Objections to "Personal experience" as "proof"

Philosophy Forums Religion and Spirituality
1

Here is something I heard on the news this morning: Dozens in Texas claim to have seen UFO.
I thought to myself that had the same ocurrence taken place 8,000 years ago, with how humanity saw the universe back then, not filled with creatures but with gods, people would have interpreted what they saw in the language of the day, through the lenses of their culture and declared that they saw God’s chariot, perhaps.
The other thing I thought about was the objections to belief from “personal experience”. I do believe, yes, but it did not come from a “personal experience”, nor could it come from any one experience. The belief in that higher being preceedes, is prior to any abnormal experience. We then attach to that experience, ambiguous on it’s own, the interpretation that agrees with our perspective of the world and it’s constituents. Suppose I am a blank slate, as far as religious feelings are concerned. Imagine a perfect scientist riding his donkey on the road to Damascus…or on the road to Chicago…it does not matter. Now he does have an experience of something. Let me recreate that dialogue:

Voice: Friedrich, Friedrich!
Friedreich: What is this? I hear a voice but I cannot see a body. I must be hallucinating…bad coffee…one too many donuts. I better see a doctor. Maybe a shrink…
V: “You’re not hallucinating, Friedrich. It is Iam that I am, your creator.”
F: I heard some semites talk about this…But why should I believe you? Maybe you’re a minion of one of those Devils I also heard them talk about. I heard them say that other people’s gods were indeed just devils posing as if they were their revealed God. I have never met God before, and it is not as if one meets God as one meets a person and says, you’re Michael, while another is Peter, for I have both a clear vision of who is who, but in the case of the Creator, how could I decide if indeed you’re the Creator we believe was needed to Create the universe and not just a lower deity in the ranks of said creation?
V: Your disbelief offends me. I should bring a flood just to erase you.
F: But that would not prove to me that you’re the creator and not some higher creature. That would prove your power to destroy, but not to create.
V: What would make you happy? Should I create a whole new universe, repeat myself, my Word, so that you witnesses the creation by the Creator?
F: That would be impressive and as a scientist there is no telling how much I could learn…in fact perhaps I might learn enough to do it myself, just as we have learned to cure many illnesses that once require divine intervention. I would like that…but…
V: But what you fastidious little gnat?!
F: Well, that would only prove that you are a Creator of Universes, but how do I know that there are not more of these beings? More Creators?
V:Preposterous!
F:Perhaps…and even if you do prove that you can create a universe you might just be the means by which a universe is created. That is, that you yourself are created for the purpose of a higher being to create the universe. So that the Creator of the Universe was himself a Creature.
V: I am God and there are no other Gods beside me!
F: So you say, but how could you prove it beyond any reasonable doubt? I have to take your word on this. The very argument used to require a creator for the universe, that something must come from something and this something is equated to you, still requires another something to account for the existence of this something, which is to mean:“You”.
V: Be reasonable, Friedrich. based on that reasoning, how far will you have to go to find the Uncreated Creator? You only have one life. Even Aristotle settled for the Immovable Mover, which some have correctly interpreted as being Me.
F: I would die uncertain, I guess. That is the solution granted by reason alone, by objective observation of the facts and probabilities. Anywhere that I choose to stop this infinite regression in tracing the Uncreated, remains a choice, not an objective fact. I would settle, I would have to settle to believe in You or in another, for if tomorrow some other Voice approches me and says that It and not You, is the true Uncreated, I would not be able to tell the difference.
V: As It to create an Uncreated Being. Ask It to create an Omnipotent Being.
F: What would that prove? Logically I can see what you aim to do but empirically, I, as a finite being, could never observe infinite power, could never experience it. I have a word for it, but no actual or objective referent. I might as well ask for the Being to create the Highest Number, just as logically impossible to ask It to create a Highest Being.
V: Omnipotence is not a number.
F: Right, but is still meaningless to scientists who must deal with what is quantifiable. How are you going to prove to a scientist that you’re omnipotent? Or that another Being, who claims to be the same, is not in fact more potent than You?
V: That is easy. I shall destroy it.
F: Just as you destryed Satan? Oh but you didn’t…
V: All in the right time, and at my pleasure…
F: Still…
V: Still what?!!
