Joseph Antley and Mormon Epistemology

[_MrStakhanovite]

Can a witness of the Holy Ghost safeguard beliefs against skepticism? Joesph Antley seems to think so:

“In this context skepticism should be distinguished from cynicism — the latter is, by usual definitions, naturally negative, contemptuous, or distrustful. Skepticism on the other hand is merely the act of critical thinking — not accepting something as true simply because you want it to be true, but questioning something regardless of whether you want it to be true or not. A skeptic does not need to be doubtful or mistrustful about everything, but he does need to be doubtful and mistrustful of some things. The skeptic is objective. Objectively is not the same as negatively. Objectivity is being honest with oneself.”

Skepticism =(def) Striving for objectivity in the honest assessment of a belief.

Joe notes that that one does not have to be skeptical of everything, and that seems intuitive to me. We simply don’t have time to carefully and skeptically examine every belief that we hold. Another consideration is that too much skepticism can lead someone into some silly ideas, like there being no justified true belief.

Joe gives us a short list of ideas that he does not subject to skepticism:

“…there are some things that I choose not to be skeptical about: Mormonism and all of its major facets, such as the Restoration, the existence of God, the divinity of Jesus Christ, the Book of Mormon (as a whole), the Priesthood, that prophets and apostles are inspired, etc. I don’t have to be skeptical about those things because I have solid evidence that they are true, in the form of the witness from God through the Holy Ghost.”

The bolding is my emphasis, and one that I am most fascinated about.

Religious experiences that fall within the Mormon worldview tend to run the gamut, from wild off the wall stuff, to the more prosaic gentle prompting. These experiences are clearly internal states that a subject feels like:

(A) S feels pain in his left shoulder

Now if that pain is real or not doesn’t matter, all we know is that S feels a pain sensation in his left shoulder. S’s report on the sensation of pain in his left shoulder is a strong piece of evidence, after all, S is the expert when it comes to his internal states. Now it is possible via positron emission tomography to detect when a person is feeling pain by injecting a short-lived type of radioactive oxygen, but the results are not always clear, since the brain activity seen can vary from patient to patient, and is complex. It is not like a single area of the brain lights up when pain is felt, but many areas, some not even previously thought of as having anything to do with pain at all [1].

Of course, there can always be reasons to doubt that someone is really in pain, especially if they have a motive to do so (like get out of doing manual labor, or to get medication to feed an addiction), so one must always consider the greater context when someone makes a report about their internal state. That said, (A) is insufficient, because it is rather hard to determine if someone’s inner state is what they claim it is or if they are lying. As a replacement for (A), I suggest this:

(B) S reports that he feels pain in his left shoulder.

I picked pain as the first example, because it maps well with spiritual experiences as well. Brain science has been progressing enough to give us a glimpse of into the brain’s activity during spiritual encounters. Andrew Newberg (et al) at the Nuclear Medicine division of the University of Pennsylvania did a fascinating study [2] with a single positron emission computed tomography to show heightened activity in the brain’s frontal lobe, parietal lobe, and the amygdala. The parietal lobe is thought to be the main spot that generates spatial and temporal consciousness, the amygdala is connected to our sense of fear, and the frontal lobe is responsible for creating our sense of self [3]. It should come to no surprise that when humans are able to reduce blood flow to these areas, it can create feelings of calmness and transcendence that can feel very spiritual.

I want to be clear here that I’m not presenting these examples of brain science as somehow debunking claims of spiritual experiences, but rather to support three premises:

(1) Internal mental states are somehow linked to the brain.

I want to draw your attention to the word “somehow”, because I included it in this premise because I didn’t want to presume physicalism. I think it is not controversial to say that whatever internal mental states are (physical or not), they are intimately connected to the brain, and that if something affects the brain, it will also affect internal mental states.

(2) Internal mental states do not have to correspond with reality

I think this premise also escapes controversy. Amputees can suffer from phantom limb pain is just one example of the internal mental state of feeling pain in a limb that is no longer present.

(3) The strongest evidence we have for S’s internal mental state is the reports S gives about their internal mental state. It is currently not feasible to compare S’s reports about their mental states with some kind of external testing to verify those reports.

Again, I don’t think this is controversial.

Does Joe have justification for placing certain religious beliefs off limits to his skepticism? At first blush, it seems comparable to assuming I’m not a brain in a vat, or that my sense organs work accurately.

However, Joe has some pretty specific and controversial beliefs he is cordoning off from skepticism, is this a valid move in epistemology?

ETA: I was writing a longer post where I was going to put those 3 premises to work, but I'm losing interest, so I thought I'd post what I had to feed a discussion.


[1] I’m getting my information from a great little book on this subject by Patrick Wall called, ‘Pain: The Science Of Suffering’.

[2] http://andrewnewberg.com/pdfs/2003/Prayer.pdf

[3] The Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry, 7th edition, Kaplan and Sadock.

