Seeing Things Differently -DanP the apologist excuse.

[malkie]

when all else fails and they know they can't win, the apologists always go for a stalemate via relativism.

Perhaps they then feel they can punt to possibilities and save themselves......eventua.............lly................. just give it time, a Nephite ruin WILL be found..........

It's literally an Article of Faith:

9 We believe all that God has revealed, all that He does now reveal, and we believe that He will yet reveal many great and important things pertaining to the Kingdom of God.

https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/stu ... p/a-of-f/1

[hauslern]

I have been reminded by Shades about my lack of punctuation.
In a book i read:
A panda walks into a café and orders food. The panda eats the food shoots a gun into the ceiling and leaves.
The owner calls out "why did you do that?."
The Panda calls out "Look it up". Panda bears "eats shoots and leaves.

[Imwashingmypirate]

I have been reminded by Shades about my lack of punctuation.
In a book i read:
A panda walks into a café and orders food. The panda eats the food shoots a gun into the ceiling and leaves.
The owner calls out "why did you do that?."
The Panda calls out "Look it up". Panda bears "eats shoots and leaves.

[MG 2.0]

It may be true, sadly, that being open to the possibility that there is something profound in a book may cause one to be more likely to find profundity, but it is certainly not a logical way to think.

Suppose you are testing for A versus not-A. Simply acknowledging the possibility of A as a result just means you are considering one option or the other to have a non-zero likelihood. By definition then, you should also be considering that either option could have a zero likelihood.

Arguing you are 'more likely' to find A, i.e. a greater than 50% likelihood that A results,simply because you are considering A might be non-zero, is an unacceptable level of bias to introduce at the beginning of testing. Muhlestein only takes it a step further when he states that he assumes A before 'testing' for A and not-A. Both positions are illogical.

Good, Marcus! I am glad you bring this perspective to the conversation. I don't think the subjective experience of profundity is susceptible to logic tests of this kind, but I am sure others will get a lot out of this. A lot of human experience consists of what we bring to a situation as humans, and that is loaded with all kinds of bias. I doubt it could be any other way. Whether it should be is another question. I don't think it is always necessary to be completely unbiased about everything, including religion.

I came across this quote the other day but I didn’t write the source down. Just cut and pasted it into Google Keep Notes:

There are two layers of reality. There is the objective reality of what happens, and there is the subjective reality of how what happened is seen, interpreted, made meaningful. That second subjective layer can sometimes be the more important layer. As the Yale psychologist Marc Brackett puts it, “Well-being depends less on objective events than on how those events are perceived, dealt with, and shared with others.”

An extrovert walks into a party and sees a different room than an introvert does. A person who has been trained as an interior designer sees a different room than someone who’s been trained as a security specialist. The therapist Irvin Yalom once asked one of his patients to write a summary of each group therapy session they did together. When he read her reports, Yalom realized that she experienced each session radically differently than he did. She never even heard the supposedly brilliant insights Yalom thought he was sharing with the group. Instead, she noticed the small personal acts—the way one person complimented another’s clothing, the way someone apologized for being late. In other words, we may be at the same event together, but we’re each having our own experience of it. Or, as the writer Anaïs Nin put it, “We do not see things as they are, we see things as we are.”

People don’t see the world with their eyes; they see it with their entire life.

Cognitive scientists call this view of the human person “constructionism.” Constructionism is the recognition, backed up by the last half century of brain research, that people don’t passively take in reality. Each person actively constructs their own perception of reality. That’s not to say there is not an objective reality out there. It’s to say that we have only subjective access to it. “The mind is its own place,” the poet John Milton wrote, “and in itself / Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.”

This quote goes along with and supports what I’ve said many times on this board, and that is, we all bring our own life experience into the perceptions and resulting decisions we make. In my short response to Fence Sitter I alluded to the fact that subjectivity and objectivity are going to vary from one person to another. When it comes to religious matters that matters a lot.

It helps me to understand and even cut some slack to those that make various decisions and come to different conclusions in regards to Mormonism. The post Mormons that I appreciate and respect more than others are those that find themselves able to do the same thing towards their Mormon friends and family.

Anyway, I liked this quote and I thought it mind find application in your conversation.

There have been so many different ‘Joseph did it’ theories that have come along over the years. None of them seem to hold ALL the water at the end of the day. And it’s difficult for many…for a whole host of reasons…to look at the possibility that ‘God did it’. In some respects that’s the most straightforward and non convoluted answer. But again, we’re all going to see it differently per the quote I’ve shared. (Sorry I can’t remember where I got it. I find something I want keep and then save it for my own use. This was one of those times.)

That’s my two cents.

Regards,
MG

[I’ve moved posts from another thread (viewtopic.php?f=4&t=158676 ) because they discuss the quote from the OP and were a derail in their original thread. UR 4. RI

[Morley]

(Sorry I can’t remember where I got it. I find something I want keep and then save it for my own use. This was one of those times.)

Maybe Daniel Peterson quoting David Brooks.