F: Well, destruction is destruction and not creation. You would prove to me that you’re indeed more powerful than X, the measure used to grade that power is a contest of one against the other. It does not prove that there is no Higher Being besides You. If a dog kills another dog, I know which dog, between these two was the strongest, but I cannot know that there is not another dog, yet more powerful than the winning Dog. If the Dog knows the trick of talking, as you do, he might tell me how he has proven that he is the omnipotent dog, the highest dog, but he has simply allowed for the measure of strenght, finitely, against this opponent. It is a finite test of strenght, not an infinite and universal proof which could be delivered to my measurements. Even if no other dog ever appears to challenge the winning dog, that does not prove to me that it is impossible that such dog does not exist. I am a puny little scientist, bound to the limits of my observations. I can prove and be demonstrated to the quality of potency, but omnipotence is beyond measure, beyond nature, beyond what I believe is the method of proof or disproof: beyond science, it is meta-physics.
V: is not your prescious science meta-physical in it’s redaction of Laws of Nature?
F: No, because any Law can be revised when the data exceeds the explanatory virtues of the Law. The 2nd Law of Thermodynamic for example would cease if the dishes in my kitchen began to clean themselves.
V:Would it convince you if I made that happen.
F: You could tell me that you made it happen, just as some quack on the street might tell me that he brought rain today. A coincidence is not causality.
V: I grow tired of you, but desire you ever more for never had something been so rare as a true agnostic. You’re like a virgin and I so much want to be your first time. Just tell me then, how can I convince you? Isn’t there some way? The agnostic is only waiting for a personal experience, is he not, before he believes, right? Well, name your price…
F: I wish I had a price, that I had an idea, clear as day of what is God or what isn’t God. I don’t and that is why I see gods everywhere and nowhere. I cannot define God either because I am only human. Who am I that I have survayed the Nature, the essensses of Higher things that they now stand below me, below my judgment, under-stood. How much “Higher” could you be, really, if what is under you under-stood you, making you indeed lower? What mountain is high enough to let me survey the confines of the city, to trace the land and it’s limits when the horizion always receedes away from my scope?
…I fear that your words shall always be empty to me and even to you. How could you prove to yourself that you’re uncreated. I was told by two grown adults that I came from them, born of them, in a sense, created by them…yet I have no experience of that birth, of that creation. I opened my eyes and the world was there, my arms and feet and whatever else I could see, were already there. Did I really need a creator, a set of parents to explain my existence simply from the observations of my senses? No. So I was told who were my parents and that I had been born as other kids had been and whom I saw being born, but in my case I could not rule out creatio ex nihilio. Indeed I needed nothing else to be a god myself. But I took on faith that I was created out of something instead of nothing, just as you reserved the use of your imagination to posit that you had no creation. I could not prove to myself that I was not created and was in fact eternal. I can only account for the observations made after I gazed upon the world but the world may have existed prior to my observation of it. Neither could I prove that I was created. If I told you know, just for the sake of argument that you were created, how would you know, for certain, I was wrong?
V: Quite easily actually. The universe changes. It is expanding and so that implies that sometime in the past it was not expanding. That point of rest is I. I am the unchanged, the eternal real behind all change.
F: change is a point of view. I agree with you, the universe is in flux and I know this because my “I” is more fixed in relation to what changes, though it still changes, only slower. Therefore even your own perceived etrnal fixation could be nothing but a temporal fixidity that exist only in contrast with what moves at a higher pace that your own motion. The universe is expanding, we agree, but science believes that either the Big Bang is the beginning of time or just a cycle that goes beyond time and space. We have not decided. That means that the universe could indeed claim the same virtue as you and declare itself as uncreated as you claim to be.
V: But will that give meaning to your life? Will that grant purpose to your existence? Will you not them be a simple engine of entropy? What value has your life then?
F: Well, those are good, good questions, but for a scientist, theories cannot tell me “why” but only “How” I came to be. I could prove how I was conceived, but not why, ultimately, I was conceived. This is all very existentialist. But if my life is inherently meaningless and indeed if I am nothing more than a bag filled with chemical compounds and reactions, that does not mean that You or any other Being that claims to be God can give that meaning to my life. I choose that meaning as I choose to believe what you say.
V: Will you not harken to my voice then?
F: If do, that still would not mean that I know, that I can be sure or scientifically certain that you are God or even that you’re not self deluded, a mad being with illusions of grandeur. I decide then who and what is God and therefore, in a way, you are asking me to be God…but then why would I need you for? i decide to believe that X is God and therefore I choose also the meaning X can give me. X is only a means to my ends then…this is why no one ever care to test their God, for it would be to test themselves.
Chances are that there is a meaning above all others, but I haven’t found it and therefore neither have I found God. And You? You’re a Spirit of an Age…

