The Normative Structures of Science (and Religion)
“The scientific investigator does not preserve the cleavage between the sacred and the profane, between that which requires uncritical respect and that which can be objectively analyzed.”
-Robert Merton
Institutions shape and form who we are as individuals. The more habituated we become to working and living within an institutional structure, the more we will internalize its rules and the less we will consciously make decisions with regards to our obedience to those rules. With this in mind, it is important to our individual freedom and responsibility that we make explicit – in other words externalize – the rules of science and the ways in which they clash with those that regulate church activity. Both of these institutions have rules that regulate behavior within them and to the extent that these rules contradict each other we who are institutionalized within both will be compelled to navigate our ways through various forms of cognitive dissonance, compartmentalization, strategic equivocation, etc.
I will rely upon Robert Merton’s classic “The Normative Structure of Science” in order to articulate the values of science. While I think Merton’s account is more than a little dated with respect to how science is actually practiced today, I think it is a very fair description, first, of how the public is taught to conceptualize and understand science and, secondly, of the scientific values that we are taught within our educational system – especially at the college undergraduate level. In other words, I am largely assuming that our educational system in general strives to, and to some degree succeeds in modeling itself upon and instilling the values of a 1940’s understanding of science which is itself, according to Merton, closely wedded to the democratic values of the Enlightenment.
It should also be noted that Merton rejects the idea that these rules are merely “technical” such that they are merely useful guidelines to be followed by scientists. Instead, these values are taught as moral obligations that are binding upon all would-be scientists and critical thinkers. The values that structure institutionalized science, then, are as follows:
- Universalism
- Communism (again, this was before the Cold War)
- Disinterestedness
- Organized Skepticism
Universalism – Similar to Alvin Gouldner’s description of the Culture of Critical Discourse and Jurgen Habermas’s Ideal Speech Situation, science measures all claims and truths against impersonal standards of observation and previously “certified” knowledge (note the institutional language). At no point are personal attributes or the social status of the speaker relevant to the matter at hand. As Merton puts it, “objectivity precludes particularism.”
This is completely counter to an institution where a person’s ordination and stewardship limit the scope of what is said. Personal revelation over one’s stewardship is the very definition of the particularism that science rejects. The fact that one person was a Levite rather than a member of some other tribe of very important to the Israelites. While church certainly has universalistic ambitions, the entire point of many ordinances is to separation those who are “under covenant” from those who are not.
Communism – This rule is probably the most dated, both in its name as well as in its content. It claim that there is, or at least shouldn’t be any intellectual property within science. Since science is a communal effort in which even the most brilliant minds stand upon the shoulders of other giants, the findings and data collected by such people are openly and freely shared such that all scientists should have access to and be able to cite all other scientists. According to Merton, the only individual rights that a scientists can properly lay claim to within science is an increase in reputational esteem.
While Merton notes that this is in tension with the capitalistic privatization of science, it is also in tension with the rules which govern the distribution of knowledge within the church. Certain findings, revelation and ordinances are very much intended to be kept from the uninitiated, the unworthy, etc. While we might be tempted to claim this policy of “milk before meat” is no different from a scientist’s having to familiarize themselves with the requisite mathematics, for example, in order to fully understand the relevant work it seems obvious to me that whatever overlap there is between these cases is not only limited in scope but probably ideologically motivated as well. The limitations placed upon substantial amounts of knowledge within the church have nothing to do with intellectual qualifications necessary for a proper understanding of it. Contrary to science, some gospel experiences and knowledge belong to us and nobody else. We might prefer it if others shared their revelation more often than they do, but we have no moral claim to such knowledge.
Disinterestedness – By this, Merton is explicitly not claiming that scientists are more noble or altruistic than others. Rather he is remarking on the specific means by which science sanctions and redirects self-aggrandizement and cheating within the scientific community: peer review. The regulation of fraud, cheating and other forms of self-interestedness is done (ideally) through mutual scrutiny and competition among peers. Indeed, it is precisely because scientists are speaking to peers rather than uninformed “clients” that fraud and other forms of cheating are kept in check.
Mutual scrutiny and competition among peers is expressly and forcefully rejected within the church. The entire point of forbidding arguments and disputations through the hierarchical stratification of stewardships is to undermine the idea that church leaders are peers to be reviewed such that different policies and teaching come into competition or conflict. (Laman and Lemuel really struggled with this.) Yes, there are mechanisms by which such leaders are constrained (raising hands, reporting unrighteousness, etc.) but none of these have anything to do there being an equal and open scrutiny among peers with competing arguments.
Organized Skepticism – This is the scientific rule described in the quote above which says that the scientist is not to take 1) any assumption for granted or 2) anybody’s word for it. Everything and everyone is open to investigation/analysis and nobody is able to hide behind their social status or some sacred taboo. In other words, no person, thing or idea is sacred.
When spelled out as Merton does, this rule is quite obviously incompatible with a gospel in which only certain lineages are allowed within certain areas during certain times of the year wherein they see and hear things that they are never to discuss outside of this context. Some things in the church are simply not meant to be discussed or analyzed, criticized or doubted. Moreover, there is an undeniably anti-skeptical element to the idea that faith is a moral virtue and that we will be condemned for not believing certain things. If, however, somebody resists this reading of faith by saying that we are all equally able to confirm whatever doubts we have through personal prayer, this still falls very short of an organized skepticism that actively encourages its members to doubt, criticize or otherwise “review” all persons, claims, etc. At no point in gospel teachings are doubt and criticism praised as institutional virtues as such. On the contrary, when we are tempted by Descartes’s method of universal doubt we are encouraged to begin by first doubting that very method and its supposed virtues.
Conclusion – While the reader may not completely agree with my understanding of science or religion I don’t think it’s possible to re-describe these institutions such that all of these tensions disappear into thin air. I should also point out that these tensions have nothing whatsoever to do with any particular finding or theory defended by science. Instead, I have simply juxtaposed the rules by which each institutions regulates and thus shapes its members. No doubt, each person will have internalized these rules and negotiated their tensions differently. My point in this post has not been to pass judgement on how we ought to go about this process. Rather, my goal has been to raise this process to a conscious level such that each person can gain control of the ways in which both institutions continue to shape their lives.
Some practical details.
1. If one is asked if the church is true, which standards those of religion or those of science apply? In other words, could a person be telling the truth by saying yes, even though by the standards of science, they might be lying. Or more baldly, is it even possible to lie about believing the church to be true?
2. Likewise, with other matters like whether one attended church or did one’s home teaching. What standards apply to whether one did or did not do those things. If one who has stewardship over you says that you did those things, in your understanding does that mean that you did them, even though under another standard of evidence like science you may not have done them?
Comment by Martin James — October 7, 2015 @ 5:33 pm
You are a new version of the John Mellencamp song. Jeff fights science, but authority still always wins!
Comment by Martin James — October 7, 2015 @ 5:52 pm
I think the idea that there are moral “rules” is right. I wouldn’t couch it as rules but more as values that often are in tension with each other and with non-scientific values as well. While communism is a horrible term, the idea of a scientific community still seems a pretty key value. The reality is that even the great scientists like Einstein, Feynman or others were able to do what they did only because they were embedded in a community. In particular the relationship between the experimentalists and theoreticians is pretty key. Sometimes, as with string theory, that gets out of whack. But I think with string theory we see that when things get out of whack progress tends to be a bit weak.
Comment by Clark — October 8, 2015 @ 8:05 am
I think my question is whether both authority and science are within a larger value system of communication and cognitive framing or whether they are separate systems.
I get the feeling that Jeff G thinks that historically authority was co-extensive with the larger system but now there are two systems with science trying to appear like is is coextensive with a larger system and authority is within that system and subject to critique.