[Kishkumen]

I came across this quote the other day but I didn’t write the source down. Just cut and pasted it into Google Keep Notes:

There are two layers of reality. There is the objective reality of what happens, and there is the subjective reality of how what happened is seen, interpreted, made meaningful. That second subjective layer can sometimes be the more important layer. As the Yale psychologist Marc Brackett puts it, “Well-being depends less on objective events than on how those events are perceived, dealt with, and shared with others.”

An extrovert walks into a party and sees a different room than an introvert does. A person who has been trained as an interior designer sees a different room than someone who’s been trained as a security specialist. The therapist Irvin Yalom once asked one of his patients to write a summary of each group therapy session they did together. When he read her reports, Yalom realized that she experienced each session radically differently than he did. She never even heard the supposedly brilliant insights Yalom thought he was sharing with the group. Instead, she noticed the small personal acts—the way one person complimented another’s clothing, the way someone apologized for being late. In other words, we may be at the same event together, but we’re each having our own experience of it. Or, as the writer Anaïs Nin put it, “We do not see things as they are, we see things as we are.”

People don’t see the world with their eyes; they see it with their entire life.

Cognitive scientists call this view of the human person “constructionism.” Constructionism is the recognition, backed up by the last half century of brain research, that people don’t passively take in reality. Each person actively constructs their own perception of reality. That’s not to say there is not an objective reality out there. It’s to say that we have only subjective access to it. “The mind is its own place,” the poet John Milton wrote, “and in itself / Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.”

This quote goes along with and supports what I’ve said many times on this board, and that is, we all bring our own life experience into the perceptions and resulting decisions we make. In my short response to Fence Sitter I alluded to the fact that subjectivity and objectivity are going to vary from one person to another. When it comes to religious matters that matters a lot.

It helps me to understand and even cut some slack to those that make various decisions and come to different conclusions in regards to Mormonism. The post Mormons that I appreciate and respect more than others are those that find themselves able to do the same thing towards their Mormon friends and family.

Anyway, I liked this quote and I thought it mind find application in your conversation.

There have been so many different ‘Joseph did it’ theories that have come along over the years. None of them seem to hold ALL the water at the end of the day. And it’s difficult for many…for a whole host of reasons…to look at the possibility that ‘God did it’. In some respects that’s the most straightforward and non convoluted answer. But again, we’re all going to see it differently per the quote I’ve shared. (Sorry I can’t remember where I got it. I find something I want keep and then save it for my own use. This was one of those times.)

We are in fundamental agreement about so much here, MG. The quote is marvelous, and I agree with it completely. I do think there is probably something one might call objective reality, but, at the same time, I have a very limited grasp on what that is, and I think all humans do. I can understand both the “Joseph did it” and “God did it” perspectives. If I pursue “Joseph did it” lines of inquiry, I learn a lot of things. If I approach the text from a “God did it” perspective, I can learn a lot of different kinds of things than I would learn by exclusively focusing on the “Joseph did it” inquiry.

[Gadianton]

This quote goes along with and supports what I’ve said many times on this board, and that is, we all bring our own life experience into the perceptions and resulting decisions we make. In my short response to Fence Sitter I alluded to the fact that subjectivity and objectivity are going to vary from one person to another. When it comes to religious matters that matters a lot.

The quote is predictable and it is not news to anybody. I would like to point out that you have no interest in cognitive science. The quote is a rhetorical ploy. You have an interest in a quote that you can post anytime you're losing an argument on the Book of Mormon to try for a stalemate. If there is no objective truth, then you can never be wrong. You can't be right either, but you're happy in that moment when you have no good response, to just avoid being wrong, and in fact, nullifying the entire enterprise of explaining the Book of Mormon with a single quote is quite economical.

We have had some other conversations here such as conversations about gender roles. I don't recall you having any interest in cognitive science that probably has a whole lot more to say about the different ways LGBQT+ people experience the world in real time than normies, than it does research bias.

Extending the insight to a long arch of scholarly discussion is barely applicable, if applicable at all. How we both might experience the lecture on a book in real time by Dan Petersen is one thing. But scholarship and scientific inquiry in general employs practices to drain away bias and account for these subjectivities that get in the way of arriving at good conclusions. Two scientists may experience "different worlds" during a lecture, based on their attentiveness, sensitivity to the temperature, and the quality of their respective hearing. But given a transcript of the lecture, and given a week to review and think about it, if they are then to summarize the content there's a great chance many of their original differences in perceived content will have been meted out.

I see you're back as disingenuous as ever, and not having learned anything worth reporting. Well, as Morley suggested, you could start a conversation on that book by Hardy you just read. Maybe you did learn something? I for one will be curious how many posts you can last on that conversation before you throw out this quote to avoid discussing the actual content of the book.

[MG 2.0]

The quote is predictable and it is not news to anybody.

I felt that the quote was quite profound. Still do. And that it has application to what we all perceive as reality.

We’re each unique in our interpretive lenses.

“People don’t see the world with their eyes; they see it with their entire life.”

No one is immune from this.

As I said earlier this (and the remainder of the quote) helps me as I try to understand better those that see the world differently than I do and accept them for who they are.

