Kevin C's review of Taves, Revelatory Events.

[clarkgoble]

On 2/9/2018 at 7:08 PM, Nevo said:

And, to be clear, Taves accounts for all of those arguments in her analysis.

People seeing bits of the plates:

Joseph's family believing the plates were real:

Joseph believing the plates were real:

That's not what I was getting at. Again to be very explicit - what contrasts Vogel from Taves in terms of the evidence. If you think there's nothing then you'll think my objections make no sense. So I assume that's what you are saying. That there's no evidence suggesting a way to distinguish Vogel from Taves and both account for the data equally.

Also you'll note that many of those quotes show explicitly that she's speculating and doesn't have evidence for her positions you quote. 

43 minutes ago, hope_for_things said:

Taves is arguing that the plates aren't ancient, but that they are real in the sense that they are tangible, and in the sense that Joseph and his followers viewed them as real (see the quotes that Nevo posted.)

Yes I realize that.

43 minutes ago, hope_for_things said:

No, its not that we have to presuppose the plates weren't real.   I don't think Taves ever makes this claim in her book to my recollection.   She is making an argument for a possible development of early Mormonism that assumes the plates are real, but that they aren't ancient.  You shouldn't conflate these two positions of ancient and real, as Taves construction doesn't make this conflation, and there is an important distinction between the two.  

By real I mean really what they purport to be. I recognize Taves thinks Joseph faithfully instantiated the plates with either sand or tin. Her whole argument more or less rests on Joseph being unable to take the plates from the hill unless he instantiated them. But this is purely speculative. There's no data to support it. The reason she thinks Joseph would think instantiating them would be OK largely rests on the antagonistic letter from Jesse Smith that seems pretty ambiguous.

Edited February 12, 2018 by clarkgoble

[hope_for_things]

1 hour ago, clarkgoble said:

By real I mean really what they purport to be. I recognize Taves thinks Joseph faithfully instantiated the plates with either sand or tin.

Then your critique of Taves is based on what you think she should have argued, "what they purport to be", rather than the parameters around what her actual argument is.  In other words, you're saying that Taves approach isn't expansive enough, rather than saying her argument doesn't actually address the evidence sufficiently.  I think this is a difference of personal preference.  

Taves does address the evidence in a very detailed fashion, some of her analysis around the earliest documents and the first vision is unique and quite in the weeds analysis, that I haven't found in other places.  The back and forth with Steven C. Harper on the first vision that she referenced in her footnotes is actually quite interesting.  That she doesn't engage other arguments that you believe would have been relevant, is an argument that her scope should have been different, not that she didn't address the appropriate evidence sufficiently.  

1 hour ago, clarkgoble said:

Her whole argument more or less rests on Joseph being unable to take the plates from the hill unless he instantiated them. But this is purely speculative. There's no data to support it. The reason she thinks Joseph would think instantiating them would be OK largely rests on the antagonistic letter from Jesse Smith that seems pretty ambiguous.

You're making assumptions here that aren't accurate again.  Taves doesn't say anything about whether or not the plates were ever in the hill.  Why couldn't these materialized plates have been placed in the hill, and then recovered from the hill.  And I would argue that the Jesse Smith letter is one clue that points to a possible construction, but I'm pretty sure Taves wouldn't say her argument rests on that letter.  You're stretching things again here.  

Edited February 12, 2018 by hope_for_things

[clarkgoble]

24 minutes ago, hope_for_things said:

Then your critique of Taves is based on what you think she should have argued, "what they purport to be", rather than the parameters around what her actual argument is.  In other words, you're saying that Taves approach isn't expansive enough, rather than saying her argument doesn't actually address the evidence sufficiently.  I think this is a difference of personal preference.  

I was rather forthright on that point, wasn't I?  I'm not sure it's preference but again that gets to the question of whether you think she needs to take the next step. Clearly like most apologists, Taves doesn't. Maybe you don't either. My point isn't whether this is a preference but merely noting how this limits what we know.

