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OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 17/11/21, SPi
Perceiving Things Divine

Perceiving
Things Divine
Towards a Constructive Account of
Spiritual Perception
Edited by
F R E D E R IC K D. AQU I N O
and
PAU L L . G AV R I LY U K
1
1
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In memoriam William J. Abraham (1947–2021): Requiem aeternam

dona ei, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat ei. Requiescat in pace.
Foreword
Mark Wynn
This volume is a successor to Paul Gavrilyuk and Sarah Coakley’s 2012 collection
The Spiritual Senses: Perceiving God in Western Christianity. That text introduced
various traditions of thought, and the present volume draws out, most excitingly,
some of the implications of those traditions for contemporary debate—showing
how close attention to the idea of spiritual perception can deepen and, in some
cases indeed, transform our approach to an array of otherwise apparently quite
disparate theological themes, including: liturgy, the reading of scripture, eschat
ology, spiritual formation, divine hiddenness, and the spiritual import of, for
instance, the experience of nature and of beauty. It is to be hoped that the intel
lectual project that has been initiated in these pages will be taken up more
widely—and in that case, we may expect theological enquiry to become newly
alert to the deep-seated connections between religious understanding and our
capacity to orient ourselves in the everyday world, through our apprehension of
values that are presented to us in sensory and more than sensory form.
The central themes of this collection are very fully and acutely described in
Frederick Aquino and Paul Gavrilyuk’s Introduction, so rather than present a fur
ther survey of the volume’s contents, in the following brief remarks, I shall try to
draw out the significance of its concerns by showing how they intersect with three
further contexts of enquiry, each of which is of obvious practical and theological
interest. I shall introduce these contexts in turn, by touching on: the nature of
knowledge of place; the emotions as sources of evaluative insight; and the role of
salience in the perceptual field in disclosing the import of the sensory world.
We all of us negotiate our physical environment not only by reference to its
structure—as when I duck to avoid a low-lying beam—but also with a view to
acknowledging the existential significance of particular spaces: when I comport
myself differently in a football ground as compared with, say, a lecture theatre or
graveyard, that is not only because of the different physical dimensions of these
spaces. And when we orient ourselves appropriately in a particular place in bodily
terms, in ways that give due recognition to the existential significance of the place,
we do not normally rely on some process of reflection—as if I were to rehearse
first the thought that this place is a graveyard, and then the thought that the dead
are to be treated with respect, and then the thought that I had therefore better not
kick a ball or raise my voice while here. Rather, in standard cases, it is in the
responses of the body, rather than mediately, by means of some process of
viii Foreword
reflection, that we apprehend the significance of the space, and adapt our
demeanour to fit the space.
Of course, the existential import of a place is commonly defined by the stories
with which it is associated: in such cases, it is the history of the space that defines
its meaning for us in the present and calls for appropriate practical acknowledge
ment in the present. And when we are attuned to the storied significance of a
place in bodily terms, rather than by way of some discursive assessment of its
import, we seem to navigate our way through the world by means of something
like a spiritual perception—that is, by means of a non-inferential apprehension of
the space that tracks not only its sensory but also its existential import. And there
is some reason to think that spiritual perception that is theological in content
works similarly. This is most straightforwardly true of spaces whose religious
meaning is fixed by reference to their history, as with, say, sites of pilgrimage. But
it is also true, potentially, on a wider scale, in so far as theological traditions offer
us a storied account of the significance of particular items in the world, human
beings among them, and indeed of the world itself, considered as the object of
divine creation and care: these distinctively theological storied meanings can also
be acknowledged, we may suppose, immediately in our bodily responses. A num
ber of the essays in this volume carry very fruitful implications for how we might
elaborate on an account of the nature of spiritual perception of broadly this form,
that is, one that understands spiritual perception by reference to our bodily
attunement to place-relative, story-mediated existential meanings.
Moving to a second context of enquiry, it is a commonplace of recent philo
sophical work on the emotions that emotional feelings can themselves be
thoughts, rather than simply stimuli for thought, or the by-products of thought.
Here is one example of how this proposal might be developed, presented by
Peter Goldie:
imagine you are in a zoo, looking at a gorilla grimly loping from left to right in
its cage. You are thinking of the gorilla as dangerous, but you do not feel fear, as
it seems to be safely behind bars. Then you see that the door to the cage has been
left wide open. Just for a moment, though, you fail to put the two thoughts – the
gorilla is dangerous, the cage is open – together. Then, suddenly, you do put
them together: now your way of thinking of the gorilla as dangerous is new; now
it is dangerous in an emotionally relevant way for you. The earlier thought, nat
urally expressed as ‘That gorilla is dangerous’, differs in content from the new
thought, although this new thought, thought with emotional feeling, might also
be naturally expressed in the same words. Now, in feeling fear towards the gorilla
you are emotionally engaged with the world, and, typically, you are poised for
action in a new way – poised for action out of the emotion.1
1 Peter Goldie, The Emotions: A Philosophical Exploration (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2000), 61.
Foreword ix
Although he is concerned with a somewhat unusual state of affairs, Goldie’s

remarks point very readily to a number of insights into the nature of emotional
feelings, and their importance for everyday life. First, it seems a clear implication
of this sort of example that emotional feelings are themselves forms of thought:
here, the feeling of fear (of feeling towards, as Goldie puts the point) involves
some reckoning with the character of the world. Moreover, this reckoning runs
beyond what can be captured verbally in the statement ‘That gorilla is dangerous’.
So as with our apprehension of the storied import of a place, so here, we seem to
be dealing with an insight that is not standardly realized in a discursive, verbally
articulated train of thought, but in the responses of the body. In this case, the new
insight is presented in a response of feeling, rather than in the body’s disposition
to orient itself in space—though as Goldie notes, the understanding that is vouch
safed in the feeling of fear is also of its nature action-guiding.
We can draw out the sense of this example a little further by noting that it
would be possible in principle to apprehend both that the gorilla is dangerous and
that the cage is open without seeing what follows for our wellbeing from the fact
that these truths hold in combination—that is, without grasping what needs to be
done in these circumstances. By contrast, the understanding afforded in the feel
ing of fear brings together these two truths—the gorilla is dangerous and the cage
door is open—in such a way as to disclose their combined import for the person’s
safety. In such cases, we can think of emotional feelings as involving an integra
tive kind of understanding: one that reveals the overall sense of various features
of a situation, thereby orienting the person in practical terms. This account offers,
potentially, another way of representing the nature of spiritual perception—in
this case, because religious understanding is commonly thought to be concerned
not so much with individual entities, nor even with God considered as an indi
vidual entity, as with the connectedness of things, or with questions about how
the world, as it were, hangs together, so as to add up to a meaningful context, one
that calls for practical acknowledgement in the lives of human beings. This
account also invites the thought that spiritual perception is integrative in the fur
ther sense of involving a unitary state of mind, in which the affective, cognitive,
and volitional strands of the person’s engagement with the world are fused. Again,
a number of the essays in this collection speak very directly to this question, by
showing how the subject of spiritual perception is the person considered in their
affective-intellectual-moral integrity, and by exploring the ways in which spiritual
practices can contribute to the formation of this unified state of mind.
Lastly, and very briefly, let us note one further way of thinking of spiritual
perception—again, one that intersects with various themes in this collection. In
ordinary experience, the perceptual field is of course structured—so that certain
items are thrown into relief, while others are consigned to the periphery of our
awareness. Accordingly, in our perception of the world, objects are not presented
to us neutrally, rather, certain features of our environment are salient in the per
ceptual field, and are thereby picked out as more deserving of attention than other
x Foreword
features. Accordingly, the ordering of the perceptual field can track, for example,
the relative moral significance of the items that fall within our purview—so that
we are focally aware of, say, the facial expressions of human beings, rather than of
the inanimate objects that are also presented to us on a given occasion of percep
tion. And by extension, it seems reasonable to suppose, the contouring of the per
ceptual field can also count as more or less appropriate in theological terms—and
will count as theologically fitting to the extent that an object’s salience in the per
ceptual field is directly proportional to its importance relative to some religious or
spiritual narrative. When there is such a correspondence, between the salience of
objects and their theological significance, then the world as it appears in our
experience will mirror the divine vantage point on the world—since the patterns
of salience that are inscribed in the perceptual field will now track a divinely
ordered scale of values. We might even say that, in such a case, the world as it
appears will offer a window onto the mind of God—by giving us a sensory image
that matches the divine assessment of the relative importance of the contents of
the perceptual field.
Here, then, are three ways of thinking about the nature of spiritual perception,
namely, by reference to: the body’s spontaneous sensitivity to the storied signifi
cance of particular places; the integrative, action-guiding understanding that is
afforded by emotional feelings; and our ability to track the relative importance of
objects via the structuring of the perceptual field. When understood in these
ways, spiritual perception turns out to be rooted in capacities that are continuous
with our capacity to apprehend the normative significance of the world in other
respects. These accounts allow us to see, therefore, how it is possible for human
beings to register the full range of values in their practical engagement with the
sensory world—that is, not just, say, prudential and moral values, but in addition
spiritual values. The essays in this volume lead us more deeply into these same
issues—and thereby they show us both what we need to understand if our lives
are to be well-ordered in theological terms, and what it would take for a creature
of our capacities and mode of embodiment to display that sort of understanding
in their relationship to other human beings and the everyday world.
Acknowledgements
We owe a debt of gratitude to many scholars and organizations. The first impetus
for this book project was given by the Analytic Theology Seminar at Southern
Methodist University in August 2012, organized by William Abraham, at which
we agreed to assemble a team of researchers in order to advance the work of The
Spiritual Senses volume (2012) in a constructive direction. As a result, we organ
ized three symposia to discuss individual chapters and form a coherent vision of
the volume. The first symposium was held in Atlanta, Georgia, in November 2015
with the participation of William Abraham, James Arcadi, Kenny Boyce, Sarah
Coakley, Boyd Taylor Coolman, Brandon Gallaher, Amber Griffioen, Stephen
Grimm, Douglas Hedley, John Kern (as an assistant), Dominika Kurek-Chomycz,
John Martens, Mark McInroy, Timothy O’Brien, Marcus Plested, Michael Rea,
Ann Taves, Allan Torrance, Sameer Yadav, and Ray Yeo. The second symposium
was held in San Antonio, Texas, in November 2016 and additionally included
Chance Juliano (as an assistant), David Luy, Michael McClymond, Kevin Nordby,
Nicole Reibe, and Mark Spencer. The third symposium was held at the University
of St Thomas, St Paul, Minnesota, in July 2017 and included William Abraham,
Hans Boersma, Sarah Coakley, Boyd Taylor Coolman, Richard Cross, Erika Kidd,
John Martens, Mark McInroy, Faith Pawl, Darren Sarisky, and Erika Zabinski (as
an assistant).
In the fall 2017, Paul Gavrilyuk and Mark Spencer organized a faculty seminar
on spiritual perception at the University of St Thomas co-funded by the Dean’s
office and the Templeton Foundation through the Philosophy of Religion Center
at the University of Notre Dame. The seminar participants were John Froula,
William Junker, Stephen Laumakis, Mathew Lu, John Martens, Mark McInroy,
Stephen McMichael, Faith Pawl, Barbara Sain, and Deborah Savage. The guest
speakers who presented their work at the seminar and offered public lectures
were Aquino, Greco, and Taves. In June 2017 Gavrilyuk’s graduate seminar
‘Perceiving God: The Spiritual Senses in History and Theology’ at the St Paul
School of Divinity, University of St Thomas, was enriched by the contributions
of the following guest speakers: Aquino, Coolman, Greco, McInroy, Spencer,
and Yadav.
In addition, the following events were held at different venues: a panel on
spiritual perception at the annual meeting of the International Society of

Neoplatonism Studies in Seattle, Washington, in June 2016 organized by Frederick
Aquino with contributions from Paul Gavrilyuk (in absentia) and Mark McInroy;
‘Retrieving Premodern Understandings of Spiritual Perception for Contemporary
xii Acknowledgements
Theology’ panel at the annual Patristic, Medieval, and Renaissance Conference at

Villanova University in October 2016 and organized by Boyd Coolman with the
participation of Frederick Aquino and Paul Gavrilyuk; a graduate seminar on
spiritual perception at Abilene Christian University (ACU), Abilene, Texas,
organized by Frederick Aquino with presentations by John Cottingham and Paul
Gavrilyuk in March 2018; ‘Spiritual Perception in Eastern Christianity’ session at
the Inaugural Conference of the International Orthodox Theological Association
and organized by Paul Gavrilyuk with the participation of Frederick Aquino and
Marcus Plested in January 2019.
Over the course of editing this book and writing his chapter, Frederick Aquino
has benefited from conversations with William Abraham, Sarah Coakley, John
Cottingham, Paul Gavrilyuk, John Greco, Jeffery Kinlaw, Chance Juliano, Michael
Van Huis, and Taylor Bonner. The following institutions also provided opportun
ities to share material on spiritual perception and related ideas: a graduate sem
inar on religious epistemology at Saint Louis University (March 2013), the Annual
Aquinas Colloquium, Oxford University (March 2017), and the CSART Keynote
lecture at ACU (March 2018).
Paul Gavrilyuk wishes to thank different scholarly audiences who responded to
earlier versions of the volume’s introduction presented at the following venues: a
‘Divine Hiddenness’ Panel of the Philosophy of Religion Group chaired by Amber
Griffioen at the annual meeting of the American Academy of Religion (AAR) in
San Diego in November 2014; a session ‘Understandings of Spiritual Perception’
at the Logos Workshop organized by Michael Rea and the Center for Philosophy
of Religion at the University of Notre Dame in May 2015 (with a commentary by
Allison Thornton); a keynote address at McMurry University, Abilene, Texas at
the invitation of Jeffery Kinlaw and Frederick Aquino in March 2018.
We also wish to acknowledge the help of our editorial assistants Erika Zabinski,
John Kern, Chance Juliano, and Taylor Bonner. Over the years, we have grown to
rely on the spotless professionalism of Tom Perridge and his team at Oxford
University Press.
Table of Contents
List of figures xv
List of contributors xvii
Introduction xix
PA RT I . FAC E T S
1. The Possibility of Spiritual Perception: Objections and Replies 3

John Greco
2. Developing Spiritual Perception: Lessons from Claude Monet
and Wassily Kandinsky 20
Paul L. Gavrilyuk
3. Training Spiritual Perception: A Constructive Look at
John Cassian37
Frederick D. Aquino
4. Value Perception and Spiritual Perception in Max Scheler 51
Mark K. Spencer
5. Radical Evil and Spiritual Perception 67
William J. Abraham
6. Spiritual and Sensuous: Spiritual Perception, Eschatologically
Considered81
Boyd Taylor Coolman
PA RT I I . I N T E R SE C T IO N S
7. Scripture as Signpost: A Perceptual Paradigm of Biblical

