What are trick socks and what do they have to do with religious experience? Bryan Frances argues that if you see what appears to be blue socks, and you continue to believe that the socks are blue, in spite of being told by reliable witnesses that they are really green, then it is plausible to think that your belief is blameworthy. But then if you "see" what appears to be God but you are told by reliable witnesses that what you "saw" was really something else, then, by analogy, your continued belief that you "saw" God is blameworthy. So, the blue socks case seems to suggest that to have religious beliefs of a certain kind may be epistemically irresponsible.
UPDATE: Bryan Frances has posted another excellent post on trick socks and religious experience over at Knowability, partially in response to Colleen Keating, Trent Dougherty, and other commentators.
Saturday, December 02, 2006
Frances on Trick Socks and Religious Experience
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3 comments:
CK,
I'm not sure what you're saying. In the socks case, is the person blameworthy? It seems so to me and I haven't been able to think of a good reason to think not. See my reply to Dougherty at the Knowability blog.
I also haven't been able to think of a good reason why the socks person is blameworthy while the amateur mystic isn't. The mystic in question has really had experiences of God, she has encountered the intelligent, plausible alternative (but ultimately false) explanations of her spiritual experiences, and just like the socks person can't do anything to cast doubt on those alternative explanations. I assume that some people with mystical experiences of God CAN cast doubt on those alternative explanations. In fact, they can refute them outright--although the refutation might be something only an experienced mystic can understand. But few of us have such mature spiritual experience.
I don't see how the privacy issue matters here. In addition, there probably is some sort of public checking of spiritual insight. That's why beginners go to the spiritual masters (e.g., mediation masters) to check their insights. What am I missing?
I've posted a response at the Knowability blog.
I think the analogy is closer then Ck thinks. Although there is a disanalogy in the, shall we say, mode of perceiving (i.e., sight versus spiritual experience), to say that one is "public" while one is "private" is to make a mistake. Surely all those people crowding into churches are having a public experience! They might not know "exactly" what each of the other person is experiencing, but then again, the same might be said for the blue experience (do I see the same shade of blue as Ck? The same hue as Ck? How could we ever know?).
And Ck seems to miss the important analogy: if the believer in the blue sock still holds the belief after hearing the scientific testimony, the same can be said for the spiritual believer whom, after being shown a defeater of the spiritual experience, still believes that they are somehow connected to god.
What might the defeater be? Well, if one is a materialist about the mental (all mental states are states of the brain), then it seems to follow that spiritual experience is a state of the brain. To pick out spiritual experience qua experience PLUS the connection to god is adding a useless assumption. And, I would suggest, there are many good reasons to assume that spiritual experience is just like any other experience: rooted in states of the brain. See here for more info on this line, though done for a layperson.
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