I just came upon a thread by Ben McGuire over at the FAIR forums. (Basically an LDS apologetic discussion forum) It's fairly similar to the old positivism discussion here from last year. The difference is the focus of the debate. It starts off with a mention of Searle and his view on speech acts and intentionality. Ben says, "for the intentionalist, the meaning of an utterance (the speech act - whether it is an oration or the writing of a document) is defined entirely by the intentions of the author (using the term loosely here in this instance)." He continues later, "anti-intentionalists claim that the linguistic meaning of a text and the utterance meaning of a text are two entirely separate things. In other words, in the example above, What the individual said and what he meant to say are distinct." Now this is right, but what does it have to do with apologetics?
Well Ben argues that most views of naturalistic critics commit the "intentionalistic fallacy." That is, by reading a text in terms of what they know of the purported author. The text can't transcend the author. Relative to the Book of Mormon or even the Bible, this means that the author is king.
I'm not sure I agree. (And I should note I've not read the whole thread yet, but both Brent Metcalf and Dan Vogel join in) Here's my reasoning. Clearly the text is directed to an audience. The audience for either the Bible or the Book of Mormon is initially the people who first experience the text. Thus it seems fair to understand the text in the context of that people. Thus I don't see it as being that incorrect for Metcalf and Vogel to look to the 19th century to understand the Book of Mormon. The problem is that they neglect other claimed authors. (i.e. the purported Book of Mormon figures)
This can't be seen as really an issue of intentionality though. Clearly one could focus on intents of the authors with the authors being the 6th century Jewish figures Lehi and Nephi, for instance. Likewise adotping anti-intentionality though also doesn't resolve it, since we are then left with the question of context. Now certainly we can talk about a text in any context and how the meaning shifts. That's certainly a valuable analysis, but it seems that to the historian the concern are purported contexts.
That is, for the historian (as opposed to say literary analyst) the issue is the text and the context under study. However for a text that purports to work across multiple historic contexts, one can't neglect those other contexts.
Let me put that a little simpler, for the person studying say 12th century monastic orders, what counts with respect to the Bible is how people in the 12th century would have read it. How Augustine or the apostle Paul would have read the text is largely irrelevant, except to the degree it directly impacts upon 12th century figures.
So the error we have with Vogel and Metcalf isn't their 19th century readings or even their claims about Joseph Smith. (Although clearly we can debate them on those points) Rather the claim is that both claim that the text can only be considered in the 19th century context and exclude other contexts.
Of course to be fair, they don't solely do that. And I think it erroneous to claim they do. They reject the other contexts, but do because they feel the text doesn't fit those other contexts and it does fit the 19th century. I disagree with them, of course. But I think all this philosophical discussion of textuality, intents, and speech acts, is really just missing the rather simple points of disagreement. (I made a similar point in the positivism thread)
Whoops, I just noticed that I neglected to give the link to Ben's discussion. Here it is.
I should also add that I definitely agree with Ben that the assumption of Joseph as author has problem with things in the text that Joseph doesn't appear to be aware of. An example would be, say the distances given in the text versus the common view that the text is about all the Americas - a view difficult to reconcile with the text itself. Thus all the debate about DNA and so forth. If the author rules the text, then we can frequently skip the text and appeal to the auhtor to understand the text. However if someone claims not to be the author, then our approach must be more complex. My point is more about contexts rather than authorial intent. It gets even more complex when critics presume unconscious writings. It is unsurprising that when author intent is focused in on that a lot of psycho-speculation comes to play. Unfortuantely so. (Although I've not read Dan's biography of Joseph Smith, so I don't know if there is as much pschological speculation of Joseph's thoughts and intents as some have claimed)
I take back that presumption that Dan Vogel isn't engaging in the intentionality fallacy. He wrote:
I don′t do psychohistory because the BofM tells me what JS believed, felt, and thought. You are wrong to characterize my interpretations as external only.
and
If JS authored the BofM, it is quite likely that he was influenced by his father′s dream when he dictated Lehi′s dream. If he was influenced by his father′s dream when he dictated Lehi′s dream, and changed it from one of family unity to one of family division, then he did it intentionally to convey a certain meaning that it did not have before. If he did it intentionally to convey a certain meaning that it did not have before, then he PROBABLY did it to reflect the division in religion that had occurred in his own family.
and finally
Tell me why I can′t say what I said above. Tell my why I can′t surmise JS′s intentions by reading the book.
This all reminds me of when I was a sophomore taking philosophical writing. The first assignment was to write an analysis of John Donne's "The Flea." Well being the creative sort I went to the library and researched Donne's life and found out about his relationship with his long time love and all the controversy in his life. So I wrote my paper on how "The Flea" was really about Donne's life. Needless to say the professor took me to task on this, pointing out the intentionality fallacy. An author can write something without necessarily writing about what they believe or their life. That's not to say they can't invoke their life. Merely that you are on thin ice if you use a non-autobiographical text to assert something about their thoughts.
I've closed comments in order to avoid spam since I don't check this older blog as much anymore.
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