Interpretation101
Sameer Yadav
8. Spiritual Perception and Liturgy 117
Catherine Pickstock
9. Sensus Christi: A Liturgico-Sacramental Therapy for a
Pornographic Sensibility138
Boyd Taylor Coolman
xiv Acknowledgements
10. Spiritual Perception and the Racist Gaze: Can Contemplation

Shift Racism?153
Sarah Coakley
11. Divine Hiddenness, Agapē Conviction, and Spiritual Discernment 177
Paul K. Moser
12. Healed and Whole Forever: Spiritual Perception in Nature 193
Douglas E. Christie
13. Spiritual Perception and Beauty: On Looking and Letting Appear 212
Mark McInroy
Afterword: The Spiritual Senses and Human Embodiment 229

John Cottingham
Index 233
List of figures
2.1 The Water Lily Pond. Claude Monet’s Estate in Giverny, France.
Photo: P. Gavrilyuk, 1 August 2015, 11.22 a.m. 23
2.2 Claude Monet, Water Lilies (1906). The Art Institute of Chicago,
Chicago, Illinois. Photo: P. Gavrilyuk, November 2019. 24
2.3 Claude Monet, Grainstack, Sun in the Mist (1891), Minneapolis Institute
of Art, Minneapolis, Minnesota. Photo: P. Gavrilyuk, May 2016. 27
13.1 Lewis Bowman, Transfiguration (2005). 222
Rembrandt Van Rijn, “The Good Samaritan” (etching). 230
List of contributors
William J. Abraham (1947–2021) was Emeritus Outler Professor of Wesley Studies at

Perkins School of Theology, Southern Methodist University, Dallas, Texas and Director of
the Wesley House of Studies at Truett Theological Seminary, Baylor University, Waco,
Texas. His recent publications include Canon and Criterion in Christian Theology (Oxford,
1998), Crossing the Threshold of Divine Revelation (Eerdmans, 2006), The Oxford Handbook
of Methodist Studies (Oxford, 2009), co-edited with James E. Kirby; The Oxford Handbook
of the Epistemology of Theology (Oxford, 2017), co-edited with Frederick D. Aquino; and
Divine Agency and Divine Action, vols. 1–4 (Oxford, 2017–2021).
Frederick D. Aquino is Professor of Theology and Philosophy at the Graduate School of

Theology, Abilene Christian University. His recent publications include Communities
of Informed Judgment (CUA, 2004); An Integrative Habit of Mind (NIU, 2012); Receptions of
Newman (Oxford, 2015), co-edited with Benjamin J. King; The Oxford Handbook of the
Epistemology of Theology (Oxford, 2017), co-edited with William J. Abraham; and The
Oxford Handbook of John Henry Newman (Oxford, 2018), co-edited with Benjamin J. King.
Douglas E. Christie is Professor of Theological Studies at Loyola Marymount University in

Los Angeles. He is the author of The Word in the Desert: Scripture and the Quest for Holiness
in Early Christian Monasticism (Oxford, 1993), The Blue Sapphire of the Mind: Notes for a
Contemplative Ecology (Oxford, 2013), and is the founding editor of Spiritus: A Journal of
Christian Spirituality (Johns Hopkins, 2001–).
Sarah Coakley FBA is the Norris-Hulse Professor Emerita, University of Cambridge,

Professorial Research Fellow at the Australian Catholic University, and Honorary Professor
at the Logos Institute, University of St Andrews. Her recent publications include The
Spiritual Senses: Perceiving God in Western Christianity (Cambridge, 2012), co-edited with
Paul Gavrilyuk; God, Sexuality and the Self: An Essay ‘On the Trinity’ (Cambridge, 2013);
and The New Asceticism: Sexuality, Gender and the Quest for God (Bloomsbury, 2015).
Boyd Taylor Coolman is Professor of Theology at Boston College. He has authored:

Knowledge, Love and Ecstasy in the Theology of Thomas Gallus (Oxford, 2017), The Theology
of Hugh of St. Victor (Cambridge, 2010), and Knowing God by Experience: The Spiritual
Senses in the Theology of William of Auxerre (CUAP, 2004). His interests lie in high medieval
theology, the Victorine and Franciscan traditions, early scholasticism, and mysticism. He
founded the ‘Boston Colloquy in Historical Theology’.
John Cottingham is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Reading, and an

Honorary Fellow of St John’s College, Oxford University. His books include The Spiritual
Dimension (Cambridge, 2005), Philosophy of Religion: Towards a More Humane Approach
(Cambridge, 2014), and In Search of the Soul (Princeton, 2020).
xviii List of contributors
Paul L. Gavrilyuk is the Aquinas Chair in Theology and Philosophy at the University of
St Thomas and the Founding President of the International Orthodox Theological
Association. His books include The Suffering of the Impassible God (Oxford, 2004), Georges
Florovsky and the Russian Religious Renaissance (Oxford, 2013), and The Spiritual Senses:
Perceiving God in Western Christianity (Cambridge, 2012), co-edited with Sarah Coakley.
John Greco is the Robert L. McDevitt, K.S.G., K.C.H.S. and Catherine H. McDevitt L.C.H.S
Chair in Philosophy at Georgetown University. He is the author of Putting Skeptics in
Their Place: The Nature of Skeptical Arguments and Their Role in Philosophical Inquiry
(Cambridge, 2000); Achieving Knowledge: A Virtue-theoretic Account of Epistemic Normativity
(Cambridge, 2010); and The Transmission of Knowledge (Cambridge, 2020).
Mark McInroy is Associate Professor of Theology at the University of St Thomas. He is the

author of Balthasar on the Spiritual Senses: Perceiving Splendour (Oxford, 2014), for which
he received the Manfred Lautenschlaeger Award for Theological Promise in 2015. He is
co-editor of The Christian Theological Tradition (Routledge, 2019), with Michael J. Hollerich,
and Image as Theology: The Power of Art in Shaping Christian Thought, Devotion, and
Imagination (Brepols, forthcoming), with C. A. Strine and Alexis Torrance.
Paul K. Moser is Professor of Philosophy at Loyola University Chicago. He is the author of

The Divine Goodness of Jesus (2021); Understanding Religious Experience (2020); The God
Relationship (2017); The Severity of God (2013); The Evidence for God (2010); The Elusive
God (2008); Philosophy after Objectivity (1993); and Knowledge and Evidence (1989); editor
of Jesus and Philosophy (2010); co-editor of The Cambridge Companion to Religious
Experience (2020) and of the book series Cambridge Studies in Religion, Philosophy, and
Society and Cambridge Elements: Religion and Monotheism.
Catherine Pickstock is Norris-Hulse Professor of Divinity at the University of Cambridge.

Her books include After Writing (1998), Thomas d’Aquin et la Quête Eucharistique (2001),
Repetition and Identity (2013), Aspects of Truth (2020), and Truth in Aquinas (2001) co-
authored with John Milbank. She is a co-founder (with John Milbank and Graham Ward)
of the critical international theological movement, Radical Orthodoxy.
Mark K. Spencer is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of St Thomas in

St Paul, Minnesota. He is the author of the forthcoming book The Irreducibility of the
Human Person: A Catholic Synthesis (The Catholic University of America Press), and of
more than forty articles on metaphysics, phenomenology, and aesthetics.
Mark Wynn is Nolloth Professor of the Philosophy of the Christian Religion at the
University of Oxford. He is the author of Spiritual Traditions and the Virtues: Living
Between Heaven and Earth (Oxford, 2020) and Renewing the Senses: A Study of the
Philosophy and Theology of the Spiritual Life (Oxford, 2013).
Sameer Yadav is a systematic and philosophical theologian and Associate Professor of

Religious Studies at Westmont College. He is author of The Problem of Perception and the
Experience of God (Fortress Press, 2015) and a number of articles in edited volumes and
journals on topics including Christian mysticism, religious epistemology, liberation the
ology, and the intersection of race and religion.
Introduction
Frederick D. Aquino and Paul L. Gavrilyuk
Perceiving Things Divine seeks to make philosophical and theological sense of

spiritual perception. The objects of spiritual perception are God and all reality
inasmuch as it can communicate divine presence. The possibility and mechanism
of spiritual perception, as well as religious claims based on it, remain essentially
contested. While pre-modern Christian theology offers ample theoretical resources
and a considerable historical record of ‘perceiving things divine’, no theory of
spiritual perception was ever formally adopted as authoritative and the topic
remained exploratory, rather than settled. In modernity, the possibility of spiritual
perception was often questioned on epistemological grounds, as a matter of general
scepticism vis-à-vis any religious claims, including the claims based on religious
experience. While modernist epistemologies had precious little space for ‘perceiv-
ing things divine’, the concept of the spiritual senses continued to play a role in the
theories and practices of spiritual direction.1 Taking into account such theories
and practices, this volume aims at restoring spiritual perception to its rightful
place in philosophy and theology.
The constructive vision of the present volume builds on the historical ground-
work provided in an earlier collection of essays on the spiritual senses.2 Representing
the first phase of the Spiritual Perception Project,3 this collection surveyed the
theme of spiritual perception throughout Christian history, beginning with Origen
of Alexandria and ending with twentieth-century theologians, such as Karl Rahner,
Hans Urs von Balthasar, and William Alston. Diachronically arranged, the study
was largely descriptive and highly selective and thus focused primarily on Christian
authors who gave a theoretical articulation of the notion of spiritual perception.
While our historical research continues, in Perceiving Things Divine we expand the
topic of the ‘spiritual senses’ by correlating spiritual perception with other types of
perception, including physical, moral, aesthetic, and value perception.
1 For a classical treatment of this issue in Jesuit spirituality, see Augustin Poulain, Des grâces
d’oraison; traité de théologie mystique (Paris: Gabriel Beauchesne, 1901).
2 Paul L. Gavrilyuk and Sarah Coakley, eds, The Spiritual Senses: Perceiving God in Western
Christianity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012).
3 Online at spiritualperceptionproject.wordpress.com with videos on The Spiritual Perception
Project Channel on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/channel/UCzQwXDBp6xIw_f4_z7eodeQ.
Frederick D. Aquino and Paul L. Gavrilyuk, Introduction In: Perceiving Things Divine: Towards a Constructive Account of
Spiritual Perception. Edited by: Frederick D. Aquino and Paul L. Gavrilyuk, Oxford University Press.
© Oxford University Press 2022. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198802594.001.0001
xx Introduction
Reflecting the results of the second phase of the Spiritual Perception Project,
this volume argues for the possibility of spiritual perception. More exactly, it seeks
to make progress towards a constructive account of the different aspects of spirit-
ual perception while exploring its intersection with various theological and philo-
sophical issues, such as biblical interpretation, aesthetics, liturgy, race, ecology,
eschatology, and the hiddenness of God. Spiritual perception can be explained in
two ways, on the analogy with the (five) physical senses, and, without such an
analogy, as a perceptual capacity sui generis. When the analogy of the five senses
is in play, it is often appropriate to use the tradition-sanctioned expression ‘spiritual
senses’, especially when the emphasis is on the nature of the spiritual sensorium.
Spiritual perception may also be construed as a perceptual power sui generis, akin
to but not reducible to intuition, moral discernment, conscience, or aesthetic
taste, and thus not to be correlated exclusively with the fivefold sensorium.4 For
this reason, our general preference in this volume is for the broader expression,
‘spiritual perception’, which includes all phenomena associated with the operation
of the spiritual senses without necessarily implying an analogy with the physical
senses. In what follows, we discuss the general features of perception, introduce a
new interdisciplinary field of spiritual perception, and sketch out future research
trajectories in this field.
Varieties of Perception
Along with reason, memory, and testimony, perception is indispensable for

acquiring beliefs about objects in the world. In its basic form, perception entails
an awareness of a given object. In terms of its structure, perception generally
includes the basic elements of (1) a perceiver, (2) an object, (3) an experience, and
(4) a relation between (1) and (2). Perceptual modes of presentation include see-
ing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching, though this list is not intended to be
exhaustive.5 Moreover, perceptual experiences can vary in quality and accuracy.
Traditionally, perception is taken to be the ability to acquire beliefs about
objects in the world on the basis of experience and not as a result of a chain of
reasoning. In this respect, what makes perception a distinctive source is that it is
constrained by its object.6 The content of the perceptual experience is formed by
the relevant properties that are phenomenally represented in it. In this sense,
4 Other examples of unique perceptual powers, usually classified as ‘extrasensory perception’

(ESP), include telepathy, clairvoyance, precognition, distance vision, introspection, and the like. The
discussion of these powers is outside the scope of this volume.
5 Since Aristotle’s De anima, it has been common in Western psychology to describe the physical
sensorium as fivefold. Cultural anthropology brought to light other ways of differentiating sensory
modes, different from the Aristotelian five. See David Howes, The Varieties of Sensory Experience: A
Sourcebook in the Anthropology of the Senses (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1991).
6 On this point, see Tim Crane, ‘The Problem of Perception’, in The Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy (https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/perception-problem/).
Frederick D. Aquino and Paul L. Gavrilyuk xxi
erceptual experience is distinguishable from conception. As William Alston

p
explains in his groundbreaking work, Perceiving God, ‘what makes this a matter of
perceiving the house, rather than just thinking about it or remembering it, is the
fact of presentation, givenness, the fact that something is presented to conscious-
ness, is something of which I am directly aware’. As a result, the givenness or
presentation of the object to the perceiver is distinguishable from any concep-
tualization, however seldom the ‘former may be found without the latter in
adult experience’.7 He argues that perception is ‘essentially independent of any
conceptualization, belief, judgment, or any other application of general con-
cepts to the object, though it typically exists in close connection with the latter’.8
So, a fundamental distinction remains between a blue object appearing to a
person and a person taking it to be blue. Thus, as Sameer Yadav makes clear in
Chapter 7, it is possible to distinguish between perceptual awareness and per-
ceptual recognition.
Scholarly debate has arisen concerning whether perception is shot through
with background beliefs, dispositions, and practices, and could be altered or
improved by training. For example, in The Evidential Force of Religious Experience,
Caroline Franks Davis anticipates this new stage of studies in perception and
captures well the extent to which our perceptual experiences incorporate
interpretation:
Psychological studies paint a very different picture of perception . . . Interpretation,

far from being an extraneous element imposed from without, is absolutely
essential to there occurring a perceptual experience at all. Perception of any type
is never a purely physical activity; it involves the whole person. We are not p assive
recipients of ready-made representations of our environment; rather, stimuli
from that environment must be processed by various interpretive mechanisms
before they can have any significance for us and constitute a perceptual experience
(as opposed to mere sensation).9
So, the movement from ‘mere sensation’ to ‘representation’ in Davis’s terms

