8.  Of Mystics and Machines
===========================

The world you saw was real, Rumi, not an apparition, etc.
It is boundless and eternal, its painter is not the First Cause,
                                                              etc.
And the best of the rubaiyat your burning flesh left us
is not the one that goes, "All forms are shadows," etc.

She kissed me: "These lips are real like the universe," she said.
"This fragrance isn't your invention, it's the spring in my hair,"
                                                         she said.
"Watch them in the sky or in my eyes:
the blind may not see them, but the stars are there," she said...

  -- Nazim Hikmet, _Rubaiyat, First Series 1 & 6,_ 1947

Mystics, or at least some of them, claim a direct experience of God.
They also produce exasperatingly verbose poetry about their
indescribable God, but that is part of the mystique of mysticism.  The
more incomprehensible the verbiage, the surer the sign of an encounter
with a God wholly other than us.  However, when we study mystical
experience rather than sit around being impressed, we learn about our
brains---not some sort of ultimate reality.  For all our sublime
experiences or powers of reason, we are biological machines.

1.  Feeling the Spirit
----------------------
God should have been a Necessary Being; declared by the stars above, 
revealed by prophets, heralded by miracles.  Unfortunately, as we 
learn more about the world, God seems to disappear from public view.  
We might still feel a hint of an infinite power in an inspiring church 
service, or lose ourselves in a Qur'an recitation.  But such feelings 
are fragile, ready to evaporate when we step back into a world of 
speeding automobiles and noisy children.

Emotion is, of course, vital to religion; most religions strive to
make even everyday life a religious experience.  We may not always
feel the spirit, but religions still weave all that is significant to
us into a whole way of life.  Our Gods are never just ways to explain
the world.  Moreover, an intense religious experience is
psychologically compelling in a way no involved analysis can be.[1]
The trouble is, while vital to spiritual belief, religious experience
is rather feeble as an argument.  A prophet may feel an inner
certainty that the Space Brothers are watching over us from their
flying saucers, but this does not add to the credibility of her
claims.  She might reach the heights of rapture when contemplating the
coming fleet of UFOs, but her hopes are still wildly unlikely.  If
anything, beliefs backed up by rapturous emotions are doubly
suspicious---it is too tempting to accept them uncritically.

Still, private spiritual experience is where many philosophers and
theologians make their stand.  Religion may have to abandon public
reality, but the awesome feeling at the heart of spirituality must be
beyond naturalistic science.  In the early twentieth century,
theologian Rudolf Otto argued that while scientific rationality is no
help in reaching God, we can get there if we start with our spiritual
emotions.  We approach God when we feel we are mere creatures facing a
tremendously powerful mystery.  We feel dependent on this "wholly
other" or "numinous" aspect of reality.  Such feelings are not derived
from everyday experience or rational arguments; they are the
"non-rational" basis of religion.  There is more to this than a warm
feeling in the stomach when "God" is mentioned: religious emotions
come from an encounter, an insight into the basic nature of reality
which cannot be analyzed in ordinary rational ways.[2]

Otto's strongest examples of the numinous awareness behind religion
were the experiences of theistic mystics.  Indeed, mystics claim no
mere warm and fuzzy feeling, but direct experience of ultimate
reality.  A churchgoer may believe Jesus is God; a mystic _knows._
However, experiential insight is not just the province of saints.
Religious experience gives us another way of knowing, of capturing a
spiritual dimension underlying ordinary physical reality.  When not
distracted by cars and kids, even non-mystics can catch glimpses of
the deeper reality.

If religious feelings transcend reason, then it is no wonder our
sciences fail religion.  Spirit cannot be measured by instruments or
trapped in theories.  A scientific naturalist is like a blind person
denying the colors of a sunset because she cannot hear or touch them.
Ordinary religious people catch glimpses of light, and try to follow a
path which leads them into seeing more and more.  Then there are the
mystics, virtuosos of spiritual awareness whose eyes have been opened.
Drunk with God, they break free even of the words and concepts
religions use to part the veil---they are like painters who best
communicate their experiences in their art.  They can get through, if
ever so slightly, to someone who can see some light, and lead them to
see a sunset like they do.  But the reports of mystics mean nothing to
those who try to apply rational analysis.  By touch, they only
experience a chaotic drivel of paint textures, and conclude it is all
nonsense.

In the modern world, this is an attractive defense of religion.
Science has chased God out of our picture of the world, leaving only a
range of feelings.  But religious scholars can now say this is exactly
as things should be.  Far from collapsing onto mumblings about
spiritual experience, religion is returning to its roots in
revelation, following what the logic of divinity demands.  Denise
Lardner Carmody and John Tully Carmody describe mysticism as an
experience of ultimate reality, and say that

    The core truth about ultimate reality, as one gathers it from the
    traditional reports, is that only ultimate reality itself can
    render ultimate reality adequately: ultimate reality must be its
    own revelation and exegesis.  The only way to know God is to
    experience God directly.[3]

Using our sciences to understand God, then, is bringing the wrong
tools to the job.  We must find a way to immerse ourselves in
spiritual experience, opening ourselves up to a mystical way of
knowing.  A seeker must surrender her self to God; a critical attitude
reserves judgment to the self, and so impedes spiritual progress.  We
must believe in order to see.

Mysticism has other advantages besides protecting religion from the
spiritually blind.  It is hard to reserve exclusive truth for any one
tradition when the world is awash with so many different varieties of
intense religious conviction.  Mysticism promises to yield an esoteric
core common to all religions.  Each culture expresses its imperfect
glimpses of ultimate spiritual reality through its own metaphors, but
the ultimate reality, and the mystical experience leading to it, is
the same underneath.[4]

Infidels, of course, are not impressed.  After all, another way of
denying any religious tradition has exclusive truth is to say they are
all mistaken.  If mystics hint that skeptics are blind, skeptics
suspect mysticism is a delusion.  Indeed, in the culture of science,
"mysticism" usually stands for superstition or woolly-minded flights
of fancy.

Nevertheless, there is more to the debate than two incompatible
cultures trading insults.  We can examine what mystics claim about
their experiences and what they become aware of, and try to fit them
into a picture of our world.  We need not be bullied into abandoning
our reason in doing so.  But neither can we assume mysticism is a
delusion because some mystics attack rationality.  We may find that we
have to go beyond ordinary reason to account for mystical experience.
We do not have to grant absolute authority to either reason or
mysticism as we know them.

We can start with the mystical claim to direct, unmediated
acquaintance with ultimate reality.  This is an attractive idea:
knowledge unfettered by our limited ways of thinking.  After all, our
philosophical traditions also emphasize how our perspectives condition
us.  We should then seek truth by stripping away interpretations and
attending to the clear, unadorned facts.  Philosophers with an
empirical turn of mind departed from sensory experience.  Others
thought more ethereal ideas were more certain, like the Platonists who
sought a stable reality behind changing appearances.  With the
European Enlightenment, philosophers tried to break free of the
corruptions of custom and tradition.  Descartes took this to an
extreme, and declared the foundations for knowledge were to be found
only in those "clear and distinct ideas" present in a properly
reflective state of mind.[5]  But wherever philosophers found
certainty, the idea was similar: theorizing distances us from raw
experience of reality.  Even today, the popular mythology of science
is that we do best by ignoring theory and interpretation, and let
reality speak for itself in the laboratory.

Mystics typically take this suspicion of theory further, seeking a 
point where even distinctions between knower and known melt away.  As 
Richard H. Jones explains,

    Mystical knowledge is not "dualistic" knowledge of objects or
    events by a subject; it is not a knowledge of facts.
    . . . mystical wisdom is not mere intellectual assent to
    propositions concerning states of affairs in the world, but is a
    way of looking at the world tied to how we live and, in the case
    of mysticism, a path to mystical enlightenment that transforms the
    experiencer in a radical way.[6]

Mystical knowledge is supposed to be direct, unmediated by theories.
And this knowing by acquaintance is intimately connected to religious
emotions and a personality change which affects the mystics' whole
outlook.

So a mystic defense of religion has a more basic quality than
arguments that life is a miraculous creation or that every statement
in the Qur'an is true.  Even if someone were convinced such arguments
were correct, this would only remove an obstacle to the real point of
religion: getting in a right relationship with God.  Religious
experience suggests we can dispense with secondary issues.  If we feel
the spirit and get on a path to God, that is both our true objective
and all the evidence we need.

Maybe so.  But more straightforward fact claims like a cycle of
rebirth or a Christian sort of God are central to mystics' own
understanding of their experience.[7]  We can question these claims,
without denying mystics have extraordinary experiences they describe
as contact with ultimate reality.  Our ideas of science and reason are
not etched in stone; we might find we have to modify them in the
process of examining mysticism.  Mystical experience may be the
gateway to God.  But we cannot accept this blindly, even if we have
such an experience.  Even our most intense feelings of certainty can
be mistaken.

2.  Thirty-two Flavors of Ultimate Reality
------------------------------------------
Mysticism certainly generates a lot of intimidating rhetoric.  But it
is not clear that if we shave our heads, wear a hair shirt, and rein
our critical devils in, we end up on a path to God and not just with a
zonked-out brain.  After all, even some religious traditions are
ambivalent about esoteric experiences.  Protestants who think
salvation is accessible to all through a plain reading of scripture do
not have much use for mysticism.[8]  Muslims who emphasize the Qur'an
and Islamic Law are often suspicious of Sufi mysticism, especially
since it is so often accompanied by dubious folk religion and gross
superstition.  Private revelation can be dangerous; the Word of God
must prevail.

