Saturday, April 27, 2013

The Value of an Intelligence in Mormon Thought


Nearly all Western Judeo-Christian religions affirm the value of men and women. The devotees of these faiths oft claim that God is our creator and we are, accordingly, of immeasurable worth. For most of these religions, the value of a particular human being is derived from God. God created all things ex nihilo (i.e. out of nothing) and it is through His creative act that we are constituted in our present form. Whatever value we have is derivative upon God’s prior creative act. God is the author of all things, including our worth as human agents. [1]

But what of a religion that denies creation ex nihilo and the concept that God is the ground of all being? In such a belief system could human souls have value free of God’s complete creative act? Interestingly, Mormons are confronted with such questions. Upon one construal of the teachings of Joseph Smith, Mormonism maintain that human souls are eternal intelligences. [2] As philosopher Sterling McMurrin put it:

“The Mormon concept of man is distinguished from the classical Christian doctrine primarily in its denial that man is essentially and totally a creature of God. This follows from the fundamental thesis of Mormon metaphysics that all primary being is original and uncreated. In contrast to the view of traditional Christianity, both Catholic and Protestant, Mormonism describes all reality in its constituent elements as ultimately uncreated and imperishable. The most important facet of this denial of origins, with radical meaning for the Mormon religion as well as for the theology, is the doctrine that the human self in its essential being is given and uncreated. . . . Whatever is essential to at least the elementary being of the individual person in his full particularity, therefore, existing in the most ultimate and mysterious sense, is uncreated, underived, and unbegun.” The Theological Foundations of the Mormon Religion (Salt Lake City, UT: Signature Books, 2000), 50.

This novel teaching about man leads to the conclusion that we are coeternal with God. As the Prophet Joseph Smith maintained:

“We say that God Himself is a self-existing being. . . . Who told you that man did not exist in like manner upon the same principles? Man does exist upon the same principles. . . . The mind or the intelligence which man possesses is co-equal [co-eternal] with God himself. . . . The intelligence of spirits had no beginning, neither will it have an end. . . . The first principles of man are self-existent with God.” History of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, Period I, ed. B.H. Roberts (2nd ed.; Salt Lake City, Deseret News, 1950), VI, 310 – 12.

But, if we are co-eternal with God, what accounts for our value as human agents? God's creative act cannot provide a full explanation since we are not totally his creatures. [3] Therefore, it is apparent that Mormonism must provide an alternate account explaining the value of human agents. Further, in presenting an account, Mormonism cannot reference abstract laws independent of man. Such laws would be timeless, immaterial principles. Importantly, if Joseph's teachings are correct, "there is no such thing as immaterial matter." D&C 131: 7 – 8. [4] A materialistic, monist account, which does not draw upon abstract, immaterial laws, must be offered. Fortunately, a concept used in modern Analytic philosophy known as "supervenience" may provide the necessary tool to render an explanation of how an eternal, self-existent human agent can have value free of God's creative act.

Supervenience is the notion that there cannot be an A-difference without a B-difference. In other words, B-properties supervene on A-properties if two situations identical as to their A-properties are identical as to their B-properties. For a concrete example, imagine a painting, say the Mona Lisa. The painting, as an object, is the B-property. Those physical constituents that make it up, i.e. its atoms and complex molecules which form the canvas and paints, are the A-properties. What supervenience maintains is that if two objects have identical arrangements of A-properties--in this case an identical arrangement of atoms--then the two objects will also be identical as to their B-properties--i.e. they will both be the same painting; the Mona Lisa.

But how is this principle relevant to our inquiry? By recognizing that even if two objects are identical as to their A-properties--the arrangement of their fundamental physical constituents--thereby being identical as to their B-properties--in this case being the same painting, they can still, nevertheless, vary as to their value. This concept may appear complex, but it is quite simple.