A few times he has said that all of our thinking is within a system but I don’t think he has really made explicit what creates those systems. Again I think he would say that that question only makes sense within the scientific system but I maintain that it is part of the communication system and that much of our communication system is conditioned by biology and not ideology. Science may describe the rods and cones in our eyes but it didn’t create the conceptualization of color and can’t make it go away by describing it differently.
I think he confuses nature with talk of nature.
Comment by Martin James — October 8, 2015 @ 12:35 pm
Clark, I don’t see the importance of the rules/values distinction within this context. Both can be internalized.
Martin, in this post I frame both science and religion as institutions that have rules/values that are internal to them. I don’t much care (within this context) how those rules and values operate upon each other or within society at large. This post was supposed to be about us realizing the source behind the values which we have internalized and thus intuitively feel to be right.
If we just feel inside that the values of religion (as I describe them) are wrong, then why is this? What is the explanation for these feelings? This, in turn, will help us understand better to what extent we can or should trust those feelings. It is a mini-genealogy of moral intuitions, if you will.
I also think that nature/nurture is a non-issue if ever there was one. This is especially the case since I almost entirely sideline psychological mechanisms/explanations altogether since they have nothing to do with how we go about the sociological practices of justifying and explaining ourselves to others.
Comment by Jeff G — October 8, 2015 @ 1:17 pm
To answer your somewhat off-topic question, though, yes the enlightenment which culminated in the French revolution just was the usurpation of religions strong correlation with and power within society at large by science.
In the same way that pre-modern society were compelled to receive their education through the church, now we are equally compelled by law to receive our education through institutions strongly associated with and even modeled upon science. If would be shocking if moral intuition didn’t turn against religious values through this historical transition.
Comment by Jeff G — October 8, 2015 @ 1:19 pm
The distinction between rules and values is how one adjudicates between them. Part of it might depend upon what one means by rules and how they can conflict with other rules. Usually the distinction is made to treat values and competing interests in tension one tries to balance as much as possible. Rules on the other hand typically have far less tension between them and one tends to follow them more strictly with less conflict.
Both can be internalized. But Merton treats them as moral obligations with the implication they all must be met in a strong way. Values are more important guidelines as a weaker form of obligation. He opposes that as you note. But of course we could then discuss what we mean by a moral obligation. Perhaps this distinction would evaporate. I
Comment by Clark — October 8, 2015 @ 2:48 pm
To add, I think the rules/values distinction is important when comparing religion and science. Religions tend to put more emphasis on rules (although not always – especially the more liberal kinds like Unitarianism or liberal protestantism). Science I think puts more emphasis on them being important guidelines.
This is why for instance communism is seen as dated. Lots of scientists keep data secret for various reasons. This is especially the case if the data was very hard to collect. However there’s also a lot of backlash against private data – especially the past decade. Merton sees this as a rule but many scientists see it as an ideal in tension with other values.
Comment by Clark — October 8, 2015 @ 2:51 pm
I think I agree with you. It sounds like you make values into unspoken rules, so to speak while rules are the institutionally enforced things that were written down somewhere. If this is the case, then I agree that Merton is more concerned with values than rules.
I agree that his description of how science is actually practiced now is a bit off/dated, especially in his communism section. That said, I think the public is still taught in school that scientists, as a rule, follow those the values as he describes them and, more importantly, that us students should too. Of course schools allow for exceptions to this rule (which is what it sounds like you’re saying as well), but the very fact that not having access to all information is an exception rather than a rule is very much associated with democratic/scientific values.
Comment by Jeff G — October 8, 2015 @ 3:13 pm
No – rules are more clearly defined. Values and vaguer and you are balancing them rather than trying to follow them. It’s the difference between “all raw measured data must be made publicly available” and “sharing information is important.”
Comment by Clark — October 8, 2015 @ 7:01 pm
Okay, but isn’t the exception to any rule just a case of rules being balanced off each other in the exact same way?
Comment by Jeff G — October 8, 2015 @ 9:59 pm
It seems the hermeneutic is a bit different.
Comment by Clark — October 9, 2015 @ 11:18 am
Jeff,
Sorry for being off-topic but I guess I thought what was one topic was that it makes no sense to talk about the moral structures of science and religion without talking about how individuals talk about values. I think that the moral trend is towards individuals as authority rather than either science or religion. It seems science is taking a bad rap (or is set up as a straw man) compared to the moral fact that moral legitimization today means saying “I believe that is wrong” without any appeal to any authority other than themselves. In fact science and religion are seen by many as part of the same patriarchal order that is immoral.
Again this may seem off topic, but I don’t know how else to talk about these values systems outside an understanding of how people frame morality.
Take alternative medicine for example. That is neither science not religion in a strong historical sense for Western society but it seems to me that your view of religious authority is similar to calling it alternative medicine in that it is alternative to science. But I don’t know that you conceive of it like alternative medicine.
I know that you don’t think I have evidence for this, but I just don’t know any people that really take authority seriously as a legitimizing factor. The real authority is always their own moral feeling. They quote authority when it matches their own moral feeling and change the subject when it does not. Pretty similarly so for science. I think morals are primarily biological and not that influenced by either science or religious authority. Behavior may be affected by those institutions but morals to a much lower extent. In other words, the particular ways that people act against conscience or else find institutions that match their conscience is what institutions determine.
Comment by Martin James — October 9, 2015 @ 1:54 pm
So you think that institutions do not shape our moral intuitions?
“They quote authority when it matches their own moral feeling and change the subject when it does not. Pretty similarly so for science.”
I actually agree with that quite a lot. Moral discourse it itself a strategic move performed by interested agents. This is a big part of my total rejection of any strict distinction between nature and nurture.
Comment by Jeff G — October 9, 2015 @ 3:48 pm
Jeff,
My main concern here is that I think “science” is not a good placeholder for “elite power structure of modern institutions”. So big education, big government, big media, big business are very important and only marginally related to big science. This is further complicated by the fact that science does affect what we call nature or nuture but I’m much more of the opinion that nature/nuture is outside the control of conscious human behavior.
The third level of difference is that I don’t see morality as a social process as being as central to mormonism as you do. Its just not a word that appears in scripture. To me, morality is one of the concepts the most tainted by science and philosophy. I know you are trying to use those conceptual tools against the institutions that created them but I think using those tools has bad consequences as a religious person.
Comment by Martin James — October 9, 2015 @ 4:20 pm
I haven’t thought this all out but the fact that non-religious people are perfectly happy to talk about morality and about authority makes justifications based on them suspect in my eyes.
Take the word sacred or sin. I would rather say that what matters is wholly the parts of morality that are incommensurate with morality. That it is only what goes beyond morality that matters religiously. That is why I think that seeing other religious people as having a common enemy in “science” is completely the wrong track. False gods are not sacred and people who are worshiping a completely different version of God are not worshiping anything sacred. So, a defense of historical versions of moral as authority strikes me as including so much that it can’t be a good justification of mormon theology or practices.
But I haven’t thought this all through yet.
Comment by Martin James — October 9, 2015 @ 4:30 pm
“I know you are trying to use those conceptual tools against the institutions that created them but I think using those tools has bad consequences as a religious person.”
I am open to this possibility… I just need more than a hunch to go along with it.
Comment by Jeff G — October 9, 2015 @ 4:47 pm
It leaves you unable to explain what makes something sacred. How about that?
Comment by Martin James — October 9, 2015 @ 5:21 pm
I don’t really care what makes something sacred in any metaphysical or objective sense if only because an empirical investigation into the matter is absolutely hopeless.
Instead, the best we can hope for is a model of the social structures that shape/structure/guide our pursuit of overlapping interests/incentives such that we are led to treat some things as sacred and others as profane. As Merton noted, there is an institutional pressure for scientists to treat EVERYTHING as profane, while in religion this is clearly not the case.