2

Well done. It poses an interesting question in the “burden of proof” debate, and an interesting un-asking of the question "what would it take for you to believe (or disbelieve) in god).
What about logical dis/proofs? Could we confirm or deny the existence of god, or of omnipotence, based on its conclusions? I realize that that means accepting logic, but accepting logic and accepting the existence of anything are significantly different.

3

I know God exists. My “knowing” is not dependant on by ablity or need to prove it to someone else. I just know, and one can choose to believe that or not.

4

To further complicate matters, exposure to and recognition of a good logical argument IS a personal experience, subject to all the same problems - How do you know the seemingly true argument is true, and not just a ruse from a clever rhetorician, and so on.

5

I remember quite a few years ago, working in a semi desert situation in the north of my country where the temperature in the shade can reach 50c. So obviously, beer goes down like water. One night after one to many ales I glanced into the sky and actually observed an UFO shooting across the sky at incredible speed less than 500 yards away. Since no one else spotted this thing, I did ask my drinking buddies if they observed anything unusual to which they replied no, I put it down to hallucination on my part.
So much for personal experience. It’s not worth a cent, if no one else observes it as well. :astonished:

6

Hello Carleas:
— What about logical dis/proofs? Could we confirm or deny the existence of god, or of omnipotence, based on its conclusions?
O- You mean based on the premises, attributes, claimed for the idea, we could test it’s conclusions for consistency at least. You could do that, but that disproves only the particular version (subjective) of the Unknown. It does not dispel altogether the possibility of a Being, though with a different set of attributes.

— I realize that that means accepting logic, but accepting logic and accepting the existence of anything are significantly different.
O- I agree. I think that logic is a general tool of reasoning that is use by both sides.

Hello Soldout:
— I know God exists.
O- I know that you think you know, but “How do you know?” is my question. As a matter of faith, I grant anyone’s decision to believe (or not believe), but not that their belief (or disbelief, for that matter)in the supernatural must derive from science…that I don’t buy.

— My “knowing” is not dependant on by ablity or need to prove it to someone else.
O- That was not the issue. You claim that somehow you decision to believe in the supernatural has less to do with faith. Indeed, I fully agree with you in saying that your claim to know is independent of any possible demonstrations or proofs, either to yourself or to someone else.

— I just know, and one can choose to believe that or not.
O- That “just” you throw in there so innocently is what I speak about as faith. That “just” is not a defined science, or proof, or demonstration, or reasoning. That is the irrational, non-rational, pre-rational–take your pick of terms, they mean much the same— ground that supports your rational elaborations, rationalizations of what is simply a faith. It is not by reason, nor by science that you “know”…you “just know”…

Hello Uccissore:
— To further complicate matters, exposure to and recognition of a good logical argument IS a personal experience, subject to all the same problems - How do you know the seemingly true argument is true, and not just a ruse from a clever rhetorician, and so on.
O- Or even that you own the qualification to recognize a valid argument? Many people are convinced at childhood, or as death approaches. Others are simply not wise by the general standard.
In the first the argument is backed by a hungry mind apt for unquestioning trust in adults. In the second, the argument is back by a heightened awareness of one’s coming demise and frailty so that the argument arrives as a wish fulfillment. In the third case, the argument is drawn from the reasoning of the given listener, like Socrates did , apparently, with that slave and with all his interlocutors as well. The beauty of the argument itself, coupled with the charisma of the Wiseman is all the majority requires to suspend the uncomfortable position of uncertainty.

