(April 30, 2011 at 12:12 pm)Matthaios Wrote: How do we know that fishes exist? By experience, surely? People had fish-like experiences and, through trust in their perception and the validation of others having (assumedly) similar experiences, came to believe that there are such things as fish, and then the fact that fish exist became common knowledge. Just as with religious experiences, there is a leap from the epistemological (the belief that fish exist) to the metaphysical (that fish exist). Quite a few philosophers (William Alston comes to mind) have argued that experiences of God can be thought of in a similar way.No "experience" of God can be proven to be anything but a psychological illusion.
Even if the open windows of science at first make us shiver after the cozy indoor warmth of traditional humanizing myths, in the end the fresh air brings vigor, and the great spaces have a splendor of their own - Bertrand Russell
