Wittgenstein and the Mormon language-game

[The Before]

If “know” doesn’t necessarily mean know and “true” doesn’t necessarily mean true, what is being testified to?

In my experience it’s a performance meant to emulate the testimony of others. Young children are led to the stand and their parents whisper the words to say, word by word. “I know the church is twue. I know Joseph Smith is a pwophet.”

Yes, well, many children do have rhotacism.

[Everybody Wang Chung]

[Gadianton]

If “know” doesn’t necessarily mean know and “true” doesn’t necessarily mean true, what is being testified to?

Well, FARMS (I think, based on the dust jacket) did publish a one-off volume on testimony in the late 80s or 90s, and I recall one of the essays trying to downplay "I know" as a statement of faith. In other words, one doesn't really know, but is willing to say it like that for effect. I suppose that's similar to BKP. Yet that doesn't address the point, as walking back personal certainty and the possibility of certainty are two different things.

When apologists make theoretical criticisms about truth and knowledge they are questioning what the gauge might mean in alternate realities, but these realities are really hard to imagine, and so the point ends up getting confused with certainty in the ordinary sense. Truth is possible in theory but we're just seeing through a glass darkly. Take MG as representative, he throws around "glass darkly" all the time, along with Sorites Paradox, as if it's all talking about the same thing. It isn't. Glass darkly is an accessible example of realism and practical limitations to knowledge. Sorites Paradox does not reduce to that, it undercuts what's outside the glass itself along with the glass and everything else. Language games might be something like the buck stops at the glass; the glass is the only reality you can make sense of.

[Doctor CamNC4Me]

My inability to ferret out board members who change their handles makes me feel like Helen Keller at a Las Vegas EDM festival.

Anyway. Why the “F” did you start referring to DCP as The Afore. And for any noobs who be late to the game, it’s Ah-For-Eh, That’s my head canon and I’m sticking with it.

[Limnor]

In that context—thank you Dean, by the way—it makes me wonder why anyone would come to this place to offer that type of argument. They’d have to be aware that others would call them out.

Worse, what the language game actually does is to reduce the impact of “know” and “true” by redefining them. The irony is the more the testimony is made understandable through redefinition of terms, the less impressive it is.

[Limnor]

Anyway. Why the “F” did you start referring to DCP as The Afore. And for any noobs who be late to the game, it’s Ah-For-Eh, That’s my head canon and I’m sticking with it.

My understanding is the term originated as shortened mimicry of something like “the afore-mentioned” person of substance, essentially clowning the pretension.

[Everybody Wang Chung]

Anyway. Why the “F” did you start referring to DCP as The Afore. And for any noobs who be late to the game, it’s Ah-For-Eh, That’s my head canon and I’m sticking with it.

My understanding is the term originated as shortened mimicry of something like “the afore-mentioned” person of substance, essentially clowning the pretension.

As much as I would love to take credit, the Dean actually coined the term 'Afore.'

[The Before]

If “know” doesn’t necessarily mean know and “true” doesn’t necessarily mean true, what is being testified to?

Well, FARMS (I think, based on the dust jacket) did publish a one-off volume on testimony in the late 80s or 90s, and I recall one of the essays trying to downplay "I know" as a statement of faith. In other words, one doesn't really know, but is willing to say it like that for effect. I suppose that's similar to BKP. Yet that doesn't address the point, as walking back personal certainty and the possibility of certainty are two different things.

When apologists make theoretical criticisms about truth and knowledge they are questioning what the gauge might mean in alternate realities, but these realities are really hard to imagine, and so the point ends up getting confused with certainty in the ordinary sense. Truth is possible in theory but we're just seeing through a glass darkly. Take MG as representative, he throws around "glass darkly" all the time, along with Sorites Paradox, as if it's all talking about the same thing. It isn't. Glass darkly is an accessible example of realism and practical limitations to knowledge. Sorites Paradox does not reduce to that, it undercuts what's outside the glass itself along with the glass and everything else. Language games might be something like the buck stops at the glass; the glass is the only reality you can make sense of.

Please correct me if I am wrong, but “through a glass darkly” and Sorites are not interchangeable forms of epistemic humility. The glass metaphor presupposes a determinate truth imperfectly apprehended; Sorites reveals that some of our concepts work perfectly well without determinate boundaries. Wittgenstein would resist turning either point into a general theory of skepticism. His question would instead be grammatical: what are the criteria governing the Mormon use of “I know”? If “I know the Church is true” can survive every conceivable counterexample, then its role may be closer to confession, avowal, or religious commitment than ordinary empirical knowledge. That does not make the utterance fraudulent or meaningless. But neither the obscurity of the glass nor the vagueness revealed by Sorites licenses carrying the ordinary authority of “knowledge” into a practice where the ordinary conditions of mistake and correction have been suspended.

[Limnor]

Wittgenstein would resist turning either point into a general theory of skepticism. His question would instead be grammatical: what are the criteria governing the Mormon use of “I know”? If “I know the Church is true” can survive every conceivable counterexample, then its role may be closer to confession, avowal, or religious commitment than ordinary empirical knowledge. That does not make the utterance fraudulent or meaningless.

Oh, so you don’t really “know.”

[The Before]

Wittgenstein would resist turning either point into a general theory of skepticism. His question would instead be grammatical: what are the criteria governing the Mormon use of “I know”? If “I know the Church is true” can survive every conceivable counterexample, then its role may be closer to confession, avowal, or religious commitment than ordinary empirical knowledge. That does not make the utterance fraudulent or meaningless.

Oh, so you don’t really “know.”

Me? Of course I don’t really know. All I know is that I am a thing able to ask the question of whether I know.