7

I posted this before on another thread but did not receive a reply. I base my belief in God not only on my experience, but on the similar experiences of others.

There is a nucleus of agreement between the experience of God of people in different places, times and traditions. They interpret these experiences in similar ways despite vast differences in their own history and cultures. Therefore, we have reason to believe that they are all in contact with an objective aspect of reality.

We treat other cognitive claims as true unless there is some positive reason to think them delusive. This is our only reason for thinking that ordinary sense perception corresponds to reality. We cannot prove that what people agree in perceiving really exists independently of them.

We always assume that ordinary waking sense perception coincides with reality unless we have ground for thinking that it is delusive in a given case. It is inconsistent to treat experiences of God on differently. So far as they agree they should be provisionally accepted as real unless there is some positive ground for thinking they are not.

Sure there are doubtful charlatans kooks and liars who claim mystical experiences. But some of the finest people in history claim to have experienced God as well. It seems unreasonable to doubt their veracity. Persons who have had these experiences find it difficult to accept arguments against their veridicality. Attempts to explain away such experiences as originating in psychological or physiological states are guilty of the genetic fallacy.

8

felix, my problem with your argument there is that if you replace “God” with “dreams”, it becomes an equally compelling argument that dreams correspond to an objective reality (rather than just being in our heads).

Accepting experiences as corresponding to objective reality by default, as you suggest, is an arbitrary privileging of one interpretation of reality over another. It smacks of running towards a desired conclusion rather than seeking knowledge in all possibilities. Both a objective reality and a psychological state can explain the experience of God, so both are candidates unless we find reason to elevate one over the other. The experience by itself does not help us decide between the two, nor does it help that the experiencer feels it was “really really real”. We feel the same way about dreams while we’re dreaming them, but they’re not real.

If you want to distinguish an objective from a subjective experience, you look to see if the experience connects in a reliable way with things you already consider objective. That’s the basic premise of scientific inquiry (broadly construed to include not only physical science, but history, sociology, psychology, etc). We consider dreams a subjective, psychological phenomenon because they are episodic and disconnected. They do not connect in any reliable way with life as we know it.

Experience of God to me seems similarly unreliable in myself and others, which is why I’m inclined to believe that it does not have an objective referent.

Also, what would you say is this common nucleus of thought about God, held in common by Abrahamic monotheists, animists, ancestor worshippers, pagans, etc etc?

And do you think that all the atheists who I’ve read had awesome experiences of God before they deconverted were just faking it? Or have ulterior motives? That’s the same sort of arbitrary explaining away that you complain of in your post. Clearly some people have these sort of experiences and are then persuaded that they do not refer to an objective reality.

9

Because unless we – all of us: theist, agnostic, atheist – assume that things like logical truths are true and that strong, cogent inductive argument can yield probable truth, we slip into radical skepticism, a realm in which no proposition can be known to be true.

The theist just as much as the atheist must agree that, for example, ~(p&~p) is true or no proposition can be true including the proposition “God exists.”

So, if your argument is “We can’t know which propositions are probably true,” then we cannot know that the proposition “God exists” is probably true and there is absolutely no reason to believe that it is true.

If, OTOH, you believe that it is possible for us to know which propositions are probably true, then you have the answer to the question which you ask that goes, “How do we know the seemingly true argument is true?”

10

Aporia–

In as much as I specified ordinary waking sense perception, replacing “God with dreams” would render my argument self contradictory.

Isn’t that what we do in ordinary discourse? If I don’t assume that your experience corresponds to objective reality in most points how can we converse? Only when I am unable to fit your described experience into what I understand is true somewhere do I question it’s veridicality.

Well I am aware of some of the possibilities. I consider them. But the conclusion that it is God fits best my experience.

Consciousness itself is a psychological state. There is no objective reality for us outside of a psychological state of some kind. The feeling that the experience is really real is at the moment of it’s occurance is compelling. The experience must be amenable to integration with prior and subesequent experience for it to be menaingful. Unless I wake up and find out my entire waking life is a dream I’ll go on believing the experience of God is really real. I don’t have the slightest expectation that will happen.

