The Epistemology of Religious Experience

by Keith E. Yandell

Overview

This book addresses a fundamental question in the philosophy of religion. Can religious experience provide evidence for religious belief? If so, how? Keith Yandell argues against the notion that religious experience is ineffable, while advocating the view that strong numinous experience provides some evidence that God exists. An attractive feature of the book is that it does not confine its attention to any one religious cultural tradition, but tracks the nature of religious experience across different traditions in both the East and the West.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780521374262
Publisher:	Cambridge University Press
Publication date:	02/26/1993
Pages:	384
Product dimensions:	6.26(w) x 9.33(h) x 0.98(d)

Table of Contents

Introduction: is our task impossible or impolite?; Part I. The Experimental Data: 1. Religious experience, 'East' and 'West'; Some basic epistemological concepts; Part II. The Challenge from Ineffability: 3. The outlines of ineffability; ineffability relative to particular languages; 5. Reasons in ineffability's favour; Part III. The Social Science Challenge: 6. Nonepistemic explanation of belief; 7. Non-religious explanation of religious belief; Part IV. The Religious Challenge: 8. Self-authentication and verification; 9. Religious practices and experimential confirmation; Part V. The Argument from Religious Experience: 10. The argument in twentieth-century philosophy; 11. The principle of experimential evidence; 12. The argument triumphant; Part VI. Enlightenment and Conceptual Experience: 13. Are enlightenment experiences evidence for religious beliefs? 14. Conceptual experience and religious belief.

Editorial Reviews

"This is a meticulous, thoughtful, and progressive analysis and defense of the central question: Does religious experience provide evidence for religious belief?" Michael Pomedli, Review of Metaphysics

"This is a meticulous, thoughtful, and progressive analysis and defense of the central question: Does religious experience provide evidence for religious belief?" Michael Pomedli, Review of Metaphysics

" . . .this is a book which breaks new ground in the field, as well as putting some familiar points in a new context. It is to be warmly welcomed." —Mark Wynn, International Philosophical Quarterly

From the Publisher