Religious Experience and Rational Certainty

The purpose of this paper is to clear up the long-standing veritable mountain of misinterpretation, perpetuated from critic to critic, concerning the admittedly problematic concept of self-authenticating (i.e. unmistakable) religious experience. While it may well be the case, as many have argued, that a sort of ‘experience’ about which one could not be mistaken is simply a logically impossible state of affairs, this cannot be known to be the case so long as what is under attack is (as I hope to show) a bogus concept, obviously absurd, having nothing whatsoever to do with the correct interpretation of ‘self-authentication’. Hence, my mission herein is essentially that of philosophical analysis or clarification of meaning. Only upon suitable clarification of this concept will we be in a position to consider the question of its possible application, i.e. whether or not there could be an instantiation of such experience. I might point out that my central concern is somewhat more explicatory than historical, though I believe that the account developed in this paper is essentially congenial with the intent of those who have been proponents of the view that there can be self-authenticating religious experience. Let us begin, then, by turning to some representative criticism of the concept in question

Certainty · Criticism · Epistemology · Interpretation (philosophy) · Meaning (existential) · Nothing · Political science · Simplicity · State (computer science) · Computer Science · Karl Barth and Christian Theology · Law · Medieval Philosophy and Theology · Philosophy · Theology and Philosophy of Evil

• Philosophical Analysis

  Arthur Pap, Max Black•Philosophy and Phenomenological…•1952

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