Religion and Ethics Forum
General Category => Science and Technology => Topic started by: Sriram on May 29, 2023, 09:55:23 AM
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Hi everyone,
Here is a BBC article about 'invisible others'.
https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20230526-felt-presence-why-we-sometimes-feel-invisible-others
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explorers and adventurers have reported feeling similar presences, notably Ernest Shackleton, who had a sense of a "fourth man" accompanying his three-man party on the final stage of their epic trek across South Georgia in 1916. Everest mountaineers have also experienced these phantoms acting as guardian angels, helping them to survive and providing an eerie comfort. Sometimes it's referred to as the "third man factor".
In psychology, this experience is known as a "felt presence". Ben Alderson-Day, an associate professor of psychology at Durham University in the UK, is the author of a new book called Presence: The Strange Science and True Stories of the Unseen Other. He has found that these experiences are not limited to people in extreme situations. You may well have had the sense yourself at some point that someone is right there in the room with you, even though you can't see them.
A felt presence feels as though it's there with you in your personal space. It's hard to pin down exactly what a felt presence consists of. It's not experienced via the five physical senses of touch, sight, hearing, smell or taste, so it's not an hallucination. Objectively, in reality, there is nothing there at all. Yet they're not quite delusions either, which involve thoughts. Nor is it the same as imagining someone is there. People sometimes talk of something as nebulous as "a thickness in the air". It's almost like a sixth sense, which feels very real at the time.
The way we experience a felt presence can depend on our personal feelings and beliefs. It might feel comforting, as it was for Robertson, or malign or religious perhaps, depending on how you interpret the experience – a guardian angel maybe or a ghost or a visitor or your brain trying to help you.
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Yeah......I know...I know! It's all just your brain conjuring up such things in moments of stress or wishful thinking during lonely moments. 'The brain of the gaps'.
But there could be other worlds and other people close to us in 'parallel universes' who might be able to access us during moments of stress.
Cheers.
Sriram
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As to the subject itself, how do you propose we might investigate it?
It does remind me of one of my favourite cartoons.
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Yeah......I know...I know! It's all just your brain conjuring up such things in moments of stress or wishful thinking during lonely moments. 'The brain of the gaps'.
But there could be other worlds and other people close to us in 'parallel universes' who might be able to access us during moments of stress.
Maybe, however, what you need here, is Ockham's Razor. No need to indulge fantastical explanations when there are much simpler ones available.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam%27s_razor)
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We have discussed Occam's razor before, torridon. Ockham was a friar who believed in God and probably thought that the simplest of explanations is 'God'. He said something like "Entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity"....and this principle is not considered as a irrefutable one in the scientific method.
Your 'maybe' indicates that you probably accept the parallel universe hypothesis.
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We have discussed Occam's razor before, torridon. Ockham was a friar who believed in God and probably thought that the simplest of explanations is 'God'. He said something like "Entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity"....and this principle is not considered as a irrefutable one in the scientific method.
Your 'maybe' indicates that you probably accept the parallel universe hypothesis.
Or he put maybe because he just doesn't know.
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An interesting article, certainly. I was particularly struck by this:
In his search for explanations, Alderson-Day turns to a combination of the physical and the psychological. With mountaineers and explorers, a lack of oxygen to the brain may play a part, something which is also known to induce hallucinations. But there's also the survival aspect. Is the mind somehow conjuring up a presence that helps us through?
And, I agree with Alderson-Day when he suggests that both the body and mind need to be studied in order to fully explain these experiences.
I'm struck by the similarity to NDE experiences also.
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We have discussed Occam's razor before, torridon. Ockham was a friar who believed in God and probably thought that the simplest of explanations is 'God'. He said something like "Entities must not be multiplied beyond necessity"....and this principle is not considered as a irrefutable one in the scientific method.
Occam may have come up with this notion and may also have consider this to be consistent with god, but the problem for him and other theists using Occam is that they need to demonstrate the necessity for god as an entity to explain the cosmos etc. Without demonstrating necessity then the entity of god merely becomes an additional unnecessary step and using Occam the preferred explanation would be one that is simpler in that it does not propose this additional unnecessary complexity that is god.
So sadly Occam rather undermines the conclusion he came to (but then again as a Friar I doubt he was particularly open to the non-existence of god) through the very mechanism he proposes.
Under Occam a cosmos that can exist without the existence of god is preferred to one that includes the existence of god.
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An interesting article, certainly. I was particularly struck by this:
And, I agree with Alderson-Day when he suggests that both the body and mind need to be studied in order to fully explain these experiences.
I'm struck by the similarity to NDE experiences also.
I'm a reasonably big fan of knowledge for knowledges sake but the lengths that you'd have to go to to investigate this seem to outweigh the return.
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I'm a reasonably big fan of knowledge for knowledges sake but the lengths that you'd have to go to to investigate this seem to outweigh the return.
Yes, I agree. I was simply agreeing with the idea that to fully explain this phenomenon we need to look at the relationship between mind and body further rather than introduce Sriram's 'other worlds'.
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Occam may have come up with this notion and may also have consider this to be consistent with god, but the problem for him and other theists using Occam is that they need to demonstrate the necessity for god as an entity to explain the cosmos etc. Without demonstrating necessity then the entity of god merely becomes an additional unnecessary step and using Occam the preferred explanation would be one that is simpler in that it does not propose this additional unnecessary complexity that is god.
So sadly Occam rather undermines the conclusion he came to (but then again as a Friar I doubt he was particularly open to the non-existence of god) through the very mechanism he proposes.
Under Occam a cosmos that can exist without the existence of god is preferred to one that includes the existence of god.
Sriram appears to be using the reverse ad hominem here. If you agree with William on one thing, then you should agree on another.
As to the razor meaning William should have eschewed the odea of god, I think that all of our thinking takes place within cultural assumptions that it is almost impossible to be aware of. Further the razor is a tool in a set of logical approaches, William would have used. If William also accepted some form of the cosmological argument, then a 'god' might be seen as part of the minimum entities.
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Yes, I agree. I was simply agreeing with the idea that to fully explain this phenomenon we need to look at the relationship between mind and body further rather than introduce Sriram's 'other worlds'.
Given that those who would be the most reliable subjects in the sense of having it most consistently are categorised as having severe mental issues, we would I suspect be looking at defining what combination of physical and brain chemistry would likely lead to the experience.
I don't see anyway the 'hypothesis' that it arises from parallel universes could begin to be investigated.
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Sriram appears to be using the reverse ad hominem here. If you agree with William on one thing, then you should agree on another.
Yup that's right.
Actually I don't agree on either account - firstly I don't agree that the simplest explanation is likely to be correct - from what I've seen in the years I've spent studying biology things are incredibly complex and not simple at all.
But even if you were to accept the premise of Occam I'm struggling to see how it would posit god, in that there are explanations for life, the cosmos etc that don't require god and therefore the addition of god would seem to be an unnecessary over-complication which would fall foul of Occam.
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Yup that's right.
