Abstract
Under ordinary circumstances, perceptual experience provides good grounds for belief. Some argue that religious experiences are unlike ordinary perception, and so do not justify the corresponding beliefs. Applying Alston’s doxastic practice approach to epistemology, we can see that the question comes down to whether some defeater or other is operative that removes the experience’s justificatory force.
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Notes
- 1.
This paragraph is a summary of the argument of Alston (1991).
- 2.
Whether the arguments are actually available to the other religions depends on whether those other religious practices are sufficiently coherent, among other things.
- 3.
Andrew Koehl makes this case persuasively (2005). On the way to making that case, he gives an admirably thorough survey of the literature on the topic.
- 4.
He makes other claims, too; I have listed here only the ones that I think have some bearing on the question.
- 5.
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Webb, M.O. (2015). The Justificatory Force of Religious Experience. In: A Comparative Doxastic-Practice Epistemology of Religious Experience. SpringerBriefs in Religious Studies, vol 2. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-09456-4_4
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