"Distinct impressions"

***QUOTE***

TOUCHSTONE SAID:
Steve,

I get the distinct impression now after reading a lot of your posts that you use technical/philosophical language to obscure your arguments. I don't know whether that's a conscious choice or not, but this post is a good example of needlessly ornate forms getting in the way of an idea.

***END-QUOTE***

Touchstone,

I get the distinct impression now after reading a lot of your comments that you use impressionistic language to obscure your poverty of arguments. I don't know whether that's a conscious choice or not, but this comment is a good example of needlessly impressionistic verbiage getting in the way of an idea.

Incidentally, what’s the difference between a distinct impression and an indistinct impression? Or is the distinction—how shall we say—impressionistic?

What the Evangelutionist is really attempting to do is to play both sides of the fence. He is raising an intellectual objection to my position, but he’s also retreating into an anti-intellectual bunker.

At T-blog, we get these schizophrenic objections all the time. On the one hand we’re accused to being too fideistic. On the other hand, we’re accused to being too philosophical.

The interlocutor was the one who framed the question in terms of epistemic *justification*. And he seems, intentionally or not, to be operating with an internalist constraint on knowledge.

That being so, one cannot engage his objection without drawing technical/philosophical distinctions regarding internalist/externalist models of justification:

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/justep-intext/

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/knowledge-analysis/

I’m responding to the interlocutor on his own level.

***QUOTE***

If my Mormon neighbor comes to me and tells me about his visitation by the Angel Moroni, testifying *explicitly* to the truth of the Book of Mormon and the status of Joseph Smith Jr. as a prophet of God, what would you tell him was actually happening?

***END-QUOTE***

Short answer: I ‘d tell him that he was deluded.

***QUOTE***

Now, with respect to my Mormon friend, you suggested that his experience may be shown to be (i) non-specific or (ii) otherwise disproven.

As far as specificity, go ask your friendly Mormon neighbor, and you'll learn that they specifically have the truth of the Book of Mormon validated by what they claim to be a veridical experience.

***END-QUOTE***

Are you trying to be obtuse?

I don’t have any uniform opinion about the religious experience of Mormons in general since their experience is individual and variable. It all depends on the example.

A Mormon can enjoy a religious experience which has nothing to do with the Book of Mormon.

With respect to the Mormon prayer, I already did a post on that a long time ago, which I mentioned in reply to the interlocutor. So I’ve answered that question before you or he ever asked me about it.

***QUOTE***

Relating that back to your argument that if you have positive knowledge of snow, no ignorance of snow can deny this positive knowledge. So here, the Mormon is saying "I have truth" -- "I have direct knowledge of snow". Since that's the case, it seems you've given the Mormon a powerful defense, as it's own you claim for yourself.

***END-QUOTE***

That’s an argument from analogy minus the argument.

***QUOTE***

As for being falsified elsewhere, on what grounds would the Bible, Qur'an or the Book of Mormon be falsified?

***END-QUOTE***

A couple of issues:

i) The Bible can be falsified iff the Bible is false. But if the Bible is true, then it cannot be falsified.

ii) Both Mormonism and Islam are Christian heresies. As Manata points out, this means that they can be falsified on internal grounds alone—although they can also be falsified on external grounds.

***QUOTE***

I thought the whole point of this was that the external arguements *weren't* conclusive?

***END-QUOTE***

i) And why did you think that was the whole point? The sufficiency or insufficiency of external arguments was never the issue of this particular thread.

Rather, the issue was the sufficiency or insufficiency of religious experience.

Sometimes religious experience is sufficient, but at other times religious experience is insufficient. The latter case is where external arguments come to the fore.

ii) But it also depends on the purpose to which religious experience is being put. Are we talking about religious experience simpliciter, or the *argument* from religious experience?

***QUOTE***

If the external arguments aren't conclusive, then you've got yourself chasing your tail.

***END-QUOTE***

I have no opinion on whether external arguments *in general* are either conclusive or inconclusive. That would all depend on *which* external argument we’re talking about.

***QUOTE***

if "other grounds" exist, and they are experiential, then those experiential evidences have the same doubt cast on them as the experience we began with -- the Muslim's veridical experience viz. Allah and the Qur'an, and the Mormon's veridical experience viz. the Book of Mormon.

***END-QUOTE***

And who equated the “other grounds” with existential arguments? In my discussion, I set the existential arguments in *contrast* to the “other grounds.”

It didn’t take long for the Evangelutionist to revert to form: total incomprehension and misrepresentation of the opposing position.

***QUOTE***

As near as I can tell, then, the argument winds up simply with naked assertions of "other grounds", grounds not specified.

***END-QUOTE***

The first move Touchstone makes is to allege that I use “technical/philosophical language to obscure my arguments.”

Having thus proceeded to strip my arguments of their technical/philosophical qualifications, he then throws up his hands and exclaims them to be “naked assertions”!

One would be hard put to find a better example of a straw man.

***QUOTE***

Rejection on grounds of specificity wouldn't make sense for the Mormon who received a "testimony" of the truth of the Book of Mormon, unless you're prepared to allow that such a "tetimony" might be true.

***END-QUOTE***

Evidently the Evangelutionist is unable to keep more than one idea in his head at a time. Mormonism was not the only example that the interlocutor deployed.

There is no one criterion to apply in every case, because the examples of religious experience are necessarily diverse. Some religions posit different truth-conditions than others. And individual adherents vary in their range of religious experience.

***QUOTE***

But I wonder how you would reject the Mormon's experience as different than your own then. What are these other grounds?

***END-QUOTE***

I’ve already given a detailed answer to that question. The Evangelutionist disregards all of the detailed argumentation, then expresses his puzzlement at the absence of an answer.

Answers are beside the point when dealing with a disputant who lacks the mental discipline to follow an argument.

***QUOTE***

It seems your whole argument would depend on that.

***END-QUOTE***

He didn’t begin to engage my “whole” argument. Instead, he tried to reduce my “whole” argument to a simple-minded caricature.