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The
Problem of Induction as Pseudo-Problematic:
Mysticism
as Metalogical
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Within the mystical
experience itself we can no more prescind from the problem associated
with the notion of causality than from any other state of human
affairs. In other words, mystical experience is no more exempt from
logical problematics – simply because it deals with the individual in
relation to the Absolute – than any other type of experience, and any
epistemological attempt to render this account coherent must sooner or
later come to terms with the Problem of Induction.
Let us first,
however, be clear about the problem before we begin to address it. The
sequence of events within which we are accustomed to discern any
causal relation, such that the effect perceived is construed to
be in necessary relation to a perceived cause
– which is to say as invested with the same type of logical
cogency that obtains between premises and conclusions – essentially
result from what David Hume in his Enquiry Concerning Human
Understanding had called a “customary conjunction”, a kind of
psychological reflex conditioned by the perceived regular succession of
contiguous events. The implications of this type of putative association
are profound, and critical to our examination of the concatenation of
events we find occurring within the mystical experience.
Let
us be more to the point. With no disconfirming instance occurring within
our experience of any sequence of events that appear to instantiate a
regular succession, we interpret what are essentially two separate and
unrelated events – or events related only through observation – as causally
conjoined and therefore necessarily related. A simple analogy
will, I think, suffice. Suppose that each time I flip on the light in my
study, a car is heard to backfire somewhere in the street. The
coincidence at first strikes me as odd …
but I find it recurring again and again, that is to say, without
exception. Further suppose that, beginning to suspect some causal
relation between these two otherwise completely unrelated events, I
begin to consciously examine this phenomenon by turning the switch on
and off at both regular and irregular intervals – and each time,
without failure, a car is heard to backfire. It is extremely likely at
this point that I will posit what I interpret to be a causal
connection to exist between the two, even though I find myself utterly
unable to discover the nature of this apparent, but elusive, nexus
between two otherwise discrete and unrelated events – if indeed there
is one to be discovered at all – and we have no warrant, at least none
served by logic, to believe that there is. Even one disconfirming
instance will suffice to disabuse me of this notion, but none is
foreseeably forthcoming. In other words, it is no less the case in
ordinary states of affair, than it is in mysticism, that we cannot state
a priori and therefore with apodictic certainty what course of
events will follow those which precede them.1
The implications of
this assertion, together with the problematics inherent in it, have a
direct and significant bearing upon mystical epistemology. While we are
unable to say, in any event, what a particular experience will be,
especially as it pertains to union with the Uncreated Absolute–
whatever it can be, it cannot be temporal, for this
possibility has been categorically eliminated by the via negativa
as a condition to whatever type of experience will ensue,
although we cannot positively say what this type of experience
will be. One cannot, for example, experience participative union
with the Timeless and Eternal God without experiencing the timelessness
and eternity of God in that union which transcends time. And this is to
say that the negative logic of the via negativa
invests certain types of experiences subsequent to union with a negative
necessity. In a sense, while it cannot prescribe certain
experiences, it proscribes others. It informs the nature of
subsequent experiences as no positive principle can. As David Hume had
correctly pointed out, our experiences subsequent to a given event may
indeed always be otherwise – but not when the conditions
informing such experience, that is to say, as prerequisite to the
possibility of that experience, preclude some clearly defined and
distinguishable phenomena from it. In this sense, it is very much
analogous, from a purely negative perspective, to the argument that Kant
articulates in his attempt to answer essentially the same the question
but within a positive context: “How are a priori synthetic
judgments possible?”; a question to which he first formulates his
answer in terms of the Transcendental Aesthetic, the principal
features of which are what he calls the “two pure forms of
sensible intuition serving as principles of a priori knowledge,
namely space and time.”
2
These Kant saw as necessary
features of any possible experience, and therefore could be posited a
priori of every conceivable experience. While we cannot explore
Kant’s argument in depth, a brief aside may prove helpful in
illustrating our own point.
