Vogel Responds To Apologist Brian Hales

[ERMD]

I have a headache.

I'm glad I spend my days controlling bleeding and placing chest tubes.

[cdowis]

The accusation of going “beyond available evidence” is one of Hales’ favorite apologetic strategies.

He is among several others who have made this observation.

For example, he thinks historians go beyond the evidence when they use secondhand or hearsay testimony or make reasonable inferences from the evidence.

I might add, "and ignores first hand testimony when it contradicts Vogel's imaginary scenarios", such as the first hand account of the eight witnesses, which is completely ignored in favor of third hand accounts, creating an imaginary scenario complete with details unsupported by any account. Your only defense for this scenario is that it was "reasonable", abeit completely out of whole cloth.

The first hand testimony contradicts your account, where they hefted and handled those plates with the appearance of gold, turned the pages, and viewed the engravings. You have chosen instead a third hand account that is vague, at best, and filled in details from your fantasy and imagination. I see no attempt to reconcile this with the first hand account which has details that you have ignored.

He hit the nail on the head. You went beyond the evidence to give an account created out of whole cloth. Historians applauded your effort to explain away the witness testimony and gave you an award for your cleverness.

This fantasy became a part of the antimormon Chick Publication. I am sure you are proud of yourself.

Edited September 23, 2011 by cdowis

[Dan Vogel]

Cobalt,

I haven't read his book, but I think, based on the excerpts I can find that he is equally misguided as his mentor Rorty. He's right to take issue with Rorty and other modernist relativist writers who claim that all truth is relative (except for the truth that all truth is relative). But he's also wrong in his apparent view that it is possible to construct an objective truth that is free from cultural and linguistic context.

The constructivist position you espouse here is little different than the relativism you decry at the beginning. The objectivity problem is only a problem when the postmodernist controls the definition, usually defining it in a way that is impossible to satisfy and amounts to little more than sophistry. I suspect your definition of “objective truth” works the same way. Moreover, the cultural and linguistic context of truth is something no one denies, not even an objectivist. This general meaning of construction is trivial and not philosophically interesting. So, the constructivist has to show how all knowledge is socially constructed in meaningful and counterintuitive way.

Boghossian relates this on page 26:

One famous constructivist, the French sociologist Bruno Latour, seems to have decided to just bite the bullet on this point. When French scientist working on the mummy of Ramses II (who died c. 1213 BC) concluded that Ramses probably died of tuberculosis, Latour denied that this was possible. “How could he pass away due to a bacillus discovered by Robert Koch in 1882?” Latour asked. Latour noted that just as if would be an anachronism to say that Ramses died from machine-gun fire so it would be an anachronism to say that he died of tuberculosis. As he boldly put it: “Before Kock, the bacillus had no real existence.”

[mfbukowski]

They're real in the sense that they have the potential to affect human experience. Some of those species could have scientific or medicinal value. If we never went looking for them because we consider them "unreal", we'd being doing ourselves a great disservice.

So they are "potential things"? Exactly what is included in that class? Unborn babies? Stadiums that were never funded? Aliens with green skin as opposed to aliens with blue skin?

And of course I am not suggesting that science and "discovery" cease. The entire point is that things which are unknown are outside a human context- they don't have names and they are unclassifiable- since classification is dependent on knowing what you are classifying. "They" are not even in the set of "potential cures" until they are tested and known to be such. Could newly discovered plant chemical xyz be the new cure for cancer? Even at that stage it has a name, and chemical characteristics known to have "potential" to do that. At that point, such a chemical would have the "potential" you reference, but not while it is yet totally unknown.

I do not doubt that there are stars, galaxies, chemicals plants etc etc ad infinitum which are yet unknown- but I don't think we can call them "existent" until we know what they are. What is it that exists? We don't know,

Of course we understand it. We can only experience phenomena, not noumena. A very nice, perfectly valid abstract philosophical assertion.

And an important one for thinking about such things clearly. In fact, your sentence reflects the confusion. What exactly is a "noumena"? How much does it weigh? I would argue there literally is "no such thing". Why bother getting confused by the "existence" of nothing?

But at the end of the day, also irrelevant. We experience ourselves as being constrained, affected, and determined by a noumenal world. It doesn't matter if this is true or not. It doesn't matter if we can prove it. Our experience forces us to take it seriously, philosophers be damned. It's real to us, and that's the only thing that matters. (I have no idea why that's so hard to understand! )

It's hard to understand because I have in my whole life never bumped into a "noumena". Have you? Why do you think such things are "real" then?

