Exam 2 Flashcards
(34 cards)
- Each of the following is one of James’ four “marks” of mystical experience EXCEPT…
I
N
T
P
- Ineffability: Like states of feeling, descriptions of their quality are inadequate (at best).
- Noetic Quality: Like knowledge states, they are “illuminations, revelations, full of significance and importance.”
- Transiency: They are short-lived. But they can be remembered and recognized.
- Passivity: “The mystic feels as if his own will were in abeyance.”
2) In “Mysticism”, James claims each of the following about mystical experience EXCEPT…
[authority of mystical states]
1. mystical states…
- Mystical states are authoritative over the individual who has the experience
- Mystical states have no authority over individual who have not had such an experience
- Mystical states break down the authority of ordinary consciousness and sense knowledge. Such states offer hypotheses which others may ignore.
(maybe?) full awareness of consciousness in all degrees
3) According to James, the “more” with which we feel ourselves connected in religious experience is on its “hither side”…
The subconscious continuation of our conscious life.
4) According to James, a religion consists of…
The essence of religion primarily involves feeling and conduct. “The faith-state may hold a minimum of intellectual content.”
Religion = Faith state + creed
5) According to James, “over-beliefs” are necessary to proceed from mystical experience to religion. James identifies his own over-belief as…
Optimism… “God is real because he produces real effects [e.g., optimism].”
6) In “The Future of an Illusion”, when Freud considers the protective functions of civilization, he focuses primarily on the fact that a civilization…
The primary function is to protect us from nature (including human nature)
7) According to Freud, as a civilization develops science and the forces of nature lose their human traits, its gods retain each of the following functions EXCEPT…
- To even out the defects and evils of civilization
- To attend to the sufferings which men inflict on one another in their life together and
- To watch over the fulfilment of the precepts of civilization, which men obey so imperfectly.”
8) According to Freud, monotheism has the following advantage over polytheism…
“It had laid open to view the father who had all along been hidden behind every divine figure as its nucleus. Fundamentally this was a return to the historical [psychological] beginnings of the idea of God. Now that God was a single person, man’s relations to him could recover the intimacy and intensity of the child’s relation to his father.”
- Freud also comments about, roughly, how conceptions of God become too abstract to lose their function to resembling the protective father. [Dr. H. confirmed this is right.]
9) According to Freud, religious beliefs are clearly…
All religious doctrines are illusions and insusceptible of proof, some are so improbable we may compare them to delusions.
10) According to Freud, we can account for the strength of religious beliefs by recognizing that they are…
“…Fulfilments of the oldest, strongest and most urgent wishes of mankind. The secret of their strength lies in the strength of those wishes.”
11) According to Broad in “The Argument from Religious Experience”, the phenomenon of religious experience raises each of the following questions EXCEPT…
- What is the psychological analysis of religious experience?
- What are the genetic and causal conditions of religious experience?
- Assuming that religious experience exists, is it veridical?
12) Broad suggests that the general agreement found among mystics about the “common nucleus” of religious experience is (at least potentially) most like the agreement among…
“…we find a common nucleus combined with very great differences of detail. Of course the interpretations which they have put on their experiences are much more varied ·than the experiences themselves. It is obvious that the interpretations will depend in large measure on the traditional religious beliefs in which various mystics have been brought up. “
13) Broad suggests that we should rely upon the following general rule when we evaluate the claims mystics make on the basis of their experiences…
Treat cognitive claims as veridical unless there be some positive reason to think them delusive.
14) Reacting to what he calls a “plausible” Freudian-style view of how religious experiences might have first started from irrational fears, sexual impulses, and false beliefs about nature, Broad raises all of the following mitigating factors EXCEPT….
- Modern science had similarly humble origins
- Religion like science has been refined
- We accept doctrine of physics merely on the authority of those whom we have been taught to regard as experts.
- Like Einstein, Galileo, etc. there have also been great religious geniuses as well
15) Broad’s final conclusion about religious beliefs is that we don’t know that the conditions under which religious beliefs have arisen makes it reasonable to think that they are…
Especially likely to be delusive or misdirected
16) In Alston’s view, a belief-forming practice is “weakly normatively justified” for subject S provided that S…
Has no significant reasons for regarding it as unreliable.
17) Alston considers each of the following to be ways in which our usual practice of forming beliefs on the basis of perception [PP] might differ from the practice of forming Christian beliefs on the basis of religious experience [CP] EXCEPT…
- Within PP there are standard ways of checking the accuracy of any particular perceptual belief.
- By engaging in PP we can discover regularities in the behavior of the objects putatively observed, and on this basis we can to a certain extent effectively predict the course of events.
- Capacity for PP and practice of it is found universally among normal adult human beings.
- All normal adult human beings whatever their culture use basically the same conceptual scheme in conceptualizing (objectifying) their sense experience.
18) Alston’s main conclusion about PP and CP [regarding their normative justification] is that…
CP has the same epistemic status as PP (not 100% sure)
19) Alston replies to the objection that his defense of CP uses CP itself (and so engages in circular reasoning) by asserting that…
PP does the same
20) Alston’s view of the justificatory status of beliefs formed by CP would be most opposed by….
atheists
21) In “God and Evil” (taken from Hume’s Dialogues on Natural Religion), Philo is trying to show that Cleanthes’ method of arguing for the existence of God….
is wrong.
- cannot understand God on the model of a perfect human being
- one cannot infer the existence of a perfect, anthropomorphic God from observing nature
22) In Hume’s “God and Evil”, Philo argues (against Cleanthes) that…
● In addition to frequency, intensity, and duration, we must consider these things by calculating life’s total pleasure or pain (If health is more common than sickness; and pleasure more common than pain)
● Even if Cleanthes could prove there is more happiness than misery an unanswered question would remain: why there is any misery at all if God is perfect? (called the problem of evil)
● Even if evil’s existence could be proven to be compatible with God’s perfection, science would still be unable to prove that God exists.
● One cannot infer the existence of a perfect anthropomorphic God from observing nature.
● So one cannot understand God on the model of a perfect human being.
23) In Hume’s “God and Evil”, Cleanthes raises the following objection to one of Philo’s main assumptions…
Cleanthes objects to: (5) neither humans nor animals are happy and (2c) pain outweighs pleasure, Cleanthes states: “health is more common [more frequent] than sickness; pleasure than pain…”
24) According to Philo, a problem with Cleanthes’ approach is that even if he could prove that the existence of evil is compatible with God’s existence, he still would not have proven that…
Science would still be unable to prove that God exists.