Actually I don't agree on either account - firstly I don't agree that the simplest explanation is likely to be correct - from what I've seen in the years I've spent studying biology things are incredibly complex and not simple at all.
But even if you were to accept the premise of Occam I'm struggling to see how it would posit god, in that there are explanations for life, the cosmos etc that don't require god and therefore the addition of god would seem to be an unnecessary over-complication which would fall foul of Occam.
I didn't say the razor posits a god. I said that William had other tools which used in conjunction might assume a god, and that what you see as an overcomplication with your toolset is not seen as that with a different toolset
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As to the razor meaning William should have eschewed the odea of god, I think that all of our thinking takes place within cultural assumptions that it is almost impossible to be aware of. Further the razor is a tool in a set of logical approaches, William would have used. If William also accepted some form of the cosmological argument, then a 'god' might be seen as part of the minimum entities.
Again I think you are correct - I suspect culturally when Ockham was around there would simply be no notion that there might not be a god and this would have been even stronger for those such as Ockham who had chosen a religious vocation. So for him I imagine his 'razor' would have been about how god interacted with the world rather than whether god did and even less, whether god actually exists.
God would have been a default absolute assumption to any discussion.
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I didn't say the razor posits a god. I said that William had other tools which used in conjunction might assume a god, and that what you see as an overcomplication with your toolset is not seen as that with a different toolset
See my later reply. I don't think Ockham would have seen his razor being about providing evidence that god exists - he would have taken that as an absolute assumption. However plenty of people more recently have tried to use the razor as evidence for the existence of god - I think that is decidedly wooly thinking.
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See my later reply. I don't think Ockham would have seen his razor being about providing evidence that god exists - he would have taken that as an absolute assumption. However plenty of people more recently have tried to use the razor as evidence for the existence of god - I think that is decidedly wooly thinking.
You are arguing against something not only that I haven't said but something that I have twice said I am not saying.
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All this talk of simple and complex are entirely subjective and depend on what we are comparing them to. There is no clear definition of either.
Choosing a simpler solution could further complicate matters when you dig deeper. Just because a solution seems simpler in a specific situation, does not mean it is correct or likely to remain simple further on. I don't think as a part of the scientific method, Occam's razor is a valid principle.
But coming back to the felt presence, there is the possibility of people from other parallel universes intervening in our lives. The idea of a simulated world is also to be considered.
It is not similar to NDE's because during NDE's the person is clinically dead on various parameters.
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You are arguing against something not only that I haven't said but something that I have twice said I am not saying.
It must be exhausting being you NS - being unable to avoid starting a row even if you were the only person left on the planet.
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All this talk of simple and complex are entirely subjective and depend on what we are comparing them to. There is no clear definition of either.
Choosing a simpler solution could further complicate matters when you dig deeper. Just because a solution seems simpler in a specific situation, does not mean it is correct or likely to remain simple further on. I don't think as a part of the scientific method, Occam's razor is a valid principle.
But coming back to the felt presence, there is the possibility of people from other parallel universes intervening in our lives. The idea of a simulated world is also to be considered.
It is not similar to NDE's because during NDE's the person is clinically dead on various parameters.
Just to ask again how would you test this?
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But coming back to the felt presence, there is the possibility of people from other parallel universes intervening in our lives.
Of course, I'm sure they've nothing better to do.
Religion: All About Us!
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. . . . . .
It is not similar to NDE's because during NDE's the person is clinically dead on various parameters.
But what you don't know is just when the NDE experience takes place and that is not necessarily when the subject was clinically dead. The fact that an NDE is remembered suggests that there was brain activity at the time.
I 'm not saying that the two conditions (felt presence and an NDE) are the same, but that they share some similarities.
E.g.
suggested lack of oxygen to the brain
physical stress
perception of a presence or presences, including fictional characters
hearing sounds
seeing landscapes
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Its incorrect to keep attributing all such experiences to the brain. It is like attributing all our normal experiences (vision, hearing, love, fear etc etc.) to the brain.
The brain is certainly involved as a platform for all these experiences...we all know that. But the brain does not create these experiences.
It would be more correct to say that the mind creates such experiences. But we don't know what the mind really is. We tend to dismiss it as just electrical and chemical reactions in the brain....which is rather simplistic.
Better to say that we don't know instead of dismissing these experiences as just brain generated images.
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Its incorrect to keep attributing all such experiences to the brain. It is like attributing all our normal experiences (vision, hearing, love, fear etc etc.) to the brain.
No, it is the reasonable thing to do, given that is what all the scientific evidence points to.
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No, it is the reasonable thing to do, given that is what all the scientific evidence points to.
Evidence points to the mind and consciousness. Treating the mind, consciousness and brain as the same thing is not correct.
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Evidence points to the mind and consciousness. Treating the mind, consciousness and brain as the same thing is not correct.
Maybe not the same thing, per se, but they are all aspects of the same thing. Mind being the subjective aspect of the brain and consciousness being a constituent of mind.
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Maybe not the same thing, per se, but they are all aspects of the same thing. Mind being the subjective aspect of the brain and consciousness being a constituent of mind.
You are talking as though you actually understand objectively as to what mind and consciousness are.
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You are talking as though you actually understand objectively as to what mind and consciousness are.
IMHO the brain is the wetware, mind is simply an emergent property of the brain and encompasses things like things like our behavour, perception, internal word. Consciousness is just a state of that mind.
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As this thread is in the Science board, are we taking the philosophical view that we need to use the tools of science to argue for or against, e.g. an epistemological naturalist perspective (knowledge is best/ (only)? gained via the methods of science/ natural science?.
We have seen arguments that the mind is an emergent property of a complex structure - the brain - and the mind cannot be reduced to physicality in itself. Where the mind relates to subjective experiences, how is it possible for science/ methods of natural science to observe, define or prove anyone's subjective experiences?
Gordon's thread looked into this issue; http://www.religionethics.co.uk/index.php?topic=20013.0
i.e. that a human mind cannot observe/ know the subjective experience of being a bat.
This discussion between 2 bioethicists, Alex McKeown and David Lawrence, on defining 'mind' and what we mean by the term 'body' (whatever supposedly enables human cognition) and whether the body has much to do with the function of the mind is interesting.
For example, Lawrence seems to suggest that for there to be a mind the brain requires information and information is an ontologically separate fundamental property of the universe. The idea that there is information that we are aware of and our mind processes subjectively but the subjective outcome is something we cannot convey to others, makes sense to me.
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/354462653_Does_a_mind_need_a_body
Not sure how scientific methods would deal with this inability to convey subjective experience. Subjective experience is clearly a very important part of being human and impacts on human interaction and socialisation so not surprising that conventions and rules around incorporating subjectivity into society are up for discussion and debate.
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But there could be other worlds and other people close to us in 'parallel universes' who might be able to access us during moments of stress.
Cheers.
Sriram
King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table were perceived as a protective force by soldiers going off to the 1st or 2nd World War. Maybe they exist in a parallel universe, even though it has been proved they had no historical existence - in fact were a literary invention, dating from hundreds of years after the time King Arthur was supposed to have lived.