Mystical
Transcendence and Transcendental Aesthetics
For Kant, every
possible experience is necessarily invested with temporal and
spatial aspects which he describes as the two forms of sensible
intuition that are the a priori , the necessary, conditions of
all appearances; time as universal to every intuition, and space
as relative to every outer intuition. Every possible percept,
every conceivable concept, Kant argues, is not just invested, but necessarily
invested with at least one of these two forms
of sensible intuition precisely because they are what he calls the
“subjective conditions” of sensibility: they are the only way that
we can apprehend data given our subjective constitution as such, in
other words, given the inherent epistemological apparatus with which we
have been constitutionally endowed by nature. In effect, the data
delivered by sensibility acquire these spatio-temporal aspects precisely
because our subjective constitution invests them with these features in
order to make them available to us. As a result, we can state a
priori that all possible experiences will be spatio-temporal in
nature because space and time are the conditions under which
alone data may be received given our unique subjective apparatus which
synthesizes data through the forms of space and time through which alone
they subsequently become intelligible to us. In the words of Kant, they
are the very “condition of the possibility of appearances.”
3
And this, in effect,
is how synthetic a priori judgments are possible. Within the
terms outlined by Kant in the Transcendental Aesthetic, we can
say, a priori (that is to say, with certainty) that the nature of
any possible experience – even without being able to say what
that experience will be – will at least be temporal or spatial, or
both.
The resulting
problem – the penalty, if you will – involved in acquiring this type
of certitude of course, is that we subsequently acquire knowledge of
what are essentially appearances, or phenomena, and not what Kant
calls the nouemna, the objective realities concealed behind the
forms of space and time; forms, we had seen, imposed upon the noumena
of subjective necessity. For Kant, then, whatever our experiences may
not be, the matter is that Kant’s thesis, as we can now see, is
essentially diametric to that of St. John. But where Kant had asked the
question “how are a priori synthetic judgments possible?”, or
in other words, how does necessity – and therefore, in light of
the trenchant objections of skepticism, certainty – not simply obtain
relative to our experiences of the natural order, but deductively
follow from epistemological considerations deriving from man’s
subjective constitution as such – St. John now asks,
at least implicitly, how are epistemological considerations necessarily
related to metaphysics in the mystical experience, such that the
conclusions drawn by mystics about states subsequently to be
experienced, not just follow, but deductively follow from
previously defined mystical premises? In other words, how are the
mystic’s epistemological presuppositions necessarily related to
claims about metaphysical realities encountered in the mystical
experience – so that the mystic’s purely negative claim, for
example, concerning the ineffability of this experience, is validated?
In short, are these claims merely analytical propositions that necessarily
follow from epistemological premises to which no metaphysical reality
necessarily corresponds– or do these premises themselves derive of
necessity from the metaphysical features outlined by St. John? In a
word, does, indeed, deductive certainty obtain – and if so,
what does it say about the nature of the mystical experience that St.
John describes?
To begin to answer
this question, we must once again turn to the most fundamental
epistemological feature deriving from the via negativa itself,
namely that, unlike a positive or prescriptive principle which purports
to eliminate an infinitude of other possible features or elements in the
act of positing one, the via negativa does not dictate
that certain types of experience will follow – to the exclusion
of all other possible types of experience – but that certain clearly
defined types of experience will not follow – and will not
follow of necessity given the conditions under which alone these
experiences may occur; conditions themselves dictated by the via
negativa acting in conformity with the metaphysical parameters to
which it is applied. In other words, the via negativa, not merely
as a negative logical principle, but as a conditioning factor – a
presupposition – of certain types of experience, invests each movement
in the progress to mystical union with a deductive necessity relative to
the type of experience that it will not be. We can apodictically
assert that certain experiences will not be of such and such a nature
simply because these types of experience are otherwise unavailable
except through the via
negativa
which
not simply abolishes ontological incommensurability, but in so doing
establishes an epistemological correspondence grounded in the
negativity of this metaphysical logic such that statements concerning
any subsequent experience whatever will not simply be true, but be necessarily
true. And this necessity clearly does not derive merely from relations
obtaining between logical propositions, but from relations that obtain
between ontological realities. That two of the terms negated by this
negative principle of metaphysical logic, then, are precisely those
terms which Kant posits as necessary to our apprehension of natural
phenomena (to which Kant alone confines himself as the only legitimate
province of reason) – space and time – is no coincidence.
