Is holding an unjustified belief illogical?

[UndercoverElephant]

Oh, I got a bit mixed up about what exactly was being asked. Sorry.

Justification for believing that you are conscious is the issue at hand, not what consciousness itself is.

I don't even know how I would answer that... Probably something like "I justify my belief that I am conscious, because I respond to changing information in my environment"? Others could observe this behavior and also see that I must be conscious. Unless they are a fan of incoherent concepts like P-Zombies.

At any rate, I think that you can justify that you experience conscious awareness within reason.

Why bother when it is a brute fact?

[Gate2501]

Why bother when it is a brute fact?

I think that this may be a point of some debate. After doing some research on Google with the term "brute fact" and "consciousness", it would seem like the usual suspects(Chalmers, Searle) are claiming that it is a brute fact not open to investigation. Some other philosophers don't think so.

I have just begun looking into this, but I have not been impressed with other arguments brought forth by those two(Chinese room, p-zombies,etc.).

I'll get back to you when I have thought more about this myself. I don't see why it would be axiomatic to assume that subjective experience couldn't be some manner of illusion though(not that I am saying it is *wink*).

[SumDood]

Okay, lets try it from yet another angle. Can a person develop a belief using illogical means? I say, emphatically, yes. Consider the following:

P1: Vikings traveled in ships
P2: Vikings reached many lands
C1: Vikings reached Canada

The conclusion is true, but it does not follow from the premises. Some would say "Evidence exists that Vikings traveled in ships and reached many lands, therefor I believe they reached Canada." A true belief arrived at illogically.

Am i correct in assuming that you, UndercoverElephant, would still say that a person's belief is logical no matter how illogical the reasoning behind the belief, as long as the belief itself is 'logical'?

[Yoink]

Okay, lets try it from yet another angle. Can a person develop a belief using illogical means? I say, emphatically, yes. Consider the following:

P1: Vikings traveled in ships
P2: Vikings reached many lands
C1: Vikings reached Canada

The conclusion is true, but it does not follow from the premises. Some would say "Evidence exists that Vikings traveled in ships and reached many lands, therefor I believe they reached Canada." A true belief arrived at illogically.

Am i correct in assuming that you, UndercoverElephant, would still say that a person's belief is logical no matter how illogical the reasoning behind the belief, as long as the belief itself is 'logical'?

The claim is not that the belief is "logical" it is that the terms "logical" or "illogical" are inapplicable to propositions per se.

[SumDood]

The claim is not that the belief is "logical" it is that the terms "logical" or "illogical" are inapplicable to propositions per se.

I thought Undercover Elephant was claiming exactly that: Beliefs are logical as long as they do not contradict themselves or other established facts. If he has changed his stance and i missed it, i do apologize.

[AkuManiMani]

I think the issue here isn't whether the OP's proposition is illogical. The relevant question here is how cogent the proposition is, given what we know.

[UndercoverElephant]

I thought Undercover Elephant was claiming exactly that: Beliefs are logical as long as they do not contradict themselves or other established facts. If he has changed his stance and i missed it, i do apologize.

What I said was that beliefs are not illogical unless they contradict themselves or some other "established fact." I'm not all that concerned whether "not illogical" is taken to mean "logical" or "neither logical nor illogical."

[UndercoverElephant]

I think the issue here isn't whether the OP's proposition is illogical. The relevant question here is how cogent the proposition is, given what we know.

Actually, the issue was strictly whether or not the term "illogical" can be applied to unjustified beliefs. As you can see from the poll result, lots of people mistakenly think it can. The whole debate came about because I was accused of holding "a totally illogical belief" when the truth is that I hold a belief which is difficult or impossible to justify objectively. There's a big difference between the two. If I actually held a belief (or rather a set of beliefs) which were "totally illogical" then it means that something I believed was definately and demonstrably incorrect, but holding a belief which is difficult or impossible to justify objectively does not involve me believing anything which is necessarily wrong.

Logical consistency is probably more important to me than it is to most of the posters on this board because I have a coherentist theory of truth. IOW, I don't assess whether a statement is true by trying to determine whether or not it accurately mirrors what's "out there in objective reality" - I reject correspondence theories of truth. For me, truth is something you can only arrive at by trying to form a comprehensive belief system which contains no internal contradictions - something which many people seem to believe is very easy. It isn't. It's almost impossible.