However, even unmystical traditions turn out to have mystic episodes
tied up with their foundations.  Early Christians cultivated ecstatic
experiences.  Paul had his Damascus road vision, plus in 2 Corinthians
12:1-10 he tells us he made a mystic ascent into the third heaven and
returned with secrets he could not reveal.  Muslim tradition speaks of
Muhammad's Night Journey, where he ascended to the Throne of God.
Jews and Muslims developed similar techniques of ascending to heaven,
even up to the Throne, and returned to describe the journey in
paradoxical language.  Anyone who wants to argue that mysticism lies
at the heart of Abrahamic religions can at least point to some
pervasive mystical practices.[9]

Religious suspicions of mysticism also have a point, however.  Many
people have personality-transforming experiences which lead them to
claim special knowledge, but they do not always testify to the same
reality.  Mystics used to encounter angels, many people today meet
alien beings who abduct them in the night.  Psychiatrist John Mack is
much impressed with their stories, even though his patients have
difficulty articulating their experiences.  UFO abductions are
illusory to modern science, but Mack says "it may be wrong to expect
that a phenomenon whose very nature is subtle, and one of whose
purposes may be to stretch and expand our ways of knowing beyond the
purely materialistic approaches of Western science, will yield its
secrets to an epistemology or methodology that operates at a lower
level of consciousness."[10]  Though crudely, classic themes of
inexpressibility and different ways of knowing emerge when Mack writes
about the spiritual significance of UFO abductions.

If the ultimate reality behind spiritual experiences is to be God, we
need a common theme beyond thrones and aliens.  The traditional
favorite is the ineffability of the experience.  Even lesser visions
like UFO abductions suggest rational incomprehensibility.  If God is
Wholly Other, something beyond human reason may be exactly what we are
looking for.

So mystical theology usually takes the negative way, using paradoxical
language highlighting how God is beyond all description.  Classical
metaphysics already ties itself into knots trying to convey the
unsurpassable omni-everything greatness of God.  Negative theology
proclaims a God so great that all descriptions are inadequate.
Concepts can only limit God.  We cannot even say "God exists," as that
might mean God is merely one real object among others.  The logic of
perfection, of absolute transcendence, drives negative theology to
state only what God is not: not material, not limited in power, not
nonexistent, and so on.

Since metaphysicians regularly ignore reality in search of Reality,
and since the perfections of classical theism easily lead to
paradoxical claims, the God of the philosophers and the God of the
mystics should fit together very well.  Indeed, ancient Greek
philosophy culminated in the mystical monotheism of the NeoPlatonists.
They produced endlessly obscure doctrines about the deeper reality
behind appearances, but all that merely hinted at the true God.  As
Proclus put it, "the One transcends all discursive knowledge and
intellection and all contact.  And only [mystical] unification brings
us near the One, since just because it is higher than any existence it
is unknown."[11]

Christian theology, and later Islamic philosophy, recruited
NeoPlatonism to defend the faith.  The negative way set God beyond all
possible criticism.  Even saying "not this, not that" was not good
enough; Pseudo-Dionysius described the nature of his God by saying:

    It is beyond assertion and denial.  We make assertions of what is
    next to it, but never of it, for it is both beyond every
    assertion, being the perfect and unique cause of all things, and,
    by virtue of its preeminently simple and absolute nature, free of
    every limitation, beyond every limitation; it is also beyond every
    denial.[12]

Even the concepts of metaphysics are only tools to frame what is 
always beyond concepts.

Hyperventilating prose piling one negation on top of another is a good
way to drive critics away; from exhaustion, if not exasperation.  The
trouble is, negative theology also seems to set God beyond creation,
immortality, salvation, revelation---everything we expect a God to be
good for.  In popular religion God makes a difference; the negative
God seems only to fry the brains of mystics and philosophers once in a
while.

What is more, purely negative language gives us no context to
understand what an incomprehensible God means.  At face value, the
negative God is not even false but unintelligible.  Ideas become
vague, slippery, content-free labels as we detach them from the
network of concepts they take meaning in.  Consider "democracy." We
have no ten-point checklist to test whether a country qualifies as a
democracy, only a rough picture in the context of examples like France
or Sweden, usual features like multiparty elections, and political
theories about how people express consent.  If we start disconnecting
"democracy" from our various examples and theories, it quickly becomes
only a label with a positive feeling attached to it.  Any dictatorship
can claim it in its propaganda.  Similarly, "God" is hopeless outside
a network of religious concepts and fact claims.  The purely negative
God needs one more denial: it does not make sense.

And in fact, our religions and philosophies do not rely on mindless
negation but set their Gods in a network of concepts which tell us how
God is unknowable.  For example, the Catholic God is beyond human
comprehension.  But while unknowable "in essence"---whatever that
means---God is not a total mystery.  There are _mediators_ which bring
us closer to God.  Jesus, Mary, angels, the saints, and Church
personnel are personal intermediaries; plus the whole idea of God is
mediated through a network of claims including miracles, the accuracy
of scripture, the created nature of the world, and so forth.  The
unknowability of God defends vulnerable aspects of the faith, warning
us to stay on the right Path.  The God who in "his infinite
simplicity" cannot be captured in language turns out to be just
approachable enough to back up church authority.[13]

NeoPlatonism is also an elaborate conceptual scheme which makes an
unknowable God intelligible.  Platonists describe a hierarchical
structure of reality.  Those things which are cognitively clear, less
subject to change, morally superior, and more causally potent are also
more real.  God is ultimate perfection, the only fully real One.  Our
world, the "sensible realm," is full of suffering and change, being a
lesser reflection of a more perfect "intelligible realm." This realm
is apprehended by Reason, and contains realities like mathematical
truths by virtue of their rational certainty.  The intelligible forms
behind the imperfect copies we ordinarily see are in turn caused by
even higher realities.  Existence is stretched out between God and
Nothingness, where each level is causally dependent on a higher
reality, and where in the end God is the only True Cause.  This is not
a God who one day gets bored of moving over the waters and decides to
create something; God emanates lesser realities by impassive
Necessity, like the sun illuminating the void.  God first emanates
personified "intermediate hypostases" like Reason, Soul, Wisdom, and
so on.  These intermediates then do the dirty work involving change
and creation.[14]

The One God remains, of course, utterly incomprehensible.  But with a
Platonic background, we can read the negative theology of a Proclus or
Pseudo-Dionysius in context.  God is now a limit of a series of higher
realities increasingly remote from our everyday concepts.  By
detaching our Rational Souls from the corruptible world and attending
to the intelligible realm we approach the realities above our sphere
of being.  Philosophy itself is like a mystical ascent towards the
more Real, towards what cannot be captured by the sort of knowledge
enmeshed in the world of accidents.  The great unwashed might take an
ascent to the Throne of God literally, but this is only an allegory of
the mystic journey of the Rational Soul.

This is not just speculative metaphysics gone wild.  Mystic knowledge
of intelligible realms should help explain our less perfect world
which is, after all, caused by the higher realities.  Philosophical
contemplation should uncover the deeper principles behind appearances.
Ancient Platonists thought a circle was the perfect shape, and so
heavenly bodies should move in circles.  In fact, they thought the
heavens should be arranged in a series of spheres in perfect circular
motion, all animated by cosmic souls emanating from God.  Quite often
NeoPlatonism went hand in hand with astrology, since the spiritual
macrocosm of the heavens was intimately connected to our personal
spiritual microcosm.

Western mystical theology has always hammered on how God was beyond 
comprehension.  But the negative way itself only makes sense within 
complex conceptual schemes.  And today, these schemes seem false in 
their concrete claims and quite crazy in their methods.


Now, it is tempting to say that grandiose metaphysical scenarios like
NeoPlatonism are just interpretations tacked onto a simple experience
of God.  Even though the most impressive mystical writings are
drenched in metaphysics, we should eliminate the philosophical
middlemen and look at the testimony of raw experience.  Let us take
the holy men ordinary people acknowledge as spiritual masters, and
ignore the metaphysicians.

But in folk mysticism, spiritual experience is closely tied to magic.
Holy men perform miracles; and though such Low Magic is not supposed
to be the goal, miracles confirm the mystic is on the right Path and
lead to "more ineffable revelations."[15]  While the NeoPlatonists'
incomprehensible God is a limit in a hierarchically structured
reality, folk mysticism finds God in a limit of progressively more
powerful and deeper paranormal phenomena.  Folk theories permeate folk
mysticism, especially folk psychology about "direct experience" and
feelings of certainty.

If interpretation is so intimately involved in mysticism, we should
wonder how much our spiritual experiences are culturally conditioned.
UFO-abductees, for example, do not just have experiences they later
fit into an abduction story.  Like past-life regression memories, an
abduction tale is usually fashioned in therapy.  UFO mythology is a
part of our cultural environment, absorbed by both the abductee and
the therapist.  They bring a story template to the sessions where they
forge a narrative, and their joint effort feeds back into the UFO
culture to reinforce or change the standard story.[16]  There is no
raw, interpretation-free abduction experience.

Similarly, recent scholars have emphasized how mystical experience is
constructed within religious cultures.  First of all, mystical
traditions have histories.  For example, ancient Hebrew religion was
full of mystic episodes.  Especially in the early parts of the Bible,
we find ecstatic experiences leading to God, but these are not
described in terminally obscure language.  Before the Babylonian
exile, a prophet might say "my eyes have seen the King, Yahweh of
Hosts" (Isaiah 6:5); God could be seen, and his messages were
fearfully clear.  Judaism after the exile revolved around _texts_
which needed convoluted interpretation.  God now communicated in
obscure language which might require divine inspiration even to
understand.[17]

Later Jewish mysticism continued the same trends.  Alongside early
themes like a heavenly ascent and entry into the realm of angels, holy
writ was central.  As Steven T. Katz describes, the very letters of
Torah have a magical significance in Jewish mysticism.  Many Sufis
treat the Qur'an very similarly, creating elaborate schemes of
letter-magic; with Hindus, Vedic sounds are the magical, creative
words.  Layers of mysterious meaning and metaphor in texts run
together with the depths to be plumbed by progress in mystical
experience.  Jewish mystics use texts like the Biblical erotic poem,
the Song of Songs.  Their tradition trains them to experience a
supernatural Person beyond all description, and speak of this in a
traditional language laced with the obligatory unknowables.
Christians use the Song to create encounters with a Christ-like
love---not the Jewish experience in different theological garb, but a
distinctly Christian encounter.  Religious cultures direct their
mystic followers to experience a particular "ultimate reality." Their
cultural template helps shape their experiences, which feed back into
the religious culture to reinforce or change the standard pattern.
Katz denies there is any raw, theory-free mystical experience.
Culture precedes and shapes the experience, as well as providing the
resources to interpret it afterwards.[18]
  
It support of his views, Katz points out how mystics in different 
traditions report different, highly specific details of ultimate 
reality.