Let us say we have the original Mona Lisa sitting in front of us--which was painted under the care of Leonardo da Vinci. Sitting next to it is a particle for particle duplicate. The duplicate was created in a lab by a scientist which scanned the original for its physical composition and made an exact atom for atom copy. They are, accordingly, indistinguishable as to their B-properties, being identical paintings. However, it is clearly the case that the original Mona Lisa is exponentially more valuable than its duplicate. The duplicate may, importantly, still be valuable. Even if the duplicate has a copy, its value is still not of the same degree nor depth as the original. The original is connected up with history in a way that the duplicate is not. As philosopher David Chalmers has pointed out, value is a "context-dependent" property which does not merely supervene, in a local sense, upon the underlying physical A-properties alone. The Conscious Mind: In Search of a Fundamental Theory (New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 1996), 34.

With this principle in hand we can begin to construct a picture as to why human agents are of worth free of God's creative act. To do so, let us take up another thought experiment which runs in parallel to the one above: in this thought experiment, instead of paintings and scientists we will use persons and God. Imagine Jane, an eternal, unbegun intelligence, whom God has decided to make a physically identical (A-property) copy of. Since Mormon thought maintains that our bodies, spirits and the whole of reality is matter, God could arrange the physical properties in such a manner as to create Jane's duplicate. Let us say God decides to do this. he perfectly arranges all the physical constituents to create a particle for particle duplicate of Jane. Duplicate Jane will look the same, speak the same and, likely, will have the same memories. Supposing God could do this, would Jane's duplicate have the same value as Jane? If our reasoning from above holds here, we would say she clearly does not. Importantly, duplicate Jane will still have value since she has been created into a conscious human agent by God. God's creative act accounts for part of our value as well. However, duplicate Jane's value would not be of the same kind, type, nor depth as Jane. Jane is eternal, without beginning. She has been through an eternal history of experiences and has been refined through the corridors of time to arrive at her current station as Jane. Duplicate Jane was brought into being at a later point. She is like the copied Mona Lisa, in a sense. She does not have the same historical context nor the actual-real experiences that Jane has. In fact, none of her experiences are her own. They are the real Jane's experiences. Duplicate Jane's memories are, in this sense, merely an illusion. Lacking the authenticity of Jane, duplicate Jane cannot have the same value.

God cannot, in Mormon thought, make a particle for particle duplicate of us with the same value. [5] Any creation to mimick us would not be eternal, for it would have a beginning whereas we are without beginning. In a real sense, the difference between an eternal being's value and a created being's value is the same difference as between the value of God as a necessary, uncreated being, in traditional Christian thought and the value of human agents as contingent created beings. Mormonism turns the whole picture on its head. We are all eternal. In Mormon thought it is our uncreated nature, therefore, which spans the eternity and accounts for our inherent value. We are the being that God, however powerful, cannot actually replicate. For any duplicate would have a beginning and we are without beginning. In a paradoxical turn, in traditional Christianity the value of souls derives from God's creative act; in Mormonism, the value of souls derives from the fact that God cannot actually create us.

If this understanding of the human agent is correct, then when we look into the face of the other, we are looking down a corridor of time that has no end; and when they look back at us, they are also looking down a similar corridor—almost like two mirrors facing one another. It is perhaps for this reason that the salvation of every soul is so important in Mormonism. After all, Mormonism teaches that we had to take upon ourselves a body since certain knowledge can only be obtained from actual experience. Without the actual experience, the acquisition of that knowledge is not possible. When one agent acquires the knowledge it seems that divine agents can then share than knowledge amongst themselves. This accounts for the fact that Christ was able to “tap-into” our experience in the atonement to learn of our pains. Without our prior experience, there would have been nothing to tap into. It is this type of full knowledge of the other that exemplifies the community of the Gods, in Mormon theology. To borrow a phrase from philosopher Cornelius Plantinga, Jr. “Each member [of the Godhead] is a person, a distinct person, but scarcely an individual or separate or independent person. For the divine life there is no isolation, no insulation, no secretiveness, no fear of being transparent to another. Hence there may be penetrating, inside knowledge of the other as other, but as co-other, loved other, fellow Father, Son, and Spirit are “members one of another” to a superlative and exemplary degree.” “Social Trinity and Tritheism,” in Trinity, Incarnation, and Atonement: Philosophical and Theological Essays, ed. Ronald Feenstra and Cornelius Plantinga Jr. (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 1989), 28. In Mormonism, this “inside knowledge of the other” is not limited to three; it is multiplied by an innumerable host of human souls who will become divine and share in the divine life in the same way that our Father, his Son Jesus Christ, and the Holy Spirit do.

