Abstract
In the perceptual model of mystical experience, the mystics are said to “perceive” God much like ordinary people perceive physical objects. The model has been used to defend the epistemic value of mysticism, and it has been championed most vigorously by William Alston in his work Perceiving God. This paper is a critique of the model from a phenomenological perspective. Utilizing insights from Husserl and Merleau-Ponty, I show that models like Alston’s are based on an inadequate notion of perception, which fails to distinguish perception from other modes of intentionality; the result is that even if we assume the mystics have directly experienced God, it is not clear why we should say they have “perceived” God. Then, using a better and richer concept of perception, I show that the mystical experiences under discussion cannot be truly perceptual, because they lack some salient features of perception. The conclusion is that talks of “perceiving God” can only be analogical or metaphorical, but not literal.
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Notes
Besides the direct awareness defined here, Alston also recognizes a higher degree of directness or immediacy in which certain things can be given to the consciousness: in some situations, there is no distinction between the object of awareness and the state of consciousness through which the object is being aware of (e.g., a pain that I am aware of, which is not distinguishable from my awareness of that pain). Alston calls that a “maximally direct awareness” of an object (1991, p.21). Perception is not such a maximally direct awareness of objects. Consequently, Alston excludes from the corresponding notion of “mystical perception” any mystical experience that demonstrates such a maximal degree of immediacy (e.g., the experience of an “undifferentiated unity” as discussed by Stace (1960)); see Alston (1991, p. 24).
Alston does not give this particular statement as a direct description of perception. Rather, this is Alston’s qualification for the so-called “infused contemplation,” which Alston argues to be a kind of perception. The same description is applied by Alston to sense perception, as I explore next.
Nowadays, it is very common to believe that the perceiving subject is not totally passive but is participating in some kind of interpretive process. Alston explicitly rejects the notion (1991, pp. 35–42). But we do not have to go into debates with Alston on the point. Even if Alston is wrong on this, his main argument can still be maintained if we do not take the degree of passivity he requires to be absolute. We can take “passivity” here to mean that no conscious efforts are involved. In fact, for our purpose, the whole debate on whether perception is interpretive can be easily avoided as long as it can be shown that ordinary and mystical perception involve a similar degree of passivity, so that they can be subsumed under the same generic notion.
Alston himself favors the theory of appearing, in which “for S to perceive X is simply for X to appear to S as so-and-so.” But he thinks that additional requirements for perception in other theories of perception can also be satisfied by mystical perception (1991, pp. 54–59).
See Teresa of Ávila (1957, p. 89) for the distinction.
This is an important point to remember. If we try to include experiences of a sensory nature (apparitions, visions, and so on) as cases of mystical perception, it might become possible to evade some of the criticisms I make in this article, but that will also alter Alston’s original project in a fundamental manner.
The differences include the following: (1) while sense perception is present in all our waking hours, mystical perception occurs much more rarely; (2) while sense perception is vivid and richly detailed, mystical perception is “dim, meager, and obscure”; (3) while “sense perception is shared by all humans,” mystical perception is not a universal experience (Alston 1991, p. 36).
See Alston (1991, pp. 146–225).
For Husserl’s notion of epoché, see, for example, Husserl (1931, pp. 107–111).
For Husserl, the term contains no sense of an “activity,” but means simply an experience with an intentional character. See Husserl (1970, p. 563).
For the quality and matter of acts, see Husserl (1970, pp. 586–589). The notions were later absorbed into Husserl’s richer concepts of noema and noeisis. For our purpose, it will be sufficient for us to continue our discussion with the simpler notions of quality and matter of acts.
It should be noted here that Husserl’s notion of a signitive act is very broad and goes beyond the idea of being an expression. See, for example, Husserl (1970, pp. 715–718).
For a summary of Husserl’s notion of perceptual presentation, see Husserl (1970, pp. 652–659).
For the distinction between simple and compound acts of intuition, see Husserl (1970, pp. 580–585, 788–795).
For a discussion of various intuitive acts from a phenomenological perspective, see Smith (1989).
Except, I suppose, in the theory of reminiscence in Plato’s philosophy.
My suggestion here for taking the mystics’ experience as a sui generis type of intuition does not imply that Alston’s original doxastic approach to perception can then be reapplied immediately to the mystics’ experience. Any new working concept of “mystical intuition” calls for more work to be done for its epistemic justification than Alston has supplied so far for sense and mystical perception; this will be discussed in the rest of the essay, especially in the section titled “The Epistemological Consequences of Alston’s Failure.”
At the end of this essay, we will come back to address the philosophical motivation for Alston and others to identify the putative intuition of God as a form of perception.
