Ben Gurion University Professor Delivers Philosophy Lecture at YC

On Tuesday Feb. 24th, Dr. Yehudah Gellman, Professor of Philosophy at Ben Gurion University of the Negev, lectured to students and professors in Furst Hall. The lecture was co-sponsored by the Philosophy Club of Yeshiva University and the Bernard Revel Graduate School. Dr. Gellman, who taught for a number of years at Yeshiva, is the author of The Fear, the Trembling and the Fire: Kierkegaard and Hasidic Masters on the Binding of Isaac (University Press of America) and more recently, Experience of G-d and the Rationality of Theistic Belief (Cornell University Press), which served as the topic of his lecture.

Prior to the lecture, the Philosophy Club hosted Dr. Gellman and an estimated 30 students for a dinner funded by YCSC.

Following the dinner, Dr. Hyman, Dean of BRGS, introduced Dr. Gellman, who then proceeded to the rostrum. Dr. Gellman was welcomed with a warm round of applause to which he commented, "In Israel, we clap at the end if the speech is worthy." The lecture was in fact worthy, and the applause that Dr. Gellman received afterwards was sufficient validation--even by Israeli standards.

Dr. Gellman explained that the thrust of his argument lies in "using purported experiences of G-d, as the basis for the rationality of believing in G-d." While not claiming to offer a sound proof for G-d's existence, Dr. Gellman argued that, at the very least, mystical and religious experience can serve as a "strong" rational justification for believing in G-d's existence. Dr. Gellman asked the audience to accept "the premise that there might be genuine experience of G-d within Jewish and religious traditions." To support this premise, Dr. Gellman argued that "the view that we can only experience physical reality is too restrictive. We cannot a priori rule out the possibility of what people claim to experience," by which he meant the Divine presence. In other words, if people claim to have had exposure to the Divine, their experiences may in fact be genuine; and if that possibility is accepted, belief in G-d can be logically justified.

Dr. Gellman termed the principle underlying his argument, the "Best Explanation of Experience," or BEE. BEE states that if a person has an experience which seems to be of a particular object, then everything else being equal, the best explanation of th at experience is that that person actually experienced that object. Thus, if a person claims to have experienced G-d, and everything else being equal, it can be argued that he actually experienced G-d.

While Dr. Gellman carefully advanced his position, he was quick to point out that the validity of his argument was predicated on the condition of everything else being equal. In fact, the objections to Dr. Gellman's approach assume that everything else isn't equal. Dr. Gellman then proceeded to articulate the objections to his argument. A typical objection to Dr. Gellman's position would be as follows: How can the person who claims to have had mystical experience ever be sure that it was G-d whom he was experiencing? A better explanation for this experience might be that the person is psychologically impaired or that the experience was contrived to attract attention. The delineation of the numerous objections to his argument took up the bulk of Dr. Gellman's hour long lecture.

The students who attended the event were noticeably stirred by Dr. Gellman's lecture. Following the lecture, students gathered around the professors who attended, and sought their insight into Dr. Gellman's presentation. But the overall response to Dr. Gellman's lecture was best captured by Nathan Mintz, a philosophy major at Yeshiva College, who said that "while the topic of the lecture was intriguing, clearly more time was needed to sufficiently explore the nuances of Professor Gellman's argument."