2.4.2 Perceptual Experiencing-as

Question 1

What is Hick’s book called?

Answer 1

‘Religious Faith as Experiencing-as’

Question 2

What is Hick’s analogy within the book?

Answer 2

• Hick develops an analogy between perception & experience of God
• he starts with the idea that perception is not simply registering what is ‘out there’ neutrally
• in addition, there is a well-known phenomenon (the Necker Cube) in which one set of lines can be seen in two different ways
• we can also see patterns in natural objects, as when we see a face or a fish in a cloud; we don’t just see, we ‘see-as’ or ‘see-in’
• we see the lines as a cube facing this way or that; we see a face in the cloud

Question 3

What is the significant importance of ‘seeing-as’?

Answer 3

• it is widely argued that all seeing involves seeing as; this is hard to accept at first
• an example of this is with books; consider what someone who has never seen a book, whose culture has no books, would experience i.e. they wouldn’t see the book as a book
• specifically, if they haven’t grasped the concept BOOK, they can’t
• in a different way, we can extend this idea from seeing to all experiencing - we hear a sound as bird-song, smell a smell as coffee, & so on
• perception, on this account, always involves recognition (or mis-recognition), bringing experience under a concept

Question 4

What are other concepts similar to the Necker cube (& explain their differences)?

Answer 4

• sometimes, as with the Necker cube, we can only see something as this or that e.g. we see the cube as facing one way or the other
• but, with other seeing-ass, we can add layers of perceptual recognition - you can see the object in the sky as a bird, & as a hawk & as a hawk hunting