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    Mystical experiences cannot provide evidence in favor of ... — Carmelics
    Home/Religious Experience
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    Mystical experiences cannot provide evidence in favor of their validity as experiences of God

    Natural Theology
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    2 reasons for
    1 reason against

    Reasons For

    2 perspectives
    Reason for 1 of 2
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    • 1.William Alston's perceptual model of mystical experience requires that doxastic practices yield consistent, checkable outputs across practitioners to confer justification.
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    • 2.Cross-cultural mystical reports yield irreconcilably different characterizations of the ultimate—personal God, impersonal Brahman, Sunyata—with no neutral criterion to adjudicate among them.
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    • 3.Without such a criterion, the competing reports mutually undermine each other's evidential force, leaving no net positive evidence for any particular theistic object.
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    Reason for 2 of 2
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    • 1.Mystical experiences are shaped by the conceptual frameworks mystics bring to them, as Steven Katz argues in his constructivist account.
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    • 2.If the content of mystical experience is constructed by prior religious belief, the experience cannot serve as independent evidence for those very beliefs.
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    Reasons Against

    1 perspective
    Reason against
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    • 1.Different theistic faiths claim experience of the one and only God, ostensibly justifying beliefs that contradict one another
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    • 2.If theistic mystical experiences lead to contradictory results, they cannot provide evidence in favor of their validity as experiences of God
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    Topics

    Religious ExperienceNatural Theology

    Related

    Cross-cultural mystical reports yield irreconcilably different characterizations...Different theistic faiths claim experience of the one and only God, ostensibly j...If the content of mystical experience is constructed by prior religious belief, ...If theistic mystical experiences lead to contradictory results, they cannot prov...
    +3 moreShow less
    Mystical experiences are shaped by the conceptual frameworks mystics bring to th...William Alston's perceptual model of mystical experience requires that doxastic ...Without such a criterion, the competing reports mutually undermine each other's ...

    Similar

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    Source

    AI-extracted1/3 agreementValid
    SEP: mysticism
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    Diversity of claims, and especially any genuinely conflicting claims, would impact the Argument from Experience for the epistemic value of mystical experiences. In the history of religions, we find innumerable gods, with different characteristics. Shall we say they all exist? Can belief in all of them be rational? In addition, there are experiences of non-personal ultimate realities, such as the Brahman of Advaita Vedanta. Brahman cannot be an ultimate reality if God is (Hick 1984, 234–235) sinc
    Extraction notes

    Validity: Extracted via Max plan + API grounding/validity checks

    Details

    Type
    claim
    Perspectives
    3 (2 for, 1 against)
    Edits
    1 edit