Does Perception Track Deific properties: A Case for Deific Perception

Abstract

This paper argues for deific perception, the idea that some perceptual experiences represent deific properties, as an explanation for a certain type of religious experience. Using Siegel's method of phenomenal contrast, a pair of experiences are compared: an ordinary perception of a black rose, and one where the rose seems imbued with religious significance. Intuitively, these have different phenomenologies. Deific perception posits that in the religiously-significant experience, a deific property like "being a creature of God" partly constitutes the visual phenomenology. Rival explanations like differences in attention or cognitive penetration fail to account for the phenomenal contrast. Deific perception coheres with realism about religious properties and provides a naturalistic explanation of how some people directly sense the divine in nature. If valid, it suggests that with proper background beliefs and recognition capacities, perception can represent high-level deific properties, just as it may represent other abstract properties like natural kinds. The paper thus contributes to debates on the contents of perception and offers a sympathetic account of a class of numinous experiences.

Author's Profile

Hamid Nourbakhshi
University of Missouri, Columbia

Analytics

Added to PP
2024-01-10

Downloads
305 (#72,078)

6 months
179 (#16,880)

Historical graph of downloads since first upload
This graph includes both downloads from PhilArchive and clicks on external links on PhilPapers.
How can I increase my downloads?