[UndercoverElephant]

Okay, lets try it from yet another angle. Can a person develop a belief using illogical means? I say, emphatically, yes. Consider the following:

P1: Vikings traveled in ships
P2: Vikings reached many lands
C1: Vikings reached Canada

The conclusion is true, but it does not follow from the premises. Some would say "Evidence exists that Vikings traveled in ships and reached many lands, therefor I believe they reached Canada." A true belief arrived at illogically.

Am i correct in assuming that you, UndercoverElephant, would still say that a person's belief is logical no matter how illogical the reasoning behind the belief, as long as the belief itself is 'logical'?

The above example is of a logical argument which is invalid because the conclusion does not follow from the premises. If that was the reason that a person gave for believing that Vikings reached Canada then they would believe it for an illogical reason. It is the argument which doesn't follow the rules of logic, not the conclusion/statement C1. It can't be illogical to believe that Vikings reached Canada, because they did reach Canada.

[drkitten]

The above example is of a logical argument which is invalid because the conclusion does not follow from the premises. If that was the reason that a person gave for believing that Vikings reached Canada then they would believe it for an illogical reason. It is the argument which doesn't follow the rules of logic, not the conclusion/statement C1. It can't be illogical to believe that Vikings reached Canada, because they did reach Canada.


That's an interesting criterion you have there.

So if I say that "The 3M company (NYSE:MMM) will close at above 100 at the end of August, [i]because its stock ticker is three identical letters, and they always close above 100 at the end of August," you will need to wait until next month to know whether or not I'm investing "logically" or not?

If you say that it will rain next Saturday "because my son is getting married and his bride is a real bitch and even God hates her," we need to wait until the weekend to know if you're a crazy old bat?

I would say just the opposite. If the justification for your belief is itself blatantly illogical, then so is the belief itself, even if (by good luck) it happens to be correct.

[UndercoverElephant]

That's an interesting criterion you have there.

So if I say that "The 3M company (NYSE:MMM) will close at above 100 at the end of August, [i]because its stock ticker is three identical letters, and they always close above 100 at the end of August," you will need to wait until next month to know whether or not I'm investing "logically" or not?


No, of course not. How does that accord to my criteria?

Your investigations aren't logical.

(A) The belief that it will close above 100 is neither logical nor illogical.
(B) The belief that it will close above 100 because its ticker has three identical letters is illogical.

(A) is just a belief, or a proposition. (B) is a belief about the same proposition but also a belief about why the proposition is likely to be true.

[drkitten]

No, of course not. How does that accord to my criteria?

Your investigations aren't logical.

(A) The belief that it will close above 100 is neither logical nor illogical.
(B) The belief that it will close above 100 because its ticker has three identical letters is illogical.

(A) is just a belief, or a proposition. (B) is a belief about the same proposition but also a belief about why the proposition is likely to be true.

So you're saying it's not illogical to hold a belief for an illogical reason.

What an interesting criterion you have.

[UndercoverElephant]

DrK

What I mean when I say "illogical belief" should be quite clear. It only applies to a set of beliefs which are themselves logically inconsistent. The example I gave was of a all-loving and merciful God who sends people to hell for eternity. The means of arriving at this belief is a-logical. The person who believes it does so because it says so in the Bible or somebody said so at church. This pair of beliefs is logically-inconsistent regardless of their origin. It is illogical to believe both claims at the same time, because they contradict each other.

A single proposition cannot be illogical on its own, even if it was the result of an invalid logical argument. It is the argument which is illogical, not the proposition.

Geoff

[UndercoverElephant]

So you're saying it's not illogical to hold a belief for an illogical reason.

What an interesting criterion you have.

Er, no you keep misquoting me, DrK.

Here it is again, so you can't garble it by claiming there is an "it" which is illogical.... :rolleyes:

A single belief/claim/proposition cannot be illogical on its own, regardless of the reason it is being proposed.

A single belief/claim/proposition can be arrived at via an illogical method, i.e. via an argument that is supposed to be valid but isn't. In this case it is the argument which is illogical, not the proposition.

A set of beliefs can be illogical because they contain propositions which contradict each other. In this case you cannot say which proposition is wrong, but you can say that at least one of them is. Either God is all-loving and merciful, or God sends people to hell for eternity, but both claims cannot be true.

[Yoink]

So you're saying it's not illogical to hold a belief for an illogical reason.

What an interesting criterion you have.

This is a weird discussion to watch because people keep refusing to see what is a fairly simple (although also rather uninteresting) claim and insisting it must be some other much more sinister claim.