In this regard, it
turns out, St. John is in substantial agreement with Kant relative to
the limitations of reason. But St. John would continue on where Kant
defaulted, by appealing to knowledge not acquired through reason and
relative to experiences that are not sensuously endowed. By a
continuation of this inexorable logic, the descriptive utterances of the
mystics are understood to deductively follow as so many conclusions from
– if you will, consequences of – premises contained within the via
negativa itself; for example, that certain experiences are
unavailable except under certain clearly specified conditions, and that
these conditions determine a priori and deductively that only
such and such experiences can possibly follow. And it is precisely this
type of deductive certainty relative to this unique type of experience
which, I suggest, strongly corroborates the authenticity of the
mystic’s claim to a type of experience that is, at the same time, also
validated by the demonstrable coherence of what he utters. Nor must we
think that the type of certainty that obtains between the mystic and his
experiences in any way compromises the acknowledged autonomy of God, for
as we had seen, the via negativa does not necessitate that
a particular experience follow from the mystical protocol – merely
that should an experience follow (solely contingent upon the will
of
God), it will in fact be invested with certain negative features
according to the inexorable logic of mysticism.
The via negativa,
then, is not simply a practical propadeutic to, but in fact is the
logic of mysticism. But what are we to make of the via negativa
itself? How are we to establish the validity of this negative principle
of applied logic – not merely in its negative, logical function which,
as we had seen, is essentially an existential application of the law of
the excluded middle, or the principle of non-contradiction–but
relative to the metaphysical assumptions in which we see it exercised by
St. John in particular, and, for that matter, mystics in general? And
our answer to this, of course, involves the entire metaphysical
infrastructure of mysticism. While, from a purely phenomenological
perspective, the via negativa presupposes the existence of the
Absolute, the infinite, the eternal, etc., it is nevertheless a
presupposition held to be verified in the mystical experience – which
in turn validates the via negativa as corresponding to, if not a
metaphysical reality, then at least a coherent claim to a perceived
reality. In a word, there is an undeniable correspondence between the
metaphysics and the experience – and while we may argue from the
premises implied in the metaphysics to conclusions drawn from these
premises – that is to say, find the conclusions to be implied in the
premises and therefore deducible from them, we cannot argue from
premises to experiences. And the existence of this type of
correspondence between the premises implied in the metaphysics and the
experience itself, I suggest, strongly supports the authenticity of the
mystic’s claim.
The reality which
the metaphysics purports to describe, and the reality actually
encountered by the mystic, correspond too exactly and too consistently
to be considered less than strongly evidential. And this, in turn,
brings us to a clearly related issue that will be examined in greater
detail later on but which at the moment is extremely pertinent to
the present inquiry: if experience substantiates the negative claims
embodied in the via negativa, then this means that not only are
statements about certain types of mystical experience logically and
metaphysically consistent with the principles from which they
purportedly derive, but that such statements deriving from these
principles are in fact empirically substantiated in experience. The
metaphysics of mysticism, then, is at least logically consistent. But
what is more, its strictly logical claims are existentially instantiated
in the mystical experience itself – which is to say that the
principles correspond to realities. And unless this claim is
discredited, the mystic is able to offer the skeptic at least two
complementary credentials requisite to any science: correspondence with
reason and compatibility with fact. Of course, the skeptic will demand
much more of the mystic in the way of complete accountability, but, as
we shall find, no more than the mystic would require of the skeptic in
the demand for equal accountability.
Three arguments,
then, are essentially brought to bear upon the credibility of the
mystical experience. It is one thing to state from a metaphysics that
some dimension of reality exists qua rational; in other words, to
conclude to some aspect of reality from purely rational premises. It is
quite another thing to say that such a dimension has empirical reality.
But what is more, it is something else altogether to find that a clear,
coherent, correspondence exists, is demonstrable, between what are
essentially rational premises and empirical conclusions. It is not
merely to say, as in the first case, that the rational is real, but in
light of the latter two cases, that the real is rational. In most
sciences, for example, the empirical verification of a rationally
consistent hypothesis suffices to at least conditionally validate the
hypothesis as purporting to say something authentic about
reality, and inasmuch as it does, it is held to have made a coherent
claim upon reality. In other words, in light of the confirmation
of the hypothesis, warrant is derived to make certain statements about,
to predicate certain things of, reality in a way that is both rationally
and empirically consistent. In short, the correspondence between the
hypothesis
and the empirical evidence is of such a nature as to be mutually
corroborative, and where this corroboration occurs we are generally
agreed that sufficient evidence exists to allow our claim of making a
meaningful statement about some aspect of what is real. But what is
more, in many cases certain aspects of the reality affirmed to exist by
the physical sciences are characteristically unavailable except through
an extremely sophisticated procedural protocol coupled with equally
sophisticated technical apparatus. These aspects are not only typically
beyond normal empirical acquaintance, but cannot, moreover, be
apprehended unaided by artificial technology – and even when so
apprehended exhibit such disproportion to ordinary perception as to
appear to constitute something altogether different. It is not that the
reality itself has changed or proven illusory – it is that the level
of perception has changed. And this is to say that while the methods
of attaining to certain ordinarily undisclosed aspects of reality are
quite different between the mystic and the scientist, the results
are strikingly similar. Too similar, in fact, to be summarily dismissed.
