Scientists and Seers: Infalliblity and Autonomy
The infallibility (or lack thereof) that can be attributed to priesthood leaders is not different from that which can be attributed to scientists or any other community that pretends to cultural authority. (This would include political parties, activist groups, nations, ethnic minorities, social identities, etc.) In both cases, the party in question fully acknowledges that they are imperfect and completely open to critical review. Neither party claims absolute and unyielding certainty.
While each community is open to critical review of its imperfect claims, they also insist, however, that such critical review must come from WITHIN their own community – through processes that they recognize as legitimate. This inevitably places the community beyond the scope of “outside” criticism. Indeed, within our modern, liberal society such communities will tend to moralize any such external criticism as an illegitimate or oppressive interference with their autonomy or academic/religious freedom within their “rightful” stewardship or domain. (Non-modern moralize such interference in different moral terms – moral pollution, etc.) Each community is thus fully open to correction, but only through the rules, means, techniques, values, persons and truths that define, structure and differentiate it from other communities.
Each community will, for obvious reasons, self-describe their own unresponsiveness to outside criticism in much softer terms that I have used. Such communities will often claim to be fully open to a “true” version of other competing communities. Such claims, however, are means of retaining exclusive rights over the contested domain rather than an inclusive sharing of these privileges. Even within Popper’s idealistic depiction of science as an open society – in stark contrast to Kuhn’s closed society – any person can call scientists’ claims into question but only through the properly “scientific” means and techniques that have already pre-defined the community. Thus, scientists do not place themselves open to correction from prophets to the extent that the latter are not fellow scientists nor do prophets from scientists to the extent that these are not prophets.
For better or worse, the infallibility of priesthood leaders exactly parallels that of scientists. Whether one perceives infallibility in one community rather than the other depends largely upon whether one is looking at it from the inside or outside of that particular community. Each community is only perceived as (practically) infallible to the extent that it is (practically) unresponsive or open to correction through some means or rules of correction that are themselves native to some other community. In this way, the very same unresponsiveness to outside criticism that is moralized as “autonomy” from within a community is similarly moralized as “infallibility” from outside that community. Stated differently, the outsiders’ “fallibility” is practically equivalent to the insiders’ “heteronomy”.
Whichever of these narratives feels more intuitive to any person will depend less upon the facts of the case at hand and more upon the extent to which they have internalized the rules and values of the community in question.
For better or worse, the infallibility of priesthood leaders exactly parallels that of scientists.
I don’t know about that, seems like a big leap to me, aren’t scientists educated in their field??? And doesn’t scientific method offer repeatability and falsifiability?
Comment by Howard — November 18, 2015 @ 5:10 pm
Exactly. Those are the ways that that particular community regulates fallibility. Religion has different ways.
Comment by Jeff G — November 18, 2015 @ 6:48 pm
Well I suppose parallels could be drawn between an apples and oranges as well.
Comment by Howard — November 19, 2015 @ 5:22 am
Well, if the bloggernacle started calling one of them a vegetable, then pointing out that they’re both fruit would be significant.
Comment by Jeff G — November 19, 2015 @ 8:09 am
This is getting too deep for me.
Comment by Howard — November 19, 2015 @ 10:16 am
Does the fact that scientists always include inherent fallibility matter? That is that scientific positions are admitted to be models and approximations not eternal truths.
Comment by Martin James — November 19, 2015 @ 2:00 pm
But what does that mean in practice? Who is actually allowed to “approximate truth” better than they? Who decides what methods could establish such a claim? Despite what scientists might claim, they are no more open to “external criticism” than church leaders are.
The main difference that I see is that science at least (and sometimes) pretends to allow all insiders the equal privilege of criticism (very much after the Enlightenment model) whereas Mormonism makes no such promise. Indeed, I would suggest that this lack of openness to criticism from all insiders is exactly why so many people are more inclined to accuse the latter of “practical” infallibility than they are the former… That and when church members become convinced that the critical methods of science are “natural, necessary and/or universal”. But such cases just are to accuse the church of being unresponsive to the external rules and values of science/enlightenment.
