Abstract

Philosophical interest in mysticism is often limited to the question of whether mystic states can support a convincing argument for the existence of God, and many authors defend a negative answer by appealing to certain conventional generalizations about the character of such experiences. In this dissertation I develop an alternative approach, by starting with a detailed analysis of one major mystic, Saint John of the Cross , and using the results in a "retroductive" or "explanatory" inference to the conclusion that it is reasonable to regard contemplative consciousness as a cognitive mode of experience. Chapter One presents background information on John's life, writings, intellectual milieu, and influence. The second chapter examines his notion of the structure of the human person, and challenges the common view that the Sanjuanist mysticism is fundamentally anti-cognitive. In Chapter Three I outline his teaching on the stages of spiritual development, the range of contemplative experiences associated with each, and their close connection with psychological and moral maturation. Chapter Four organizes these findings into a partial list of facts to be accounted for in any "argument to the best explanation" of the mystical data, and challenges some popular theories about the "common features" of introvertive mystical states, especially those of James and Stace, maintaining instead that many of these experiences are truly theistic in their implications. In the fifth chapter I show that a "retroductive" defense of mysticism cannot be ruled out in advance, since the traditional philosophical objections to contemplative consciousness as a "way of knowing" do not conclusively disprove its cognitivity. In Chapter Six I describe the explanatory mode of inference and apply it to mystical phenomena, comparing the explanatory power of the hypothesis that contemplation is a cognitive mode of experience ) with various reductive accounts of mysticism; here I maintain that, given certain justified convictions about the mystical data, H provides as good an explanation of them as any alternative hypothesis it is reasonable to consider, and therefore that it is reasonable to accept H, and perhaps even to believe that contemplation involves awareness of God. Chapter Seven summarizes my conclusions