    All these mystical personalities intended and experienced, they
    had _knowledge by acquaintance,_ what their communities taught as
    _knowledge by description._ The had existential knowledge of what
    their co-religionists knew only through propositions.  This
    existential knowledge moreover is quite specific, even to
    confirming minutiae of theological doctrine.  For example, Theresa
    of Avila not only encounters Jesus but also receives existential
    verification of the doctrine of the Trinity, while Jewish mystics
    always experience reality as conforming to the _halachah_ (Jewish
    Law).  This is to say, experiences are highly specific, more often
    than not reinforcing the structures of established religion down
    to its most technical doctrinal detail.[19]

Mysticism is not a culture-free, self-interpreting experience.
Mystics give us thirty-two flavors of ultimate reality.  And these are
conflicting realities, not an undifferentiated mush of ecstatic
feeling.

Even some sort of God is not constant in mysticism.  Classical
Buddhist ultimate reality, which has as much mystic testimony behind
it as any other flavor, is not theistic.  Many Buddhists suggest that
down deep, the world is but change and accidents.  Our lives are
changed by mystical experience, but mainly because if we push far
enough, we find that there is no such Thing as self.  Buddhist
philosopher Gunapala Dharmasiri argues that mystical truth lies
_beyond_ experiences of Unity and Love.[20]  In fact, Buddhist
mysticism often seems tainted by flashes of rationality.  While some
Buddhist sages adopt a heavy-handed negative language to describe the
"emptiness" they seek, others charge them with "mistaking purely
negative discourse for profundity" and advocate a more balanced
approach.[21] An infidel who thinks we live in an accidental world and
who is convinced the self is but a construct in the brain could agree
with much in early Buddhist doctrines, though parting company about
the existence of a cycle of rebirths we strive to escape from.

We need elaborate conceptual schemes to tell us about an unknowable
God beyond our concepts.  And if we seek unmediated experience of
divine reality, we end up with conflicting certainties.  Mysticism may
still be a path to God, but we cannot rely on experience alone; no
matter how sublime and ineffable.  Defenders of a mystic God have to
find ways of criticizing rival flavors of ultimate reality, or find a
common core to mysticism which amounts to more than negative talk and
feelings of certainty.  Otherwise, it looks like mysticism is
constrained not by any ultimate reality, but by the accidents of
history and human psychology.

3.  Beyond the Brain?
---------------------
It does not seem possible to distill a mystical essence independent of 
particular religious cultures.  But the similarities of mystical 
traditions are as real as their differences.  And though they disagree 
on its nature, mystics at least agree there is a deep spiritual 
reality beyond appearances.

A defender of God, then, can use mystical testimony---not as an
infallible experience, but as firsthand evidence supporting a
religious theory.  Theists can claim rival mysticisms are mistaken.  A
crude example would be a conservative Christian who believes some of
us encounter angels of God, while others are misled by lying spirits.
Truthful experiences are those which fit the Bible and Christian
tradition.  More sophisticated theologians claim a theory with a God
does a better job accounting for mystical experience and tying it to
an overall picture of the world.  Steven Payne argues that theistic
mysticism is more likely to involve true perception than a Hindu
monism which identifies the self with a transcendent but impersonal
One.  Theism makes sense of religious experience, while if "everything
is already identical with the transcendent One, then it is not clear
how there could be any sense of dread, fascination, and unworthiness
in the face of the Wholly Other." Plus, if mystical experience totally
identifies the self with the One, it is hard to see why the experience
is so fleeting.  Why return to the world of illusion?  Theism might
explain monistic experience; "an intense experience of union with God
might be _felt_ as a kind of monistic identification," though a Hindu
is mistaken to stop there and call it ultimate reality.[22]

Nontheists in turn criticize theistic mysticism.  But now the debate
is about how to explain mystical experiences.  Anyone criticizing a
rival mystic tradition is acknowledging that experience is fallible.
Mystics can be mistaken, though they often _feel_ they cannot be.  In
this case, we should also consider the prospects for a naturalistic
explanation.  Maybe there is no spiritual reality whatsoever.

For the naturalist, common mystical themes tell us about our
psychology.  For example, many traditions use sexual imagery to
describe contact with ultimate reality.  This is no embarrassment for
mystical religion, since the emotions and vocabulary of sexual love
are a natural metaphor for a feeling of ecstatic unification.[23]  A
mystic may use ordinary love as a starting point to eventually attain
a relationship with her God for which "love" is a barely adequate
word.  However, sexual imagery also suggests mystical experience
builds on a mundane psychological substrate.  It is not difficult to
imagine how some of us might take their capacity for sexual love and
build it up to an intense spiritual feeling, all without an actual
object of this transformed love.  In fact, the suppression of normal
sexual expression common to many mystical disciplines is probably just
the sort of thing to prepare for such an experience.[24]

So for the habitual reductionist, psychology promises to help us
explain mystical experience without going beyond the brain.  And in
any case, psychology should help us find some order in the grab-bag of
experiences called mystical.  A shaman ingests a hallucinogen and
journeys into a deeper reality, a contemplative withdraws into
herself.  Some mystics flog themselves, some attend philosophy
seminars.  We need a better sense of how their experiences are similar
and different.

Figuring out mysticism is difficult, since even ordinary experience is
very complex and nowhere near adequately understood.  But we can start
with a rough map.  Many scholars recognize two broad forms:
extrovertive, visionary episodes; and introspective, "depth mystical"
experiences.  Visionary mysticism is better known in popular religion.
Saints encounter Jesus; prophets are transformed by the presence of
God or a revealing angel.  Like hallucinations, visions take place
when we have high levels of cognitive and physiological activity.
Techniques to get a vision often induce a hyperaroused state but cut
down on external stimulation.  Depth mystical experiences, in
contrast, come about when our level of arousal is abnormally low.[25]
Introspective mystics typically use techniques to "clear the mind" and
withdraw into a cloud of unknowing.  Meister Eckhart's mysticism seems
to have been of this sort:

    Therefore, if God is to speak his word to the soul, it must be
    still and at peace, and then he _will_ speak his word and give
    himself to the soul and not a mere idea, apart from himself.
    Dionysius says: "God has no idea of himself and no likeness, for
    he is intrinsic good, truth, and being." God does all that he does
    within himself and of himself in an instant.  . . . God acts
    without instrumentality and without ideas.  And the freer you are
    from ideas the more sensitive you are to his inward action.  You
    are nearer to it in proportion as you are introverted and
    unself-conscious.[26]

In depth mysticism, the seeker meets God not in a fiery vision which 
rips her apart and puts her back together differently, but in a deep 
quietness.

Depth mysticism may be an exception to Steven T. Katz's emphasis on
how mystical experience is culturally constructed.  This variety of
mysticism seems to be centered on a "pure consciousness event" (PCE),
where the mystic is aware but lacks any object to be aware _of._ As
Stephen Bernhardt describes it, in a PCE "The subject is awake,
conscious, but without an object or content of consciousness---no
thoughts, emotions, sensations, or awareness of any external
phenomena.  Nothing."[27]  Such a state would be no more a cultural
artifact than an orgasm.

Meister Eckhart probably was familiar with the PCE; it was likely an
aim of his spiritual discipline, to be sought after and interpreted in
Christian terms.  Eckhart locates his experience in a NeoPlatonism-
influenced Christian metaphysics, even quoting Pseudo-Dionysius.  He
ties the content-free awareness of a PCE to the God beyond all
concepts.  But a PCE without concepts---without even visions of deep
reality or feelings of an overwhelming Presence---does not guarantee
the truth of Eckhart's conceptual scheme.  Though we might find a
place for God in an explanation of PCEs, a PCE is by no means a direct
experience of God.

Naturalistic psychology gives us a better handle on PCEs.  Robert
Forman describes how an introspective mystic uses a process of
"forgetting." Through repetitive mental routines, she begins to turn
off her cognitive and conceptual thinking, producing an effect similar
to what we see in sensory deprivation experiments.  "Meditators and
mystics practice a technique in which they recycle a constant mental
subroutine.  This technique serves as a catalyst to enable the mind to
come to `forget' all thought and sensation."[28]  It seems the
neurological basis for attention can continue to function for a while
even when those parts of the brain dealing with cognition and memory
are swamped by a recycled subroutine.  We can have awareness without
content precisely because consciousness is not a unitary, magical
thing.  The part of our brain involved in attention can sometimes go
its own way even without anything to attend to.

Introspective mysticism is a bit too free of concepts to support a
God.  Visionary mysticism is more promising.  Here we have encounters
with an overwhelming Presence, the self melting away in divine love,
hints of spiritual realms increasingly difficult to describe by
ordinary language.  It seems this is exactly what to expect from
experiences that bring us closer to God.

Visionary episodes are similar to other extraordinary experiences we
think of as paranormal events; for example, near-death experiences.
People who have had NDEs often report that it felt more real than
everyday reality, and that they emerged transformed.  They met a
loving presence, time became unreal to them, their selves lost their
boundaries and even broke apart completely.  These are mystical
themes.  This suggests that mystical experiences, like NDEs, take
place when the normal function of the brain is disrupted in certain
ways.  If we need nothing beyond the brain to explain paranormal
experience, the same applies to mysticism.  Mystical traditions
cultivate techniques to induce these experiences, and fit their
transforming personal significance into a picture of ultimate reality.
The mysticisms of different traditions have much in common, since they
rely on similar states in similar brains.  But the experiences are
also very much entangled with the traditions, since little in our
brains is untouched by our cultural environment.

