Abstract
AbstractIn Religious Experience, Wayne Proudfoot argued that a tout court rejection of reductionism in accounts of religious experience was not viable. According to Proudfoot, it’s possible to distinguish between an illegitimate practice of descriptive reductionism and the legitimate practice of explanatory reductionism. The failure to distinguish between these two forms of reductionism resulted in a protective strategy, or an attempt to protect religious experience from the reach of scientific explanation. Among the theorists whom he accused of deploying this illegitimate strategy Proudfoot included William James and his work in The Varieties of Religious Experience. In this article, I argue that while James does occasionally deploy a protective strategy in Varieties, this is not the only nor most important method of treating religious experience James developed. Implicit in his rejection of medical materialism, James not only deploys the protective strategy Proudfoot criticizes, but the pragmatic method with which he treats all claims. I argue that James’s pragmatic method leads to what James called noetic pluralism, or the view that there is no privileged knowledge practice, but a plurality of knowledge practices, and that this method puts pressure on the explanatory reductionist, who is implicitly committed to noetic monism.
Highlights
In the opening lecture to The Varieties of Religious Experience, “Religion and Neurology,” William James confronts what he calls “medical materialism,” or the view that religious experience can be reduced to the causal relations of physiological processes.[1]
I have argued that the critique of medical materialism James develops in “Religion and Neurology” cannot be dismissed on the grounds that it contains nothing more than an illicit strategy that protects religious experience from the reach of scientific explanation
I have argued that when we elucidate the most forceful considerations to which James appeals in Varieties, we have a case against medical materialism, but a case against debunking efforts reliant on explanatory reductionism in general
Summary
In the opening lecture to The Varieties of Religious Experience, “Religion and Neurology,” William James confronts what he calls “medical materialism,” or the view that religious experience can be reduced to the causal relations of physiological processes.[1]. It says, are, when you come to the bottom of the matter...due to the perverted action of glands which physiology will yet discover.[3] The problem with this view, according to James, is that “an existential account of facts of mental history [cannot] decide in one way or another...their spiritual significance.”[4] For one thing, all “states of mind [have]...some organic process as its condition.”[5] To determine the spiritual significance of a claim, James suggests that one must judge the claim “[b]y their fruits...not by their roots.”[6] Given this “empiricist criterion,” James suggests that etiological accounts of an episode are irrelevant, and that medical material cannot debunk the pretenses of religious experience by invoking these kinds of considerations.[7]. I argue that James’s pragmatic method leads to noetic pluralism, that explanatory reductionism relies on an implicit commitment to noetic monism, and that if we have reason to embrace noetic pluralism, we have reason to reject explanatory reductionism
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