Transcendent Nephites

[_Physics Guy]

I don't suppose that we can identify objective value in texts independent of whatever value people find in them, but on the other hand I don't think that people's subjective judgements of value are just arbitrary. I think that there's usually some kind of practical reason why people value things, at least when the stakes are high enough. The strategies that people are consciously or unconsciously applying may be flawed but I think there's usually at least some sense behind them, though not necessarily the sense that people articulate consciously.

If Grant Hardy is positioning Mormon scriptures as authentic ancient texts but unreliable history then I can see how that might be a radical change for many Mormons but it doesn't seem like a big change to me. What Gadianton says fits my own more superficial impression that the content of the Book of Mormon has always been mostly a placeholder, anyway. All it really has to do is support the frame of Miraculous Book, because that supports Smith and the Church. So the story of the Nephites could be entirely a satirical fiction as long as it's an ancient satirical fiction recovered through miracles by Joseph Smith, Jr.

Sometimes something has an awesome active ingredient that doesn't really need its conventional trappings. You can leave out the vermouth. Other times the trappings are the only good parts. The chocolate coating is thin but it's better than the ice cream inside.

I should probably just have lunch, but I'm trying to bring in the thought from up-thread about brands. I tried to argue above that branding, with its cues that generate real if subjective experiences, can be a legitimate part of a product in its own right, at least for some kinds of product. But okay, just because branding can be a real source of value doesn't mean that we can live by branding alone. You can sew a Gucci label onto polyester and sell it for ten times the price, but that's still just twenty bucks. For big tags you need fine leather by Gucci.

For what it's worth my superficial impression as a non-Mormon is that the authentic ancient pedigree of the Mormon scriptures is the designer label without which the products won't sell. They're ice cream bars, not martinis; scrape off the chocolate and advertise them as Lite, and no-one will buy them at all. And being a channeled text by Shakespeare might be better than "Smith made it up," but it's not chocolate. I mean, ancient Jews in America is the kind of thing you can imagine being directed by Spielberg. Channeling Shakespeare is at most PBS.

[_Physics Guy]

Some texts become such a part of a culture that they can be used for thinking and communicating by making reference to events or themes in the book. The Illiad was used that way in ancient times I have heard. The Bible has been used that to the present.

That's a good point. Shared stories create vocabulary.

That's a kind of value that sort of combines my first two numbers, which were about telling us about the real world, and my last two numbers, which were about branding-like cues telling us that this text has value. We only value a story as vocabulary if it lets us refer to something that we think is real but which would otherwise be hard to express. But a text can only work to communicate this way if there is an audience that appreciates the story this way, effectively authorizing the story's entry in the dictionary.

The value of texts as vocabulary involves our other two main kinds of value so far, but I don't think it just reduces to them. It has at least as much distinctness from them as my 1) and 2) or 3) and 4) pairs have from each other. So I'd accept it as a genuine 5). If I collapse my two pairs, this would get number 3).