Another clue that mystical experiences are due to anomalous brain
states comes from observing the effects of drugs.  Traditional peoples
often use psychoactive substances to enter the spirit realm, and the
Western occult tradition is not averse to dabbling in psychedelic
mysticism.  This does not mean encountering Christ or Krishna is a
matter of selecting the right drug, neither does it mean drug-induced
visions are the same as what saints see.  Crudely messing with the
brain's chemistry is bound to have different effects than what native
brain chemicals produce after we practice mystical techniques within a
supportive religious environment.[29] Still, it is impressive how many
weird and ineffable aspects of mystical experience show up in
drug-induced states.  In Walter Pahnke's famous Good Friday
Experiment, seminary students were given either a placebo or a
psychedelic drug.  All immersed themselves in a religious environment
of chapel, prayer, and meditation.  The psychedelic group's
experiences closely echoed classic mystical accounts; many reported
transformed lives in a follow-up study.[30]

The psychedelic evidence is suggestive, but we would like to know more
about how the brain behaves in mystical experiences.  Our knowledge
about the brain should be helpful, even though neuroscience is still
in its infancy.  For example, we know that the temporal lobe of the
brain has an important role in time perception, and that distorted
time perception and feelings of timelessness is typical in mystical
experience.  Indeed, by stimulating the temporal lobe by means such as
applying a magnetic field, experimenters find they can reproduce not
only time distortion, but often other mystical feelings like an
overwhelming Presence as well.[31]  The amygdala, a part of the brain
involved with very basic affective emotions, is tightly connected to
the temporal lobe along with the hippocampus, and it appears they act
in concert during mystical experience.  Naturally occurring
abnormalities in temporal lobe function also give us clues about
mystical experience.  Sufferers from temporal lobe epilepsy, for
example, have frequent visions, are extremely religious and often
hypersexual.  Chronic hyperstimulation by mystical techniques produce
similar results.  In our modern, secular world we often see such
conditions as pathologies, but in a different social environment they
would be valued signs of the visionary.[32]

We still do not have a fully detailed theory telling us exactly what
happens in visionary states.  But we know enough to say they belong
together with those abnormal brain states accompanying phenomena like
NDEs, drug highs, and temporal lobe seizures.  We cannot expect a
simple, straightforward theory of mysticism, since we are not studying
a single, simple experience.  But we have made progress, and have
excellent prospects to learn more.  What we have learned fits a
naturalistic picture rather well.  If we immerse ourselves in a
mystical tradition and practice techniques to drive our brain into an
anomalous state, we can enjoy a rush of feelings about ultimate
reality.  No Gods needed.


This does not yet end the argument, however.  If an experience happens
in the brain, this does not mean it testifies to nothing beyond the
brain.  The early psychologist William James developed a philosophy
which was both radically empiricist and thoroughly mystical.[33]  He
knew mystical episodes were accompanied by physical conditions
creating abnormal brain states, including his own ineffable experience
after inhaling nitrous oxide.  But he argued that an unusual brain
condition might be necessary to perceive ordinarily occluded
realities.  If sensory deprivation, fasting, or drugs help produce
spiritual visions, perhaps such techniques are precisely what open the
doors of perception.  After all, ordinary perception works much the
same way.  To see a cat and identify it as a cat, we need a properly
prepared brain operating in the right conditions.  And when we
perceive the cat, something changes in our brain.  If we had a
full-blown neuroscientific theory telling us exactly what happens when
we see a cat, this would not mean the cat is a figment of our
imagination.  Similarly, neuroscientists may one day find out exactly
what goes into a mystical vision, but this will not decide whether our
Gods are real.

At first it may be hard to take a mystic who believes her experience
opens a "third eye" seriously---mystical brain states seem abnormal,
even pathological.  But mystics seek a very extraordinary reality.
Mysticism is supposed to break us out of our ordinary conceptual
frameworks; giving the brain a good jolt might do just that.
Psychologist Stanislav Grof claims psychedelic and "transpersonal
experiences" provide mystic knowledge and transcend the
"Cartesian/Newtonian conception of the world."[34]  If so, we need
something beyond the brain to explain mystical brain states.  An
everyday cat-sighting is best explained by the independent existence
of a cat.  Perhaps the same goes for a vision of an angel.

This analogy does not quite work, however.  According to the best of
our knowledge, the cat is an external source of information.  An angel
is not.  To see this, consider Daniel C.  Dennett's argument that a
truly strong hallucination is impossible, as is a virtual reality
computer game which is as rich as real life.[35] Say we find a subject
to don a virtual reality helmet, which shows her a lifelike picture of
a sleeping cat.  We need a lot of information to produce that picture,
but this much is doable.  However, when we allow her to move her head
and see the cat from different angles, the amount of information we
must feed her multiplies enormously.  The situation gets completely
out of hand when we allow the cat to move around independently.  We
quickly reach a point where only the real world and a real cat can
keep up with the massive amount of information we have to supply the
subject.  Better to short-circuit the whole process and just jolt her
brain into feeling certain she saw a cat---a cat which will of course
be difficult to describe clearly.

Because of this information explosion, a hallucination as rich as real
life should be impossible.  The brain cannot generate so much
information internally.  The best we can hope for is to feed the brain
some random noise under conditions of sensory deprivation and let the
imagination elaborate.  And even then, it is difficult to generate a
coherent vision with stable facts one can go back and check again in
detail.

Mystical visions are much more like hallucinations than cat-sightings.
A mystic is typically _passive,_ responding to an outside spiritual
force even when she initiates the encounter.  If she sees an angel,
she has little opportunity or desire to circle around it and get
massive amounts of coherent information.  She never returns with
consistently true and surprising information about the ordinary world
which is supposed to depend on the supernatural reality she perceives.
She may, in describing her experience, use vast amounts of obscure
metaphysics but end up saying very little of substance.  If she
narrates a heavenly journey, it starts out as a vague tale
imaginatively fashioned out of echoes of her training, probably in
conditions of sensory deprivation.  It becomes more concrete when
retold and further connected to traditional story-templates about
mystical ascents.

Visionaries are not much for producing information, but they excel in
emotion.  Indeed, mystics often insist their experience does not
result in information---mere "dualistic knowledge"---but intense
feelings and personal transformation.  Maybe so.  But intense feelings
and even personal transformation can easily take place in a brain
driven into an anomalous state.  Nothing outside need participate.

We can criticize mystical claims, and ask how we might best explain
mystical and paranormal experiences.  And whether with UFO abductions,
visions, or introspective experiences, we invariably find anomalous
psychological events which serve as ingredients for elaborate cultural
constructions.  We find that our basic psychological capabilities like
love, awareness, and person-recognition can be scrambled and
disconnected from the outside world.  We find changed lives, intense
convictions, ambitious doctrines.  We do not find any spiritual
reality.

4.  The Limits of Language
--------------------------
Mystics discover too many flavors of ultimate reality.  Mystical
experience can be understood within the material world.  These
objections, in one form or another, are standard equipment for critics
of mysticism.  This is not a bad thing; after all, they _are_
excellent reasons to remain skeptical.  Still, we might be missing
something.  We can explain mysticism fairly well within the framework
of naturalistic science; but in their talk of paradox and
ineffability, mystics gesture at something beyond all frameworks.
Perhaps the standard critic ignores the radical nature of mysticism,
treating it as just another claim.  The mystic challenges the
arrogance of reason, denies that language can capture everything.

This threatens to take us back to the negative way, NeoPlatonism, or
some such madness.  But perhaps we should move beyond mystical
theologies as well.  Any conceptual scheme, it seems, is based on
certain metaphysical presuppositions, or at least rules which tell us
what fits and what does not.  If we insist that any scheme---common
sense, science, theology, whatever---is _the_ correct way, we risk
becoming ensnared in its rules.  We end up like computers, rigidly
following predetermined programs.  Yet we live lives which are touched
by creative novelty.  Perhaps we should think of spirituality as being
open to creativity, and see mysticism as a particularly impressive
example of our ability to leap beyond rules.

This way we can also understand why mystics talk in negatives and
paradoxes.  By "directing the listener away from the realm of
objects," mystics try to break us out of our ordinary conceptual
sets.[36] As a way of supporting a claim or conveying information,
negative talk is drivel.  As a way of pointing to an unknowable God in
a conceptual scheme like NeoPlatonism, it is a mistake.  But
paradoxical language has a different purpose: breaking us free of the
well-worn ruts of everyday thought.  Mystics tell us we have reached
the limits of language.  They invite us to join the experience, but
cannot say anything positive about what lies ahead.  Theodore
W. Jennings argues that everyday religious language often functions
similarly.  When we call out "oh God!" we are not doing theology, but
instead using "God" as an expletive.  Jennings believes this "signals
the rupture of the structures of our experience and is therefore
rather like swearing."[37]  God hovers at the limits of language, as
does mystical experience.

This is all very well---religion can make us see things differently,
sometimes to the point of radical personal transformation.  But as
yet, none of this supports the notion that there is, in fact, a God.
Religions make real claims.  Mystics are jolted out of their
conceptual sets, but they come back to earth and settle on a more
intensely religious way of seeing the world.  They then say their
experience _validates_ their new point of view.  They claim a direct
experience of ultimate reality changed them; they do not say they went
through an arbitrary rearrangement of conceptual furniture.  And
against such claims, the standard objections apply.  We need something
extra in the experience---something beyond language, but still
something we can get at.  Something like perception, but beyond
acquiring information.  Something that changes our perspective; but
something creative, not a random rearrangement.

To find what this something might be, consider an analogy used by
Richard H.  Jones.  Say we have to describe our world to intelligent
beings who live in a flat, two-dimensional environment.  If they know
geometry, we can probably explain the concept of an extra spatial
dimension.  If they know some physics, we might even convince them
they live in a thin slice of a larger three-dimensional universe.  We
can acquaint them with a different mode of existence by using familiar
categories in "two-dimensional language," but the crucial experience
is missing.  No amount of talk can convey our effortless familiarity
with 3D life, our qualitative certainty that we move in 3D.  Perhaps
language fails mystics for a similar reason.[38]

Indeed, many philosophers believe there is something ineffable about
experiential qualities, or "qualia." Frank Jackson tells the story of
Mary, a "color scientist" who knows everything there is to know about
light and how the brain reacts to light.[39]  She knows what
wavelengths will dominate in an eye looking at a red spot.  She
understands how retinal cells respond to light, and how the optic
nerve broadcasts information to the brain.  She knows the exact
physical changes which take place in the visual cortex and other parts
of the brain.  She can map out how the brain handles the question
"what color do you see?" and predict the answer will be "red." But
Mary has spent all her life in a room where everything is shades of
grey.  One day she steps out, and sees a tomato for the first time.
And the experience, the redness, is something new.  She has not
acquired some new information in addition to what she already knew;
instead, she has become acquainted with a quality which cannot be
reduced to information.