Ah. Well, that's where we differ, then. My experience as a Pentecostal and a religious historian persuades me that such experiences are unreliable ways of knowing.

Didn't know you were Pentecostal. Good for you- I thought you were an atheist. So historical evidence has shown you that the alleged legendary person Jesus of Nazareth was the Son of God and savior of the world?

[mfbukowski]

Cobalt,

The constructivist position you espouse here is little different than the relativism you decry at the beginning. The objectivity problem is only a problem when the postmodernist controls the definition, usually defining it in a way that is impossible to satisfy and amounts to little more than sophistry. I suspect your definition of “objective truth” works the same way. Moreover, the cultural and linguistic context of truth is something no one denies, not even an objectivist. This general meaning of construction is trivial and not philosophically interesting. So, the constructivist has to show how all knowledge is socially constructed in meaningful and counterintuitive way.

Boghossian relates this on page 26:

One famous constructivist, the French sociologist Bruno Latour, seems to have decided to just bite the bullet on this point. When French scientist working on the mummy of Ramses II (who died c. 1213 BC) concluded that Ramses probably died of tuberculosis, Latour denied that this was possible. “How could he pass away due to a bacillus discovered by Robert Koch in 1882?” Latour asked. Latour noted that just as if would be an anachronism to say that Ramses died from machine-gun fire so it would be an anachronism to say that he died of tuberculosis. As he boldly put it: “Before Kock, the bacillus had no real existence.”

Latour takes on a view prominent with the French especially which takes things beyond what I consider reasonable. What they lack I think is a good philosophy of language- they need a little Wittgenstein.

Clearly once a language game is defined- like the existence of the tuberculosis bacillus, we know what is meant by the sentence "Ramses died of TB".

I would find a statement like his to be metaphysical nonsense. Once a term is given human context and defined in culture, one would have to pretend that one could go "back" to a time before such a definition was made- which is impossible. The discovery of the bacillus, in a sense, forever changed human culture so that everyone now knows that TB is indeed caused by a bacillus and not "bad air" or too much blood, or demons.

To apply that "retroactively" is impossible- we would have to magically return to a world in which that was never known to do so. To me, that just reflects a total misunderstanding of the point.

I think the central mistake Rorty makes is in his theory of the contingency of the self- I think we do not experience ourselves as contingent, and for me the very act that I sit here thinking about what to say next, as you all do as well proves that. There is "someone" in here who can choose words with which to define things- and that proves, at least to me, that the self is not contingent.

I of course ascribe that lack of contingency to subjectively be what we call "my spirit", but that is I suppose for another thread.

[wenglund]

How can a Mormon NOT believe that God (a human) organizes "reality" and that we all follow him in organizing our own "worlds"?

I am mystified.

I certainly believe we are creators. I am just not sure that is all we are. Maybe the word "discover" has a deeper philosophical meaning than what I am familiar with, and if so, then perhaps a better word might be "teachable." I believe we create, but also we learn, and are taught by God and each other and in a way we may be taught by our so-called creations. I believe that to some extent, the "real world" can teach us about itself.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

[Dan Vogel]

Dowis,

He is among several others who have made this observation.

For example, he thinks historians go beyond the evidence when they use secondhand or hearsay testimony or make reasonable inferences from the evidence.

I might add, "and ignores first hand testimony when it contradicts Vogel's imaginary scenarios", such as the first hand account of the eight witnesses, which is completely ignored in favor of third hand accounts, creating an imaginary scenario complete with details unsupported by any account. Your only defense for this scenario is that it was "reasonable", abeit completely out of whole cloth.

The first hand testimony contradicts your account, where they hefted and handled those plates with the appearance of gold, turned the pages, and viewed the engravings. You have chosen instead a third hand account that is vague, at best, and filled in details from your fantasy and imagination. I see no attempt to reconcile this with the first hand account which has details that you have ignored.

He hit the nail on the head. You went beyond the evidence to give an account created out of whole cloth. Historians applauded your effort to explain away the witness testimony and gave you an award for your cleverness.

This fantasy became a part of the antimormon Chick Publication. I am sure you are proud of yourself.

