literature shows that typical mystical experiences are conceptual in nature and not empty
of concepts. (4) An epistemological objection: subjects could not know they had endured
a PCE. They could not know this during a PCE, because it is supposed to be empty of all
conceptual content (Bagger 1999, 102–3). A subject could not know this by remembering
the PCE, since there is supposed to be nothing to observe, and hence nothing to
remember. Neither could a subject surmise that a PCE had transpired by remembering a
“before” and an “after,” with an unaccounted for middle. This would fail to distinguish a
PCE from plain unconsciousness. Indeed, it seems to matter little whether a subject who
emerges with mystical insights underwent a PCE or was simply unconscious. (5) A
second epistemological objection: suppose a PCE has occurred and that a subject knows
that, somehow. Still, there is a problem of the relationship of a PCE to the subsequent
claims to knowledge, such as when Eckhart purportedly grounds knowledge of the soul
and
end p.148
God as one, in a PCE (see Forman 1993a). If, in a PCE, subjects were empty of all
experiential content, they could not claim to have had acquaintance of anything (Bagger
1999, 102–3).
7.2 Criticism of Weak Constructivism
Several objections can be raised against the weak constructivist position. (1) The
argument from the kind of beings we are against the possibility of a PCE is not
convincing. While our cultural sets shape our ordinary experience, this argument gives no
good reason why we could not enjoy experiences on a preconceptual level of awareness,
especially through a regimen of training. Steven Katz, the author of this argument, notes
our “most brutish, infantile, and sensate levels” of experience when we were infants
(1988, 755). It's hard to see why in principle we could not retrieve an unconceptualized
level of experience. (2) It makes little difference whether a PCE is an “experience” or
only an “event.” A PCE occurs within a wider experience of the subject, including the
subject's coming out of the PCE and assigning it meaning. Let this wider experience be
the “experience” under discussion. (3) The textual evidence that objectors cite against
PCEs often seems consistent with the view that PCEs exist and that different traditions
place different interpretations on them (Pike 1992, supplemental study 2). (4)
Neuropsychological studies of mystical experience point to the possibility of events of
pure consciousness. A theory by Eugene d'Aquili and Andrew Newberg (1993, 1999)
claims to account for PCEs by reference to occurrences in the brain that cut off ordinary
brain activity from consciousness. This theory, if upheld, would provide physiological
support for episodes of pure consciousness (for more on this theory, see section 13.1). (5)
There need be no problem about mystics knowing they had PCEs. If we accept a
reliabilist account of knowledge, a belief is knowledge if produced by a reliable cognitive
mechanism (perhaps with some further conditions). “Awakening” from (what is in fact) a
PCE, if it produces the belief that one has “awakened” from a PCE, could be a reliable