INTRODUCTION

The fact that the brain mediates RSEs is an unwelcome discovery for some religious people, particularly if they sense that the materiality of the brain somehow taints the spiritual perfection of such experiences. Others feel sure that the neural embodiment of RSEs should yield evidence that the neurosciences confirm their religious beliefs. For yet others, both religious and anti-religious, neural mediation is exciting because it opens up lines of inquiry into the causal conditions and functions of religious behavior, belief, and experience that formerly seemed non-existent. I count myself in this last, religiously mixed group of intellectuals. We support the neurological study of RSEs not because of any expectation that such research by itself can settle questions about the truth or falsity of religious beliefs, or about the value and liabilities of RSEs, but because of the potential of the neurosciences to illumine the functions and causal conditions of RSEs.

While this book presumes that the human brain mediates RSEs, it is important not to take this completely for granted. Exhaustive neural mediation is a minority view in the history of thought and across cultures at the current time, despite its widespread acceptance among Western philosophers. We need to ask about the reasons to believe the hypothesis that RSEs are exhaustively neurally embodied. What is the philosophical significance of this idea? And precisely how can we mount fruitful research into the neural expression of RSEs? These are the questions to be examined in this chapter.