: : :
: : : : So they're all models, Gotch, and you ultimately have no demonstrable way of knowing that Christianity is any more 'true' than Islam of Buddhism.: : : Piper: Just as experience can demonstrate that grass is green or the sky is blue, so too can experience demonstrate the existence of God (see my 'by minerva's shield' post to floyd). Although holding such a belief may be epistemoligically dubious and perhaps irrational it is still an arguable position. (epistemology is inherently dubious and whoever said faith was rational?).
: : However, to assume the existence of God requires an a priori assumption that is utterly and eternally untestable (and indeed any testing is expressly forbidden in the Christian church).
: Piper: We must take many things as self-evident. I see then nothing inconsistent if one wants to take experience of god as self-evident.
Self-evidence is entirely subjective; you could perfectly well take the existence of giant purple mushrooms to be self-evident; but it's not in any way substantiable or verifiable.
: : The a priori assumptions on which science and logic are founded are still assumptions, but they are subject to experimental testing. Even if an experiment cannot provide you with the ultimate confirmation of a theory, it can falsify it (unless you hold to the Quine-Duhem Thesis).
: Piper: We cannot 'prove' the principles of induction and deduction, they are self evident rules. (just like we cannot 'prove' experience).
Anything held to be a 'rule' needs to be substantiable in some way; you need some criteria by which you can test the objective truth of a proposition.
(snip)
: : Are our belief-forming processes reliable or not?
: : The problem with Alston's argument is that he assumes non-sensory perceptions (M-experiences) are of a similar form to sensory perceptions, and that they are imposed upon the viewer;
: :
"...it is both necessary and sufficient for a state of consciousness to be a state of perceptual consciousness that it involve something's presenting itself to the subject, S, as so-and-so..."
: : You could say exactly the same thing about toothache; or a wet dream; it ultimately doesn't make reliable evidence for God.
: Piper: I believe Mr Alson has an answer to your objection, namely that each practice (be it Perceptual or mystical) has a set of 'overriders' and checks which weeds out unjustified beliefs when doubts about them arise.
O.K. It's time to send the undertaker out for Alston's theory...
First off, for the innocent bystanders (both of them!), some terminology.
A sense-perception (SP) is something your senses tell you - e.g. that the sun is shining.
A mystical perception (MP) is a mystical experience; that is, one that is not dependent on any physical sense, but is held (by Alston and others) to be objectively true.
A doxastic practice (DP) is the superset of belief processes of which an MP is one type.
The Christian MP is known as the CMP.
Alston recognizes and admits that "CMP is epistemically inferior to SP"; that is, any condition you care to try and measure an MP by is inherently fuzzy; but he holds that belief in an MP is still prima facie justified.
So how weakly justified does an epistemological theory have to be before it is no longer automatically justified? - Alston quietly ignores this.
As such, his theory is epistemologically fuzzy to begin with.
Secondly, are Alston's overriders capable of showing an MP to be genuinely cognitive?
Alston's criteria for establishing the genuineness of MPs are based on "...conformity with the (religious) tradition, concordance with what God could be expected to be, do, or say, and fruits in the way of spiritual development."
In other words, if you think you've met someone who has called himself God and blessed you, it's possibly a valid MP.
Unfortunately, this is epistemologically *far* weaker than an SP; which can be verified (in theory, at least) by testing. Alston maintains that the difference between MP and SP is illusory; "there is a basic commonality across the divide" (his words). If this is the case, then why can an MP not be tested as an SP can?
Alston's response to those who ask him for some verification is to call them "epistemic imperialists".
There's a further fudge here over the 'cognitive issue'
Is the belief produced by a DP sufficiently verifiable to count as 'cognition'; and is it 'meaningful'
To say that something is 'meaningful' because it is verifiable is not the same as saying it is 'cognitive' because it is verifiable. Alston behaves as if it is; he attacks 'meaningful-verifiable' criticism thus;
"I find no merit in any such criterion. It seems clear to me that I can form beliefs that make claims about objective reality, and thus possess a truth value, without having any idea of how they could be tested by sense perception..."
Unfortunately for him, the shakiness of his epistemology lies in 'cognitive-verifiability'; that is, how can anyone be sure that an MP is the product of thought?
After all, there's no reason to say that an encounter with God has to be verifiably 'meaningful'; but every reason to say that is has to be proveably 'cognitive' (that is, a perception).
Alston doesn't appear to understand the difference; he uses the two different statements equally; and thus sets up a strawman of meaningfulness rather than responding along the real line of attack, which is cognitive verification.
As such, the epistemology of Alston's theory is dubious and fuzzy at best.
However, it's a model of solidity when compared to the metaphysical holes in his theory.
The requirements for an SP to be 'objective and verifiable' are pretty well-defined; it has to obey physical laws, be independently experiential to all, inhabit space-time and so forth.
As such, any 'objective' phenomena that is not an SP cannot occupy the normal space-time continuum; if it did, it would impinge on the realm of the senses and be an SP. Any 'God' has to exist outside the normal idea of space and time. It also has to contain some common quality that makes it an MP to the observer; so that everyone goes "hey, look, it's God".
But by definition, God is not dimensionally linked to us; therefore any MP is not in any way dimensionally connected to God; as such, there is no common way of God-spotting.
The only way you can judge God is by set criteria (e.g. Being the creator of Heaven and Earth, smiting people as He sees fit and being an incredibly large late-middle-aged man with a big white beard and a matching dress).
Unfortunately, there is no way you can identify someone like that experientially. You can't identify God and you can't describe or delimit God; as such there is no way of saying that any MP is 'more correct' than any other MP.
Which means that, for all the MPs in the world, there is no way to tell if one is 'correct' or not; and many of them contradict each other; how many of the monotheist DPs declare theirs to be 'the One True God'?
Furthermore, according to Alston's own criteria, the MP of a confirmed nihilist has as much truth-value as that of a theist; the nihilist's perception of the Ultimate Nothingness behind everything is as valid as the Christian's perception of God; and the simultaneous truth-equivalence of 'God' and 'not-God' is clearly absurd.
Essentially, MPs fit none of the universal metaphysical requirements for being 'perceptual'; and thus they fail Alston's own statement that successful perceptual DPs have an output that corresponds to objective reality.
Nice try, but no cigar.
Gideon.
: : (For Gotch, there is right and there is wrong; and he is right...though, of course, the same could be said of many people including eminent scientists like Hawking...)
: Piper: everybody is a slave to something gideon.
There is a difference between the slave who loves his master uncritically and the slave who is continually watching out for his master's weak points and trying to escape. I'm happy to be of the second class.
It was just a friendly recommendation, but it's your choice...
None.
