When Debate Doesn't Make Sense

[_Tal Bachman]

Hi Levi

I hope you won't take it personally that I couldn't possibly care less whether you "take my word" for anything. In fact, there is no need to take my word for anything about Mormonism, since Mormonism's own scriptures, history, and General Authorities say all that needs to be said about it.

That includes explication of what Mormonism in the end comes down to. And permit me to suggest that what it comes down to is precisely why you shouldn't leave Krakauer's book aside at all. It is a good starting point for appreciating the core psycho-social dynamics of Mormonism, regardless of how polite your Mormon friends are to you.

But if you've come to think that Jon Krakauer's book is "impossibly biased" or whatever, and would rather start with scriptures, history, and Mormon GAs directly, let me know and we can start a new thread wherein I post relevant passages.

Trailer:

"Obedience is the first law of heaven"

"The prophet cannot lead us astray"

"I consecrate my life to the church"

I'll give you the avalanche if you want it, bro! Then you can tell me all about how "flawed" my understanding of Mormonism was.

Let me know, my-soon-to-be-crushed-by-400-tons-of-snow amigo,

Tal

[_Loquacious Lurker]

I'll give you the avalanche if you want it, bro!

Why not just go ahead and do it for the good of the group?

[_Tal Bachman]

Hey LL

Gimme some more specifics. Do you mean, the argument for the claim that Mormonism does not allow for "righteous disobedience" to the prophet speaking as the prophet? Doesn't everyone familiar with Mormonism already know that?

Lay it on me sister (or brother)

Tal

[_Daniel Peterson]

Folks like Bitton, Peterson, McGuire, Juliann, sometimes base their church defenses on claims that it is not clear that we can actually "know" anything at all.

I'll let Ben and Juliann speak for themselves, but, in my case (and, I'm very nearly as confident, in the case of my late long-time friend Davis Bitton), this statement is flatly false.

I hold no such view, and never have.

[_Loquacious Lurker]

Hey LL

Gimme some more specifics. Do you mean, the argument for the claim that Mormonism does not allow for "righteous disobedience" to the prophet speaking as the prophet? Doesn't everyone familiar with Mormonism already know that?

Lay it on me sister (or brother)

Tal

Hey, you're the rainmaker. Or in this case, the snowmaker. You promised an avalanche. You're supposed to lay it on US.

P.S: by the way, I think Peterson is trying to get your attention...just a hunch...

[_Tal Bachman]

Indeed, I saw that on the Top 100 thread I just posted, where I responded. Weird how some people attempt to turn every single thread into a giant discussion about themselves.

But not to derail the thread - do you doubt that Mormonism doesn't permit "righteous disobedience of the prophet speaking as the prophet?"

[_Ray A]

But not to derail the thread -

You're still not getting it, Tal. There's no such thing as "derailing threads" here. The mods don't give a rats, as long as you keep the vulgar confined to the "lower kingdoms".

[_Daniel Peterson]

Mission accomplished.

Now you know. What you'll do with your knowledge is up to you (though it's fairly predictable).

[_Dr. Shades]

You're still not getting it, Tal. There's no such thing as "derailing threads" here. The mods don't give a rats, as long as you keep the vulgar confined to the "lower kingdoms".

Actually, we recognize that threads will drift and diverge as they progress, but we also recognize that there's such a thing as an abrupt or, perhaps, "hostile" derailment as well. The former is a fact of life, the latter we'd like to avoid.

Drawing the line is what's difficult. Even so, I've split threads before when one person dives in with something too far off-topic. I'll probably have to do so again (sometime).

The ONLY reason you don't see me split derailments more often is that I'm too bogged down with deleting swear words, spammers, and quote pyramids.

[Guest]

I'm addressing this part again in more depth.

Let's look at Tal's argument:

"We live in a universe of laws. That means we live in a universe of constraints. It seems to me that it is only when our beliefs conform to those constraints that they have any real chance of being true.

