Wayne Proudfoot on religious experience

1. Wayne Proudfoot on religious experience • William James • Regards religious experience as similar to the taste of honey or the smell of eucalyptus. • It is like sensations & as such • unmediated by beliefs & • formative of beliefs vs consequent upon them Proudfoot on religious experience - 1

2. Wayne Proudfoot on religious experience • Proudfoot’s retort • 1. Religious experiences, and indeed all experiences, are mediated by beliefs. Beliefs are constitutive of experiences. • E.g., table across room Proudfoot on religious experience - 2

3. Wayne Proudfoot on religious experience • 2. Religious experiences cannot be identified as religious except by subject matter & this requires beliefs. • E.g., listening to Bach • Proudfoot generalizes: “Concepts and beliefs are constitutive of [all] experience” (37). There are no pure descriptions, but only “phenomena under a description” (37). Proudfoot on religious experience - 3

4. Wayne Proudfoot on religious experience • There is no sharp line between experience and interpretation of the experience. When we learn our first language & acquire a conceptual scheme, we operate & describe what we perceive in terms of this conceptual scheme. There is no primitive description of what is perceived which we can fall back on. It’s interpretation all the way down. Proudfoot on religious experience - 4

5. Wayne Proudfoot on religious experience • Implications of this position • 1. Contra James, there is no ineffable religious experience. • 2. We can understand the religious experiences of someone from another time and place. Proudfoot on religious experience - 5

6. Wayne Proudfoot on religious experience • 3. Contra Rudolph Otto & Friedrich Schleiermacher, there are many different kinds of religious experiences, not only one. • Rudolph Otto (German, 1896-1937) - the Holy or numinous experience -- an experience of a wholly other which evokes boundless awe & wonder & which entrances & captivates Proudfoot on religious experience - 6

7. Wayne Proudfoot on religious experience • Friedrich Schleiermacher (German, 1768-1834) -- an experience of absolute dependence, of the Infinite in contrast with our finitude Proudfoot on religious experience - 7

8. Wayne Proudfoot on religious experience • Critical evaluation • Query: Is Proudfoot arguing that religious experience is inauthentic, not genuine, and of little evidential value for supporting religious belief? Proudfoot on religious experience - 8

9. Swinburne on religious experience • Richard Swinburne’s defense of the authenticity of all experience, including religious experience • The Principle of Credulity Proudfoot on religious experience - 9

10. Swinburne on religious experience • “That it is a principle of rationality that (in the absence of special considerations) if it seems (epistemologically) to a subject that x is present, then probably x is present; what one seems to perceive is probably so. How things seem to be is good grounds for a belief about how things are.” (The Existence of God (NY: Oxford UP, 1979): 254) Proudfoot on religious experience - 10