Daniel Peterson and D&C 131.

[Marcus]

I agree with Doc thanking Physics Guy. I am unsure if I want to understand that Photo Doc has posted however.

I'm guessing it's the front half of a tapir who recognizes a tapir's behind when that name gets mentioned.
(all credit goes to PG for this analogy.)

[drumdude]

I agree with Doc thanking Physics Guy. I am unsure if I want to understand that Photo Doc has posted however.

Have you never heard the tragedy of Darth Dan the Tapir? It's not a story the apologists would tell you.

[DrStakhanovite]

Sorry for my absence, I was traveling for a spell and only now have I gotten settled back home.

Not to try and be difficult, but why on earth are we obliged to play by the rules of philosophers? I'm just askin is all.

This is a good question, because the thesis of materialism goes back to antiquity. The following passages comes from the
‘The Oxford Companion to Philosophy’ (italics mine):

Physicalism. The doctrine that everything is physical. Also called materialism, the view is associated with Democritus, Epicurus, Lucretius, Hobbes, Holbach, T.H. Huxley, J.B. Watson, Carnap, Quine, and Smart. (p.679)

Physicalism is the modern term used to indicate contemporary incarnations of the idea. As to be expected, how one worked out the details of materialism was often dependent on the current state of the natural sciences at the time. The term “physicalism” came into usage after World War 2 when the more profound discoveries of astronomy and particle physics were finally being noticed by the non-specialists.

Democritus (460 to 370 B.C.E.), Epicurus (341 to 270 B.C.E.), Lucretius ( 99-55 B.C.E.) constitute an important and influential tradition starting in Ancient Greece that carried over into a broader Hellenistic context that was alive, thriving, and sharing space with Jesus, Paul, and the early church.

For people with a keen interest in the development of the political and social philosophies that impacted America, Thomas Hobbes is probably one of the most important English thinkers in that regard.

Karl Marx and Lenin are two other people who can be included as well and it would be hard to overestimate the importance both have had in world history in the 19th and 20th centuries.

Thomas Huxley, the infamous “Darwin’s bulldog” is a worthy inclusion, but one could include both Stephen Hawking and Francis Crick as well, scientists who are well known for important scientific achievements and not simply known for being hostile to religion.

Materialism/Physicalism is one of those ideas that has a profound impact not just on civilization, but was held by some of the keenest minds in history. Just for the sake of transparency, I write this as someone who rejects materialism/physicalism.

And, I confess I have not read Nagel, but I have read Daniel Whiteson, professor of experimental particle physics at the University of California, "We Have No Idea" (2017). And he would realistically agree that based on the only barely 4% knowledge of only 4% of the universe, we have no realistic logical reason to be confident in what we profess is knowledge, material or otherwise.

The above approximates my own problems with materialism/physicalism and is mentioned in the Oxford Companion reference (italics mins):

The principle objections to physicalism have come from theology, epistemology, and psychology.

So you are not alone in your reservations.

[DrStakhanovite]

I have no way of really determining if there is such a thing as matter outside of our space time. It is speculative at best, Perhaps word twiddling.

So picking up my use of the ‘Oxford Companion to Philosophy’ used in my previous post here:

Physicalists hold that the real world contains nothing but matter and energy, and that objects have only physical properties, such as spatio-temporal position, mass, size, shape, motion, hardness, electrical charge, magnetism, and gravity. (p.679)

As noted before, physicalism is simply the most current iteration of materialism, and this represents the position in broad strokes.

I do not think it is clear that the idea of spirit here has to fit that limited definition. I think you are correct about normal 19th century usage but people sometimes push the boundaries of usual meanings to make a point.

The text D&C 131 absolutely demands that “spirit” fits with that definition (italics mine):

7. There is no such thing as immaterial matter. All spirit is matter, but it is more fine or pure, and can only be discerned by purer eyes;

8. We cannot see it; but when our bodies are purified we shall see that it is all matter.

My first thought about spirit is matter refined is that it says so little specifically that there is nothing to really defend.

The task of fleshing out what is meant by “spirit is matter refined” goes to those Mormons engaged in philosophical theology, but “spirit”, whatever its true nature, cannot be immaterial because that is expressly and unambiguously stated not to be the case in D&C 131.

[Gadianton]

Lewis's general strategy of meta-argument here may have been interesting, but he screwed it up totally at the first step. Why on Earth should atomic motions have nothing to do with truth?

I was surprised that Lewis put it that way. I think more to the point is saying if my thoughts reduce to atoms in my brain; rather than merely being determined by them.

[DrStakhanovite]

I wanna go back to the ‘Oxford Companion to Philosophy’ mentioned here and do some comparisons with material that Daniel has posted in the last couple of days (italics mine):

The principle objections to physicalism have come from theology, epistemology, and psychology. Theological objections stem from the widespread belief in supernatural, immaterial gods, and in special creation and life after death. (p.679)

The following comes from the blogpost ‘Of Victims and Psychics’ made public on 2/21/2022 (italics mine):

I’ve never been overly interested in paranormal phenomena — what’s sometimes called psi — such as clairvoyance, ESP, and spiritualism. My worldview doesn’t demand that they be authentic or true. Pretty obviously, though, their authenticity, if confirmed or even strongly evidenced, would tend to undermine certain reductionist materialist dogmas in a way that would be congenial to things that matter much more, and much more directly, to me.