These social structures are both historical in nature and practically constrained (but not uniquely determined) by the non-social world. Thus, since there is nothing we can learn from a direct empirical investigation into the matter, once we have identified these factors (non-social constraints, inter-subjectively structured incentives and the historical shifts in these relations) there isn’t really anything more to say on the matter.
If this doesn’t count as an explanation then I don’t know what to tell you. The only systematic alternative I see to this is metaphysical speculation and I hope we can all agree that that would not be an improvement.
Comment by Jeff G — October 9, 2015 @ 6:18 pm
“I don’t really care what makes something sacred in any metaphysical or objective sense if only because an empirical investigation into the matter is absolutely hopeless.”
Why is it any more hopeless than anything else? I think the empirical investigation of how we experience the sacred will help us understand what is sacred. Plus, I think God wants us to find out empirically, also.
Comment by Martin James — October 9, 2015 @ 9:19 pm
I’m not even sure what you mean by that. Other than studying the ways we talk about and interact with sacred things, what else is there to “empirically investigate”?
Comment by Jeff G — October 10, 2015 @ 4:23 pm
What an intelligence is made of or where God lives, or what the physics of paradisiacal glory. I think only an obsolete understanding of empirical could make one think that those things are hopeless.
None of the scriptures could possible refer to the empirics or science we have now because they didn’t exist when the scriptures were written.
Comment by Martin James — October 11, 2015 @ 11:54 am
That’s right. I forgot that you have your own, very private definition of that term.
Comment by Jeff G — October 11, 2015 @ 4:07 pm
From Wikipedia:
“Empiricism in the philosophy of science emphasizes evidence, especially as discovered in experiments. It is a fundamental part of the scientific method that all hypotheses and theories must be tested against observations of the natural world rather than resting solely on a priori reasoning, intuition, or revelation.”
Comment by Jeff G — October 11, 2015 @ 4:08 pm
I’m not following. If the terms I referred to exist, then they can be addressed by experiment and observation. Is it possible that you don’t believe in them. the only world there is is the natural world.
Comment by Martin James — October 12, 2015 @ 11:43 am
Do you not believe Kolob can be see with a telescope?
Comment by Martin James — October 12, 2015 @ 11:44 am
It is just that “natural” doesn’t mean what it used to.
Comment by Martin James — October 12, 2015 @ 11:45 am
Here is a very simple one. What do you think the DNA of Jesus looked like? Mary’s and what?
If you don’t think it looked like Mary and God the father’s I don’t’ think you believe in the Mormon god.
Comment by Martin James — October 12, 2015 @ 11:53 am
Martin, nobody has studied any of those things empirically. Unless you can provide a way in which multiple people actually can do so, all of your hypothetical scenarios are simply whistling in the wind as far as empirical science goes.
I’m not against believing any of those things. What I am against is thinking we have any obligation to pretend that empirical science is at all relevant to such beliefs.
It is not mine, but your scientism that sees a strong link between a my refusal to call these things empirical and a supposed disbelief in their existence.
Comment by Jeff G — October 12, 2015 @ 12:34 pm
Put differently, if there had been a cam coder present at the first vision,i see no reason to insist that it would have recorded what Joseph saw. Maybe, maybe not. Why should we care? It is only scientific ideology that is on the line.
Comment by Jeff G — October 12, 2015 @ 12:43 pm
Martin (13) I think for some groups authority is quite important but you’re clearly right that it’s not for everyone. Perhaps for even a majority. That is authority gets used to attack ones enemies but not as a significant guiding principle. But then I tend to think identity politics rules most of the time.
While we may have moral drives that develop evolutionarily, I think how they manifest relative to specific questions will be shaped quite a bit by individual beliefs and cultural trappings. However I do think our moral concerns are driven by our biology. Often with differences between groups. (Think Haidt’s theories about how disgust relates to politics)
One way of seeing objective ethics within philosophy is looking at our moral intuitions and seeing what they lead to when we apply them more broadly and coherently.
Martin (26) there’s a theory that Kolob is Sirius but let’s be honest, it’s all speculative. The context for Kolob in the Book of Abraham appears to be from a relatively ignorant astronomical view that is looking at the issue from a geocentric perspective. In this case Sirius is Kolob because it was the brightest – although at the time of Abraham the north star was Thuban which fits the discussion quite well too. If we move to the period of the papyri then Kochab and Pherkad were twin stars around the north point.
Comment by Clark — October 12, 2015 @ 12:45 pm
I would say that this is a big point of contention between myself and Martin – and to a lesser extent Clark. Martin wants 1) there to be timeless, immutable and natural laws for truth, morality and meaning that exist fully outside of us like objects and 2) our own modern western-scientific ideas of truth, morality and meaning to match up with these eternal laws/objects. The idea of large amounts of cultural variation across time and space thus become very threatening to him. That is the only motivation I could ever imagine for a) drawing a strong line between variable culture stable biology and b) insisting the morality must fall on the biological side of this divide. His attempt to leverage “meaning” against the interpretations of authority figures also smacks of this same fear on his part.
Comment by Jeff G — October 12, 2015 @ 1:10 pm
If my critique of Martin above is correct, then I would suggest that genetic and biological engineering poses a massive threat to his views of morality, since it fully reverses the stable/variable relationship. If morality is based in an individual’s biological make-up, then what happens when that individual alters that make-up however they see fit? Whatever variability there exists at the cultural level, the idea of individuals unilaterally reinventing it at will is simply not an option.
Comment by Jeff G — October 12, 2015 @ 1:45 pm
JeffG,
Why do you keep ignoring it when I sya I’m not the least bit concerned with morality? What I’m concerned with is Mormonism and experience – both empirical and intuition. Morality is a side issue.
Comment by Martin James — October 12, 2015 @ 2:05 pm
Also, I’m not concerned with timeless, immutable laws. Now, I do believe that there is a connection between technology and science and experience but I’m completely open to that being a changing target.
I rarely use the term Western. Are the nuclear weapons produced in North Korea or Iran or India “western”. I don’t rule out experience that isn’t explained by science or communicated in the terms of science but I do have a bias towards a “univocal” assessment of experience rather than one that that is multi-vocal.
I do have some issues. But my main issue is people refusing to talk as they act which is that our consciousness or reason or identity or whatever the term of the week is, is a function of physical processes like other physical processes. Just because we don’t know the details doesn’t mean we don’t know there is a physical connection.
The most potent experiences in the world to me are that 1. People die. 2. Some substances make you feel different when you ingest them.
The rest is details.
Comment by Martin James — October 12, 2015 @ 2:13 pm
Not to say that I’m not threatened. It’s just that you are a threat in a different way than you think. I’m interested in Mormons and experience. Not morality and science. If you are right that morality is just authority speaking and that Mormonism is about morality. I’m fine to say bye, bye mormonism and it threatens me not one bit.
But what I am threatened by is that you convince some fellow travelers who may be trying to make sense of the experiences they have from a point of view that recognizes both science and Mormonism that they shouldn’t really try to do that because morality operates differently than science and that it is misguided to aim for that type of coherence.
I think your project is the wrong project from both the point of view of science and of mormonism.
Comment by Martin James — October 12, 2015 @ 2:31 pm
Well, I was responding more to Clark with that comment. I think it does speak quite directly to your own hopes and fears in our debates. In particular, you seem to think that minds and culture are the source of change and thus error while it is the natural universe itself, precisely because it is unchanging, that truth and rightness lie. Thus, you think that all revelation and intuition must be empirical in the scientific sense because otherwise such things might just be a changing and thus unreliable part of somebody’s mind/culture.
