Chiron

Speaking of placebos, their powerful effects are simply testament to the power of the human mind and emotions. In order for a drug to be effective, it has to exeed the placebo effect, which is why new drugs are tested and compared to placebos.

And A-M, the pushing-yourself-into-that-love thing sounds like meditation, or some sort of nirvana. Have you ever encountered and considered meditation or Zen?

Quickly,
-Chiron

Nikolai

Thought this may be off topic, and if the discussion continues it might be better to start a new thread, but what are the explanations for placebo? I mean the specific details of how it works...

Anti-Materialist

Ok - I will compile a list of links...

A rather extensive list of links.




I will start a new thread to do it, and it will take me a few days because much of my points were made from memory. I need to really dig to find some of this stuff.

It'll be worth doing though - I might be able reference some of it in my book.


====

Oh, and in response to Chiron - yes, I am a big believer in meditation. What you are describing from Zen, is also found in the Sufi-Muslim tradition, and in original taoism, and in Christian mysticism.

My meditations are not really related to any particular technique, they are just what I developed that works best for me.


Do you study Zen?

Bugs

That’s easily explained - Occam’s Razor doesn’t say choose the simplest.

Occam’s Razor actually says:

"Pluralitas non est ponenda sine neccesitate", which is translated as "plurality should not be posited without necessity."

This is often translated as choose the simplest. And this is where the confusion lies, because “simplest” is not necessarily the option to chose. For example, if you’re deciding on evolution v. creation, you’ll see that creation is the simplest. What could be simpler that goddidit? By comparison, evolution with its multiple steps since life first started, plus the huge amount of evidence to study, is highly complex. Occam’s Razor only works if you know what it really means.

What Occam’s Razor means is this:

Do not invent unnecessary entities to explain something.

An example

Suppose I have a cat. One night, I leave out a saucer of milk, and in the morning the milk has gone. No one saw who or what drank the milk. Lets say there are two possibilities:

1 The cat drank it

or

2 The milk fairy drank it

Occam tells us to reject option 2. This is because option 2 requires us to invent an unnecessary entity – the milk fairy. It is an invention because we have no prior evidence that the milk fairy exists. And it is unnecessary because there is a plausible natural explanation that does not require the milk fairy – the cat. (We know he exists.)

Note: we haven’t proven that the cat drank the milk. Or disproven the milk fairy option. Strictly speaking, we keep an open mind about both options. But Occam says that if you insist it could be the milk fairy, you have invented an unnecessary entity. And why would you do that?

Note also that strictly speaking, both solutions are equally simple. But the cat hypothesis is simpler in that you haven’t had to invent a new, unproven entity. Same with creation – you need to invent the unproven “God”. Evolution doesn’t require unproven supernatural designers that leave no evidence of their existence.

In addition, the question of whether the simplest has always been proven to be 100% accurate, is misleading. The question you should ask is, how often has the solution with the additional unnecessary entities (milk fairies), been correct? Rarely, and the reason is that if you go that route, there are limitless inventions you can speculate about. And most of them will be wrong. In my example above, consider the additional options that we could choose if we abandon Occam. The milk could have been drunk by ghosts, or aliens, or the boogieman or Santa Claus or an invisible unicorn. Why choose one of these over the others when there is an equal lack of evidence for any of them?

Occam’s Razor doesn’t assume the simplest answer is correct. It just tells you that if you put unnecessary things in your answer they will probably be wrong.



(Edited for typo.)

Anti-Materialist

Well, this makes sense on the surface.
But you are starting with a known entity, and an unknown entity. You know about the cat - you don't know about the milk fairy.

But Lettuce look at a different scenario.



Say you have two plausible hypotheses:


1) The fundamental forces of nature are fine tuned to create a universe that will result in great complexity. Part of this complexity includes life.


2) There are billions upon billions upon billions of universes, each with slightly different settings of the fundamental constants. We just happen to live in a universe in which the settings were such that it lead to complex physics, chemistry, and eventually life.



This is an entirely different scenario.




Also, there is no evidence for the Milk Faerie. But you can talk to your cat, and get feedback from your cat, anytime you like.

If you would like to, you could talk to God and get feedback from God - here is a link on how to do it:

http://www.mindspring.com/~scottr/nde/jansen1.html



I have spoken with the author of this paper - Dr. Karl Jansen. He was really very nice. He does not say that using ketamine to induce a near death experience is any sort of proof that the near death experience is real, or that it is false.

