If we do give him the benefit of the doubt on the question of sincerity, we must go through a whole other level of assessment before we can put complete confidence in the truth of his statement. The first level of evidence evaluation yields some new data that must also be explained.

e₄. The letter writer is saying these great things about his colleague because he sincerely believes them to be true.

Why does this person (biography) believe these things (the content of the statement)? Once again, the presuppositions of normal communication ask us to endorse a standard explanation for most sincere communicative attempts.

t^*₀. The speaker believes this because he knows what he is talking about -- he believes it because it is, in fact, true.

Thus, when we accept information through the testimony or authority of others, we tacitly engage in a dual explanatory inference. We explain the linguistic act as a sincere attempt to communicate the speaker's belief, and then explain the speaker's having the belief in terms of the speaker knowing what he is talking about.

Larry Wright has helpfully distinguished two quite different things that can go wrong when someone communicates a sincerely held belief. Sometimes people have unreliable access to the information they are trying to communicate. Thus, a rival explanation of my belief that my friend is a good teacher might be that I have only observed him in specialized upper-division courses that would be of interest to philosophy and psychology majors -- I have never observed him, for example, in introductory courses.

t^*₁ The letter writer believes that his friend is a good teacher because he has never observed his lousy teaching in introductory courses.

Even when authorities possess excellent access to information, we still worry sometimes about their ability to reliably interpret this information. In this context the cautious letter reader might have at least two potential worries about my testimony. The first has to do with specialized training. Obviously, my claims presuppose some fairly technical knowledge about pedagogy, academia, and research standards in contemporary psychology. One would like to think that expectations for teaching and collegiality would not vary across the humanities and natural and behavioral sciences. I, hopefully, have the necessary background to provide relevant information about these aspects of my friend's career. But what about the prediction for professional distinction with respect to his research? I am trained as a philosopher, not a psychologist. Perhaps his psychological insights I observed in the course of our collaborative teaching and writing are common knowledge in the field. Or worse, maybe they are discredited or eccentric. Am I really qualified to say? A rival explanation once again suggests itself.

t^*₂ The letter writer believes his colleague will make a name for himself because of his lack of knowledge about contemporary academic psychology.

A very different worry about the reliability of my belief focuses on my ability to "objectively" process the information to which I do have reliable access. Basically, the worry here is one of perceptual or interpretive bias. Perhaps I so admire his pedagogic technique because it is so similar to my ineffective classroom style. Or, maybe I am so impressed with his psychological hypotheses because they nicely coincide with my own half-baked notions. He is, after all, my good friend -- might I not be guilty of "seeing more with my heart, than with my eyes?" So we have yet another category of rival explanation.

t^*₃ The letter writer believes these grossly inflated things about his friend because of some sort of perceptual bias.

None of the above should be taken to suggest that testimony is inherently unreliable. What could be more obvious than the fact that almost everything we claim to know comes to us second hand through the word of others? What I am suggesting is that our assessment of testimony can be structured and critically evaluated.

Direct observations, for most of us, carry the ultimate epistemological weight. The reports of eyewitnesses, to cite just one example, often determine criminal proceedings. It is not surprising, therefore, that the subjects of mysticism and religious experiences have received so much careful attention by contemporary theologians and philosophers of religion. Mystics claim to have directly "observed" the existence of God. We have countless examples of this kind of "eyewitness" testimony to the truth of theism. The status of this testimony as religious evidence provides rich religious and epistemological territory.

I will bypass the important business of analyzing and distinguishing the various forms of religious and mystical experiences that have been documented in the literature. I offer, instead, the following as a particularly vivid example of the kind of psychological occurrence with which we shall be concerned in the remainder of this chapter.

