Jinto

Yes. Just the other day I was arguing with a theist who told me that because solipism is a simpler hypothesis than anything scientific, that if I really "believed in" occam's razor, that I should be a solipist. It took me five hours to slowly and painfully explain to him that solipism actually increased the number of theoretical entities involved in any description of the universe.

If you consider mountains of fossil evidence to be "weak data," then yes, I agree with you. If you consider such things as unverified andecdotal evidence to be data AT ALL, then I can't agree with you there, since such "data" is easily contaminated by lies, misperceptions, false memories, etc. All of which are phenomena which HAVE been observed to exist under proper observing conditions.

By the way, if the PEAR data is accurate, then why a) do other laboratories have a hard time reproducing it, and b) why haven't they applied for a free million dollar research grant, courtesy of James Randi? After all, this would be right up his alley.

(Speaking of Randi, how did your tarot card readings go?)

Then please direct your contempt towards the idiots who misapply it and not toward those who use it properly.

An assertion that we ALL agree with, even those who are guilty of the same.

Anti-Materialist

Awww, Jinto - I don't wish to feel contempt towards anyone. Those who have the intellectual courage to challenge the beliefs they were raised with, and the intellectual patience to think through incredibly subtle and abstract concepts, are deserving of great respect.


I maintain a very warm and fuzzy worldview.


Sometimes, computer communication is annoying, because it does not convey tone of voice. Had you guys heard me say outloud that occam's razor is horse poop, you'd have heard a tone of jocularity in my voice. It would have conveyed the sense that I was making that statement to get a response, because I felt that the issue needed to be addressed.

Perhaps I should use more smilies:

:notworthy :banghead:

Anti-Materialist

Oh, and regarding my Tarot readings...

They told me to be wary of the tower of darkness, for it shall be possessed by the knight of wands!


I interpret this to mean that the Amazing Randi is really a very powerful sorcerer who wishes to keep others from discovering his secrets, and so he doesn't want anyone to believe that they also have dark powers.


Either that, or it means that I shall have to take a pee in the middle of the night, and I must be careful or I shall misapply my wand, and miss the tower of darkness, and thus wind up peeing on my floor.


I am not sure which of these interpretations is accurate - I'll let you know what turns out to be the truth after it happens. Then, with hindsight, I will be able to say that the prediction was perfect!

JGL53

Well, we disagree about 'assumption', A-M.

I try not to make assumptions, if they are not sufficiently justified by the facts, but we all must make assumptions, every minute of every day, for pragmatic reasons, if nothing else. In other words, 'to make an assumption' is far from necessarily being a bad thing, as you seem to be arguing.

E.g., I got in my car this morning and drove off without checking under the hood for bombs possibly put there by enemies I may not even know I have. In fact, I didn't even have a qualified mechanic check under the hood first to make sure my car was in working order before I put in the key and turned. I just 'assumed' the car would crank right up, and son-of-a-bitch, it did!

Do I need to give you another million examples of when I don't 'investigate' first to rule out alternative theories in my life before I make an assumption and take action?

If my car battery was dead, or if a bomb was wired to my ignition, I would find these things out as a matter of course. The truth will eventually out, as the old saying goes. The gremlins can't hide forever (or can they?).

Thus it is with the scientist. He or she will test what seems to be reasonable. In the end, over centuries, and after experiments by tens of thousands of scientists, more and more truths out - many of them by sheer accident, in the course of their day to day work, e.g. the discovery of penicillin.

I cannot worry myself with the POSSIBLITY of any number of gremlins, as you put it, being an unseen part of the workings of reality. I assume they aren't, and until they show up, it is a reasonable assumption that they aren't there, in any existentially important way.

Naturally, you are free to disagree, and disagree until death takes you away if you want to, but there ARE such things as a reasonable assumptions. Deny it or not, you yourself make literally thousands of them every day that you live.