Materialists, of course, assume that if a drug can induce a Near Death Experience, then that is just evidence that is a strictly physical phenomenon. I think that is a silly argument - but materialists have great faith in their beliefs - their faith is almost as hard to shake as the faith of fundamentalists.

Bugs

Agreed. That’s the principle of Occam’s Razor – don’t invent unknown entities.

Agreed again. Occam’s Razor can’t help you with that choice. Each option has unknown unproven entities. (1) has a God, or designer, (2) has multiple universes. So we’re stuck. Personally, I think we may never know which of those is true.

Funnily enough, I have exchanged emails with Karl Jansen on this very topic. He gave me permission to quote his email:

Me: Couldn't all the experiences on K be explained by the effects of the drug on the brain?

Dr. Jansen: Yes.

Me: Am I correct here?

Dr. Jansen: Yes.

Me: Is my logic faulty here?

Dr. Jansen: No.

Me: If not, I was wondering why you would propose the above additional entities?

Dr. Jansen: Because it's fun. The full reasoning is set out in some detail in my book Ketamine: Dreams and Realities, available from www.maps.org

It seems like he agrees the NDE is formed by chemicals in the brain only, and that any other explanation involving an actual out of body experience would violate Occam’s Razor. That’s what I assumed him to mean, anyway.

Occam’s razor again – if a NDE is a result of chemicals in the brain, I don’t need an unnecessary entity (an unknown and unexplained non-physical phenomenon), to explain it. That assumption could be wrong, but currently I know of no reason to believe it is wrong.

Philosoft

Of course it is evidence of a physical cause. We are building an inductive case, aren't we? I think what you call "faith" is simply a continued reluctance to posit a non-physical cause where one is still not warranted.

JGL53

I assume the multiverse you describe in #2 is a natural existing reality. Ergo, I will assume #2 is the correct theory of ontology until I see evidence of #1. My reasoning is that, even though there's also no direct (only indirect) proof of #2, it required no belief in an entirely different type or kind of entity from anything we have observed, as does #1. Theory #2 is still a metaphysical naturalism - just like our observable universe.


Oh, really? Why? If Dr. Jansen or others, proved that a NDE can be induced by a drug (ketamine) then why would a disinterested person STILL suspect that SOME near death experiences are paranormal or supernatural?

Usually when a natural explanation is found for a phenomenon, that ends that. The paranormal is usually called upon by the credulous when NO scientifically sound or naturalistic theory can be deduced. But damn, A_M, you seem to want to eat your cake and eat MINE too!



((Ah, yes, reaching to the bottom of the straw man barrel, i.e, using a weasel word like 'faith' to twist and confuse the issue, to try and put atheists in the same philosophical boat as supernaturalists - not good, A-M, not good at all.))

Obviously, every sane person has 'faith' or belief or assumption about the nature of reality in order to live from day to day without seriously injuring or killing oneself, among more mundane considerations.

But 'faith' in the existence of invisible, immaterial, unknowable entities that are conscious persons who create by pure thought, or who via supernature countermand the laws (attributes) of nature, and/or who secretly interject their wills into human affairs - well, that a faith that atheists, by definition, don't have. We, in contrast to supernaturalist and paranormalists, believe in and assume metaphysical naturalism. We don't assume entities beyond necessity. So sue us.

JGL53

double post.

Anti-Materialist

So, in this scenario, we are presented with two choices:


1)
Talking to God, via ketamine, is strictly hallucinatory in nature.


2)
Talking to God, via ketamine, actually involves talking to the creator.



You say you choose 1, because you see God as an unnecessary entity in this set of choices. This is precisely why object to people using occam's razor left and right, as if it were a law of logic.


All things are not equal in these two statements. It may have seem like the same experience either way, but the consequences are different.

If God's commentary on your life review is strictly imaginary, the the ethical advice you are given during your life review is coming from your own internal ethical system.

If God's commentary on your life review is actually from God, then the ethical advice may have slightly more weight.



However, I think there are other basic questions to ask. For example, why in the world would we evolve with the capacity to have a life review at the moment of our death?

I mean, I am sure we could concoct some sort of explanation for it - but I bet the explanation will sound pretty hokey.


It all comes down to an intuitive judgement call. Which seems more likely - that we evolved to have a life review and hallucinate talking to God at the moment of our death, or that we are actually talking to God at the moment of our death.


The talking to God hypothesis seems better to me, because it adds extra explanatory power. Specifically, it fits in very nicely with the fine-tuned universe hypothesis. It also fits in very nicely with the considerable evidence for reincarnation.

However, the hallucination hypothesis doesn't really fit in with the multiple universe theory, although it does not conflict with it.