Of course, science is not equally open to the criticism from all insiders either. There is – and probably must be – a practical and mostly dis-articulated hierarchy at play. (I’m not sure that this is necessarily a bad thing.) The church, however, strongly endorses a hierarchical model of concentric circles of insider-ness. But whether these hierarchical levels of “insider-ness” go unarticulated or are morally enforced is irrelevant to the issue at hand. Neither model is infallible to criticism from full blown insiders, nor is either model fallible to outside criticism.
Comment by Jeff G — November 19, 2015 @ 2:19 pm
So, what is the religious equivalent of Einstein’s 1905 year? Or even Watson and Crick. Or Mandelbrot. Or Shannon. Who looks like an insider versus an outsider depends on when you are looking at it.
Comment by Martin James — November 19, 2015 @ 4:17 pm
You’re right. So what?
We are discussing a correction of a community whose authorities claim to be fallible rather than 1) a complete break with the community that then appears “infallible” or 2) the original constitution of a new community in which case there was leaders, infallible or otherwise. Thus, an outsider can never become an insider that is able to correct the authorities unless and until the previously constituted insiders recognize them and their methods as worthy to do so. (This happens in science and religion.) It is when a separate community acknowledges this outsider’s claim that the authorities of the original community are then and only then perceived to be “infallible” in an immoral sense by that separate, 2nd community.
Comment by Jeff G — November 19, 2015 @ 4:58 pm
The main point is that infallibility is merely a perceived unresponsiveness to norms that some different community takes to be binding. But the fact that one group of authorities does not respond to the norms of a separate community does not imply an unresponsiveness to any and all corrective claims (which is what infallibility claims). In this sense, religious and scientific authority exactly parallel one another.
All groups are and must be very selective in whose criticisms they are willing to respond to. When we are not those whose criticisms they are willing to respond to, this gives the illusion of infallibility for all practical purposes. Thus, sociologically speaking, protests of infallibility are nothing more than protests at a lack of legislative control over some community. Nothing more.
Comment by Jeff G — November 19, 2015 @ 5:09 pm
I don’t think it has as much to do with legislative control over the authorities as it has to do with the process of using and understanding the positions of the authorities.
If I believe an authority to be infallible, I don’t need to understand the position of the authority relative to any mode of thought or experience other than memorization or obedience. But if I believe the authority to be fallible, then my understanding of the reign of the current authority is also combined with a way of thinking that is on the lookout for the fallible areas. So even if legislative control is never over the authority the effects are very different on the thinking of those that do not have authority.
This is the biggest reason for the gains the secular crowd have made relative to the non-secular crowd. The speed of innovation that comes from assuming authorities are fallible produces faster rates of change in what authorities say which has been correlated with relative status in the market for authority.
If you substitute cognitive control for legislative control I might agree with you more. The difference is how the brains of the adherents function internally and among other non-authorities that is the difference not how they bind or don’t bind the authorities that matters.
Comment by Martin James — November 19, 2015 @ 6:32 pm
I’m still not understanding why the second community in a scientific sense would accuse the first community authority of infallibility. If the leaders of the first community don’t maintain that they could never be wrong or even that they will only accept the methods of the first community, they never need to maintain that they are infallible and shut off discussion. It seems to me in the scientific case they both work to argue for their conclusion inside the system and also within the new community system. It is not uncommon for an authority in system one scientifically to take part in system 2’s discussion from within system 2’s own understanding. Where does the need for a protestation of infallibility come in?
Comment by Martin James — November 19, 2015 @ 6:49 pm
Are you saying that infallibility is the same thing as being accused of tenaciously holding to one’s own position of power under the norms of a particular community?
If I could see some secular text where community A claims not to have infallible leaders and community B accuses them of having infallible leaders I might understand this better.
Comment by Martin James — November 19, 2015 @ 6:54 pm
Merely reframing the issue in individualistic terms doesn’t get you anywhere.
“But if I believe the authority to be fallible, then my understanding of the reign of the current authority is also combined with a way of thinking that is on the lookout for the fallible areas.”
But this just is to bring your own understanding (and those who instilled that understanding within you) to (at least partially) legislate the issue at hand! Furthermore, this individualistic depiction has no use whatsoever for a public declaration of fallibility. Indeed, the whole point of making such declarations is to justify (in this case) your own legislation on the issue to the rest of the community.