What you describe here as objective is consistent with what I just described above. My experience of God is contiguous with my life experience and knowledge. The data of science is equivocal on the matter. History confirms that numerous others have had similar experience which they interpreted in similar way. The social sciences are equivocal.

Abraham’s experience of God was prototypical. My experience confirms for me the veridicality of the Abrahamic monotheists. These others are various kinds of spiritual experience. I don’t reject them as imaginary out of hand. I evaluate them on a case by case basis.

No. I have friends whose life experience is like that. I evaluate each case on it’s own merits. Belief is a dynamic thing that can change over time in either direction.

11

O- I don’t think that the tenacity of the believer can count as ground for the veracity of his belief, for we have martyrs for all sorts of stupid beliefs. The hardness of their position actually convinces me that the ground that founds their truth does not come from reason. I don’t know if it is a matter of genetics or upbringing, but I am not here to debate nature versus nurture. Suffice to say that reason alone cannot account for the tenacity of a believer and nor can his belief unto death count as a positive ground for rendering a judgment on the veracity or objectivity of his/her beliefs.

12

Reality Check

We’ve been over this before, and it’s an impossible situation. ‘We’ doesn’t matter, and ‘we’ don’t exist when it comes to epistemology. If you have ever been wrong before, then you might be wrong this time. That’s as far as it needs to go. “Uccisore was duped by what seemed to him to be a sound logical argument, but was in fact a clever construction formed by a sophist that had no merit” is, I’m sure you’d agree, a very possible state of affairs. With that in mind, for any argument I accept, it’s possible that the above situation applies to it- even though I don’t think it does, in any particular case.
I’m not arguing for skepticism here, I’m arguing against there being a hard break between personal experience and argumentation. They are sides of the same coin, subject to the same problems.

13

True, but your specification of ordinary waking sense perception is arbitrary. We call waking life objective and dreams subjective because waking life forms a richly connected continuous narrative, while dreams are episodic and disconnected. The coherence of experience over time is the criterion for objectivity, and as a corollary we consider new experiences objective if they integrate well with what we already consider objective.

Right. That was the main point of my previous post. The criterion for objectivity of new experiences is integration with things we have previously considered objective. The mere feeling that something is really real doesn’t make it objective, as dreams feel really real at the moment we have them. Once we wake up and realize that nothing in the dream connects with the narrative of our waking life, we are able to distinguish dreams from reality.

I can gain information about your experience of your day without any assumptions about its objectivity. In the process of conversing I may make predictions, ask questions, and fact-check, attempting to integrate your experience into my view of the world. If it fits, your narrative probably was about something real; if not, I remain suspicious and investigate further.

History confirms that people who are told a good story about god, especially in their childhood, will tend to integrate that story into their sense of what is real. As a result they will tend to experience god in the way that he was presented to them. Thus it is not clear how much the followers of a religion count as independent witnesses to a certain experience of god.

What is clear is that different peoples who have not had contact with a given religion tend to develop different perceptions of god(s). Those witnesses who are genuinely independent of each other tend to develop contradictory stories. There is a bare nucleus of consensus that some spiritual side of life exists, but this hardly seems incompatible with naturalism. Spirituality is an aspect of consciousness which in turn emerges from brain activity; it need not be separate or independent from the physical unless you add afterlife, divine beings, etc (which the peoples of the world don’t agree on at all).

Are you sure you’re not just Christian because your parents brought you up that way, or because your culture works in that paradigm? Do your experiences of God confirm what you were told independently, or are they merely a product of what you were told? It seems to me that to answer these questions, one must determine whether these experiences connect to the mundane world in any reliable way. Does god answer prayers in any consistent pattern? Does he show favor to those who do his supposed will in any consistent way? Does he do things that cannot reasonably be explained any other way? In my long experience with Christianity and its supposed evidences I’ve found the answer is no. You may disagree, but that is something we can dispute objectively. It’s not just up to personal experiences and feeling like god is really real.

What would be some criteria for your “case-by-case” evaluation of non-Abrahamic religions? If you measure them by their similarity to your own beliefs, then we’re just back to the question of why you accept those beliefs and not others. If you look at them on their own merits, however, I think the world’s religions appear genuinely different and irreconciliable.