We all should be willing to look at any new evidence coming along that may disprove our most cherished theories. And, of course, no theory is or can be proven absolutely true forever and a day. But I think you are abusing the concept of agnosticism. Somethimes, you (and every scientist) will have to take the bull by the horns, or you'll never even get out of bed in the morning, much less do anything else.

As to your five proffered examples of weak data indicating idealism is a possible explanation - I agree it ALWAYS is a POSSIBLE explanation, but is it the best, or most obvious? That is the important question. We never rule it out ABSOLUTELY, but the burden is on the gremlins to show up on camera, or somesuch. Until then, it is reasonable to assume they are imaginary and, evern worse, supererogatory.

I will again, as in a sister thead, recommend Carl Sagan's book "A Demon-Haunted World" to offer you more mundane explanations for your examples #s 1,3, 4, and 5 (I'm unfamiliar with PEAR).

Until Sagan's naturalistic explanations can be ruled out - and there's sound argument in their favor, in mine and many people's opinion - then I don't think we can justify spending any time speculating about POSSIBLE gremlins.

Anti-Materialist

But this is a perfect example of what I am talking about. You did not, in fact, assume that there was not a car bomb under the hood.

What you did was get into the car, and drive to work. The process of thinking about a car bomb did not occur to you. You did not make that assumption.

Rather than making assumptions, we choose to act in a practical way.

If it did occur to me to check for a car bomb, then I would probably not do so. It would not be because I assume there is no car bomb. It would be because it seems very unlikely to me that there is a car bomb, and thus is not worth my time.

An assumption is choosing to believe something, because you need to believe in things in order to get through the day. This is not true though. You do not need to believe in things in order to get through the day - you simply need to act.

Assumptions are useful in thought experiements - but after we are done with the thought experiment we must be careful to dismiss the assumptions. They were just assumptions, after all.

I do not assume there is a God. However, in my spiritual practices, I am able to feel God's presence in a very profound way. Well - I am not even sure that is an accurrate statement. Rather, I am able to feel a connection to creation, and that connection induces in me certain states of mind that enable me to handle difficult situations. That connection also provides me with a very impressive ability to act with creativity and foresight in the things I do.

It works, it gets results, so I do it. However, I do not assume that the underlying theory that explains why it works is true - nor do I assume it is false. I simply don't have enough data to make a conslusion. Instead, I choose to act.

Anti-Materialist

But this is a perfect example of what I am talking about. You did not, in fact, assume that there was not a car bomb under the hood.

What you did was get into the car, and drive to work. The process of thinking about a car bomb did not occur to you. You did not make that assumption.

Rather than making assumptions, we choose to act in a practical way.

If it did occur to me to check for a car bomb, then I would probably not do so. It would not be because I assume there is no car bomb. It would be because it seems very unlikely to me that there is a car bomb, and thus is not worth my time.

An assumption is choosing to believe something, because you need to believe in things in order to get through the day. This is not true though. You do not need to believe in things in order to get through the day - you simply need to act.

Assumptions are useful in thought experiements - but after we are done with the thought experiment we must be careful to dismiss the assumptions. They were just assumptions, after all.

I do not assume there is a God. However, in my spiritual practices, I am able to feel God's presence in a very profound way. Well - I am not even sure that is an accurrate statement. Rather, I am able to feel a connection to creation, and that connection induces in me certain states of mind that enable me to handle difficult situations. That connection also provides me with a very impressive ability to act with creativity and foresight in the things I do.

It works, it gets results, so I do it. However, I do not assume that the underlying theory that explains why it works is true - nor do I assume it is false. I simply don't have enough data to make a conslusion. Instead, I choose to act.

Jinto

How is this different from assuming that it is very unlikely that there is a God, and acting in accordance with that belief?

So can I color you agnostic then?

