Mcconkie On Intelligences

[Cobalt-70]

The position that our spirit bodies are begotten/created/formed by heavenly parents has been repeatedly taught by all modern-day prophets and affermed in The Family: A Proclamation to the World. The process is unknown and "spirit babies" is perhaps a misnomer.

Consequently, I (and Joseph Fielding Smith and everybody else I've discussed the matter with) interpret Joseph Smith's comments in the King Follett discourse about "spirits" being immortal and self-existent as referring to the self-same uncreate intelligences referred to elsewhere by Joseph's revelations and the "intelligences" referred to by Abraham as being "spirits". Linguistic precision was not a strong suit of the early brethren, included Joseph Smith.

And in doing so they greatly distort, twist, and take out of context what Smith actually said in that sermon. He made it very clear that he believed spirits (i.e., the part of King Follett that continued to exist after he died) were not created.

[Cobalt-70]

No one's trying to do that.

Do you agree with Derrida generally? Here it appears you do. Critcs tend to disagree with those they criticize. I think we have an example or two of that here on this board. Whether or not one's argument "undermines" another tends to be a tad debatable.

Husserl's philosophy as a whole has been very influential, even though many disagree with parts of it.

I don't know. I haven't read everything that Derrida wrote. But I agree that his writings that I have read so far totally and very potently deconstructs the writings of Husserl that he criticizes. Yet if it were not for writers like Husserl, there would be no Heidegger or Derrida, so in that sense he was very influential. Also, just because Derrida deconstructs his writings, that doesn't mean that it isn't "valid." It just means that if you look at it too closely, it self-deconstructs.

[Nofear]

And in doing so they greatly distort, twist, and take out of context what Smith actually said in that sermon. He made it very clear that he believed spirits (i.e., the part of King Follett that continued to exist after he died) were not created.

Well, you're welcome to write your own exegesis on the matter. Persuasion is better than assertion.

[Tarski]

I'm a little surprised at this post.

So you agree with Sellars then?

I think he was befuddled in his discussion of the "homogeneous pink ice cube". We had to wait for Dennett to begin to clear that up.

But this much I more or less agree with:

Thus, Sellars provides a two-pronged attack on traditional foundationalism. The way we describe our perceptual experience does indeed suggest that we have infallible access to certain private experiences, private experiences that we cannot be mistaken about. However, we should recognize the possibility that we may be being fooled by grammar here. Sellars gives an alternative interpretation of such statements as, “this looks red to me,” an interpretation that does not commit one to having such a privileged epistemological access to one’s perceptual experience. Further, a conceptual analysis of “knowledge” reveals that knowledge is essentially a rational state and, therefore, that one cannot claim to know what one has no reason for accepting as true. Such reasons must be conceived in terms of linguistic constructions that one can articulate, and thus, the bare presence of the Given cannot ground the knowledge we have of our own experience or, consequently, of the world. This, then, is a rejection of the traditional foundationalist picture, or what Sellars calls, “the Myth of the Given.”

from SEP

[Tarski]

This summary is close to right, but not exactly right on the money.

:snip:

I am surprised that you endorse this. I am all about the primacy of intersubjectivity. My biggest problem is with people making subjectivity their foundation as it were. (Mental substance idealism)

In fact, the word intersubjective is a little unfortunate as it sound as if it is dependent on subjectivity. I think the reverse is closer to the truth. Subjectivity is the derivative notion despite how it may seem to some people's intuition.

We are not ontologically separated from the real world by a veil of subjectivity. We are (as Heidegger would have it) always-already-in-the-world. This is why even if a sort of physicalism is true (which I think is the case) a human being is not equal either to a sum of particles or equal to a ghost in a machine. We are a semiotic disturbance propagating on the physical world like a wave on water. But just as there is a sense in which the wave is nothing more than the activity of water (the wave moves on by and the water stays put), we also are an activity on the sea of matter and energy. This metaphor is limited for sure as it doesn't do justice to the nearly correct idea that we are extremely subtle interacting biological machines (we exchange matter and energy with the environment of course so we are not closed systems in any sense). There are various rational stances we can take when we think about a human being.

If information, pattern, and meaningful activity are ontological categories that you see as undermining physicalism then I would just say that your notion of physicalism is untenable. But it is also a strawman version of physicalism.

By the way, this notion of the epistemological importance of inter-subjectivity (all the ways we coordinate) is the reason that Elder Packer's "knowing the taste of salt" trope regarding a "testimony" is a nonstarter.