Quote

That she doesn't engage other arguments that you believe would have been relevant, is an argument that her scope should have been different, not that she didn't address the appropriate evidence sufficiently.  

I'm not sure scope is the right term so much as I think she should have focused more on distinguishing her model from the others in terms of evidence.

24 minutes ago, hope_for_things said:

You're making assumptions here that aren't accurate again.  Taves doesn't say anything about whether or not the plates were ever in the hill.  Why couldn't these materialized plates have been placed in the hill, and then recovered from the hill.  And I would argue that the Jesse Smith letter is one clue that points to a possible construction, but I'm pretty sure Taves wouldn't say her argument rests on that letter.  You're stretching things again here.  

No you're misunderstanding what I was referring to. He attempts to get the plates but can't. For Taves at that point the plates are purely spiritual by which she means in Joseph's head. By making physical plates he's then able to obtain the plates thereby removing the spiritual plates from the hill.

I am not saying Taves says her argument rests on Jesse but rather that it is key to her argument. Without Taves there's not a lot around Joseph for the instantiation as something Joseph would have believed.

Edited February 12, 2018 by clarkgoble

[hope_for_things]

22 minutes ago, clarkgoble said:

I was rather forthright on that point, wasn't I?  I'm not sure it's preference but again that gets to the question of whether you think she needs to take the next step. Clearly like most apologists, Taves doesn't. Maybe you don't either. My point isn't whether this is a preference but merely noting how this limits what we know.

Its your opinion of what that next step should be, is what I disagree with.  You assume that's the correct next step to take, and your comparison to apologetics in general is too broad a comparison in this case and I don't agree that its a fair comparison.  

24 minutes ago, clarkgoble said:

No you're misunderstanding what I was referring to. He attempts to get the plates but can't. For Taves at that point the plates are purely spiritual by which she means in Joseph's head. By making physical plates he's then able to obtain the plates thereby removing the spiritual plates from the hill.

I am not saying Taves says her argument rests on Jesse but rather that it is key to her argument. Without Taves there's not a lot around Joseph for the instantiation as something Joseph would have believed.

I don't think Taves timeline is dependent on when Joseph produces the plates or how they were produced or whether Joseph himself produced them or was helped by others.  I also don't think the Jesse Smith letter as specific evidence is key to her argument, but I do agree the concept found in that letter is key.  I don't think she's using the letter as proof of this concept, just as pointing to the idea that a contemporary had that was similar.  

[clarkgoble]

34 minutes ago, hope_for_things said:

Its your opinion of what that next step should be, is what I disagree with.  You assume that's the correct next step to take, and your comparison to apologetics in general is too broad a comparison in this case and I don't agree that its a fair comparison.  

My point is just to doing enough work to form a hypothesis but not enough to argue it is better than alternative interpretations. That seems a common thing taught in academics. It's certainly fine to disagree with it, but I just note that apologetics are often treated quite differently since that's exactly what they are doing. However I think apologetics does wrong when they limit things in that way.

34 minutes ago, hope_for_things said:

I don't think Taves timeline is dependent on when Joseph produces the plates or how they were produced or whether Joseph himself produced them or was helped by others.  I also don't think the Jesse Smith letter as specific evidence is key to her argument, but I do agree the concept found in that letter is key.  I don't think she's using the letter as proof of this concept, just as pointing to the idea that a contemporary had that was similar.  

In one sense yes. Her model would work whether or not Joseph makes the plates when trying to get the plates. However she clearly argues for that, presumably because it's one of the few pieces of evidence that fit her model but not Vogel's.

As I've said I'm most intrigued to see how the book is looked at by the critic crowd. The "it's meaning that matters not facts" view of religion that dominates the Maxwell Institution and a lot of Mormon Studies is cautious in how they respond but mostly positive. (Although it's hard to imagine a review like that being written there a decade ago) Like Taves, Perry pretty well dismisses the significance of what many of us to take as basic questions. I'd absolutely love to know what Vogel or others think of the book.

