Within a year of each other, three one-volume general dictionaries of philosophy have recently appeared; when our future colleagues in philosophy look back on the 1990s they may well think of it as the decade of reference works. But however productive these years may prove to be in this genre, clearly visible somewhere around the top of the heap will be this handy, useful, entertaining, and instructive contribution from Simon Blackburn. Its two immediate competitors are the Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy, (...) edited by Robert Audi, and the Oxford Companion to Philosophy, edited by Ted Honderich. No detailed comparison will be attempted here, but two points stand out as obviously giving Blackburn’s dictionary a rather different use and flavor from the others: while containing a closely comparable number of entries, it is distinctly shorter and handier in format; and it has all been written by a single author. (shrink)

Properties of mental representation are related to findings in cognitive science and ideas in shamanism. A selective review of research in cognitive science suggests visual images and spatial memory preserve important functional information regarding physical principles and the behavior of objects in the natural world, and notions of second‐order isomorphism and the perceptual cycle developed to account for such findings are related to shamanic experience. Possible roles of implicit processes in shamanic cognition, and the idea that shamanic experience may involve (...) normally unconscious information becoming temporarily available to consciousness, are considered. The existence of a cognitive module dedicated to processing information relevant to social knowledge and social interaction is consistent with cognitive science and with shamanism, and may help account for the extension of intentionality and meaning that characterize shamanic practice. Overall, findings from cognitive science and ideas from shamanism exhibit a number of correspondences and similarities regarding basic properties of cognition, and this suggests that shamanic and nonshamanic cognition may not be fundamentally different. (shrink)

I am grateful for Mr Bagger's thoughtful remarks, as well as those of Professors Cousins, Smith, Katz, and Gimello at a recent American Academy of Religion panel devoted to The Problem of Pure Consciousness . But I cannot help but be struck by the tone of Mr Bagger's notice. As one colleague communicated to me after reading the piece, this is one of the most gratuitously rude pieces he had ever seen! If our book is really as bad as all (...) this, it makes one wonder why Religious Studies , or Mr Bagger, would bother to give it such attention, and whether it indicates how deeply we have touched a nerve in the contemporary debate. (shrink)

In ‘Religious Pluralism and the Divine: Another Look at John Hick's Neo-Kantian Proposal’ [ Religious Studies , xxx, 1994) Paul Eddy argues against the ultimate ineffability of the Real, and claims that a neo-Kantian epistemology leads to a Feuerbachian non-realism. In response I stress the impossibility of attributing to the Real the range of incompatible characteristics of its phenomenal manifestations, so that it must lie beyond the range of our human religious categories, and the distinction, which Eddy fails to observe, (...) between grounds for believing in the Divine, and reasons for thinking that the Divine can be differently conceived and experienced. (shrink)

While a surprising number of people, both religious and non-religious, have had deep and significant mystical experiences, scholars have reached little agreement about their cause and character. Many analyze mystical experiences as if they are formed by the same linguistic processes that shape ordinary experiences. This paper shows that this is based on a misunderstanding, for these experiences result from letting go of language. The paper concludes that we need to think about mystical experiences - and what they have to (...) teach about consciousness and reality - in a new light. (shrink)

After an initial consideration of the three main positions discernible within the current literature on the question of the relationship between mystical experience and its interpretation, attention is focused on a new model of this relationship. by utilizing wittgenstein's notion of "seeing-as" in conjunction with a more complex theory of the nexus between experience and interpretation, it is argued that there are varieties of mystical experience. on the other hand, it is maintained that there is a limiting case of mystical (...) experience, the essence of which is its undifferentiated or contentless nature. it is suggested that the contemplative method, while producing a variety of content-filled mystical experiences, nonetheless is most conducive to the attainment of this "pure" contentless mystical state. (shrink)

Some philosophers such as Ninian Smart have claimed that mystics from different religious traditions may sometimes have the same experience , while nevertheless giving different and tradition-bound descriptive reports of that experience. In two important essays, Steven Katz has challenged such a claim. Mystics from different religious traditions do not have the same experience.

In 'Religious Pluralism and the Divine: Another Look at John Hick's Neo-Kantian Proposal' Paul Eddy argues against the ultimate ineffability of the Real, and claims that a neo-Kantian epistemology leads to a Feuerbachian non-realism. In response I stress the impossibility of attributing to the Real the range of incompatible characteristics of its phenomenal manifestations, so that it must lie beyond the range of our human religious categories, and the distinction, which Eddy fails to observe, between grounds for believing in the (...) Divine, and reasons for thinking that the Divine can be differently conceived and experienced. (shrink)

This paper is a reply to D'Costa's article ("Religious Studies," 32, pp. 223-32) in which he argues that there is no such position as religious pluralism because in distinguishing between, e.g., Christianity or Buddhism, and Nazism or the Jim Jones cult, a criterion is involved and to use a criterion is a form of exclusivism. In reply I point out that this sense of 'exclusivism', as consisting in the use of criteria, is self-destructive; that the pluralistic hypothesis, as a meta-theory (...) about the religions, has a different logical status from the creeds of the historical religions; and I also show the origin of the ethnical criterion used by the religious pluralist who stands within one or other of the great world faiths. (shrink)