It's rare we get your psychological insights, Morley, so really enjoying this. I can't hold a candle to your knowledge here, but allow me to nuance my theory of lying, beginning with your observation.Morley wrote:It remains that way until, one day, his wife asks him, "Why do you do spend so much time doing this, Bertrand?" then "And why did you, here at the end of your life, decide to become a painter?"
Hearing these questions, Dr Russell is, at first, flummoxed. He has given almost no time to contemplating to his own motivations.
I made the point that the testimony narrative doesn't seem to fit the actual testimony experience, members are broadly aware of this, but the testimony tradition rolls forth powered by Mormon culture itself, not necessarily the leaders making demands. For now I have to throw out BKPism.
That Dr. Russell's explanations for himself are ad hoc reminds me of the first stimulus that got me here, and this is not ad hoc as of today, this has been on my mind for years. Dennett's Stalinist theory of perceptions. Perception isn't immediacy, it's a staged verdict. Likewise, Dr. Russell's explanation for his fascinations are after the fact, and perhaps had he been asked the question on another day in another mood, his answer would have been entirely different.
I think Dennett's insights are some of the most interesting in phil mind, but I don't know what to do with them. I can't convince myself that pain is a Stalinist trial. However, it struck me long ago that something like spirituality, sans DMT, sans intensive stimuli to evoke emotional responses, such as I believed to be the general case in Mormonism, that spiritual experiences in context with the expectations of testimony bearing could very much be explained by a Stalinist trial of the mind.
That was thought 1.
I can't properly credit thought 2 as It's something I scanned online in a psychology paper one day and then couldn't find it again. The observation being made as I recall it, was that facets of religious culture mirror the social phenomena of a down zipper. In polite society, we pretend we don't see it and expect the same courtesy be afforded to us should we be in the position. Substitute the testimony bearer and receiver here and that's the basic model I have in mind, and you can see where dishonesty is nuanced.
I have to go now, so that isn't much of an explanation but I tend to ramble so maybe it's better to leave it at this for now.