The Nature of Mystical Experiences
In a thoughtful, reflective, and well argued response, answer the following questions: How does philosophy help us make sense of our experience? How do the resources of this class — e.g., the definition and explanation of philosophy, the moral theories, or the concepts of truth and mysticism — help us come to terms with who and what we are? (If they don’t, then explain why and then explore what subject or experience might help us in this process of self-discovery.)
Please provide the details from the course content in your answer, as well as links between different themes and concepts (e.g., the connections between the ethics of care and Jill Bolte Taylor’s belief that we can choose to run the deep circuitry of the right hemisphere of the brain that supports compassion, or the connections between Kant’s concept of duty and ideas about truth, etc.).
After reviewing Jill Bolte Taylor’s talk “My Stroke of Insight,” what lessons do you draw about the nature of mystical experiences? Are they brain-based? If so, does this dimish their significance for the individual and society? After all, if mystical experiences are brain-based, are they any less real than other brain-based perceptions of reality, such as science? (Feel free to use other resources from the course to answer this question, e.g., Ekhart Tolle’s video, Plato’s Allegory, etc.).
Ethics is the study of the principles of right and wrong — of morality. You’ve studied several ethical theories in this class, and you’ve read several articles in which they are applied to real-world problems. Which of these theories do you find most interesting? What makes it so? Compare and contrast this theory to at least one other theory we’ve studied. Then, using one of the case studies (i.e., one of the articles that applies ethics to a real-world situation), illustrate how the theory applies in that particular case (don’t just summarize the application in one of the articles; explain and defend that application, i.e., go deeper than the text).