Lars Nielsen, Thomas Ferguson, Dan Peterson, John Dehlin, and Gadianton (along with everyone else) sees the world not only through their eyes but with their entire life experience.

Your life as a post Mormon is a life that is different than, say for example, mine as an active Mormon. We would each walk into a Mormon chapel and have a different experience based upon an accumulation of life experience based upon what we individually accept and interpret as subjective and/or objective influences/truth.

If we can simply look at the ‘other’ without necessarily having to imprint our ‘own world’ on them and asking irrelevant questions such as “Why don’t they see the world as it is?” Or in other words, the world as I see it, I think we can come to a better place of acceptance.

Running around trying to prove this or prove that especially within the framework of something so personal as religious belief does an injustice to the subjective reality of others that brings them a sense of joy and meaning.

Lars Nielsen has his ‘life experience’ and what he views as objective truth that influences his subjective feelings and conclusions in regards to Mormonism. There is no way for you or I to know what the ‘complete package’ is that brought him to where he is. Same with others I’ve mentioned, including you. And it’s all good in the sense that we each have our own path and our own set of subjective and objective truths that being us to where we are at any given moment in time.

People can argue and debate until the cows come home as to the value and personal meaning of their own subjective and objective ‘truths’ or interpretive meanings of the world around them.

I accept the fact that you’re in a different place than I am. And that’s fine. My hope would be that you and other post Mormons can accept active and believing members of the church in a similar way. As fellow travelers that see the world ‘with their entire life’.

Of course, in order to do so would entail cutting Daniel Peterson and other apologists some slack. OF COURSE they are going to view things differently than you do.

I’m happy that Kishkumen was able to see the value, depth, and meaning of the quote I posted and commenting on that fact rather than casting it as “predictable” and “not news to anybody”. That may be true for YOU. And that’s OK. But don’t assume that’s the case for anyone or especially everyone else.

Hope you’re doing well Gadianton and that your life is going according to your own best wishes.

Regards,
MG

[MG 2.0]

Repeating a quote I posted earlier:

There are two layers of reality. There is the objective reality of what happens, and there is the subjective reality of how what happened is seen, interpreted, made meaningful. That second subjective layer can sometimes be the more important layer. As the Yale psychologist Marc Brackett puts it, “Well-being depends less on objective events than on how those events are perceived, dealt with, and shared with others.”

An extrovert walks into a party and sees a different room than an introvert does. A person who has been trained as an interior designer sees a different room than someone who’s been trained as a security specialist. The therapist Irvin Yalom once asked one of his patients to write a summary of each group therapy session they did together. When he read her reports, Yalom realized that she experienced each session radically differently than he did. She never even heard the supposedly brilliant insights Yalom thought he was sharing with the group. Instead, she noticed the small personal acts—the way one person complimented another’s clothing, the way someone apologized for being late. In other words, we may be at the same event together, but we’re each having our own experience of it. Or, as the writer Anaïs Nin put it, “We do not see things as they are, we see things as we are.”

People don’t see the world with their eyes; they see it with their entire life.

Cognitive scientists call this view of the human person “constructionism.” Constructionism is the recognition, backed up by the last half century of brain research, that people don’t passively take in reality. Each person actively constructs their own perception of reality. That’s not to say there is not an objective reality out there. It’s to say that we have only subjective access to it. “The mind is its own place,” the poet John Milton wrote, “and in itself / Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.”

Quoting something drumdude posted as a quote on another thread:

The world we choose to live in determines, among many other things, how we read scripture. Those who have chosen to live in God’s world read a different Bible and Book of Mormon than those who have chosen to live in a godless world. Dan Vogel and Dan Peterson do not read the same Book of Mormon. For Vogel, the Book of Mormon is a purely naturalistic product of Joseph Smith’s nineteenth century. For Peterson, the text has both ancient and nineteenth century provenance, being composed anciently and translated in the nineteenth century. For Vogel, Joseph Smith was the sole, purely naturalistic, human author of the book. For Peterson, the book has multiple authors and, since most of those authors are prophets, God strongly influenced the book’s construction and content.

As I’ve gone through the years it becomes more self evident that the “how we” component as to how we approach things makes a huge difference in life paths and outcomes.

We literally construct our reality. But that doesn’t negate that there is an objective reality out there that we can’t quite wrap our minds around.

In my way of thinking the only possible way of knowing even a portion of what is ‘real’ in the objective sense in regards to what might be termed ultimate reality is if we receive that information from a source other than human beings.

Human beings are pretty creative at making stuff up. Until and if there is a point in time and space where ultimate reality is objectively known I think we ought to be cutting each other a lot more slack.

Regards,
MG

[Res Ipsa]

Welcome back MG. I hope you and yours are well.

Welcome also to the postmodern revolution. Has accepting concepts like “race is a social construct” given you any cognitive dissonance.

I agree that cutting folks more slack should be a consequence of adopting a constructionist (often referred to as social constructionist or social constructivist) stance toward the concept of reality.

Perhaps we could join the Church of the Subgenius.