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Mystical Experience and Non–Basically Justified Belief

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Michael P. Levine
Michael P. Levine
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, University of Western Australia
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Extract

Two theses are central to foundationalism. First, the foundationalist claims that there is a class of propositions, a class of empirical contingent beliefs, that are ‘immediately justified’. Alternatively, one can describe these beliefs as ‘self–evident’, ‘non–inferentially justified’, or ‘self–warranted’, though these are not always regarded as entailing one another. The justification or epistemic warrant for these beliefs is not derived from other justified beliefs through inductive evidential support or deductive methods of inference. These ‘basic beliefs’ constitute the foundations of empirical knowledge. One can give a reason for the justification of a basic belief even though the justification for that belief is not based on other beliefs. Thus, according to Chisholm, if asked what one's justification was for thinking that one knew, presently, that one is thinking about a city one takes to be Albuquerque, one could simply say ‘what justifies me…is simply the fact that I am thinking about a city I take to be Albuquerque’.

Type
Research Article
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 25 , Issue 3 , September 1989 , pp. 335 - 345
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1989

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References

page 335 note 1 ‘Immediate justification’ need not be equated with incorrigibility. Foundationalists also differ on whether a person has to be able to show that their foundations have the required status, or simply having that status suffices. See Alston, William, ‘Has Foundationalism Been Refuted?’, Philosophical Studies XXIX (1976), 291–2.Google Scholar

page 335 note 2 Chisholm, Roderick, Theory of Knowledge, 2nd ed. (New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1977), p. 21.Google Scholar Also, according to Alston, the fact that a belief is immediately justified does not mean that a person might not have other beliefs that could justify the belief. Alston says, ‘To say that a belief is immediately justified is just to say that there are conditions sufficient for its justification that do not involve any other justified beliefs of that believer. This condition could be satisfied even if the believer has other justified beliefs that could serve as grounds…’ ‘Has Foundationalism Been Refuted’, p. 293.

page 335 note 3 Annis, David calls the first thesis ‘the thesis of self-justification’, and the second the ‘thesis of dependency’Google Scholar. Annis, David, ‘Epistemic Foundationalism’, Philosophical Studies XXXI (1977), 345–52.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The position I am outlining is minimalistic. See Alston, , ‘Has Foundationalism Been Refuted?’Google Scholar Also, Cornman, James, ‘Foundational Versus Nonfoundational Theories of Empirical Justification’, American Philosophical Quarterly XIV (1977), 287–97.Google Scholar Some foundationalists require all justification of every empirical belief to be derived from basic beliefs. Others think that coherence may also serve as a source for justification. See Bonjour, Laurence, ‘The Coherence Theory of Empirical Knowledge’, Philosophical Studies XXX (1976), 281–312.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 336 note 1 Martin, C. B., Religious Belief (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1959), p. 85.Google Scholar

page 336 note 2 Ibid. p. 76.

page 337 note 1 With the exception of Alvin Plantinga, and those who follow him in supposing that belief in God could be properly basic, I take it that most contemporary foundationalists such as Roderick Chisholm deny that the mystic's beliefs can be properly regarded as foundationally basic beliefs. Though Plantinga has argued that belief in God can be properly basic for some, he has not explicitly argued that the mystic's beliefs could be. I am supposing however that what he says about belief in God for the ordinary believer can certainly be applied, mutatis mutandis and a fortiori, to the mystic. See, for example, Plantinga, Alvin, ‘Is Belief in God Properly Basic?’, Nous XV (1981), 41–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 337 note 2 Epistemic principles are required to show that some non–basic belief is justified in accordance with foundationalist principles. However, no epistemic principles need to be formulated or known in order to be justified in a belief that is in fact justified in accordance with those correct principles specifying the conditions under which the belief is justified.

page 337 note 3 Chisholm, , Theory of Knowledge, p. 78.Google Scholar

page 337 note 4 For the definition of ‘h is beyond reasonable doubt for S’, and ‘h is evident for S’, see Chisholm, , Theory of Knowledge, p. 135.Google Scholar

page 338 note 1 If such non–standard beliefs can be justified then one can assume that such principles can theoretically be formulated, since they are merely the specifications of conditions that must be met for the beliefs to be justified. If there could be such conditions, then they could in principle be specified. However, because the experiences are so extraordinary and the beliefs based on those experiences are empirically un–verifiable by means of sense experience, there would be any number of problems in actually formulating such principles

page 339 note 1 Alston, , ‘Has Foundationalism Been Refuted?’, p. 296Google Scholar. Alston is giving a reliabilist account for the justification of principles of justification. Though this may be related to reliabilist accounts of the structure of epistemic justification such as Alvin I. Goldman's it should be kept distinct. A reliabilist account for the justification of principles of justification may be distinct from, and incompatible with, foundationalism. The relationship between Goldman's reliabilist account of justification and foundationalism and coherence accounts is, I think, unclear. Goldman sees them as compatible. See, Goldman, Alvin I., Epistemology and Cognition (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1988), p. 80.Google Scholar