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People believe in many such things when they are in trouble or in need of support. It could be their own dead mother or father or friend or Jesus or Krishna or anyone like that. King Arthur and his knights is rather strange ....but whatever floats their boat, I suppose!
'Felt presence' is not the same . It is not a belief or something that the person voluntarily chooses to have as support. It is the feeling of a presence that the person does not expect. It happens spontaneously.
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It is not uncommon to have peceptions of things that aren't there or aren't real. It is the subconscious mind 'filling in'.
There is an unused picture hook on my bedroom wall and when I stare at it in the morning lying in my bed, it starts to move, up, down, left, right, sometimes slow, sometimes quickly. There seems to be no rationale for its apparent movement. It seems my subconscious mind has decided it must be an insect and fills in a crawling behaviour for it.
'Felt presence' is likely just such a phenomenon of mind.
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'Felt presence' is likely just such a phenomenon of mind.
.. or maybe a change in dopamine levels.
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No, it is the reasonable thing to do, given that is what all the scientific evidence points to.
If all our mental experiences, including our beliefs and reasonings, are simply the result of chemical and electrical changes in the brain, an organ that evolved not to enable us to discover the truth but to aid our survival (and bear in mind that some beliefs mght be false but have survival value), what grounds do we have for accepting the reasooning that led us to that conclusion?
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If all our mental experiences, including our beliefs and reasonings, are simply the result of chemical and electrical changes in the brain, an organ that evolved not to enable us to discover the truth but to aid our survival (and bear in mind that some beliefs mght be false but have survival value), what grounds do we have for accepting the reasooning that led us to that conclusion?
Cognitive science reveals that experience is a product of mind. That brains evolved in accordance with Darwinian principles is not sufficient reason to ignore the findings of science. You could even caricature science as our best efforts to find the truth about the world by making a concerted effort to bypass the inherent biases that evolution has endowed us with.
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Cognitive science reveals that experience is a product of mind. That brains evolved in accordance with Darwinian principles is not sufficient reason to ignore the findings of science. You could even caricature science as our best efforts to find the truth about the world by making a concerted effort to bypass the inherent biases that evolution has endowed us with.
How can we bypass the attributes developed through evolution and still hope to survive and evolve? Is that why we are racing towards extinction?
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Is that why we are racing towards extinction?
Not a problem surely, as we will be reincarnated and start again!
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How can we bypass the attributes developed through evolution and still hope to survive and evolve? Is that why we are racing towards extinction?
We try to bypass the biases that evolutionary processes have left us with. That doesn't mean we try to bypass all our attributes.
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We try to bypass the biases that evolutionary processes have left us with. That doesn't mean we try to bypass all our attributes.
Attributing all such (felt presence) complex phenomena to evolution amounts to attributing agency and intelligence to evolution. Mere random variations and NS cannot explain such phenomena.
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Attributing all such (felt presence) complex phenomena to evolution amounts to attributing agency and intelligence to evolution. Mere random variations and NS cannot explain such phenomena.
Incorrect. Attributing agency to an insentient process is classic case of agent detection, a cognitive bias.
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Incorrect. Attributing agency to an insentient process is classic case of agent detection, a cognitive bias.
But that's what you are doing...
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But that's what you are doing...
Nope. It is your claim that evolution is intelligent, or guided. Not mine. I'm happy to observe that it is an insentient process with no guiding hand.
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The way you claim that evolution does this and that in terms of changing its mechanisms to suit the survival and reproduction of organisms, implies that evolution has intent, intelligence and agency. Plasticity and epigenetics cannot arise within evolutionary processes purely through random variations and natural selection. Objectives of survival and reproduction are clear.
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The way you claim that evolution does this and that in terms of changing its mechanisms to suit the survival and reproduction of organisms, implies that evolution has intent, intelligence and agency. Plasticity and epigenetics cannot arise within evolutionary processes purely through random variations and natural selection. Objectives of survival and reproduction are clear.
It's all in your mind Sriram.
An insentient process cannot plan ahead or have objectives. Natural selection produces the superficial appearance of design but it is a category error to read that as intentional design. Isn't it cool that we have teeth in our mouth in exactly the right place for munching food, surely that means we were designed ? Well no, there is a sufficient explanation for mouths with teeth in the observation that having well placed hard mineralised structures to grind up food allows for better digestion which allows for better survival rates which means that creatures with teeth have better reproduction rates than toothless rivals. It all comes down to differential survival rates and 'well designed' variations will always do better than those that are not so well 'designed'.
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It doesn't just give the superficial appearance of design....it is deliberately designed through plasticity to suit the environmental conditions.... This is a fact.
This implies intent, objective and intelligent response.
Natural Selection is a metaphor for such deliberate adaptations.....used when people did not know that such responsive adaptations were possible.
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It doesn't just give the superficial appearance of design....it is deliberately designed through plasticity to suit the environmental conditions.... This is a fact.
This claim is not a 'fact', it is just your claim. There is no evidence to suggest actual intentional design going on. The Omicron variant outcompeted the Delta variant of Sars-Cov-2, therefore it must have been designed, right ? This is all your argument boils down to, and it has no merit.
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By design...I don't mean a God designing everything. I mean that there is an intelligent response from the organism to the environment. It is not random variations.
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By design...I don't mean a God designing everything. I mean that there is an intelligent response from the organism to the environment. It is not random variations.
So organisms apply their knowledge to make changes to themselves in response to the environment they are in?
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By design...I don't mean a God designing everything. I mean that there is an intelligent response from the organism to the environment. It is not random variations.
This is just the same flawed argument as design. Evolution is an algorithm that produces produces apparent 'designs' for living organisms. The entropy gradient delivers countless numbers of potential designs for life, and the most viable variants will tend to proliferate at the expense of less fit variations. This process produces 'designs' that seem fit for purpose. Likewise with apparent 'intelligence of response'; just as an organism's body plan may have been honed over countless thousands of generations, so also have their behaviours. A flower that displays heliotropism may look like its doing something smart, responding dynamically to the position of the Sun in the sky, but it is not because there is intelligence in the flower figuring this behaviour out, it is just that flowers that do this have gained a survival and reproductive advantage from it and so the behaviour is conserved.
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So organisms apply their knowledge to make changes to themselves in response to the environment they are in?
Never heard of plasticity Maeght?!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenotypic_plasticity
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Phenotypic plasticity refers to some of the changes in an organism's behavior, morphology and physiology in response to a unique environment.[1][2] Fundamental to the way in which organisms cope with environmental variation, phenotypic plasticity encompasses all types of environmentally induced changes (e.g. morphological, physiological, behavioural, phenological) that may or may not be permanent throughout an individual's lifespan.
The special case when differences in environment induce discrete phenotypes is termed polyphenism.
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Never seen chameleons?!
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Never heard of plasticity Maeght?!