“The speed of innovation that comes from assuming authorities are fallible produces faster rates of change in what authorities say”
I think that’s probably right. It would be a huge mistake, however, to assume that the speed of change or even adaptability is itself the measure of righteousness.
I’m struggling to understand your 2nd comment. Accusations of infallibility are strategic moves aimed at delegitimizing authority figures that are not responding to outside norms. This strategic move is fairly effective given our very Modern hostility to unilateral and coersive sovereignty.
Comment by Jeff G — November 19, 2015 @ 7:17 pm
Infallibility is what insiders claim for the leader of their community. It is a dogma of the catholic church not a claim of outsiders about the pope. Outsiders claim that popes and prophets are fallible not infallible. I think you have it exactly backward. Outsiders may claim some people believe their leader is infallible when they are not but that is not and accusation of infallibility it is an accusation of a false belief in infallibility.
My point is that it is not just public declarations that are an issue it is a person’s judgment, problem solving and decision making.
Comment by Martin James — November 19, 2015 @ 8:45 pm
You’re obviously not understanding the post.
Point me to one single person who believes church leaders to truly be infallible.
Comment by Jeff G — November 19, 2015 @ 9:39 pm
The obsession with fallibility is unfortunate.
If you truly believe in the Atonement, if you believe Christ leads the Church, fallibility is a feature, not a bug.
That is what those who cry “fallible!” fail to understand.
Comment by SilverRain — November 20, 2015 @ 5:20 am
I’ll admit I don’t understand the post if you agree the doctrine of infallibility was a catholic dogma insupport if the post.
It would be interesting to quantify what people believe about how fallible seers are.
So if we surveyed church members and asked them what percent of the time the prophet is wrong, do you think there are not many members that would answer 0%? Isn’t that the same thing as saying seers are infallible?
I don’t think infallibility is a big deal either way. The big deal to me is how people understand the relation between the words of the seers and their own understanding of righteousness. I’m not quite sure what you believe is the case with fallibility and the teachings of past seers. I know you think that current prophets are what are important for us, but I don’t know what you think for past prophets and past followers. So take a doctrine at random, say Adam-God theory. If that is now wrong for us based on current seers, does that mean that it was wrong for Brigham Young and his followers also or were they right then but wrong now? If they were wrong are there consequences for them being wrong? If they were right, I’d like to here more about exactly when they changed from being right to wrong. Did it become wrong in stages as it was not preached by later seers or only when it was preached as wrong? I’m just not at all clear how a person could ever go about the process of reconciling one’s beliefs to the teachings of current seers without some background notion of the web of beliefs that stay true over time. In other words, the background beliefs play a large role in knowing what seers believe. As you have pointed out this is more and more difficult when members are in a social belief system that operates in parallel but with orthogonal components. You think that some members are unaware of the extent to which enlightenment notions are interfering with understanding seers. To me, the teachings of the seeds are so entwined with enlightenment notions that a person could never really separate them. For example, the notion in many cultures about treating people as property or objects is in conflict with enlightenment notions but also seems to be tied up in practice but not necessarily in theory with our religious notions of proper treatment of others. I don’t think a person looking at another cultures social structure could ever really tell when they were applying religious notions versus cultural notions this gets back to the notion of infallibility because what that fallibility often comes from is changing social norms rather than specifically religious ones. So what are we to make of the idea that our current seers point out ways that prior seers were limited by the culture they were in. That is how much of the current notion of seers is just current social environment? You might think it doesn’t matter we just follow the seers right now. I think that gets pretty difficult in times of rapid social change. A good example for me is the role of women in the workplace. My understanding of the teachings of the current seers is that it is strongly to be avoided by mothers and that it is not a social ideal. But in practice there is a wide variety of accommodation such that I don’t think anyone really knows how to interpret that guidance. Rather than believing in infallibility I think most members agree with the seers when it suits them and ignore them when it doesn’t. My concern with losing the enlightenment notion of consistency is that it becomes even easier to ignore our seers because there is not a very good way of telling when one is blind to one’s own biases. How in your notion of community action do we tell when claims of following the prophet are tendentious?
Comment by Martin James — November 20, 2015 @ 7:52 am
Martin,
Read the 1st paragraph of the OP again. It’s not talking about Catholic who actually believe in infallibilty. It’s only talking about communities fully acknowledge their own fallibility…. like science and the LDS church.