page 339 note 2 Alston, William, ‘Perceiving God’, Journal of Philosophy LXXXIII (1986), 655–65.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See p. 662. Also, see his articles ‘Religious Experience and Religious Belief’, Nous XVI (1982); ‘Christian Experience and Christian Belief’, in Faith and Rationality, ed. Plantinga, Alvin and Wolterstorff, Nicholas (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1983).Google Scholar

page 341 note 1 See, Horsburgh, H. J. N., ‘The Claims of Religious Experience’, in Logical Analysis and Contemporary Theism, ed. Donnelly, John (New York: Fordham University Press, 1972), pp. 58–75.Google Scholar

page 341 note 2 Martin, , p. 70.Google Scholar

page 341 note 3 Ibid. p. 88.

page 347 note 4 Ibid. pp. 76–7, 81–6.

page 343 note 1 The analogy between mystics and extraterrestrials is mine. However, the discussion of extraterrestrials I present is based upon that of Sosa, Ernest, ‘The Raft and The Pyramid’, in Midwest Studies in Philosophy, V, ed. French, P., Uehling, T. Jr, and Wettstein, H. (Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 1980), pp. 3–25.Google Scholar See pp. 20–1. His purpose is to show that ‘all foundationalism based on sense experience is subject to a fatal dilemma’, and so should not be so based (p. 22).

page 343 note 2 Sosa, , p. 20.Google Scholar

page 343 note 3 Ibid. p. 21.

page 344 note 1 See Ibid. pp. 22–3: ‘… it is not obvious that fundamental knowledge of reality would have to derive causally or otherwise from sensory experience … How could one impose reasonable limits on extraterrestrial mechanisms for noninferential acquisitions of beliefs? … Let us suppose them to possess a complex system of true beliefs concerning their surroundings… all constituted by concepts none of which corresponds to any of our sensible characteristics… Would we have to concede the existence of special epistemic principles that can validate their noninferential beliefs?… Would it not be preferable to formulate more abstract principles that can cover both human and extraterrestrial foundations?… What more fundamental principles might support both human and extraterrestrial knowledge in the way that those concerning good health and well–being support rules of nutrition for both infant and adult?’

While more fundamental principles supporting derived maxims, rules, etc. in ethics and nutrition are significant, the fundamental principles of epistemology, would, I think, be of less interest than the derived principles. Sosa, asks, ‘…what more fundamental principles might support both human and extraterrestrial knowledge’ (p. 23)?Google Scholar However, the only general principle I can think of that would support both is that the derived principles must be conducive to establishing true beliefs. The real work for the foundationalist, apart from defending the foundationalist analysis of justification, is to formulate accept–able derived epistemic principles.

page 344 note 2 Coherence with one's other beliefs may play a role in justifying the beliefs of extraterrestrials just as it may do so in connection with our beliefs according to the foundationalist. Chisholm, for example, thinks that a principle of coherence is needed to give a complete account of justification. See, Chisholm, Roderick, Theory of Knowledge, pp. 82–4:Google ScholarLewis, C. I., An Analysis of Knowledge and Valuation (LaSalle, III.: Open Court, 1946), pp. 338–62.Google Scholar Coherence is generally regarded as crucial to justifying beliefs about the past, theoretical knowledge, etc. See, Bonjour, , ‘The Coherence Theory of Empirical Knowledge’, p. 288.Google Scholar

page 345 note 1 See, Sosa, , ‘The Raft and The Pyramid’, p. 22.Google Scholar ‘According to the foundationalist, our visual beliefs are justified by their origin in our visual experience or the like. Would such belief be equally well justified in a world where beliefs with such an origin were nearly always false?’ I take it his suggestion is that they would not be. Sosa's intention is to show that epistemic principles concerning our visual beliefs are derived principles. They are derived from more general epistemic principles that he thinks can be found to incorporate the knowledge of both extraterrestrials as well as ourselves. Leaving aside the issue of whether more general epistemic principles are to be found or are worth finding, I agree that beliefs based on certain kinds of experience would not be justified if they usually turned out to be false. The reason, I think, is that it is a metag–epistemic presupposition that can itself be justified, if at all, in terms of a conceptual requirement concerning the nature of epistemic principles. They must be truth conducive. Beliefs based on a type of experience alone that were generally false would not be justified on the basis of that experience alone. At least such beliefs would not be justified if we were justified in believing that such beliefs were false. (It may turn out that our visual beliefs are generally false, but since we are not justified in believing this, we would still be justified in believing that our ordinary visual beliefs are justified.)