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Visions, Pictures, and Rules
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 October 2008
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The Judeo-Christian mystical tradition is replete with accounts of visions. But the perceptual experiences reputedly involved in these visions are often problematic. The prophet Isaiah (of Jerusalem) is reputed to have seen God in a mystic vision; St Francis to have seen Christ and received the stigmata; Julian of Norwich to have seen Christ's passion; St Teresa of Avila to have seen Christ, the devil, seraphim, and various Saints. Yet at least two fundamental questions immediately arise concerning the perceptual awareness involved in such visionary experiences. First, how could Jewish or Christian mystics have any reasonable certitude of correctly identifying such extraordinary entities as God, angels, and deceased Saints, as figures in their visions? And second, while Catholics, for example, see the Virgin Mary during their visions, Muslims see Muslim saints and Hindus see Hindu deities: why then do mystics tend during their visions to perceive entities which accord with their expectations, entities which are usually regarded as possessing special religious significance exclusively within each mystic's own religious tradition?
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References
page 304 note 1 Julian of Norwich, , Revelations of Divine Love, trans. Wolters, Clifton (Baltimore, Maryland: Penguin Books, 1966), ch. 16 (italics mine).Google Scholar
page 304 note 2 I follow Goodman's, Nelson usage here. See Languages of Art (New York: Bobbs-Merrill, 1968), pp. 22–3.Google Scholar
page 305 note 1 Walton, Kendall, ‘Pictures and Make-Believe’, Philosophical Review, July 1973, pp. 283–319Google Scholar. Walton calls the truths ‘make-believe’ rather than ‘imaginary’ because he defines an imaginarily true proposition as one which is fictionally true in virtue of some fact entirely about someone's imagining (or pretending, supposing, dreaming) that it is true. The make-believe truths of representational art are fictionally true partially in virtue of facts both about literal acts of perception and about the physical configuration of the paint on the canvas.
page 307 note 1 St Teresa of Avila, The Life, Relations, Maxims and Foundations, trans. Lewis, David, ed. Burke, John J. (New York: Columbus Press, 1911), ch. 7, pars. 11 and 12Google Scholar. By using the phrase ‘with the eyes of the soul’, St Teresa indicates that she had what is usually referred to in the mystical literature, following St Augustine, as an ‘imaginary vision’, technically a vision involving images and their counterparts for the senses other than sight, even though the five external senses are not used.
page 307 note 2 Walton, , ‘Pictures and Make-Believe’, pp. 309 and 313.Google Scholar
page 308 note 1 In recognition of mistakes of this sort in perceiving visions, St John of the Cross admonishes novices not to be deceived by visions by interpreting ‘them according to their apparent sense and literally’ (Ascent of Mount Carmel, trans. Peers, E. Allison [Garden City: Doubleday, 1958], bk. II, ch. 19, par. 5).Google Scholar
page 308 note 2 Imaginary visions, which phenomenologically involve the perception of shapes, colours, etc., could, I suppose, involve genuine acts of sense perception if reliable data is acquired about external states of affairs. Although the bodily senses are not used here, I take it that the precise causal mechanism is irrelevant to whether or not an act is a genuine act of sense perception.
page 309 note 1 St Teresa, Life, Rel. 2, par. 15.
page 309 note 2 St John of the Cross, Ascent of Mount Carmel, bk. II, ch. 24, par. 5.
page 311 note 1 Maclntyre, Alasdair, ‘Visions”, in New Essays in Philosophical Theology, eds. Flew, Antony and Maclntyre, Alasdair (New York: Macmillan, 1964), pp. 258–9.Google Scholar
page 311 note 2 Note that where vision rules function, the mystic will not have an epistemically privileged position in identifying the entities in his vision. Anyone equally cognizant of the relevant rules is on an equal footing in assessing the identity of entities in the vision provided that he too knows all the relevant details of the entities literally perceived by the percipient. This is like the equal epistemic footing of two percipients equally informed about representational art, when identifying entities in a painting which they are viewing, or about which they both know the physical details.
page 313 note 1 Inferring from the label that the painting is an X-representation is not a case of inferring this from the relevant features of the representation because the label is not part of the representation.
page 313 note 2 I am discussing ordinary dreams. Some dreams are classified by the mystics and their commentators as visions, but there is no need to assess that classification here. (E.g. see Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, pt. II, II, Q. 174, Art, 3 and pt.I, Q. III, Art. 3.) The basic idea that visions and dreams have certain features in common was first suggested to me by Nelson Pike.
page 314 note 1 St Teresa, Life, Rel. 9, par. 26. See also ch. 29, par. I.
page 314 note 2 The latter criterion is problematic since several percipients could simultaneously have exactly similar received visions, giving the appearance that all were observing the same external state of affairs. Generally, though, when the experiences of several percipients are exactly similar, the vision will be a perceived vision. Hence probable accounts of perceived visions include the of St Francis's publicly observable visions, Exodus 24: 9–10, and the transfiguration of Jesus (Matt. 17, Mark 9, Luke 9).Google Scholar
page 315 note 1 Bonaventura, St, The Mind's Road to God, trans. Boas, George (Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merrill Co., Library of Liberal Arts, 1953), p. 4.Google Scholar
page 315 note 2 Julian of Norwich, Revelations, chs. 12 and 19.
page 315 note 3 St. Teresa, , Interior Castle, trans. Peers, E. Allison (Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1961), Sixth Mansions, ch. 8.Google Scholar
page 318 note 1 I am indebted to George Mavrodes and Kendall Walton for comments which helped me clarify several issues raised in this paper.