The Fruits of the Unseen: A Jamesian Challenge to Explanatory Reductionism in Accounts of Religious Experience
Open Theology March 13, 2020 Stepanenko Walter Scott 2 citations
Wayne Proudfoot argued that rejecting all reductionism in accounts of religious experience is not viable; he distinguished illegitimate descriptive reductionism from legitimate explanatory reductionism and accused William James of using a protective strategy to shield religious experience from scientific explanation. This article argues that James occasionally uses that protective strategy in *The Varieties of Religious Experience* but more importantly develops a pragmatic method that leads to noetic pluralism—the view that no single knowledge practice is privileged. This pragmatic method challenges explanatory reductionism, which implicitly assumes noetic monism.