involves activity on the part of the perceiver.10 This kind of interpretative activity
may reinforce one’s beliefs, desires, and wishes, or result in a kind of perceptual
distortion (see chapters 5, 6, and 10). As we hope this volume will show, however,
7 William Alston, Perceiving God: The Epistemology of Religious Experience (Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University Press, 1991), 27; emphasis in the original.
8 Alston, Perceiving God, 37.
9 Caroline Franks Davis, The Evidential Force of Religious Experience (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1989), 148–9.
10 Some argue that there is a form of perception (e.g. simple perception) that does not require the
possession of concepts (although this claim has been challenged). On the non-conceptual aspect of
perception, see Robert Audi, Moral Perception (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013); for a
good overview of the relevant issues, see Daniel O’Brien, ‘The Epistemology of Perception’, https://
www.iep.utm.edu/epis-per/.
xxii Introduction
background beliefs, dispositions, and practices may also restore, purify, and
enhance spiritual perception, for example, in how we read scripture (Yadav),
interact with the environment (Christie), and engage in liturgical acts (Pickstock).
We emphasize that training enables one to make fine-grained perceptual judge-
ments (Aquino, Gavrilyuk). Of equal importance to this volume is the expansion
of the scope of perception.
Some forms of perception in everyday experience appear to go beyond phys
ical perception. These forms include moral and aesthetic perception. In Moral
Perception, for example, Robert Audi seeks to show how perception factors in the
acquisition of moral knowledge. In this regard, he makes a distinction between
two kinds of properties: the perceptual and the perceptible. The former are sensory
properties such as colours and shapes, while the latter are ‘not all sensory and
include certain moral properties’ such as ‘being wrong, being unjust, and being
obligatory, among others’.11 So, the phenomenal aspect of moral perception is a
non-sensory perception of injustice but not in ‘pictorial’ terms, say in how we see
the Mesquite tree in our backyard. In this respect, Audi thinks that we should not
expect moral perception to be reducible to physical properties. Consequently, this
kind of research opens the door for exploring a phenomenon like spiritual per-
ception. For example, in Chapter 1, John Greco explores the parity between moral
and spiritual perception. In Chapter 11, Paul Moser locates spiritual perception in
conscience thereby aligning it even more closely with moral perception.
Similarly, the perception of beauty or aesthetic perception may include the
apprehension of non-sensory properties such as harmony, unity, complexity, and
proportion, which are also plausible candidates for being perceptible in Audi’s
sense of the term. Even if the apprehension of these properties is typically more
cognitively loaded than the apprehension of physical properties, such as shapes
and colours, as we saw above, the influence of cognitive factors on sensory aspects
of perception does not warrant excluding a given property from the range of
perception. Along these lines, the parallels between aesthetic and spiritual per-
ception are explored in this volume by Gavrilyuk (Chapter 2) and McInroy
(Chapter 13). Mark Spencer’s discussion of value perception in Chapter 4, which
draws on the phenomenology of Max Scheler, also provides an important bridge
between moral, aesthetic, and spiritual perception.
Spiritual Perception: A New Interdisciplinary Field
The study of spiritual perception is a new interdisciplinary field of research, which

requires a solid methodological basis. In this volume, we examine spiritual percep-
tion from different fields of inquiry, especially those that focus on metaphysical,
11 Audi, Moral Perception, 35.

Frederick D. Aquino and Paul L. Gavrilyuk xxiii
epistemological, phenomenological, moral, aesthetic, and theological issues relevant

to spiritual perception. The metaphysics of spiritual perception includes such issues
as the nature of the spiritual senses and their relationship to other aspects of the
self. Regarding the nature of the spiritual sensorium, the metaphysically weakest
accounts construe the spiritual senses as no more than distinct acts, whereas the
metaphysically strongest accounts construe the spiritual senses as powers, capaci-
ties, or even faculties.
An equally significant metaphysical problem is the number of the spiritual
senses. Some accounts construe the spiritual sensorium as unitary, other accounts
insist that it is manifold, and still other accounts leave the number of the modes
of spiritual perception unspecified. As we mentioned earlier, spiritual perception
could be understood on the analogy of the five physical senses and without such
an analogy. The ‘analogy of the five senses’ has a very respectable pedigree in the
history of Christian theology. Within this analogy, at least three distinct models
can be identified. The disjunctive model postulates that the spiritual senses oper-
ate when the physical senses are non-operational and vice versa. The model
emphasizes the independence of the spiritual senses from the physical senses
and in its metaphysically strongest version presupposes the existence of a non-
material soul as a locus of the spiritual sensorium. The conjunctive model postu-
lates that the spiritual senses are distinct from the physical senses, but that both
operate in tandem: the spiritual senses are always engaged simultaneously with
the physical senses. The third model holds that the spiritual senses are the physical
senses operating in an unusual way. In other words, that the spiritual senses repre-
sent a transformed state of the physical senses. In the twentieth century this
model was retrieved by Hans Urs von Balthasar and, in this volume, it is devel-
oped by Mark McInroy in Chapter 13. It is not uncommon for the conjunctive
and the third model to ‘bleed’ into each other, since both emphasize the unity of
the physical and spiritual sensorium, as well as the distinctive character of spirit-
ual perceiving.
These three models could also be unpacked in terms of the integration of the
self and the relationship between the spiritual sensorium and other aspects of the
self, including heart, mind, conscience, will, desire, body, and affectivity. For
example, in Chapter 11 Paul Moser proposes a unitary conception of spiritual
perception, locating it in conscience and connecting its proper operation with
human volitional and loving response to God and neighbour. In Chapter 8, on
liturgy, Catherine Pickstock discusses how bodily disciplines and ritual practices
influence the functioning of the spiritual senses. In Chapter 6, on the eschato
logical body, Boyd Taylor Coolman develops an account of how an initially mani-
fold and partially functioning physical and spiritual sensorium could become
unified in the ‘spiritual body’ characteristic of the resurrection state.
Additionally, the metaphysics of spiritual perception deals with the nature of
the objects of spiritual perception, and the causal mechanisms that bring about
xxiv Introduction
perceiving spiritually. In Christian practice, the objects of spiritual perception

include God, Christ, Holy Spirit, divine essence, divine attributes, divine energies,
divine presence in creation, sacraments, saints, holy objects and places, scripture,
moral properties, aesthetic properties, and other spiritual realities. We refer to
these objects cumulatively as ‘divine things’ in the title of the volume.
As emphasized by Paul Moser, God chooses to make himself available to spir-
itual perception in a manner different from that in which the physical objects
present themselves to ordinary perception. Two paradigms of divine action could
be distinguished: the first paradigm focuses on God’s reasons for voluntarily
manifesting or hiding ‘divine things’ from human perceivers; the second para-
digm assumes that divine presence is in principle available to all, focusing on the
reasons for human failures to perceive God. One might call the first paradigm
‘voluntarist’, since it accentuates the sovereign divine decision to remain tran
scendent to human experience and to reveal Godself whenever God wills; the
second paradigm might be called ‘receptionist’, since it focuses on the human
reception of divine communications. The second paradigm treats divine presence
as always in some sense available and as a function of human receptivity.
The epistemology of spiritual perception focuses on the conditions under which
perceiving the divine is possible. Some epistemological issues include clarifying
the relationship between the conceptual and the perceptual, determining whether
spiritual perception provides grounds for beliefs about God in a comparable man-
ner to how sensory experience grounds beliefs about material objects, explaining
how spiritual perception is both conceptually loaded and non-inferential, and
unpacking the epistemically beneficial and harmful aspects of spiritual perception.
Accordingly, in Chapter 1, John Greco addresses the major objections to the pos-
sibility of spiritual perception by arguing, among other things, that the objections
apply also to the causes of physical perception. In particular, he takes up the ques-
tion of whether spiritual perception is consistent with what we know about the
nature and functioning of perception in general. Building on this argument, in
Chapter 3 Frederick Aquino investigates how practices and virtues, such as purity
of heart, provide favourable conditions for the development of spiritual percep-
tion. In addition, he draws attention to some of the inter-subjective safeguards that
aid in critically examining relevant perceptual claims. Similarly, Paul Gavrilyuk
and Catherine Pickstock discuss how such practices as scripture reading and litur-
gical participation could be conducive to the activation, development, cultivation,
expansion, and sharpening of spiritual perception.
The epistemology of spiritual perception also considers how this form of per-
ception can become epistemically harmful or distorted. In Chapter 9 Boyd Taylor
Coolman notes that the apprehension of the beauty of the human body could be
distorted by viewing pornographic images and potentially healed by viewing the
presentations of the human body in religious art. In Chapter 10 Sarah Coakley
clarifies how racism is a perceptual problem and how perceptual blindness can be
explained in philosophical and theological terms. William Abraham explores the
Frederick D. Aquino and Paul L. Gavrilyuk xxv
influence of demonic deception on different aspects of human self, including

imagination, will, cognition, and perception in Chapter 4. In Chapter 12 Douglas
Christie takes up the question of how the cultivation of spiritual perception
through contemplative practices can purge the gates of perception, while educat-
ing human desire and influencing human attitudes towards the environment.
As the volume also shows, epistemological issues intersect with the moral and
aesthetic domains of inquiry. For example, John Greco draws on the schema the-
ory in empirical psychology in order to develop an account of moral perception
that takes into account the extent to which various stages of perceptual process can
be shot through with cognitive elements. Greco proposes that we come to recog-
nize moral and personal properties based on certain cues, scripts, and schemas.
Similarly, in spiritual perception, the recognition of God and divine things depends
on the schemas derived from religious education, ascetic formation, and so on.
Along these lines, in Chapter 3 Frederick Aquino focuses on the connection
between ascetic formation and spiritual perception. An important aspect of the
training of spiritual perception here involves focusing on the complex and inex-
tricable relationship between the cultivation of a stable and properly disposed
habit of mind and the different levels of spiritual perception. As a result, a reliably
formed and trained spiritual perception is able to distinguish between salient and
peripheral pieces of information and make the relevant progress towards the
vision of God.
In Chapter 2 Paul Gavrilyuk draws parallels between aesthetic perception
(apprehension of beauty in nature and art) and spiritual perception. Human
apprehension of the beautiful depends partly on emotional attunement and partly
on the ability of perceiving the object as fraught with aesthetic and spiritual pos-
sibilities not otherwise captured by our background beliefs, concepts, and sche-
mas. The aesthetic perception could be developed and sharpened depending
upon the measure of the person’s immersion in the world of art; similarly, spiritual
perception could be trained and habituated depending upon the measure of the
person’s involvement in the life of God.
The phenomenology of spiritual perception focuses on the structure of the
experience of spiritual perception in itself. The phenomenological approach
largely brackets metaphysical questions concerning the causal mechanism of spir-
itual perception and epistemological questions regarding the conditions for justi-
fying claims made on the basis of spiritual perceptual experience. This is not to
say that those who consider spiritual perception from a phenomenological angle
ignore metaphysics or epistemology completely. Indeed, phenomenologists who
consider spiritual perception are interested in metaphysical questions like that of
how the experience of spiritual perception fits together with other experiences,
and with the structure of the human person as a whole, and in epistemological
questions like that of how knowledge arises from spiritual perceptual experiences.
But these questions are considered from the point of view of the experiencing
subject, rather than in the more ‘objective’ terms used in traditional metaphysics
xxvi Introduction
and epistemology. A phenomenology of spiritual perception can stand on its own

as an account of spiritual perception, but it can also serve as providing experien-
tial data for supporting or opposing some metaphysics or epistemology of spirit-
ual perception.
Phenomenologists often try to build an account of the whole of human experi
ence by using some experience as foundational for all others. This allows for
many insights into the interconnections among the many kinds of experience, but
it also often conceals other experiences and interconnections among experiences.
Individual phenomenologies considered as a whole, and considered with respect
to spiritual perception in particular, should be used as models for particular kinds
of experience but are less helpful if they are taken to be an exhaustive account of
human experience. In Chapter 4, on value perception and spiritual perception,
Mark Spencer provides one model for a phenomenology of spiritual perception,
by building on the work of German phenomenologist Max Scheler. On Scheler’s
view, at the root of all other experiences is affective experience of values, that is, of
various ways in which things have importance. The values that we feel in persons,
situations, and things guide our attention to other aspects of those objects.
Spiritual perception occurs when we are guided by the value of holiness, the high-
est value, and we experience the world along with God; only saints are fully
guided by this value, and so only saints see the world as it truly is, as God sees it.
Scheler’s model allows for clear descriptions of forms of spiritual perception
just as the experience of seeing and loving the world along with God, seeing God
sacramentally present in the world, and seeing oneself as God sees one, in experi
ences like that of conscience. But other models might help us describe other
forms of spiritual perception. Emmanuel Levinas, for example, describes the
experience of seeing the face of another in which one experiences oneself not as
seeing God present in or revealing Himself through that face, but sees there God’s
command to serve that other. Jean-Luc Marion, drawing in part on the work of
Hans Urs von Balthasar, describes experiences of what he calls ‘saturated phe-
nomena’, in which content that one receives from the world exceeds or ‘saturates’
the meanings that one expects to find in the world.12 The most profound example
of such an experience is divine revelation. Finally, philosophers from outside the
phenomenological tradition, including some from the analytic tradition, can be
seen as providing phenomenological models for the careful description of experi
ence. For example, William Alston’s account of spiritual perception includes
many phenomenological elements.
While the metaphysical, epistemological, and phenomenological approaches
to spiritual perception have their merits, they could also benefit from distinctly
religious insights that theologically focused accounts of spiritual perception can
12 Jean-Luc Marion, In Excess: Studies of Saturated Phenomena, trans. Robyn Horner and Vincent
Berraud (New York: Fordham University Press, 2002).
Frederick D. Aquino and Paul L. Gavrilyuk xxvii
offer. Within the Christian tradition, such accounts may draw on all loci of
systematic theology, including the doctrines of God, Christ, Holy Spirit, creation,
human nature, fall, sin, incarnation, redemption, church, sacraments, and last
things. As a creator of the world, God remains transcendent and as such not
available to ordinary perception in the manner characterizing his creation. And
yet, in the incarnation, God has appeared in the world, and as a result God can
now be perceived in the person of Christ. Furthermore, the ongoing presence of
Christ can be perceived in the sacraments, which suggest that all five senses are
involved in the perception of the divine.
Christian theological anthropology postulates that humans are created ‘in the
image and likeness of God’, and some accounts of spiritual perception assume
that pre-lapsarian human beings were capable of perceiving God. The fallen con-
dition alters this state of affairs without, however, severing the communicative
link altogether. The purpose of divine action in the incarnation and redemption is
the restoration of the divine–human communication, including the perception of
God. This communication is impossible without the work of the Holy Spirit.
A question emerges, whether the operation of spiritual perception is a matter of
grace or is it a function of human effort and practice? In our judgement, divine
grace and human effort are not in causal competition; while the operation of spir-
itual perception is inconceivable without the sustaining and illuminating power
of divine grace, its activation, cultivation, and habituation also involve a measure
of human cooperation with God. While graced perception may be a divine gift,
the main emphasis of this volume is on a developed perceptual power that
becomes a vital aspect of the transformed human self. As such, the restoration of
spiritual perception is a vital, if unjustly neglected, aspect of the process of sancti-
fication and deification.
A related question is whether spiritual perception is for everybody, or whether
it is reserved exclusively for a few unique individuals with high-level perceptual
training, such as mystics. In Chapter 13, on theological aesthetics, Mark McInroy
defends a strong version of the everyday spiritual perception and argues that spir-
itual perception is a constitutive feature of physical perception. Such an account
would not rule out mystical spiritual perception, but would treat it as the culmin
ation and ultimate fulfilment of the everyday spiritual perception. We propose
that spiritual perception is a capacity that is latent in all humans, although not all
exercise it in an equal measure. The account of spiritual perception put forth in
this volume presupposes that perceiving spiritually is to some extent a feature of
everyday human experience, even if it is not always recognized as such. Just as it
is possible to speak of weaker and stronger functioning of other human powers,
such as, for example, physical strength or memory, it is equally reasonable to
speak of spiritual perception as more or less attuned to the apprehension of God.
While it is notoriously difficult to chart the precise stages of mystical ascent, it is
nevertheless possible to speak of the experiences of God that are more mundane
xxviii Introduction
and those that point to the possibilities of the resurrection state, when God will
be ‘all in all’.
The restoration of the whole person in the resurrection state will feature the
‘spiritual body’ (1 Cor. 15:44), in which all human perception will be at once fully
embodied and fully spiritual. Thus, a complete account of spiritual perception is
inescapably theological and must present ‘perceiving things divine’ in relation to
a grace-filled human striving after a full communion with God. In the eschaton,
this communion is so complete that it is Christ, who as the head of his mystical
Body, the Church, does the sensing in the believers, who have acquired the ‘mind
of Christ’ (1 Cor. 2:16, Phil. 2:5). This trope of medieval Western theology, con-
sidered in Chapter 6 by Boyd Taylor Coolman on eschatological fulfilment of
human knowledge of God, is significant for understanding spiritual perception as
the Christological transformation of the natural powers of the human self. For
spiritual perception is not a secret sense that is a prerogative of the mystics; on the
contrary, spiritual perception is how we are all meant to perceive God, the world,
and each other.
Future Work on Spiritual Perception
This volume does not seek to provide a comprehensive account of spiritual