In that case, maybe mystics experience something qualitatively new,
creative, beyond all conceptual sets---only something much more
dazzling than a newfound color, more fundamentally important than
discovering one lives in a thin slice of a 3D world.  A spiritual
quality which is the creative ground of our existence infuses reality.
God might be simple beyond information, but qualitatively rich beyond
imagination.

Before we get carried away, however, let us see if qualia are all they
are advertised to be.  This "redness," for example, seems to be a
peculiarly useless addition to the physical world of light and brain
states.[40]  It just sits there looking pretty.  And even that is
dubious.  After all, qualia are supposed to be beyond behavioral
dispositions of the physical brain.  Since she knows all the relevant
psychophysics, Mary should also be able to figure out the brain
changes underlying an aesthetic appreciation of red.  Even in an
aesthetic response, qualia come along for the ride without actually
doing anything.  Something so impotent is not a promising clue about
an all-powerful God.  Moreover, since ineffable qualia are so useless,
we should suspect there is no ethereal redness apart from the physical
brain.

Let us go back to Mary's adventures with color.  There is an important
_physical_ difference between Mary's brain before she stepped outside,
and after she saw red.  Previously she knew how a brain would change
when perceiving red light, but she herself had not undergone this
change.  Having a complete database about how brains respond to light
does not automatically put her brain in the state of "seeing red."
That can only be done firsthand, but it is still no less a physical
event.  As Owen Flanagan says,

    `An experience of red' is not in the language of physics.  But an
    experience of red is a physical event in a suitably hooked-up
    system.  . . . Completed physics, chemistry, and neuroscience,
    along with a functional-role description, will explain what an
    experience of red is, in the sense that they will explain how red
    experiences are realized, what their functional role is, and so
    on.  But no linguistic description will completely _capture_ what
    an experience of red is like.  That is only captured in the first
    person.  You have to be there.[41]

We already know a few things about the physics of color sensation.
Our eyes have three kinds of color-detecting cell, so Paul Churchland
suggests that "a visual _sensation_ of any specific color is literally
identical with a specific triplet of spiking frequencies in some
triune brain system."  This gives us "an effective means of expressing
the allegedly inexpressible.  The `ineffable' pink of one's current
visual sensation may be richly and precisely expressed as a
95Hz/80Hz/80Hz `chord' in the relevant triune cortical system."[42]
But of course, knowing this is not the same as placing ourselves in
that brain state.  Sometimes this will not even be possible.  We might
know exactly what a pigeon's color sensations are, but we cannot share
them, since pigeons have four kinds of color-sensitive retinal cell.

This account may seem to be a bit too easy, concealing an impossible 
jump from mechanical information-processing to the rich qualities of 
conscious experience.  Instead of calling on the gods to bridge the 
gap, though, let us see how new qualities of experience might emerge 
in a physical world.

Imagine that a ship of colonists lands on a desert planet inhabited by
life forms which seek out mineral nuggets and "eat" them by a process
releasing an intense blast of heat.  The blast leaves behind a
valuable liquid as a waste product.  The liquid drains away quickly,
so it has to be harvested immediately after the blast.  The strange
life forms die when confined.  So the colonists wander the landscape,
trying to detect rapid local temperature variations: to avoid being
killed, and to get to the precious liquid in time.  They start out
with optical temperature gauges, pointing them around and trying to
catch surges in the readings.  They do what we think of as mechanical
data processing, in other words---work with sets of numbers.
Temperature, for them, has no real "felt quality."

Carrying an instrument around is crude and inefficient.  So the
colonists devise a way to "see" temperature: a helmet with a small
sensor mounted on top.  The sensor rapidly scans the area in front,
and then converts the data into a continually updated color map
projected on a transparent visor.  So a temperature map is
superimposed on the view of the terrain.  Since nothing in the desert
is red, they code temperature ranges in shades of red.  "Red" is still
a spiking pattern in the visual part of brain, but for a trained
forager, its meaning shifts.  She now "sees" temperature without
conscious attention, without having to crunch numbers.  She deftly
avoids blasts and quickly moves toward their centers once they pass.
Like an expert driver "feels" the road and the condition of his car as
an extension of his body, but even more intimately, she has begun to
"see" temperature.

Now comes biotechnology.  Foragers acquire a permanent graft of an
advanced temperature sensor, a "third eye." This projects signals
directly into the optical nerve.  Some brain rewiring connects "red"
sensations to initiate reflex movements---to avoid very rapid blasts
even without much training.  The foragers' perception of red has
become like a new sense for temperature.  Not only are we far from
conscious number-crunching, but we should begin to think in terms of
an entirely new experiential quality.  And if this is still not far
enough, the next step is obvious.  Give "red" back to normal vision.
Add a new area to the brain, sort of like a monochromatic visual
cortex.  Give it a direct line from the third eye; hook up reflex and
other behaviors to it.  Broadcast information from the temperature
cortex to the rest of the brain, to be available to subroutines which
handle attention and compete to assemble our conscious experience.

At this point, foragers will have a new sense, with new sensations
linked to the temperature map of their environment.[43]  But there is
no point in the development process where qualia appear magically out
of nowhere.  Crude gauge-reading and effortless experiential knowledge
of a temperature map lie on a continuum.  A continuum of increasingly
sophisticated information processing.

If there are no such things as ineffable qualia, this is bad news for
mysticism.  We end up back with an experience which testifies to
nothing beyond the brain.  It also means there is no such thing as
knowledge beyond information, no change of perspective which can set
us free from theories.  We are not mystic souls trapped in a world of
dry, lifeless information.  We are machines.  In all their terror and
magnificence, in all their rich depth---we have experiences _because_
we are biological machines.

5.  Holy Reason
---------------
Robert Gimello observes, "Were one to subtract from mystical
experience the beliefs which mystics hold to be therein confirmed and
instantiated, all that would be left would be mere hedonic tone, a
pattern of psychosomatic or neural impulse signifying nothing."[44]
Theistic mysticism has plenty of hedonic tone, but few beliefs which
can reasonably be called true.  Mystics might insist finite human
reason cannot grasp their truths anyway.  But any blithering idiot can
go beyond reason, and even a ridiculous idea can be stamped with
sublime feelings of certainty.  I've-had-an-experience-and-so-I-
believe mysticism is not only mistaken, it is boring.

Mystical arguments need a change of emphasis.  Instead of seeking an
experience which trumps reason, mystics can try and change our view of
reason.  Maybe mysticism goes beyond _mechanical_ reason.  Machine
intelligence, if even possible, might be inferior to the best of human
reason.  And in what separates our intellect from mere computation, we
might get a glimpse of what mystical insight may be.

Joining mysticism and reason is not a new idea.  To the Platonic
philosophers, reason was more akin to mystic insight than to plodding
computation.  Imagining a hierarchically structured reality, they also
believed there were different levels of reason.  The lowest faculties
of the Soul were the sort of automatic tasks an animal might be
capable of; keeping it alive but no more.  Next came faculties like
imagination and practical Reason, the intelligence we use to negotiate
the world of sensible objects.  Still higher was the Reason
philosophers cultivated, putting them in touch with the universal
truths of the intelligible realm.  And there was more.  The great
Muslim NeoPlatonist Ibn Sina described a power of "holy Reason,"
granted by God only to a few prophets.  Holy Reason apprehended
universal truths directly, without need for learning or reflection.
Perfected Reason was like inspiration or direct experience of Reality,
not like computing or inquiry.[45]

Ibn Sina's version of holy Reason was also entangled with some
perfectly nauseating metaphysical disputes, such as whether it could
produce any knowledge of the sensible realm.  But the idea that
learning and computing inflicted only imperfect intermediate stages of
Reason put deep roots into Western theism.  Christian theology, for
example, came to depict angels as intuiting facts directly and
immediately.  Even the Devil instantly knew all he needed about the
universe and his own nature, and rebelled against God almost as soon
as he was created.[46]

Modern philosophers can no longer get away with piling layer upon
layer of Reality and Reason; certainly none claim, like some
NeoPlatonists once did, that Plato's philosophy was revealed from
God.[47] But Platonism runs deep in our intellectual culture.  Many of
us think our minds cannot be confined by mechanical rules.  Many also
suspect our minds are somehow involved with the deepest aspects of
reality.  And if we can no longer speak of holy Reason with ease, we
can still find something mystical in how the contemplations of
mathematicians can describe our world so well.  Many physicists who
write about Life, the Universe, and Everything suspect theorists
apprehend an elegant mathematical reality underlying the world of
accidents.[48] The inspiration of mathematicians and physicists might
be something beyond a machine trying to blunder its way through life.