I was at prayer on a festival of the glorious Saint Peter when I saw Christ at my side--or, to put it better, I was conscious of Him, for neither with the eyes of the body nor with those of the soul did I see anything. I thought He was quite close to me and I saw that it was He Who, as I thought, was speaking to me. Being completely ignorant that visions of this kind could occur, I was at first very much afraid, and did nothing but weep, though as soon as He addressed a single word to me to reassure me, I became quiet again, as I had been before, and was quite happy and free from fear. All the time Jesus Christ seemed to be beside me, but, as this was not an imaginary vision, I could not discern in what form: what I felt very clearly was that all the time He was at my right hand, and a witness of everything I was doing, and that whenever I became slightly recollected or was not greatly distracted, I could not but be aware of His nearness to me.

The questions before us are the evidential status of such an experience for the mystic herself, in this case St. Teresa of Avila, and the evidential value of her testimony for the rest of us.

(1) Mystical states, when well developed, usually are, and have a right to be, absolutely authoritative over the individuals to whom they come.

(2) No authority emanates from them which should make it a duty for those who stand outside them to accept their revelations uncritically.

(3) They break down the authority of the non-mystical or rational consciousness, based upon the understanding and the sense alone.

James seems, in (3), to proclaim that wholly different epistemological rules and principles should govern our understanding of the evidential value of mystical experience. James, because of his thorough going pragmatism, may mean something quite different when he speaks of epistemological authority but to the degree that the concept of good evidence applies, this entire chapter should be read as a sustained argument against principle (3).

My interest is the evidential value of mystical testimony. Let me propose, therefore, the following reformulation of the first two of James' principles in a specifically theistic context.

(1^*) Having a mystical experience involving God automatically provides good evidence for the mystic for the existence of God.

(2^*) Reading or hearing the testimony of mystics about experiences involving God provides no (good) evidence for the existence of God.

I see every reason to reject both of these epistemic principles.

St. Teresa's testimony fits perfectly into the schematic form described above.

e₁. Statement: "I was at prayer . . ."

e₂. Context: Written in her Autobiography.

e₃. Relevant biography: Catholic nun.

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t₀. She wrote it because she believed it to be true.

e₃ summarizes an incredibly rich amount of biographical detail. Much of it is relevant to the second stage assessment of her testimony. On the prior question of sincerity, however, I am confident that any conscientious reader will agree with me that the best explanation of what she wrote is that she was absolutely convinced that Christ was at her side. She writes with such grace, modesty, and insight, that her sincerity as an author is never seriously in question. Thus, we can move quickly to our second stage of explanatory inferences by supplying this inferred piece of new data.

e₄. She sincerely believed that Christ was at her side.

Thus, we are led to the second, and most interesting, explanatory question -- why does she believe this? The answer she endorses, and the one that civil communication asks us to endorse as well, is the following.

t^*₀. She believed that Christ was at her side because Christ really was at her side.

There are at least three important competing explanations of mystical experiences. The data that needs to be explained may be experienced directly by the mystic, herself. Or, it may be learned of indirectly through the testimony of mystics. In either case it cries out for explanation. Inference to the best explanation tells us that if we judge that the theist's explanation is superior to any serious rivals, this will provide important evidence for the truth of theism. If, on the other hand, we judge that any of the rival explanations are better accounts of the data, then, regardless of their intrinsic interest, mystical experiences will be of no evidential value to the theist.

We should pause here to notice one important difference between first person and third person mystical reports. In order to take St. Teresa's testimony seriously, we were forced to infer her sincerity. Presumably St. Teresa does not have to assess the relevant evidence to discover that she is telling the truth; she simply knows it. Thus, she possesses a kind of epistemological authority that those of us who simply hear of her experiences are never privileged to.

Recall James' first epistemological principle.

(1) Mystical states, when well developed, usually are, and have a right to be, absolutely authoritative over the individuals to whom they come.

The epistemological authority referred to here has nothing to do with honesty. It is assumed in the very statement of the principle that the experience has really happened. James seems to be saying that St. Teresa is in a different explanatory position than we are with respect to -- what all parties agree was -- a genuine psychological occurrence.

Such a principle when extended to non-mystical experiences has disagreeable consequences. In the example above, my experiences convinced me that my colleague would be a major figure in academic psychology. If I possessed absolute epistemological authority regarding colleague-experiences, then t^*₀ would be self-authenticating.

t^*₀. I believe my colleague will be a major figure in academic psychology because he will indeed be a major figure.