So my criticism of Hales also applies to you. Historians aren’t limited to firsthand testimony. Your mistake is in assuming that the published Testimony of Eight Witnesses is so clear as to contradict my thesis, which is based on secondhand testimony from reliable sources. You assume, for instance, that the witnesses “turned the pages”—it doesn’t say that. I have pointed this out to you previously and it’s stubborn to repeat it here. I resolved the apparent contradiction between what the Testimony was assumed to have said and Theodore Turley’s 1845 report that John Whimter, one of the eight, said the plates were shown to him “by supernatural power” by drawing from Martin Harris’s experience of seeing the plates through the cloth. It’s not necessary for me to find an explicit statement by one of the eight to make this reconstruction. Otherwise, historians couldn’t reconstruct or interpret anything and would have to satisfy themselves with simply quoting.

Edited September 23, 2011 by Dan Vogel

[Chris Smith]

So they are "potential things"? Exactly what is included in that class? Unborn babies? Stadiums that were never funded? Aliens with green skin as opposed to aliens with blue skin?

In common parlance, the difference between a potential thing (like an unborn baby) and a real thing (like an undiscovered animal species) is that if you want to know a potential thing you have to create it, whereas if you want to know a real thing you have to go looking for it. Furthermore, a real thing can affect or constrain our experience even if we haven't perceived it yet, whereas a potential one cannot. (Think "butterfly effect".) This is a non-trivial, perfectly pragmatic difference in the way we relate to such things.

And an important one for thinking about such things clearly. In fact, your sentence reflects the confusion. What exactly is a "noumena"? How much does it weigh? I would argue there literally is "no such thing". Why bother getting confused by the "existence" of nothing?

I could ask you a similar question. We experience ourselves as determined and constrained by "things", which seem to have their effects regardless of whether we're aware they're there. Pragmatically-speaking, that's all the terms "real" and "noumenal" really mean-- that the conditions imposed by things seem to remain in force even if we're not currently perceiving those things. So why get hung up on whether or how the things exist metaphysically? That just distracts from the more pragmatic goal of learning how to make predictively accurate statements about the "things" so we can manipulate them and alter the conditions of our experience in subjectively beneficial ways.

Didn't know you were Pentecostal. Good for you- I thought you were an atheist. So historical evidence has shown you that the alleged legendary person Jesus of Nazareth was the Son of God and savior of the world?

I was a Pentecostal before I became an atheist.

Peace,

-Chris

Edited September 23, 2011 by Chris Smith

[mfbukowski]

I certainly believe we are creators. I am just not sure that is all we are. Maybe the word "discover" has a deeper philosophical meaning than what I am familiar with, and if so, then perhaps a better word might be "teachable." I believe we create, but also we learn, and are taught by God and each other and in a way we may be taught by our so-called creations. I believe that to some extent, the "real world" can teach us about itself.

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

Yes, we certainly do learn by experience!

[wenglund]

Yes, we certainly do learn by experience!

I would hope we learn ostensibly as well--pedagogically as well as andragogically , Moroni 10 as well as Alma 32. thumbs up]

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

[mfbukowski]

In common parlance, the difference between a potential thing (like an unborn baby) and a real thing (like an undiscovered animal species) is that if you want to know a potential thing you have to create it, whereas if you want to know a real thing you have to go looking for it. Furthermore, a real thing can affect or constrain our experience even if we haven't perceived it yet, whereas a potential one cannot. (Think "butterfly effect".) This is a non-trivial, perfectly pragmatic difference in the way we relate to such things.

Well it sounds to me that you are really now getting metaphysical making all sorts of distinctions in classes of things we cannot see or know about- potential things as distinguished from some thing "real" which has not yet been discovered- you are out- Kanting Kant himself. But remember it was Kant who said that noumena could not be experienced- at all.

The "butterfly effect" is an analogy about the sensitivity of very complex systems theory which of course has never been observed in action, and can't be. Remember I am not saying that humans are immune from distant unknown events- there could be an asteroid hurtling toward earth right now that may wipe us all out in a year or two, which is yet unknown.

We could step off the curb and get hit by a bus we never saw coming also; clearly the unknown can be dangerous, which is why spooky movies work- we fear the unknown instinctively.

But the unknown is the unknown- that is the entire point. What is it that is "unknown"? We don't know- it cannot be defined, just as unknown species cannot be defined. I am not saying discovery does not happen- it happens all the time. Didn't your mom ever say to you "We'll worry about it if it happens"?

Every time we walk out the door there are surprises- ever had your car stolen? That's a nasty one! Trees fall, bugs bite, fires start, etc etc etc but it is still true that those things haven't had an effect in our lives until they are discovered.