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phenotypic_plasticity
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Phenotypic plasticity refers to some of the changes in an organism's behavior, morphology and physiology in response to a unique environment.[1][2] Fundamental to the way in which organisms cope with environmental variation, phenotypic plasticity encompasses all types of environmentally induced changes (e.g. morphological, physiological, behavioural, phenological) that may or may not be permanent throughout an individual's lifespan.
The special case when differences in environment induce discrete phenotypes is termed polyphenism.
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Never seen chameleons?!
Yes. What I was asking about was the term intelligence when it comes to plasticity. I wanted to know your position on this and am interested to hear from others on this as not studied it particularly.
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Never seen chameleons?!
Whose ability to alter their colouring is driven entirely by genomic mechanisms that are subject to classical evolutionary approaches. Why is it so difficult for you to understand that the ability to adapt in a short term manner to changes in local environment may provide a evolutionary advantage so should this arise due to alternations in the genome it is likely to be selected for.
Actually you shoot yourself in the foot with you chameleon example. It is pretty clear that being able to change your colour to blend in to backgrounds confers a survival advantage. This being the case, and using your suggestion that species can simply adapt themselves, why wouldn't all sorts of other species have developed this trait in a kind of Lamarkian manner. But they haven't - very few species have this ability yet countless species would benefit from it. If your notion of phenotypic plasticity (other than derived via standard evolutionary processes) was correct then surely the vast majority of species would have developed this plasticity - but they haven't.
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I know that blending with the environment offers survival advantage. That is obvious. The point is that it does not arise due to random variations. It arises through all around communication between the environment, cells and DNA (refer Denis Noble).
It also clearly indicates that survival is an objective that is inherent in every organism towards which it tries to adapt and develop.
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I know that blending with the environment offers survival advantage. That is obvious. The point is that it does not arise due to random variations. It arises through all around communication between the environment, cells and DNA (refer Denis Noble).
Complete non-sense - if this were possible why on earth wouldn't many other species have used their ability for 'communication between the environment, cells and DNA' to develop the useful ability to change colour to blend into their background. But of course the vast majority of species don't do that, despite the obvious benefit. It is almost as if the ability to change colour has arisen in a random manner in some species but not others, not on the basis of its usefulness, but in a random manner. Of course if it does develop it will persevere as individuals with this trait will be more likely to survive and breed. This, of course, assumes, that the trait is hereditable, and for it to be hereditable over many generations it needs to be encoded in the genetic material.
It also clearly indicates that survival is an objective that is inherent in every organism towards which it tries to adapt and develop.
No, survival is an outcome, not an objective. Mutations in DNA occur all the time - some are neutral, some detrimental, some beneficial. There is no 'objective' to those mutations, however those that are beneficial are likely to survive. But you seem to be completely in thrall to survivor bias. You focus on the mutations that allow chameleons to change colour and therefore to blend, but there have also been mutations that change the colour of species in a manner that makes them less likely to survive - and those will disappear rapidly as they confer survival disadvantage.
But the mutations that drive both colour changes are the same - there is no 'objective' to either. What is the case is that those that are beneficial persevere over generations and those that are detrimental rapidly disappear.
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Survival is an outcome of what? Some accidental creation of life on earth and then its evolution into complex forms...through random mutations and chance environmental factors?! Organisms just happen to fight for survival and reproduce with no inner drive to do so?
This is where the problem arises.
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I know that blending with the environment offers survival advantage. That is obvious. The point is that it does not arise due to random variations. It arises through all around communication between the environment, cells and DNA (refer Denis Noble).
It also clearly indicates that survival is an objective that is inherent in every organism towards which it tries to adapt and develop.
Nope.
Insofar as there is an objective, it is to reproduce. If survival was an objective for male praying mantises, the species would become extinct because they would never go near the females.
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Survival is an outcome of what? Some accidental creation of life on earth and then its evolution into complex forms...through random mutations and chance environmental factors?!
Yup - that's pretty well it - if an organism has traits that make it better able to survive and to reproduce and those traits can be inherited by the offspring that organism will, as per the above, err ... survive better. If requires no objective, no aim, no purpose - it just happens. For a perfect, but very simple, example see the shift in dominance of COVID strains over time - in some cases mutations made the virus better able to infect and replicate so those strains become dominant.
Organisms just happen to fight for survival and reproduce with no inner drive to do so?
This is where the problem arises.
Err you do understand that a desire to survive and a drive to reproduce are themselves evolutionary traits - ones which will clearly confer an evolutionary advantage and if heritable will be retained within an evolutionary context.
These traits are the product of millions and millions of years of evolution as they are only seen in more complex species - are you somehow arguing that a simple virus or bacteria 'fights for survival' or has a 'drive to reproduce' - that is clearly nonsense - they have no such fight or drive - they simply possess the mechanisms to replicate and if they are more successful at survival/replication due to heritable traits than other viruses/bacteria etc they will become dominant as per standard evolutionary theory.
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Nope.
Insofar as there is an objective, it is to reproduce. If survival was an objective for male praying mantises, the species would become extinct because they would never go near the females.
I accept that. Yes...reproduction is the objective. Survival is a necessary requirement for reproduction.
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Yup - that's pretty well it - if an organism has traits that make it better able to survive and to reproduce and those traits can be inherited by the offspring that organism will, as per the above, err ... survive better. If requires no objective, no aim, no purpose - it just happens. For a perfect, but very simple, example see the shift in dominance of COVID strains over time - in some cases mutations made the virus better able to infect and replicate so those strains become dominant.
Err you do understand that a desire to survive and a drive to reproduce are themselves evolutionary traits - ones which will clearly confer an evolutionary advantage and if heritable will be retained within an evolutionary context.
These traits are the product of millions and millions of years of evolution as they are only seen in more complex species - are you somehow arguing that a simple virus or bacteria 'fights for survival' or has a 'drive to reproduce' - that is clearly nonsense - they have no such fight or drive - they simply possess the mechanisms to replicate and if they are more successful at survival/replication due to heritable traits than other viruses/bacteria etc they will become dominant as per standard evolutionary theory.
Reproduction started with the replication of DNA/RNA. Reproduction is only a complex form of replication.
Every living thing has reproduction and consequently, survival as its objective. It is an inner drive right from the most basic forms of life.
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Nope.
Insofar as there is an objective, it is to reproduce. If survival was an objective for male praying mantises, the species would become extinct because they would never go near the females.
True, although I don't think this is an objective per se, merely that if there is an advantage that allows reproduction (or replication) to be easier then those heritable traits (effectively genomic if this is to be multigenerational) will be maintained.
Now of course on of the genomic traits that would allow reproduction (or replication) to be easier is a desire to reproduce - but this would only be an 'objective' in a secondary manner, in effect as a consequence of classical evolutionary advantage. And of course a desire or drive to reproduce can only exist in the more complex and higher life forms which will only have evolved millions of years after life first appeared and first started evolving. So this cannot be a fundamental driver of evolution or we'd never have got the stage where is ... err ... evolved!
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Reproduction started with the replication of DNA/RNA. Reproduction is only a complex form of replication.
Every living thing has reproduction and consequently, survival as its objective. It is an inner drive right from the most basic forms of life.