Off the top of my head, I might say there are two primary constraints which our beliefs must conform to, if they are to have any chance of being true: one constraint is logic, the other is evidence. It seems to me that any belief which requires the disregard of either, or both, is almost certainly wrong (certainly by definition, it would be irrational)."

This is an inductive argument regarding beliefs. The argument is that in order for a belief to be probably true, it must be constrained at the very least by having evidence to warrant the belief and logic. The word logic here means "good reasoning". it doesn't mean LD, the sense you took it as the restricted valid deductive forms of logic.

The term "logic" does not mean good reasoning in the opening argument. For purposes of your attempt to argue til you are blue in the face, that might be helpful to your case, but it is not a fair reading of what is in print. First, if this were the case, that would be like saying, "In order for me to like somebody, they need at least two traits. 1) They need to live in England. 2) They need to live in Great Britain." That's redundant in an obvious way that makes listing the second point trivial. Or, if you want to reverse the point, then the first term is trivial. Either way, one should not be listed.

Oddly, you anticipate this and yet write:

Now you can argue against the argument and say logic or good reasoning includes having evidence and say Tal is just being redundant. But reasoning does not necessarily include evidence, particularly value or policy type arguments

.

Yes, and not everyone who lives n Great Britain lives in England. But everyone who lives in England lives in Great Britain. Do you know the name of this fallacy Marg? Sure, not all good reasoning is evidential in nature (a point you should explain to the naïve evidentialists in this thread), but evidential reasoning is included as an example of good reasoning.

Second, saying something needs to be reasonable in order to meaningful in debate (also known as rational discourse) is so obvious that saying it is not only uneccessary, it is embarrasing. In order to rescue Tal here, you've turned him into someone who is saying the most trite things one can say. Rational discourse requires rationality is a tautology.

Third, Tal actually follows his argument with an explanation where he clearly separates out logic and evidence.

"So, for example, if Robert's belief is that "it is raining and it is not raining", he is disregarding logic, one principle of which is that "'A' cannot equal 'not A'". If Robert, after all his study, believes that it was the Japanese who dropped two atomic bombs on the United States, rather than the other way round, he is disregarding evidence. Either way, we might say that Robert is, to some extent, not psychologically sound. And, I think, we would be right.

Why then would we engage in an ongoing debate with Robert about rain, or World War II - or, perhaps, anything at all? If once we explained how opposites, by definition, cannot be identical, or laid out all the evidence that it was America who dropped the bombs, and Robert still maintained his positions............ "

Tal himself explains that logic refers to violating logical rules like the law of noncontradiction. Evidence refers to the observational record. When an existential claim (x exists) is called illogical in the sense Tal's argument requires, that refers to logical possibility. If it is merely not sufficiently supported by evidence, then it is not supported by evidence. It might then be "illogical" to believe in the sense of unreasonable, but that's a fundamental confusion on your part. The invisible pink unicorn might be illogical in the sense that it is contradictory for something to both be pink and invisible. It would be not based in evidence in the sense that there isn't empirical support of it. These are distinct in his argument. which is why he is careful to distinguish them in his examples.

Keep in mind LD that in deductive arguments regarding the physical world, the truth of each premise used is arrived at inductively. Each premise in order to be established as true, had or has to go through the inductive process of reasoning. And that process is a part of the discipline of logic, inductive informal logic. The study of logic has evolved over the centuries. In the past it may have been that informal inductive logic was not recognized as "logic" but it is today.

"Logic" is in the leaps made between premises, not the premises themselves. Presumably, one must have some sort of argument to support each premise until you hit the problem of infinite regress. But when we talk about whether some argument is logical we are just talking about whether the leaps in reasoning made followed good rational practice or not. Those leaps can either be deductive or inductive in nature.

The term "modern rational empiricism" is the term employed for today's scientific method approach.

Is this 1907? What crackerjack box do you get your philosophy of science from?

Hey Marg. Teach me about the nature of science. Tell me what this "scientific realism" stuff is about:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-realism/