Every single element of this line of thinking is tightly bound up with the enlightenment liberalism which underpins the scientific tradition we are taught in school today:
-The idea that truth is based in impersonal and unchanging law rather than sovereign will
-The idea that truth must be publicly accessible/observable to all people equally
-The idea that culture/mind is distinct from nature and that former ought to align itself with the latter
Now, very much within the enlightenment tradition that emerged from these beliefs and values there emerged empirical science. This tradition insists that inasmuch as our beliefs are not based in what we have ALREADY observed publicly, but are instead derived from intuition, revelation, etc., they are to be rejected. It is not your watered down claim that as long as we can imagine a scenario in which these things might one day be publicly observable we can keep them. Thus, most all of your examples clearly fail this test. Thus, they are not a part of empirical science.
Good thing being a part of empirical science isn’t all that important…. which is what my main point has been all along, precisely because of its tensions with the examples you bring up.
Comment by Jeff G — October 12, 2015 @ 2:33 pm
“But what I am threatened by is that you convince some fellow travelers who may be trying to make sense of the experiences they have from a point of view that recognizes both science and Mormonism that they shouldn’t really try to do that because morality operates differently than science and that it is misguided to aim for that type of coherence.”
This paragraph is confused on a number of points.
1-I’m perfectly okay with people making sense of things with science. We’ve been over this.
2-Science is itself a kind of morality rather than something that stands apart from it. It in the name of the post.
3-My efforts are aimed at opening a second coherence between Mormonism and Science. If the first coherence that you seek is truly an open option (and it very well might be), then it shouldn’t be threatened by the tensions that I point out which are themselves a part of science.
Comment by Jeff G — October 12, 2015 @ 2:41 pm
You just don’t think it is important to know how we can tell the ten tribes from the 9 or 11 tribes and I think it is very important. You don’t have an account of how we know what it means for there to be 10 tribes.
After all, if 10 is not immutable what does it mean to say 10 tribes?
Also, you don’t care what it means to say “literal” before gathering of Israel. How do we know if it is a Literal gathering of Israel if we don’t have something immutable at least on the scale of a few thousand years.
I just have a hard time believing that anyone could find your perspective a wholesome experience. I’m not morally opposed to this kind of bad faith, I’m opposed to it as an experience. I do believe that is is cognitively impairing to such an extent that morality is not possible. I’m not threatened by your lack of morality, just that it reduces by 1 (plus any converts) the number of people that experience the world in a wholesome and satisfying way.
Comment by Martin James — October 12, 2015 @ 2:44 pm
“You just don’t think it is important to know how we can tell the ten tribes from the 9 or 11 tribes and I think it is very important. You don’t have an account of how we know what it means for there to be 10 tribes.”
I have no clue where any of this came from. How does my attempt to get people to come and stand outside of the liberal scientific tradition in order to see it as the historical tradition that it is and use it accordingly entail any of these things? I’m not even sure what such question even mean, let alone how or why I should go about answering them.
Comment by Jeff G — October 12, 2015 @ 2:50 pm
If you’re saying that I don’t think it’s important for science to know about the 10 tribes, then I absolutely agree with you, if only because I see no reason why science has anything to do with that prophecy. Again, I think you’re falling victim to your own inability to see science as just one more interpretive scheme among many alternatives. Indeed, one interpretive scheme that came along millennia after the prophecy was uttered.
Comment by Jeff G — October 12, 2015 @ 2:54 pm
JeffG,
What I’m talking about has relatively little to do with “science” as you are referring to it because “science” has not theory of consciousness. None, zero, zip. It is hypocritical in the extreme in that it uses terms with a folk psychology that it excludes from scientific critique.
I’m not arguing necessarily for publicly observable to all people equally. Since I think that people are things it could very much be the case that different experiences are very likely not open to all. Take Down’s syndrome people. Your typical mormon basically just says “Well, I guess God will figure it out” with respect to the moral status of people like this or the demented. I think that these cases are some of our best insight into the mind of God and what right and wrong are.
You keep saying that my position depends on enlightenment liberalism but I offer example after example of where my concerns differ and you address them through tying them to a particular institutional development.
This doesn’t explain why I’m concerned with Mormonism for example. What does a typical enlightenment liberal of scientist care about Mormonism? Nothing because they don’t really care about what it means to be a thinking thing. They are post-cartesians in precisely the wrong way.
Comment by Martin James — October 12, 2015 @ 2:57 pm
Martin,
That is one, VERY narrow part of the post-enlightenment tradition. You showing that you do not belong to that narrow stripe says nothing about whether you’re still drinking the enlightenment kool-aid. Vast amounts of thinkers within this tradition care about experience just as much as you do (as Clark could very easily show you).
My arguments apply to how we talk about experience, something that is fully empirical in the strongest sense. Perhaps we can move beyond talking about experience-talk and actually talk about experience itself. Perhaps. But, since no two people ever have access to the same set of experiences, there is simply no hope that this could ever be scientific in anything but the most abnormal sense.
For someone like me, this isn’t a problem. I see such talk as being VERY morally important, despite being totally unscientific. Indeed, this conclusion pretty much follows from an analysis of experience/talk.
Comment by Jeff G — October 12, 2015 @ 3:13 pm
“What I’m talking about has relatively little to do with “science” as you are referring to it because “science” has not theory of consciousness.”
Why the scare quotes? The science I refer to is simply science as it is practiced and taught within any classroom or lab. It seems like your idea of “real” science is one which refers to a practice that has never actually existed in this world.
The way I see it, is that while you certainly wouldn’t fully buy into all science as it exists now (their rejection of experience, etc.) or at any other time in history, you still insist that science will, one day, triumph and bestow upon us all the blessings that it has promised us (by somehow including experience, etc), even though there is little to no evidence that this will be the case.
Science originally gained currency because it was a form of theology which would later express itself as natural theology. Scientists depended upon this connection between theology and science in order for the later to be taught in universities all the way until the end of the 19th century, when “scientist” became a profession that could justify its own existence without religious backing.
I see this same strange mixture of religious authority mixed with scientific practice in your comments. It’s like you acknowledge that science as it has actually existed in this world does indeed suffer from all the criticisms that I bring against it… BUT we should still believe its exalted claims because religion says so.
I, on the other hand, see no reason to endorse this tight relationship between the two.
Comment by Jeff G — October 12, 2015 @ 3:48 pm
“you’re still drinking the enlightenment kool-aid. ”
it is more than a bit ironic that you use that particular construction because it is the classic enlightenment insult of the non-enlightened. That is that science wins in that the physically poisoned kool-aid kills non-enlightenment minds.
So, since I’m drinking the kool-aid I must be post-enlightenment.
“But, since no two people ever have access to the same set of experiences, there is simply no hope that this could ever be scientific in anything but the most abnormal sense.”
I still have never figured out how for purposes of “authority talk” we can be sure that we understand authority (that they aren’t being sarcastic or ironic for example) but thinking this way scientifically is hopeless.
Why isn’t all talk (and all moral talk) hopeless?
If there is one thing we know is that science now is extremely abnormal. There are all manner of scientists now that are trying out theories that may be non-falsifiable but are mathematically or conceptually appealing or that they think are consequences of related theories that are falsifiable.
By the way, with respect to “This is completely counter to an institution where a person’s ordination and stewardship limit the scope of what is said.”
“And who is my neighbor?” I think this is how Jesus says “Scope my #$@!”
Comment by Martin James — October 12, 2015 @ 3:54 pm
I use the scare quotes because no one has ever done science the way you think science is taught in the classroom. The dead-ends, political infighting. Max Tegmark has some good stuff about this in his book The Mathematical Universe. There is the day to day science where philosophy and speculation are banned and are bad for the career and there are the big questions and the heroes that make their own way. Science as you see it has all kinds of examples where people who violate scientific values are later brought back into the fold when science decides they were right.
What is your word for what people are doing when they aren’t doing science at the time bu they are doing science later.
Comment by Martin James — October 12, 2015 @ 4:03 pm
“I still have never figured out how for purposes of “authority talk” we can be sure that we understand authority (that they aren’t being sarcastic or ironic for example) but thinking this way scientifically is hopeless.”