Physicist Roger Penrose is perhaps the best known Platonist today.  He
asks "how is it that the physical world indeed accords---and has
accorded since the beginning of time---with such extraordinary
precision with subtle and beautiful mathematical laws."  This mystery
is a bit overblown, of course---our ideas of physical elegance are
shaped by the interplay of theory and experiment; they do not spring
from the brow of Platonists contemplating perfect circles.  Elegant,
"fundamental" physics is a framework for accidents, not the reality
behind appearances.  However, Penrose also sees that a serious
Platonism requires a new theory of mind, one quite different than the
ideas prevailing among neuroscientists and artificial intelligence
researchers.  He suspects a solid classical world emerges from quantum
physics not by some process of decoherence, but by some unknown
feature of quantum gravity.  He also proposes that consciousness is
not a product of a system of classically interacting neurons, but is a
quantum gravity phenomenon.  If "consciousness could tie in with the
behavior of the universe at its deepest levels, and be relevant even
to the very geometrical structure of space-time," a Platonic view of
the world might become more respectable.[49]

Penrose's physics and neuroscience is very speculative;
neurophilosophers Rick Grush and Patricia Churchland describe his
arguments as "merest possibility piled on merest possibility teetering
on a tippy foundation of `might-be-for-all-we-know's."[50] But Penrose
has a deeper reason motivating his belief that mind is beyond the
machine, so that some strange new physics and neurobiology must be
involved in consciousness.  In proper Platonic form, this reason comes
from mathematics.  Godel's incompleteness theorem, according to
Penrose, shows that human mathematical reasoning cannot be captured by
any set of mechanical procedures.  A computer executes an algorithm: a
set of rules.  Penrose thinks we have a nonalgorithmic mind---beyond
even the most complex set of rules.[51]

No algorithm exists for certain functions.  For example, no computer
program can possibly implement Turing's halting function h, which is
simply h(p,n)=1 for programs p that halt when given input n, and
h(p,n)=0 for code which grinds on forever without producing any
result.  Of course, humans are also stumped by meaningful
nonalgorithmic functions like h; indeed, there is no way to know
h(p,n) for all p and n without some sort of mathematical holy Reason.
But Godel's Theorem suggests we can achieve a less ambitious
nonalgorithmicity.  In any axiom system powerful enough to be
interesting, Godel tells us there are theorems which are true but
which cannot be proven.  For any theorem-proving algorithm we devise,
a mathematician inspecting the algorithm can find a theorem which is
true and yet our algorithm cannot prove.  All systems of rules have
blind spots, yet it appears a mathematician is not locked into any
formal system.  She can always step outside of any system and examine
it from the outside.[52]

Intuitively, we feel we are more than any set of rigid rules.  In
science fiction, the hero oppressed by the renegade computer gives it
a paradox, something which does not fit its program, and watches it go
up in smoke.  Philosophers say we have free will---_we_ make our
choices, though we are influenced by our circumstances and our
history.  But if we are machines, this means our acts are ultimately
physically determined.  Like the computer bound by its instructions,
we only do what the laws of physics drive us to do.  But this position
seems absurd, even self-refuting.  If all we do is determined by
physics, the very idea of a reasoned argument becomes a farce: the
decision we make is shaped by the dynamics of some molecules, not the
logic of the argument.[53]

This does not yet mean we can resurrect holy Reason.  But if Penrose
is correct, we might begin to think about it.  If our special talent
is breaking free of rules, mystics claim to break free of all
conceptual sets.  If Platonic reason mysteriously grasps the deep
order of reality, Geoffrey Parrinder says "Mysticism is not a plug for
gaps as yet unfilled by science but, on the contrary, its conviction
of the mystical unity at the heart of things may alone provide that
order and continuity upon which all other studies depend."[54] Maybe
science and mysticism can come together in a deeper harmony.


Artificial intelligence researchers are not impressed by Godelian
arguments.  Saying we are not machines is to make an interesting claim
about the world.  Yet Penrose does not give us a test to tell us from
machines.  We do not know what in a human mathematician's performance
could set her beyond any possible machine.  Consider chess.  A general
algorithm for playing a perfect game exists in some mathematical
sense, but the number of possible chess games to evaluate is so
incredibly huge that no machine will ever implement it.  But computers
today still do a pretty good job playing chess.  It is probably only a
matter of time until computers will routinely defeat even the best
human players.  Algorithms need not be perfect to do a respectable
job; indeed, we humans also seem to get by doing imperfect but good
enough jobs.[55]

On the other hand, rule-bound machines _do_ have blind spots, and it
seems avoiding ruts could be an important aspect of intelligence.
Something is missing when we compare human intelligence to a very
complex computer program; something connected to the Godelian
intuition that we are not bound by rules.

This something, however, is quite unmystical: a touch of randomness
turns out to be all we need to keep us---and machines, for that
matter---away from rule-bound blind spots.[56]  At first this seems
crazy.  After all, randomness is the only thing more mindless than
rigid rules.  Platonists at heart, we think the essence of Reason is a
lawful, transcendent order.  In contrast, randomness is a total lack
of pattern, as in a sequence of coin flips.  Such chaos can only
corrupt Reason.  But if we ignore Plato for a moment, we will find
randomness is rather interesting.  A patternless function is maximally
nonalgorithmic.  It is a nonalgorithmic function which is meaningless,
useless for everything but keeping us from following preset rules all
the time.  So if we want a nonalgorithmic intelligence, distinguished
not by a magical knowledge of functions like Turing's h but by its
ability to jump outside of any system of rules, randomness is just
what we need.  A nonalgorithmic machine uses randomness as a device to
introduce novelty, a way to break out of ruts.

Consider a very simple game.  There are two houses; a cop starts the
game in one and the robber in the other.  Each turn, they
independently decide either to stay where they are, or move to the
other house.  If the cop ends up in the same house as the robber, she
catches him and the game is over.  Usually the cop will be successful
within a few turns.  But say she follows a search procedure described
in the police manual.  In that case, her search algorithm will have a
blind spot: a robber who has managed to steal the manual will never be
caught.  All he has to do is follow the same algorithm, ensuring he
switches when the cop switches, and stays put when she stays.

The police chief in charge of writing the manual is in the same
Godelian predicament as a mathematician trying to devise a perfect
theorem-proving algorithm.  The chief will notice that her search
procedure has a blind spot.  But every time she tries to patch up the
police manual by working around the previous blind spot, she will
introduce a new one.  Any search algorithm will fail for those robbers
using the same algorithm.

If our chief knows some game theory, however, she will supply her
officers with a coin to flip every now and then.  Someone playing a
game against an intelligent opponent has to guard against behaving too
predictably, since her opponent might figure out her strategy and play
accordingly.  So sometimes it is best to act randomly.[57]  In our
simple game, all a cop has to do to guarantee she will eventually
catch the robber is to decide whether to switch or stay by flipping a
coin.  In different games, randomness may be useful at different
levels than just deciding moves.  For example, a police chief might
issue a new manual every week, but generate the search algorithm
randomly.  Mechanical computing includes not only algorithms but also
arbitrarily complex combinations of rules and randomness.  Whenever it
needs to explore new ways of thinking or to avoid falling into ruts, a
machine can start flipping coins.

Randomness gives us novelty, not real creativity.  But we already know
how to get there.  Biological evolution creates wondrously complex
life forms, using random variation as a source of novelty.  Like
Darwin, we can start with an analogy to artificial selection.  Our
computers are very good at calculating 1+1=2, but they could just as
well be programmed to conclude 1+1=3.  However, any program which did
its sums so blatantly incorrectly could not survive long in the
software market.  Programs with an improved performance, on the other
hand, have a selective advantage.  Now, dispose of the artificial
selection, and imagine a population of machines which have to survive
and reproduce in a hostile environment.  To various degrees, our
machines will be able to represent their environment and communicate
with one another.  In a world where one machine next to another make
two, it is easy to see our machines would evolve toward consistently
concluding 1+1=2.  In fact, as Daniel C.  Dennett argues, here we see
the beginnings of abstract reasoning, of machines which evolve into
the structures enabling them to respond to the logic of the arguments
they present one another.[58] Perhaps machines following deterministic
physical laws cannot genuinely respond to arguments.  Darwinian
machines, however, can.

In the real world, evolution has an extra twist.  Genes do not carry
that much information, and biological selection acts upon genes.  Yet
brains which let machines represent their environment in detail,
imagine possible future scenarios, and communicate with similar brains
would be quite useful.  We also do not want these brains to be so
rigidly rule-bound as to abound with blind spots their competitors can
exploit.  So we add another level of Darwinism.  Today's sciences of
the mind are full of Darwinian metaphors.  There is Gerald Edelman's
"neural Darwinism"; William H. Calvin's "Darwin machine"; and
Dennett's multiple levels of Darwinian mechanisms, from a host of
sub-intelligent "demons" in the brain's "pandemonium" competing to
assemble our stream of consciousness, to clusters of beliefs called
"memes" interacting to shape our idea-space.[59]  Scientists will
debate the details for long years to come, but a good picture of our
minds is emerging.  We are nonalgorithmic _machines._ The physical
world is awash with noise, which is a source of random variation in
the brain.  We feed this randomness into variation-and-selection
mechanisms and intricate learning strategies.  The result is a machine
which runs a complex, unpredictable "program" combining algorithms and
randomness.  Intelligence, like life, walks a knife-edge between order
and chaos.

Machines, then, can avoid the Godelian trap.  Even so, talk of
Darwinian machines might seem too vague, merely a promise of further
progress.  It turns out we can make a much stronger statement: the
_only_ way for our minds to reach beyond machines is through holy
Reason, and we simply do not possess that.  Next to Godel's
incompleteness theorem, we can also prove a completeness theorem
showing that _every_ function, no matter how nastily nonalgorithmic,
can be expressed as a combination of algorithms and randomness.  All
nonalgorithmicity, in other words, comes from randomness.  Mechanical
nonalgorithmic strategies like a cop flipping coins to catch a robber
depend only on the fact the coin is random.  What sequence of heads
and tails actually turn up is immaterial.  A Platonic intelligence can
only improve on the machine by performing a task which requires a
particular random sequence of heads and tails.  This brings us back to
the ambitious version of a nonalgorithmic mind: computing a meaningful
nonalgorithmic function like Turing's h.  And the only way to get h is
somehow intuiting the exact random sequence defining h.  There is no
middle ground between machine intelligence and holy Reason for Penrose
or anyone else to occupy.[60]  And holy Reason is only a philosopher's
fantasy.  Nothing and nobody we know of has such godlike talents.

Before Darwin, most biologists were Platonists.  Each individual
reflected, more or less perfectly, the essence of its species.  After
Darwin, we learned to give accidents their due.  Platonic essences
melted away.  And as we learn more about our minds, Darwin is once
again eclipsing Plato.  Human intelligence is a product of an
accidental world, relying on those very accidents to work properly.
If our minds have anything to do with fundamental physics, it is only
that quantum mechanics is a source of randomness.  So the debate
between science and mysticism does, in fact, change our views of human
reason---but not in a way useful to religion.  Reason, we have found,
is not a transcendent force governing the world, nor a mystic power of
our Souls.

