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The Problem
of Induction as Pseudo-Problematic:
Mysticism as Metalogical
________________________________________
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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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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