It's certainly true that UndercoverElephant want his "unjustified beliefs are not illogical" to do some positive work for him that it just won't do (i.e., he wants to be able to sneak in the idea that belief in God, though unjustified, is still reasonable; despite the fact that "not illogical" does not remotely entail "therefore logical").

But that said, it's an entirely unfair reading of his claim to say that he's suggesting "it's not illogical to hold a belief for an illogical reason." "Reasons" are precisely what he is ruling out of court. He is saying a belief held in the absence of reasons (or, more strictly, without taking the reasons for the belief into account) cannot be regarded as illogical. This strikes me as a claim that should be about as controversial as the claim that the sky is blue or that 1+1=2. What people ought to realize is that conceding this claim leads to nothing. It doesn't mean that poorly grounded beliefs suddenly gain some justification they didn't have before; they remain poorly grounded. Even poor old UndercoverElephant's belief in God remains so fragile that he doesn't dare expose his "reasoning" for it here for fear that it will evanesce.

[Gate2501]

UndercoverElephant, I have a question for you, or anyone else.

Since you will only allow the strict formal definitions of logical/illogical, what would you have us call the holding of a belief like "God exists" which ignores the burden of proof, and commits multiple informal logical fallacies to facilitate it's arrival?

When a belief is held based on a bunch of non-sequitur reasoning, my first reaction is to say that the belief is held contrary to logic(informal logic at least), and would therefore be held illogically. You obviously realize that you can slip right out of this label with semantics, and you are right(with respect to formal logic).

So what exactly would you have us call this type of belief? Stupid? Silly? Ridiculous? Absurd?

The bunk *informal* logic which you are using to defend your position is also an excellent argument for the existence of the flying spaghetti monster. (ex. lowering the standards of evidence for the burden of proof to accept subjective experiences)

[UndercoverElephant]

This is a weird discussion to watch because people keep refusing to see what is a fairly simple (although also rather uninteresting) claim and insisting it must be some other much more sinister claim.

It's certainly true that UndercoverElephant want his "unjustified beliefs are not illogical" to do some positive work for him that it just won't do (i.e., he wants to be able to sneak in the idea that belief in God, though unjustified, is still reasonable; despite the fact that "not illogical" does not remotely entail "therefore logical").


I don't even want to do that. I want to claim that it is possible that is reasonable for me to believe in God even though it is not reasonable for me to expect anybody-else to believe in God for the same reason I do. Nobody-else has access to the information that I have, because they aren't me. The whole extent of my "sinister" claim is that I wish to deny that other people are in a position to tell me that my own belief in God is necessarily unreasonable. And unless those people have decided to set themselves up as some sort of Orwellian "thought police" I can't really understand why this causes a problem.


But that said, it's an entirely unfair reading of his claim to say that he's suggesting "it's not illogical to hold a belief for an illogical reason." "Reasons" are precisely what he is ruling out of court. He is saying a belief held in the absence of reasons (or, more strictly, without taking the reasons for the belief into account) cannot be regarded as illogical. This strikes me as a claim that should be about as controversial as the claim that the sky is blue or that 1+1=2. What people ought to realize is that conceding this claim leads to nothing. It doesn't mean that poorly grounded beliefs suddenly gain some justification they didn't have before; they remain poorly grounded. Even poor old UndercoverElephant's belief in God remains so fragile that he doesn't dare expose his "reasoning" for it here for fear that it will evanesce.

I "don't dare" because it would be utterly pointless to do so. Having already stated that I have no explainable reasons which might compel somebody-else to believe what I believe, then there is no point in me trying to explain my reasons. My beliefs are not fragile, they are personal. In order to understand them, you'd have to be me.

This should threaten nobody, since I'm making no demands on anybody apart from that they allow me to believe what I see fit, based on my own knowledge and personal experiences, and don't try to tell me what is or is not reasonable for me to believe when they don't have access to the raw data being evaluated.

[Yoink]

UndercoverElephant, I have a question for you, or anyone else.

Since you will only allow the strict formal definitions of logical/illogical, what would you have us call the holding of a belief like "God exists" which ignores the burden of proof, and commits multiple informal logical fallacies to facilitate it's arrival?

Um, isn't the answer given in the thread title? "Unjustified."

[Gate2501]

Um, isn't the answer given in the thread title? "Unjustified."

Touche... :(

[UndercoverElephant]

UndercoverElephant, I have a question for you, or anyone else.