The
Model of Science: a Reluctant Analogy
So let us carry the
argument further. The reality which science purports to disclose to us
is, for all practical purposes, intelligible, coherent, only to those
who have submitted themselves to exacting and rigorous programs in the
physical sciences covering an abstract spectrum ranging from integral
calculus to quantum theory propadeutic both to gaining access to, and to
meaningfully interpreting, this otherwise and ordinarily undisclosed
dimension of physical reality. We may even pursue the point further and
say that these aspects of reality at which they arrive are typically
unavailable to the ordinary man inasmuch as he lacks the basic aptitude
requisite to the type of extremely abstract thought requisite to these
disciplines. This is not intellectual arrogance – it is simply a
candid assessment that could be equally turned upon the point of
artistic ability. Nor am I
persuaded that a specific aptitude is a democratic endowment that can be
cultivated through education and that, therefore, all men are latently
Heisenburgs or Pascals given the proper tutelage. But neither am I
implying that there is a mystical aptitude in the way that there are
other clear aptitudes within individuals for the arts or sciences. I am
simply suggesting that certain dimensions of reality are no more
democratically accessible through science than through mysticism. Our
basic distrust of this argument, I think, stems from our inclination to
believe that, in the case of science, while we ourselves are unable to
enter into its mysteries, other men, better able than us, are, and
therefore can confirm the realities – described by others – which we
ourselves cannot.. But in the end this is either a restatement of the
argument, or a deferment of the conclusion. In any case, the layman by
and large trusts to the authenticity of the reality described by
scientific specialists; specialists who, as we have said, had undergone
long, arduous years of training in order to gain access to, and to
coherently interpret, dimensions of reality available exclusively
through special equipment presumed to authentically disclose elements of
reality that in turn are interpretable only in terms of the most
abstruse and recondite hypotheses. There is much more to the objection
of science than this, but for the moment the analogy, I think, between
mysticism and science is fairly obvious. The realities, then, defined by
Heisenburg and St. John are in this respect equally opaque to the
uninitiated.
Considered from
this perspective, then, metaphysics is a statement about the ultimate
nature of reality much in the way that physics is a statement about the
ultimate nature of reality – and these essentially are not so much
competing statements as complementary insights. It is not that there is
a conflict about what constitutes the nature of ultimate reality
– for this issue is entirely outside the speculative interest and
competence of physics – as much as a divergence concerning what is ultimate
in the nature of reality, and we arrive at divergent, even
complementary, but not intrinsically conflicting answers
to this question precisely because the one, physics, delimits the scope
of its inquiry and establishes the limits of its competence relative to
matter considered as the ultimate constituent of physical reality
– a claim with which the mystic would not quarrel within its
recognized and legitimate province – where, on the other hand, metaphysics
resumes where physics leaves off and sees not the being of matter, but
being as such, together with the relations obtaining between modes of
being, as the ultimate nature of reality; a reality that clearly does
not preclude physical being, but which is nevertheless not constrained
solely, or even principally to it. In a real sense, the one appeals to
that from which the other essentially prescinds inasmuch as neither, in
and of themselves, purport to provide a universal and exhaustive
schematic of reality in toto, but only a general understanding of
the principles underlying it. On the one hand, it would be both
unproductive and fatuous to argue that only what is sensible is real,
for this would leave a good deal more than pure mathematics and formal
logic out in the cold. Or that states-of-mind alone are real – a
statement neither entirely congenial to, nor likely to be endorsed by,
mystic and physicist alike. Nor yet as the Platonists and Neoplatonists
would contend that reality is quintessentially suprasensuous and that
our empirical acquaintances are either entirely illusory or at best only
impoverished representations of a sensibly inaccessible reality. St.
