The ontomystical argument revisited

Abstract

I argue that Alexander Pruss’s ontomystical arguments should not be endorsed without further argumentative support of their premises. My specific targets are his claims that (i) Śamkara’s principle is true and (ii) the high mystics had phenomenal experiences of radical dependence and as of a maximally great being. Against (i), I urge a host of counterexamples. The only ways I can see for Pruss to respond to these counterexamples end up falsifying (ii). The key problem which leads to this conclusion is that Pruss needs a criterion for distinguishing phenomenal experiences from non-phenomenal experiences according to which the experiences of the high mystics were phenomenal experiences while the experiences of those persons I discuss in my counterexamples to Śamkara’s principle are not. There appears to be no such criterion. I suggest that the future of the ontomystical arguments lies in developing them as inductive rather than deductive arguments.