perception. As we have already noted, much in our constructive proposal remains
exploratory. There is a need for work on spiritual perception in comparative
religion, cultural studies, anthropology, cognitive science, neuroscience, and

psychology. We believe that our work has just begun and we welcome future studies
that will take the emerging interdisciplinary field to new heights.
Our study has important implications for the theory and practice of education
in the West, where due attention to the spiritual dimension of learning is often
lacking. It follows from our account that education is not merely about acquiring
various pieces of information, but it is also about helping students to become bet-
ter perceivers of the spiritual dimension of reality. Furthermore, if humans are
capable of ‘perceiving things divine’, then the prevailing reductionist theories of
human nature require critical evaluation and revision. The next stages of the pro-
ject could involve a rigorous engagement of cognitive science in order to both
draw on its insights and challenge its physicalist assumptions. Equally valuable
work remains to be done in the fields of cultural anthropology and comparative
religion. The aspiration of the Spiritual Perception Project in general and of this
volume in particular, is to make progress towards understanding the powers of
the human self, especially in terms of its openness to and preparation for ‘perceiv-
ing things divine’.
PART I
FAC ET S
1
The Possibility of Spiritual Perception
Objections and Replies
John Greco
Throughout history and in different cultures, many persons have taken themselves
to have a perception of God on some analogy to the perception of physical objects.1
There are numerous variations on the theme, but the central idea is that the ana
logy is apt on at least two important dimensions. First, the idea is that there is
some analogous kind of cognitive contact—that the mind–object relation in the
two sorts of case are somehow importantly alike. Second, the idea is that there is
some analogous epistemic relation—that the experience of God serves to ground
beliefs about God in a way importantly similar to how sensory experience grounds
beliefs about material objects. Again, variations on both themes abound, including
variations that eschew talk of analogy. That is, some have thought that we can quite
literally experience God in our lives, and that this quite literally counts as a kind of
perception. No analogy needed.2
Others, of course, have thought that a perception of God would be impossible.
Here we need not get into verbal disputes about the ordinary language meaning
of ‘perception’. The real issues concern the ideas above about cognitive contact
and epistemic grounding. Those who deny that a perception of God is possible, or
who deny that the analogy is apt, are really denying that an experience of God
could put us in a similar cognitive relation as we have with physical objects of
perception. Likewise, they deny that an experience of God could provide epi
stemically good grounds for beliefs about God, in a way similar to how sensory
experience provides epistemically good grounds for beliefs about physical objects.
And again, variations on the theme abound. That is, the specific reasons regard
ing why such a relation would be impossible, or why such grounding would be
possible, are various. Nevertheless, I think we can identify three broad lines of
1 For numerous examples, see Paul Gavrilyuk and Sarah Coakley (eds), The Spiritual Senses:
Perceiving God in Western Christianity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012). See also
William P. Alston, Perceiving God (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1991), especially chapter 1; and
William James The Varieties of Religious Experience (New York: Longmans, Green, 1916; originally
published in 1902).
2 For example, in Perceiving God, Alston offers a general analysis of perception on which perceiving
God counts as an instance.
John Greco, The Possibility of Spiritual Perception: Objections and Replies In: Perceiving Things Divine: Towards a
Constructive Account of Spiritual Perception. Edited by: Frederick D. Aquino and Paul L. Gavrilyuk, Oxford University Press.
© Oxford University Press 2022. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198802594.003.0001
4 The Possibility of Spiritual Perception
reasoning put forward by the naysayers. As it turns out, the details will not matter
for our purposes.
The first broad line of objection to the possibility of spiritual perception is that
there is no good inference from religious experience to divine reality. Put differ
ently, there is no rationally sound route from (a) experience of a religious charac
ter to (b) the conclusion that such experience is caused by or accurately represents
a divine reality. Let us call this the ‘no good inference’ objection. Like other objec
tions to spiritual perception, this line of reasoning does not assume that God does
not exist. That is, the idea is not that we cannot perceive God because there is no
God to perceive. Rather, the idea is that, even if God does exist, it would be impos
sible to perceive God, either literally or in an importantly analogous sense. More
specifically, even if God does exist, there is no good inference from religious
experience to divine reality.
The second broad line of objection to the possibility of spiritual perception is
that all religious experience is theoretically loaded, and therefore cannot provide
the kind of immediate relation to God that perception is supposed to provide to
the object of perception. Put differently, experience of a religious character is
always ‘thick’ with the concepts, assumptions, and expectations of the religious
believer. This sort of mediation is sometimes thought to be inconsistent with the
kind of cognitive contact (the kind of mind–object relation) that perception is
supposed to provide. Alternatively, this sort of mediation is thought to be incon
sistent with the kind of epistemic grounding that perception is supposed to pro
vide. Either way, the idea is that experience which is thus theoretically loaded
cannot play a role similar to that which sensory experience plays in the percep
tion of physical objects. Let us call this the ‘loaded experience’ objection.
Finally, a third line of objection claims that neither God nor God’s properties
can be a proper object of perception. The idea behind this objection is that per
ception and perceptual experience are necessarily narrow in scope. For example,
the properties that are presented in perception are restricted to relatively ‘low-
level’ properties, such as colour, sound, motion, and shape. Higher-level proper
ties, involving causation and agency, for example, always fall outside the scope of
what is presented by perception proper. Beliefs that are about such properties
therefore require some kind of inference or interpretation, in that their contents
are not delivered by perception itself. If this is right, then it turns out that God’s
properties and activities, and thus God Himself, must fall outside the scope of
perception. Call this the ‘no proper object’ objection.
We have identified three broad lines of objection to the possibility of spiritual
perception. I said above that variations of these abound but that further details will
not matter for our purposes. That is because, I will argue, all three lines of objec
tion are clearly misguided from the point of view of the contemporary cognitive
science of perception. That is, they are clearly misguided even at this very general
level of presentation. Accordingly, adding further details cannot save them.
John Greco 5
The remainder of the chapter is organized as follows. The first part considers
three issues in the cognitive science of perception that speak directly to our three
lines of objection: (a) in what sense does perception involve inference or reason
ing?; (b) to what degree is perception ‘cognitively penetrated’ by higher-level
mental states of the perceiver?; and (c) what is the proper object of perception?
We will see that all three issues do involve substantive disagreements in the sci
ence of perception, but none in such a way that leave our three lines of objection
standing. That is, consensus positions about the nature and functioning of percep
tion are enough to show that all three lines of objection are without force. The
next part puts forward a model of moral and spiritual perception that shows how
(a) these can be both conceptually and theoretically loaded and yet (b) non-
inferential. The model also shows how moral and spiritual perception can be
understood as kinds of expert perception, that is, perception that is enabled and
improved by accumulated knowledge and training. The model is also psycho
logically realistic, in the sense that it is consistent with what we know about the
nature and functioning of perception in general.
What We Know about Perception in General
The science of perception is rife with interesting and difficult issues. Nevertheless,
these issues are debated within a broad consensus about the nature of perception
and perceptual functioning, and that consensus is enough to put aside the famil
iar lines of objection considered above. These were framed as objections to the
possibility of spiritual perception, but it is interesting to note that they might be
framed as objections to moral perception as well. That is, the very same consid
erations that were reviewed above could be directed against the possibility of
moral perception with little or no adjustment. Thus, one might argue that there
is no good inference from moral experience to moral reality—that there is no
rationally sound route from (a) experience of a moral character to (b) the conclu
sion that such experience is caused by or accurately represents the moral facts.
Likewise, one might insist that all moral experience is conceptually and theoretic
ally loaded and therefore cannot provide the kind of immediate relation to moral
reality that perception is supposed to provide. Finally, one might think that moral
properties cannot be the proper object of perception, precisely because they are
the sort of higher-level properties that go beyond the low-level properties that are
made available by perception proper.
Accordingly, our three broad considerations against the possibility of spiritual
perception count just as well against the possibility of moral perception. But
again, we shall see that all three lines of objection are misguided, and that this is
made clear by consensus positions in the cognitive science of perception.
Accordingly, let us turn to three relevant issues in that domain.
Does Perception Involve Inference or Reasoning?
The first issue I want to consider is whether, or in what sense, perception involves
inference or reasoning. This is important because our first line of objection claims
that there is no good inference from religious experience to religious reality. Put
differently, the idea is that religious experience does not ‘support’ religious belief.
This line of objection is premised on the idea that perception in general, for
example the perception of physical objections via sensory experience, does involve
a good inference from experience to reality. The central thought of the objection
is that spiritual perception falls short in a way that physical object perception does
not. Put differently, the central thought is that religious experience fails to sup
port religious belief in a way that sensory experience successfully supports percep
tual beliefs about physical objects.
The problem with this line of objection is that no one now thinks that physical
object perception involves good inference from sensory experience to physical
reality. More carefully, no cognitive scientist thinks that physical object percep
tion involves inference or reasoning in the way that the objection requires. Clearly
enough, and without controversy, physical object perception involves inference in
some sense. And in fact, texts on perception frequently speak about ‘inferences’
in perception. But cognitive scientists use the word ‘inference’ in a very broad
way. In effect, what they mean by ‘inference’ is any kind of information processing.
Let us make a distinction between (a) information processing in general and
(b) reasoning proper in particular. Information processing in general takes repre
sentations as inputs, operates on those according to some relevant set of process
ing rules, and then outputs further representations on that basis. In this very
broad sense, physical object perception involves lots of information processing, as
when the visual system represents distance from a variety of binocular and
monocular cues. Much of this processing is subpersonal, in terms of both the rep
resentations that are operated on and the processing rules that are used.3
Now let us consider the kind of information processing involved in reasoning
proper. Reasoning takes prior beliefs as inputs, operates on these according to
some relevant set of inference rules, and then outputs further beliefs on that basis.
Moreover, the relevant processing operates on person–level representations (i.e.
beliefs) according to person–level inference rules. ‘Good reasoning’ is reasoning
that takes us from input beliefs (premises in the reasoning) to output beliefs (con
clusion of the reasoning) in an appropriate way.
3 Subpersonal processes, in the sense intended here, are computational processes operating on
r epresentations that are sub-doxastic and hence not available to the subject, in this case the perceiver.
For an informative discussion of the personal/subpersonal distinction as it is typically used in
cognitive science and the philosophy of mind, see Zoe Drayson, ‘The uses and abuses of the personal/
subpersonal distinction’, Philosophical Perspectives 26/1 (2012): 1–18.
John Greco 7
And now here is the point: physical object perception involves lots of information
processing, but that processing is not relevantly like reasoning from premises to a
conclusion, as the present line of objection requires. In short, the present line of
objection misapplies the norms of good reasoning to perception. That is, when
the objection claims that ‘there is no good inference’ from experience to belief in
some candidate episode of perception, it is using the norms of reasoning to evalu
ate perception. But perception is not a kind of reasoning, and is therefore not
subject to the norms of reasoning.
The moral of the story is that not even physical object perception involves a
good inference from experience to reality. That is the wrong way to think about
perception in general. Accordingly, it can be no objection to spiritual perception
that there is no good inference from religious experience to religious belief. As
noted above, the same point applies to moral perception.
Is Perception Cognitively Penetrated?
There is a hotly debated issue in the contemporary literature regarding whether