But the replication of DNA/RNA is simply a chemical process - there is no 'inner drive' whatsoever, merely chemistry and energetics.
In far more complex organisms a drive to reproduce has evolved, but that is because it confers evolutionary advantage. So you have everything entirely the wrong way around Sriram.
And as JeremyP has pointed out survival is often not a goal, even for more complex organisms, as there are plenty of examples where individual members of the species will sacrifice themselves (i.e. not survive) in order to ensure that the gene pool (so to speak) is retained in future generations.
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Everything is just a chemical process...even our intelligence , our mind-brain functioning, our love and our intent, our sex and reproduction. All our thoughts, emotions and activities are associated with some chemical process. That does not mean there are no objectives behind them.
DNA replication is an objective. Not that the DNA needs to be consciously aware of it. It is just a vehicle. Like a car moves without being aware of it ....but the driver behind it has an objective.
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DNA replication is an objective.
No it isn't - it is merely a chemical process that occurs under certain conditions. There is no objective, no goal, no drive - it is just something that can happen. And if the conditions aren't correct that chemical process doesn't happen - does that mean that DNA now has an objective not to replicate?!?
Not that the DNA needs to be consciously aware of it. It is just a vehicle. Like a car moves without being aware of it ....but the driver behind it has an objective.
Terrible analogy - DNA has no 'driver' it is just a fairly complex molecule that can be subject to all sorts of chemical processes depending on the conditions.
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DNA replication is an objective. Not that the DNA needs to be consciously aware of it.
Whose objective is it? How have you determined that?
O.
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Whose objective is it? How have you determined that?
O.
I have no idea whose objective....but that the organism has an objective to survive and reproduce is definite. It is only if we accept that reality can we go further as to how and why and by whom.
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I have no idea whose objective....but that the organism has an objective to survive and reproduce is definite.
Organisms, though, have a drive to survive for themselves, not for their DNA - you could argue that the DNA manifests that drive, but I don't see a mechanism whereby that drive to survive informs the content of the DNA. It provides a survival advantage which increases the likelihood of replication, which is a 'natural selection' for those genetic expressions which lead to an instinct for survival...
It is only if we accept that reality can we go further as to how and why and by whom.
Nobody's denying that instinct of the organism, we're just questioning on what basis you've determined that this is has been instilled in that organism as a deliberate choice, and by whom?
O.
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I never said that organisms survive and reproduce through deliberate choice. It is an objective that the organism is driven towards from within.
I believe that it could be because of the collective consciousness that regulates the ecosystem. Consciousness could be fundamental.
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I never said that organisms survive and reproduce through deliberate choice. It is an objective that the organism is driven towards from within.
Perhaps I misunderstood, fair enough.
I believe that it could be because of the collective consciousness that regulates the ecosystem. Consciousness could be fundamental.
I accept the internal logic of that as a possible explanation; do you have anything to support the idea, because the evidence arrayed in support of the conventional wisdom that the survival instinct is just one more expression of natural selection working on random variation is very robust.
What's your evidence for this explanation?
What's the methodology by which you've arrived at that conclusion from that evidence?
O.
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It is an objective that the organism is driven towards from within.
That's a bit like saying that a rock has the objective of rolling down a slope or that sea levels have the objective of rising and lowering as tides.
It is complete non-sense - there is no objectives - all that is happening is that entities are being subject to physical processes.
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Perhaps I misunderstood, fair enough.
I accept the internal logic of that as a possible explanation; do you have anything to support the idea, because the evidence arrayed in support of the conventional wisdom that the survival instinct is just one more expression of natural selection working on random variation is very robust.
What's your evidence for this explanation?
What's the methodology by which you've arrived at that conclusion from that evidence?
O.
No methodology. It is a philosophical idea. I just believe that consciousness is fundamental and that all evolutionary mechanisms are driven from within organisms.
IMO chance factors such as random variations and NS cannot lead to evolution. There has to be an inner mechanism by which organisms adapt and change their phenotype to suit the environment.
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Sriram,
It is a philosophical idea.
No it isn’t. Or at least it isn’t unless you also think “any notion that happens to appeal to me” is a “philosophical idea” too.
IMO chance factors such as random variations and NS cannot lead to evolution.
Yet again: why not?
There has to be an inner mechanism by which organisms adapt and change their phenotype to suit the environment.
Yet again: why does there have to be any such thing?
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IMO chance factors such as random variations and NS cannot lead to evolution. There has to be an inner mechanism by which organisms adapt and change their phenotype to suit the environment.
Given a constant supply of variation and a competitive environment, there is no way for NS to not result in evolution. It is inevitable.
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IMO chance factors such as random variations and NS cannot lead to evolution.
Why should anyone take any notice of your opinion unless you back it up with evidence.
There has to be an inner mechanism by which organisms adapt and change their phenotype to suit the environment.
Why does there have to be - the evidence suggests there doesn't have to be such a mechanism at all. Again you are getting locked into your narrow anthropocentric tunnel vision Sriram.
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I have no idea whose objective....but that the organism has an objective to survive and reproduce is definite. It is only if we accept that reality can we go further as to how and why and by whom.
The objective of organisms to survive and reproduce is programmed into them by evolution. This is simply due to the fact that organisms that don't have an objective to reproduce often don't and their genes that encode that behaviour do not get passed on to a new generation.
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No methodology. It is a philosophical idea. I just believe that consciousness is fundamental and that all evolutionary mechanisms are driven from within organisms.
And you're at liberty to believe that, but can you appreciate that your - by your own admission - unsupported belief is not a valid basis for the rest of us to presume that science has reached some sort of hard limit in the exploration of these phenomena?
IMO chance factors such as random variations and NS cannot lead to evolution.
And I don't mean this pejoratively, but you have to accept that this is pretty much the definition of the argument from personal incredulity. You don't even have some sort of probabilistic estimation to back that up, just a feeling that it's too improbable.
There has to be an inner mechanism by which organisms adapt and change their phenotype to suit the environment.
Or, perhaps, you are just as liable to be poor at intuiting probability, extremely large timescales and the possibility of parallel iterative events as the rest of humanity has been demonstrated to be.
O.
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It is not an unsupported belief. It is not just plucked from nowhere.
I have the instances of QM where observation (consciousness) influences wave-particle duality. I have Wheeler's participatory anthropic principle. I have instances of documented NDE's. Instances of documented reincarnation cases. I have Chalmer's new ideas of panpsychism. I have ideas of Jung's collective consciousness. I have Eagleman's theories of the unconscious mind being larger and more powerful than the conscious mind. I also have centuries of world philosophies where consciousness (Self) is considered as the real power behind the apparent events in the world.
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It is not an unsupported belief. It is not just plucked from nowhere.
It is. I asked you what methodology you had to validate any evidence you had to support it, and you said you didn't have any. It is, by your own description, an unsupported belief - again, that doesn't make it definitively wrong, but it just doesn't give anyone else a reason to accept that it's right.