6.  Accidental Reason
---------------------
God has not changed much for the past few millennia.  We still look 
around, ask where it all comes from, and conclude there must be a 
Creator.  Most of us still hope to get closer to God through miracles 
and spiritual experience.  And metaphysicians still come up with Gods 
a Greek philosopher could have recognized without too much difficulty.  
Perhaps more of us today are sophisticated believers who speak gently 
of an infinite unknowable, suggesting our religions only symbolically 
hint at an inexpressibly deep Reality.  But even these views echo 
ancient mystical theologies.

Modern science changes the ancient debates, though not because it
opens a new front in an ancient war between Reason and Revelation.
That war is more myth than reality.  Philosophers have always pulled
out their hairs trying to reconcile God with evil, and worried about
revealed religions which do not even bother to be internally
consistent.  Even so, premodern philosophers rarely undermined faith.
They occasionally thought orthodoxy depended too much on arbitrary
authority, and often considered popular religion vulgar.  But if
philosophers disdained the aid of the priests, their transcendent
Reason led to God anyway.  Even this conflict of styles was no great
issue; many Christians and Muslims brought Athens and Jerusalem
together quite effectively.

Science changes the debate because it forces us out of the conceptual
sets of Western metaphysics.  It has roots in previous ways of
thinking, of course.  Unlike Near Eastern mystical sects devoted to
preserving the wisdom of the founding saint, Greek philosophy
encouraged a critical attitude; a student could disagree with the
master.  And unlike Eastern Christianity, the Western Church was never
sufficiently mystical, so it nurtured interest in the material world.
Still, science could just as well have started somewhere civilized
like China or the Islamic Middle East.  Europe inadvertently started
science off and failed to strangle it.  Scientists took the critical
attitude and the interest in the world, and made something new and
bizarre.  Modern science emerged as a historical accident---and a
precarious and disruptive accident at that.[61]

Mystics and metaphysicians realize a common-sense view of the world is
not enough, and pursue the reality behind appearances.  They desire
certainty, and only the certainty which comes from a direct,
theory-free experience of ultimate reality is good enough.  But, as
Ben-Ami Scharfstein points out, this is no way to understand the
world.

    The non-mystic may be naive in taking the world as it looks, yet
    if he does, he may begin to explain himself, the mystic, and the
    world.  In ordinary experience, the world is more or less one; in
    mystical experience it is split, it lacks the possibility of at
    least intellectual coherence.  Mystics try to sweep the world
    under the rug.  Then they try to ignore the lumps in the rug.[62]

Science _starts off_ with a naive view---our common-sense,
folk-theoretical description of the world.  Not because common sense
has any special virtue, but because we can only start from where we
happen to be.  We can then go further, often undermining common sense
in the process.  Controlled, systematic experiments are a good way to
learn more.  This is not like a quest for pure experience.
Experiments count for or against the theories they test, be they folk
theories or sophisticated mathematical models.  Every measurement,
every bit of "raw data," depends on a complex theoretical background.
When we improve our theories, we do not only fit the facts better, but
we also go back and rethink what the facts are.  "Mary saw a red
tomato" is not the same fact in folk psychology and in a mature
neuroscience.  In the light of our best theories, "Mary encountered an
angel" is not a raw fact but a mistake.

So science harbors a curious tension.  On one hand, we hope that in
refining our theories and experiments, we fall in a positive feedback
loop.[63]  In that case, we converge to some very powerful and solidly
confirmed theories.  The planets really do behave like our celestial
mechanics tell us.  Evolution is a theory, but also solid enough to
call a fact without apologies.  On the other hand, nothing is
absolutely certain.  Even the most basic assumptions of scientists,
like there being an external world independent of our whims, are open
to question.  Assumptions are only starting points.  For example, if
parapsychology had succeeded, we not only would know some new facts
but we would have had to rethink how we do science.  We could have
discovered the world our religions imagine; it just did not turn out
that way.

This lack of certainty can be unnerving.  After all, transcendent
Reason is, automatically, trustworthy.  The accidental reason of a
fully naturalistic science is a bit tarnished in comparison.  We might
wonder if we have pushed reason so far as to undermine
itself---whether without some transcendental guarantee, reason is just
an intellectual game with no real claim to produce truth.  After all,
as Paul Churchland remarks,

    Human reason is a hierarchy of heuristics for seeking,
    recognizing, storing, and exploiting information.  But those
    heuristics were invented at random, and they were selected for
    within a very narrow evolutionary environment, cosmologically
    speaking.  It would be miraculous if human reason were completely
    free of false strategies and fundamental cognitive limitations,
    and doubly miraculous if the theories we accept failed to reflect
    these defects.[64]

Churchland is correct---and also overly pessimistic.  Yes, our brains
are terrible at intuitively grasping things like quantum mechanics.
And from an evolutionary perspective, our reason is mainly a tool to
negotiate a _social_ environment.  So we tend to see purposes
everywhere in nature, if necessary inventing gods to supply them.  But
our brains and social enterprises are also quite flexible.  We are not
locked into the conceptual sets our history predisposes us to.  In
well-trained physicists' brains, and more importantly in the community
of physicists, we have created a virtual machine which sees the world
in terms of quantum physics.  Some of us live without gods.
Accidental reason is never perfect, but it is the best we can do.

Still, accidental reason is too fragile for many philosophers.
Science might oppose mystical visions of reality, but without
transcendental assurances, why accept science?  Perhaps every way of
looking at the world, mysticism or science, involves fundamental
metaphysical presuppositions.  And there may be no way to
decide between these non-arbitrarily.  Mystical systems and science
all come as a package deal, where assumptions about ultimate reality
include the very criteria used to judge whether any claim is
acceptable.[65]  There is no unbiased, fully rational choice---only a
transcendent Reason could have provided that.  One cannot criticize a
faith from the outside, only convert to or out of total points of
view.

Such philosophers seem to misunderstand science, particularly how
presuppositions are only starting points.  But in these postmodern
times, distrust in reason is common.  We still have to see whether
accidental reason self-destructs.  Meanwhile, if we accept science,
the verdict on mysticism is clear.  Certain, theory-free experience of
ultimate reality is an illusion.  There is nothing which remains when
the surface reality of accidents are boiled away---all we can find
behind accidents are another layer of accidents.  Against our
intuitions, facts become clearer, more solid, as we wrap them in
ever-more sophisticated theories and computations.  Paradoxically,
refusing certainty leads to the most reliable knowledge.

Notes
-----
[1] See testimonies by contemporary religious philosophers in Thomas
V. Morris, ed., _God and the Philosophers: The Reconciliation of Faith
and Reason_ (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994).  A frequent
reason for belief is a paranormal or mystical experience they believe
must be explained by a God.

[2] Rudolf Otto, _The Idea of the Holy: An Inquiry into the
Non-Rational Factor in the Idea of the Divine and its Relation to the
Rational_ (2nd edition, transl. John W. Harvey, New York: Oxford
University Press, 1950).

[3] Denise Lardner Carmody and John Tully Carmody, _Mysticism:
Holiness East and West_ (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997),
p. 21.

[4] E.g. Frithjof Schuon, _The Transcendental Unity of Religions_
(transl. Peter Townsend, New York: Harper & Row, 1975).

[5] Ernest Gellner, _Reason and Culture: The Historic Role of
Rationality and Rationalism_ (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), chap. 1.

[6] Richard H. Jones, _Mysticism Examined,_ p. 5.

[7] _Ibid,_ pp. 32-39.

[8] See Bernard McGinn, _Foundations of Mysticism_ (New York:
Crossroad, 1992), pp. 267-291, for an overview of Christian
theological views of mysticism.  Catholic and Orthodox attitudes tend
to be more positive than with Protestants.  But even among
Protestants, quasi-mystical themes are common.  For example, the Holy
Spirit may have to act on someone for her to truly understand
Scripture, or skepticism might inherently be a spiritual failure.
Conservative Protestant theology occasionally reads like mysticism
centered on scriptural literalism; e.g. James Montgomery Boice, _The
Sovereign God_ (Downers Grove: InterVarsity, 1978), pp. 21-23 (based
on 1 Cor. 2:14).

[9] E.g. Karen Armstrong, _A History of God: The 4000-Year Quest of
Judaism, Christianity and Islam_ (New York: Alfred E.  Knopf, 1994).
Western scholars usually have more favorable attitudes toward Sufi
mysticism than towards mainstream Islam.

[10] John E. Mack, _Abduction: Human Encounters with Aliens_ (New
York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1994), p. 43.

[11] Proclus, _Commentary on the Parmenides 7,_ quoted in Bernard
McGinn, _The Foundations of Mysticism,_ p.  61.

[12] Pseudo-Dionysius, _The Mystical Theology,_ quoted in _Ibid,_
p. 176.  This is the respectable bit.  One of my favorites is the
Gnostic _Apocryphon of John_ (in J.M. Robinson, ed., _The Nag Hammadi
Library_), which starts out by "The Monad is a monarchy with nothing
above it," and proceeds to a negative theology gone mad; about two
pages of immeasurability, incomprehensibility, and ineffability.

[13] _Catechism of the Catholic Church,_ par. 39-43.

[14] R.T. Wallis, _Neoplatonism_ (London: Duckworth, 1972); John Peter
Kenney, _Mystical Monotheism: A Study in Ancient Platonic Theology_
(Hanover: Brown University Press, 1991).

[15] Geoffrey Parrinder, _Mysticism in the World's Religions_ (New
York: Oxford University Press, 1976), pp.  165-167.  Popular
mysticism's dependence on paranormal theories of the world is clear in
the modern New Age as well.

[16] See Nicholas P. Spanos, _Multiple Identities and False Memories_;
Elaine Showalter, _Hystories: Hysterical Epidemics and Modern Culture_
(Columbia University Press, New York, 1997), chap. 13.

[17] James L. Kugel, in J.L. Kugel and R. A. Greer, _Early Biblical
Interpretation,_ p. 59.

[18] Steven T. Katz, "The `Conservative' Character of Mystical
Experience," in S.T. Katz, ed., _Mysticism and Religious Traditions_
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1983).

[19] _Ibid,_ p. 21.