perception is ‘cognitively penetrated’. The question here is whether, or to what
extent, perceptual experience is influenced by higher-order mental states such as
beliefs, background theories, expectations, desires, etc. Another way to frame the
issue is in terms of the modularity of perception. On traditional models of the
mind, perception is understood as ‘modular’, in the sense that perceptual process
ing is thought to be independent from higher-order modes of cognition, such as
reasoning, supposing, desiring, etc. Friends of cognitive penetration deny such
independence, offering evidence that what we perceive can be influenced by what
we believe, expect, desire, etc.
As Firestone and Scholl understand the issue, it is essentially about how the
mind is organized.
What do we mean when we say that cognition does not affect perception, such
that there are no top-down effects on what we see? The primary reason these
issues have received so much historical and contemporary attention is that a
proper understanding of mental organization depends on whether there is a
salient “joint” between perception and cognition . . . whether visual perception is
modular, encapsulated from the rest of cognition, and “cognitively (im)pene
trable.” . . .We single out this meaning of top-down not only because it may be the
most prominent usage of the term, but also because the questions it raises are
especially foundational for our understanding of the organization of the mind.4
4 Chaz Firestone and Brian J. Scholl, ‘Cognition does not affect perception: Evaluating the evidence
for “top-down” Effects’, Behavioral and Brain Sciences 39 (2016): 3.
One might think that the controversy here has implications for the possibility of
spiritual perception. For it seems that the best candidates for spiritual perception
are clearly influenced by higher-order mental states of the believer. For example,
religious experience by Christians will typically have a Christian content, as
opposed to a Hindu or Buddhist content. Likewise, the influence of desire,
expectation, and other aspects of will on religious experience are readily acknow
ledged in various religious traditions.5 But if perception proper is supposed to be
isolated from the influence of higher-order cognition, then these candidates for
perception can be ruled out as proper instances.
In fact, however, the relevant debates about cognitive penetration in percep
tion have no such implications. We can see this by making a four-way distinction
between (a) the perceptual processing that takes place before or ‘upstream’ from
the construction of a conscious sensory experience; (b) the qualitative features of
conscious sensory experience, such as phenomenal colour, phenomenal pitch,
etc.; (c) the conscious experience of low-level perceptual features of objects in the
environment, such as shape, texture, motion, distance, etc.; and (d) the perceptual
beliefs or judgements that are provoked by sensory experience. And now the
point is this: the controversies over cognitive penetration concern only categories
(a)–(c). They concern: (a) whether higher-level cognition affects perceptual pro
cessing upstream from conscious experience; (b) whether higher-level cognition
affects the phenomenal quality of sensory experience; and (c) whether higher-
level cognition affects the experience of perceived features such as shape and dis
tance. Moreover, the reason that issues over cognitive penetration concern only
categories (a)–(c) is that it is uncontroversial that top-down effects occur at (d),
the level of perceptual belief or judgement. That is, all parties to the dispute agree
that perceptual belief is affected by prior beliefs, desires, expectations, and the
like.6 Accordingly, it can be no objection to spiritual perception that beliefs based
on religious experience are affected by higher-level cognitive resources. That is
completely in keeping with the nature and workings of perceptual belief in
general.
To see this point more clearly, let us take a closer look at what is and is not a
matter of substantive disagreement here. First, let us take a closer look at what is
controversial. In each of the cases below, a number of researchers have presented
experiments that purport to demonstrate the relevant effect, and others have in
one way or another disputed their findings.7
5 See Caroline Franks Davis, The Evidential Force of Religious Experience (Oxford: Clarendon Press,
1989); as well as some of the chapters in this volume, especially the Introduction and Chapter 3.
6 For example, see the discussions in Jack Lyons, ‘Circularity, Reliability, and the Cognitive
Penetrability of Perception’, Philosophical Issues 21/1 (2011): 289–311; William F. Brewer, ‘Perception
is Theory Laden: The Naturalized Evidence and Philosophical Implications’, Journal for General
Philosophy of Science 46 (2015): 121–38; and Firestone and Scholl, ‘Cognition does not affect percep
tion’, 1–77.
7 See Firestone and Scholl, ‘Cognition does not affect perception’.
John Greco 9
Consider the perceptual processing that takes place en route to but before the
production of a conscious sensory experience. In the case of visual processing,
this would include the subpersonal processing that begins when light hits the
retina, and continues as the perceptual system builds up initial representations
that will eventually be recruited to produce a three-dimensional representation of
the perceived environment. This is sometimes called ‘early vision’. Some contro
versies in perception science are in regard to whether early vision and analogous
early processing in other perceptual modalities is subject to cognitive penetration
by higher-order cognition.
A second kind of controversy regards whether the qualitative character of con
scious sensory experience can be affected by higher-order cognition. For example,
there is controversy over whether knowledge of an object’s typical colour (bananas
are typically yellow, for example) can affect experienced colour. Similarly, some
researchers claim to have shown that knowledge of race affects the experience of
skin tone.
There is also controversy regarding cognitive penetration at the level of per
ceived low-level properties, such as shape, size, and distance. For example, there
is controversy over whether the anticipation of a physical task, such as climbing a
hill, can affect perception of slope. Likewise, there are controversies over whether
knowledge of an object’s desirability or perceived value can affect perceptions of
distance.
Now let us take a look at what is not controversial. For one, it is not controver
sial that higher-order cognition can affect the quality of sensory experience by
means of attentional direction. For example, suppose that one is particularly fear
ful of spiders and is therefore, due to some prompt or other, hypersensitive to the
possibility of spiders in one’s environment. It is uncontroversial that in such a
situation, one is more likely to perceive spiders if they are there to be perceived.
Similarly, suppose that you are a bird lover and that you are highly knowledgeable
about and interested in local birds. It is uncontroversial that in such a situation,
one is more likely to perceive birds in one’s environment—more likely than some
one who is uninterested in birds and so not thus attentionally attuned. This is in
fact commonplace, and no one working on perception denies it.
It is easy to see why these kinds of attentional phenomena do not touch on
the controversies over cognitive penetration reviewed above. Namely, one’s atten
tional direction, at least in the examples we considered, affects what is input into
early processing, as opposed to the processing itself.8 Thus, someone who is look
ing for birds, even subconsciously, scans her environment differently from some
one who is not looking for birds. For example, someone who is eager and
interested to see birds will change their gaze in response to subtle movement on
8 There are real controversies over other kinds of attentional phenomena.

the periphery of the visual field, or in response to a chirp from above. But again,
this kind of attentional direction can be understood as affecting input to early
processing, as opposed to the early processing itself. Nor does it affect the qualita
tive features of one’s sensory experience, nor how low-level features of the percep
tual environment are presented, once the input is given.9
Another thing that is not controversial is that higher-order cognition can affect
one’s perceptual recognition abilities. Again, if one is a trained bird watcher, one
is more likely to perceptually recognize an ambiguous figure as a bird. Likewise,
one is more likely to perceptually recognize a bird if one is primed to do so, either
by testimony, story-telling, promise of a reward, or some other priming mechan
ism. Again, this is commonplace, and no one working on perception would
deny it.
Also again, we can see why this kind of phenomenon does not touch on actual
controversies over top-down processing. Namely, the kind of differential recogni
tion presented in our examples can be explained by different reactions to the
presentation of low-level perceptual properties. For example, someone who is
expert at identifying birds, or who is simply primed to see birds, will be more
sensitive to bird-relevant perceptual cues, such as shape and size, and thus more
likely to recognize a bird as a bird. But this sort of phenomenon is consistent with
enjoying the very same ‘thin’ qualitative experience as someone not disposed to
see birds.10 It is also consistent with being perceptually presented with the very
same low-level features of the environment. In the examples we considered, it is
the reaction to perceptual cues, rather than the cues themselves, that are subject
to top-down effects.
In sum, it is uncontroversial that higher-order cognition can affect perceptual
judgement and perceptual belief. This is because it is uncontroversial that higher-
order cognition can affect one’s perceptual experience by means of attentional
direction, and that it can affect one’s ability to recognize perceived objects. There
are other uncontroversial top-down effects on perceptual belief as well.11 Thus
it can be no objection to spiritual perception that beliefs based on religious
experience are subject to the same top-down effects. Again, that would be entirely
consistent with our best understanding of perception in general.
What is controversial within perception science is whether there are top-down
effects on (a) ‘early’ perceptual processing, that is, processing before conscious
sensory experience; (b) the qualitative character of sensory experience, such as
phenomenal colour; and (c) the presentation of low-level features such as size and
distance. But the defender of spiritual perception need not take a stand on these
9 For discussions of attentional direction in religious experience, see chapters 2 and 3 in

this volume.
10 For more on the distinction between ‘thin’ and ‘thick’ experience, see text below.
11 Most obviously, background beliefs can affect whether one trusts one’s perceptual experience, or
takes it at face value.
John Greco 11
controversial issues. At least not until there is some reason to think that religious
experience involves some such phenomena in a way that perception proper
does not.
At this point, a sceptic about spiritual perception might think that we have
missed the relevant issue. For the point of the ‘loaded experience’ objection is
about religious experience, not religious belief. The problem with spiritual percep
tion, the objection goes, is that religious experience itself is shaped by higher-level
resources, and this is the crucial disanalogy with physical object perception.
To answer this charge, we may invoke a distinction that is more familiar in
philosophy than in cognitive science—that between ‘thin’ and ‘thick’ experience.12
According to this distinction, thin experience is supposed to have a purely quali
tative nature, exhausted by purely phenomenal properties. Thick experience, on
the other hand, is supposed to involve representational content—it presents
experienced objects as having properties. In different terms, thin experience is
understood as uninterpreted qualia, whereas thick experience is understood as
carrying an interpretation, presenting some object as having some property. At
least typically, thick experience is understood to fall short of judgement. Thus,
I can experience a stick in water as being bent or broken, while judging that it is
straight. Nevertheless, my (thick) perceptual experience is thought to represent,
in some sense, the stick as broken. And whatever sense this is, it goes beyond a
merely phenomenal presentation. Thus, a perceiver who lacks the concepts of
stick and of being broken could not enjoy the same thick experience, although she
could enjoy the same thin experience, that is, the same purely phenomenal
presentation.
With this distinction in hand, we may now see that the present objection dis
solves. For either the charge is (a) that religious experience considered as purely
phenomenal, thin experience is cognitively penetrated, or (b) that religious experi
ence considered as interpreted, thick experience is cognitively penetrated. The first
version of the objection is clearly without force. On the one hand, it is controver
sial whether any perceptual experience considered as thin is subject to top-down
effects, and so it is not clear that there is a difference here between religious
experience and sensory experience in physical object perception, even if religious
experience is subject to top-down effects. On the other hand, it is not clear
whether religious experience considered as thin really is subject to top-down
effects. That is, it is not clear that the purely qualitative or phenomenal character
of religious experience is so affected. Indeed, this would be a hard thing to
12 The language of ‘thick’ and ‘thin’ perceptual experience probably originates with philosophers
influenced by Immanuel Kant’s distinction between ‘intuition’ and ‘concepts’ in his Critique of Pure
Reason. For example, see C. I. Lewis, Mind and The World Order: An Outline of a Theory of Knowledge
(New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1929, reprinted in paperback by Dover Publications, Inc., New
York, 1956).
establish, for reasons similar to why the same issue remains controversial in the
case of physical object perception.
The second version of the objection is also without force. This is now the charge
that religious experience considered as thick is subject to cognitive penetration.
But as we have already seen, perceptual experience in physical object perception
is clearly subject to cognitive penetration when considered as thick. Remember,
thick experience is experience carrying representational content, as when one
perceives a bird as a bird. In other words, thick experience involves the same
kinds of high-level representational capacities as does perceptual belief. But we
have already seen that this kind of representation is penetrated by higher-level
cognition, and uncontroversially so.
What is the Proper Object of Perception?
A third issue in the philosophy and science of perception concerns the proper
objects of perception. The issue here can be framed partly in terms of a distinc
tion that we have already seen—that between (a) the low-level properties of per
ceptual objects, such as size, shape, and motion, and (b) higher-level properties
involving causation, agency, dispositions, etc. As Siegel points out, the issue is
over which properties are represented in perceptual experience.
Positions on which properties are represented in experience can be located on a

rough continuum, with low-level properties (where these include color, shape,
illumination, and depth) at one end, and high-level properties (where these
include kind properties, agential or other emotional properties, and semantic
properties) at the other. The issue is which of these properties can be perceived
as being instantiated: e.g., whether one can have a visual experience that repre
sents that someone is trying to do something.13
13 Susanna Siegel, ‘The Contents of Perception’, in Edward N. Zalta (ed.), The Stanford Encyclopedia
of Philosophy (Winter 2016), <https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2016/entries/perception-
contents/>, 39–40. Siegel notes that defenders of the view that only low-level properties are repre
sented in experience include Michael Tye, Ten Problems of Consciousness: A Representational Theory of
the Phenomenal Mind (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995); Fred Dretske, Naturalizing the Mind
(Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995); Austen Clark, A Theory of Sentience (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 2000); Richard Price, ‘Aspect- switching and Visual Phenomenal Character’, Philosophical
Quarterly 59/236 (2009): 508–18; Berit Brogaard, ‘Do we Perceive Natural Kind Properties?’,
Philosophical Studies 162/1 (2013): 35–42; defenders of the view that high-level properties are repre
sented in experience include Christopher Peacocke, A Study of Concepts (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,
1992); Charles Siewert, The Significance of Consciousness (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1998); Susanna Siegel, ‘Which Properties are Represented in Perception?’, in T. Gendler Szabo and
J. Hawthorne (eds), Perceptual Experience (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 481–503; Susanna
Siegel, The Rationality of Perception (Oxford University Press, 2017); T. Bayne, ‘Perception and the
reach of phenomenal content’, Philosophical Quarterly 59/236 (2009): 385–404; Farid Masrour, ‘Is
Perceptual Phenomenology Thin?’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 83/2 (2011): 366–97;
John Greco 13
Siegel is here concerned with which properties are represented in perceptual

experience, but we can also ask which objects are so represented. Does perceptual
experience present us with chairs, trucks, and waiters, etc., or merely with three-
dimensional objects that must be judged to be chairs, trucks, and waiters?
According to theories on which visual experience represents only very low-level

properties, such as color, the shapes of facing surfaces, their illumination prop
erties and nothing more, visual experience does not carry information about
whether any of the facing surfaces belong to the same ordinary object, and does
not carry information about whether there are any ordinary objects in the
immediate environment at all. Instead, visual experience represents that low-
level properties are instantiated at certain locations, without taking a stand on
whether ordinary objects are instantiating them. A version of this view . . . argues
that experience represents colors (and perhaps other low- level properties)
instantiated in regions of space-time around the perceiver, and nothing else.14
Once again, however, it is essential to note that the current controversy is over
which properties and objects are represented in perceptual experience. There is no
analogous controversy over the proper objects of perceptual belief or judgement.
That is, all parties agree that perceptual beliefs (judgements) are about ordinary
objects in the environment, including people, furniture, and the like. For example,
my perceptual beliefs include the beliefs that there is a waiter walking toward the
table, that there is a firetruck parked on the street, and that my dog is lying down
quietly. The only controversy in the area is how such perceptual beliefs are related
to perceptual experience—whether they reflect the same or similar content, or
whether they go beyond the content of experience in significant ways. It can be
no objection to spiritual perception, then, that religious beliefs have higher-level
objects and properties as their content. This is entirely consistent with perceptual
beliefs about physical objects, which also can have higher-level objects and prop
erties as their content.
A Model for Moral and Spiritual Perception
So far we have seen that perception should not be understood as involving an

inference from perceptual experience, not if by ‘inference’ we mean the sort of
movement from premise to conclusion that is manifested in reasoning, and that is
Bence Nanay, ‘Do we see apples as edible?’, Pacific Philosophical Quarterly 92/3 (2011): 305–22; Ned
Block, ‘Seeing-As in the Light of Vision Science’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 89/1
(2014): 560–72.
14 Siegel, ‘The Contents of Perception’, 47–8, cites Clark, A Theory of Sentience, ch. 5 as a defender
of this kind of view.
subject to the norms of good reasoning. Nevertheless, we have also seen that
perceptual belief is influenced by various higher-level mental states and resources,
including presumed theories, prior beliefs and background knowledge. We have
also seen that the objects of perceptual belief can be, and in fact usually are,
ordinary objects with high-level properties. How are these various features of per
ception consistent with each other? How is it that perception can be both non-
inferential but conceptually and theoretically loaded? A very general answer is
that background knowledge can influence perception in ways other than by act
ing as premises in an inference. Put differently, higher-level mental states can
‘shape’ perceptual dispositions in various ways, by shaping expectations, influen
cing attention, distributing salience, and the like.
In this part of the chapter, I present a psychologically realistic model for how
this might work. My claim is not that perception does work this way. Neither is
the claim that this is the only way that perception can incorporate top-down pro
cessing. Rather, the point is to describe one model for explaining how perception
can be both non-inferential and yet subject to various top-down effects of higher-
order cognition. The same model also demonstrates the possibility of moral and
spiritual perception. That is, it shows how there could be, quite literally, a percep
tion or moral and spiritual reality.
A central idea of the proposed model is that perception operates by employing
various kinds of cognitive heuristics. In general, a heuristic is a ‘mental short-cut’
employed in cognitive processing. Heuristics are ‘short-cuts’ in the sense that they
forgo more costly information processing for the sake of efficiency and speed.
Thus, Shah and Oppenheimer write that ‘heuristics primarily serve the purpose
of reducing the effort associated with a task’,15 and do so by (1) examining fewer
cues, (2) reducing the difficulty associated with retrieving and storing cue values,
(3) simplifying the weighting principles for cues, (4) integrating less information,
and/or (5) examining fewer alternatives.16
Gigerenzer and Gaissmaier adopt the following general definition: ‘A heuristic
is a strategy that ignores part of the information, with the goal of making deci
sions more quickly, frugally, and/or accurately than more complex methods’.17
Early work on heuristics typically claimed that heuristics trade speed and effi
ciency for accuracy.18 But as their definition suggests, Gigerenzer and Gaissmaier
dispute this, arguing that cost-saving heuristics can sometimes increase accuracy.
15 A. K. Shah and D. M. Oppenheimer, ‘Heuristics Made Easy: An Effort-reduction Framework’,