Anything that undermines reductionist materialism ipso facto undermines D&C 131. The text of D&C 131 unambiguously states that anything and everything (including that which is spirit) is ultimately material. Daniel continues:

In recent years, I’ve begun to wonder whether I shouldn’t take a more serious and open-minded look. I had long thought that such things had been definitively discredited, but now I’m not so sure. The first inkling that I had in that direction was a brief discussion, in one of his books (I no longer remember which) by the prominent Anglo-American philosopher John Hick, who had spent some time reading through the publications of England’s Society for Psychical Research. He had emerged from that reading much more impressed than I had expected he would.

The book in question is John Hick’s ‘Death and Eternal Life’. Here is a relevant summary from the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy; a peer reviewed source that can be cited in professional journals(italics in original):

Hick’s Death and Eternal Life stands as one of the few substantial constructive works in pluralistic philosophy of religion or what he calls “global theology.” His expansive treatment of the topic includes discussion of historical views, contemporary philosophical views, humanist views, the contributions of biology, psychology, and parapsychology, and Western and Eastern religious views, including Catholic, Protestant, Vedantic Hindu, and Buddhist thought. Hick argues that there is no good reason to rule out the existence of an afterlife a priori. He rejects naturalistic views of the human person, including mind/brain identity and epiphenomenal views, and argues that the evidence from parapsychology—which he believes is more formidable than is often acknowledged—points to “the independent reality of mind and brain, as mutually interacting entities or processes” and “considerably decreases the a priori improbability of the survival of the mind after the death of the body” (Death and Eternal Life [DEL], 126).

It is very safe to say that John Hick rejects the doctrine of materialism/physicalism, especially when it applies to the philosophy of mind. Let’s return to the ‘Oxford Companion to Philosophy’ to get some added perspective:

Physicalism in the philosophy of mind. Physicalism in the philosophy of mind is an application of the general metaphysical thesis that everything in the space-time world is physical. Concerning the sphere of the mental, then, physicalism claims that all the facts about minds and mentality are physical facts.

This claim is usefully divided into two parts: ontological physicalism, which holds that there are no mental particulars, all the individuals of this world being physical particulars and their aggregates, and property physicalism, which holds that all properties of these individuals are physical properties.

Ontological physicalism excludes such putative entities as immaterial souls, Cartesian mental substances, ‘entelechies’, and ‘vital forces’, and mental particulars like sense-data. If all physical entities (e.g. all physical particulars) were taken away from this world, nothing would remain—not even an empty space-time framework. (p.679)

Compare what is said in regards to ontological physicalism to verses 7 and 8 in D&C 131:

7. There is no such thing as immaterial matter. All spirit is matter, but it is more fine or pure, and can only be discerned by purer eyes;

8. We cannot see it; but when our bodies are purified we shall see that it is all matter.

The above scripture is clearly articulating a position of ontological physicalism. If you believe Doctrine and Covenants 131 is revelation then you are committed to a position that everything that can and does exist is constituted matter.

Daniel Peterson is undermining his own scripture for the sake of arguing with atheists. You cannot find an activity that captures Mopologetics more perfectly than this.

[Failed Prophecy]

Daniel Peterson is undermining his own scripture for the sake of arguing with atheists. You cannot find an activity that captures Mopologetics more perfectly than this.

Indeed. Most of Mopologetic engagement with atheists is simply to borrow argumentation from theistic philosophers and assert it applies to Mormonism. They absolutely do not. I'm sure DCP loves the cosmological argument as well (which also doesn't apply to Mormonism).

Although Blake Ostler is not a very nice individual online, he at least seems to have tried to develop a Mormon specific philosophy of sorts. Have you engaged with that? Is my limited impression correct? If so, why doesn't DCP lean more heavily on him?

[drumdude]

why doesn't DCP lean more heavily on him?

DCP's apologetic arguments are pretty well cemented. Can't teach an old dog new tricks.

He's still debating Hitchens, who has been dead for a decade. And he's still whinging about the "new atheists" almost 2 decades after the term was coined. Surely at some point they're just "atheists"...

[DrStakhanovite]

Indeed. Most of Mopologetic engagement with atheists is simply to borrow argumentation from theistic philosophers and assert it applies to Mormonism. They absolutely do not. I'm sure DCP loves the cosmological argument as well (which also doesn't apply to Mormonism).

Although Blake Ostler is not a very nice individual online, he at least seems to have tried to develop a Mormon specific philosophy of sorts. Have you engaged with that? Is my limited impression correct? If so, why doesn't DCP lean more heavily on him?

I unironically believe that Blake is modern Mormonism’s most prolific and wide ranging philosophical theologian, but his actual abilities as a writer, philosopher, and theologian don’t even begin to approach a bar of “barely acceptable”.