Since you will only allow the strict formal definitions of logical/illogical, what would you have us call the holding of a belief like "God exists" which ignores the burden of proof, and commits multiple informal logical fallacies to facilitate it's arrival?


I already explained in the other thread that "burden of proof" can only apply to a positive claim which can, in principle, be proven true or false. If this is not the case then there is no burden of proof so it can't be illogical to ignore it. A belief which is arrived at via numerous logically fallacies should be called "poorly justified" or "unjustified."


When a belief is held based on a bunch of non-sequitur reasoning, my first reaction is to say that the belief is held contrary to logic(informal logic at least), and would therefore be held illogically. You obviously realize that you can slip right out of this label with semantics, and you are right(with respect to formal logic).

So what exactly would you have us call this type of belief? Stupid? Silly? Ridiculous? Absurd?


What is wrong with "unjustified"?



The bunk *informal* logic which you are using to defend your position is also an excellent argument for the existence of the flying spaghetti monster. (ex. lowering the standards of evidence for the burden of proof to accept subjective experiences or reasoning)

I'm not even offering you an argument for the existence of God, so how can it be adapted to be an excellent argument for the existence of the FSM???

It is YOU who keeps banging on about "burden of proof". From the first moment you mentioned it I have maintained that there isn't any burden of proof, because proof is theoretically impossible. Now you are claiming that I'm trying to prove God exists. I'm not. I think that doing so is an exercise in futility.

[Yoink]

I don't even want to do that. I want to claim that it is possible that is reasonable for me to believe in God even though it is not reasonable for me to expect anybody-else to believe in God for the same reason I do. Nobody-else has access to the information that I have, because they aren't me. The whole extent of my "sinister" claim is that I wish to deny that other people are in a position to tell me that my own belief in God is necessarily unreasonable. And unless those people have decided to set themselves up as some sort of Orwellian "thought police" I can't really understand why this causes a problem.

But you know perfectly well that getting us (or, at least, some of us) to agree that your belief is "not illogical" doesn't get you one step closer to getting anybody to agree that it is "reasonable." Those are not related.

Also, it has been shown repeatedly (so I won't bother rehearsing what must be a familiar argument to you) that there is no experience which can serve as proof of the existence of God. Therefore I don't need to be you to know that if you base your belief on some experience you underwent that you have reasoned falsely on the basis of that experience.

I "don't dare" because it would be utterly pointless to do so. Having already stated that I have no explainable reasons which might compel somebody-else to believe what I believe, then there is no point in me trying to explain my reasons. My beliefs are not fragile, they are personal. In order to understand them, you'd have to be me.

This should threaten nobody, since I'm making no demands on anybody apart from that they allow me to believe what I see fit, based on my own knowledge and personal experiences, and don't try to tell me what is or is not unreasonable for me to believe when they don't have access to the raw data being evaluated.

If you have no explainable reasons that could compel someone else to believe then you have no explainable reasons that could compel yourself to believe. When it comes to judging the logic of an argument, there is no advantage to being the originator of the argument--if anything, the opposite.

Now, it may be that you will find it hard to convey the quiddity of your experience in words. It may be that you will misdescribe it. That's obvious. But you can refine your description in the light of our responses. What you will quickly come to realize, however, is that the particular essence of the experience is immaterial. We will be able to show you rather quickly that whatever the particular details of the experience the chain of reasoning that you have built up from it is incorrect, and that your belief in God is consequently untenable.

[UndercoverElephant]

But you know perfectly well that getting us (or, at least, some of us) to agree that your belief is "not illogical" doesn't get you one step closer to getting anybody to agree that it is "reasonable." Those are not related.

Also, it has been shown repeatedly (so I won't bother rehearsing what must be a familiar argument to you) that there is no experience which can serve as proof of the existence of God. Therefore I don't need to be you to know that if you base your belief on some experience you underwent that you have reasoned falsely on the basis of that experience.


It has not been shown that there is no experience which can serve as proof (subjectively) of the existence of God. On the contrary, there is a long history of people (mystics) who claim that personal experience can prove this, but only to one person at a time. It can never serve as objective, public proof because it is based on subjective experiences which are usually described as "ineffable."

That is what the debate is really about, I suppose. If you want to make the claim that it is necessarily true that there is no such thing as a genuine mystical experience then we have a disagreement. If you do want to make such a claim, how would you justify it?


