August Rituals

If it's late September and you really should be back at school, you're not a BYU student, where that happens a month earlier, in late August. And the semester kicks off with an opening devotional assembly featuring an address by a General Authority. This year Elder Scott spoke on the theme "learning truth is best accomplished by using multiple senses" (quoting the Deseret News article reporting the talk). Examples of senses he gave: sight, hearing, and inner feelings that come through inspiration. Uh, I have a question.

Are feelings perceived? And what organ of perception, what bundle of nerves, "senses" feeling the way the eye senses light or the eardrum senses changes in air pressure that we perceive as sound? I think this raises an interesting question as to what a "theory of inspiration" really says. If the Spirit whispers to a person, are we saying there are physical sound waves transmitted to that person's ear? Or is there just something happening in the person's mind that they mentally construe as sound (even though their ear drum never moved)? Perception originates in external stimuli. It's not clear we really think inspiration or revelation works that way.

For example, both the Book of Mormon and the New Testament regard dreams as sometimes being revelatory. But dreams don't come to our minds via perception; they are purely mental events. Our mind constructs dreams, but our eyes don't see them and our ears don't hear them. So plainly Mormons affirm non-perceptual revelation that comes to our minds but not via our senses.

Likewise with visions, which the Book of Mormons likens to dreams: "Behold, I have dreamed a dream; or, in other words, I have seen a vision" (1 Ne. 8:2). This suggests one "sees" a vision with one's mind, not with one's eyes, just like one views the visual imagery of a dream with one's mind, not with one's eyes. Of course, almost everyone has dreams. Maybe that's what makes it such a striking analogy.

So maybe Elder Scott is just telling BYU students to use their minds. Great advice.

Actually, that's not what I was going to write about. As I read the short article at Deseret News I could hear Elder Scott (in my mind, not with my ears). After hearing GAs for years and years at Conference, one becomes so accustomed to their respective distinctive speaking styles that it kicks in even when one reads written text. Of course, this can't happen for speakers you have never heard in real life. And it won't happen for fictional characters in dialogue in a novel or play.

There's a differance between spoken word and written text: the spoken word is immediate (ignoring the case of a recorded speech), whereas written text is postponed, so to speak. So for GAs who we hear a lot, this "voice memory" we attach to a written text they spoke or wrote makes their written remarks more immediate and more direct. Some pictures do tell stories. That's sort of interesting. I suppose it also works for those who show up regularly in the media or maybe for actors with a distinctive voice (like Robert Mitchum, for example in his opening and closing narration in Tombstone).

Comments

[Tytus]

This actually wasn't the new semester kick-off, it was BYU "Education Week", which is like "EFY for Adults/Families"

BYU Fall semester doesn't start until September 3rd.

[Dave]

Thanks for the correction, Tytus. I guess I'll have to rerun the post in two weeks.

[a random John]

A while back john f. stated in a blog comment that he believed that Josepeh Smith Jr. literally saw God the Father and Christ. I then asked what someone walking by the grove would have seen. john f. was honest enough to admit that he didn't know and that the answer might be, "nothing."

[Robert B.]

In a discussion with the neurologist that was treating my wife we were discussing the loss of visual acuity (among other frailties). He commented that you do not see with your eyes or hear with your ears. The brain gathers information and then processes it to provide a "picture".

IOW we do not all see or hear the same way even at the same time. Each of us have learned or trained our brains to react to the stimulus provided. Changing conditions in the stimulus or the brain can change how we process the data.

I thought at the time the same must apply for spiritual learning / senses.

Robert B.

[Dave]

Robert, I've seen the same idea discussed in the context of teaching computers to "see". You can't just run data from a nicely tuned electric eye--computers can't make heads or tails of the resulting data stream. It takes sophisticated software that replicates the many visual "subroutines" our human brains use to construct a field of vision with objects, background, colors, shades, movement, etc. It turns out human vision is much more complicated than anyone ever suspected.

[Ann]

I just had a conversation with my psychiatrist about feelings. There are four: happy, sad, angry and afraid. Everything else is thought. I would guess that in the context, "trust your feelings," (Star Wars, anyone?) would refer to trusting your happy.

[Jared*]

Boy, you are right. Elder Scott's voice would turn on in my head only for the quotes in the story.

[Duff]

I'm afraid its even more complicated than we all want to think, this consciousness thing. If anyone is really interested in what it is all about, I suggest Daniel Dennett's, Consciousness Explained, or Susan Blackmore's Conversations on Consciousness, wherein she and many other "mind" scientists give their thoughts on what it means to really be conscious. It boggles the mind...whatever the mind is.