14

Ucc,

But isn’t that truly a conflicting statement? Since personal experience is always subject to error, then using personal experience as a basis for argumentation carries the same liability. Argumentation, at least of the variety I’ve seen in this forum, leans toward a drive for certainty. Arguments are more I KNOW than, I think maybe… It seems to me that between illusion and delusion, personal experience has very little credence in argumentation.

When Scrooge was confronted by Marley’s ghost, he asked, “How do I know that you aren’t a piece of potato, a bit of undigested beef?” It is a question that can be asked of any personal experience…

15

You’re right about personal experience, tentative. And again, I’m saying that argumentation doesn’t fare much better, because any argument you care to name, you have experienced through the same fallible mind. It’s not as though personal experience isn’t to be trusted because eyes suck, or ears don’t work. It’s because of the subjectivity of interpretation, yes? Interpretation exists in response to an argument every bit as much as it does when faced with the sense of a physical object.

16

Ucc,

You’re starting to scare me. We might be agreeing… :astonished: It would then follow that belief, faith, personal experience, are subjective at best. It would seem then, that all that is left is how shall we act? And the rationale behind our acting out can be informed by beliefs, faith, and personal experience and maybe some sort of coherent philosophy (doubtful). At that point discussion becomes both relevant and might even be useful. One can move beyond the why questions to the pragmatic how issues, where accomodation and compromise has a chance. It would make little difference theist, atheist, religious or not. We might be capable of looking at potential solutions to issues that divide people.

… There has to be something wrong with this. It would mean argumentation about real issues instead of just squabbling over thin air…

17

tentative

Yes, in a sense. You seem to be saying that these other questions won’t get us anywhere, so the question of how we act is the only question left. I’m a virtue epistemologist these days, so as I see it, the question of how we should act needs to be answered first, and it actually ends up informing that other stuff once we do.

Well, worse, it must necessarily be informed by those things, whether we want it to be or not, and that’s where the rest of what you say is going to fall into difficulty. You can work out compromises and pragmatic solutions to problems ONLY amongst people who have a lot of common ground between them when it comes to these subjective, ‘thin air’ problems that you’d rather not discuss. The alternative is force.

18

I think the questions of how we should act has to be negotiated as part of process. We are all ready doing something, and a lot of the ‘somethings’ is goring someone elses’ ox. Such questions rely on cultural history, new technologies, demographic make up of the people involved, and many other things that complexify the process.

I would suggest that it is the lack of common ground that is the useful part of the process. If everyone is in agreement, there is no need for accomodation or compromise. What is critical, is the acceptance of our own understanding as being subjective. This is the only thing that allows us to work toward compromise. Those who declare that it is God’s way or no way, or those who refuse to accept any metaphysical claims as having any validity are those who have no choice but to resort to force. It is when all involved see and accept their own subjectivity that discourse becomes possible.

19

Uccs, aren’t arguments are personal experiences, sure, but they are personal experiences that you can carry with you and rehearse whenever you like. You can ‘take them to the lab’, so to speak, and analyze them at your convenience. They are experiences that you can actually give to other people, and that they can evaluate for themselves, without you as intermediary. They are shareable experiences, not in the sense that you can relate them to someone, but that you can actually cause someone to have the same experience. In that way, they are more reliable and more objective than the truly personal experience, the subjective experience that no one but you has experienced, that no one but you can experience.

20

My parents were nominal Christians who rarely attended church. My formal education was strictly secular. I attended public schools and universities. I investigated Eastern religions for several years before I began to look into Christianity. According to my acculturation I could have just as readily become an unbeliever.

I live in the US. I’m exposed to a variety of cultural influences that are not Christian. Even among Christians I did not receive that much guidance that led to what I would count as genuine spiritual experience. As far as prayer, it depends on what you mean by answers. The purpose of prayer is to contact God. The presence of God is the answer to every prayer. Does he show favor? Favor is the presence of God. Does he do things that cannot reasonably be explained any other way? Sometimes. But people are quite creative. But if you are looking to explain God away, you may succeed to your own satisfaction.

My criteria is whether they engender a sense of the presence of God. In my experience even Taoism and Buddhism which are are not theistic religions have remarkably similar spiritual essences to that of Christianity.