Thus, this post is an analysis of when outsiders accuse insiders of believing in infallibility when the insider actually do not….. Just like the bloggernacle. It’s about cases where detractors and protesters are the only ones who ever even bring up the issue at all.
Comment by Jeff G — November 20, 2015 @ 8:46 am
You are trying to claim that by LDS lights, LDS seers are just as fallible as scientists are fallible scientists are by scientists lights.
I’m saying let’s put it to a vote. Let’s ask people who you think are in the scientific community what percentage of the time scientific leaders are wrong about scientific matters are wrong and then let’s ask LDS believers what percentage of the time that LDS prophets are wrong on prophetic matters. This normalizes the question to the standards of each community. Are you claiming that the percentages are similar and so the infallibility issue is similar for both?
Comment by Martin James — November 20, 2015 @ 9:33 am
Scientific communities often act like religion where *belief* or pretending to believe in one theory over another helps ensure one’s on-going employment to research that theory. But this isn’t science it’s human nature and human bias! So you can draw parallels in human nature and human bias between scientific communities and religious communities you are simply acknowledging that both communities are populated by people!
The problem is Q15 claim to be Prophets and speak for God! God is beyond the pettiness of common human nature such as described above so arguing Q15 is similar in behavior to scientific communities is meaningless! What needs to be argued is how their fruit differs in a Godly way than scientific fruit and how they bring us truth in a way that exceeds or enhances the truths science brings us.
Is banning Gay’s kids Godly truth? Are younger missionaries?
Just because a member of Q15 approaches the pulpit in GC and reads from a teleprompter and words fall out of his mouth doesn’t mean he is channeling God or even God’s ideas. The big question is WHEN (if ever) is he actually channeling God or God’s ideas? The rest of his words are just well intended filler.
Comment by Howard — November 20, 2015 @ 9:39 am
Martin,
That would be a very interesting study! I am very nervous, however, about the language according to which we would gather the data. I don’t think how often somebody is taken to be right necessarily track how capable they are of not being right.
One of the main points of the post is that once we account for the sociological and normative differences between open and closed societies, there is no work left over for “infallibility” to do.
Thus, I would probably guess that members of a closed society would take their leaders to be right more often than the members of an open society… but I’m guessing that this follows from the norms that structure the attitudes of those members, not from the actual abilities of the leaders themselves. If we could somehow control for these elements, I would love to see the survey that you describe.
Howard,
How in the world is a scientist doing what he needs to do in order to remain employed as a scientist not a part of science? My point is that any description of religion or science independent of the ways in which people organize themselves into these communities is, by definition, ideological. (This isn’t necessarily bad.)
How is God’s being beyond bias, etc. any different from a natural scientist’s claim that nature is beyond such things? I see no way in which fallibility infect one more than the other.
Comment by Jeff G — November 20, 2015 @ 10:01 am
It seems the problem is not fallibility but univocality. Science rarely is univocal. So when people play a science authority trump card the time honored response is to simply quote a scientist who agrees with the person disagreeing. This happens in religion too.
Comment by Clark — November 20, 2015 @ 10:08 am
Clark,
Could you say a little more? I can’t tell to what extent we agree.
Comment by Jeff G — November 20, 2015 @ 10:14 am
Jeff wrote: How in the world is a scientist doing what he needs to do in order to remain employed as a scientist not a part of science?
Contrasting and comparing is an effective method of de-conflating for the purpose of clarifying. The commonality between the scientific and religious *communities* (not method) is human nature and human bias so these traits can be dropped out to more clearly contrast and compare the differences between the religious process of arriving at truth and the scientific method of arriving at truth. Re-conflating what I de-conflated above is just an apologetic sidestepping defense. Please address the points I made in #21 directly.
The scientific process includes peer review, repeatibility (or not) which can be done by anyone (peer or not) and falsifiability. The religious process could include peer review but often does not (unanimous Q15 vs one apostle’s talk), it can also be confirmed by the spirit (or not) by ordinary people. But generally in practice LDS members are expected to obey as if God were speaking regardless of the lack of peer review or their own spiritual confirmation or non-comfirmation and regardless of the fact that the brethren have been totally wrong in the past (see the ban on blacks and prophetic misstatements regarding blacks) and often in direct violation of LDS scripture requiring common consent! And this is the problem!