Edited February 12, 2018 by clarkgoble

[hope_for_things]

44 minutes ago, clarkgoble said:

As I've said I'm most intrigued to see how the book is looked at by the critic crowd. The "it's meaning that matters not facts" view of religion that dominates the Maxwell Institution and a lot of Mormon Studies is cautious in how they respond but mostly positive. (Although it's hard to imagine a review like that being written there a decade ago) Like Taves, Perry pretty well dismisses the significance of what many of us to take as basic questions. I'd absolutely love to know what Vogel or others think of the book.

I agree it would be very interesting.  I personally can't imagine this group having a problem with her thesis as its based on a naturalistic interpretation.  The review by Perry is the only formal review I've seen of the book to this point, besides Kevin's Interpreter review.  

[Nevo]

Adam J. Powell has reviewed Revelatory Events for the Journal of Mormon History. Here are some excerpts:

Quote

Following her much broader theoretical study Religious Experience Reconsidered (2009), Ann Taves’s Revelatory Events is an attempt to analyze more specifically the role of, and bio-cultural processes behind, suprahuman presences as they purportedly guide the nascent stages of three new religious/spiritual movements: Mormonism, Alcoholics Anonymous, and A Course in Miracles (ACIM). As Taves states in the preface, her objective is to demonstrate that such spiritual “paths” and their supernatural claims can be studied both historically and naturalistically, applying recent findings from the cognitive and social sciences to illuminate both similarities and differences among these cases. . . . Across three chapters (“Groups,” “Selves,” and “Motives”), Taves notes the crucial function of social legitimation among the earliest followers, suggestibility and cognitive characteristics among the paths’ founders, and the personal as well as collective anxieties fueling the advent of the suprahuman guides for each group. . . .

Revelatory Events offers fresh perspective on a number of formative events in the early history of Mormonism. For example, Taves repeatedly highlights the “interactive” social aspect of the early development of Mormonism (47), including her framing of Smith’s translation work as an unfolding outcome of his various relationships with family and Martin Harris rather than as a predetermined calculated process, her analysis of Smith’s visit from Moroni as a vision that needed the affirmation of Joseph Smith Sr. before it spurred young Joseph on to action, and her general observation that experiences combine with “constellations of collaborators” to engender particular types of “social formations” (151). Along the way, the book also offers unique understandings of both Smith’s relationship to the gold plates as well as the progressive logic underlying the 1832, 1835, and 1838 accounts of the First Vision. . . . [O]ne of the volume’s laudable contributions is its careful exposition of Smith’s first recorded revelation, along with a discussion of what “revelation” and “seer” likely meant at the time. Such a treatment not only offers a refreshing degree of finesse to historical reconstructions of early Mormonism but is also possible because of Taves’s exciting use of the Joseph Smith Papers to compose such microhistories.

To be sure, much more could be said in praise of this fascinating and masterfully interdisciplinary study, including a nod to its implicit suggestions related to the success of some new religious movements over others. However, no work of such comparative breadth and theoretical synthesis is entirely without flaws, or at least the potential to cause perturbations. Readers familiar with, and especially those involved in the academic study of, Mormon history may find fault with a few specific assertions in the book. For instance, it is not necessarily clear that there is a shift from prayer-induced visions to object-mediated messages between Smith’s first and subsequent revelations; Taves selectively disregards Smith’s later claims to have used the Urim and Thummin to receive that first revelation so that the supposed shift is more pronounced. Similarly, some may question the claim that Smith and his “first followers” believed themselves to be “mediating the emergence of entirely new [spiritual] paths” (271), and Taves’s contention, cogently argued, that Smith made the gold plates himself with full faith that God would transform them into an ancient record will undoubtedly give Mormon historians much to ponder. More generally, it is worth noting that the later portions of the book that deal with the cognitive psychology of these “unusual experiences” includes almost no material on relevant phenomena like thought insertion and no discussion at all of others like felt presences. . . .