Daniel styles himself more as a purveyor of ideas rather than someone who formulates and vigorously defends them. There is enough self awareness present in his writings over at ‘Sic et Non’ to suggest that Daniel knows philosophy and theology are not his wheelhouse and he does take certain steps to mitigate mistakes. I think that is why we see him borrow so much from Protestant and Catholic apologetics; if he cites someone else attacking materialism and then makes an application of that to the arguments of critics, it gives him a certain buffer of deniability if the criticism is ever deemed wanting.

On the other hand, Blake lacks any semblance of self awareness and conducts himself as if he is virtually immune to any criticism whatsoever from any conceivable person. I’ve had chats with people who have been tasked with editing his writing on behalf of their employer and he is totally one of those authors that editors hate to work with. The guy gets invited on to Mormon themed podcasts and just makes ludacris claims, like having read the entirety of Aquinas’ ‘Summa Theologica’ in the original Latin as an undergraduate or that some research paper he wrote contained novel ideas about paleontology that Stephen Gould himself independently discovered and who subsequently published it before Blake could get anyone to take it seriously. Anything that Blake gets interested in, it isn’t long before he starts behaving as a subject matter expert on it.

I suspect that Blake has got a certain reputation among Mormon apologists that he isn’t nearly anywhere as good as he thinks he is and that utilizing his work carries a lot of risks. The man has written so much and on such a variety of topics, he should be enjoying a level of celebrity in Mormon circles. The fact that he doesn’t indicates to me that most people are aware “something is up” with him.

The last time I was able to engage something Blake wrote was May of last year, I did a three part review of something he wrote for the Interpreter. Here is a summary of Blake’s mistakes that communicate just how poorly Blake does philosophy:

It is interesting to me that the virtues displayed by Hazony, Van De Mieroop, and Rochberg are conspicuously absent from Blake’s essay entirely. Blake starts off early complaining about a lack of historical context and then proceeds to give none himself and seems entirely content to drag in details about late 20th century epistemology from the analytic tradition and slap it over the text of Alma like so much paper mache. Does Blake take the task of epistemology to be fundamentally descriptive or normative? Readers are unsure because Blake doesn’t clarify and thus the relationship between things such as “reliabilism” and Alma’s words is prohibitively opaque. Perhaps more importantly, why should we even think such epistemology is even relevant to Alma anyways?

I do have to remark that Blake’s handling of basic philosophical concepts is executed so poorly that the reader’s confidence in his ability to conduct a book review is depressingly ground into dust. A short list of examples would be:

• Blake references and speaks about “Justified True Belief” (JTB) as if it is a tenable epistemological theory that has actual philosophers out there defending it. The reality is that JTB is only introduced as a definition of knowledge because it fails in its task to actually capture the meaning of knowledge and is used as a springboard to discuss broader issues that deal explicitly with those failures.

• Blake mistakenly identifies the reason Alvin Planting’s epistemology is considered moderately Foundationalist. Instead of accurately identifying “properly basic beliefs” as being non-inferential beliefs (thus acting as the “foundation”) Blake states: “Plantinga’s view is a form of foundationalism because it bases knowledge on having a reliable justification as its foundation”.

• Blake struggles to keep apart theories that address the shape and structure of knowledge (e.g. Foundationalism) and theories concerned with the justification of beliefs (e.g. Reliabilism).

• Blake's own version of Reliabilism that he forces onto the text of Alma keeps switching between language that seems to assume an Internalist view of epistemic justification and language that seems to assume an Externalist view of epistemic justification, thus making his formulation essentially useless in the contemporary context he has explicitly chosen to use in this essay.

• Blake makes a comparison between Korihor and Nietzsche that entails such a poor understanding of Nietzsche’s philosophy that it would be indefensible within any meaningful context of Nietzsche’s works. Blake’s characterization is completely divorced from contemporary scholarship and is more in line with the polemics found in the classrooms of Hyles–Anderson College in Indiana or the storied halls of the Pensacola Bible Institute in Florida.

I’ve been working on a private thesis that a fundamental and unique aspect of Mopologetics which sets it apart from other examples of religious apologetics is that the execution of Mopologetics always has an element of ineptitude present. Reading the books by Hazony, Van De Mieroop, and Rochberg, provided this backdrop to reading the Interpreter that makes me legitimately wonder what it is the Interpreter Foundation is even trying to accomplish.

[MG 2.0]

Alpha and Omegus, I may being missing something you are looking at but to my understanding it is clearly an analogy to the concept of ether which is under consideration not an identity one with the other. The fact that the idea of ether has been shown to be an incorrect understanding of light does not help nor hinder the analogy. I do not see much in the analogy which is different than proposals in the opening of the gospel of John. It sounds like fairly traditional speech about the power of God.

Well there could be some move in those words to seeing the power of God as something existing before and logically prior to the individuation of God. That would be not so traditional. Whether or not that lean in thought is a good or bad idea I do not think it is dependent upon the specific ideas of ether. Ether was an idea of the time which could be used for an analogy.

Yup.

Regards,
MG