In the perceptual model of mystical experience, the mystics are said to “perceive” God much like ordinary people perceive physical objects. The model has been used to defend the epistemic value of mysticism, and it has been championed most vigorously by William Alston in his work Perceiving God. This paper is a critique of the model from a phenomenological perspective. Utilizing insights from Husserl and Merleau-Ponty, I show that models like Alston’s are based on an inadequate notion of perception, which fails to distinguish perception from other modes of intentionality; the result is that even if we assume the mystics have directly experienced God, it is not clear why we should say they have “perceived” God. Then, using a better and richer concept of perception, I show that the mystical experiences under discussion cannot be truly perceptual, because they lack some salient features of perception. The conclusion is that talks of “perceiving God” can only be analogical or metaphorical, but not literal.

在神秘经验的感知模型中，神秘主义者被称为“感知”上帝，就像普通人感知物理对象一样。该模型已被用来捍卫神秘主义的认识论价值，并在威廉·阿尔斯顿（William Alston）的作品《感知上帝》中得到了最有力的支持。。本文从现象学的角度对模型进行了批判。利用胡塞尔和梅洛-庞蒂的见解，我证明了像阿尔斯通这样的模型是基于不充分的知觉概念的，这无法将知觉与其他意向模式区分开来。结果是，即使我们假设神秘主义者直接经历了上帝，也不清楚为什么我们应该说他们“感知”了上帝。然后，我使用一种更好和更丰富的感知概念，表明正在讨论的神秘经验不能真正地感知，因为它们缺乏感知的一些显着特征。结论是，关于“接受上帝”的讨论只能是类比或隐喻的，而不能是字面的。