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Can There be Self-Authenticating Experiences of God?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Michael P. Levine
Michael P. Levine
Affiliation:
Swarthmore College
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Extract

Let us follow Robert Oakes in describing a self-authenticating experience of God as one that ‘would have the epistemic uniqueness of guaranteeing –all by itself – its veridicality to the person who had it.’ The idea that there could be self-authenticating experiences of God has been criticized often in recent years. It seems that the only experiences that could be self-authenticating are those about one's own current psychological states. Nevertheless, the individual who claims to have such an experience of God is clearly using ‘experience’ in such a way as to suppose that one's experience of God is logically independent of the existence of God, but still self-authenticating.

Type
Articles
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 19 , Issue 2 , June 1983 , pp. 229 - 234
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1983

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References

page 229 note 1 Oakes, Robert, ‘Religious Experience, Self-Authentication, and Modality De Re: A Prolegomenon’, American Philosophical Quarterly, VI (1979), 217–24. Quote is on p. 217.Google Scholar

page 229 note 2 This is unlike the case of one's mental states. There the existence of a particular state is not logically independent of that state. Cf. Oakes, p. 217n.

page 229 note 3 In what follows I am using ‘experience’ to refer to experiences other than those of one's own current psychological states.

page 230 note 1 Oakes, p. 218.

page 230 note 2 Oakes, p. 218.

page 230 note 3 It is important to understand what Oakes means by ‘veridical’ experience. He does not attempt to give a strict definition, but says, “Veridicality relates to experiences that are veridical in very much the same way that truth relates to propositions that are true, i.e. “veridical” is the experiential analogue of “true”… an experience E is veridical iff (i) the state of affairs correlating to E 's phenomenological content obtains, and (ii) that it obtains is a causally necessary condition for the occurrence of E… (p. 220).

page 230 note 4 Oakes, pp. 218–19.

page 231 note 1 Oakes, p. 219.

page 231 note 2 Oakes, p. 221. Oakes gives the following ‘contextual explanation’ of ‘self-authenticating’. An experience E had by some person N is self-authenticating (guarantees its veridicality to N) iff (a) E is veridical, and (b) N's belief that E is veridical is logically sufficient for N's knowing … that E is veridical (pp. 221–2).

page 231 note 3 Oakes, p. 222.

page 232 note 1 Oakes, pp. 222–3.