[Guest]

“In this context skepticism should be distinguished from cynicism — the latter is, by usual definitions, naturally negative, contemptuous, or distrustful."

Actually Cynicism was a philosophy that taught "that the purpose of life was to live a life of Virtue in agreement with Nature. This meant rejecting all conventional desires for wealth, power, health, and fame, and by living a simple life free from all possessions. As reasoning creatures, people could gain happiness by rigorous training and by living in a way which was natural for humans. They believed that the world belonged equally to everyone, and that suffering was caused by false judgments of what was valuable and by the worthless customs and conventions which surrounded society." It has taken on the meaning Joseph attributes to it only because it has been distorted and misrepresented by religious people who are themselves "naturally negative, contemptuous, or distrustful" of anything that smacks of non-theism. I'll stick with the egalitarian nature-lovers, thankyouverymuch. :P

[_Tarski]

Good post.

Here is a little related thought:

Joe is the authority on his own subjective states (although he could just barely conceivably be wrong). This is a matter of an unspoken social norm as well as a fact about the current state of cognitive science etc.

Suppose that Joe says he had an inner experience and on this basis knows the Mormon church is true. If we doubt him, he reminds us that we can't know his inner experience. But is this relevant?

Let CT be "The church is true".

Without very strong evidence to the contrary we must grant that Joe experienced something that included, in the end, a feeling of conviction that CT.

We must grant B: Joe experiences various thoughts and feelings including a conviction that CT.

But of course we need not grant CT itself.

In fact, unless he has the kind of public evidence we usually require, even Joe himself has no warrant for accepting CT itself even if he cannot now bring himself to doubt it because of his unfortunate inner experience (brain fart).

Joe is in no better position than we are regarding the truth of CT if all he has is a subjective experience.

Joe is only an authority about what he feels or thinks but not usually about the truth or falsity of the content of any propositions he associates with his subjective feelings except in the trivial case that the proposition is simply about the subjective experience itself and not about the world at large.

In short, to say that we can't know his experience is to say something pretty irrelevant.

I can think of a couple possible (ultimately weak) objections to the above but let's see if you spiritualist types can come up with them on your own.

[_Dr. Shades]

"…there are some things that I choose not to be skeptical about: Mormonism and all of its major facets, . . . [SNIP!]"

The tithe-collectors at the C.O.B. must LOVE people like Young Antley.

[_MrStakhanovite]

Good post.

Thanks.

I’m trying to wrap my head around having a spiritual experience and then moving to bracketing a whole series of complex and controversial beliefs in a way that makes them immune to skepticism.

I’m willing to grant Joe’s experiences at face value and give them some kind of evidentiary value, but I don’t see how they could be so strong that they are immune from honest and critical self evaluation.

[_Tarski]

Good post.

Thanks.

I’m trying to wrap my head around having a spiritual experience and then moving to bracketing a whole series of complex and controversial beliefs in a way that makes them immune to skepticism.

I’m willing to grant Joe’s experiences at face value and give them some kind of evidentiary value, but I don’t see how they could be so strong that they are immune from honest and critical self evaluation.

Let's take a terse example. Suppose that we are walking along in a desert and I get a distant look on my face and then suddenly my eyes bug out and I declare with certainty that my grandmother in another state just died one hour ago.

Is there now some small evidence for the proposition that my grandmother just died that was not there a second before?

[_MrStakhanovite]

Let's take a terse example. Suppose that we are walking along in a desert and I get a distant look on my face and then suddenly my eyes bug out and I declare with certainty that my grandmother in another state just died one hour ago.

Is there now some small evidence for the proposition that my grandmother just died that was not there a second before?

As stated? I don’t think any evidence was gained, and given it would be easy to find out if your premonition was true or not, because it was so precise.

If we alter the scenario and say, you were going to try out some type of spiritual new-age religion, and you build a campfire in the desert and prayed all night, and came back saying you were visited by a spirit who told you that the new age religion is true, I’d give that some kind of value, but it would be small.

[_brade]

Some very quick thoughts...

Can a witness of the Holy Ghost safeguard beliefs against skepticism?

I think so.

Does Joe have justification for placing certain religious beliefs off limits to his skepticism? At first blush, it seems comparable to assuming I’m not a brain in a vat, or that my sense organs work accurately.

However, Joe has some pretty specific and controversial beliefs he is cordoning off from skepticism, is this a valid move in epistemology?

Ah, now that's the question. I think the answer is going to turn somewhat on what we say about the nature of Joe's Holy Ghost experiences. I think that if Joe arrives at his specific and controversial beliefs by a belief-by-association (BA) method, then, no, Joe doesn't have justification for his anti-skepticism. I haven't sorted out how I feel about the case where his beliefs come by a belief-by-direct-apprehension (BDA) method.

