Joseph Antley and Mormon Epistemology

[_Aristotle Smith]

Allow me to modify Mr. Antley's quote:

there are some things that I choose not to be skeptical about: my wife and everything about her, such as the her not cheating on me, her not being a crack addict, her not beating the children, her not racking up 1000's on the credit card, her honesty about her life before we met, that she's not stealing money from my friends, etc. I don’t have to be skeptical about those things because I have solid evidence that they are false, because I love her and she loves me, I can feel it.

In general, this is how most of us think. We feel love towards a spouse and we observe generally good behavior from them. Therefore we tend to think that there is not any bad behavior hidden from us.

So what happens if your friend confesses that he has been having sex with your wife? Or you find drugs in her purse? Or the kids confess that they are really afraid of your wife because she beats them while you are at work? Are you still going to "choose not to be skeptical about her?" After all you still love her, and she loves you, and you can feel it. Why choose to be skeptical at this point?

Of course any of those revelations would radically alter your relationship with your wife, no matter how good you felt up until that point in time. But to a priori refuse to not be skeptical is to is to essentially admit that you don't mind being lied to, as long as you feel good about the situation. And that, in essence, is the problem with Mormon epistemology.

My main point is that for the most part, we do operate on auto pilot throughout life. Generally good behavior from a spouse, associated with good loving vibes, is pretty good evidence that the marriage is fine. But what do you do with really big disconfirming evidence? As a Mormon, you are taught to ignore it.

For me, the "witness from God" (a.k.a., good vibes/feelings) is a legitimate form of evidence. But, it's only one piece of evidence. If there is other contrary evidence, you have to re-evaluate or re-interpret the good vibes/feelings. In some cases the evidence will kill the good vibes/feelings. For example, finding out that a spouse has been cheating on you will turn warm loving feelings cold very quick. In my case, one of the reasons I hung onto the LDS church for so long was because of a general respect I had for Joseph Smith. Learning about Helen Mar Kimball finally killed that for me. Facts influence feelings and vice-versa. Mormon epistemology likes to pretend that feelings are totally separate from facts, and works very hard to convince people that they are separate.

[_Tarski]

I can't imagine a defense of BDA especially if you define it as you did:

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 -- t

I want to to excise the "put there by divine intelligence" since it begs some important questions.

Lets boil it down to this:

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 -- t

Even if I accept the idea that having a belief is tantamount to a ( token of a) proposition in one's head with an assigned truth value, I still don't see how it differs in practice from BA. After all, the difference may just be that we are not privy to the presumably unconscious processes that led up to the conviction. They may still just be something like associations etc.
I don't see how one can tease the two notions apart since a large portion of what leads to conscious thoughts, convictions and speech acts is quite unconscious subterranean brain activity.

[_Joseph Antley]

I took intro to philosophy once but philosophy has never been a great interest of mine. Thanks for perusing h my old blog posts -- knowing that someone reads what I write is an ever-welcome ego boost.

[_MrStakhanovite]

Brade,

Interesting points on the BA and BDA distinction. I’m not totally familiar with the robust defenses of Reformed Epistemology but I wonder, shouldn’t BDA be truth conducive? If so, how does bracketing core beliefs from skepticism aid in that?

[_brade]

Brade,

Interesting points on the BA and BDA distinction. I’m not totally familiar with the robust defenses of Reformed Epistemology but I wonder, shouldn’t BDA be truth conducive? If so, how does bracketing core beliefs from skepticism aid in that?

Sorry, I don't understand what you're asking. Flesh it out a bit more for me. I'm getting slow.

[_Buffalo]

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.

Excellent response.

[_Uncertain]

Some very quick thoughts...

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.

Hi Brade,

BDA fails on the grounds it is not reproducible.

There are some really good compelling reasons why reproducibility is a core component in the practice of science. Take for example a scientist who has an unknown substance he wants to identify to do so he proposes using method X he uses method X and determines his substance is pure graphite. Now suppose he ships his substance to a different scientist who exactly duplicates method X but this time the results are different instead of graphite the results he gets are pure lead. The content of the unknown substance did not change indeed what the substance consists of is a universal truth it does not change depending on which scientist uses the method. The logic is clear and compelling if method X is a reliable means to identify the universal truth concerning the content of substance X than the method should agree regardless of which scientist uses the method assuming of course they used the method correctly. The content of the truth did not change my substance is the same hence the method used must be wrong at least once. Now lets extend this example suppose this substance was sent to 10 different scientists who also used exactly the same method 10 different times and got 10 different contradictory results. We can confidently claim the method in fact fails more times than it succeeds when it comes to identifying the universal truth of what my substance consists of. This argument applies to any method secular or religious that claims to reliably identify universal truths.

The content of what the afterlife consists of is a universal truth similar to my unknown substance example. And yet many different religions have different and directly contradictory descriptions of what exactly the afterlife consists of. Do we engage in an endless cycle of reincarnation until Nirvana is reached? Or do we die once get resurrected in a glorified immortal body and get assigned a kingdom of glory? Only one of these can be true which is it and how are we to know?