This might be somewhat helpful, since I can’t figure out for the life of me why my views imply that meaning doesn’t exist. If you think that we understand each other simply by reading each other’s minds then I guess that would make sense. But why in the world should we believe anything like that?
Maybe if you said something about what you think meaning is, then I would be able to respond to your issue. As things stand, I have literally have no clue why you think that my model actively prohibits our understanding of one another.
Is it because my model doesn’t seem dualistic in that it doesn’t acknowledge or appeal to a spiritual realm of mind and meaning? Even if I don’t appeal to such things, I certainly do not rule them out either.
Comment by Jeff G — October 12, 2015 @ 4:08 pm
My point of view is that we need to move beyond both science as we have practiced it and religion as we have practiced it. It seems clear to me that both are changing and will continue to change. It is the rear-view mirror view of religion as better in it’s historical sense that I find particularly lacking in appreciation of divinity. God is obviously and continually telling us that things are obsolete. Why do I need a justification of authority to recognize revelation when I hear it? All it does is make it harder to hear and respond to new revelation. It’s the revelations that matter not that they come from authority.
Authority is a fetish.
Comment by Martin James — October 12, 2015 @ 4:10 pm
I think the only reason we can understand one another (when we do) is because the structure of our minds are creating an experience that is similar in the appropriate way.
Comment by Martin James — October 12, 2015 @ 4:13 pm
In other words meaning exists because dualism is false.
Comment by Martin James — October 12, 2015 @ 4:14 pm
“Science as you see it has all kinds of examples where people who violate scientific values are later brought back into the fold when science decides they were right.”
Because that is exactly what the historical record shows. If you ignore what scientists say they do (especially in the philosophy of science or, even worse, “popularizations”) and actually look at what they do (you know, the empirical data) you get a very different picture. These finding have has been confirmed in many, many different ways and it has never been empirically challenged, only on moralistic grounds (which are themselves non-trivial).
Comment by Jeff G — October 12, 2015 @ 4:17 pm
Morality exists because certain states of our brain (in a sufficiently advanced physics) correspond with certain beliefs about a God (who also exists in a sufficiently advanced physics).
Comment by Martin James — October 12, 2015 @ 4:18 pm
I’m saying that the real picture matters. You seem to think the moral caricature matters. What did I miss?
Comment by Martin James — October 12, 2015 @ 4:20 pm
Is it agreeing with you to say that I don’t care about science as a values creating institution, but I care a lot about the ways of being that it opens up for us.
Comment by Martin James — October 12, 2015 @ 4:21 pm
You got me so threatened with the misplaced threats, that I can’t think straight.
It is like guy that got divorce papers served and instead of his name, his wife’s lovers name is there!
Comment by Martin James — October 12, 2015 @ 4:23 pm
“I think the only reason we can understand one another (when we do) is because the structure of our minds are creating an experience that is similar in the appropriate way.”
How in the world could anybody ever know this since nobody has ever had another person’s experience in order to compare them? Can’t you see that this theory amounts to nothing more than making things up that can’t be disconfirmed and is thus the opposite of empirical science? The best we can ever do is compare what people say about their experiences… which is exactly what my model does.
“Authority is a fetish.”
I challenge you to justify this without appealing to an authority of some kind. Authority is always present, even if you object to one particular distribution of it. For example, “Why do I need a justification of authority to recognize revelation when I hear it?” just is to acknowledge the authority of the Revealer!
Comment by Jeff G — October 12, 2015 @ 4:23 pm
I am the authority, obviously.
Comment by Martin James — October 12, 2015 @ 4:25 pm
That is the whole point of mormonism, no?
Comment by Martin James — October 12, 2015 @ 4:26 pm
“Morality exists because certain states of our brain (in a sufficiently advanced physics) correspond with certain beliefs about a God (who also exists in a sufficiently advanced physics).”
Your theories are getting less and less empirical as we go along. This wouldn’t be bad if I saw some other way of supporting them (they are presupposed by moral discourse, or supported by scripture), but sadly I do not. If you’re faulting my model of social interaction because it doesn’t live up to your particular theory of meaning as you’ve explained it, then I’m perfectly comfortable with that.
Comment by Jeff G — October 12, 2015 @ 4:29 pm
When the technology is sufficiently good, we will be able to see what makes us have certain concepts in our mind. Then we will be able to manipulate those concepts in ways that we agree upon outside any particular authority other than us agreeing that our experience is a certain way when the technology says it is a certain way.
So, really I’m not after a science of experience, I’m just after a science good enough to get a technology of experience where I can control all my experience.
Comment by Martin James — October 12, 2015 @ 4:29 pm
I just to understand you and then you completely lose me. Don’t those institutions affect our moral vocabularies by changing our brains in an empirically identifiable way?
Comment by Martin James — October 12, 2015 @ 4:31 pm
“That is the whole point of mormonism, no?”
Baptizing yourself and sealing yourself to yourself? I suppose you are in charge of excommunicating yourself once you judge yourself to fall into apostasy? No, your self-authorization is not the point of Mormonism.
“When the technology is sufficiently good, we will be able to see what makes us have certain concepts in our mind.”
Says who? What authority are you appealing to here? It certainly isn’t empirical data.
Comment by Jeff G — October 12, 2015 @ 4:32 pm
Do you really not think that there is an empirically identifiable difference from a brain using your “science values” and a brain using your “authority values”?
Comment by Martin James — October 12, 2015 @ 4:33 pm
“Don’t those institutions affect our moral vocabularies by changing our brains in an empirically identifiable way?”
Yes. So what? What makes you think that brain states = meaning? That is the exact opposite of what current cognitive science suggests.
Comment by Jeff G — October 12, 2015 @ 4:34 pm
“Do you really not think that there is an empirically identifiable difference from a brain using your “science values” and a brain using your “authority values”?”
I don’t care about what brains do. People got along just fine for millenia while having no idea what a brain did at all. We don’t morally judge or baptize brains, we morally judge and baptize complete people.
Comment by Jeff G — October 12, 2015 @ 4:35 pm
The arguments may not be specifically empirical but the overall concept certainly is empirical in a large number of ways. Physically identifiable brain damage affects moral thinking in physically identifiable ways.
Comment by Martin James — October 12, 2015 @ 4:39 pm
“People got along just fine for millenia while having no idea what a brain did at all.”
No they did not. I don’t think you can call the record of history “fine” under either religious or non-religious conceptions. Whether one says “nasty, brutish and short” or living in apostasy, it was most certainly not fine.
Comment by Martin James — October 12, 2015 @ 4:44 pm
“I don’t care about what brains do”
This is the heart of the matter right here. I don’t think a Christian person can love his neighbor without caring about what brains do. God has revealed to us more and more about the nature of brains so we can use it to love our neighbor better and you want to say that none of that matters. That be we ignorant or be we aware of what brains do, it is morally the same how we follow authority. That is just plain wrong.
Comment by Martin James — October 12, 2015 @ 4:47 pm
That is whey cognitive science and artificial intelligence so far haven’t made faster progress.
Comment by Martin James — October 12, 2015 @ 4:49 pm
Ok, the threat chemicals have lowered their concentrations. I still can’t figure out why the form of this authority thing is so important to you over the content of the authority statements.
Comment by Martin James — October 12, 2015 @ 4:55 pm
“Physically identifiable brain damage affects moral thinking in physically identifiable ways.”
Yeah, lot’s of things can do that. Nobody doubts that the brain plays an important role. What you seem to doubt is that there are other roles that need to be played as well by other people within our social environments.
“Whether one says “nasty, brutish and short” or living in apostasy, it was most certainly not fine.”
They survived and reproduced just fine. The entire Bible is filled with positive examples of people who lived just fine without knowing about the brain. And when Joseph went to the grove he was not taught neurophysiology.