Even so, with the nuance and erudition made possible by Taves’s keen historical eye, firm grasp of the cognitive social sciences, and all of the primary resources now available to scholars of religion, Revelatory Events represents the best of the comparative method in twenty-first century scholarship. Its mixed-method engagement with, and responsible application of, the findings of multiple disciplines never devolves into abstruse or grandiose theorizing. Likewise, it not only excavates differences but illuminates the commonalities operating in the early developmental stages of its three case studies. If nothing else, this aids historians and social scientists of Mormonism alike by demarcating both areas of fruitful investigation (e.g., the role of Smith’s various personal relationships in shaping early Mormonism) and areas of imminent drought (e.g., debates around the First Vision). This book is highly recommended!

(See Journal of Mormon History 43, no. 4 [October 2017]: 196–199)

 

Edited February 12, 2018 by Nevo

[hope_for_things]

41 minutes ago, Nevo said:

Adam J. Powell has reviewed Revelatory Events for the Journal of Mormon History. Here are some excerpts:

 

Very cool, I need to get that copy of the JMH to read the whole review.  Thanks for posting this Nevo!  

[hope_for_things]

On 2/2/2018 at 12:05 PM, Kevin Christensen said:

As promised a while back, my long review of Ann Taves Revelatory Events, titled, "Playing to an Audience."

http://www.mormoninterpreter.com/playing-to-an-audience-a-review-of-revelatory-events/

I managed to get this done in the midst of getting our Bethel Park reader to sell, finding a new place in Canonsburg, getting the new place ready to live in and moved to, and dealing with my wife's summer knee replacement.

FWIW

Kevin Christensen

Canonsburg, PA

 

Some of you may find this review in Steve Fleming in the Juvenile Instructor interesting.  Read all the way through the comments at the bottom, Dr. Taves even comments in this thread.  And apparently there will be a part 2 as well.  Good stuff.  

http://juvenileinstructor.org/reflections-on-tavess-revelatory-events-pt-1/

 

[Kevin Christensen]

18 hours ago, hope_for_things said:

Some of you may find this review in Steve Fleming in the Juvenile Instructor interesting.  Read all the way through the comments at the bottom, Dr. Taves even comments in this thread.  And apparently there will be a part 2 as well.  Good stuff.  

http://juvenileinstructor.org/reflections-on-tavess-revelatory-events-pt-1/

 

What an honor to be labeled and dismissed without analysis, particularly when my essay explores the difference between a dismissal as "Not us" and a risk-taking argument that explores  specific details and differences and explains "Why us".

FWIW

Kevin Christensen

Canonsburg, PA

[mfbukowski]

3 hours ago, Kevin Christensen said:

What an honor to be labeled and dismissed without analysis, particularly when my essay explores the difference between a dismissal as "Not us" and a risk-taking argument that explores  specific details and differences and explains "Why us".

FWIW

Kevin Christensen

Canonsburg, PA

Exactly- it was a thirty second read that said nothing and then Taves said nothing addressing your analysis.  What's the point?

Edited May 1, 2018 by mfbukowski

[clarkgoble]

9 hours ago, Kevin Christensen said:

What an honor to be labeled and dismissed without analysis, particularly when my essay explores the difference between a dismissal as "Not us" and a risk-taking argument that explores  specific details and differences and explains "Why us".

To be fair this is the introductory post for what looks to be a series of posts. As I indicated above my main qualm is that there's almost no primary source material indicating this kind of materializing of spiritual objects was something Joseph considered. Without that it's a thesis that seems driven by wanting a middle ground rather than evidence. (Yes there's the Jesse Smith letter but as I indicated above that's fairly ambiguous and hard to portray as representing Joseph's beliefs that I can see) 

I do hope they discuss the ground for this materialization thesis because I just don't buy it at all. Admittedly apologists make similar arguments lacking evidence. So this isn't really me railing against Taves. However I do think there's a bit of a double standard in treatment when apologists putting forth a speculative theory with little or no evidence and Taves doing the same thing. I think as a theory Taves' model is fine. However let's be honest it has about as much evidence as the theories for horses in the Book of Mormon.

Edited May 1, 2018 by clarkgoble