Jonathan Scott Miller (Bowling Green State University)
"Are Mystical Experiences Evidence for the Existence of a Transcendent Reality? An Evaluation of the Metaphysical Claims of Eugene d’Aquili and Andrew Newberg"
Are mystical experiences all in the brain? Neuroscientists Andrew Newberg and Eugene d’Aquili have developed a model of what happens in the brain during mystical experiences, which has been quite influential in the psychology of religion. They have also attempted to draw metaphysical implications from their research, arguing that mystical experiences are evidence for the existence of a transcendent reality, which they refer to as “Absolute Unitary Being.” Newberg and d’Aquili’s metaphysical arguments are problematic, however, for at least three reasons. First, they rely on an insupportable dichotomy between “subjective” and “external” ways of looking at the world, which leads to problems faced by dualistic theories of consciousness. Second, when taking the so-called subjective perspective, they rely on the “subjective vivid sense of reality” of an experience as the sole criterion for its reliability, which threatens to include hallucinations and delusions among veridical experiences. Third, when taking the so-called external perspective, they overlook the importance of being able to independently verify the content of an experience as well as the potential mechanisms for its generation. In short, d’Aquili and Newberg fail to show that mystical experiences cannot be explained solely in terms of the relevant sorts of brain activity.