John no less than the physicist would find each of these three
alternatives unsatisfactory, and for reasons remarkably similar; reasons
pointing to more than a casual correspondence between theory and fact,
metaphysics and reality, which in turn strongly suggests that
authenticity, in fact, is the copula between the two.
Our question then
becomes this. If the logic and the metaphysics of mysticism rationally
and consistently explain the mechanics of the mystical experience and,
in effect, account for uniform and significant features of that
experience – which as such has an empirical basis – then on what
grounds are we to reject the mystical experience as non-veridical? The
objections to which we have adverted – its characteristic
unavailability to the
majority of men, the unintelligibility of its utterances to the
uninitiated or to layman, the lengthy and rigorous propadeutics required
to have access to ordinarily undisclosed dimensions of reality, its
inability to be comprehended except by an apparently select few –
without exception equally apply to science. And while it may be argued
that one scientist can confirm the observations of another, we
may equally argue on these very same terms that one mystic can confirm
the experiences of another. And this is to say that the notion of personal
testimony is a significant feature in both accounts. In short, it is
very difficult to understand how the mystical experience is to be
rejected offhand without at once rejecting not simply some extremely
significant features of the scientific protocol, but science itself as
purporting to both veridically and meaningfully convey the physical
aspects of reality to us. And this really places us in a skeptical
posture that few of us would choose to assume.
This is not to say,
of course, that very clear differences do not exist between science and
mysticism, but it nevertheless remains that the notion of credibility as
it pertains to both accounts is too similar to be glossed over or simply
ignored. And while we may be inclined to see reason as superordinate to
science as a more comprehensive principle beneath which scientific
theory is subsumed – and therefore more clearly evident within, and
more confirmatory of, science than mysticism – some philosophical
retrospect, I suggest, offers another and quite different perspective on
the matter. In fact, the notion of reason, or better yet, specific
features of the type of deductive reasoning from which a notion of
necessity follows are, I suggest, much more strongly supported by the
mystical account than by science, and for this simple reason: science is
essentially unable to extricate itself from the problem of induction. It
cannot forge, because it cannot discover, the vinculum that binds
effects to putative causes. It cannot argue with the type of certainty
that is apodictic, or implies necessity, that, for example, what so far has
been the case relative to specific observations, will in fact
continue to be the case; that given
identical circumstances, the implementation of a specific hypothesis
will necessarily yield identical results: in short, that the future will
conform to the past.
Ex-Huming
Hume
Let us assume that B
has always – that is to say, historically – followed, accompanied,
every observed instance of A. If we are then asked to justify our
expectation that the next occurrence of A will be accompanied by
the occurrence of B we will very likely say something like the
following: “every time, without exception, that I have observed A,
it has been accompanied by B, and I have never known of an
instance of B that was not preceded by the occurrence of A:
therefore A and B are so consistently, so uniformly
conjoined that the occurrence of A is understood not simply as
antecedent to B but necessarily antecedent to B.
There is an observable sequence of uniform events to which no
disqualifying instance can be appealed, so A therefore is the
cause of B; there is, then, a necessary connection between A
and B that can therefore be scientifically legislated as a
(physical) law which admits of no exceptions.” And this, of course, is
quite a subreptive leap from a history of a uniform sequence of
events, to the necessity of the continuing uniformity of this
sequence. And in the end, the justification of this argument will always
be circular: it will always appeal to experience which will only
disclose the sequence of observed events – but not the necessity
presumed within them. In other words, there is no discoverable reason
why B, and not C or Y, should follow an instance of
A – it is simply the case that B, in our experience,
always has. Now, of course we can argue, as indeed Russell has
4,
that the discovery of uniformities alone, to which no disqualifying
instances have thus far been observed, suffices for the rehabilitation
of science through extreme probabilities that are quite nearly
tantamount to certainty, and that this is really the best that we can
hope for since nothing whatever in the way of necessity binds what we
construe as effects to events we interpret as causes.