Psychological Bulletin 134/2 (2008): 207.
16 Shah and Oppenheimer, ‘Heuristics Made Easy’, 209.
17 Gerd Gigerenzer and Wolfgang Gaissmaier, ‘Heuristic Decision Making’, Annual Review of
Psychology 62 (2011): 454.
18 For example, see A. Tversky and D. Kahneman, ‘Judgment under uncertainty: heuristics and
biases’, Science 185 (1974): 1124–30.
John Greco 15
If we think of heuristics very broadly, and in terms of ‘reducing the effort

a ssociated with a task’ by ‘examining fewer cues, integrating less information, and
examining fewer alternatives’, then it is fair to say that heuristics are used in the
early stages of perceptual processing, including the subpersonal processing of
early vision and other perceptual modalities. In fact, these are ‘hard-wired’ into
perceptual systems. They take advantage of stable structures of the perceptual
environment, such as typical lighting patterns, and are responsible for many well-
known perceptual hallucinations. In what follows below, however, I am interested
in the role of higher-level heuristics in perceptual judgement. In particular, I want
to look at the role of perceptual ‘schemas’.
The central idea of schema theory in empirical psychology is that cognition in
general often involves heuristics known as ‘scripts’ and ‘personae’. In the following
passages, Nisbett and Ross describe how scripts and personae are supposed
to work.
To understand the social world, the layperson makes heavy use of a variety of
knowledge structures normally not expressed in propositional terms and pos
sibly not stored in a form even analogous to propositional statements.19
They distinguish between two kinds of schema: event-schemas, or ‘scripts’, and

person-schemas, or ‘personae’.
A script is a type of schema in which the related elements are social objects and
events involving the individual as actor and observer . . . A script can be com
pared to a cartoon strip with two or more captioned ‘scenes’, each of which sum
marizes some basic actions that can be executed in a range of possible manners
and contexts (for instance, the ‘restaurant script’ with its ‘entering’, ‘ordering’,
‘eating’, and ‘exiting’ scenes).20
Social judgements and expectations often are mediated by a class of schemas
which we shall term ‘personae’, that is, cognitive structures representing the per
sonal characteristics and typical behaviors of particular ‘stock characters’. Some
personae are the unique products of one’s own personal experience (good old
Aunt Mary, Coach Whiplash). Others are shared within the culture or sub-culture
(the sexpot, the earth-mother, the girl-next-door, the redneck, the schlemiel, the
rebel-without-a-cause) . . . Once the principal features or behaviors of a given indi
vidual suggest a particular persona, subsequent expectations of and responses to
that individual are apt to be dictated in part by the characteristics of the persona.21
19 Richard Nisbett and Lee Ross, ‘Judgmental Heuristics and Knowledge Structures’, in Hilary
Kornblith (ed.), Naturalizing Epistemology, 2nd edn (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1994), 278.
20 Nisbett and Ross, ‘Judgmental Heuristics and Knowledge Structures’, 280.
21 Nisbett and Ross, ‘Judgmental Heuristics and Knowledge Structures’, 281–2.
The application to perception is straightforward. When we are seated at the

restaurant table and a man approaches, we perceive that the waiter is coming.
According to schema theory, this perception is not based on an inference from
other things we believe. For example, we do not reason that ‘waiters typically
dress in such and such a manner, there appears to be a man dressed this way, and
therefore this must be the waiter’. Rather, we are operating with a script that dis
poses us to expect a waiter in the present time and place, and that provokes an
interpretation of present perceptual cues. Suppose that we are working with the
persona of the surly waiter. We will be apt to interpret a tone of voice as impa
tient, or a facial expression as sarcastic. On the present proposal, such perceptions
are not grounded in anything like a reasoning process. As was explained in the
passages quoted above, scripts and personae are not thought of as beliefs or
assumptions, as premises for inferences would have to be. Nevertheless, percep
tion is theoretically loaded on this view. As was also explained above, scripts and
personae can be part of our cultural inheritance, the result of special training, or
gleaned from previous life experience.
The present account of physical-object perception opens up possibilities for
moral perception and spiritual perception. For example, the present account
explains how we might see (quite literally) that an action is wrong, that a child is
innocent, or that a man is dishonest. The basic idea is that we are equipped with
moral scripts and moral personae. If perception in general involves schema-
governed interpretation, then moral perception involving this kind of informa
tion processing would be just another kind of perception. In effect, the moral
perception that some man is dishonest would not be essentially different from the
empirical perception that some man is a waiter.
Again, the main idea is that, as perceivers, we employ moral scripts and perso
nae. Put differently, we employ scripts and personae that have moral content. In
our cast of characters there is the shifty lawyer, the cop on the take, the school
yard bully, the vicious drug dealer, the petty neighbour, and the greedy doctor.
There is also the selfless mother, the devoted teacher, the kind doctor, the cour
ageous cop, and the crusading lawyer. The list goes on and on. There are also
countless moral scripts. As with personae, many of these are highly specific to
time, place and culture. Others are more universal, perhaps showing up in the
great literature of several distinct cultures.
According to schema theory, then, perceptual processing can involve scripts
and personae. Some feature of a situation activates a relevant schema, and as a
result we are disposed to see or hear things a particular way. The present sugges
tion is that these might be moral ways as well as empirical ways. For example,
moral schemas might influence one to see a movement as aggressive, to hear a
voice as threatening, or to feel a touch as reassuring. Of course, some schemas
amount to no more than stereotypes and myths. In such cases their influence
would undermine the reliability of our moral judgements, thereby having a
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Darting round the tree, and overthrowing the savages who barred
their way, they reached the canoe, which still lay upon the shore. So
sudden was the action that the Indians were stupefied, and the brave
trio gained a rod or so in advance before their foes started in pursuit.
They had gained the canoe, the Dead Chief and the Yankee were
already in it, and Floyd was following, when he fell by a hatchet
hurled at him by Willimack. Seth would have turned back to aid him,
but the Dead Chief seized the paddle and pushed off quickly, just as
the Indians pounced upon the fallen man. A score of them plunged
into the water, each with a hatchet or knife in his teeth, but the quick
strokes of the paddle soon left them far behind. A useless volley
from those on shore followed.
"Poor lad," said Yankee Seth. "I'm afeard he's gone under."
"The young soldier is very brave," replied the chief. "If he is not dead,
he will die like a man. And now, hear the words of the Dead Chief. I
swear by the grave of my father, by the totem of my tribe, that I will
not go back to the village where my squaw and pappooses dwell,
until the young war-chief is saved or I have avenged him. It is
spoken; the Dead Chief can not lie."
"Good for yew, old man," said the Yankee. "I'm with yew threw thick
an' thin. Thar's my hand on it. Shake."
The two woodmen clasped hands, while the canoe floated at will in
the midst of the dark stream.
They lifted Floyd and dragged him up the bank into the bushes,
where Willimack and Elskwatawa stood. He had been stunned at
first by the stroke of the hatchet and was still dizzy and faint when he
faced the chiefs. Their dark looks convinced him that he had little to
hope from them. The death-wail was rising from the Indian band as
they lifted the bodies of the fallen and laid them in a row along the
bank. Four were dead, including the neighbor of the Yankee in the
tree-top, and as many more desperately wounded. In such a melée
as this, when a body of men assail a desperate athlete like the
dreaded Long Man, some must get hurt. The cloud upon the face of
the Prophet grew darker as, one by one, the dead were brought out,
and Willimack uttered a snarl like a tiger as a man who had been his
best friend was laid with the rest.
"It is finished then," thought Floyd. "They will revenge themselves
upon me for the death of these men. I can only meet my fate like a
man; but my poor father, my darling Madge! Oh, if the Skeleton
Scout would but come now and scatter these fiendish knaves as he
did at the stockade! I wonder if Yankee Seth or the chief were
injured? Even if they are safe, what can they do against so many?"
At this moment the panther-call of which Seth had spoken came
from the opposite bank of the stream. A faint hope came into the
heart of the prisoner. The call was given to show that he was safe
and would not desert him in the hour of need. Willimack advanced
and looked in the face of Floyd with that vicious glance of triumph
which small natures feel in the power they may gain over an enemy.
"Floyd," said he, "the white man can not have all his own way. To-
night I was insulted in your wigwam—I, a chief of a great nation. I
told you then that a chief never forgot, and that the day of revenge
would come; behold it is here already!"
"Do not trouble me by too much talking, Willimack. I am in your
power, it is true, but for all that you shall not force me to cringe to
you, or to ask mercy at your hands."
"Waugh! Will you not beg for life from the Wyandot and Shawnee?"
"No."
"Listen. Was it you that cut the bonds which bound the Dead Chief to
the tree?"
"It was."
"Good! That is another thing against you. Did you know that the
Dead Chief was our prisoner?"
"Yes. That is the reason I set him free," replied Floyd, in an
undaunted tone.
"It is well. You speak like a great brave, and had you lived would
have been a great chief among the white men. But, the white men
must cease from off the face of the Indian country. We love it too well
to let the feet of bad men press it, and tread upon the earth where
our fathers' bones are laid. The English are friends to us, and will not
take our country; the Americans steal all."
"Do what you mean to do, and at once. I can bear any indignity you
may heap upon me, as becomes a man."
Willimack stood aside, and the Prophet advanced. His dark face was
working with passion, and he seemed to struggle to repress a desire
to strike down the young soldier where he stood. His fingers clutched
the handle of a hatchet convulsively, and now and then he half drew
it from its sheath.
"Let Elskwatawa speak, for he is the great Prophet of the Shawnees.
I see before me the dead of my tribe and one warrior of the
Wyandots. They had hoped to live to fight many battles against the
whites and again possess the land of their fathers. The Manitou
came to me in a dream and told me that the time had come for the
Indians to drive out the white dogs and take their own again.
Therefore you see us in our war-paint to-day."
He paused and cast a wild glance about him which seemed to have
a great effect upon the savages, and they uttered a wail of agony.
"But see," he cried. "They lie in their blood upon their own soil, and
the man who killed them is in our hands."
A triumphant shout went up as he said this, and fierce looks were
directed at the young soldier, who returned them by a glance of
haughty defiance.
"The Indians deal justly by all," said the Prophet. "No man can die by
their hands who is not worthy of death for some great wrong done to
the nations. Warriors and chiefs, I have gone among the white men
at Vincennes, and have spoken to the war-chief Harrison. The tears
have flowed from my eyes when I spoke of the wrongs of my people;
yes, my tears have fallen like rain. He is a man of iron, and I can not
melt him. He cares not for us, but for his own people. You stood by,
Willimack, when all the chiefs were seated and Tecumseh stood up
like a child about to be punished. At last they saw how great an insult
this was to the great chief. They offered him a chair; but the chief
looked at them with scorn when they said, 'Your father offers you a
seat!' 'My father?' he cried. 'The sun is my father and the earth is my
mother. I will repose on her bosom.'[1]
"The chief will bear no more. The battle must be fought and we will
win again the lands of our fathers. We must not fail. The mortification
of failure shall never be ours, and my great brother will not disgrace
me by a mistake. I hear the warriors shout as they gather. I hear
them in the South and East, in the North and West, with a sound like
the summer leaves rising and rustling in the breeze. I hear their tread
upon the mountains, by the silent rivers and in the green valleys. It is
well. Shall Tecumseh tremble and shall Elskwatawa fail? No! The
mountains and plains the Great Spirit gave us are around us, behind
and before.
"I too have my warriors; and here, on the Wabash, on the Scioto,
and on the broad waters of the North, my voice shall be heard for
war."
He ceased for a moment, and cast a sad glance upon the bodies on
the ground.
"There be our brothers, who had thought to take a part in this great
battle to come. Their eyes are closed, their voices are not heard,
their lips are pale, their ears hear no sound. What is this I see upon
their faces? It is blood, the blood of the white man's shedding. And
now, I think I hear a voice, speaking from the dead lips, and it says,
'Avenge me on my foes! My blood has been shed, and I can not
cross the dark river until I smell the blood of one of the accursed
race.'"
His eyes again fell upon Floyd, and fire seemed to flash from their
depths.
"Who is this I see before me? His hands are red with blood. It is the
blood of Negarish and Monado, of Cartain and Zeman. My brothers,
let us light a fire and burn this white man, and then the souls of my
brothers shall find rest and peace."
A wild cry arose from the assembled band, and they began to collect
dried leaves and sticks from the surrounding woods, and pile them
about the limbs of young Floyd after they had tied him to a tree. The
pile rose until it reached nearly to his shoulders, and he felt that his
last hour had come. He was brave enough to meet his fate, but it
was agony to him to know that, when the flames had consumed his
body, there would be no one left to protect his father, and Madge,
whom he had hoped to make his wife when the autumn leaves were
yellowing in the sun. He began to suspect that when he was gone,
Willimack would go back and storm the stockade. What then would
be the fate of his father and that sweet girl he could not think. Madge
was brave, he knew, but, would she have strength enough, when the
hour of her great peril came, to save herself from dishonor with her
own hand?
"Stand back," said Willimack. "Let the voice of a chief speak terror to
the ears of his enemy before he dies. I am Willimack, chief of the
Wyandot, and I am ashamed to be at the death of a child. I see
water in your eyes, and I know you are weeping in your heart. You
fear the pain which will come when the flames curl and the smoke
rolls about you. Let the chief of the Wyandots speak. You know that
you refused me the shelter of your dwelling when I came to it. The
yellow-haired hunter struck me down and bound me, but I saw that
the Bright Eyes looked sadly upon the disgrace of a chief. Good; the
Bright Eyes shall make the fire bright in the lodge of Willimack."
Bright Eyes was the Indian name given to Madge by those who, from
time to time, visited the cabin of the Floyds.
"Oh, red hound!" shrieked Floyd. "Oh, if I had dreamed half the
villainy you had in your black heart, I would have killed you as you
sat by my fire."
"The heart of a chief is not open to the eyes of a dull pale-face,"
replied Willimack, scornfully. "The Bright Eyes is very beautiful. Her
voice is like the song of the birds when the summer sun is high.
Floyd would have made a nest for her that she should sing for him
alone; but Willimack laughs, for he knows that she can only sing in
his lodge."
Floyd struggled manfully to break his bonds, glaring furiously at the
savage who knelt at his feet, and, striking a flint and steel, began to
kindle the flame. It burned slowly, for the leaves were damp. Again
and again it smoldered and went out, but the Indian persevered until
a little jet of flame leaped up. This he fed, leaf after leaf, until he had
a little fire burning, apart from the pile, about the person of the young
soldier. He took savage delight in prolonging the scene, and the
Indians, understanding his motive, yelled in concert and danced
wildly about the tree.
Willimack now took up a lighted brand, and with it touched the