[20] Gunapala Dharmasiri, _A Buddhist Critique of the Christian
Concept of God,_ chap. 6.

[21] Robert Gimello, "Mysticism in its Contexts," in S.T. Katz, ed.,
_Mysticism and Religious Traditions._ Quotation from Tsung-Mi, p. 77;
see also Gimello's discussion of Hakuin, p. 80f.

[22] Steven Payne, _John of The Cross and the Cognitive Value of
Mysticism: An Analysis of Sanjuanist Teaching and its Philosophical
Implications for Contemporary Discussions of Mystical Experience_
(Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1990), p. 143.

[23] Robert Charles Zaehner, _Mysticism: Sacred and Profane_ (Oxford:
Clarendon, 1957), p. 151f.

[24] Paul Kurtz, _The Transcendental Temptation,_ pp. 99-102.

[25] Roland Fischer, "A Cartography of Understanding Mysticism,"
_Science_ <174> (1971) p. 897.  Suggestibility and hyperarousal are
important in quasi-mystical episodes like evangelical conversion
experiences as well; see Leonard Zusne and Warren H. Jones,
_Anomalistic Psychology,_ pp. 91-94.

[26] Raymond Bernard Blakney, _Meister Eckhart: A Modern Translation_
(New York: Harper & Row, 1941), pp. 99-100.

[27] Stephen Bernhardt, in R.K.C. Forman, ed., _The Problem of Pure
Consciousness: Mysticism and Philosophy_ (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1990), p. 220.

[28] Robert K.C. Forman, _Ibid_, p. 38.

[29] Steven Payne points out some of these differences (_John of The
Cross and the Cognitive Value of Mysticism,_ pp.  204-206), and
concludes there is no good physiological account of mysticism and no
reason to expect one will ever become available.  However, the
comparison to drug-experiences is not meant to lead to a single simple
account for the phenomenology of all types of mysticism, especially
the depth mysticism Payne correctly observes to be most different from
a psychedelic experience.  Note that mystics themselves need not
always have the same sort of experience, describing physiologically
distinct events in similar religious language.
 
[30] See W.N. Pahnke & W.A. Richards, "Implications of LSD and
Experimental Mysticism," in Charles T. Tart, ed., _Altered States of
Consciousness_ (New York: Wiley, 1969); Paul Kurtz, _The
Transcendental Temptation,_ pp. 102-104.

[31] An intriguing, if perhaps simplistic, theory of mystical
experience is that of Michael A. Persinger, "Religious and Mystical
Experiences as Artifacts of Temporal Lobe Function: A General
Hypothesis," _Perceptual and Motor Skills_ <57> (1983), p. 1255; and
subsequent work.  For NDE parallels see Susan Blackmore, _Dying to
Live,_ chap. 10.

[32] For mysticism in a neuroscientific and psychopathological
context, see Rhawn Joseph, _Neuropsychiatry, Neuropsychology, and
Clinical Neuroscience_ (2nd ed., Baltimore: Williams & Wilkins, 1996).
Ben-Ami Scharfstein considers the most important difference between
mystical and pathological cases to be that psychotics lack _control_
over their experience; _Mystical Experience_ (Baltimore: Penguin,
1974), pp. 164-166.

[33] G. William Barnard, _Exploring Unseen Worlds: William James and
the Philosophy of Mysticism_ (Albany: State University of New York
Press, 1997).  Naturally, James believed in paranormal phenomena as
well.

[34] Stanislav Grof, "Beyond the Brain: New Dimensions in Psychology
and Psychotherapy," in Christian Ratsch, ed., _Gateway to Inner Space:
Sacred Plants, Mysticism and Psychotherapy_ (transl. John Baker,
Bridport: Prism, 1989).  Grof's argument is based mainly on occult
physics and alleged paranormal feats in psychedelic states.

[35] Daniel C. Dennett, _Consciousness Explained,_ chap. 1.

[36] Richard H. Jones, _Mysticism Examined,_ p. 112.

[37] Theodore W. Jennings, _Beyond Theism: A Grammar of God-language_
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1985), p. 135.

[38] Richard H. Jones, _Mysticism Examined,_ pp.\ 109-111.  See also
the classic, Edwin A. Abbott, _Flatland: A Romance Of Many Dimensions_
(New York: Barnes & Noble, 1963).  Some degree of ineffability in
experience and the nature of words can be defended without
acknowledging any truth in mysticism; e.g. Ben-Ami Scharfstein,
_Ineffability: The Failure of Words in Philosophy and Religion_
(Albany: SUNY Press, 1993).  I want to pursue the more radical view
that there is no such thing as complete ineffability.

[39] Frank Jackson, "Epiphenomenal Qualia," _Philosophical Quarterly_
<32> (1982) p. 127.  See also David J. Chalmers, "The Puzzle of
Conscious Experience," _Scientific American,_ December 1995, p. 80.

[40] In other words, qualia invariably end up being epiphenomenal.
Philosophers who accept nonphysical qualia then usually try and find
ways to bind qualia to the brain, usually by some very hypothetical
laws connecting mental and physical realms.  See, for example, David
J. Chalmers, _The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory_
(Oxford: Oxford University press, 1996).

[41] Owen Flanagan, _Consciousness Reconsidered,_ p. 100.

[42] Paul M. Churchland, _A Neurocomputational Perspective,_
pp. 104-106.  Churchland also expresses a dissatisfaction with the
limits of language; however, this is not on account of some mystic
ineffability but the practical impossibility of conveying full
brain-state information by ordinary language.

[43] Of course, some philosophers will not concede this
point---probably those who seriously raise the possibility of zombies:
creatures identical to humans in every physical way and every possible
behavior, except that they're not really conscious.  Personally, I
think the proper response to this fantasy is proper medication, not a
counterargument.  Zombies are a twentieth century version of
transubstantiation, only worse.  See Daniel C. Dennett, _Consciousness
Explained,_ especially pp. 404-406.

[44] Robert Gimello, in S.T. Katz, ed., _Mysticism and Religious
Traditions,_ p. 62.

[45] Majid Fakhry, _A History of Islamic Philosophy,_ p. 142.

[46] Jeffrey Burton Russell, _Lucifer: The Devil in the Middle Ages_
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1984), p. 175.

[47] R.T. Wallis, _Neoplatonism,_ p. 17.

[48] Many physicists found it easy to cross over from Platonism to a
mushy mysticism; see selections in Ken Wilber, ed., _Quantum
Questions._ Even today, Platonism exists as an undercurrent in
theoretical physics, particularly among workers in general relativity.
For a critique of physical Platonism, see Victor J. Stenger, _Atoms
and the Void_ (forthcoming).

[49] Roger Penrose and Stuart Hameroff, "What `Gaps'?  Reply to Grush
and Churchland," _Journal of Consciousness Studies_ <2>:2 (1995),
pp. 98-111.  Roger Penrose's basic arguments are laid out in _The
Emperor's New Mind_ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989); and
_Shadows of the Mind: A Search for the Missing Science of
Consciousness_ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994).  Penrose's
Platonism is less hierarchical than the classical version; see figure
in _Shadows_ p. 414.  He focuses on what he believes are three gaps:
between the Platonic, mental, and physical worlds.

[50] Rick Grush and Patricia Smith Churchland, "Gaps in Penrose's
Toilings," _Journal of Consciousness Studies_ <2>:1 (1995), pp. 10-29.

[51] See Roger Penrose, _Behavioral and Brain Sciences_ <13> (1990)
p. 692; and accompanying critical comments.

[52] The classic statement of the Godelian anti-AI position is
J.R. Lucas, "Minds, Machines, and Godel," _Philosophy,_ <36> (1961),
pp. 112-127.  Penrose's arguments introduce some subtle differences,
especially in _Shadows of the Mind,_ but it is a variation on the same
theme.  See Douglas R. Hofstadter, _Godel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal
Golden Braid_ (New York: Vintage, 1980), chap. 15 for a critique of
Lucas.

[53] G.R. Habermas and J.P. Moreland, _Immortality,_ pp. 39-41; Antony
Flew, _Atheistic Humanism,_ pp. 119-123.

[54] Geoffrey Parrinder, _Mysticism in the World's Religions,_ p. 6.

[55] Daniel C. Dennett, _Darwin's Dangerous Idea,_ chap. 15.

[56] Taner Edis, "How Godel's Theorem Supports the Possibility of
Machine Intelligence," _Minds and Machines_ (forthcoming).  This
section is based on the more detailed arguments presented here.

[57] James O. Berger, _Statistical Decision Theory: Foundations,
Concepts, and Methods_ (New York: Springer-Verlag, 1980), pp. 10-13.

[58] Daniel C. Dennett, _Darwin's Dangerous Idea,_ chap. 14; _Elbow
Room: The Varieties of Free Will Worth Wanting_ (Cambridge: The MIT
Press, 1984).

[59] William H. Calvin, _The Cerebral Symphony: Seashore Reflections
on the Structure of Consciousness_ (New York: Bantam, 1990); Gerald
M. Edelman, _Neural Darwinism_ (New York: Basic, 1987); Daniel
C. Dennett, _Consciousness Explained_ and _Darwin's Dangerous Idea._

[60] Proved in Taner Edis, "How Godel's Theorem Supports the
Possibility of Machine Intelligence."

[61] Ernest Gellner, _Reason and Culture,_ chap. 7.

[62] Ben-Ami Scharfstein, _Mystical Experience,_ p. 59.

[63] See Ronald N. Giere, _Explaining Science: A Cognitive Approach_
(Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1988).

[64] Paul M. Churchland, _A Neurocomputational Perspective,_ p. 141.

[65] E.g. Richard H. Jones, _Mysticism Examined,_ chap. 3; Donald
Rothberg, "Contemporary Epistemology and the Study of Mysticism," in
R.K.C. Forman, ed., _The Problem of Pure Consciousness._ The one
constant in most philosophy of mysticism seems to be obscurantism.
Building metaphysical castles in the sky used to dominate (see Bernard
McGinn, _The Foundations of Mysticism,_ pp. 291-326); as philosophers
lost confidence in grandiose metaphysics, equally obscure postmodern
hand-wringing replaced it.