Edited January 24, 2012 by Tarski

[mfbukowski]

I don't know. I haven't read everything that Derrida wrote. But I agree that his writings that I have read so far totally and very potently deconstructs the writings of Husserl that he criticizes. Yet if it were not for writers like Husserl, there would be no Heidegger or Derrida, so in that sense he was very influential. Also, just because Derrida deconstructs his writings, that doesn't mean that it isn't "valid." It just means that if you look at it too closely, it self-deconstructs.

Everything deconstructs if you look at it closely. Meaning is context- take a proposition out of a context and -poof- it's meaningless.

[mfbukowski]

I am surprised that you endorse this. I am all about the primacy of intersubjectivity. My biggest problem is with people making subjectivity their foundation as it were. (Mental substance idealism)

In fact, the word intersubjective is a little unfortunate as it sound as if it is dependent on subjectivity. I think the reverse is closer to the truth. Subjectivity is the derivative notion despite how it may seem to some people's intuition.

We are not ontologically separated from the real world by a veil of subjectivity. We are (as Heidegger would have it) always-already-in-the-world. This is why even if a sort of physicalism is true (which I think is the case) a human being is not equal either to a sum of particles or equal to a ghost in a machine. We are a semiotic disturbance propagating on the physical world like a wave on water. But just as there is a sense in which the wave is nothing more than the activity of water (the wave moves on by and the water stays put), we also are an activity on the sea of matter and energy. This metaphor is limited for sure as it doesn't do justice to the nearly correct idea that we are extremely subtle interacting biological machines (we exchange matter and energy with the environment of course so we are not closed systems in any sense). There are various rational stances we can take when we think about a human being.

If information, pattern, and meaningful activity are ontological categories that you see as undermining physicalism then I would just say that your notion of physicalism is untenable. But it is also a strawman version of physicalism.

By the way, this notion of the epistemological importance of inter-subjectivity (all the ways we coordinate) is the reason that Elder Packer's "knowing the taste of salt" trope regarding a "testimony" is a nonstarter.

I was not endorsing the position, I was saying the summary of Husserl's position was pretty close to being a good summary of my understanding of Husserl's position, but not precisely correct.

Thanks for your interesting post. I am not sure I quite understand it, but I think it would be fun to get together and talk about it sometime, or take it up off the boards where there is always the factor of playing to the audience.

As long as one believes there is a "real world" which is somehow independent of our experience ("our" of course implying your intersubjectivity) one has introduced the problem of epistemology, a problem I think Pragmatism has solved, or more precisely, erased.

I find that most of my positions are very much in line with Rorty's. The important difference is his view of the contingency of the self; I think his view of "ironism" is ultimately untenable because in fact it is not only "ironic", it is contradictory. I think that ultimately it is his view of the complete contingency of the self which is untenable.

The question then becomes, what IS this "subject"- or does the question even make sense to ask. It is here where I think Husserl sees the issue a bit more clearly than Nagel- but that is not an endorsement of Husserl either, except in his view of the transcendental ego.

This is an interesting article on the subject: http://durham.academia.edu/MatthewRatcliffe/Papers/445082/Husserl_and_Nagel_on_Subjectivity_and_the_Limits_of_Physical_Objectivity

I think many of these problems we have conceiving of the self are precisely caused by brain issues- we have the left brain contemplating the right brain- or attempting to and vice versa. And of course never the twain shall meet- hence "philosophical" issues which are literally impossible to figure out because we are not wired to be able to figure them out. I suspect ultimately that is the whole problem of subjective vs objective in a nutshell. From the point of view of physicalism, I think it is really a question of which hemisphere is asking the question, as it were. If you have not seen this- you absolutely MUST:

But that is, as I see it, irrelevant to the religious question, which is about the language we use to give our lives meaning. I suppose I am ultimatley a Wittgensteinian fideist anyway, even if that is a controversial position. But I am working on it.

[inquiringmind]

If the principles of intelligence have always existed, then it does make sense that Man has always existed, and that Man could be in the beginning with God.

I'm not sure I understand what you're saying here, because you already said

Perhaps there is a hybrid approach to McConkie/Young and Smith's views:

The principles of intelligence have always existed (they are not created). Spirits are created by God using principles of intelligence, and only spirits have individual identities.

Men and woman are individuals.

If spirits are created, and "only spirits have individual identities," how could it make sense to say that men and women have always existed?

(But are you saying that individual men and women have always existed, or is that just what I'm reading into what you said?)

Edited February 27, 2012 by inquiringmind