not understand. Although, how can we know what these are, until we're on the other side of matters?

And with that, I'm off to become a hermit for a couple months. Feel free to leave comments, I'll probably check occasionally, but I'll only be responding at best once a week.

Philosophy and Search Algorithms

I'm at Madison now, ready to officially start my immersive Arabic program tomorrow. Or rather, not ready, but being pushed off the cliff anyhow. So I have a couple ideas that I want to get out before I am unable to use English or be around large amounts of English-speakers for two months (mercifully I have Friday nights off, at least, but I don't plan on writing philosophy then). First, I've been thinking that philosophy (and truth-seeking in general) is a lot like computer search algorithms, and that the analogy can help us to understand the place of the history of philosophy.

One can use simple search algorithms, called hill-climbing algorithms. The point is simple: you look everywhere around your current position, and you find the direction that takes you higher (where what counts as "higher" depends on what you are searching for; in this case, perhaps it is what is more rational/coherent/explanatory/pragmatic/all of the above). You take this step, and you repeat the procedure until you find a maximum.

It's nice, it's simple, it gets some results, but the problem with the hill-climbing algorithm is the same as with many thinkers: if you only look from within your own position, you are as likely as not only going to find a local maximum. That is, you found your own little hill in the search-space, but it is quite possible that you are surrounded by the Himalayas. Or plains, for that matter. The fact that you found a local maximum has absolutely nothing to do with the surrounding terrain. That's the problem with "faith seeking understanding": if you start with some ground that you refuse to question, you may get interesting results, but that says absolutely nothing whatsoever about what is ultimately true.

One solution to the problem with the basic hill-climbing algorithm is to start searching at multiple points. There's still no guarantee of finding a global maximum, the absolutely highest point present on the search-space, but one increases ones chances greatly. Even if one doesn't find the highest point, one at least has multiple local maxima to compare. One has a better chance of finding oneself to be in the Himalayas, even if one doesn't find Mt Everest.

Similarly, in philosophy, studying multiple styles of philosophy and assorted thinkers is necessary, not to find the global maximum (the absolute truth), but at least to have different local maxima at hand. Such an endeavor must be done sympathetically, though; if one can't actually see the world through the eyes of different thinkers, then one has not actually searched through the world with them.

One type of search algorithm that enables one to search multiple points is the genetic algorithm. One starts a pool of strings encoded with information. They are tested via a fitness function, and the fittest are allowed to pass on to the next generation. Further, the fittest strings are also mixed up to create new strings with information taken from multiple old strings, thereby enabling change to occur so that new areas on the search space can be explored.

This is how I think that the history of philosophy can work. There is (1) progress, which (2) needs what was done in the past and (3) which doesn't necessarily lead to "the truth" (since we can't necessarily know when we've actually hit a global maximum). We take the "memes" given by other philosophers, ancient and contemporary, and we remix them in our own persons. Some combinations will prove fitter than others, and there can be overall progress. Nevertheless, we never get rid of the past, since it is part of our own intellectual makeup and is a constant source of ideas to stimulate our own searches. Also, the diversity of philosophies is what enables the search to continue and possibly hit better and better local maxima. It isn't about getting it right once and for all, but rather it is about participating in the communal effort for truth as it gradually improves over time.

The Status of Religious Experience

Does religious experience (whatever you may count that to be) indicate anything about the world, or not? I've been thinking that, before we can answer this question in any way, we need to be clear on what is being asked. There are at least three different questions: (1) does r.e. point to anything real? (2) can r.e. be reduced to anything else? and (3) can r.e. be translated into anything else?

The first question is whether r.e. gives evidence for anything real. Does it indicate something about the world as it is? It seems that the answer to this question is clearly yes. Even if religions are merely about wish-fulfillment and social cohesion, then they are still concerned with features of us as psychological and sociological beings. We actually have to deal with our minds and our societies as structures of the world given to us, and so they are real. If r.e. is anything more, then it is all the more real.

The second question is whether r.e. is reducible to any other field of experience. R.e. may indicate something real, but this reality may be merely psychological features of experience. I would argue that r.e. is not merely reducible to these other areas of experience, although this may not be quite as clear as my answer to the first question. What is experienced in r.e. is experienced in a different way than anything in any other area of experience. The religious believer is not experiencing exactly the same thing as the psychologist or the sociologist. At very least, the religious believer is concerned with the phenomena as presently experienced, while psychology and sociology are concerned with the phenomena as caused and related to factors of mind and society. The perspectives are different.

