William James

Question 1

(267) ineffability?

Answer 1

transcends human language, ‘cant be imparted or transferred to others’

Question 2

(267) Noetic

Answer 2

new knowledge is discovered ‘illuminations’, ‘revelations’

• cognitive, epistemological
• gap between what you know and what you can say

Question 3

(267) Transiency

Answer 3

they don’t last very long

• just haunt you
• leaves you restless
• the feeling fades and you are left with a faint memory

Question 4

(267) passivity

Answer 4

completely unexpected

-no control over the experience

Question 5

(268-269) what is Jame’s point about passages of words or the effects of light in the context of mystical experiences?

Answer 5

trying to approach peoples experiences sympathetically and relate them to every day life.

• poetry can describe ordinary things but can move you in extraordinary ways
• inner messages, words are alive ‘fetch vistas of life continuous with our own’
• enlargement of perception
• deeper significance
• more polished

Question 6

(271-2) why does James think that the popularity of Alcohol is due to ‘power to stimulate mystical faculties of human nature’?

Answer 6

-bring things which are hidden in sobriety out to the surface
-sobriety discriminates and says no
-sobriety is incapsulating
= is it really insight or is it just an illusion
= why is illusion a problem
=the illusions don’t seem so distant from real life
= can just be an illusion, but it changes your life
=the fruits

Question 7

(271-2) our consciousness in a drunken state?

Answer 7

‘our same consciousness in an extraordinary degree’

-escapism from the authority of the mind

Question 8

(271-2) our consciousness in a drunken state?

Answer 8

‘our same consciousness in an extraordinary degree’

-escapism from the authority of the mind

Question 9

(272-273) what does James mean by ‘monastic insight’?

Answer 9

• revelation
• ‘the other in its various forms appears absorbed into one’
• ‘opposites are melted into unity’

Question 10

(279) how does J. Trevor answer the question ‘what do we say to those who don’t understand?’

Answer 10

other people need to hear justification but no matter the overthought you give your experience, no one will understand how real it felt.
-just have to live more intensely in your own life

Question 11

(278- 81) how do descriptions of mystical experiences strike you? as delusional or authentic?

Answer 11

• hard to believe if you have never experienced it
• feelings felt reading poetry or philosophy don’t empower me to feel the presence of something other I assign them to just a sensory experience.

Question 12

(281) what new subject does William James talk about here?

Answer 12

methodical cultivation - training in mystical insight e.g. yoga

Question 13

(281) what does ‘samadhi’ mean in yoga?

Answer 13

• a sense of super consciousness
• self consciousness perfected
• ‘overcome the obscurities of his lower nature sufficiently’

Question 14

(282) what does James mean by ‘pantheism’

Answer 14

• god and the universe are one

- the universe is God’s body

Question 15

what is a test for pure samadhi? (281)

Answer 15

a test of purity for outsiders to understand.

a test to see how the results of samadhi/ reaching a super consciousness is helpful for life.

Question 16

(283) what is the difference between knowing health and being healthy, what is the authors point of this distinction?

Answer 16

the difference between knowing what healthy is and experiencing being healthy. the difference between being told and experiencing.
=but by knowing something you can still get a sense of it through imagination

Question 17

(285) if ‘mystical truth exists for the individual who has the transport (i.e, mystical experience) but for no one else’ what are the implications for the philosophy of religion?

Answer 17

• is discussion of philosophy of religion limited to these people only
• mystical experience does not take the same form as philosophical discussion though. philosophical discussion is based on proposition and judgement mystical experience is subjective and at times cannot be discussed, how is this useful for philosophical discussion?

Question 18

(290) why does James reject a soully medical approach to mystic states?

Answer 18

medical observation is not deep enough, it is too surface level. concerned by matter not knowledge

Question 19

(294-5) do you agree that mysticism is the same across different religious traditions

Answer 19

if they are, what makes them all necessarily religious experiences, why do they need this attachment

Question 20

(282) what philosophical directions do mystical states lead to?

Answer 20

jolting out of everyday things a sense of what really matters- small to vast.

• tranquility
• optimism
• higher ‘yes’ function

Question 21

(295) why are there so many self contradictory phrases and paradoxical expressions in mystical writing?

Answer 21

they are not conceptual speech

Question 22

(297-98) what is James point the authority of mystic states over these who have them?

Answer 22

they are authoritative over you but could never be authoritative to anyone else.
= surely it is there choice whether they engage with the experience or not

Question 23

(300) one sentence which sums up Jame’s argument?

Answer 23

‘it is the rationalist critic who plays the part of denier in the controversy, and his denials have no strength, for the there can be no facts to which new meaning may not be truthfully added, provided the mind ascends to a more enveloping point of view’

Question 24

(301) how could you summarise Jame’s epistemology expressed in his concluding paragraph

Answer 24

we have to be sceptical about what we can prove