PHIL 3600 Lecture Notes - Lecture 11: Amusia
Document Summary
He tries to articulate a general theory of religion. Having an experience about religion that was very meaningful doesn"t mean that that individual is able to communicate it well. Various factors can prevent communication: maybe the individual isn"t a good writer or physical limitations prevent communications. Biologists/microscopes: maybe you"re just seeing fuzzy shapes, maybe the shapes don"t have meaning. Perhaps we need training to understand what is in the microscope, just like people might need training to understand religious experiences. Maybe some religious people are able to see things a non-religious person can"t because they have the training/background. Drunk people seeing rats: really drunk people can hallucinate things. We have ways to test and verify whether the hallucination is true. There is a lack of standards to verify whether a religious experience is true. Blind people: a few individuals out of a group of blind people are now able to see.
