Experience and Meaning

This chapter develops a social practical account of religious experience that integrates experience and meaning and addresses the criticisms that experience is too subjective and private to serve as a fit object for scholarly inquiry. Drawing from the pragmatist philosophy of Robert Brandom, this chapter argues that experiences are social practical affairs, in that they are perceptual events that require that the experiencer be socialized into a linguistic community. This view of experiences should lead to the rejection of the claims of perennialists, that there are universal and/or nonconceptual mystical experiences. Turning to the insider/outsider problem, this chapter argues that insiders do have a distinctive position in relation to their own experiencers, but that the asymmetry between the insider and outsider is not absolute. Furthermore, in many cases, the outsider can have superior knowledge about the experience. This chapter concludes with an assessment of the possible compatibility of neuroscience, cognitive science, and evolutionary psychology with a social practical theory of religion.