Anthology section 9

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Anthology section 9

• Steve and Plim

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The Sense of encounter may be mistaken
What is Donovan saying in the extract? He is
saying that as well as our intuition being wrong,
then so can our idea of encounter. As we can not
verify encounters with God then we can not feel
certain of encounter experiences. He goes
further and says that as a relationship with a
person develops into an I-you relationship, we no
longer see them as an it. Each may think they
have become a you in the eyes of the other, yet
how can they be sure? If someone believes they
have a religious experience and it is possibly
mistaken, then this wont worry them as they
themselves are convinced of that fact.
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What shall we quote from this extract??
Is the impression that it is taking place enough
to go on? Donovan is questioning here that
simply believing that we are having an experience
is not enough evidence to prove that it is
actually happening. If we have no empirical
evidence to prove that an experience is actually
occurring then it is difficult for sceptics to
believe. This backs up that religious
experiences are highly subjective and are open to
interpretation. For instance, if someone is
locked up in a mental asylum for proclaiming to
be Jesus, are we wrong to do that if we take
religious experiences to be true based on word of
mouth.
(The picture behind was taken from the wall of
San Lazaro Psychiatric Hospital)
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As Bertrand Russell reminded us, our apparent
intuitions about other people can be wildly
astray
Principle of credulity
Principle of Testimony
Our intuition may tell us that a person whom we
are talking to is genuine, when in fact they are
lying to you. This is because we may feel they
have no reason to lie to us, therefore they would
not, however, this is not always the case.
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you may not be as right as you think you are
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• The impression of certainty is no guide at all
  for us to go by.
• Simply the belief that someone is right is not
  enough evidence that an encounter is happening.
  For instance, the belief that someone loves us or
  we are talking to a human on the phone may not be
  correct, such as the belief that what we see in
  our dreams or hallucinations is a genuine
  experience, when it could simply be a creation of
  the mind.

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Yet how do we know when such an encounter has
really been achieved?
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What Examples Can I give to show my
understanding?
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What have we already studied??? Religious
experience Situation ethics (especially with
personalism) Religious language
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Implications... If... We believe every
encounter that we possibly have Then It can
leave us open to deceit and what we percieve to
be an I-you relationship with someone, could be
an I-it. If many encounters are wrong and
are disproved Then How can we believe a
different account based on someone's testimony
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Do you agree with the main thrust of the extract?
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I believe that if we are taking encounters to be
real, based on a persons testimony and yet, we
are disproving others on the same evidence then
it seems to create a logical contradiction.
Without any empirical proof, it is very difficult
to prove that an encounter is actually genuine.
As the text says, deception in encounters is not
at all rare, and I believe that the principle of
testimony can lead us to be deceived (although
not always intentionally) by factors outside our
control. There are external factors on the mind
such as drugs and mental issues etc. that can
lead to a false encounter.