The Spirit and the Taste of Salt

Keywords

qualitative experience, mind-body problem, spiritual revelation

Abstract

(1) Objective:  discuss how a particular philosophical insight and its implications (specifically, the irreducibility of qualitative experience) has helped me, and can help us, better understand the Spirit / revelation.

(2) What is philosophy anyway?

(3) The Mind-Body Problem

(4) Physicalism & Response

(5) C.S. Lewis (“Meditation in a Toolshed”):

I was standing today in the dark toolshed.  The sun was shining outside and through the crack at the top of the door there came a sunbeam.  From where I stood that beam of light, with the specks of dust floating in it, was the most striking thing in the place.  Everything else was almost pitch black.  I was seeing the beam, not seeing things by it.

Then I moved, so that the beam fell on my eyes.  Instantly the whole previous picture vanished.  I saw no toolshed, and (above all) no beam.  Instead I saw, framed in the irregular cranny at the top of the door, green leaves moving on the branches of a tree outside and beyond that, 90 odd million miles away, the sun.  Looking along the beam, and looking at the beam are very different experiences.

Original Publication Citation

“The Spirit, the Taste of Salt, and the Irreducibility of Qualitative Experience.” BYU Education Week. Brigham Young University, August 22, 2018.

Document Type

Presentation

Publication Date

2018

Language

English

College

Humanities

Department

Philosophy

University Standing at Time of Publication

Full Professor

Additional Files
17_TheSpirit.pdf (2888 kB)
Link to Full Text

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