I have the instances of QM where observation (consciousness) influences wave-particle duality.
And you've had it explained to you that 'observation' does not need to be a conscious observer - again, that's an unfortunate metaphor.
I have Wheeler's participatory anthropic principle.
Which, whilst put forward by a very eminent scientist, was not in any way anything more than unsupported ponderings on his part. He defined it as speculation, and never submitted the idea in a peer-reviewed paper anywhere.
I have instances of documented NDE's.
Which, when investigated, have better supported explanations that don't involve spirits and which, even if you discount the conventional wisdom of science, still aren't supporting your theory, they're just not contradicting it.
Instances of documented reincarnation cases.
As above.
I have Chalmer's new ideas of panpsychism.
For which there is no methodology for testing or investigating, and no conventional demonstrations of validity.
I have ideas of Jung's collective consciousness.
For which there is no supporting evidence.
I have Eagleman's theories of the unconscious mind being larger and more powerful than the conscious mind.
Which is not really in question, but doesn't support your claim, it just doesn't contradict it.
I also have centuries of world philosophies where consciousness (Self) is considered as the real power behind the apparent events in the world.
And there are centuries of folk-wisdom to support ghosts, witches, black-magic, fairies, kelpies, naga, bakemono and who knows what else. Fairy tales are not a reliable source of data for determining the nature of reality.
You have a pyramid scheme, you have the MLM of woo. Your woo claims stand proudly on the shoulders of other woo-peddlers and hijack the idle speculations of people with actual credentials. None of what you've cited here is any better an indication of reality than me suggesting that the magic of Jesus is supported by the fact that Lewis Carrol wrote about Aslan and Tolkien wrote about Gandalf, therefore magic's real.
You need a methodology, you don't have one.
You need some basis for assessing whether that methodology produces valid results, you don't have one.
And then you need those results, and you don't have them.
You can suggest that these are possibilities, and no-one can argue strongly against that, but you're over-reaching the validity of your claims when you suggest that you've definitively identified a limit to the capability of conventional science to investigate a phenomenon or when you claim that your failure to accept the capabilities of the mechanisms that science has evidenced is therefore sufficient grounds to presume that some unrelated claim is valid.
O.
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I am only suggesting possibilities. I have no definite proof of all this.
But the materialism that is so much a part of scientific theories is certainly questionable. That attitude is what leads to scientism and the impression that all phenomena need to necessarily be testable through standard methods.
That does not mean that I or any person can immediately present alternative methods of investigation either. It is not about proof but about opening out our minds (no....your brains will not fall out) to certain possibilities.
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I am only suggesting possibilities. I have no definite proof of all this.
But you keep denigrating science and suggesting that there are areas where scientific enquiry has no place.
But the materialism that is so much a part of scientific theories is certainly questionable.
Is it? On what basis?
That attitude is what leads to scientism and the impression that all phenomena need to necessarily be testable through standard methods.
As I've said before, at the ideological level they don't need to be, but at the practical level nobody's offering anything else.
That does not mean that I or any person can immediately present alternative methods of investigation either. It is not about proof but about opening out our minds (no....your brains will not fall out) to certain possibilities.
That we don't abandon the established, reliable, proven methodology we do have is not closing ourselves off from possibilities, but it's acknowledging that there are massively different qualitative and quantitative reasons for treating those ideas differently.
O.
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But you keep denigrating science and suggesting that there are areas where scientific enquiry has no place.
Is it? On what basis?
As I've said before, at the ideological level they don't need to be, but at the practical level nobody's offering anything else.
That we don't abandon the established, reliable, proven methodology we do have is not closing ourselves off from possibilities, but it's acknowledging that there are massively different qualitative and quantitative reasons for treating those ideas differently.
O.
I am not denigrating science. I am saying that there are possibly phenomena which cannot be studied using standard methods.
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I am not denigrating science. I am saying that there are possibly phenomena which cannot be studied using standard methods.
That's not denigrating science, although my sense is that you've not been suggesting that this is a possibility but that it's a fact - that's perhaps just vehemence.
However, you've described science as 'short sighted' and 'stuck' because it doesn't accept your arbitrary claims of limits or give equal weighting to your unsubstantiated possibilities.
O.
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That's not denigrating science, although my sense is that you've not been suggesting that this is a possibility but that it's a fact - that's perhaps just vehemence.
However, you've described science as 'short sighted' and 'stuck' because it doesn't accept your arbitrary claims of limits or give equal weighting to your unsubstantiated possibilities.
O.
I believe in an after life and a soul and so on. These are my personal beliefs based on my experiences. I believe that these are facts....though I am not clear about the finer details. Based on this, I have philosophical ideas which are also shared by other people like me around the world. These are also supported by some instances that I have mentioned in post 74.
However, when it comes to objective evidence....it is not possible to get physical evidence of the kind that scientists look for. Having said that, there are areas of science where it is possible to discern certain possibilities that could tie up with the philosophical ideas. This is what I generally talk about.
I am not questioning scientific theories by themselves....unless of course, I find something far fetched such as random variations and NS leading to evolution....more so when more meaningful explanations are available. I truly find this absurd and in need of serious rethinking.
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I believe in an after life and a soul and so on. These are my personal beliefs based on my experiences. I believe that these are facts....though I am not clear about the finer details. Based on this, I have philosophical ideas which are also shared by other people like me around the world. These are also supported by some instances that I have mentioned in post 74.
However, when it comes to objective evidence....it is not possible to get physical evidence of the kind that scientists look for. Having said that, there are areas of science where it is possible to discern certain possibilities that could tie up with the philosophical ideas. This is what I generally talk about.
I am not questioning scientific theories by themselves....unless of course, I find something far fetched such as random variations and NS leading to evolution....more so when more meaningful explanations are available. I truly find this absurd and in need of serious rethinking.
Whereas back in the real world, no philospher is going anywhere useful by ignoring the science. You have to take account of the insights of science otherwise you are just a lightweight timewaster.
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Whereas back in the real world, no philospher is going anywhere useful by ignoring the science. You have to take account of the insights of science otherwise you are just a lightweight timewaster.
I am not questioning scientific theories by themselves at all. Taking the insights of science is precisely what I believe in doing.
But I don't believe in limiting myself to the self imposed limitations of science and its methods. That would be scienism.
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I am not questioning scientific theories by themselves at all. Taking the insights of science is precisely what I believe in doing.
But I don't believe in limiting myself to the self imposed limitations of science and its methods. That would be scienism.
Being true to the evidence is not scientism
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Being true to the evidence is not scientism
Trying to apply the methods of science where it is not applicable or inappropriate....is scientism.
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Trying to apply the methods of science where it is not applicable or inappropriate....is scientism.
That's irrelevant. Nobody is suggesting to do that.
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I believe in an after life and a soul and so on. These are my personal beliefs based on my experiences. I believe that these are facts....though I am not clear about the finer details. Based on this, I have philosophical ideas which are also shared by other people like me around the world. These are also supported by some instances that I have mentioned in post 74.