Maybe your car was stolen 2 hours ago, and you don't know yet. Are you worried about that? Is it having a (pragmatic) effect in your life?

In a real sense, for you, then it hasn't "happened" yet. Maybe somebody saw it happening - but not you. And the crook knows he did it- but in your world all that is irrelevant- for now. It is not until you get out there and experience it's "absence" that it will become "real" for you. It is objectively real now, but not subjectively real until you experience it. Someone knows about it now, but not you. But no one can possibly know that this particular butterfly at this particular location and at this particular second flapped it's wings and that will cause a hurricane in the Atlantic in three months.

It is unobservable and conjecture at best- in a specific case. I know mathematically that is what the theory says- that's fine. I am just saying that it is unobservable in principle. My just walking in to the area to observe that given butterfly would create more breeze than his wings- it becomes a Heisenberg Uncertainty thing then.

I could ask you a similar question. We experience ourselves as determined and constrained by "things", which seem to have their effects regardless of whether we're aware they're there.

Yes, the unknown can be a dangerous "place". Boogie men can reach out and grab you in the dark!

That's all the terms "real" and "noumenal" mean-- that the conditions imposed by things seem to be perception-independent.

That's not what Kant meant by "noumena"- of course he did not use the word "real" either.

So why get hung up on whether or how they exist metaphysically? That just distracts from the more pragmatic goal of learning how to make predictively accurate statements about the "things" that condition us so we can manipulate them and alter the conditions in subjectively beneficial ways.

Hey- that's MY point! ;-)

I was a Pentecostal before I became an atheist.

Oh, ok- now I get it!

Edited September 23, 2011 by mfbukowski

[mfbukowski]

I would hope we learn ostensibly as well--pedagogically as well as andragogically , Moroni 10 as well as Alma 32. thumbs up]

Thanks, -Wade Englund-

Heck yeah!

I've gotten zapped for some principles and plodded through others.

[Chris Smith]

Maybe your car was stolen 2 hours ago, and you don't know yet. Are you worried about that? Is it having a (pragmatic) effect in your life?

In a real sense, for you, then it hasn't "happened" yet.

Irrelevant metaphysical nonsense. For all practical purposes, it behooves me to think in conventional chronological terms. If the cops ask me when the theft "happened", am I going to give them the time that I discovered it missing from the parking lot? Or the time that a witness saw the crooks driving off with it? The latter answer could help us determine how far they away they might have gotten, whereas the former answer is useless and predictively invalid. I agree that in theory, we have no way of knowing whether things really "persist" when we're not being affected by them. But we do know, from experience, that the most useful course of action is to act as if they persist. To do otherwise, in fact, would be sheer folly from a practical point of view. And that, my friend, is all that I mean by real, regardless of what Kant or anyone else may have meant by it. It behooves us to think of things as possessing a perception-independent "reality" and to reject any philosophy that suggests otherwise, because realistic thinking is the more predictively useful way to organize our experience.

Edited September 23, 2011 by Chris Smith

[mfbukowski]

It behooves us to think of things as possessing a perception-independent "reality" and to reject any philosophy that suggests otherwise, because realistic thinking is the more predictively useful way to organize our experience.

The important question is what you can know about what is "perception independent", and the answer to that is "nothing". I don't care any more about the metaphysics than you do. It is the epistemology that matters, and that is what we are talking about on this thread. What counts as evidence and how it affects our lives is what matters.

[Chris Smith]

The important question is what you can know about what is "perception independent", and the answer to that is "nothing".

We can know how such things affect our experience, which for all practical purposes amounts to knowledge about the things.

Edited September 23, 2011 by Chris Smith

[Calm]

andragogically

New word of the week!....appropriately enough.

[Dan Vogel]

The important question is what you can know about what is "perception independent", and the answer to that is "nothing". I don't care any more about the metaphysics than you do. It is the epistemology that matters, and that is what we are talking about on this thread. What counts as evidence and how it affects our lives is what matters.

This sounds like one of the question-begging definitions—winning the argument by definition only. It also seems to be verging on solipsism.

[Cobalt-70]

The constructivist position you espouse here is little different than the relativism you decry at the beginning. The objectivity problem is only a problem when the postmodernist controls the definition, usually defining it in a way that is impossible to satisfy and amounts to little more than sophistry. I suspect your definition of “objective truth” works the same way. Moreover, the cultural and linguistic context of truth is something no one denies, not even an objectivist. This general meaning of construction is trivial and not philosophically interesting. So, the constructivist has to show how all knowledge is socially constructed in meaningful and counterintuitive way.

