Truth vs. Truth

WOW! Double wow. This is really helpful to me. Lights going on and everything. Thanks for passing this along.

Thanks for this post, Clark. I hope to see more posts in which philosophical thought is interfaced more directly with common Mormon practices and thought.

Conversations along similar lines (Truth vs. Truth) go on all the time among theoretical and philosophical psychologists (who typically contrast and advocate more particular, situated, and relational truths to the universal, atemporal, and acontextual Truth of mainstream psychology). Interestingly, a minority of these scholars are Judeo-Christian or even religious (though few have any antagonism to religion).

I agree with you that the “I know the Church is true” line is not poor language per se. However, I still think that Latter-day Saints should be moving away from the phrase, if for no other reason than its triteness. I wonder how testimonies would be different if members made a conscious attempt to not say these statements that at least sometimes are used as “vain repetitions.” My suspicion is that our testimonies would at least be more thoughtful, and that they would also be more appreciated overall. I’ve found it interesting that the apostles seem to rarely say this phrase nowadays — though there still is an emphasis on “I know.” (Even here, though, they often simply say WHAT they know, rather than saying THAT they know it–”God lives,” not “I know God lives.” I think this is a good direction for members to take.)

The existential approach to knowledge and testimony meetings falls down when small children get up and say “I know the church is true, I know … etc.” Put bluntly they don’t know it in the Greek sense and they don’t have comittment in the Judeo-Christian/existential sense. Even worse, the practice is usually tolerated, if not encouraged (I know it’s not supposed to be, but we’re talking practice not policy here). In many instances these testimonies are cited as the “most uplifting” or the “most pure” or whatever.

I think case of children is the real clue to what testimony meetings are, a language game. I mean that in the Wittgensteinian sense, so I am NOT asserting that it’s coercive or BS. Basically learning to be a Mormon is to a large degree learning the language of Mormondom. For whatever reason “I know” has become the catchphrase to which a whole constellation of values is attached. The language comes first, the cognition of the values comes second. It also serves to differentiate us from others because our language game is different than others’ language games. It’s also an instance of rule following, it’s simply a rule that you go up and say that. Sure there are those (< 10%) who don’t follow the rule, but by and large people follow the rule.

Most Mormons haven’t really given it much thought, much like they haven’t given knowledge itself much thought. It’s just how the language game is played, so that’s how they play it.

I do agree that for many it’s just a contentless language game. That’ not how I meant it, my apologies if that’s how it came across. In some ways using the terms “language game” and “rule following” is unfortunate in that the connotation of those two phrases in English is so bad. It’s almost as bad as using “myth.” In all three cases the technical meaning is quite precise and is not derogatory.

For Wittgenstein language games and rule following are foundational to being human. In a large sense it’s how one learns meaning and values, by playing the game and following the rules. That’s what I see going on in most testimony meetings, not contentless drivel, but teaching and learning.

Also, the testimony meeting really only has meaning for those who know how the game is played. That’s why evangelicals consider it boring pap, they play their language game differently. That’s also why it would take some doing for me to appreciate a pentecostal service, an evangelical church meeting, or a catholic mass, I am not immersed in the language games they play.

Clark: I’m confused at what both you and DKL are saying. (The problem in grasping what you mean is probably mine and not yours). It seems to me that you are saying that we don’t have knowledge in an epistemic sense, we have knowledge only as a matter of commitment (with emphasis on the “only”). But nobody I know believes that they have knowledge of a matter just because they are really committed to it. You may be saying that we have knowledge in the Latin sense of “consoscere” (interpersonal knowledge of another) rather than “sapere” (knowledge of fact). But that is a different matter because to have knowledge of another is to have also a certain sense of epistemic or propositional knowledge entailed in the personal knowledge, like at least that “the other exists” and “the other has communicated with me”.

As I read DKL still, I read him to say that we don’t have knowledge at all, we only have certain linguistic practices that are unique to one community or tribe or another. But that isn’t knowledge really either in the sense I believe that church members use it. Church members aren’t claiming to know in the sense that they know how to properly use the syntax and grammar peculiar to their tribe or religious community; rather, they are claiming to know something that entails matters of fact as well. They are claiming to have a personal basis for knowing e.g., that God exists, that he speaks and answers prayers, that one has been called by this God to be in the Mormon community, that the Mormon community is the kingdom established by God and so forth. While “kingdom of God” certainly has a peculiar meaning within a tribal use, the claim of knowledge doesn’t seem to me to be limited to merely claiming that one’s own tribal usage is a useful or accurate for the tribe. Now maybe you’re saying that that’s the best that we can do based on the authority of Wittgenstein. Those who claim to know are claiming that we can do much better. Frankly, if that is all that there is to testimony, I’m not interested at all.

Well I’m just not well enough versed in Wittgenstein to push what he says too far. So I’ll let David (not DKL who is a positivist) speak there.

The original point was more to get at the distinction between regular epistemology of objective truth as correspondence versus existential “epistemology” where truth is subjective. While I know Kierkegaard about as well as I know Wittgenstein he is famous for saying, “Truth is subjectivity.” This goes back to Pascal who makes the distinction between intellectual and existential truth - and privileged the latter.

Now I certainly agree we should have both. And I don’t want to go in the direction of say Nietzsche or certain interpreters of William James and say that whether a judgement is wrong doesn’t matter. That what matters is how helpful for life the judgement is. That is to reduce truth to utility. I think that simply wrong.

Having said that though the existentialist view of truth sees truth as wrapped up in values. The existential truth grows and not only in itself but in terms of the person who holds it. Thus truth, existentially, is very much wrapped up in an experience of holding the truth and finding it growing. Truth and faith are thus wrapped together in the existential consideration rather than the focus being on truth and correspondence or “adequate measurement.” Thus faith brings out a kind of transcendence in which the truth is able to grow.

An other way of looking at it is to say that an existential truth grows like a living thing. To ask if something is true is to ask if it is alive. To ask the epistemological question of truth is simply a whole other kind of question. That’s not to say that in interrogating a situation in terms of existentialist truth we can’t also raise epistemological questions. But fundamentally I think the issues are different. One is about commitment of the individual through faith whereas for epistemological issues one can have an intellectual judgment without having any commitment at all.

Now some thinkers end up merging the two traditions. (I think Nietzsche heads that way, Heidegger definitely does seeing epistemological truth as grounded by something more akin to an existentialist truth, Peirce does as well) But fundamentally there is a move such that to speak epistemological truth is to adopt an uncommitted and unengaged “distance” from the phenomena. Values are repressed. We adopt a “God’s eye view” (meaning of course the idealization of God found among the classic Greek thinkers) whereas for existentialism it is all about engagement and bringing close. They are two polar opposite movements in a sense.

Blake, I think you’re misreading David. (I did initially as well) I think this paper gets at some of the issues related better. When you say “mere language game” I think you were taking him as saying more a word game. But clearly that’s not what Wittgenstein is saying.

I should also note that while there are things about Kierkegaard I like, overall I don’t care for him. Presumably because of how high he privileges the subjective. I think any account has to blend the two parts.