I think you're overreaching to say that these claims support yours - they don't contradict them, but they are far from offering any support for your claims as they are so subjective and vague.
However, when it comes to objective evidence....it is not possible to get physical evidence of the kind that scientists look for.
And here's where, I feel, you could be clearer - is this an assessment of the current state of science, or is this a judgement on science as a concept? Are you saying that these are intrinsically beyond science's remit, because you can't cite people's experience - a reaction to phenomena which could therefore examined and investigated - and then say that it's beyond science. If you're saying that current science isn't in the right place, I can't disagree with that, but equally that also doesn't mean that your claims are somehow correct.
Having said that, there are areas of science where it is possible to discern certain possibilities that could tie up with the philosophical ideas. This is what I generally talk about.
Except that when any genuine science comes up you dismiss it as somehow insufficient.
I am not questioning scientific theories by themselves....unless of course, I find something far fetched such as random variations and NS leading to evolution....
You accept, if I recall, Einstein's relativistic explanation for gravitational effects? That's not as robustly supported by multiple scientific fields as the neo-Darwinian model of evolution by natural selection.
...more so when more meaningful explanations are available.
Unsubstantiated but internally consistent possibilities are not a suitable alternative to demonstrable, testable effects. That they're more meaningful TO YOU says more about you than about the ideas.
I truly find this absurd and in need of serious rethinking.
How can I think about it when you don't offer anything to consider?
"This is a possible explanation for something science can't explain."
"Arguably, yes."
"Therefore it's true.
"Hang on..."
"Oh, and therefore we should also consider this well-established piece of robustly supported scientific thinking questionable too."
"Wait.."
"No, look, this unrelated scientist said something when he was philosophising that I've misunderstood, therefore science is wrong."
There is, indeed, some rethinking needed here. I'd suggest that it's not mine.
O.
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Sriram,
I believe in an after life and a soul and so on.
And I believe in leprechauns – after all, we can all believe in anything we like.
So what though?
These are my personal beliefs based on my experiences.
Validated by some very bad reasoning, but ok…
I believe that these are facts....though I am not clear about the finer details.
Or for that matter about any “details” at all, finer or otherwise.
Based on this, I have philosophical ideas…
No you haven’t. Philosophical ideas are validated by reason and, often, by evidence too. What you actually have at best are just notions or speculations that lack any of the foundational rhetoric of actual philosophy.
…which are also shared by other people like me around the world.
Argumentum ad populum fallacy.
These are also supported by some instances that I have mentioned in post 74.
All of which have been quickly and repeatedly rebutted here with not even the attempt at counter rebuttals by you. You might for example want to start by explaining what you think NEAR death experiences have to tell us about ACTUAL death.
However, when it comes to objective evidence....it is not possible to get physical evidence of the kind that scientists look for.
What other type of evidence that could be even in principle to distinguish your beliefs from dumb guessing?
Having said that, there are areas of science where it is possible to discern certain possibilities that could tie up with the philosophical ideas. This is what I generally talk about.
No you don’t. What you actually assert are some woo beliefs that aren’t “discerned as possibilities” by the findings of science at all. Not contradicting your belief about an afterlife or mine about leprechauns as examples isn’t the discerning of a possibility in either case.
I am not questioning scientific theories by themselves....unless of course, I find something far fetched such as random variations and NS leading to evolution...
Argument from personal incredulity – yet another fallacy.
…more so when more meaningful explanations are available. I truly find this absurd and in need of serious rethinking.
See above.
I am not questioning scientific theories by themselves at all. Taking the insights of science is precisely what I believe in doing.
You’re doing no such thing.
But I don't believe in limiting myself to the self imposed limitations of science and its methods. That would be scienism.
No it wouldn’t – “scientism” means something else.
Trying to apply the methods of science where it is not applicable or inappropriate....is scientism.
No it wouldn’t, and no-one does that in any case. If you think your various beliefs to be facts but that science isn’t capable of validating that position then it’s your job to propose a different method to distinguish your claims from dumb guessing.
This has been explained to you countless times but you just ignore the problem nonetheless.
What does your egregious behaviour say about you do you think?
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I think you're overreaching to say that these claims support yours - they don't contradict them, but they are far from offering any support for your claims as they are so subjective and vague.
When we talk of non physical and abstract aspects of life like panpsychism and soul, it is bound to be vague. Not that everything in science is clear cut and crystal clear.
And here's where, I feel, you could be clearer - is this an assessment of the current state of science, or is this a judgement on science as a concept? Are you saying that these are intrinsically beyond science's remit, because you can't cite people's experience - a reaction to phenomena which could therefore examined and investigated - and then say that it's beyond science. If you're saying that current science isn't in the right place, I can't disagree with that, but equally that also doesn't mean that your claims are somehow correct.
Science as defined by its methods has certain inherent limitations in scope. We cannot examine everything in life in strict objective terms using instruments and stuff. Take NDE's for example. It is so simplistic to conclude from these events that, since we can only see and examine brains, the entire experience must necessarily be explained only through reactions in the brain. This is a natural limitation. We have to otherwise rely on anecdotal accounts of what happened during the patients death period. We have no choice. Scientists therefore brush it off as imaginary or hallucination. Nothing much else science can do, especially if the general tendency among people of science is to disbelieve in such matters.
You accept, if I recall, Einstein's relativistic explanation for gravitational effects? That's not as robustly supported by multiple scientific fields as the neo-Darwinian model of evolution by natural selection.
Nothing is so robustly supported that it cannot be called into question or modified by new evidence in times to come. Science is always tentative.
Unsubstantiated but internally consistent possibilities are not a suitable alternative to demonstrable, testable effects. That they're more meaningful TO YOU says more about you than about the ideas.
As I have said many times....evidence could be all around us but we may not see it. Once the mind is prepared, we might see the evidence and find many things as true ..which was dismissed as nonsense earlier.
How can I think about it when you don't offer anything to consider?
"This is a possible explanation for something science can't explain."
"Arguably, yes."
"Therefore it's true.
"Hang on..."
"Oh, and therefore we should also consider this well-established piece of robustly supported scientific thinking questionable too."
"Wait.."
"No, look, this unrelated scientist said something when he was philosophising that I've misunderstood, therefore science is wrong."
There is, indeed, some rethinking needed here. I'd suggest that it's not mine.
O.
I am not asking you to rethink all this. I am saying that such things as random variations and NS need rethinking in general.
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I am not questioning scientific theories by themselves....unless of course, I find something far fetched such as random variations and NS leading to evolution....
Fallacy of personal incredulity (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_incredulity). ::)
It is utterly absurd to think that one person finding something 'far fetched' has any significance at all in the face of vast amounts of objective evidence, doubly so when said person has shown that they know virtually nothing about the subject and studiously avoids specific arguments for the scientific view, like they're terrified of learning anything.
....more so when more meaningful explanations are available.
You haven't even provided any adequate explanation at all. The mechanisms you keep trying to replace it with would basically lead to the absurd conclusion that genetics has nothing to do with the differences between humans and (say) cucumbers.
