This paper explores the relationship between religious belief and religious experience, bringing out a role for episodic memory that has been overlooked in the epistemology of religion. I do so by considering two questions. The first, the “Psychological Question,” asks what psychological role religious experiences play in causally bringing about religious beliefs. The second, the “Reliability Question,” asks: for a given answer to the Psychological Question about how religious beliefs are formed, are those beliefs formed using generally truth-conducive cognitive mechanisms (...) or patterns of reasoning? I argue that the standard way of answering the Psychological Question overlooks the fact that religious beliefs are often formed via reflection on episodic memories of past religious experiences. Furthermore, recognizing this opens up room to make more meaningful progress on answering the Reliability Question. (shrink)

Several prominent philosophers, including A.J. Ayer and Derek Parfit, have offered the evidentiary requirements for believing human personality can reincarnate, and hence that Cartesian dualism is true. At least one philosopher, Robert Almeder, has argued that there are actual cases which satisfy these requirements. I argue in this paper that even if we grant the empirical data-a large concession-belief in reincarnation is still unjustified. The problem is that without a theoretical account of the alleged cases of reincarnation, the empirical evidence (...) alone does not license giving up materialist theories of the mind. (shrink)

It is often said that the ontological argument fails because it wrongly treats existence as a first-level property or predicate. This has proved a controversial claim, and efforts to evaluate it are complicated by the fact that the words ‘existence is not a property/predicate’ have been used by philosophers to make at least three different negative claims: (a) one about a first-level phenomenon possessed by objects like horses, stones, you and me; (b) another about the logical form of assertions of (...) existence; and (c) still another about a second-level phenomenon possessed by concepts when they are instantiated. I argue that only the last of these claims, originally voiced by Kant, is both plausible and relevant to the ontological argument. And I try to show that the relevance of the Kantian version comes from its providing the underlying justification for a different, and far less controversial, criticism of the ontological argument. (shrink)

It is widely held that there is a problem of talking about or otherwise representing things that not exist. But what exactly is this problem? This paper presents a formulation of the problem in terms of the conflict between the fact that there are truths about non-existent things and the fact that truths must be answerable to reality, how things are. Given this, the problem of singular negative existential statements is no longer the central or most difficult aspect of the (...) problem of non-existence, despite what some philosophers say. (shrink)

It’s not often that I get to feel like a spokesperson for empirical conservatism. But that happened recently when I was invited to give a talk at the 50th Annual Conference on Anomalous Phenomena sponsored by the International Fortean Organization (INFO). The occasion provided several healthy illustrations about what I suppose we can call boggle relativity. The conference was stimulating, challenging, and professionally run, and I was happy to meet quite a few very smart and pleasant attendees—among them, the SSE’s (...) treasurer John Reed, MD. In fact, I very much look forward to attending future INFO conferences. (shrink)

This paper presents two historical cases of remote viewing. The Icelandic medium Indridi Indridason described in Reykjavik in 1905, through a drop-in-communicator, a fire that was burning in Copenhagen. Emanuel Swedenborg described in Gothenburg in 1759 a fire that raged near his home in Stockholm. There are striking similarities between these cases which took place before radio or telephone communication existed between Reykjavik and Copenhagen, and between Gothenburg and Stockholm. The correctness of the descriptions was verified when news arrived in (...) Gothenburg and Reykjavik. Indridason’s communicator spoke a Copenhagener Danish, gave his name as Emil Jensen, and claimed to have been a manufacturer. He described a fire in a factory that was taking place during the sitting and said that it was brought under control before the sitting was over. Many persons witnessed these descriptions, and written accounts were deposited with the Governor of Gothenburg and the Bishop of Iceland. A Danish newspaper arriving in Reykjavik weeks later described a fire in a factory at Store Kongensgade. Indridason’s researchers did not attempt to verify Emil Jensen’s identity. Search in Danish archives a century later identified an Emil Jensen, a manufacturer, who lived most of his life on Store Kongensgade. (shrink)

This slender and interesting volume by three Dutch philosophers examines the manner in which eight prominent philosophers dealt with ostensibly paranormal experiences arising both spontaneously and also as the result of hypnosis. Hans Gerding covers both Immanuel Kant and Arthur Schopenhauer; Rico Sneller discusses Friedrich Joseph Schelling, Hans Driesch, and Gabriel Marcel; and Hein van Dongen considers William James, Henri Bergson, and Jacques Derrida. My guess is that JSE readers might already know about Kant’s apparent ambivalence (or perhaps just change (...) of heart) about Swedenborg’s vision of a Stockholm fire (and his other reported experiences), as well as William James’s investigations of mental mediumship (Mrs. Piper in particular) and his experiments with altered states. Nevertheless, I expect they will find much that they didn’t already know in those chapters, as well as in the others of course. (shrink)

This article provides a critical examination of a controversial issue that has theoretical and practical importance to a broad range of academic disciplines: Are religious experiences localized within the brain? Research into the neuroscience of religious experiences is reviewed and conceptual and methodological challenges accompanying the neurotheology project of localizing religious experiences within the brain are discussed. An alternative theory to current reductive and mechanistic explanations of observed mind–brain correlations is proposed — a mediation theory of cerebral action — that (...) has the potential for addressing what Chalmers called the “hard problem” of consciousness. (shrink)