A Joseph Smithian Metaphysics?

The parallels with Process thought are fairly strong, and I’m not just referring to the word “process” in #2. The metaphysic is about as Whiteheadian as it is Smithian.

Would you expand more on the monism? I’m not sure how that differs much from the idea that everything is matter.

Jacob, I’d caution tying process thinking to the process thought of Whitehead let alone his popularizers like Hartshorne. As I think Nicholas Rescher has amply demonstrated it’s a philosophical stance with many adopters over the years going back at least to Leibniz. Each thinker has their own stance but in the general stance they share a view that process is more important than substance. My own views arise more out of Peirce and Heidegger rather than Whitehead. But I think Joseph’s focus on growth and eternal progression (and well before the rise of Darwinism injected this so strongly into philosophy) entails a strong process view.

Tom, not all Mormon philosophers would agree with the above. So I don’t think there is a Mormon philosophy. Rather there are lots of diverse Mormon philosophers. The above is explicitly not meant as an exegesis of Smith but rather taking some prominent themes and applying them to the ontological sphere.

As for sources, there’s really not a good book that does this. The books that have attempted to do it typically were written in the early 20th century and adopt dated naive views of either Mormon theology or philosophy. The best resent book is Blake Ostler’s three volume Exploring Mormon Thought. It’s a groundbreaking work but ends up adopting several very controversial theological stances that are outside of the mainstream of Mormon thought. (The rejection of foreknowledge, and the rejection of the straightforward reading of eternal progression and a plurality of gods as taught in the King Follet Discourse)

The other best source for Mormon theology are the various fragmentary notes on Joseph Smith’s sermons. These are actually online in a very nice format. However it gets tricky since these are not canonical for Mormons and are generally seen as mixed with speculation that Mormons are free to reject.

There are other writings. The Society for Mormon Philosophy and Theology is getting going with yearly conferences and a journal. However no one has yet synthesized all this academic inquiry into a single source. Yet. I suspect this will come but honestly right now everyone is still working out the ideas. It’s very early in development.

You also have the issue that by and large people are interpreting Mormonism from the particular philosophical interests they have. So Aristotle scholars look at it

Kent, as I see monism, it’s the idea that there basically isn’t stuff with radically different properties ala Cartesian dualism or Thomist souls.

I don’t think the suggestion that there is only one true metaphysics that can be successively approximated by rational considerations alone is remotely tenable. It is akin to the suggestion that the only reason scientists do experiments is because they are mentally inadequate.

Tom, I’m very skeptical of any metaphysics that “proceed[s] by rational demonstration to its conclusions.” Of course I’m not clear on what you mean by that. But I can’t think of metaphysics that has been done that way since the Rationalists. I think that metaphysics ought use the results of empirical study and work out the most likely underlying grounds. Now theology is not, of course, empirical. But I think if we take the theological grounds as serious then we can ask what kind of metaphysics would be entailed if a solid reading of tradition Mormon theology was true. That is proceed in much the same way we do with empirical results from the sciences. As I’ve mentioned many times I extremely skeptical of intuition as an appeal. I do think a kind of phenomenological introspection is also necessary albeit one that takes into consideration close study of signs.

Regarding you subsequent paragraph, I’m not sure how the claim that metaphysics and theology use different methods entails that “a fully materialist philosophy can give account of the whole manifold of reality.” I can see someone for other reasons opposing materialism. Of course the materialism I’m espousing isn’t a tradition materialism.

I also think you’re putting up a greater opposition between theology and philosophy than is justifiable. I think the Scholastics get far too bum a rap. I think the problem of Scholasticism was that tradition got far too much weight. I additionally think that the Scholastics had at best a naive hermeneutic of scriptural interpretation. The problem with the Scholastics wasn’t that they used theology. The problem with the Scholastics was tradition became dogma. (With the exception of the transition from Plato as master to Aristotle as master) So there also was a certain lack of a skeptical stance I think it necessary for inquiry.

As for knowing that things come in and out of existence, I may or may not agree depending upon what you mean by “things.” I see forms change. But is that things coming in and out of existence? So I think our phenomenology here has to be far more sophisticated.

As for Mormonism being unable to embrace ontology. I confess I’m not sure what that means. Further I don’t think one can reject ontology. All that means is that one has an ontology one doesn’t think about critically. But it’s still there, often inconsistent, and affecting our thinking.

You know I’ve thought about that question a long time Michael and I’m not sure I have an answer. I don’t think most Mormons think in terms of the contingent/necessary categories. The way it’s usually conceived of though is that since all beings go into the infinite past without a beginning is that all intelligences are equally necessary beings. But there are compelling cases to be made on the other side. It depends upon how you consider possible universes.

Is there a possible universe in which there is no God? I think most Mormons would say no. Can they establish this justifiably though? I’m not sure. I will say though that the kind of thinking about God as a necessary being that tends to go on in traditional Christian theology just is alien to most Mormon thought. Mormons tend to existentialists rather than essentialists in that sense. So it’s probably unsurprising that existentialism, even among those more on the analytic side of the philosophical fence, is quite influential among Mormons.

The more interesting question is whether the being who is God is necessarily God or whether there could in a possible universe be an other being who is God. While I don’t know, I suspect there would be much more diversity of opinion on that question.