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Reply to Michael Levine

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Robert Oakes
Robert Oakes
Affiliation:
Professor of Philosophy, University of Missouri-Rolla
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Extract

I am grateful to Mr Levine for his careful and accurate rendering of the thesis which I presented and defended in my first paper on the topic of ‘self-authenticating religious experience’. As should be reasonably clear from his remarks, I defended therein the negative and somewhat modest epistemological thesis that even if it is inconceivable (or logically impossible) for there to occur self-authenticating experience of God, it is far from obvious that such is the case. Hence, it seems to me that the claim of more than a few theistic mystics to have had such experience is entitled to something more than the rather cavalier rejection it has received at the hands of many ‘tough-minded’ epistemologists of religion. (I except Mr Levine: his rejection of that claim inclines towards the distinctly non-cavalier.)

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Articles
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Religious Studies , Volume 19 , Issue 2 , June 1983 , pp. 235 - 239
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1983

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References

page 235 note 1 ‘Religious Experience, Self-Authentication, and Modality De Re: A Prolegomenon’, American Philosophical Quarterly, VI (1979), 217–24.Google Scholar

page 237 note 1 For example: if (as I believe) that God exists is true for Al possible worlds, then being a contingent object and being God-created are logically equivalent properties (i.e., it is inconceivable that there should exist something which has one but not both of these properties). However, ‘being a contingent object’ and ‘being God-created’ do not denote but one and the same property, since it is perfectly conceivable for someone to believe of some object that it is contingent (generable and perishable) but not God-created. Indeed, antitheists believe just that.

page 238 note 1 I owe thanks to George Mavrodes for a criticism which led to this addendum.

page 238 note 2 Consider: it seems to me that the state of being awake is self-authenticating. That is, it seems to me that, necessarily, persons who are awake are certain of being awake so long as they believe that they are. There could, however, exist a religious sect (obviously in Southern California) which believes (for whatever reason) that God wishes them always to be asleep and, indeed, it would be unthinkable for them to violate what they take to be God's wishes. Hence, they believe (perhaps not irrationally?) that they are always asleep. Such, however, does not violate the self-authenticating character of being awake. For when these persons were awake, they would be certain that they were if only they believed it.