Deborah Harrell wrote:
> Perhaps I wasn't clear, but since no-one can get inside
> another's mind, no-one can be sure they are experiencing the
> exact same numinous event.
Erik Reuter <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> responded;
Yes, I know that. That is the problem and the point. Numinous
experience is all in the mind of one person, and cannot be
verified independently by others. Reliable knowledge, in
contrast, can be verified or falsified by others in a repeatable
experiment.
Erik, you are right, it is true that what goes on inside a mind cannot
be verified independently by others at this time. But that is not the
issue.
No one is arguing about unverifiable experiences. The question is
the cause of reported numinous experiences.
(Note that you or I could verify that reports occur. We could ask
bunches of people. I have done this directly on a small scale, which
is not very helpfult, and indirectly on a larger scale. I did this
indirectly by looking at reports by others who have asked bunches of
people. Of course, I first had to and did make a judgement about the
reliability of those making these indirect reports.)
As for cause: Deborah has hypothesized that something as yet unknown
outside the human body is what a person having a numinous experience
perceives.
More precisely, Deborah said
..., I think it's the manifestation of another sense (call it
sixth or seventh or spiritual if you like), which detects - albeit
imperfectly - a level of reality that we cannot currently describe
or measure, except in "soft" terms like metaphysical, higher
plane, spiritual, etherial, etc.
[Brin-l Digest, Vol 180, Issue 21; 18 Jul 2003]
Others have hypothesized that numinous experiences cause a person to
feel that they have had an undeniable experience caused by something
outside the human body, but that the mind is simply confusing inner
and outer experience, and that the body has this capability
intrinsically. (Put another way, the hypothesis is that having this
capability is in some ways similar to having the capability of
distinguishing green, unripened fruit from red, ripened fruit easily
by color, which most, but not all people have. Some, as we know, lack
this capability.) In addition, this second hypothesis includes the
notion that such a capability helped groups of symbol-making animals
survive in paleolithic times better than groups whose members lacked
this capability.
At the moment, to decide between these two hypothesizes, one can use
Occam's Razor: does an explanation that fits other already known
understandings of the world do a better job or a worse job than an
explanation that requires an additional, not yet known understanding
of the world?
--
Robert J. Chassell Rattlesnake Enterprises
http://www.rattlesnake.com GnuPG Key ID: 004B4AC8
http://www.teak.cc [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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