Who wants to follow junk science that violates scientific method? And who want to follow blind guides who rely on authority rather than revelation?
Comment by Howard — November 20, 2015 @ 10:50 am
Howard,
My point was that once you’ve taken the human element out, there’s nothing left over in either case. Thus, your distinction doesn’t exist.
Also the idea of “the” scientific method is a myth. Each science has a different method…. And so does the church. To be sure, the church’s method is probably more closed than any particular science, but this does not amount to infallibility.
Comment by Jeff G — November 20, 2015 @ 12:00 pm
The most interesting aspect of your approach to me is not the reply to the critics who really don’t believe in seers anyway. I agree that the charge of infallibility is just saying “I don’t believe in religion” which is not that interesting.
What is interesting to me is how believers exist in a world where there are multiple competing communities always going on at the same time. It is far from an either/or enlightenment/religion distinction. It is a sociological fact that Bishops, for example, are often people that are integrated into secular employment and social roles and to my way of seeing it still employ enlightenment thinking in their religious worldview because the world views are overlapping.
I’m having trouble how thinking of religious authority in non-enlightenment terms really would work at the bishop level where “common sense” drives most decision making and that common sense is heavily influenced by enlightenment, values and education. It is one thing to say “ignore the fallibility arguments of the haters” it is another and much more important thing to figure out what fallibility standards apply in the everyday bishop world and how to know when enlightenment values are taking us the right way or the wrong way religiously. Two paradigmatic cases might be where moving away from racism was a good thing, but becoming more individualistic was a bad thing.
Comment by Martin James — November 20, 2015 @ 1:02 pm
So we’re back to apples = oranges and visa versa? I doubt many will find your position compelling Jeff.
Contemporary LDS claims to prophetic leadership and proprietary priesthood and propritary Holy Ghost all rely on conflation, when they are de-conflated LDS “Prophets” are exposed as simply well intended men, and the equivalent of priesthood powers and the spirit are available to non-members including women! What I would love to see is evidence to the contrary and I believe such evidence existed in the Joseph Smith story but is found lacking in the contemporaty administrators. Please offer the most compelling evidence to the contrary you have.
Comment by Howard — November 20, 2015 @ 1:10 pm
Conflation is the LDS proprietary secret sauce.
Comment by Howard — November 20, 2015 @ 1:15 pm
Martin,
“I agree that the charge of infallibility is just saying “I don’t believe in religion” which is not that interesting.”
I think this is exactly what makes it interesting! When people within the church start throwing around “infallibility” is reveals who they are aligning themselves with. They grey areas formed by overlapping communities with their respective value systems are exactly what indict such church members.
“at the bishop level where “common sense” drives most decision making”
But it doesn’t really matter what it is that drives the decisions. What matters is how the decisions are justified to the ward-members. The pre-modern thinking is that the ward members do not follow the bishop because what he’s saying “is common sense”. Instead, they follow what he said because he is the bishop.
Howard,
Why in the world do you assume that everybody is morally obligated to draw the sharp distinction that you do? The scriptures certainly never draw such a bold line. I’ve written several posts on how historically contingent your thinking is. The scriptures are also full of examples where people obey simply because of who is saying it. If you want a nice detailed explanation of different types of authority at work and the historical variation among them, read Max Weber’s The Types of Legitimate Authority: https://archive.org/stream/MaxWeberEconomyAndSociety/MaxWeberEconomyAndSociety_djvu.txt (The relevant past starts in chapter 3)
Comment by Jeff G — November 20, 2015 @ 5:12 pm
Weak dodge Jeff.
Comment by Howard — November 20, 2015 @ 5:50 pm
Jeff G,
I’m taking it as a given that believers follow the bishop. So what matters then is what the Bishop says and what the Bishop believes depends on how the Bishop thinks and the Bishops are thinking using enlightenment tools even if they don’t need to give enlightenment reasons.
It is just very, very difficult to communicate without many shared understandings. Even if we take for granted that we will follow the bishop because he is an authority, a narrative is required for people to make sense of what is being said.