If you have no explainable reasons that could compel someone else to believe then you have no explainable reasons that could compel yourself to believe. When it comes to judging the logic of an argument, there is no advantage to being the originator of the argument--if anything, the opposite.


There are if some of the premises being fed into the argument are subjectively-justified. Let me give a less controversial example:

(P1) I know I'm conscious.
(P2) I know that if somebody hits me hard on the head, I cease to be conscious.
(C) The fact that I'm conscious has something to do with my head.

P1 can only be justified subjectively. If you tried to get a non-conscious computer to evaluate the argument, it would claim that it isn't sound, because P1 is false. In this case, any human can act as the originator of the argument, and most of them would agree with P1. But not all...there are eliminative materialists who would deny P1.


Now, it may be that you will find it hard to convey the quiddity of your experience in words. It may be that you will misdescribe it. That's obvious. But you can refine your description in the light of our responses. What you will quickly come to realize, however, is that the particular essence of the experience is immaterial. We will be able to show you rather quickly that <i>whatever</i> the particular details of the experience the <i>chain of reasoning</i> that you have built up from it is incorrect, and that your belief in God is consequently untenable.

How can you know that without me telling you anything about why I believe what I believe, apart from that it is personal?

[Gate2501]

I already explained in the other thread that "burden of proof" can only apply to a positive claim which can, in principle, be proven true or false. If this is not the case then there is no burden of proof so it can't be illogical to ignore it. A belief which is arrived at via numerous logically fallacies should be called "poorly justified" or "unjustified."

The burden of proof dodge "It is impossible to prove god, therefore there is no burden of proof on the claim *God exists*", is special pleading, and as I said in the other thread, leads you to much bigger problems with your argument. As soon as you admit that it is impossible to prove the claim in which you hold a belief, you must face the reasons as to what would warrant you to believe in such a claim initially. After all, you couldn't have seen any evidence, there cannot be evidence for this claim!

I suspect that you believe that you do have evidence(personal and subjective), that justifies your own belief in this claim. If this is the case, it is dishonest to try and take the burden of proof off of the table just because the evidence that you feel justifies your belief would not meet a standard of evidence that could objectively verify the claim.


What is wrong with "unjustified"?

Nothing really.


I'm not even offering you an argument for the existence of God, so how can it be adapted to be an excellent argument for the existence of the FSM???

Your burden of proof dodge alone is pretty good stuff as far as FSM is concerned(albeit ridiculous).

[UndercoverElephant]

The burden of proof dodge "It is impossible to prove god, therefore there is no burden of proof on the claim *God exists*", is special pleading, and as I said in the other thread, leads you to much bigger problems with your argument.


So you keep saying, but you never actually explain why you are saying it.

WHY is it "special pleading" to claim that God, as defined by me, couldn't be objectively proven to exist even if it exists? I don't know why you keep saying this. What I am telling you is true, and I can go into great detail as to exactly why it is true if you want me to. According to the concept I attach to the word God, the question "Does God exist" can never be objectively answered. I'm sorry that this is inconvenient for you, but this just happens to be the case. It's not "special pleading." It's just the way things are.


As soon as you admit that it is impossible to prove the claim in which you hold a belief, you must face the reasons as to what would warrant you to believe in such a claim initially. After all, you couldn't have seen any evidence, there cannot be evidence for this claim!


I never said that *I* hadn't "seen any evidence." I said there is no way I could ever show anybody else any evidence.


I suspect that you believe that you do have evidence(personal and subjective), that justifies your own belief in this claim. If this is the case, it is dishonest to try and take the burden of proof off of the table just because the evidence that you feel justifies your belief would not meet a standard of evidence that could objectively verify the claim.


It's not that it wouldn't meet an objective standard. I can't show you the "evidence" at all. In order for you to be able to understand that "evidence", you would need to have lived my life as me.

Why are you so bothered about proving to me that my own beliefs are unreasonable? I'm not trying to impose them on you or anyone-else. I'm not asking they be taught at school or recognised by the law. I'm not even willing to talk about them in any detail, let alone try to convince anyone to share them. So WHY can't you just allow me to assess my own experiences according to my own knowledge and come to my own conclusions?

[JoeTheJuggler]

I'm just hopping back into this, which seems to have gone a different direction. . . .


It's not the result of an argument and it's not something that can be explained by anything else. I am conscious. It's a brute fact.
This is not the same definition of "brute fact" given in quote you cited. Paper, for example, can indeed be explained. Consciousness can too.