I don't regard that as necessarily saying too much, though; I'm highly resistant to reducing any area of experience to any other. Even if there is a sense in which chemical laws are reducible to physical laws, the way we experience chemistry is not merely the way in which we experience physics, and so as domains of human experience the one is not reducible to the other. So to say that r.e. is not reducible to psychology or sociology does not mean that r.e. gives evidence for what the religious believer wants, but merely that it has its own legitimate field of empirical inquiry.

So there needs to be a third question: is r.e. translatable into another field of experience? While chemistry may not be reducible to physics as a domain of human experience, there is a sense in which it seems that chemical laws are shorthand for physical laws (something I'll assume for the time being for the sake of illustration). Statements about chemistry can be translated into physics, although not all statements about physics can be translated into chemistry; therefore, we consider physics to to more basic. So the real question about r.e. is whether it is translatable into any other area of experience. Can religious statements be translated into psychological and sociological statements? Can the reverse be done? Does r.e. have something of its own, fundamentally distinct from anything presented anywhere else?

I'm not sure how to answer this last question. I'm also unclear on whether analyzing the experience itself could tell us anything one way or another. On the one hand, it seems perfectly coherent to say that, no matter what the believer experiences, her account of her experience could be completely false and self-delusional as well as brought about by perfectly natural causes. This explanation may or may not be true, but there seems to be nothing impossible about this hypothesis (and in many cases, I admit that it seems quite plausible). On the other hand, I do want to preserve the uniqueness of all experience, and there does seem to be something qualitatively different about r.e., some peculiar stance in relation to the mystery of being that sets it apart. This is in part due to phenomenological concerns (from looking at the experience) and in part due to metaphysical concerns (from reasoning about the world). So for the time being, my hunch is to say that r.e. is untranslatable, though this still does not entail that it means what people think it means. Looking at the experience itself may give grounds for establishing its uniqueness, but cannot in itself tell us how that experience relates to other aspects of our experience.

Teaching Phil 1001

I'm not sure yet what I'll be teaching next semester, but I need to start planning out some course ideas since I won't be able to do much work on it for a couple months coming up. So, here's some preliminary ideas of have for how to structure a course on "Philosophy of Human Nature," and feedback would be appreciated.

There are two threads running through the course. One is the subject matter: the notion of the self. What is the self? Is there any actually existing self? Am I primarily an individual shaped by my circumstances, or primarily a human being with rationality/freedom/whatever else that might entail? How does my identity relate to society? And stuff like that.

The other thread is the overall structure of the course (the formal cause, as it were). One of the problems in teaching an introduction to philosophy is that the students get overwhelmed by the number of views, and lapse into relativism, skepticism, or dogmatism to cope, or simply declare that it is all opinion. So I want to structure the course around the development of different notions of the self in order to show how we work through philosophical problems and the tools we have at hand for dealing with differences.

The current structure of the course would then be the following: I will look at three different traditions. The first will be the Platonic tradition: Plato, Aristotle, and Augustine (and despite differences, Aristotle is sufficiently responding to Plato to be placed within the Platonic tradition as far as I am concerned). This tradition largely sees the individual as an individual, rational substance, with will brought in with Augustine. The second will be the Chinese tradition: Confucius, Daoism, and Neo-Confucianism. This tradition focuses more on social forces, tradition, and ritual, whether the particular thinkers are for them, against them, or synthesizing these different aspects. The third will be Buddhism: Siddhartha Gautama, either Madhyamika or Yogacara, and Zen. This tradition does away with the idea of a subsistent self. (So there is individual-self, social/natural-self, and non-self). A final section will deal with how we can start to interrelate the different traditions from our own standpoint.

Since I am focusing on a specific topic, I think that the number of thinkers should be manageable. My misgivings are twofold: I am not including any early modern thinkers (largely because, while they are historically important, I just don't find them interesting other than as a bridge between the scholastics and the German idealists) or existentialists (who would normally be considered to be somewhat important on issues of selfhood). Also, it will be heavy on "Eastern" thought, including things that students will not necessarily encounter in their other courses, which might make it a poor introduction to philosophy in general. However, I think that the different thinkers and movements which I am presenting do bring up really interesting and relevant issues and so are good from a topical point of view.

Any thoughts?