Rainbow of Experiences, Critical Trust, and God: A Defense of Holistic Empiricism PDF
Preview Rainbow of Experiences, Critical Trust, and God: A Defense of Holistic Empiricism
n o z f ÿ THE RAINBOW OF EXPERIENCES, c c ■ CRITICAL TRUST, AND GOD A Defense of Holistic Empiricism œ H C □ KAI-MAN KWAN m cn Ό I r O Γ ’ ■<· cn ■.»si* "■.'·'■*■ < # 0 Ό ■ïW?). 1 -< u m 52 o Λ continu■um The Rainbow of Experiences, Critical Trust, and God Continuum Studies in Philosophy of Religion Series Editor: Stewart Goetz Editorial Board: Thomas Flint, Robert Koons, Alexander Pruss, Charles Taliaferro, Roger Trigg, David Widerker, Mark Wynn Freedom, Teleology, and Evil by Stewart Goetz Image in Mind: Theism, Naturalism, and the Imagination by Charles Taliaferro and Jil Evans Actuality, Possibility, and Worlds Alexander R. Pruss Thinking Through Feeling: God, Emotion and Passihility (forthcoming) by Anastasia Phillippa Scrutton God's Final Victory: A Comparative Philosophical Case for Universalism (forthcoming) by John Kronen and Eric Rcitan Philosophy and the Christian Worldview: Analysis, Assessment and Development (forthcoming) edited by David Werther and Mark D. Linville The Moral Argument (forthcoming) by Paul Copan and Mark D. Linville Goodness, God and Evil (forthcoming) by David E. Alexander Well-Being and Theism: Linking Ethics to God (forthcoming) by William A. Lauinger Free Will in Philosophical Theology (forthcoming) by Kevin Timpe The Rainbow of Experiences, Critical Trust, and God A Defense o f Holistic Empiricism Kai-man Kwan A continuum Continuum International Publishing Group Inc 80 Maiden Lane, New York, NY 10038 The Tower Building, 11 York Road, London SEI 7NX www.continuumbooks.com © 2011 Kai-man Kwan All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the permission of the publishers. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data ISBN-13: 9781441174017 (hardback) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Kwan, Kai-man. The rainbow of experiences, critical trust, and God : a defense of holistic empiricism / Kai-man Kwan. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and indexes. ISBN-13: 978-1-4411-7401-7 (hardcover : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 1-4411-7401-X (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. God— Proof, Empirical. 2. Swinburne, Richard. 3. Trust. I. Title. BL473.K93 2011 212'.13—dc23 2011019701 Typeset by Newgen Imaging Systems Pvt. Ltd., Chennai, India Printed in the United States of America C ontents Foreword vii Acknowledgments ix Abbreviations x Introduction 1 Part A: God, Critical Trust, and Holistic Empiricism 3 1 Contemporary Resurgence of the Argument from Religious Experience 5 2 Ludwig Wittgenstein and the Rainbow of Experiences 26 3 Toward Holistic Empiricism 40 4 The Critical Trust Approach 62 5 A Post-Foundationalist Argument from Religious Experience 85 6 Critique of Narrow Empiricism 98 7 Arguments for the Principle of Critical Trust 107 8 The Critical Trust Approach and Other Epistemologies 124 Part B: Critical Trust, the Rainbow of Experiences, and God 135 9 Experience of the Natural World, Critical Trust, and God 137 10 Experience of Self, Critical Trust, and God 162 11 Existential Experience, Critical Trust, and God 172 12 Interpersonal Experience, Critical Trust, and God 190 13 Moral Experience, Critical Trust, and God 208 14 Aesthetic Experience, Critical Trust, and God 227 15 Intellectual Experience, Critical Trust, and God 240 16 Religious Experience, Critical Trust, and God 252 17 Theistic Experience, Critical Trust, and God 267 VI Contents 18 The Beauty of the Rainbow of Experiences and the Consilience of Theism 284 Conclusion 292 Notes 293 Bibliography 297 Subject Index 311 Name Index 313 Forew ord Richard Swinburne “All knowledge comes from experience.” We come to know what is happen ing around us by what we hear, see, and touch, and this experience of the world is mediated by visual, auditory, and tactual sensations. But merely coming to know that I have had certain sensations—for example, the sensa tion of a blue shape passing across my visual field—will not provide me with very much useful information about the world. I need to know for certain what constituted the shape. I trust my senses when it seems to me that what I am observing, via the shape in my visual field, is a blue car passing the window. We trust our senses and our memories about what we did and heard yesterday; and we trust other people when they tell us what they have seen and heard. All our knowledge of history and geography comes from what others have told us or written what they have seen or heard. Scientists acquire their knowledge about how the world works by making observa tions, especially from the results of experiments, and find the best theory to explain them. But each individual scientist relies largely for his data on what others report from their observations. Moreover, scientists trust their intu itions that the theory which satisfies their normal criteria for being the best theory will yield true predictions. As nonscientists we are entirely dependent on what they tell us. So even for information about very ordinary physical events, we have to place a lot of trust in others. Furthermore, since we think that most of our beliefs about ordinary physical events are correct, we must think that we are in general right to trust our senses, our memories, and what scientists and others tell us. Yet we also think that our sources of infor mation are not perfectly reliable; we check them against each other. What one person tells us that they saw at a certain place and time may be contra dicted by what other people tell us that they saw at that place and time; and then we justifiably doubt what the first person told us. And so generally our trust in our sources is and ought to be critical trust. Kai-Man Kwan argues that wre have no good reason for confining this principle of “critical trust” to our sources of information about ordinary physical events. We seem to be aware of ourselves as making free choices of deep significance, of other people as beings who arc more than their bod ies, of the compelling nature of morality, of the beauty of nature and works of art, and of the timeless truths of logic and mathematics. We should, he argues, trust our intuitions also in these respects— in the absence of coun terevidence. It is to be expected, Kai-Man Kwan argues, that the wrorld VIII Foreword should contain the realities which I have just set out, and that we should be aware of them—if there is a God, but not otherwise. Finally many of us have at particular moments or for long periods an explicitly religious experi ence, which often comes as an awareness of God. To this awareness also we should give critical trust. Kai-Man Kwan argues that all the major types of human experience fit together in providing us with a reasonable prima facie case for the existence of God. The aigumcnt relating to God “f 10111 religious experience” is often pre sented as an argument from a very peculiar type of experience which reli gious people have, quite unlike our other experiences. This book is unique in describing so comprehensively, and within one volume the data, the many different kinds of related human experience, data often hard to describe and so easy to neglect. It thus locates the “argument from religious experience” within a rich and deep background, which brings it to life and makes it much more plausible. I am very happy to commend this wide-ranging book, to what I hope will be a wide-ranging public. Acknow ledgm ents This book project began with my PhD research in Oxford under the super vision of Richard Swinburne over 20 years ago. His excellent scholarship has always been my model, and his patient supervision and enlightening criticisms have laid down the foundation of my work in analytic philosophy. The debt I owe him should be obvious in this book. I am also grateful to Charles Taliaferro, who was one of the first readers of my PhD dissertation. His constant encouragement has been a great help to me. Last, but not least, I have to thank my lovely wife, Wendy. Especially during the few months I concentrated on the writing of this book, her unfailing support and loving patience were just remarkable. I dedicate this book to her. Of course, it goes without saying that all the faults are mine.
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