Suppose that I am aware of the dangers of the lack of relevant information or perceptual bias. Thus, I casually consider the following rival explanations.

t^*₁. I believe my colleague will be a major figure in academic psychology because I am trained in philosophy and do not realize that his views with which I am so taken are actually eccentric and discredited in the field.

t^*₀. She believed that Christ was at her side because Christ really was at her side.

From what we know of her life it is indisputably clear that she did indeed take t^*₀ to be the best explanations of her mystical experience. It is also true, however, that she seriously considered at least two rival explanations of what had happened to her.

t^*₁. She believed that Christ was at her side because she was suffering from some physical pathology.

t^*₂. She believed that Christ was at her side because the devil was deceiving her.

Both she and her confessors were very concerned with quasi-empirical tests to confirm or disconfirm these rival accounts. Her confident explanatory ranking was only possible after very seriously considering these rivals. Thus, one very undesirable consequence of James' principle is that it may suggest to the mystic that there is no need to consider rival explanations of the mystical experience. Even worse than this, however, is the problem of relativism. We, including all of the religious and scientific communities, may rank the rival hypothesis of insanity as the best explanation of David Koresh's sincerely held belief (let us assume sincerity) that God had spoken to him. Koresh, himself, is granted absolute epistemological authority to discount our explanation and substitute his own. This is epistemologically -- and not just morally -- perverse.

James seems to have made a rather elementary error. He has confused strength and unshakability of conviction with epistemological authority.

As a matter of psychological fact, mystical states of a well-pronounced and emphatic sort are usually authoritative over those who have them. They have been "there," and know. It is vain for rationalism to grumble about this. If the mystical truth that comes to a man proves to be a force that he can live by, what mandate have we to order him to live another way? We can throw him into a prison or a madhouse, but we cannot change his mind.

I concede that there are lots of circumstances, philosophical and practical, where we cannot change a person's mind about something he or she firmly believes. In many of these circumstances it would be inappropriate "to order him to live another way," and immoral to "throw him into a prison or a madhouse" if we fail to reason with him. Rationalism does not grumble about this, but it does give us a mandate to rationally criticize his reasoning.

James has it backward. Disinterested third-parties are more reliable explainers than the mystic herself. Because the strength of her personal commitment is so strong, she will be less likely to fully consider the explanatory virtues of rival accounts. But, ultimately, the mystic is in precisely the same epistemological situation as those of us who only hear mystical testimony and are convinced that the mystic is honest.

There is something artificial about the single-minded focus so far on this one bit of mystical testimony. St. Teresa's authority is greatly enhanced by the fact that the experience she describes is far from unique. She reported many similar mystical experiences during her life, and the literature shows that these psychological occurrences are "corroborated" by the accounts of many other Christian mystics. This is very important additional data.

e₅. Many other Christian mystics have reported similar kinds of experiences.

I think that there is little doubt that all of us -- theists and skeptics alike -- would explain St. Teresa's experience of Christ at her side as a delusion if such experiences were absolutely unheard of in the Christian tradition.

The mystical literature is a mixed blessing, however, for the metaphysical realist. In one sense the written record corroborates St. Teresa's experience, but in another it falsifies, or at least complicates, it. The problem is that non-Christian mystics report occurrences that bear a strong psychological similarity to her experience, but seem to have a very different religious content. Thus, if we are to consider all of the relevant data we must also include the following.

e₆. Many non-Christian, and non-theistic, mystics report experiences that are psychologically similar, but theologically quite different.

Indeed, e₆ provides the context for the most important interpretive disagreement between contemporary scholars of mysticism.

Consider the following explanatory hypothesis which is stated very clearly in Stace's Mysticism and Philosophy.

[T]here is a clear unanimity of evidence from Christian, Islamic, Jewish, Mahayana Buddhist, and Hindu sources, also supported by the witness of the pagan mystic Plotinus, and the modern Englishman . . ., that there is a definite type of mystical experience, the same in all cultures.

