Remembering religious experience: Reconstruction, reflection, and reliability
Philosophy and the Mind Sciences January 22, 2024 DOI: 10.33735/phimisci.2024.10205 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Key points | Argues that accounts of how religious beliefs are formed typically overlook that believers often form such beliefs by reflecting on episodic memories of past religious experiences, and proposes that attending to this memory-based route opens room for more meaningful progress on whether the cognitive mechanisms involved are generally truth-conducive. |
Abstract
This paper explores the relationship between religious belief and religious experience, bringing out a role for episodic memory that has been overlooked in the epistemology of religion. I do so by considering two questions. The first, the “Psychological Question,” asks what psychological role religious experiences play in causally bringing about religious beliefs. The second, the “Reliability Question,” asks: for a given answer to the Psychological Question about how religious beliefs are formed, are those beliefs formed using generally truth-conducive cognitive mechanisms or patterns of reasoning? I argue that the standard way of answering the Psychological Question overlooks the fact that religious beliefs are often formed via reflection on episodic memories of past religious experiences. Furthermore, recognizing this opens up room to make more meaningful progress on answering the Reliability Question.