charity wrote: A paradigm IS NOT an experience. A paradigm is an intellectual contstruct.
A spiritual witness IS an experience. A spiritual witness can occur when a person has no intellectual construct about spiritual witnesses.
It only becomes a spiritual witness when it is interpreted as such, and that requires a paradigm.
This then leads to another question. Suppose a person with no paradigm which allows for spiritual experiences has "an experience." There is no way for him to adequately evaluate the experience as being spiritual since he is missing an important evaluative tool. So he is forced to evaluate it as something else, even when it may in fact be a spiritual experience. Correct?
No. Because what it "is"---the limits of the intelligible---is only made possible by the paradigm (though I would abandon Kuhn's term at this point for what is actually under discussion here: ideological interpellation).
From the Ernest L. Wilkinson Diaries: "ELW dreams he's spattered w/ grease. Hundreds steal his greasy pants."
charity wrote:This then leads to another question. Suppose a person with no paradigm which allows for spiritual experiences has "an experience." There is no way for him to adequately evaluate the experience as being spiritual since he is missing an important evaluative tool. So he is forced to evaluate it as something else, even when it may in fact be a spiritual experience. Correct?
A person will interpret stimuli within their language and paradigm. Of course. Given that, the only people who interpret such stimuli as spiritual witnesses are those whose paradigm suggests that's how to interpret it. The problem is that there's really no way to definitively say that the stimuli were from some supernatural power or from somewhere else. All stimuli are meaningless until we assign them meaning, and how we assign them meaning depends on our language and our worldview. So, the assertion that we have had a spiritual witness that exists outside of the paradigm is circular: we know it's a spiritual experience because we believe that's what spiritual experiences are.
This is where I have a problem with those who would try to shoehorn postmodernism into Mormonism. Those who privilege the subjective "spiritual witness" are doing nothing more than asserting that one kind of truth-gathering is better than another, a very unpostmodern way of looking at the world.
Thanks for developing the point further, runtu. I'm distracted by my multi-tasking: burning CD's, harvesting databases, reading a pamphlet on Blood Atonement, flirting via text-message, joyously living my life---being a moral compassless libertine's exhausting, sometimes!
From the Ernest L. Wilkinson Diaries: "ELW dreams he's spattered w/ grease. Hundreds steal his greasy pants."
1. Church member has a spiritual witness that the Church is true. A spiritual witness is not a paradigm.
Why do you claim this when it is simply false. Even my scientist friend says that laws of physics that we think we have empircal evidence of are subject to reinterpretation and thus would qualify as a paradigm.
A spiritual witness is a paradigm as much as any you hold.
But tell yourself this long enough and you may believe it.
A paradigm IS NOT an experience. A paradigm is an intellectual contstruct.
A spiritual witness IS an experience. A spiritual witness can occur when a person has no intellectual construct about spiritual witnesses.
The so called spiritual witness is obtained base on a formula and intellectual input as well as cultural and social expectations. It certainly is a paradigm as a result.
Runtu wrote:A person will interpret stimuli within their language and paradigm. Of course. Given that, the only people who interpret such stimuli as spiritual witnesses are those whose paradigm suggests that's how to interpret it. The problem is that there's really no way to definitively say that the stimuli were from some supernatural power or from somewhere else. All stimuli are meaningless until we assign them meaning, and how we assign them meaning depends on our language and our worldview. So, the assertion that we have had a spiritual witness that exists outside of the paradigm is circular: we know it's a spiritual experience because we believe that's what spiritual experiences are.
This is where I have a problem with those who would try to shoehorn postmodernism into Mormonism. Those who privilege the subjective "spiritual witness" are doing nothing more than asserting that one kind of truth-gathering is better than another, a very unpostmodern way of looking at the world.
I think this is fine as long as investigators are made aware of this postmodernist perspective and that people make sure to point out the subjective nature of their paradigm when bearing their testimonies of the LDS Church being the only true church.
I'm sure that the First Presidency would laugh long and hard were they to be made aware of apologists flirting with postmodernism.
"reason and religion are friends and allies" - Mitt Romney
Zoidberg wrote:I'm sure that the First Presidency would laugh long and hard were they to be made aware of apologists flirting with postmodernism.
Heh. This is exactly what got me reading apologetics in the first place. I nearly died when I stumbled on such arguments! It would (almost) be interesting to trace how these discourses first got injected into FAIR/MAD--I think I have an idea, but I'd need to care a whole lot more to flesh it out.
From the Ernest L. Wilkinson Diaries: "ELW dreams he's spattered w/ grease. Hundreds steal his greasy pants."
Blixa wrote:Thanks for developing the point further, runtu. I'm distracted by my multi-tasking: burning CD's, harvesting databases, reading a pamphlet on Blood Atonement, flirting via text-message, joyously living my life---being a moral compassless libertine's exhausting, sometimes!
Blixa here is a typical example of a person unwillling to shift their paradigm. She outright refuses to get an idea of how to live by a moral code.
What kind of a sick, twisted paradigm is that in which motherhood does not sound appealing? *faints*
"reason and religion are friends and allies" - Mitt Romney
Enuma Elish wrote:As you know, I’m more than willing to refute a traditional understanding of LDS orthodoxy when the view does not concur with the evidence.
David, you realize, do you not, that entertaining such thoughts is the first step to joining an LDS splinter group?
"Finally, for your rather strange idea that miracles are somehow linked to the amount of gay sexual gratification that is taking place would require that primitive Christianity was launched by gay sex, would it not?"
charity wrote: A paradigm IS NOT an experience. A paradigm is an intellectual contstruct.
A spiritual witness IS an experience. A spiritual witness can occur when a person has no intellectual construct about spiritual witnesses.
It only becomes a spiritual witness when it is interpreted as such, and that requires a paradigm.
This then leads to another question. Suppose a person with no paradigm which allows for spiritual experiences has "an experience." There is no way for him to adequately evaluate the experience as being spiritual since he is missing an important evaluative tool. So he is forced to evaluate it as something else, even when it may in fact be a spiritual experience. Correct?
Davids example would be more like forcing facts into a current paradigm which is an aspect of "normal science" or in this case, "normal religion" (if Kuhn doesn't mind us spitting on and insulting his grave). David's shifts really aren't shifts, they are adjustments to the reigning paradigm which is exemplified by the belief the Church is "True".
What "Charity" brings up here displays the key elements required when speaking of a "shift".
If the reigning paradigm can't fit the discovery in, then a new paradigm might be formed which can account for it.
Lou Midgley 08/20/2020: "...meat wad," and "cockroach" are pithy descriptions of human beings used by gemli? They were not fashioned by Professor Peterson.
LM 11/23/2018: one can explain away the soul of human beings...as...a Meat Unit, to use Professor Peterson's clever derogatory description of gemli's ideology.