Now, the
implications of this argument extend well beyond science and I think,
relative to our own position, it will be necessary to examine
Russell’s objection more closely, for it rather neatly summarizes the
objection from skepticism in general. Russell essentially argues 5 along with Hume that
our belief in causation results merely from the consistency, regularity,
and uniformity of observed events. This much, I think, we are fairly
clear about. But the interesting question relative to this line of
reasoning is simply this: what are Russell’s grounds for stating that
uniform events cause our belief in causation? Is it that hitherto
uniform events have always caused our belief in causes? And who is to
say that tomorrow these same uniformities will not cause our
belief in causes, as they have in the past? To advert back to experience
is to reiterate the very argument which Hume and Russell have
discredited. And this is to say that if the premises upon which the
argument is constructed are not true, then neither is the conclusion. If
we consistently hold that we cannot argue from causes to effects
except inductively, then the grounds upon which we make this statement
today – our experience of uniformity in events is the cause of our
belief in causes – may not (do not necessarily) hold true for
tomorrow. If nothing in the way of necessity binds effects to
causes, in either event the result is the same: the discreditation of
the notion of causality both as it applies to events observed among
phenomena, and as it pertains to the construction of the argument by
which the notion of causality has been discredited. If this argument is
valid, then Russell is correct in stating that we can achieve no more
than probabilities. But by the very argument itself Russell cannot argue
to this conclusion consistently from his premises. If, then, we
have grounds for neither necessity nor probability, we have no grounds
for either claims to knowledge or skepticism. Both are equally
discredited.
If, on the other
hand, this argument is not valid, if this line of reasoning is not
sound, then either the premises or the conclusion, or both, are false.
And I suggest that the premises are false while the conclusion
remains true for this reason: Russell cannot explain the
problem with believing in causes without appealing to a cause (of the
problem). In other words, he argues against causes by using
causes. And this really is to say that we cannot talk about the
problem without invoking causes – and this would suggest that the notion
of causality is necessary to any discourse on causality. In other words,
even if, as Russell argues, we cannot discover it in events – we
cannot dispense with it in discourse. And that with which we cannot
dispense, we understand to be necessary – it is what we mean by
necessary. The relation, moreover, between my expectations and certain
uniform events cannot simply be a matter of inference: we do not infer
that uniform events cause our belief – our belief is a direct result
of, in other words is causally related to, these events. It is
not the case that we conform our expectations to events; it is, rather,
that our expectations arise from, are caused by, these events –
whether or not this expectation in and of itself is warranted.
There is, it turns
out, a necessary relation, not between the uniform occurrence of B
subsequent to A, but between my belief and the events that
have caused my belief. We should have no expectations at all, no belief
whatever, apart from the events which informed these expectations.
Beliefs and expectations, then, are necessarily related to uniform
events. While there is no necessary reason for the sun to rise tomorrow,
there is a necessary reason for my expectation that the sun will
rise, and it is that I should have no such expectation except for the
observed uniformity of the sun having risen every day. Nor can we
argue that the conditions for our belief may not be the same tomorrow;
that is to say, that the conditions from which alone the development of
expectations derive may be different tomorrow from what they have
been today, or that tomorrow the uniformities we observe will no longer
cause any expectations regarding them whatsoever. For this would mean
that we can have no expectations. But we do have expectations. Whether
or not they are legitimate expectations – which is quite beside the
point – is another question entirely, but the expectations that we do
in fact possess are necessarily
connected, arise out of, derive from, uniform sequences of events, and
are unintelligible apart from them as the necessary condition of the
formation of expectations. There is, in short, no other way that
expectations are formed; they are necessarily derived from consistent
and uniform sequences of events and cannot be understood apart from
them.
Equally important, I suggest, is that the argument –
essentially the Problem of Induction itself– is subreptive upon its
own terms. It indicts what it holds to be a circular argument upon
circular terms. It arrives, pseudo-syllogistically at a conclusion from,
but in violation of, its own premises. What do I mean by this? Quite
simply this: to hold that we have no logical warrant to posit a
necessary connection between what now appear to be two discrete
and unrelated events (say the occurrence of B invariably
following each and every occurrence of A with no disqualifying
instance) because we have hitherto been unable to discover such a
connection – is to make the subreptive leap to the very proposition
which the argument holds to be untenable: that the future will conform
with the past: in other words, because we have not been able to
establish a necessary connection up to this point in time, does not
warrant the conclusion that we will not be able to establish such a
connection in the future. Yes, nothing in the way of contradiction
results if we hold that B will not immediately follow the
occurrence of A simply because it always and without exception has.