I truly find this absurd and in need of serious rethinking.
It is you who needs to do the rethinking. Start by learning something about the current science and stop running away from the facts that confirm the current view, like the vast number of example of evolution for which we know the underlying mutations for and why they were better at survival in the environment.
As I've said before, a very simple and recent one is the classic example of natural selection: the peppered moth. We know exactly what the underlying mutation was and about when it happened, we know exactly why it was better at surviving in the (changed) environment. We also know that, because the environmental change was very short-term (in terms of evolution) because it was due to human activity, that the change hadn't fully replaced the original and when the environment changed back, we know exactly why the original variant then had the advantage again, so the population shifted back. This is a clear example of a random mutation and subsequent natural selection.
Also, as I said, there are a vast number of other examples, all through evolutionary time, for which we can find exactly what mutations led to what changes and why they were advantageous in the environments at the time. We can also see the relics of genes that were useful in ancestor species that then became unnecessary.
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When we talk of non physical and abstract aspects of life like panpsychism and soul, it is bound to be vague. Not that everything in science is clear cut and crystal clear.
Generally, the core elements of (hard) science are extremely rigidly defined and deeply understood, and at the fringes there is some uncertainty. There are, admittedly, 'softer' sciences dealing with complex systems like psychology, sociology and the like where the output is more an identification of trends and likelihoods than fast facts; in those instances, though, there are typically at least some postulated mechanical explanations, and statistical evidence to support the conclusions. With these 'non-physical' claims, though, there's nothing more than a conceptual 'it would fit the observation'. These are not equal states at all.
Even beyond the fringes of science with conceptualisations and possibilities the differences remain - the Higgs Boson for a long time was 'just' an hypothesis, but that was a world beyond your panpsychism claims; it was a hypothesis because we understood at least one way that it could be tested, we just didn't have the ability to undertake that test. With these 'woo' notions we don't even have that possibility of future verification. You'd have exactly as much validity in claiming 'fairies' as an explanation.
Science as defined by its methods has certain inherent limitations in scope.
Yes, it is strictly limited to actual phenomena that have measurable, detectable effects, and it is predicated on the notion that cause and effect are consistent.
We cannot examine everything in life in strict objective terms using instruments and stuff.
Why not?
Take NDE's for example. It is so simplistic to conclude from these events that, since we can only see and examine brains, the entire experience must necessarily be explained only through reactions in the brain.
No, it's not simplistic to conclude that from the available evidence. It would be simplistic to presume that and not bother investigating, but if you do the testing and that's what the evidence leads to that's not simplistic. What would be simplistic would be to presume that some phenomenon must be beyond science AND to then presume that your pet parapsychological notion is the only other possible notional explanation.
This is a natural limitation. We have to otherwise rely on anecdotal accounts of what happened during the patients death period. We have no choice. Scientists therefore brush it off as imaginary or hallucination.
No they don't brush it off. They look at the history of scientific investigation into the reliability of human perception and memory, particularly in times of high physiological stress. Then they look at the observable activity that is associated with memory and perception and see what's happening in those circumstances. And then they, consistently, in multiple separate investigations, conclude that the most likely explanation is that people are misinterpreting atypical neurological activity brought about by extreme circumstances because it's the explanation that fits the evidence best. It might be incorrect, it might be restricted by the limitations of science but YOU DON'T OFFER ANYTHING BETTER.
Postulations on pseudo-magical 'non-physical' explanations with no methodology, no mechanic, no verification and no validation is not a viable alternative to researched, evidenced, repeated investigation and inductive and deductive reasoning.
Nothing much else science can do, especially if the general tendency among people of science is to disbelieve in such matters.
It's not about belief, it's about acceptance - they don't accept because you don't give them any reason to accept it.
"This could be true."
"Yes."
"Therefore it's true."
"Well, hang on...."
Nothing is so robustly supported that it cannot be called into question or modified by new evidence in times to come. Science is always tentative.
Absolutely right. You're just missing the 'evidence' bit. You have a claim, nothing more.
As I have said many times....evidence could be all around us but we may not see it.
So could fairies. Until you can demonstrate it, it's functionally just 'fairies'.
Once the mind is prepared, we might see the evidence and find many things as true ..which was dismissed as nonsense earlier.
Evidence speaks for itself. If you need to have a particular 'perspective' I'd question the reliability of the conclusion. You don't have to be a materialist to follow the line of reasoning in science - you don't have to accept it, but the line from cause to effect is demonstrable.
I am not asking you to rethink all this. I am saying that such things as random variations and NS need rethinking in general.
No. They MIGHT need rethinking, but nothing you've offered in the claim 'but I can't accept that' is sufficient to overthrow hundreds of years of evolutionary biology.
O.
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Sriram,
When we talk of non physical and abstract aspects of life like panpsychism and soul, it is bound to be vague. Not that everything in science is clear cut and crystal clear.
Not vague, incoherent. These unqualified claims and assertions are epistemically just white noise.
Science as defined by its methods has certain inherent limitations in scope.
Yes – its limitations are that it deals only with phenomena with detectable effects.
We cannot examine everything in life in strict objective terms using instruments and stuff. Take NDE's for example. It is so simplistic to conclude from these events that, since we can only see and examine brains, the entire experience must necessarily be explained only through reactions in the brain. This is a natural limitation.
Aw no. Yet again – why do you think a NEAR death experience tells you any more about ACTUAL than a near car crash experience tells you about an actual car crash, or for that matter than sex tells you about pregnancy?
We have to otherwise rely on anecdotal accounts of what happened during the patients death period.
There is no “death period” – just a NEAR "death period". Just removing the "N" from "NDE" is dishonest, and you should stop doing it.
We have no choice. Scientists therefore brush it off as imaginary or hallucination. Nothing much else science can do, especially if the general tendency among people of science is to disbelieve in such matters.
Wrong again. The choice “we” (ie, you) have is to find a different method to distinguish your claims from dumb guessing, and “people of science” don’t “brush off” unqualified clams of fact so much as they are indifferent to them. Why shouldn’t anyone “disbelieve” your claims about an supposed afterlife therefore for the same reasons you would disbelieve my claims about leprechauns?
Nothing is so robustly supported that it cannot be called into question or modified by new evidence in times to come. Science is always tentative.
Yes – this has been explained several times to you already each time you complained about science’s lack of “proofs” – something it doesn’t claim to have.
As I have said many times....evidence could be all around us but we may not see it. Once the mind is prepared, we might see the evidence and find many things as true ..which was dismissed as nonsense earlier.
And as I’ve said many times as a corrective without reply, if you want to claim evidence then you need FIRST to define it, determine how you’d find it, and explain how you’d examine it. Just now all you have for “evidence” is equivalent to me claiming rainbows are evidence for where leprechauns leave their pots of gold – the only problem being that your mind isn’t “prepared” to see this obvious truth as I do.
I am not asking you to rethink all this. I am saying that such things as random variations and NS need rethinking in general.
Given your deep ignorance of such matters, why should anyone take your personal incredulity about them seriously?