I'm no constructivist. I agree that constructivism is as misguided as relativism. However, I also think that objectivism is no better than relativism.

The point that I was making about "objective truth" is not that truth is purely a construction, which it is not. We acquire knowledge from the outside world, and do not merely construct it internally. However, the way we acquire knowledge is through the mediation of text. My point is that objective truth is (almost) irretrievably undermined by the unstable nature of the text we use to acquire and describe it. Our access to objective reality is via a tangled network of text. Our brains are programmed to think in textual terms, and we cannot escape our own brains for long enough to avoid the text that colors and distorts our acquisition of objective knowledge. So more often than not, we end up with multiple, sometimes paradoxical understandings that each may be as objectively true as the other one, yet they may be incompatible with each other.

So as applied to history, there is an "objectively true" history of Joseph Smith. But the only access we have to that objective history of Joseph Smith is through writing. But writing is dead and can only ever be an imperfect and ambiguous representation of reality. You can't ask a piece of paper what it actually means, and even if you could, how do you know that it's explanation would be any more "objective" than the original text? Once you start looking at the words on the paper, you realize that each of the words is loaded with cultural and linguistic baggage. Since the paper is dead, you cannot ask the paper to remove the baggage so you can see what is underneath. So you are forced to use your own cultural baggage to make assumptions about the text. A Mormon will swear that the text objectively means one thing, while an evangelical will swear the text objectively means something else. Being dead, the text cannot choose which of them wins. The winner is invariably the one that has the most (rhetorical, political, physical, etc.) power.

Edited September 24, 2011 by Cobalt-70

[mfbukowski]

This sounds like one of the question-begging definitions—winning the argument by definition only. It also seems to be verging on solipsism.

Please elaborate.

Please show exactly how I am using a question-begging definition.

I am nothing close to a solipsist. Have you ever heard of the notion of linguistic constructivism? Linguistic constructivists are not solipsists- they in fact are about as far from that as possible. They believe that reality is socially created. One cannot be a solipsist and believe in society, much less that reality is created by society and language.

Please explain how we can know anything which no person has ever experienced. Science for example, is a "pool" of objective observations which are essentially all human experiences linked by language and mathematics. And so is his-story.

Science is a metaphor, as is all linguistic knowledge. When we speak, things don't come out of our mouths- words do. Those words are symbols for our experiences- or metaphors.

[Chris Smith]

The winner is invariably the one that has the most (rhetorical, political, physical, etc.) power.

Power comes partly from being right. If I make predictions that turn out to sustained by observational data, that grants me considerable power, especially in an academic establishment that makes predictive validity its power-principle.

And, on a larger scale, the nation that makes science and technology a major policy objective could easily wipe out a nation whose religious fundamentalism dictates a rejection of science.

[mfbukowski]

I'm no constructivist. I agree that constructivism is as misguided as relativism. However, I also think that objectivism is no better than relativism.

The point that I was making about "objective truth" is not that truth is purely a construction, which it is not. We acquire knowledge from the outside world, and do not merely construct it internally. However, the way we acquire knowledge is through the mediation of text. My point is that objective truth is (almost) irretrievably undermined by the unstable nature of the text we use to acquire and describe it. Our access to objective reality is via a tangled network of text. Our brains are programmed to think in textual terms, and we cannot escape our own brains for long enough to avoid the text that colors and distorts our acquisition of objective knowledge. So more often than not, we end up with multiple, sometimes paradoxical understandings that each may be as objectively true as the other one, yet they may be incompatible with each other.

So as applied to history, there is an "objectively true" history of Joseph Smith. But the only access we have to that objective history of Joseph Smith is through writing. But writing is dead and can only ever be an imperfect and ambiguous representation of reality. You can't ask a piece of paper what it actually means, and even if you could, how do you know that it's explanation would be any more "objective" than the original text? Once you start looking at the words on the paper, you realize that each of the words is loaded with cultural and linguistic baggage. Since the paper is dead, you cannot ask the paper to remove the baggage so you can see what is underneath. So you are forced to use your own cultural baggage to make assumptions about the text. A Mormon will swear that the text objectively means one thing, while an evangelical will swear the text objectively means something else. Being dead, the text cannot choose which of them wins. The winner is invariably the one that has the most (rhetorical, political, physical, etc.) power.

