230 ARGUMENTS: MONOTHEISTIC CONCEPTIONSTiger Promoter hypothesis, and there is no reason at all to think it, or
its competitor, true. Further, both are irrelevant to what Mary must
know or believe in order for her experience to be evidence.
If what the honorable tradition proposes as decisive is in fact
irrelevant, there remains the other suggestion, which is the one
pursued here. Whatever the correct principle of experiential evidence
is, in order for Mary’s experience to provide her with evidence, it must
be evidence, she must take it as such, and she must (non-culpably)
have no reason to think that what the correct principle of experiential
evidence says would render her experience non-evidential actually
does so. In terms of the principle of experiential (P*), she must (non-
culpably) have no reason to think that her experience is canceled or
counterbalanced or compromised or contradicted or confuted or
logically consumed or empirically consumed. Then her experience
provides evidence that there is a tiger in the garden. Thus:
(P**) If a person S has an experience E which, if reliable, is a matter
of being aware of an experience-independently existing item X,
and S (non-culpably) has no reason to think that E is canceled
or counterbalanced or compromised or contradicted or
confuted or logically consumed or empirically consumed, and S
takes E as evidence that X exists, then in having E, S has
evidence that X exists.
The evidential argument from religious
experience
One might argue in this manner: religious experiences are at least
apparently experiences of God; the best explanation of the occurrence of
these experiences is that God causes them; so it is more reasonable than
not to believe that God causes them; if God causes them, then God exists;
so it is more reasonable than not to believe that God exists. This is an
inferential argument from religious experience. It is compatible with the
argument offered here that this inferential argument succeeds. But the
argument here is not an inferential argument from religious experience.
An evidential argument from religious experience has a different
shape. It goes like this: experiences occur which at least seem to be
experiences of God; if these satisfy a correct principle of experiential
evidence, they are reasonably taken to be reliable; they do satisfy a
correct principle of experiential evidence; they are hence reasonably
taken to be reliable; if they are reasonably taken to be reliable, then