The argument used above in support of reproducibility in science directly applies to reproducibility in religious ways of knowing. If many different people using BDA arrive at directly contradictory conclusions about what the afterlife consists of than it must be the case BDA fails more often than it gets it right at least with regards to the afterlife. And if you believe a given model of the afterlife on the basis of BDA you are far more likely to be wrong than you are to be right. How can it be otherwise? If 10 people use method X and arrive at 10 different and contradictory conclusions at least 9 of them must be wrong hence most who use method X are wrong in their conclusions.

Now a common approach to address this criticism is to simply state every person is justified to believe what they think God has directly revealed to them. So if a Catholic believes God has directly spoken to his soul by the Holy Spirit affirming Catholicism is the only church with his authority. While a Mormon believes God has directly spoken to his soul by the Holy Spirit affirming Mormonism is the only church with his authority. The argument would be each person is fully justified in believing what they think God has told them. After all simply because someone else claims to have a spiritual experience does not mean your spiritual experience is false or conveys false information. The problem with this counter argument is it does not address the reason why lack of reproducibility is so damaging to any method that claims to reliably return universal truth.

Suppose you have 10 believers each of which have had a spiritual experience which they firmly believe comes from God and fits the definition of BDA you give above. The counter argument would say each believer is fully justified in believing what they think God has revealed to them. But this does not change the underlying logic if 10 different people claim 10 different and contradictory things then it must be the case that at least 9 of them are wrong. Therefore at least 9 out of 10 of the believers who believed something because they had a BDA affirming that belief are in fact wrong therefore believing proposition x because you have had a BDA produces an incorrect belief far more often than it does a correct belief hence BDAs are not reliable means to obtain universal truth. If BDAs are not reproducible they are not reliable for exactly the same reasons why any method secular or religious that claims to reliably produce universal truth must be reproducible.


Best,
Uncertain

[_Willy Law]

For posting the rock in the hat translation method on his Facebook Book of Mormon page with over 80,000 followers, Antley will always be my favorite apologist...despite my disagreement with his blog post.

[_MrStakhanovite]

Sorry, I don't understand what you're asking. Flesh it out a bit more for me. I'm getting slow.

Sure...

I guess what I’m getting at, is that one of the overall goals of epistemology is knowledge, and an essential component to knowledge is truth. It seems to me, that the critiques of BDA given in this thread presume an evidentialist epistemology (no doubt, spurred on by Antley’s words), but I assumed BDA would have a role in an epistemology that rejects evidentialism.

If evidentialism is rejected, I’m wondering what cognitive faculties must be operating in a given environment to produce the warrant needed for Antley to set aside those beliefs as being immune to skepticism.

And another thought I just had, given what the Book of Mormon says about faith, could a TBM even get away with evidentialist epistemology?

[_Gadianton]

Mr. Stak,

Good points. I think I can fully resolve the issue.

As I've stated before, I am a spiritual eliminativist. This especially means that I do not believe people feel the HG, nor do they feel anything that they are misinterpreting as the HG, rather, they are just making it all up whole cloth. I do believe there is the occasional extraordinary experience, but these are not frequent enough to work as the backbone to the Mormon testimony across millions of people. You know how missionaries are always "identifying" the spirit? Well, does anyone need to have someone "identify" that they are seeing or hearing? No. These are lessons in fabrication. This goes on like crazy at the MTC where a good deal if not the majority of initiates are confused about the whole testimony thing. They aren't sure if they really have one. Well, within weeks, they are declaring all the amazing things they've felt to investigators and known their whole lives.

Testimonies are "don't ask, don't tell." One is not brainwashed per se, but submits to a culture where bullshitting about one's knowledge of gospel things is the expectation and one learns this behavior. Privately, it's common for members to share doubts.

Interestingly, the reason folks don't subject these "feelings" to skepticism isn't because they are protective, rather, it's because they know they are just making up the report of feelings and there is nothing to be skeptical about. Folks will subject their sight or hearing to skepticism. They will subject their love of spouse etc. to skepticism as well. They would subject their spiritual experiences to skepticism too under the right circumstances if they really had these experiences. But they aren't. This is a powerful position for the Church to be in. If real feelings were involved, then second guessing could become a problem. But once you submit to the BS club, you're good. unless...

You know how Brigham Young said, "pray you never see an angel, those who have, left the Church?" (or similar) This is ridiculous. If folks really saw an angel they'd be far less likely to leave. But in the BS club, those who spin unusually bizarre tales strain the tacit "don't ask don't tell" agreement. Why do they do it? Self-promotion, vying for increased influence, power, or even attention from the opposite sex. It's a risk. If the risk doesn't pay off, if the person doesn't get the promotion or get the girl, then it might not be worth it to stick around, "screw you guys, I'm going home."