This is kind of like saying "I'm not an atheist- I just don't believe in God". If language is the only way we can "represent" (your word not mine) objective reality and the only way we can "acquire" knowledge is through language, please explain how that "objective reality" gets put into language- and what possible relevance it could have that it magically "exists" outside language.

It sounds as if you are speaking of some magic realm we cannot see or talk about- I have given up bothering with trying to find that "missing link" to what we cannot see or speak about.

I think you are indeed a "closet" constructivist!

[Chris Smith]

It sounds as if you are speaking of some magic realm we cannot see or talk about.

I feel the same about your rejection of the contingent self. You seem to be rejecting the obvious pragmatic implications of our experience of the world in favor of some ultra-abstract, anti-metaphysical metaphysic. Since you insist upon rejecting the "reality" of things unless it can somehow be verified, I think you're a closet positivist.

[mfbukowski]

I feel the same about your rejection of the contingent self. You seem to be rejecting the obvious pragmatic implications of our experience of the world in favor of some ultra-abstract, anti-metaphysical metaphysic. Since you insist upon rejecting the "reality" of things unless it can somehow be verified, I think you're a closet positivist.

Well I think Rorty himself was highly conflicted over the contingent self- so much so that in fact I think he created a logical contradiction in his conception of what an "ironist" is- one who on one hand seeks to create her own unique "vocabulary" (ie: linguistic metaphorical reality) while yet realizing that somehow that reality is totally contingent- ie: an input from outside and a result of language, which has conditioned herself completely.

I don't understand how a person can be one who creates a vocabulary without having a non-contingent self which does the creating; I think we all experience our selves as non-contingent. I don't think for one minute that language is selecting itself in my brain- my experience as I craft each sentence is that indeed there is an "I" who is doing the speaking, accepting this phrasing, rejecting other choices, re-working the sentence to make it more clear etc. Those words aren't picking themselves- the one who is doing the picking is "me". The self is the non-contingent speaker who crafts the unique vocabulary and point of view which creates my world for me.

And ultimately I think that Rorty's mistake about the self leads to his inability to understand the individual- and so he ultimately misses the point about a culture being a group of individuals with shared experience rather than a hive-like collective with "group-think".

But as far as being a "closet positivist"- I think you are off base because positivists are typically seeking only one kind of verification and that is objective verification- in other words, scientific verification. For them, all knowledge should be scientific knowledge. To me, that totally misses the importance of the subjective- and that is where all that is important in life is "located". We fall in love in the subjective, we make personal choice in the subjective, create our worlds in the subjective mode and find meaning in our lives in the subjective.

To deny it is to deny the most important things in life, in my opinion, and it is also just plain a faulty view of epistemology.

[Dan Vogel]

Bukowski,

Please elaborate.

Please show exactly how I am using a question-begging definition.

Sure. You said:

The important question is what you can know about what is "perception independent", and the answer to that is "nothing".

I could be wrong, not knowing all the nuances of your chosen system of thought, but since perception is a function of a mind, you appear to me to be saying something tautological (like Chris mentioned before)—call it circular or question-begging, if you like—specifically: “what can you perceive that isn’t perceived.” Since no one, not even an objectivist questions this, it is a trivial point and philosophically uninteresting.

I am nothing close to a solipsist.

You also said to Chris:

Maybe your car was stolen 2 hours ago, and you don't know yet. Are you worried about that? Is it having a (pragmatic) effect in your life?

In a real sense, for you, then it hasn't "happened" yet.

This seems like another trivial observation that no one, not even an objectivist, denies, or you have another—perhaps counterintuitive--meaning that possibly verges on solipsism.

Have you ever heard of the notion of linguistic constructivism? Linguistic constructivists are not solipsists- they in fact are about as far from that as possible. They believe that reality is socially created. One cannot be a solipsist and believe in society, much less that reality is created by society and language.

Yes, I’m familiar with this notion. It’s quite popular in various forms. But I wouldn’t pretend to know as much as someone who has adopted this social construction as their own system of thought. It’s a way of understanding reality that is constructed and self-referential.

I don’t believe society creates reality—reality exists independent of humans. Whether or not we have direct access to it is a different matter (a notion that is itself problematic in my mind). For example, the existence of dinosaurs is a part of reality that is not contingent on humans. The way we chose to talk about it (rather than another way) is socially constructed. This should be distinguished from other things that ARE socially constructed—like religion, government, and society itself. If you mean reality is constructed in this sense, it is trivial and philosophically uninteresting. But if you mean it in some counterintuitive sense, that there is no objective reality, perhaps your position might verge on solipsism.

