DCP equates the Witnesses of the plates to witnesses of the Lincoln assassination

[Kishkumen]

Another recent thread raises the idea of sneaky equivocation in Mormon statements about polygamy. I see some potential equivocation in the collectively signed witness statements.

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A quick reading of this famous statement probably seems to imply that the witnesses handled the golden plates. If I read closely, however, I notice that they saw plates but handled "leaves"—and only the "leaves" that had been translated up to that point.

If the witnesses really had handled the individual plates, then it would be a bit odd for them to switch to calling them "leaves" in mid-statement. If they were leaf-like, why call them plates? If they were plate-like, why call them leaves? I also find it hard to imagine how, if they were handling the individual golden plates, they could be restricted to handling only those which Smith had translated. For that matter I find it hard to see why anyone would have wanted to restrict the plate-handling in that way. Finally, it would also be odd for the witnesses to mention only seeing and hefting, in their emphatic conclusion, if they had in fact handled the plates individually.

So I can't help imagining an alternative reading: perhaps the "leaves [that] the said Smith has translated" were simply the paper pages of Smith's English translation, and not the golden originals.

To be sure, there doesn't seem to be any great point in solemnly attesting to having handled a pile of modern paper with handwriting that everyone admitted had been produced only recently, by Smith and collaborators. There is a little bit of point to affirming that, though. If I showed you something that I was telling you was an ancient artifact, and at the same time I showed you some plaster casts that I said I had made of it, then when I later showed only the plaster casts and claimed that the artifact had been lost, you would be able to confirm that they were the same casts that I had showed you before, when I had also shown the artifact. So if you attested that I had once shown you both artifact and plaster casts at the same time, you'd be helping establish the association between the lost artifact and the still-extant casts.

If the eight witnesses were clearly remembering the event, and it had included passing around the paper leaves of Smith's supposed translation, then they might have been willing to sign the statement as it is written, with the idea that they were affirming an association between Smith's translation and the gold plates—or at any rate with the understanding that they were attesting to nothing more than what had indeed happened, handling paper leaves of the translation. With my reading, the eight witnesses might only actually have seen the plates from a distance, and hefted them inside a box, yet have been willing to affirm a statement that mentions handling leaves.

To people who weren't there, though, the same statement would suggest instead that the witnesses had really handled the individual plates.

If the witnesses had in fact handled individual plates, then their statement might still have mentioned "leaves" at that crucial point just through clumsiness in drafting the document. If saying "leaves" instead of "plates" was just a clumsy mistake in phrasing, it was an unfortunate slip, because it weakened the statement considerably. However "leaves" happened, the fact that it's there does seem to make the statement weaker than it seems at first reading.

I have always assumed that leaves referred to individual “plates,” although I grant that it is an odd expression. In the light of what I have subsequently learned, however, it seems more likely that there is a kind of sleight of hand or fudging in all of this. Perhaps the leaves do refer to the manuscript, or to characters from the “plates” copied onto paper. The seeing and hefting could refer to a box with the “plates” inside. There is so much room in the translation process, and the handling of the box with “plates” in it, for skullduggery of some kind or another. I just find the whole thing impossible to take at face value. I do not believe that Joseph Smith had ancient plates. It is more likely by far that he had some kind of prop that was made to represent the plates. How much effort was put into the prop to make it look like ancient plates is something I still view as up in the air. I read these statements, and I see room for all kinds of possibilities. If your BS detector is going off, then there is probably a problem.

Of course, at the end of the day, I don’t really care about that. What irks me is the misuse of these statements to validate things they can in no way validate. These witnesses did not have the knowledge or ability to authenticate ancient Native American Hebrew plates. They are spiritual witnesses to alleged miracles and nothing more.

[MetaProf]

Of course, at the end of the day, I don’t really care about that. What irks me is the misuse of these statements to validate things they can in no way validate. These witnesses did not have the knowledge or ability to authenticate ancient Native American Hebrew plates. They are spiritual witnesses to alleged miracles and nothing more.

It really does simply boil down to this

[Dr Exiled]

I second the good reverend. Great analysis as usual.

[Philo Sofee]

The Reverend has always taught me well, which is why I try to listen as often as possible.

[Physics Guy]

What irks me is the misuse of these statements to validate things they can in no way validate. These witnesses did not have the knowledge or ability to authenticate ancient Native American Hebrew plates. They are spiritual witnesses to alleged miracles and nothing more.

This is quite right as far as the logic goes. Even if Smith did have a stack of gold leaves etched with glyphs, that wouldn't do anything at all to prove that he had translated any ancient records.

I think it might legitimately count as some evidence toward that conclusion, however.

If someone tells me that they have mixed milk and plutonium to make an invisibility potion, I'm not going to be convinced even slightly just because they can show me their carton of milk, but their credibility has to be lower still if they don't even have milk.

I still wouldn't be convinced about the invisibility potion even if they showed me their plutonium and I could confirm it was real. But I think I'd have to wonder somewhat. I would never have believed that they could have gotten hold of actual plutonium. So evidently some of my basic beliefs can be wrong. The world is not how I thought it was. How much else should I doubt?