But by that same token, nothing in the way of contradiction results
if we affirm that what we have been unable to establish today, we will
be able to establish tomorrow. Upon what basis can we maintain that the
argument (to wit, against causality) which now holds today, will hold
tomorrow? Inevitably, ineluctably, we invoke the same premises, adduce
the same terms that the argument has already repudiated. In the end, we
can make no claims whatever, logical or otherwise, upon the terms
invoked by the Problem of Induction, not even the problematic posed by
the pseudo-problem itself.
It would appear
that both Russell and Hume have made something more in the way of a
psychological observation than an epistemological claim, and if this in
fact is the case then their argument is of little interest to us from a
purely epistemological point of view. Their argument essentially appears
to be more along the lines of operant conditioning than epistemological
analysis: in effect, they appear to be conflating two
entirely separate issues: our conditioning to observed uniformities,
which is a psychological claim, with our inability to discover necessity
between expectations and the events that precipitate them, an
epistemological claim which in the end, I argue, is a mistaken claim.
What they really seem to be talking about is, fundamentally, the
provenance of certain types of belief. And this, in the end, is
all that the skeptic is left with if nothing whatever in the way of
necessity obtains in our experiences. But I am not persuaded that this
is the case relative to all our experiences, and I suggest that it very
clearly is not the case relative to mysticism in particular. The
point from which we had departed in this rather long, but I think
necessary, aside is this: the pronouncements of science, widely accepted
as paradigms of reason, are ineluctably subverted by the problem of
induction, and as a result, the type of deductive certainty toward which
it strives, it cannot attain.
We had further
argued that as a consequence of this disability, reason of this
deductive type finds a more consistent paradigm in the metaphysics of
mysticism than in the physics of science, and essentially for this
reason: within the phenomenology of mysticism, there is no way of
stating without contradiction that, for example, subsequent to the
negation of time, temporal experiences may nevertheless follow. To
presuppose the negation of time as the condition to a certain
type of experience is to be able to assert not simply with certainty,
but with deductive certainty that, whatever subsequent experience
will be, it will not be temporal. In other words, as metaphysical logic,
the via negativa binds it premises to its conclusions with a
deductive certainty that is clearly analytical in nature. As an
existential principle – a condition – it also connects certain types
of
experience mystical in nature, to certain other types of experience
negative in nature which the former presupposes. In either case the
conclusions are understood to be implied in the premises, and as such,
to deductively follow from them. The mystic, therefore, can appeal to
the type of certainty to which the physicist cannot – but it is a
certainty only negatively descriptive in nature and will yield no
knowledge whatever of what subsequent experiences will be; only
what they will not be. And while the scope of this knowledge is
confined to negative assertions, they are at least deductively certain
relative to the nature of future experiences – an assertion to which
no law of physics can lay claim. And the deductive nature of this
certainty itself , I suggest, coupled with the testimony – together
with the consistency, uniformity, and agreement with reason that we had
examined earlier – puts the burden of proof not on the mystic, but the
burden of disproof on the skeptic.
There remain
problems of another type, however, which must be discussed before
concluding our analysis; problems relating to the authenticity of the
mystical experience in light of several of the more significant
objections commonly brought to bear against it. In attempting to
substantiate the mystic’s claim upon reality, if we find that the
criteria to which we appeal is conceded to substantiate other types of
experience as genuine, and not illusory – if this same criteria, in
other words, holds true for the mystic’s claim as well, then at the
very least the probable authenticity of the mystical experience must be
conceded also. In the following prolepsis, then, we will consider some
of these objections which, if a coherent epistemological account of
mysticism is to be achieved, must ultimately be answered.
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The
Prolepsis: Objections to the Mystical Experience
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1
This, of course, is the Problem of Induction forcefully stated by the
skeptic David Hume in his Treatise of Human Nature (Bk. I, Part
III, Sec. 1-6).
2 Immanuel
Kant, “Transcendental Doctrine of Elements, First Part,
Transcendental Aesthetic,” Critique Of Pure Reason,
translated by Norman Kemp Smith (New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press,
1965, 67 A 22.
3
op. cit. B 39
4 Bertrand
Russell, The Problems of Philosophy (Oxford University Press,
1978), pgs. 64-65
5
op.cit.
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