person of the prisoner in various places, laughing in demoniac glee
when he shrunk from the contact. Others took the hint and followed
the same amusement for some time, the young man bearing it
bravely. They at length lit the pile, and the flames began to creep up
about his person, and a thick smoke arose. He was dimly able to see
through the smoke and flame, that the Indians were dancing and
shouting all around, when a new cry arose, and he saw the Indians
break and run in every direction, evidently in the greatest dread.
Then the figure of the being known as the Skeleton Scout bounded
into the open space. Seeing him closely, the young man could
conceive of nothing more horrible than the ghastly head, blazing
eyes, and tremendous hight of this strange being. "Oonah! Oonah!"
was the cry of the Indians as they fled, and the next moment the
brands were scattered and the young man was free!
"Stand here until you hear the loon-cry, and then make for the river,
where your friends are waiting. Remember the Skeleton Scout!"
FOOTNOTES:
[1] A fact.
CHAPTER VI.
A YANKEE RUSE.
The strange apparition was gone, and the next moment the loon-call
sounded from the depths of the woods, mingled with cries which
seemed to burst from a hundred throats. The young soldier bounded
across the open space, and ran at his best speed toward the place
where he had left the boat. Suddenly, without warning, two dark
figures started up in his path and seized him, and he thought himself
again in the hands of his enemies, when he heard one of his captors
say, in a nasal tone not to be mistaken: "This yew, capting?" He had
fallen into the hands of his friends!
"All right, Seth," he answered. "Get back to the canoe as quick as
you can. The woods are alive with savages."
The Dead Chief led the way, and in a moment they were again in the
canoe, and pushed off from the shore. The moon had gone down,
and a darkness like Egypt had fallen on the river. The Dead Chief
had taken the paddle, and, under the strokes of his vigorous arm, the
light craft was shooting down the stream. The Pottawatomie knew
his course well, and how much danger lay before them. Not a word
was spoken, for they knew the virtue of silence. They must break
through the cordon of their enemies at any and every hazard. On
they went, the shadows dark about them, each grasping a weapon,
and ready to defend himself to the utmost if attacked. They knew
that by far the greater portion of the wild band had gathered about
the death-fire, and yet they were certain that the Prophet was too
able a warrior to leave the path to Vincennes clear.
"Back her a minnit, chief," whispered the Yankee. "I want tew speak
tew the young 'un here."
By the skillful use of his paddle the chief managed to keep the canoe
nearly stationary in the midst of the stream, while Seth bent forward
and whispered to his young companion:
"Yew got away; heow did yew dew it?"
"By aid of the Skeleton Scout," replied Floyd, in the same tone.
"Whatever he may be, he is at least a friend to us."
"He never hunts nothing but Injins, he don't," said the Long Man.
"Clever of him tew help yew, anyheow. Was they going to scorch
yew?"
"The fire was lit already," replied the young soldier. "Ugh! my throat is
dry by even thinking of it."
"A close shave!" chuckled the Yankee. "That Skeleton Scout is a
darned nice ghost, by gracious. How many Injins below, think?"
"Seventy or eighty danced around me at the stake."
"Pooty dancers?"
"Can't say I appreciated their efforts."
"No? that's queer! Let her go on, chief. The men we've got tew tackle
are waiting for us in the mash (marsh). Git yure weepons ready,
'cause we are 'most thar."
Again the canoe glided softly down the stream, until it struck the
marsh of which he spoke. It was a level bottom, where the soft soil
had drifted down and been left, leaving scarcely room in places for a
canoe to cross without grounding on the soft bottom. In this soil
gigantic rushes had grown up, as we see them in our creeks when
duck-hunting. These rushes rose above the water, to the hight of
eight or ten feet, and stood so thickly together that, unless a man
was well acquainted with them it would be impossible to force a
canoe through. Of course there was a channel running through the
marsh, but it was more than likely that the patrol canoes of the
Indians occupied this water-course, and it would not be an easy task
to get down, facing their weapons. The Dead Chief seized one of the
rushes and held the canoe, and all bent forward to listen. Not a
sound was heard except the sighing of the long blades as the wind
rustled through them. If the Indians were watching, they knew
enough to keep silent, and, for all the environed men knew, their foes
might be lying within twenty feet of them.
The Dead Chief was acquainted with all the passes through the
marsh, and had not for a moment thought of forcing a path through
the reeds. The rustling they must of necessity make would apprise
the lurking Indians of their vicinity, and put them on their guard. They
were rather ready to trust to their woodcraft on shore, but they would
have liked to find the exact position of the canoes of their enemies,
before striking for the shore. But, though listening carefully, they
could hear nothing of the red-skins, and determined to try the land.
The head of the canoe was pushed into a little channel which the
Dead Chief knew ran close to the bank, at a good place to land. This
was accomplished without a rustle, and Floyd leaped with the chief
to the shore, closely followed by his Yankee friend. The canoe was
left as of no further use to them, and pushed into the rushes out of
sight. This done, the Dead Chief sat down on the bank, and drew his
moccasins from his feet, and made Floyd understand by the sense
of touch that he was to take off his boots, and put on these. Will
hesitated to make the Indian go barefooted through the woods, but
the Dead Chief took his hand and pressed it upon the sole of the
bare foot. The moment his hand came in contact with the hard and
callous foot, he understood that the Indian had a protection there
which made a moccasin rather an object of ornament than use. He
offered no further objection, but drawing off his boots, he left them on
the bank, and put on the moccasins. He understood that the Indian
thought the boot a poor thing for a scout to wear. The moment he
was ready, the chief again took the lead, bending his body low, and
keeping one hand on the ground, carefully removing every
obstruction from the path which the less experienced soldier might
step on.
Floyd followed, imitating his attitude, and betraying at once a keen
sense of woodcraft, and the attributes of a scout. Not a stick
cracked, not a twig bent. The Yankee who followed him was
surprised at the celerity of his motions, and the quiet way in which he
performed his part. Their course led directly away from the river, for
they knew that they must make a wide circuit to get away from the
Indians, who had doubtless lined the shore with scouts. It was only
the extreme darkness of the night, since the moon had gone down,
which had allowed them to pass the sentries unperceived. Seth had
no doubt that, favored by the darkness, they already had passed one
of the guard canoes, but there were two more. One was probably in
the center of the marsh around which they were now describing a
circle, and the other further down, though where it was, they could
not say. Once out of reach of the river by half a mile, the Yankee
gave a signal to the chief to wait, and they sat down together in the
darkness.
"By jinks," he chuckled. "Had a right nice time of it so fur. I ain't
enjoyed myself so mighty well this year. The pizon critters didn't sort
o' kalkilate on finding us so foxy, did they? I hev all I ken dew tew
keep from laffing rite eout when I think heow I walked intew them
cussed thieves arter I tumbled eout of the tree with that ornery critter
that would hev that pertickler tree."
"I should think you would be afraid to talk so loud while we remain in
danger," said Will Floyd.
"Ain't no danger here, Lord love yew!" replied the volatile scout. "It's
glorious work fighting these cussid thieves! Now, look here; thar's
lots of good Injins in this created airth, but thar's a pizon heap of bad
'uns. There's my friend, Dead Chief, now; he's what I call a good
Injin. And if you raally want a mighty bad specimen, yew jest take up
Willimack or the Profit."
"That scoundrel Willimack threatened our family while I was tied to
the stake. Do not let us dally a moment, my friend. Think of them I
have left in danger—my old father and my darling Madge. He
insulted her, most of all, for he designed for her a fate worse than
death—a place in his lodge."
"He duz! Now look at me, yew. I'll never stop hunting that pesky
critter until I've got his skulp or he's got mine. Take that pooty gal into
his lodge, will he? Wants her for a squaw, duz he? Yew jest wait! He
won't live to see it, bet yure life he won't! I'm so cussid mad I could
hop rite over that tree-top. Oh, holy fly! Hold me, somebody, or I'll go
charging back rite intew them Injins, and cut and slash and hack and
hew. Oh, bu'st me all to pieces! Take my hat and stamp on it,
somebody, I'm so darned mad. Litening strike me intew a blind
nigger ef I ain't growed nigh a fool sense yew told me that. Come,
let's git along. Ef old man Harrison don't rair rite up on his hind feet
when I tell him this, then thar ain't no buffler on the prahary; not a
darned buffler."
The party kept out from the river for a quarter of an hour, and then
inclined again toward the stream. The Dead Chief still kept the lead,
but all at once he stopped and dropped to the earth as suddenly as if
he had received a ball in his bosom. The others followed his
example and listened, and understood what it was which caused this
hasty movement. It was the sound of human voices, just below them.
The bank at this point was rather high, and crawling on their hands
and knees to the edge of the bluff they looked down. The Indians
who held this last guard-boat evidently were not trained warriors, for
they had built a fire and were cooking some meat. To be sure, their
fire was built in a sheltered nook and could not be seen from the
river, but would have called down upon their heads the wrath of the
Prophet, if he had known of it.
There they sat, six stalwart young warriors, grouped in various
attitudes of ease and comfort about the fire, gnawing the flesh from
the bones of a young buck which one of their number had brought
down by a well-directed arrow. The flame lighted up their bronzed
figures and dark faces, and danced upon their waving plumes and
beaded belts and moccasins. They were chatting in low tones over
their feast, it being evident that they did not think it possible that the
two whites—for they knew nothing of the Dead Chief—could escape
from the hands of their companions above. But they had not
reckoned upon the fertility of resource possessed by the Yankee
scout. Long Seth touched his companions lightly, and they drew
back cautiously at least a hundred yards from the dangerous vicinity,
where they could converse with ease and not be heard by the
Indians below.
"Ain't got much time tew talk 'bout it," said the Yankee. "What do yew
say? Thar's six Injins, red with white blood. Shall we give 'em goss or
not? If we lick 'em—I'd ingage tew lick the hull bilin' myself—we kin
git the canoe tew ride tew Vincennes, and I'd ruther ride than walk,
any time."
"I'm for thinning this band as much as we can," said Floyd. "There
will not be so many to attack my father's stockade."
"Dead Chief is ready," said the Pottawatomie, in his short way.
"Good enuff!" replied Seth. "Waal, I'll creep down the bank below 'em
and come up on the back. You two creep up in front, and jest ez
soon as I give my loon-call, yew pick eout two of 'em and knock 'em
over. Pick eout the biggest, they ginerally fight the best. I'll give a
good account of number three, and then charge 'em like smoke.
Them's the sentiments I express upon this momentous occasion.
Now for it."
They separated, the chief and Floyd creeping cautiously to the front
and making their weapons ready for a shot, and the Yankee moving
away rapidly but silently to the left. After allowing five minutes to
pass, they heard the loon-call on the river.
Lifting their rifles, each sighted a man and pulled trigger. Down went
two of the savages, one shot through the brain and the other through
the breast, and with a hearty border shout they grasped their smaller
weapons and darted down the bank just as the weapon of Long Seth
spoke and a third Indian uttered his death-cry. At the same time the
Yankee appeared, and the three closed in upon their enemies, who,
like rats in a trap, turned and fought like men.
Singling out an adversary, the determined whites rushed on. Dashing
down the weak defense of his adversary, Seth struck him with his fist
a blow which seemed to shatter his jaws, for the bones absolutely
rattled as he went down.
"Take that, you red devil," he hissed, turning to seek a new foe. But,
the struggle was already at an end. The Dead Chief had hurled his
hatchet at his antagonist with the skill which only long practice in the
use of that weapon can give, and he rolled to the earth, the bright
bowl of the keen ax only showing through his skull. Will Floyd, at the
expense of a slight flesh-wound in the arm, had buried his dagger in
the breast of his own antagonist, and the struggle was over.
Seth knew that no time was to be lost, and darted for the canoe,
though for what purpose the chief remained behind the young soldier
could guess. When he joined them in the canoe he touched the
soldier on the arm and offered him two bloody scalps.
"No, no," said Floyd, pushing back his hand. "I can not take them."
"Two for you, Long Man," said the chief, offering the others to the
Yankee.
"I didn't hev time tew wait for 'em," replied Seth, coolly, taking the
bloody trophies and thrusting them into his belt. "Thank yew all the
same, chief. I reckon yew ain't used tew this sort of thing, cap.?"
"I confess I am not."
"Yew'll git over that. Climb intew the canoe and git hold of a paddle. I
reckon we'll hev a hard time of it yit. I hear them devils up above
coming down the rushes; hark! Du yew hear that?"
They listened and could hear the dip of paddles upon the river below.
They had been mistaken in the number of their enemies after all, it
seemed, and they had yet another patrol canoe below the rushes!
"Load up yure rifles, boys, and yew give the pistils fodder if they ain't
full already, Will. This old thief, the Profit, meant business when he
pitched on us. If we git threw it won't be for lack of head-work."
For some moments nothing was heard but the sound of preparation,
as they loaded their weapons. Then the canoe, which was a large
one, shot out into the stream, and Spink, who sat in the stern, caught
up a heavy stone which lay on the bank and laid it in the bottom of
the canoe, close to his feet. "Yew needn't mind the paddle jist yit,
Will. Let the chief keep her stiddy, and put her rite on tew the other
canoe, old man! I'll fix these heathen, yit."
The canoe was now only a few rods in advance, coming up under
the full sweep of the paddles in the hands of half a dozen strong
men. The morning was coming fast, but it was still too dark to
distinguish faces.
"Put her straight for 'em," said Seth. "I'll show 'em a trick."
As the two canoes neared each other, the Dead Chief shouted to the
coming savages in the Indian tongue:
"Who comes?"
"Brothers," replied the voice of the warrior in command. "Have the
white dogs been taken?"
"Who can escape the snares of the Prophet?" replied the Dead
Chief.
"Are they dead?" demanded the warrior.
"Why should we kill them?" replied the Dead Chief. "Come back and
we will see them burn by the same fire."
The canoes were now side by side, and the Indians were trying to
peer through the gloom of the morning to make out the figures in the
other craft, when Seth rose suddenly, and, uttering a wild cry, dashed
the huge stone through their canoe's bottom, tearing a great hole,
through which the water rushed in a torrent, and in a moment the
Indians were floundering in the water, while the other canoe,
impelled by the strong arms of Floyd and Dead Chief, passed on
down the river. In spite of the toils which the Prophet had set about
them, his prey had escaped.
CHAPTER VI.
THE AMBUSCADE.
Vincennes, on the Wabash, was the seat of government chosen by
Harrison, as Governor of that territory. Here he was gradually
collecting his forces for the coming struggle which he was assured
must come, with the Indians under the control of Tecumseh and the
Prophet. In the mean time his spies were everywhere gathering such
information as they could of the position and designs of the enemy.
In choosing these men, Harrison showed great knowledge of the
Indian character, and for this reason his most trusted scouts were
from that class of bordermen who, trained in border warfare, had
also suffered loss at their hands. These he sent into the Indian
country upon all sorts of pretenses, to collect information for future
use.
Thus he learned who were lukewarm in the British cause, and
therefore might be won over to the Americans.
Thus, when the struggle commenced, he knew upon whom to
depend, and what he had against him. The Governor was at his own
private residence when informed that the Pottawatomie, Dead Chief,
and his companions, Captain Floyd and Long Seth Spink, desired to
speak with him. He at once ordered them to his presence. Floyd was
admitted first, and found the Governor seated at a small table,
covered with papers and maps.
"Ah, captain," he said, "I am pleased to see you, although your leave
of absence has not yet expired. I don't see what brought you here
ahead of your time. You surely can not have had a quarrel with Miss
Madge?"
"No, your excellency. Far from that, but the family are in great
danger."
"Ha! In what way?"
"The Indians are on the war-path."
Harrison started up eagerly. "By heaven, I thought so. Who are their
leaders?"
"The Prophet and Willimack are with the party we met."
"Give an account of the affair in few words."
Floyd commenced with his meeting with the Yankee in the morning,
and the attempt of Willimack to enter the stockade, and told the story
up to their entrance into the town.
"Then there is not a moment to be lost. Take out your company of
the rangers and as many more as you need, and march up the river
to the stockade. How far do you call it?"
"About twenty miles."
"Very good. Get your men under arms. Take the Dead Chief with you
as a guide, and I will let this man Spink go also. You may send him
to me at once."
"The Dead Chief?"
"Seth Spink."
"Oh; do you know him, then?"
"I have heard of him," replied Harrison, with a slight smile. "This
action on the part of Willimack is premature, it is evident, and I am
certain that the Prophet is not pleased with it, nor do I think
Tecumseh knows any thing about it. Send Spink to me."
Floyd went out into the next room, but the Governor followed him to
the door, and, speaking with marked kindness to the Dead Chief, told
him to go with the captain as guide. Then beckoning to the scout, he
again entered the room. The Yankee followed him, closing the door
after him. They remained closeted in the room for more than an hour,
when the scout came out with a hurried step, and went down to the
river-side, where the company of Will Floyd, consisting of nearly a
hundred men, were under arms.
"Ha, Spink, my good fellow, hurry up," shouted the captain. "Death,
man, do you not see that I am impatient?"
"No use to hurry now, cap," replied Seth. "My father died in a hurry.
Ef he'd taken time tew think about it he needn't hev died at all. But,
he got it intew his head he couldn't live, and so he went off without
thinking. He won't dew that ag'in."
"Is this a time for jesting, sir?" said the captain, angrily. "Take your
place. Fall in, men. By fours; trot!"
They set off at a rapid pace, and rode along the river-side beneath
the bending branches, heavy with the morning dew. The birds sung
in the laden branches, as if a thought of blood or battle never could
or would disturb their grand old woods. But, the heart of young Floyd
was heavy, for he feared that Willimack would make good his threat
of the night before, and attack the stockade before his return. The
men shared his fears, and a shade of doubt once or twice crossed
the face of the Yankee, but he kept up a good heart, singing
snatches of old songs now and then in a quaint way, which caused a
smile among the ranks. But, before they had gone five miles his
mood changed, and he began to glance quickly from side to side as
if expecting an enemy. On they went through the oak openings until
the woods began to thicken, when the Yankee bent in his saddle,
and whispered in the ear of the captain.
"No, no," said Floyd, testily. "They have retreated, I tell you. They will
not risk an encounter now."
"But I think I'm right, fer all that, cap."
"It is impossible. You do not know my rangers, or you would not think
the Indians capable of resisting our march."
"I don't believe that the Prophet would fire a gun at a white man, dew
yew?" said the Yankee, with a quizzical look. "Cum mi'ty nigh
scorching yure legs last night, though."
"He is capable of any small villainy like that," replied the captain.
"But, he certainly is too able a warrior to commence before his plans
are ripe."
"It's forced upon him, cap. He knows that we've got clear, and that
both yew and the Dead Chief are aware of his hostility, so he can't
wait. You'd better ride a leetle grain more keerful."
"Nonsense."
"I ain't used tew being talked tew that way, cap. I'm a strange critter,
yew know. I dunno heow it is, but I've got a sort of sneaking notion I
know something 'bout Injin fi'tin'. Come; order the men tew pull in,
and don't make quite so much noise in the ranks."
"You take a great deal upon yourself, friend Spink," said Floyd, with a
light laugh. "Perhaps you had better lead the company yourself, as
you seem inclined to take command."
"See what it is tew be young," muttered the Yankee, with an
appearance of great vexation. "Yew'll force me tew dew something I
don't want tew, cap. Now, look here; yew ain't going tew ride intew
yonder narrow path, are yew, without sending out scouts?"
"What would you have me do, sir? You know as well as I do that it
makes the road three miles longer to keep in the oak openings."
"S'pose it duz? Yew don't want to lose half these nice-looking boys,
dew yew? Come; take good advice, and don't go threw them
woods."
"I will ride directly forward without turning out of my course for a
mere scarecrow cry from you."
A dark frown crossed the face of the Yankee, and he pulled hard on
his bridle and left the ranks.
"Go on then, if yew will. Bet yew forty dollars yew don't go fur."
With an angry exclamation Floyd put spurs to his horse, and calling
to his men to follow, dashed into the woods. Scarcely had he done
so when there was a rattling volley of musketry, and several saddles
were emptied, while high and wild above the rattle of the small-arms,
rose the gathering cry of the forest banditti. Dark forms glided from
bush to bush, and the young captain saw his error. Entangled in the
thick woods they must have been lost, but for his prompt action.
Snatching a bugle from the hand of a musician, he sounded the call
to fall back, and, taking their wounded comrades—for the rangers
would not leave them—they hastily retreated, and sheltered
themselves behind the bushes in front of the woods and looked after
their wounded comrades. Some of the savages showed themselves
for a moment, but a volley from the rifles of the rangers quickly drove
them back, and they waited for a new advance on the part of the
horsemen.
Floyd cast a sidelong glance for the Yankee, but he was gone. In the
melée he had taken his horse and slipped away, no one knew
whither. Angry with himself for his error, Floyd sent the wounded men
back to the village and buried the single dead man in the path, riding
over it with the rangers several times so that the Indians could not
find and mutilate the body. This done he took a wide detour, leaving
the woods on his right, and set off at the best rate of speed for his
home. Three miles on the way they met the Yankee coming back
with a look of sorrow on his face.
"I couldn't wait tew see it, cap.," he said. "How many of the boys
went under?"
"One," replied the captain, sorrowfully. "You were right, Seth. I ought
to have kept out of that trap. I know it now, but, that will not atone for
my folly. But, think what I feel now when I tell you that it would be a
kindness in you to shoot me through the head."
"No," replied Seth, slowly. "I don't think that would pay us, principally
because we kain't afford tew lose yew, and yew'll take advice next
time. I've been out scouting a little in advance. Ride a little to the
front and I'll tell yew what I've found eout."
They quickened their pace, and the Yankee bent in his saddle and
said in a low voice: "Willimack hez been over the road since last
night."
Floyd started violently, and his face grew pale. "How do you know
that?" he cried.
"I kan read Injin sign," answered the Yankee, calmly. "Thar's another
thing. I believe the critter they call the Skeleton Scout is arter
Willimack."
"Why?"
"'Cause I've seen his sign. Ef he's a ghost, then he's a mighty heavy
one. Why, he's got a foot bigger'n mine, ef I kin judge by his trail.
Now mind, I don't say he's a human; sartin he don't act like one; but
yew bet all yew'r worth he don't like Willimack, or heow in natur'
would he chase him up the way he did last night."
"But my father; my dearest Madge!" moaned the unhappy young
man. "Oh, why did I ever leave you?"
"'Twould only hev been tew more sculps ef we had been thar,"
replied the Yankee. "Now, I'll tell yew what I think. Willimack turned
back with his own warriors arter the Skileton Scout set you free, and
put out fer the stockade."
"I am afraid you are right. Let us press on as quickly as we can."
"No use of that. If he did turn back, and I'm pesky 'fraid he did, all we
kan do won't bring us thar in time. I'm afeard the old man didn't half
understand his danger, nuther, and was keerless arter we went
away. Here, order yure men to close up. Them Injins are behind us
now, but I reckin they won't leave a stick or stone standing along the
Wabash, now that their blood is up."
The rangers closed up. They quickened their pace, and, late in the
afternoon, began to near the clearing in which the settler had built
his house and stockade. As they entered the clearing, a heavy
smoke was seen to rise toward the summer sky, and, uttering a cry
of agony, the young soldier spurred quickly forward, to see what he
had most feared and yet had hardly dared to hope had not happened
—his father's house in ruins, and still smoking, though the flames
had nearly gone out! It was a terrible scene of desolation, but one all
too common in the history of these Indian wars.
The rangers surrounded the blackened walls. In some places the fire
had lost its power over the walls from their green state, and they still
stood, though blackened and half consumed. The house itself had
fallen, and the charred rafters lay among the smoldering embers of
that once happy home. The desolation did not stop here, for there, in
the opening between the stockade and the house, lay the bodies of
the two soldiers, who had been killed and scalped and horribly
mutilated.
"Poor Lefebre! unhappy Forbes!" said the young soldier. "Yours was
indeed a sad, sad fate. God in his mercy take you in his keeping!
But, where is my father?"
They searched here and there, and, at length, half hidden by a
heavy beam which had fallen upon their lifeless bodies, they found
the murdered forms of the three negroes, like the soldiers, scalped
and gory. All the indignities which savage ferocity could invent had
been heaped upon the wretched men who had here met their fate.
Floyd was ghastly pale, and reeled in his walk like a drunken man as
the five bodies were drawn out into the open space and laid down,
side by side. One of the soldiers dismounted, and, taking his blanket
from his saddle, and begging another from a comrade, covered the