“I don’t think a Christian person can love his neighbor without caring about what brains do.”
Tough break for the original apostles…. and probably Jesus Himself too.
“God has revealed to us more and more about the nature of brains so we can use it to love our neighbor better and you want to say that none of that matters.”
The same can be said for any and all knowledge that can be put to good use…. even my model. What I object to, then, is how you try to raise religious objections to my model that are in fact based in quasi-scientific theories that are little more than metaphysical speculations.
Comment by Jeff G — October 12, 2015 @ 4:57 pm
” is how you try to raise religious objections to my model that are in fact based in quasi-scientific theories that are little more than metaphysical speculations.”
Fair enough.
But, I would say Joseph Smith left us with religious objections based in quasi-scientific theories that are little more than metaphysical speculations.
I mean what is this?
6. It is impossible for a man to be saved in ignorance.
7 There is no such thing as immaterial matter. All spirit is matter, but it is more fine or pure, and can only be discerned by purer eyes;
8 We cannot see it; but when our bodies are purified we shall see that it is all matter.
Comment by Martin James — October 12, 2015 @ 5:24 pm
“I would say Joseph Smith left us with religious objections based in quasi-scientific theories that are little more than metaphysical speculations.”
This is exactly why authority is important. To think that your metaphysical musings are fully on the par with his is about as un-Mormon as it gets.
Comment by Jeff G — October 12, 2015 @ 5:46 pm
Fair enough. Likewise with your musings on authority.
Comment by Martin James — October 12, 2015 @ 6:03 pm
A good P**ing match is quite mormon, however!
Comment by Martin James — October 12, 2015 @ 6:05 pm
At least as long as the church has boy scout troops anything. Goodnight.
Comment by Martin James — October 12, 2015 @ 6:06 pm
Too true, my friend. Too true. :)
Comment by Jeff G — October 12, 2015 @ 6:13 pm
JeffG,
Ok, how about this thread. Dang, I was trying to actually apply what you said about authority and I can’t get it right. I’ll try to tie it back to what you have said. I thought you have said that current prophets are more important than dead ones and that the proper way to address issues was one’s current leader.
So, I’m reading this thread about degrees of glory and I’m reading different interpretations and I’m thinking, this seems like a great place to try out what JeffG has been saying. In other words, I’m trying to learn what it means to think of the church as lines of authority relative to what the 3 degrees of glory are all about.
So, the first thought I had was that I should put the most weight on the comments that had the most current references. But there weren’t that many. Then I got thinking about what that means. In other words, does the fact that there are not that many recent references play an important role in the discussion and so I thought I would ask you.
I guess I’m over-generalizing how important current authority is, but I’m not sure. Which norms do you see as ruling the day in that discussion? Authority norms or other norms. Again, I’m trying to understand your whole approach in the context of typical mormon discussions like the one that was posted.
Comment by Martin James — October 15, 2015 @ 2:15 pm
Martin,
Sorry if I misunderstood the thread placement. That thread was almost 10 years old and the relevance wasn’t obvious to me. To answer that specific question, I don’t really care about the theological issue that threads like that discuss. Indeed, a big part of what follows from my position is that systematic theology is largely bunk. (Sorry Geoff!)
“In other words, does the fact that there are not that many recent references play an important role in the discussion and so I thought I would ask you.”
I think it does. I am fully on board with an inspired forgetting in place of a fully articulated repudiation. Both of these serve their separate purposes, but I think an inspired forgetting is something that the more theologically minded have a more difficult time wrapping their heads around. For them, clear articulation for or against something is the only path to truth (this is the epitome of enlightenment thinking!) while I think that silence on many issue is often the right path to truth. In other words, I fully allow that it might be immoral to both assert and deny a proposition while this smacks of contradiction and/or obfuscation to the modern mind.
Where the line is between 1) this inspired, and morally enforced forgetting and 2) authorities simply not taking public a stand either way on the issue is vague. After all, how can they explicitly tell us to forget something without thereby drawing attention to it? I think the line is probably when the authorities start deriding discussions on the topic as “fruitless”, “speculative”, etc.
With regards to the 3 degrees thing, I don’t think the leaders have done this very much. Personally, however, I fear that indulging in such theological musings can be somewhat dangerous (speaking from experience) not because you are necessarily saying bad things, but because it reinforces intellectual/modern modes of thinking such that dead prophets come to be pitted against living prophets, etc.
Comment by Jeff G — October 15, 2015 @ 3:51 pm
Someone must have posted something new because the comment was at the top of the list.
Your answer was very useful. In other words, I can ignore theology that doesn’t seem relevant to current talks of the prophets. You can count me as a semi-convert on that score.
What I would like to get you to think more about is the pragmatics of understanding talks that use words to me that allow for a wide range of understanding and consequence.
I want to try to get you to think hard about all the non-science words that are used by the prophets but mean new and potentially different things to people (maybe more often the young but not always) today.
A simple example would be if a prophet said “treat people with respect”. This may mean entirely different things to a 25 year old than a 85 year old in ways neither are completely aware of.
My impression is that you think my concern is a straw man or smoke screen or just not that common. I think it is at least as core to the “enlightenment values” concern you have as the science part is.
I think that because of this difference across generations in the meaning of words or in social manners or worldview or whatever way makes the most sense to you, some people see hypocrisy or just have cognitive dissonance when they hear the prophets.
Take my example about knowing about brains and loving people. In 100 A.D. not knowing about autism (for example) would not be unloving. In 2015 not knowing in pretty specific detail about something like autism would make it hard to effectively love someone with autism.
This complexity and intertwining of all the day-to-day detail of live which includes enlightenment values with words from authority which are almost necessarily vague due to the broad circumstances of the membership I think is a major, major issue.
It is just hard to try and function in both worlds at once. Enlightenment values are so much part of who we are that trying to separate them out is really, really hard. For science, it may be a bit easier because the prophets don’t say that much about science.
For something like respect it is both harder and more important. That is why I sometimes emphasize that we don’t disagree about authority. I just think it is hard to get different people on the same page about what the authorities are saying. You may say that is no big deal, let them interpret it how they want until they are kicked out (for example). I think that leaves considerable uncertainty for people. What does a parent tell a daughter who is a feminist about where the line is where feminism becomes fighting authority? Does Kate Kelly getting excommunicated mean feminism is wrong or just that making protests is wrong?
I don’t know what to say to my kids about questions like that or what to believe myself about it. Elder Nelson talked about men crying and women being strong, so clearly traditional gender roles isn’t what the prophets want.
Please post more about your pragmatics. It would help see this in action.
Comment by Martin James — October 15, 2015 @ 5:10 pm
I still *STILL* have no clue why this is a more of a problem for me than any other theory. You have never explained that and its frustrating hearing this same thing over and over. Why can’t I say that exact same thing about every thing you’ve ever written? After all, is meaning is that big of a problem, then you shouldn’t even understand my theory enough to object to it.
“I think that because of this difference across generations in the meaning of words or in social manners or worldview or whatever way makes the most sense to you, some people see hypocrisy or just have cognitive dissonance when they hear the prophets.”
I 100% agree with this. Indeed, why model specifically entails this.
“This complexity and intertwining of all the day-to-day detail of live which includes enlightenment values with words from authority which are almost necessarily vague due to the broad circumstances of the membership I think is a major, major issue.”
Why? This is an empirical fact: people do as a matter of fact misinterpret each other this way. A model that didn’t allow this would be worthless. The solution is simply asking more questions such that we gradually whittle away false interpretations, but not to any unique interpretation since this is both impossible and undesirable.
“I just think it is hard to get different people on the same page about what the authorities are saying.”
It’s not always necessary or desirable that people be on the exact same page. In almost all cases, the prophets are simply ruling out some pages while leaving us completely open to choose among what remain.
“Does Kate Kelly getting excommunicated mean feminism is wrong or just that making protests is wrong?”
