A Critique of Pure Spirit

From St. Polycarp in the first century who said he had a mystical vision foretelling his death by fire, to St. Francis who said he experienced the divine in all living things, to Jullian Norwich who claimed to have sixteen revelatory visions of heretical content, to St. Teresa of Avila who had visions of her soul being lifted out of her paralyzed body to unite with God, to the current wildfire that is Pentecostalism in the global south, to everyone today who proudly claims that they are “spiritual and not religious,”  to the current evangelical emphasis on a “personal relationship with Jesus Christ” (despite the fact that they’ve never actually met him in person), to “contemporary” worship services that aim to get people to “experience God,” there is river of mysticism that runs the entire length of Christian history. 

These mystics, in their own way, all claim to somehow have access to some sort of spiritual knowledge/experience which informs the way they live and gives ultimate meaning to their lives. Such information would indeed seem to be very important(!), but are these mystical claims not epistemologically problematic? How do these Christian mystics know about this spiritual realm of information at all? How do they gain access to it, and by what mechanism do they appropriate its data? Despite the great number of these averring mystics, the claim of having access to secret mystical/spiritual data simply breaches the boundary of the normal epistemological limitations of human beings.

  

What exactly is “mysticism,” and what do we here mean by “Christian mysticism.” Ayn Rand's definition is both clear and helpful: 

Mysticism is the acceptance of allegations without evidence or proof, either apart from or against the evidence of one’s senses and one’s reason. Mysticism is the claim to some non-sensory, non-rational, non-definable, non-identifiable means of knowledge, such as ‘instinct,‘ ‘intuition,‘ ‘revelation,‘ or any form of ‘just knowing.‘[…] Mysticism is the claim to the perception of some other reality — other than the one in which we live — whose definition is only that it is not natural, it is supernatural, and is to be perceived by some form of unnatural or supernatural means. 

(Ayn Rand, “Faith and Force: The Destroyers of the Modern World,” qtd in The Ayn Rand Lexicon: Objectivism from A to Z, ed. Harry Binswanger (New York: Meridian, 1986), 322. )

Mysticism is then, by definition, the epistemological claim to know information which is not gained through the senses or deduced by logical analysis. “Christian mysticism” is closely related and simply denotes mysticism whose content is Christian in nature. 

With this firm and clear definition in place, the decisive blow has been already struck. All we have to do is unpack the logical implications, to wit mystical claims are by definition epistemologically impossible because they violate what it means to “know” something. 

Simply by analyzing our concept of knowledge and observing how the word “know” functions for us in our particular language game we can deduce and assert that there are three necessary criteria that all things that are said to be “known” must share: the claim must be 1) true, 2) justified, and 3) believed. 

Regardless whether a mystical reality 1) truly exists ontologically (which seems impossible to confirm or deny entirely), or 3) if mystics do truly believe their own claims (which they seem to), such claims are 2) epistemologically unwarranted because the lack adequate justification. 

What does it mean to have adequate “justification” for a claim? In the same way that we broke “knowledge” down into three necessary constituent conditions, we can use the same process to break down our concept and use of the word “justification.”  

Simply by analyzing our concept of what it means for something to be “justified,” and by observing the way we use the word in our particular language game, we can deduce and assert that for a claim to be “justified” it must be have at least these two necessary conditions: empirical verifiability (ie it must be sensible), or logical deducibility.

Now that we have definitions of our key terms and concepts (“mysticism,” “knowledge,” and “justification”) we can state the argument, why mystic claims breach the normal human epistemological barrier, quiet succinctly using overlapping modus tollens and modus ponens argument forms.

P1: If a claim is justified, then it is either empirically verifiable or logically deducible. 

P2: Mystic claims, by definition, are neither empirically verifiable nor logically deducible. 

C1/P3: Mystic claims are not justified. 

P4: If a claim is not justified then it is not knowable. 

C2: Mystic claims are not knowable. 

To state it even clearer we can translate the argument into sentential symbolic logic in the following way: 

J -> (E v L)

Mystic claims are ~ E & ~ L

∴ Mystic claims are ~J

Mystic claims are ~ J

~J -> ~ K

∴ Mystic claims are ~ K

One of the strengths of this argument is that it seems to avoid a well-known objection to Logical Positivism. Said objection states that the proposition “only those claims which are either empirically verifiable or logically deducible are justified” is itself not empirically verifiable nor logically deducible, and therefore by its own standards is an unjustified claim. 

However, the present argument seems to avoid that objection because the claim that “only those claims which are either empirically verifiable or logically deducible” is shown to be not self-contradictory, but instead, is itself, both empirically verifiable and logically deducible. 

As stated above, when we empirically observe the use of the word “justify” and its function in our language game we come to the conclusion that what we mean when we say “justify” is that a claim is either empirically verifiable or logically deducible. 

Likewise, as stated above, when we logically analyze the concept of “justification” we simply conclude that its necessary constituent parts are empirical verifiability and logical deduction. What else could “justification” mean? When a claim is either empirically verifiable or logically deducible then it seems right to conclude that the claim is justified. 

This move may seem like a dubious begging of the question, but is it not the same process that we use to deduce the answer to the question “1 + 1 = ?” Simply by analyzing the definition of “1” and the function of “+” we can deduce the answer. Simply by analyzing our concepts of math functions we are able to deduce certain conclusions. In the same way, when we simply analyze our concept of “justification” we can deduce what its necessary constituent parts are. 

By way of concluding this knotty investigation, let us consider the shark. Unlike humans, sharks can sense the electromagnetic fields of other living organisms.  Humans do not have the necessary biology to sense electromagnetic fields, and so if a human were to claim that she could also do this then her claim would be dismissed out of hand because it is impossible for her to have that sort of knowledge. Just as it would be impossible for a human to claim to know what the electromagnetic field is of another living organism, mystics cannot know what is by definition unknowable.