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Perceiving Things Divine: Towards a

Constructive Account of Spiritual

Receptions of Newman 1st Edition Frederick D. Aquino

The Book of Many Things D&D Beyond

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Articulating the Moral Community: Toward a Constructive

Perceiving Things Divine

In memoriam William J. Abraham (1947–2021): Requiem aeternam

Although he is concerned with a somewhat unusual state of affairs, Goldie’s

Theology’ panel at the annual Patristic, Medieval, and Renaissance Conference at

1. The Possibility of Spiritual Perception: Objections and Replies 3

7. Scripture as Signpost: A Perceptual Paradigm of Biblical

10. Spiritual Perception and the Racist Gaze: Can Contemplation

Afterword: The Spiritual Senses and Human Embodiment 229

William J. Abraham (1947–2021) was Emeritus Outler Professor of Wesley Studies at

Frederick D. Aquino is Professor of Theology and Philosophy at the Graduate School of

Douglas E. Christie is Professor of Theological Studies at Loyola Marymount University in

Sarah Coakley FBA is the Norris-­Hulse Professor Emerita, University of Cambridge,

Boyd Taylor Coolman is Professor of Theology at Boston College. He has authored:

John Cottingham is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Reading, and an

Mark McInroy is Associate Professor of Theology at the University of St Thomas. He is the

Paul K. Moser is Professor of Philosophy at Loyola University Chicago. He is the author of

Catherine Pickstock is Norris-­Hulse Professor of Divinity at the University of Cambridge.

Mark K. Spencer is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the University of St Thomas in

Sameer Yadav is a systematic and philosophical theologian and Associate Professor of

Perceiving Things Divine seeks to make philosophical and theological sense of

Along with reason, memory, and testimony, perception is indispensable for

4 Other examples of unique perceptual powers, usually classified as ‘extrasensory perception’

Frederick D. Aquino and Paul L. Gavrilyuk xxi

­ erceptual experience is distinguishable from conception. As William Alston

Psychological studies paint a very different picture of perception . . . Interpretation,

So, the movement from ‘mere sensation’ to ‘representation’ in Davis’s terms

Spiritual Perception: A New Interdisciplinary Field

The study of spiritual perception is a new interdisciplinary field of research, which

11 Audi, Moral Perception, 35.

Frederick D. Aquino and Paul L. Gavrilyuk xxiii

epistemological, phenomenological, moral, aesthetic, and theological issues ­relevant

perceiving spiritually. In Christian practice, the objects of spiritual perception

Frederick D. Aquino and Paul L. Gavrilyuk xxv

influence of demonic deception on different aspects of human self, including

and epistemology. A phenomenology of spiritual perception can stand on its own

Frederick D. Aquino and Paul L. Gavrilyuk xxvii

Future Work on Spiritual Perception

This volume does not seek to provide a comprehensive account of spiritual

4 The Possibility of Spiritual Perception

What We Know about Perception in General

6 The Possibility of Spiritual Perception

Does Perception Involve Inference or Reasoning?

Is Perception Cognitively Penetrated?

There is a hotly debated issue in the contemporary literature regarding whether

8 The Possibility of Spiritual Perception

8 There are real controversies over other kinds of attentional phenomena.

10 The Possibility of Spiritual Perception

9 For discussions of attentional direction in religious experience, see chapters 2 and 3 in

12 The Possibility of Spiritual Perception

What is the Proper Object of Perception?

Positions on which properties are represented in experience can be located on a

Siegel is here concerned with which properties are represented in perceptual

According to theories on which visual experience represents only very low-­level

1. The Possibility of Spiritual Perception: Objections and Replies 3

Afterword: The Spiritual Senses and Human Embodiment 229

Sarah Coakley FBA is the Norris-Hulse Professor Emerita, University of Cambridge,

Catherine Pickstock is Norris-Hulse Professor of Divinity at the University of Cambridge.

erceptual experience is distinguishable from conception. As William Alston

epistemological, phenomenological, moral, aesthetic, and theological issues relevant

According to theories on which visual experience represents only very low-level

15 A. K. Shah and D. M. Oppenheimer, ‘Heuristics Made Easy: An Effort-reduction Framework’,

They distinguish between two kinds of schema: event-schemas, or ‘scripts’, and