Temporal lobe epilepsy & religious experience.

[Neo-Scholastic]

Yes and no.  In reality you can't rule out Russell's teapot, but for similar practical reasons we do.  How is this any different than the explosion of possible things that we can't rule out but actually do rule out in practice?  What is the epistemic rule for such possibilities?

I don't rule it out, if it comes up I note it's wildly improbable and that suffices. I have no need to claim certainty on the matter, but that's a personal preference on my part, I don't object to someone else rounding 0.a trillion zeroes then 1 down to zero as long as I grok that's what they're doing.

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Being a prayerful state was just my example for demonstrating that continuity of the experiences' history is a factor outside the experience itself that needs to be considered. An uninduced visionary experience has a history of prior brain-states and behaviors that are relevant to our understanding of the phenomena. For example, lets' say you are reading a book and as you are doing so you find yourself inside a completely different story. After the initial confusion had passed you would soon realize that the publisher had somehow accidently bound in the middle a chapter from a different story. You know this because there was a sudden break in meaning.  So while two experiences may be first-person identical in the immediate present, those experiences have different contexts and history, and as such, the significance of the two experience is different.

My point hinges on the idea that at least some brain-states have semiotic content.

I don't think I quite follow, how does Saul's revelation on the Road to Damascus fit in? What was the semiotic content that makes you think his revelation authentic (assuming you believe it was authentic given your reasoning thus far)?

It's a different kind of authenticity problem because my example was based on comparative prior brain-states at the cellular and microscopic level....as opposed to people in ancient history. The focus was on narrative continuity between two brain-states and the presence of outside defeaters. But I can see the connection you are making.

The road to Damascus story is a good story. I take it as told, with a grain of salt, since apparently the 1st century contemporaries are also reported to have considered Saul then Paul authentic. Perhaps it truly was an epilespy fit that induced a religious vision that gained special significance to Saul because of his personal circumstances and advances the larger Gospel narrative. And?...what exactly. Because epilepsy was the providential means by which God did it? I am supposed to give up a perfectly good story because Colonel Musturd used the pipe and not the rope?