Alberto Cavallarin

According to “hinge epistemology”, our worldviews are shaped by “hinges”: certainties, assumptions, or commitments that have a “framework” function and are therefore beyond epistemic evaluation. Recently, some scholars have suggested that religious hinges are unique kinds of hinges, or that there is something distinct about the application of hinge epistemology to religious contexts. Taking inspiration from these proposals, the essay explores the relationship between religion and hinge epistemology, with the ultimate aim of determining whether the above-mentioned claim is justified. I focus primarily on two arguments: the idea that religious hinges involve a unique doxastic attitude of faith; and the idea that religious hinges are the outcome of a uniquely religious mental faculty (a sensus divinitatis). I reject both claims: the former is based on a misunderstanding of the varieties of hinges; and regarding the latter, we have no non-religious reasons to believe that a sensus divinitatis exists. Overall, the development of a uniquely religious hinge epistemology seems unlikely, whether we base our claim on content, form, or process. I close the essay by drawing some consequences for religious “hinge disagreements”. On a more optimistic note, I also suggest a new avenue for research that emerges from my analysis, and that hinge epistemologists interested in religion, spirituality, and related matters have, so far, not considered.

I take “neo-perennialists” to share the following, minimal claim: there exists a cross-cultural category of experiences that can be defined as “mystical”. I first clarify the neo-perennialist project and defend its overall feasibility. I then criticize the narrow focus on mystical experiences that has characterized much neo-perennialist research, and research based on the above-mentioned core claim. With “narrow” I refer both to the specific understanding of mystical states that has become dominant in the literature, and the tendency to focus on mystical experiences specifically, out of all possible altered states. I finally analyze some criteria, external to the phenomenology of extraordinary experiences, that one might appeal to in order to justify restricting a neo-perennialist account, or study, to (certain) mystical states. I close the essay with a call to (1) refine the definition of “mystical experience”, and (2) push the cross-cultural study of altered states of consciousness beyond mystical states.