That mystical experiences form a phenomenological, and perhaps metaphysical, natural kind has seemed obvious to many of the analysts who have approached their studies from a comparative, cultural, or religious perspective. Following Stace, we can refer to this position as the theory of the "universal core." The following hypothesis has come under sustained recent attack, but also continues to find able defenders.

t^*₃. There is a universal core to many cross-cultural mystical experiences. They are conceived, experienced, and responded to from within the particular cultural and religious heritage of the individual mystic.

A good number of contemporary philosophers and psychologists would be highly suspicious of both the theistic realist's account and that of the pluralist. These scholars would favor some sort of secular-naturalistic account. As we saw, even St. Teresa operating in a sixteenth century context was forced to seriously consider a naturalistic rival explanation of her experience.

t^*₁. She believed that Christ was at her side because she was suffering from some physical pathology.

Contemporary materialists would likely explain St. Teresa's experience, as well as those of most other mystics, in the following terms.

t^*₄ Mystical experiences are simply the conscious manifestation of complicated neurophysiological occurrences within the mystics' central nervous systems.

Such an explanatory strategy, though widely endorsed and initially plausible, proves to be surprisingly complicated to articulate and defend.

Secular naturalists emphasize certain features of St. Teresa's central nervous system. This will not, however, provide a completely satisfactory rival. Theistic defenders of t^*₀ can adopt a sophisticated position on the relationship between consciousness, in general, and neurophysiological occurrences. They can then argue that a neurophysiological account of St. Teresa's experience, is not a rival explanation, but a complementary one, articulated at a different explanatory level. After all, a neurophysiological account of my visual experience of my word-processor does not automatically count as a rival; it in no way suggests that this visual experience is an hallucination or a dream. Sophisticated versions of substance dualism are perfectly compatible with our most up to date neuroscience.

The neurophysiological explanation does not really address the question of the etiology of mystical experiences -- why was St. Teresa's central nervous system in an experience-of-Christ mode at that particular moment? Theistic realists believe that the interesting causal story is religious -- the actions of God are responsible. Secular naturalists seek an internal causal account in terms of brain chemistry, or patterns of neural firings. It is not clear that empirical research will settle this matter, though continued breakthroughs will inevitably strengthen the secular naturalist's position as we learn more about the underlying physiology of consciousness in general.

One looks in vain to contemporary cognitive science for detailed neurophysiological accounts of mysticism. This is hardly surprising. We are just at the beginning of the cognitive revolution. There are still huge empirical and methodological debates about consciousness and sensory experience in general. Such an admission may strike some readers as hand waving and a desperate attempt to avoid explanatory responsibility. It is not offered in that spirit. When knowledge of the mechanism of consciousness was in its true infancy, it was much easier for secular naturalists to propose physiological accounts. Recall the following from Huxley that is not altogether out of date.

 

[There is a] close similarity, in chemical composition, between mescaline and adrenalin. . . . [L]ysergic acid, an extremely potent hallucinogen derived from ergot, has a structural relationship to the others. . . . [A]drenochrome, which is a product of the decomposition of adrenalin, can produce the symptoms observed in mescaline intoxication. But adrenochrome probably occurs spontaneously in the human body. In other words, each of us may be capable of manufacturing a chemical, minute doses of which are known to cause profound changes in consciousness.

I am not in any way suggesting that such a view would find supporters in contemporary neuroscience, but I take it to be obvious how this kind of account could be fleshed out to provide a satisfactory, and genuinely rival, explanation of St. Teresa's experience. Presumably more up to date naturalistic accounts would stress neural networks, or perhaps the relationship between consciousness and memory.

I would argue that it is premature to commit ourselves to the best explanation. At this point in our investigation we are in possession of some highly relevant data. We need, however, more data. We will discuss some additional data in the chapters and appendices to follow. Even after some preliminary consideration of this additional data, many of you will still feel hesitant to commit yourselves to the single best explanation. This should not come as a surprise. We are dealing here, after all, with some of the deeps questions that the human mind has ever dealt with.