To sum up, in Mormonism our value as human agents cannot be wholly derivative upon God’s creative act since we are not totally God’s creatures. Instead our value is inherent to the types of beings we are: eternal, everlasting and unbegun. No being, however powerful, can replicate us. We are, as the Mona Lisa, works of art with a history that cannot be duplicated. To look into the face of another is to look into the corridors of limitless time. Importantly, since our value and experiences cannot be duplicated, and since certain knowledge in Mormon thought can only arise from experience, the community of Gods cannot gain access to the stores of our knowledge without us. The salvation of every human agent is therefore of the utmost priority. When even one agent is lost, a potential divine relationship, of “penetrating inside knowledge of the other” is compromised; for only the fully divine have completely opened up the stores of their being to the other. In short, Mormonism provides a powerful image of how we as human agents have value. The image it presents, to my reckoning, is of deeper beauty than traditional Judeo-Christian theologies.



[1] Some Christian theologies claim that the concept of who we are has existed in the mind of God for all eternity. God determined which agents from those he foreknew in his mind to create. In these traditions, our value may be inherent in the concept of our personhood which God has had within the stores of his mind for time immemorial. However, even in these systems our value is still derivative upon God, since it required a conscious deity to maintain the concept of our being. Without that deity we would not be. See, e.g. the teachings of Luis de Molina, the 16th Century Jesuit.
[2] The other primary construal of Joseph’s teachings maintains that the spiritual element/intelligence that God made our souls from is eternal. Our particular identity and conscious events are, however, a creation of God. Bruce R. McConkie, among others, maintained this interpretation of Joseph Smith’s teachings. My analysis may not be as relevant to this interpretation. The main thrust of my argument is therefore is geared towards the construal of Joseph’s teachings that views our particular conscious events, our personhood, as eternal—without beginning nor end. For a detailed elaboration on these different interpretations, see Ostler, Blake T., The Idea of Preexistence in Mormon Thought, in Line Upon Line, ed. Gary James Bergera (Salt Lake City: Signature Books, 1989), 127 – 144. For an online edition of the same, see http://www.dialoguejournal.com/wp-content/uploads/sbi/articles/Dialogue_V15N01_61.pdf
[3] God's creative act may provide a partial explanation of our value. Yet, since we are eternal, God is not totally responsible for our existence, and therefore our value, as such. Accordingly, a more holistic account must be provided.
[4] As Truman Madsen noted, the phrase, “there is no such thing as immaterial matter,” is a mere tautology. It is like saying, “there is no such thing as inhuman humans.” It is an obvious logical truth. However, according to Madsen, the correct construal of Joseph’s revelation is “there is no such thing as immaterial [substance].” This would eliminate the substance dualism familiar to traditional Christian religions. If Madsen's construal is correct, which it appears to be, then Joseph taught that all reality is material; there are no entities residing outside of space-time. The physical plane is the whole of reality. See Madsen, Truman G. "The Meaning of Christ the Truth, The Way, The Life: An Analysis of B.H. Robert's Unpublished Masterwork," BYU Studies 15.3 (1975), 264.
[5] In Mormon thought it is doubtful whether God could even create a conscious duplicate of Jane. However, for purposes of this blog, this way of framing the issue is illustrative. 

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