Please explain how we can know anything which no person has ever experienced. Science for example, is a "pool" of objective observations which are essentially all human experiences linked by language and mathematics. And so is his-story.

Another tautology? How can we know something without knowing it? Or, how can we experience something without experiencing it?

Of course, no one knows if an observation is objective until it’s repeated by other scientists.

Science is a metaphor, as is all linguistic knowledge. When we speak, things don't come out of our mouths- words do. Those words are symbols for our experiences- or metaphors.

Yes, and this too is a trivial observation. And you can certainly experience something (reality) without having language to name or math to explain it. Language and math are contingent on humans; they are merely tools.

Now, I doubt Hales will find this arcane and esoteric philosophical maneuvering helpful.

[Dan Vogel]

Cobalt,

I'm no constructivist. I agree that constructivism is as misguided as relativism. However, I also think that objectivism is no better than relativism.

The point that I was making about "objective truth" is not that truth is purely a construction, which it is not. We acquire knowledge from the outside world, and do not merely construct it internally. However, the way we acquire knowledge is through the mediation of text.

Text is the only way? Illiterate people don’t acquire knowledge?

My point is that objective truth is (almost) irretrievably undermined by the unstable nature of the text we use to acquire and describe it.

Yet, paradoxically, you learned this from Derrida’s unstable text no doubt? There are no perfect hammers, but houses are built. Language is just a tool, and it seems to work quite well. It was made to be flexible as well as compress much thought into a single word. A sophist can take advantage of this, but language isn’t as unstable as deconstructionists like to think—or else why do they write books.

Our access to objective reality is via a tangled network of text.

Of course this isn’t true, unless you have different definition of “text” like Derrida, who said the whole world is a text.

Our brains are programmed to think in textual terms, and we cannot escape our own brains for long enough to avoid the text that colors and distorts our acquisition of objective knowledge. So more often than not, we end up with multiple, sometimes paradoxical understandings that each may be as objectively true as the other one, yet they may be incompatible with each other.

I’m not sure that the paradox exists because there are multiple truths as that the subject is truly a human invention like justice and injustice, but that the earth has one moon, or that dinosaurs once roamed the earth, doesn’t seem to fit your theory or reality. You are assuming that there is something else for which escaping our brain is worthy and preferable to having a brain—something you can’t prove in the first place let alone for me to argue against. The burden is yours to show this another thing that is purer, more real than what we have.

So as applied to history, there is an "objectively true" history of Joseph Smith.

I take what you mean by “objectively true” to be what really happened as opposed to what didn’t. God appeared to JS or he didn’t, or JS dug plates out of the hill, or he didn’t, etc. But there’s no such thing as “objectively true history” in the sense of complete or inherently endowed with meaning. No one can take in the totality of experience let alone write it down, and history or herstory is a construct laid over events that give them meaning. But that doesn’t mean that all interpretations are equally valid.

But the only access we have to that objective history of Joseph Smith is through writing. But writing is dead and can only ever be an imperfect and ambiguous representation of reality. You can't ask a piece of paper what it actually means, and even if you could, how do you know that it's explanation would be any more "objective" than the original text? Once you start looking at the words on the paper, you realize that each of the words is loaded with cultural and linguistic baggage. Since the paper is dead, you cannot ask the paper to remove the baggage so you can see what is underneath. So you are forced to use your own cultural baggage to make assumptions about the text.

I realize authorial intentionality is a problem, but that doesn’t mean that all interpretations are equally valid. Believing the four headed beast in Ezekiel and Revelations is a description of a spaceship isn’t a valid reading of those books. There are other ways at arriving at a more probable reading that is consistent with the cultural background of the text. That’s why it’s important to see how the BOM and JS’s revelations participated in the discourse of the time.

A Mormon will swear that the text objectively means one thing, while an evangelical will swear the text objectively means something else. Being dead, the text cannot choose which of them wins. The winner is invariably the one that has the most (rhetorical, political, physical, etc.) power.

I’m not sure how you decide who the winner is? But it should be decided by who has the best arguments and evidence according to the standards and values of the scholarly community. Hence, when I want to understand the Bible’s text a Mormon or Evangelical interpreter doesn’t come to mind.