JGL53

Since no belief or theory or explanation, actually thought about, can be known to be true with an absolute guarantee, then all actions that we take in a practical way MUST be based on POSITIVE assumptions that a certain result will follow a certain action. Ideas or beliefs that 'did not occur to me' are, by definition, irrelevant. - You seem to have an allergy to the word 'assumption' - you seem to be arguing that 'assumptions don't exist." Is that Right?


Wow - you argue my point for me - just put the words 'god' or 'gremlins' or 'any argument for philosophical idealism' in place of "car bomb". FINALLY, we are in agreement on a methodology/criteria for a thought experiment.

Wow - this is getting amazing. I agree, nearly one hundred per cent, with your statements quoted above - EXCEPT for the tiny adjustment of taking out the phrase "I am able to feel God's presence in a very profound way. Well - I am not even sure that is an accurate statement."

As this statement internally negates itself, potentially, since you admit you are unsure of its 'accuracy", I think we can just ignore it as being devoid of cognitive content, and irrelevant to the main statement.

I, myself, feel a hard-if-not-impossible-to-describe 'cosmic connection' to all of reality that allows me to feel comfortable in my own skin, as they say, and allows me a pragmatic way to face life and its vicissitudes daily and to deal with the imagined day of my death. (I believe there's a famous quote of Einstein's that speaks to this very concept.).

Certainly we all have to develop a state of mind, a psychological methodology, a 'spiritual practice', if you wish to use that phrase, to deal with the fact of our existence.

So you say you 'feel the existence of god' in your life. I don't use that word, and call myself an atheist - something you would never call yourself - but how do we differ, practically, pragmatically, and behavioristically? If our only difference in opinion is a different semantic PREFERENCE, then what is our practical, IMPORTANT disagreement?

I'm thinking there is none.

Anti-Materialist

You may well be right...

Actually - sometimes I think of it as the emotional communication we receive from God. Other times I think of it as the flow of the universe. It just depends on how I am using it.

I get feelings from it - If I choose to add words to those feelings, then I recognize that that is me adding those words - not God talking inside my head.


I refuse to try and define what God might be, because it is just unknowable. I know what God's presence feels like to me - it feels like this incredible sense of love, and this innate sort of behind the scenes connection to the world around me.

Even when my health problems have left me in the most unbearable states of pain - for which I couldn't take too much pain killers for, because they made me hallucinate bugs crawling on me, and things like that - I was able to hold onto a job, maintain relationships, and find happiness. A large part of what enabled me to do that was my ability push my sense of self out into this presence that I keep talking about.

By pushing myself out into that presense, I felt more of it, and less of the pain - and thus I could function. Desperate stuff, I know - but we do what works.


Thus, I know from personal experience that something is there. What I cannot know, is whether that something is strictly imaginary, or whether it is in fact a spiritual force that guides us when we are most desperate. Rather than misapplying Occam's razor, and assuming that it is just imaginary, I think it is more logical to just not make any assumption about it at all.

If I assumed it was imaginary, I don't think it would work for me. If I assumed it was real, then I would be making a leap of faith. I very strongly believe that rational thought is the only thing that will keep mankind from destroying itself. We must discipline ourselves to stick to rational thought at all times - which means no leaps of faith. Thus, instead, I make no assumptions, and I choose to take those actions that produce the best results.

Nikolai

Why should a powerful event not be dismissed? If there are two "powerful" events which contradict one another, how do we decide which one really occurred? Isn't it better to rely only on scientific data and ignore, as much as possible, personal experiences?

Why did other labs have a hard time reproducing these experiments? Shouldn't experiments be repeatable before the data is accepted? Who are these people who "investigate the methodology of the PEAR institute" and "admit that they cannot totally dismiss their data either"? Links? Also, could their bias effect the outcomes of the study?

No real mystery in NDE. It can occur in artificial settings, such as while subjecting pilots/astronauts to high velocities. They very often pass out and have a NDE.

Really? Do you have links?

I have never researched placebo, but from what I do know nothing about can't be explained in such a way as to fit the "materialist view of the human body".