Suffering the same problem are other defenses of the perceptual model of mysticism by, for example, Richard Swinburne and William Wainwright; see Abraham (2012).
For a more thorough discussion of the term, see Sokolowski (1974, pp. 89–92).
Husserl calls such signitive intentions indications, which shall not be confused with “judgments,” “expectations,” or “imaginations”; for the distinctions, see Husserl (1970, pp. 269–275).
It goes beyond the scope of this paper to establish an essential connection between bodily motility and each mode of perception. However, simple reflections will show that each mode of our perception is intricately related to some kinds of bodily motility. Vision is the more obvious case, which we have already discussed. Touching involves the explorative movements of, for example, a hand or some other body part, without which no texture can be perceived. Smelling involves the bodily movements of breathing. Tasting involves the chewing and swallowing of food. Hearing involves the perception of sounding objects located within a “lived space” that we experience through our bodily motility (see Idhe (2007)). Proprioception always belongs to a body image or schema that is intimately related to our bodily movements (see Merleau-Ponty’s famous discussion (1962, pp. 98–147)). For more discussions on the topic, see, for example, Merleau-Ponty (1962, pp. 243–298). Also note the claim here is that perception, not sensation, always involves bodily motility; see, for example, Reid (1977, pp.118, 121) for the distinction between the two concepts.
Notice that in recent years, classical views like Alston’s that take perception as a passive event, separated by nature from movement and action, have been seriously challenged by a new paradigm of research known as the sensorimotor theory or action-oriented theory of perception, which utilizes evidences not just from philosophy but also from psychology, neuroscience, and cognitive science to prove that perception and action are interdependent on one another, and that bodily motility contributes to the very structure and contents of perception. See Gangopadhyay et al. (2011).
For Merleau-Ponty on the phenomenal body and spatiality, see Merleau-Ponty (1962, pp. 98–147, 243–298).
Gale (1994) puts forward an attack on Alston that is similar yet different from mine. He suggests that for the “veridicality of a sense perception” to be testable, there is a conceptual requirement for any good model of sense perception to have both the perceiver and the perceived coexisting in a space-time receptacle, within which the two are connected through a causal chain of events. Gale argues that a parallel conceptual requirement would apply to mystical perception, which it cannot satisfy. My argument here is different in that (1) it does not involve any notion of causality, and, instead (2) it takes motility and the phenomenal body, two notions not discussed by Gale, to be essential to perception.
In some other cases quoted by Alston (1991), God’s presence is sometimes associated with a spatial coordinate like “at my side” (p. 13) or “located fairly precisely about two yards to my right front” (p. 17). Notice that (a) such spatial references are atypical among the alleged cases of “mystical perception,” and (b) those are references to the physical space, instead of any parallel notion of spiritual or “mystical” space, which alone would make “mystical perception” a full-fetched “perception” alongside ordinary perception.
One of the most interesting studies of the spatial character of mystical experience is offered by Pike in his Mystic Union: An Essay in the Phenomenology of Mysticism (1992) In Chapter 3 of the book, Pike suggests that God is experienced by mystics in various degrees of closeness through the “spiritual senses” of seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, and touching, and in a manner similar to how physical objects are experienced in different degrees of proximity by our different senses—for example, we first hear or smell an object before we can touch and taste it, and the mystics too first use analogies of hearing and smelling God before they use the analogies of touching and tasting God as their relationships with God deepen. While Pike’s analysis seems to point to certain spatial characteristics of mystical experience and seems to be an answer to the challenge raised in this essay against the notion of mystical perception, his argument is, unfortunately, based on some highly problematic readings of the mystics. We cannot review Pike’s whole argument here, but can only, as an example, look at Pike’s use of the writings by St. John of the Cross. While Pike discusses St. John at a number of places (e.g., pp. 51–53, 56–58), a careful reading of St. John will reveal features that contradict Pike’s model: for example, in contrast to Pike’s description, St. John describes spiritual hearing as subsequent to and “more spiritual” than spiritual touch (see John of the Cross1991b, stanza 14–15, section 13). Also, St. John treats all of spiritual smelling, tasting, and touching together under the label of “spiritual feelings” (see John of the Cross 1991a, Book II, chapters 23 and 32), and all these senses are awakened at the same time during what can be identified as the stage of “full union” (see John of the Cross 1991b, stanza 14–15). Pike’s claim of the distant senses of smell or warmth being activated before the senses of touch or taste just does not appear in St. John’s works. Other questions too can be raised concerning Pike’s interpretations of other mystics.
