Therefore, it can be concluded that the King Follet discourse and all its attending concepts are stripped of any evidentiary basis. The spiritual witness is not evidence. An experience, as such, is not evidence to the individual self (due to the fallibility of the human interpretive faculty) nor to others.[/b]
They are only stripped of an evidentiary basis if one assumes a naturalistic world view in which empirical evidence is the only accepted basis of evidence.
I said:
Very well, and I will take the position that your cardinal point, that of human infallibility, though obviously true and pedestrian, is, as a general metaphysical mediating principle (the manner in which you have used it before) self negating, as it must logically pertain to your own claims of human infallibility. Or, in other words, if human claims are always suspect, then blanket claims of human fallibility are themselves suspect as general claims.
Agreed. Thus ALL human claims, including those wherein the individual believes to have received an undeniable witness ALL fall under the umbrella of uncertainty. Again we agree that uncertainty is the common element of our experience, including the interpretation of internal experiences.
Not quite. All I'm pointing out here is that if we take your position that infallibly is the central delimiting factor in the reliability of the LDS witness, then that factor must delimit all other claims to certain knowledge. Since you hold to the belief that the LDS assertion of a sure testimony of the truth cannot be valid because of this inherent, overarching fallibility, your own claim regarding human fallibility must be fallible, and hence, might be mistaken. There may be areas of human perception open to infallible knowledge, or the natural limitations can be suppressed to levels at which such knowledge as LDS claim to receive from God can be impressed upon us without impermissible levels of filtering.
I'm not accepting your nihilism here, only pointing it out.
Can we? Uncertainty seems to be the commonality in both of our arguments. Therefore it would be better to deal in probabilities, not certainties.[/b]
No, uncertainty, as I pointed out above, is a matter both of inherent human limitations and the self negating argument regarding you made in your original post. You have made a claim of absolute certainty by stating that infallible communications from God are not possible under any circumstance or set of conditions, so you cannot now claim to be dealing only in probabilities when you have dealt, from the very beginning, with
certainty in that you have attached claims of complete certainty to your assertions of uncertainty regarding the doctrine of personal revelation.
I said:
This argument promises more than it delivers. This is really a complex series of inferences, predicated on some unmentioned assumptions, that is masquerading as a deductive argument, which, if followed to its conclusion, would be unassailable. However, key assertions being made here, such as that a fallible being, even if receiving infallible communications, must return to fallibly, and hence, garble the infallible communication, are pure assumptions about aspects of both human and divine nature and power that involves the argument, as stated, in deep question begging. The invitation of the Latter Day Saint to "come and see" for yourself, is intended, quite frankly to plow through questions such as this that really cannot be fleshed out in a purely philosophical manner and go directly to the source. One says "very well, I'm going to see for myself if this infallible being can make contact with an infallible being and whether or not that being can communicate with me in a manner that, while not removing general fallibility from my nature, in essence relegates it to background noise within the confines of direct communicaiton of the Spirit of God to the intelligence of a child of God".
Your claim that you are receiving a direct communication from the Spirit of God is based in your belief that you can infallibly know that you have received a direct communication from the Spirit of God. You would like to claim that you have solved this inherent paradox by cutting a gordion knot with you spirit witness claim, but are you certain that there are not other explanations for your experience? If you claim certainty, you claim infallibility. Are you infallible?
I am certain that there is no other explanation, yes. And I am not infallible, as a general rule. The universe, however, is full of exceptions to general rules, and how many might there be of which we know nothing?
I assume only that human beings are fallible. The probability of this is very high. The nature of a reality which is described as god can only be claimed if an infallible communication can be had between fallible humans and god. Is god infallible? How do you know it? Can you claim certainty that god is infallible? If so, you are making a claim about yourself first and your conception of "god" second.
The probability is very high, yes, which must imply that the probability is very high that your belief in the fallibility of human beings in the case of the principle of revelation (a principle which you must admit, you can know nothing, having never experienced it), might by quite fallible, or, in other words, unreliable.
Do I know God is infallible? Yes. How? Because I know he exists, I've experienced his power, love, and nature, and have nor reason to doubt the attributes ascribed to him in the scriptures or by his servants.
Are you claiming that it is wrong to assert that humans are fallible. Is that a logically inconsistent claim?[/b]
No. I'm saying that it is wrong to make such a claim a transcendent principle that admits of no weak links or boundaries with which it itself is conditioned and limited. The logical inconsistency lies in your making infallible claims to a knowledge of the fallibility of the claims to knowledge of others while you have already asserted the fallibility and uncertainty of any such statements you might make.
I claim that humans are fallible. You claim to infallibly understand a "mediating principle" which originates "in the spiritual realm." Which claim needs to have its bounds, conditions and dynamics defined? The highest probability is that you believe you understand the experience, which you characterize as mediated by a spiritual arbiter, because your culture provided you with the terms and ideologies which led you to interpret your experience in this way. This is true because you cannot infallibly know that you have interpreted your experience correctly.
This repeats some of your original points, but does not engage my critiques of them. First we should deal with how you can know of my infallibility in this particular area (my testimony) when the entire basis of your position is based upon the fallibility and uncertainty of your own knowledge. If you are uncertain about my testimony, then how could you ever know whether I was certain regarding it? How do you know your claims to ultimate uncertainty are not anything more than a perceptual box you have put yourself in through a sophisticated personal logical and lingusitic intellectual exercise that may have little validity outside of its own intellectual confines?