I think that's the main logical effect of a miraculous sign. It inclines people to believe things that it doesn't even directly imply, just because it kicks all their Bayesian priors, about everything, into greater uncertainty. That sudden flood of uncertainty shifts people out of the hypothesis testing phase of inquiry, where one weighs evidence carefully, back down into the hypothesis seeking phase, where one is just scrambling to assemble the available data into any coherent pattern.

You thought I was just another bumpkin like you, but I have these golden plates, so all your previous bets about me are now off. Here's an idea that fits the facts you now know: I'm a prophet.

That does not follow logically, no. But I think there is some rationality in the way an accepted miracle resets all of one's priors and that changes the game. The frame expands; we thought we were judging a detail but now we're forced to revise the big picture. One little thing makes us twig, we're not in Kansas any more.

That kind of thing happens. You get lost in the woods behind your house, wander in circles for a while just somehow missing the path, when suddenly a glimpse of a landmark through the trees makes you realize you weren't going in circles after all and are now a long way from home, miles from where you assumed you were. You were always going to be a doctor; suddenly you recognize that you never wanted that at all.

This kind of zoomed-out decision making, reevaluating background assumptions, seems to me to require a special form of logic. Or at least, the operation of ordinary logic in such special scenarios can look different from what we expect from the more typical cases in which a lot of implicit knowledge can remain implicit.

I'm interested in this issue because I wonder whether it might have something to do with quantum measurement; for that question, scenarios like getting lost in the woods or showing off golden plates are only motivational analogies. For something like the golden plates witness statements, my feeling is just that we need to understand the different phase of rationality that's involved, here.

An apologist might create a defense along these lines; I still conclude that Smith just bamboozled people. I think he did so by exploiting a sort of soft spot in human decision making, and that it's a soft spot that we are all bound to have, no matter how easy we may find it in this particular case to dismiss the witnesses, and Mormons after them, as credulous fools who wouldn't know sound logic if it kicked them in their pons asinorum. I think it's worth trying to follow their line of thought with more sympathy, because even if they were wrong, we'll make mistakes like that, too.

[Dr Exiled]

An apologist might create a defense along these lines; I still conclude that Smith just bamboozled people. I think he did so by exploiting a sort of soft spot in human decision making, and that it's a soft spot that we are all bound to have, no matter how easy we may find it in this particular case to dismiss the witnesses, and Mormons after them, as credulous fools who wouldn't know sound logic if it kicked them in their pons asinorum. I think it's worth trying to follow their line of thought with more sympathy, because even if they were wrong, we'll make mistakes like that, too.

I agree that we should sympathize with the witness victims so far as they were victims. I don't think those of the Smith family were victims and probably were part of the ruse. Oliver Cowdery and Martin Harris perhaps as well. Oliver was too close to the rock and hat magic show to not suspect what was going on and seemed to have figured out what Joseph was doing when he started to produce rival revelations that benefited he, Oliver, himself. Martin Harris had a money motive and that always clouds things, but, Martin believed pretty much anything and so perhaps he was self-deluded. However, David Whitmer seemed like an honest dupe, someone who actually convinced himself that there was an angel there during his experience. His family were probably honest dupes as well.

Joseph Smith always focused on a desire to believe and that was a prerequisite to his "witnesses" participating in the ruse. They had to meet him almost all the way to the point of almost manufacturing the experience themselves. Joseph Smith could then supply the rest in leading them to experience what he wanted them to. Prior to their experience, all the witnesses (3 & 8) had the experience outlined prior to the actual experience. Joseph told them basically what would happen. They were carefully chosen due their over-enthusiasm (or were confederates) for the possibility of having the experience and so had a great desire to have the experience happen. It helped that a lot of his own family confederates participated. (Think Asch conformity experiments https://socialsci.libretexts.org/Booksh ... r_Pressure)

I've often wondered if the Whitmers were the targets of the enterprise. They were front and center for the rock and hat show, put on for them. It happened in their house. Joseph Smith as a scryer was used to people calling his bs and needed witnesses to counter them. The Whitmers were a credulous, religious family that fit the bill. They were continually built up to the point where David Whitmer claimed to have seen Moroni running around and one of the Whitmer women claimed to have seen the plates herself. All of this lead up to the family being "blessed" to be the Lord's most holy witnesses.

[drumdude]

Of course, at the end of the day, I don’t really care about that. What irks me is the misuse of these statements to validate things they can in no way validate. These witnesses did not have the knowledge or ability to authenticate ancient Native American Hebrew plates. They are spiritual witnesses to alleged miracles and nothing more.

It really does simply boil down to this

To be fair, I think Mormon apologists argue that the witnesses seeing any plates at all validates the Mormon position. They claim that it isn’t practical for Joseph to have produced any plates at all, regardless of the writing on them.

So it isn’t a requirement for anyone to have been an expert in reading Hebrew or reformed Egyptian or whatever.