Carmack takes on the Late War

[Physics Guy]

That's a weakness in Carmack's analysis that I hadn't considered, that he should really have been asking whether the Book of Mormon fits within the range implied by the other works, not whether it was close to their average. With only four points in his sample he can't really have much idea of the range of "pseudo-Biblical", as you point out, but it would be better to try to guess the range than to treat the averages of those four cases as if they were hard facts that defined the nature of pseudo-Biblical language.

On the other board I did once point out to Carmack another concern, which was that his other four works were significantly different from the Book of Mormon, in ways that make them a poor comparison to it. They were written and revised and edited, not dictated to a scribe as inspired; they were written by educated authors; and they were written for sale as entertainment rather than as serious hoaxes.

All of those factors would tend to tone down the archaism of the other pseudo-Biblical texts, making them fit the King James dialect more closely and even depart from it in the direction of modernity, rather than of greater archaism, in order to read better to a modern audience. Smith on the other hand had less opportunity to fix up his text, less ability to hit the target of readable prose with a King James flavour, and more motivation to produce a consistently archaic-sounding text even if it didn't sound good.

Heavy-handedly ladling on whatever sounded most old-fashioned and formal to his own backwoods grammatical sense, Smith overshot King James English in several tendencies and hit a shotgun spread of archaic English usages that was evidently centered on a point somewhere well before King James. That's just my guess at what happened, as a non-linguist; but Carmack never seemed to realize how seriously that possibility has to be taken, if any non-Mormons are going to be at all impressed. He didn't notice how that heavy-handedness would not have afflicted his other four published writers in any case. I don't think he really thought much about how good a comparison his comparison group was, to be honest, because Carmack didn't understand the logic of empirical testing of theories.

Carmack seriously felt—he said as much in a post on the other board—that it was enough to show that the hypothesis of an Early Modern English speaking writer could fit the Book of Mormon grammar. For him that was enough to establish his theory as probable. He didn't acknowledge any need to show that the alternative hypothesis of clumsy fake archaism could not also fit the Book of Mormon grammar. So I think his comparison with four other pseudo-Biblical works was not a serious effort, such as he would have made to rebut any criticism of the Book of Mormon, but only something to toss on the pile of favourable evidence for whatever it might have been worth.

[Lem]

…Carmack seriously felt—he said as much in a post on the other board—that it was enough to show that the hypothesis of an Early Modern English speaking writer could fit the Book of Mormon grammar. For him that was enough to establish his theory as probable. He didn't acknowledge any need to show that the alternative hypothesis of clumsy fake archaism could not also fit the Book of Mormon grammar. So I think his comparison with four other pseudo-Biblical works was not a serious effort, such as he would have made to rebut any criticism of the Book of Mormon, but only something to toss on the pile of favourable evidence for whatever it might have been worth.

[bolding added]
I’m not as experienced as others here at interpreting mopologetic argument, but in the part I bolded, in my opinion you’re pointing out a very serious flaw in apologetic argument in general.

If you really do know but can’t bring yourself to admit in print how strong the alternatives are, then there would be a natural tendency to focus on just opening up the possibility, no matter how slight, no matter how unlikely. If an apologist really believed they had a strong argument, I would think they would be all in to compare it to the strongest alternative possible. You go for the championship if you really think you’ve got it in you. You don’t settle for just barely qualifying unless you really think that’s the absolute best you can do, and no better.

[Dr Moore]

Early Modern English is just one of an infinite set of possible cherry-picked theories. This one sticks because it sort of fits the right kind of ancientness.

But even more plausible is the most common form of plagiarism, in which the structure and key elements of a text are copied, but intentionally laced with minor grammatical modifications to escape the obvious accusation of plagiarism.

Here is an example provided by our good friend Dan Peterson just this month (June, 2021):

I wrote:

In that case, the witness testimonies would be no different from, say, thanking the Lord in advance for a blessing, or confidently prophesying (commonplace in those early years).

And then, Dan Peterson applied the most common form of plagiarism:

It was no different, really, than thanking God in advance for anticipated blessings, or prophesying that something would happen.

[Physics Guy]

If you really do know but can’t bring yourself to admit in print how strong the alternatives are, then there would be a natural tendency to focus on just opening up the possibility, no matter how slight, no matter how unlikely. If an apologist really believed they had a strong argument, I would think they would be all in to compare it to the strongest alternative possible. You go for the championship if you really think you’ve got it in you. You don’t settle for just barely qualifying unless you really think that’s the absolute best you can do, and no better.

Yes.

And I think that's a big reason why apologetic scholarship/analysis/whatever is just not interesting except to people who are really looking for help in shoring up their belief. For any more general purpose, the apologetic work is too handicapped by its blinkered assumption that the religious viewpoint in question is entitled to the benefit of every possible doubt.

Nothing makes you irrelevant like ignoring an elephant. I can't seem to make that as snappy a couplet as I wanted but I think the point stands.