What her bishop does with and says to her is absolutely none of my business and as such it doesn’t matter one bit whether I’m on the same page as her or her bishop. It only matters that I’m not on one of the pages that my own leaders have ruled out.
Again, my response boils down to this: My model is not a description of linguistic understanding and as such I do not care. If you could show me why this is more of a problem for my model than for anybody else, then I might be interested but it seems that you keep expecting me to do a job that I never pretended to be doing.
Comment by Jeff G — October 15, 2015 @ 5:52 pm
OK, I’ll agree with you that it is no more of a problem for your theory than any other and that is my issue and not yours that I think it is an issue for EVERY theory yours included. From that perspective, you don’t need to answer my concerns.
However, there is an aspect of your theory that I think makes it a key practical issue for your theory. It is this. As I understand it, you are trying to enhance an understanding of older ways of understanding truth and morality and show that certain current ways of understanding those concepts and practices are not exclusive.
What I am saying is that if I take your position seriously, which I am trying to do, it forces a reconsideration of meaning and the presumed method (I think you would say the presumption is wrong or inadequate so i’m just calling it the presumption) of determining meaning.
For example, I think you are saying that there is no empirical method of determining truth about divinity or determining who has authority. What i am pointing out is that if I follow you in that direction and just try to look to the consequences, I see what appears to me to be lots of uncertainty about what authority means.
I think your reply is that there is lots of uncertainty with or without your theory. The difference is that in your version, it seems like the ordinary enlightenment tools are suspect. The issue comes up because I don’t know when the authority approach does or does not change how meaning is established and moral decision making is done (or justified but I’m not as concerned as you about justification, I’m concerned about decision making.)
The analogy I would make is that of the legal system. There it is clear the hierarchy of the courts matters and there are procedures for determining who has authority. I think the analogy to the authority structure holds. But what is the equivalent of the legal profession? Even where everyone agrees what the authority is, there is considerable uncertainty about what authority will decide and how they will decide it. You get a much larger group of people all trying to influence authority from outside of authority. Each legal system has its own method of influencing authority ( legal training, bribery, elections, etc.)
You seem to want the authority structure but without much in the way of lobbying, interpreting, understanding authority.
I don’t understand how your theory of authority expands to any kind of sociological understanding of how authority is followed in the real world. I think those are issues that should matter for your theory even under your own terms.
Back to my issues. I would go further and say that I don’t think the problem you want addressed by reminding people of this older, more legitimate understanding of truth really gets solved by reminding them of that because I think the problem is that we have new cases and the court hasn’t been ruling on these new cases and so people are seeking out ways of answering them outside authority because authority has either been silent or so vague as to be non-responsive.
I don’t have a problem with authority being vague because I don’t have a problem applying enlightenment reason to what authority has said and making acceptable conclusions. But people who are relying on authority do have a problem because authority isn’t providing much in the way of specific answers.
I think I am misunderstanding you and being frustratingly repetitive because I don’t have enough pragmatic, real world examples of where there is a real difference between applying scripture in a enlightenment framework and applying it in an authority is the source of truth framework.
I have seen you apply the authority defensively to rule certain critiques of authority as illegitimate, but I haven’t seen you apply it to many specific questions in an affirmative way.
To summarize, if your main goal is to defend authority from critique and open an alternative method of legitimating truth you have convinced me. I won’t argue those points.
I just don’t think it gets us very far. One specific example is that many of the high-profile people recently excommunicated think they were using an authority approach not an enlightenment approach. Denver Snuffer, Kate Kelly, etc. They are both saying prophetic statements matter. You might say that’s preposterous because they violated specific instructions. I would argue that is true but I think they thought they were in a bind that authority was telling them inconsistent things. Even if you don’t believe that in their case I think it certainly happens to many others.
Thanks
Comment by Martin James — October 16, 2015 @ 9:27 am
This is a much more approachable comment.
“I think you are saying that there is no empirical method of determining truth about divinity or determining who has authority.”
On the one hand, I would say that there is no purely empirical method of evaluating anything at all. On the other, I would never want to rule out all empirical content altogether either. For example, people witnessing an ordination would clearly include empirical content, but it includes more than just empirical content. As far as personal revelation goes, I would say that there is no empirical content at all, but this doesn’t mean that there is no content of any kind or that there is no moral content. (Indeed, I insist that all moral content must come from non-empirical sources.)
“I don’t know when the authority approach does or does not change how meaning is established and moral decision making is done”
I think a problem here is that we can evaluate or justify such decisions independent of a larger community – something which I totally reject. You seem to be saying that each person must independently identify authority figures and then worry about their interaction with those figures and nothing else. This is not what I am saying (I admit that I haven’t made this clear). My model absolutely requires a minimum of your two positions (me and the authority figure) and a third position (the rest of the community) which also evaluates my relationship to the authority figure. In other words, the authority figure does not enforce their own authority since such a naked and direct power struggle is the exact opposite of authority. Rather, what authority amounts to is when the community enforces each individual’s relationship to the authority figure. In my models, I, the author, am attempting to assume the position of the community since I am passing judgement on and evaluating other people’s relationship to the authority figures of the church.
Thus, to answer you question a bit more directly, no individual ever determines the locate or validity of authority. Rather, a community must do this together. Thus, if we truly question who the authority figure is, we simply ask around (prayer being one form of asking around).
“Each legal system has its own method of influencing authority ( legal training, bribery, elections, etc.)”
I hope from the above it is clear that merely having the power to influence somebody else does not amount to authority. Such power as you describe is a two-person relationship while authority is a 3-person relationship. Bribery would be a form of authority only if the community at large morally legitimates such influence.
“people are seeking out ways of answering them outside authority because authority has either been silent or so vague as to be non-responsive”
But this just is the point that I am fighting against, namely the idea that what happens to other people within their own, separate wards, is ours to decide in any sense at all. Without this presupposition there is no reason to think that the church ought to publicly deal with such things in any specific or pointed manner. The whole point of stewardship is that universal rules should be kept to a minimum and left rather vague so that the authorities are more able to flexibly adapt to their specific stewardships. In other words, I’m not trying to answer their question; I arguing that theirs is a bad question that was never supposed to be answered.
“But people who are relying on authority do have a problem because authority isn’t providing much in the way of specific answers.”
If people aren’t able to get specific answers that are well-adapted to their own lives from the Highest Authority then they have nobody to complain about except themselves. When they start going public with it, they have already denied the parochial nature of both their own and the church authorities’ stewardships. In other words, they make themselves into false prophets.
“I have seen you apply the authority defensively to rule certain critiques of authority as illegitimate, but I haven’t seen you apply it to many specific questions in an affirmative way.”
I think it basically follows from my position that I’m probably not authorized to be all that affirmative in my use of my model. I am much more concerned with exposing distortions to church authority and gospel truth from unauthorized sources than I am or ever will be with actually teaching that truth (there are lot’s of blogs that do the latter, not many at all the do the former).
“I would argue that is true but I think they thought they were in a bind that authority was telling them inconsistent things.”
Exactly!!!! That’s how we can be sure that they are NOT paying attention to stewardships. The only way that contradictions emerge is when we compare statements from two equal authorities and the church is specifically designed such that no two people have the same authority. What these people like to do is
1) treat all authorities (living and dead) as equal,
2) show that these authorities have taught different things,
3) insist that we can’t obey all of them, and
4) pick and choose those which are most consistent with the morality that they we taught in the secular schools.
My model says that (1) is already wrong and that the rest of their thinking is like being downstream from a sewage plant.
1*) No two authorities are equal.
2*) These authorities are supposed to teach different things.
3*) We were never supposed to obey all of them.
4*) To pick and choose ourselves what we obey is to place ourselves as equals with the authority in question and thus become a false prophet.
