Abstract

Recently, a cohort of philosophers of religion have sought, through recourse to the extraordinary experiences of mystics, to defend the rationality of religious belief. My dissertation critically assesses this project. First, I portray experience as a response to stimuli, one which draws on an individual's background beliefs, expectations and values. Experience represents an individual's best explanation of an event. Secondly, I explicate the technical term, 'justification', in terms of reasons. Rather than linking justification solely to the relations among an individual's beliefs, I consider it a social judgement. We evaluate the rationality of a belief, not from any established criteria, but in light of epistemic values we share. We judge an experiential belief in terms of the "goodness" of the implicit explanation. I view our epistemic values as integral, with our ethical values, to our ideal of human flourishing. In important instances, we must defend our judgements, informed by our conception of eudaemonia, through public debate. Thirdly, I claim that the commitment to supernatural explanations implicit in the religious experiences employed to justify religious belief contradicts our historically conditioned ideal of human flourishing. For contrast I examine the mystical testimonies of Teresa of Avila, and try to isolate the explanations of experience available to her and chosen by her.