A few points.
You wrote:
3) DCP. he don't done use radical skepticism, or skepticism of any kind in order to even the playing field for religion. In my experience, he goes the opposite route and thinks apologetics lives up to the highest standards of exacting, rigorous inquiry.
---No doubt Mormon apologists, even those who approvingly trot out the (relativist) Kuhn references whenever it suits them, can at other times sound just as possessed of "sure and certain knowledge" as Hinckley - who by the way, also dramatically fluctuates between claiming to not know very important things about the world and even his own religion, and having "sure and certain knowledge". (And Gad, if "the highest standards of exacting, rigourous inquiry" are equivalent to statements like "in the end, we must take this on faith", or "we know through the Holy Ghost", then you're absolutely right. It's just that...oh nevermind).
The original point of this discussion never was to characterize a "position", since "position" implies coherence and consistency. That is far too much to hope for - and evidently, to find - in any religious apologetic enterprise...For example, no sooner does the religious apologist cite "stunning new evidence!" that one of his religious beliefs is true, than he turns round to say that "the jury's still out" on another one of his religious beliefs, which has been perfectly crushed by a mountain of just the sort of evidence he seconds earlier accepted. I suggest that the only coherent "position" that a cause's "true-believer" apologists have, is that they will continue to be that cause's "true-believe" apologists. Why that should be is not so hard to imagine - after all, their conversions didn't really have anything to do with sustained critical thinking in the first place, so why should their DE-conversions? What force would logic or facts ever subsequently have, when the original commitment wasn't forced by facts or logic?
Jamaican rastafarians believed that Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie was the reincarnation of the now immortal Jesus Christ. Then Haile died. Did that dispel their belief? Of course not, no more than the non-existence of a global flood which killed "all flesh" upon the earth only 5000 years ago, or the fraud that is Joseph Smith's "Book of Abraham", or logical impossibilities within Mormon doctrine itself, dispel Mormon belief. Like Popper's old communist friends, the Rastafarians - like the Mormons, and the Jehovah's Witnesses, and the Heaven's Gate folks once the immortal "Peep" died of cancer - simply retrofitted their beliefs, or downgraded a select few in importance (as in, "that isn't really important to our salvation") to accomodate what even they could not deny anymore, and went on just as happy as ever. They (including my former self) were even able to shield from view that we had just done what we had. We had deceived ourselves - even in the act of changing a belief in accordance with what we now knew, we were able to ignore we were doing it, and believe that we had always believed what we - *presto* - now did. I doubt, for example, that there is any Mormon reading this who would say that he believes now that there was no human life of any kind on this planet prior to 5700 years ago, even though the most authoritative sources in his religion require him to believe just that. Yet, in 1832, not a one of them would ever have claimed to believe that Adam and Eve weren't the first humans on this planet, only a few thousand years ago, or claimed that this "fact" wasn't essential to our understanding of ourselves as children of God and beneficiaries of the Plan of Salvation. See how it works?
Anyway, the original point was the habit of some Mormon apologists - including DCP, Juliann, Graham, etc. - to sometimes use arguments from skepticism to support a religion which sponsors a monthly testimony meeting, whose prophet (half the time anyway) admits the possibility of "sure and certain knowledge", and the fundamental epistemic claim of which is that by the power of the Holy Ghost, we "may know the truth of all things". (If you look back on this thread, you will find a few apologist quotes that you'll probably find fit this description).
In an effort to deny the counterproductive nature of this occasional tactic, we can of course make all sorts of excuses, all kinds of "inquiries" as to what so-and-so "really" might have meant by such-and-such a term, and even perhaps elasticize the definitions of terms to the point that they can include their own denials (as in Popper's maltreatment of the word "knowledge"); we can EVEN try to change the subject by turning it into a debate what so-and-so "REALLY believes", or whether he qualifies for such-and-such a label. But I suggest that a far better explanation is simply that this apologetic tactic is counterproductive. Not that that's the end of the world. After all, probably none of us is entirely clear on certain things; and we all probably defend our propositions in counterproductive ways without realizing it. It's not that unusual, in a way - perhaps just more pronounced, and more common, when the propositions we are defending are as patently false as those which, say, Mormonism requires us to defend. I'm sure that the tactics used by fundamentalist Christians, Nation of Islam members, and a hundred other lost cause-supporters, are often just as counterproductive, if not more so.
About a theory of knowledge (TOK):
I like to think that the quotes I provided from Kuhn and Popper themselves show exactly where their "philosophies of science" must inevitably take us; and that is, not just a completely inadequate TOK - one which would be hard pressed to admit (K) - but one which cannot even admit a rational basis for BELIEF. Can you imagine? I didn't invent those quotes, nor did I write their books. It was Kuhn and Popper themselves who said such things: that no belief is ever justified, that science is not a means whereby we get a fuller account of nature (which is to say, there is NO means by which we can get a fuller account of nature), etc. Their very own words show their philosophies to be as irrationalist - notwithstanding some valuable insights along the way (which frankly I think can be said of any philosophy, no matter how stupid) - as anything you'd hear in pre-Sokal "Social Text", or a hundred classes taught by whacked-out postmodernists who claim that science is only a mask for the imposition of phallocentrism, and every other kind of bullsh*t.
You ask about my own TOK. I don't really have one, I guess. Or if I do, it is unbearably crude at this point. It would start with claims like these:
1.) The sum total of knowledge has increased over the past 200,000 years;
2.) We do have very good reasons for certain beliefs;
3.) We do use inductive reasoning, as do other animals;
4.) There is actually a real world.
Etc.
That doesn't say much I guess - and my two year old just woke up and my wife's jogging so I have to go right now and can't continue - but I think what IS true, is that even if we all subscribe to just those three things, and even if we have no way to fully or adequately defend each (which we might, not sure at the moment), we're still WAY ahead, in a number of ways, of guys who deny them. Even Kuhn himself admitted that he had NO ANSWER to how his irrationalist, radically skeptical views about knowledge (which his own words portray as social constructivist, despite his denials) could be reconciled with the fact that people were flying around in aeroplanes. If anything, Gadianton, it is THOSE sorts of views which lead to brains in vats and solipsism, not mine.
Talk to you later,
T.