[Physics Guy]

Early Modern English is just one of an infinite set of possible cherry-picked theories. This one sticks because it sort of fits the right kind of ancientness.

That sort of preference does seem characteristic of the Mormon apologist mindset, but I can't really see how EmodeE actually is a right kind of ancientness. All it is is weirdness—as even its keenest Mormon supporters seem to agree.

Early Modern English Book of Mormon makes the Book of Mormon seem weird and mysterious, and that's so much better than being a clumsy 19th century hoax that it counts as a win.

[Gadianton]

to compare against the Book of Mormon at 275,000 words. Even though he uses percentages, that is insufficient to normalize across length

good point, I actually remember you bringing this up before.

I confess I am apologetically impaired due to my years of not paying attention. Please tell me the rest of the joke.

Okay the question was:

How do you find out what's in volumes 2-7 of "A reasonable leap into the light" without buying the books or obtaining illegal copies?

The answer:

Just read volume 1. LOL!

[Don Bradley]

So how far away from the present does the person in question have to be in order for the protective veil of scepticism about knowledge of another's mental states to shield them from the exercise of judgement about their motives?

I ask the above from a position roughly as follows:

1. In normal life we continually form pictures (or 'models') of the mental states of others. We do not (don't you agree?) do so by any process of what might be called 'mind reading', in the sense of some direct telepathic perception of the other person's mental state,

2. We need to have such models of others' mental states in order to interact with them in ways which will get them to act in the ways we desire, or at least enable us to avoid any harm they might cause. There are signs that our close primate relations work the same way.

3. We form such mental models on the basis of how we see people act: if a person is red-faced, tense and shouts a lot, we might say "She's angry". And so on. One of the problems faced by people with autism seems to be that they find the formation of mental models on the basis of observed behaviour very challenging.

4. So, if on CCTV I see someone entering a cloakroom, removing a valuable item from the pocket of somebody else's coat hanging on a peg, and then when the person later complains of the loss of the item saying "Oh, that's awful. Maybe you dropped it somewhere?", we have no hesitation in saying "That person is deliberately lying". That's not 'mind-reading', it's just normal human common-sense judgement of what someone else is up to, based on their observed behaviour.

5. And if we know enough about the words and actions of a person who lived two hundred years ago, then (making due allowance for the limitations of our knowledge) I do not see why it should be seen as in some way improper to form a picture of their likely mental state on that basis. In the case of Joseph Smith, his behaviour seems to me to be in part consistent with an intention to commit deliberate fraud. And that's not the result of a claim to some kind of mysterious 'mind reading' on my part. I am just applying to Smith the process of modelling mental states of others on the basis of their behaviour that all of us do, all the time.

Chap, while I disagree with the second half of your point 5, I find the whole quite beautifully and compellingly stated. To the idea that we can't read the minds of historical figure, I've responded with quite similar logic to your own: our minds are [/i]made[/i] for inferring the motives of others. It is one of their key function--and one that each of us relies for survival. I have to infer what others perceive and intend countless times just to reach my destination safely as a driver--how much more so, then, to succeed in interpersonal relationships? You've stated this better, I think.

I would add that the historian has, in some ways, an advantage over those who knew a well-documented figure in life. Why? Because each person in that figure's life saw him or her just from his or her own particular angle, as that person behaved when they were together. But the historian has the advantage of having, sometimes--as in this case, the records of hundreds or thousands of such contemporaries, who observed that figure at a range of times and in a variety of contexts. It is thus possible for us to pick up on behavior patterns across decades and across contexts that an individual contemporary could not have perceived. The wider and more intricate the patterns of behavior we can discern, the better we can infer the historical actor's motives. We can therefore potentially know that historical actor better, in some ways, than did their contemporaries.

Don

[Philo Sofee]

Don, I think you may have actually strengthened Chap's point... the longer he lived, the more he connived, the more people saw it, and it appears he connived on many different parameters and events...

[Kishkumen]

Don, I think you may have actually strengthened Chap's point... the longer he lived, the more he connived, the more people saw it, and it appears he connived on many different parameters and events...

Don’t be so sure, Philo. He agreed with the methodological point but not the conclusion. I, on the other hand, am not sure I agree with either. I think confidence in reading minds in this way can be useful for constructing models, but it should not be mistaken for actually knowing what happened for a certainty.

[Alphus and Omegus]

There are linguists who study the Appalachian dialect that included Palmyra and they say it could be close to Elizabethian or Early Modern English. https://daily.jstor.org/the-legendary-l ... an-holler/

This is such an important point. As a journalist, I have had to decipher different dialects in order to research stories. Has anyone who's read Carmack's drivel noticed whether he addressed this point?

It's a long-observed fact in linguistics that, due to their isolation, rural areas (especially before mass media) are sort of linguistic time capsules. They preserve archaic phrasings, pronunciations, and idioms.

Here's an article on Tangier Island, a small isle in the Chesapeake Bay in Virginia with lots of interesting linguistic artifacts:
https://www.nationalgeographic.org/arti ... que-speak/