I think I've explained this associative vs direct thing before, but I'll do it again so my previous paragraph makes sense and because I think the distinction will prove useful in this discussion. On the BA model Joe engages in a behavior that happens to have religious elements to it. For example, reading the Book of Mormon. The behavior is, say, reading. The religious elements are clear. The religious elements of the behavior are mixed up with specific and controversial propositions. For example, "The Book of Mormon is a historical document". During or subsequent to the behavior Joe has a powerful feeling. Joe reasons that some of the propositions associated with his behavior are true because he has had a certain sort of feeling while engaged in a certain behavior. On this model Joe has to go through some mental steps and may even be aware that he is going through them.

On the BDA model there are no mental steps. In this case Joe may or may not be engaged the kind of behavior I described for BA. On this model Joe simply comes to find himself with a new belief, presumably put there by a divine intelligence. He might, for example, be reading the Book of Mormon and then suddenly, even accompanied by a powerful feeling if you like, find the proposition "The Book of Mormon is a historical document" in his head with an assigned truth-value -- true.

I think the BDA spiritual experience type is the type defended by Plantinga and Alston and the rest of the reformed epistemology crowd. And though I want to find fault with their work, it's not easy to. However, my view is that the BA model, and not the BDA model, is taught by the Church. I remember it being taught on my mission. I think the whole practice of helping people feel and recognize the spirit sort of implies this model. Right? If the BDA model were what happened on the Mormon view of things then there wouldn't be any need to help people understand their spiritual experiences, because they already would when they had them. The fact that the Church teaches that people need help recognizing (1) that the spirit is talking to them and (2) what it's saying, suggests to me that the spirit, at least typically, is not direct. If anyone has their old Missionary Guide and would like to donate it, let me know. I've been looking for one so I could write a bit more about this.

The BA model is easier to dismiss, I think, because there are so many things that can, so to speak, step in between reasoning from the feeling to the truth-value of certain propositions. There are things like exactly what propositions are, as it were, floating about in the environment at the time and why some ought to be favored over others, social pressure, etc. There are too many things going on to rule them all out in favor of certain beliefs if what's happening is that Joe is reasoning to his religious beliefs.

Now, I want to be clear here. What I'm saying is that there are too many things that can't be ruled out in a BA case to safeguard against skepticism. That is not to say that Joe, in a BA case, shouldn't hope that certain religious beliefs are true and even go on behaving as if they are (I guess in this case it's hope-and-religious-activity-by-association). The sort of good feeling associated with religiously related behavior thing might be a very good reason to pursue certain religious beliefs and/or behaviors.

[_brade]

You know, I just had a thought. Here's something I'd like to know. If Joe had a qualitatively identical experience to the experience he had that has safeguarded him against skepticism that the priesthood was restored to Joseph Smith, but instead of "the priesthood was restored to Joseph Smith" being the proposition in question the proportion was "it's morally permissible to take innocent lives if you enjoy doing it", would he assent to that proposition in the same way he has to the former one?

I'd like to flesh this thought out a bit more in terms of BA and BDA and make the thought experiment a little more air tight, but I just wanted to put this out there real quick.

[_sock puppet]

I find Antley's description of what he has placed off limits from skepticism interesting for a different reason. We often hear TBMs avoid going into detail about their spiritual witness experience by claiming it is 'indescribable' (akin to the current LDS 'apostles' saying that it is too sacred to discuss when asked if they have witnessed resurrected Jesus in the flesh).

Antley is fresher and more assertive than those who would claim the spiritual experience is simply indescribable, but cannot be denied by them. They have for some time guarded this small realm from scrutiny by others, essentially having told everyone long ago to back off and don't go there. It's a long-standing cop out. Many humans with much lesser faculty for descriptive language have described various mental states with great success, because as I've read those descriptions many have rang true with my own, similar experiences. There are a few intellectuals on MST that prefer the wall against scrutiny that comes with the pronouncement that this spiritual experience is 'indescribable', though each has accomplished skills in language and communication. In my view, retreating behind the shield of 'indescribable' is a cop-out.

Antley by contrast begins by explaining that skepticism, in the right measure, is good. He then expounds on why he does not apply skepticism to his Mormon religious beliefs--because he claims he has "solid evidence that they are true, in the form of the witness from God through the Holy Ghost." Stak's OP begins an examination of how epistomologically significant this 'evidence' can be since it is self-reporting, and non-verifiable by others, as has been the case in the past and largely remains the case for pain. Brade delves a bit into how the experience Antley alludes to being a witness through the Holy Ghost is interpreted and distilled from an 'indescribable' experience into Mormon religious claims are true. Both are interesting and valid perspectives.

My take-away from Antley's statement is that he has only recently or is yet struggling to neatly tuck his spiritual experience away from scrutiny, hopefully stuffing it behind the 'indescribable' wall built by others. That may come in time for Antley. However, Antley's explanation, as begging as it is of the question of what shall skepticism be applied to, shows that he's either not quite able to compartmentalize and regard the wall as impermeable, or he has only recently arrived to that point of compartmentalizing his Mormon religious beliefs beyond the realm in which he will apply his analytical skills.