You will also notice that the false idea that we ought to maximize the overlap and consistency between science and religion is exactly what fuels (4). The basic argument is to say that since church authorities contradict each other and cannot be trusted, we will rely on those secular authorities that we can trust. “You think the scripture says this, I think it says that… so we’ll let science break the tie.” This just is to make unauthorized, false prophets out of scientists.
Comment by Jeff G — October 16, 2015 @ 1:37 pm
Put a bit more simply:
1) I have no advice whatsoever for authority figures since I am not one.
2) It may look like I am aimed to saying how we ourselves ought to think about and approach authority figures…. But even this isn’t totally right, since I am not a good example of this either and I’m the last person to call somebody else out for their disobedience.
3) Rather, my primary aim is to help us better judge and evaluate how people think about and approach authority figures. With this, I am fully on board and to the extent that I’m on board with (2) its because I am trying to help others judge and evaluate how I myself think about and judge authority figures.
Comment by Jeff G — October 16, 2015 @ 2:11 pm
I will think about this. It is so much more work for me to write a clear comment…
Comment by Martin James — October 16, 2015 @ 4:56 pm
Have a good weekend.
Comment by Martin James — October 16, 2015 @ 4:56 pm
I understand, and I do appreciate how much effort you’re putting into wrapping your head around this. (To be honest, I’m not sure why you’re doing it, but I have no complaints on that point.)
I don’t know how much they help you, but spelling out and numbering the steps of the arguments really helps me clarify my own thinking. It helps keep distinctions and dependencies from blurring into each other.
Comment by Jeff G — October 16, 2015 @ 5:33 pm
Motives are always hard to ascribe, even or even especially one’s own.
Consider the following:
1. The people who think long and hard about things.
2. The people who have a Mormon connection.
3. The people who are willing to critique and be critiqued on their ideas.
The intersection of those sets is small enough that the people in that set deserve each other’s very best effort. Think of what hard work it has been to even start to understand each other. But without that effort it is hard to get the full benefit of thinking.
Here is a an analogical narrative about it. In some sense you have built a bridge across a chasm of two ways of thinking and are inviting others to use it or build their own off of your design.
I look at myself as helping to be sure the bridge can handle all the people that might walk across it. I don’t want to stress test the bridge with you on it, but I do want to point out that the more stress tests it goes under the better the bridge can be. I think you may be thinking it is just my little bridge not some public highway and it works for me so find your own dang bridge if you don’t think mine is safe. But I believe that lots and lots of people need to cross the chasm and some of them will be driving big cars with lots of children and belongings. It is our joint duty to build the best darn bridge that we can.
There are all kinds of voices on the bloggernacle, some saying there is no chasm or you can’t or shouldn’t get from one side to the other or that you can only do it by plane or alone or as a group or at night and lots more. I find very few voices that can really contemplate the perspective of others. I figure that it is my duty to at least engage a few able and willing to bear the weight of another’s stress test of their bridge.
Or maybe I’m just the troll under the bridge..,
Comment by Martin James — October 17, 2015 @ 7:45 am
I haven’t thought about this clearly but hear are a few ideas floating around in my head.
1. You haven’t written much at all about how the community discusses authority other than to critique one framework related to modern science and educational power and offer an alternative framework of an earlier concept of authority. Furthermore, (and I may be making this up, so if it is wrong, just ignore it) you have pushed back against any part of how the community operates a discussion of a sociological analysis of what the community is doing when it discusses authority. In the most extreme versions, you have said that a theory of how the community decides between these theories can’t be made from outside the discussion itself and so it is either biased or irrelevant.
2. The point I have been arguing is that the route you are suggesting for the community is so much at odds with LDS practices as to be not compelling or realistic on pragmatic grounds.
3. A few examples. For the most part the church authorities want to support the secular authorities and not be seen as having a completely different moral vocabulary. For example, “fairness” or “liberty” are concepts that they want to support with a moral understanding that seems very different from the one you are proposing for authority within the church.
4. They are obviously threatened by changing norms for religious liberty but fully support the usual secular process for determining rights. I think it is difficult for people for people to “code switch” between different moralities and truth that are as extreme as an ancient notion of stewardship and authority. I’d just like more examples and discussion of how you see this working in practice.
5. I think that the schools are a much less important transmitter of community norms than the media and popular culture particularly for norms that are changing rapidly.
Comment by Martin James — October 29, 2015 @ 1:51 pm
JeffG,
Here is an excerpt from a talk given at Stanford University posted on the Mormon newsroom
“Latter-day Saint doctrine is unique and unequivocal about the role of intelligence and the importance of education and knowledge. In section 93 of our Doctrine and Covenants we are taught that:
1.Truth is independent—it “is knowledge of things as they are, and as they were, and as they are to come” (D&C 93:24).
2.“The glory of God is intelligence, or, in other words, light and truth” (D&C 93:36).
3.Exercising our agency, our right and power to choose, to find light and truth is essential.”
What I am interested in is what you think is meant by the term “independent” in number 1?
Comment by Martin James — October 30, 2015 @ 11:40 am
by Elder Cook
Comment by Martin James — October 30, 2015 @ 11:41 am
Well, there are two responses, neither one of which fully refutes the point you’re making.
1) What would you think if earlier prophets in the NT had said that truth was something different? If you agree with our living prophets over those dead ones, then you actually agree with me. What if President TSM said in the next conference that it was something other than what Cook says? If you would abandon the latter in favor of the former, you agree with me.
2) There is a difference in my model between a description from the inside of a culture and one from the outside. Mine is most definitely one from the outside, akin to the anthropologist who studies tribal cultures, scientific communities, etc. Elder Cook, on the other hand, is quite obviously from the inside of Mormon culture. Now, on the one hand, I would never expect these two types of descriptions to match up with each other at all. In this sense, I do not see Elder Cook’s statement as a refutation of my model.
HOWEVER (huge however), it might very well be the case that within Mormon culture it is immoral to take the “external” perspective on some issues. In this case, you could argue that my model is immoral for Mormons. I definitely acknowledge that this could be the case. I’m just not convinced that it is actually the case.
In the end, I see statements like Elder Cooks as protecting the church against a VERY dangerous type of moral relativism that is not constrained by anything at all (basically, the standard post-modernism that is used to attack religion, science and any other attempt at “controlling” or “dominating” people by way of morality). Like Elder Cook, I have no sympathy for such people.
Comment by Jeff G — November 3, 2015 @ 1:30 pm
“There is a difference in my model between a description from the inside of a culture and one from the outside.”
What I have been trying to get you to address (build into your model or thinking) not argue for, is the idea that the boundaries between inside the culture and outside the culture are extremely porous and a couple of the significant ways they are porous is language use and moral concepts, and practical interactions with the world by way of science, technology, politics and business.
This applies to both leaders and members. In other words, the leaders generally don’t want to be see as outside the mainstream in those areas. It would be easier for them if they just said this is what we believe morally and we don’t care if you think it is crazy. But they don’t do that because they want to maintain legitimacy in the larger environment. What panics them is the structure of moral discourse shifting in a way that reduces their legitimacy.
That is why I think that following you down the authority pathway in theory doesn’t help that much in practice where everyone in the church, leaders and otherwise is effectively morally multi-lingual and it is very difficult in my opinion to have those competing discourses have fundamentally different truth concepts.
Again, I’m not saying it is not correct or preferable, I’m saying that even if I agree with you about authority, authority in practice is using a vocabulary made up of many external concepts.
Elder Oaks talk about the duty to perform as a government official is an example. Some religious people felt this was insufficiently strong in support of religion over political values. You could argue that it was recognizing authority but the other parts of his comments about rights are not informed by authority as much as by individual liberty. I just see the tradition as so informed by individual liberty that “authority as truth” talk seems counter-cultural to me from an LDS point of view.
Comment by Martin James — November 4, 2015 @ 3:56 pm