See Alston (1991, p. 13). The only developments in the account of the experience are the progressions from feelings to feelings, and finally to “seeing” (perceiving) God. But those developments do not display at all any changing profiles as in perceptual experiences with the ordinary senses.
See examples of mystical experiences cited in Alston (1991, pp. 12–19).
See Alston (1991, p. 223), where he denies explicitly that he is arguing by analogy. Rather, as discussed earlier in this essay, Alston is trying to find a generic concept of perception under which both ordinary and mystical perception can be subsumed. If the class of experience called “mystical perception” is at best perception only by analogy, then Alston’s project fails.
The following discussion involves some very weighty issues in the epistemology and phenomenology of mysticism that go beyond the scope of the paper, and I can only point out the issues without going into deep debates. What I am trying to do here is just to show that my debate with Alston is far more than an argument over terminology (i.e., what counts as perception) but has some real epistemological consequences.
For example: the important question of distinguishing between direct versus indirect awareness of objects (Alston 1991, pp. 20–28) is much more easily handled by Husserl’s and Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of perception. In short, Alston’s description of indirect perception as “I take something as a sign or indication of X but do not see X itself” is inadequate, as it is not clear what the “X itself” means and what constitutes X’s identity within a perceptual experience. However, in the phenomenology of perception of Husserl and Merleau-Ponty, the very perceptual object’s identity is constituted in the bodily, spatial-temporal act of perception, as illustrated in our earlier discussion.
To just give one example: any serious discussions on the overriders of SP (that which render putatively justified S-belief unjustified) cannot sidestep the bodily, spatial, and temporal nature of perceptual presentation. Visual errors are recognized when we become aware of our odd viewing angle; tactile errors are recognized by further exploration with our hand, a notion of perception like Alston’s that only recognizes bare object appearance without the how of the appearance does not allow a truly meaningful discussion of SP as a doxastic practice.
Interestingly, the same issue of direct versus indirect presentation, discussed in note 33 above, reappears here for MP/MI: Alston admits to the possibility of direct awareness of God “by way of one’s direct awareness of something in creation [italics original]” (p. 28). To me, that makes “direct awareness of God” (which is MP/MI) a highly ambiguous concept; the only way out of this ambiguity is some clear phenomenological criteria that qualify the directness in MP/MI as specific ways in which God appears.
For example, in his discussions on the “overriders” in CMP, Alston gives a pretty general account of how mystics discern true from false appearances of God (pp. 201–205), paying no attention to how different criteria are applicable for different kinds of MP (or MI) or at different situations (as discussed in classical literature on spiritual discernment by, for example, Ignatius of Loyola (1964, pp. 129–134). Beyond the (putative) fact that God appears to the mystics, we also need the how of the appearances before we can debate if meaningful overriders of CMP actually exist, which is a requirement for CMP to be a reliable doxastic practice.
See Gavrilyuk and Coakley (2012) for an in-depth and multidimensional discussion on how the perceptual analogy/metaphor has been elaborated in the Christian spiritual tradition; see p. 6 on the differences between taking the spiritual senses as analogical and metaphorical to the physical senses.
Anthony Steinbock also tries to argue for the unique nature of mystical experiences in his Phenomenology and Mysticism (2007). For Steinbock, the appearance of God to the mystics (what he calls epiphany) is a “limit experience” that cannot be subsumed under any modes of object presentation. While the general thrusts of our projects are similar, Steinbock and I are doing different things: I situate Alston’s error in the backdrop of the pragmatist-analytic-empiricist tradition and apply Husserl’s and Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology of perception against Alston’s proposed model of mystical perception; Steinbock, on the other hand, attacks the prejudice within the phenomenological tradition itself in seeing object presentation as the only type of givenness and thus excluding the Absolute from its discussion (see Steinbock 2007, Introduction). Also notice that in my paper, I argue against characterizing the mystics’ experiences as perception but leave open the theoretical possibility that the experiences are still some form of intuition in the Husserlian sense, while Steinbock is against the idea. Whether Steinbock has successfully foreclosed all possibilities of seeing mysticism as an intuition of some sort is an interesting topic for discussion, which goes beyond the scope of this paper.
This essay is a revision and expansion of an argument that has been presented in a Midwest Meeting of the Society of Christian Philosophers and has also appeared in my unpublished doctoral dissertation (So 2001). I want to thank all whohave commented on the argument at various stages of its development, especially the anonymous reviewers for Sophia, whose many critical comments have allowed me to improve on earlier drafts of this essay.
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So, D. Can God Be Perceived? A Phenomenological Critique of the Perceptual Model of Mystical Experience. SOPHIA 60, 1009–1025 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-020-00810-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11841-020-00810-8