I think where we might agree is that you are saying that it is interesting that some members using the charge of infallibility are in some kind of apostasy or budding schism and that is interesting. I’m saying that the schism isn’t so interesting the root cause of the schism is what is interesting. If I agree with you that the cause is enlightenment values then I think the case is near terminal because the average church member is thoroughly invested in a modern, enlightenment informed lifestyle and either must be incredibly torn by conflicting value systems of authority or else a radical change in lifestyle to a more fundamentalist, separatist approach will be required.
If I agree with you, then I think it is pretty hopeless and the church will shrink they way churches have in Europe for example.
But I don’t agree with you because the real difference of the mormon church is it has a literalism that is completely aligned with science. All truths are one and consistent and there is no reason for us to distinguish religion and science because real religion and real science lead to the same place. If we police both our scientists and our religious authorities to the same standards of truth-telling we have no inner inconsistency to worry about. Right when the going is getting good, you are wanting to return to pre-modern ways of thinking that don’t hold up well in scientifically informed societies. You want to double down on what didn’t work.
If you are right, the church is doomed.
Comment by Martin James — November 20, 2015 @ 6:12 pm
I just gave you a gold mine of evidence for the historical contingency of your distinction. What better response could you possibly want?
Comment by Jeff G — November 20, 2015 @ 6:13 pm
The whole point of a God with body, part and passions and a literal gathering of Israel is that they are empirically verifiable.
Comment by Martin James — November 20, 2015 @ 6:15 pm
History is a one way train.
Comment by Martin James — November 20, 2015 @ 6:16 pm
Weak retort. Bye Jeff.
Comment by Howard — November 20, 2015 @ 6:32 pm
Comment by Jeff G — November 20, 2015 @ 6:52 pm
Your approach seems to be to defend the historical contingency of LDS authorities by reminding people of the historical contingency of all alternative systems like science or enlightenment values.
Is the following political analogy apt?
The church is like Syria in that you have a certain set of internal players trying to delegitimize the political authority(Assad) using an odd mix of traditional and outside values(democracy).
Your approach seems to me to be the Putin narrative which is that all this talk of regime change under enlightenment values is just a bunch of destructive hypocritical anarchic rebellion and that traditional authority needs to establish itself.
My trouble is that I just don’t see any future for an authority structure that is seen as historically contingent yet preaches eternal truth. A concern about inconsistency may be historically contingent but I think it is just downright funny. Simultaneously making claims about premortal existences and future resurrections while also admitting that our notions are historically limited is almost beyond satire. You can claim that science does the same thing but to me it is still different in the following way. Let’s take the case of time travel to the future. Science would still claim that if an experiment is performed in the future the results would still count as something that matters for the theory. In your terms it is open to that. But your authority view our time traveler to the future meets an uncertain authority in the future he is outside his moral structure. Your view seems to be much more inherently historically limited or closed. The part that sticks for me is just that LDS theology is an open theology with eternal personages. Satan is who Satan is across epics. A closed understanding of an open theology makes no sense in LDS terms. It is a recipe for cognitive dissonance. The cure seems worse than the disease.
Comment by Martin James — November 21, 2015 @ 9:25 am
“I just don’t see any future for an authority structure that is seen as historically contingent yet preaches eternal truth.”
In that case, you should be even more premodern than I am since it is the more time-honor tradition from which those eternal truths were preached.
At least my model allows for teachings and truths to organically adapt to differing contexts.
Comment by Jeff G — November 21, 2015 @ 9:56 am
Jeff (24) in practice scientists are univocal on some things. They always admit fallibilism and will change when more evidence becomes available. But in practice until there’s evidence on the the things they are univocal on you are dismissed when you disagree. So if you simply dismiss GR out of hand for regular phenomena no one takes you seriously. (And if you use ALL CAPS)
In areas where there’s more disagreement then there’s really no big deal.
The places where theres fair agreement but far from unanimity but where the topic is political (say climate) it’s a more unique situation.
My point is that in practice fallibilism is pointless since it only matters if you can point to strong evidence.
Comment by Clark — November 22, 2015 @ 6:08 pm
“My point is that in practice fallibilism is pointless since it only matters if you can point to strong evidence.”
Exactly… Unless you present an argument on their terms, they simply won’t respond to it.
Comment by Jeff G — November 23, 2015 @ 8:27 am