It sounds to me that the way you're defining brute fact is simply premature satisfaction of curiosity. I can't readily explain something, so I say it just is and stop looking.

[Yoink]

It has not been shown that there is no experience which can serve as proof (subjectively) of the existence of God. On the contrary, there is a long history of people (mystics) who claim that personal experience can prove this, but only to one person at a time. It can never serve as objective, public proof because it is based on subjective experiences which are usually described as "ineffable."

You're confusing two separate things. Of course I can't share your "ineffable" experience, but I can fully enter into your reasoning based on your experience. Let us say that your claim is that you "suddenly felt the presence of the Divine" or that you were "suddenly granted access to a higher level of consciousness" or what have you. O.K., great; now, tell me: is it impossible that these experiences were delusions? People under the influence of drugs claim such experiences all the time; should we concede that these "must be real" because we don't happen to share them?

Now, you're not fool enough to actually say what your experience was (because you know that if you your whole claim would collapse), but let us say that you say "no, there was something in my experience that could not have been produced by mental illusion"--great. O.K., now prove to me that it wasn't produced by a race of alien beings who have mind-control technology beyond our understanding? What's that? You can't prove that you say? Hmmmm.

So even if I grant you anything you care to claim about your experience, there's no course of reasoning that will get you from the experience to "therefore there must be a God" without committing a logical error.

That is what the debate is really about, I suppose. If you want to make the claim that it is necessarily true that there is no such thing as a genuine mystical experience then we have a disagreement. If you do want to make such a claim, how would you justify it?

Of course I can't make the claim that "there is no such thing as a genuine mystical experience." That would be an absurd claim. It could very well be that God spoke to you. It could very well be God who made sure by an act of special providence that my microwave didn't blow up this morning. How could I prove otherwise. I'm not saying that I can disprove your "mystical" experience. I'm saying that you cannot logically use it--even to yourself--as proof of the existence of God.

There are if some of the premises being fed into the argument are subjectively-justified. Let me give a less controversial example:

(P1) I know I'm conscious.
(P2) I know that if somebody hits me hard on the head, I cease to be conscious.
(C) The fact that I'm conscious has something to do with my head.

P1 can only be justified subjectively. If you tried to get a non-conscious computer to evaluate the argument, it would claim that it isn't sound, because P1 is false. In this case, any human can act as the originator of the argument, and most of them would agree with P1. But not all...there are eliminative materialists who would deny P1.

Again, you're confusing premise with argument. Of course I can't know that you're conscious or know anything about how the experience of consciousness feels to you. However, if you tell me "you know, I think I blacked out for a while today" and then tell me "I remember being in my office, looking at the clock and it was 1PM. The next thing I knew, I was waking up, feeling groggy, lying on the floor with an aching head and when I looked at the clock it was 3PM" then I can say "yes, it sure seems probable that you blacked out." I don't need to have experienced any of what you experienced to be able to say "from those premises, the conclusion you reach appears to be sound."

How can you know that without me telling you anything about why I believe what I believe, apart from that it is personal?

Because it is impossible (millions--quite literally--have tried) to come up with even a hypothetical experience that would prove--inductively--the existence of God. If no hypothetical experience fits the bill, then no experience you could have had fits the bill. Q.E.D.

[JoeTheJuggler]

Why bother when it is a brute fact?
Because I'm curious, and I'm not willing to stop asking the question "why" merely because someone offers the non-explanation "just because" (or for that matter "goddidit"). Again, this "brute fact" stuff seems like premature satisfaction of curiosity.


There are if some of the premises being fed into the argument are subjectively-justified. Let me give a less controversial example:

(P1) I know I'm conscious.
(P2) I know that if somebody hits me hard on the head, I cease to be conscious.
(C) The fact that I'm conscious has something to do with my head.

P1 can only be justified subjectively.
Ah. . now I see what's going on. You're confusing how we know something is true with purely deductive logic. We explain consciousness through science (neuroscience in particular) which is largely based on inductive reasoning--as with almost all science.

That's why I never cared for the term "justified". Whether something is "logical" and whether something is "justified" is an entirely different thing. Science is based on what the evidence points to, not on purely deductive, logical reasoning. That's why we spent so long trying to distinguish between the truth value of a conclusion and whether or not the conclusion flows logically from the premises.

Once again "logical" does not imply the statement is true.

And just because a statement is true does not mean it was logically deduced.

[UndercoverElephant]

You're confusing two separate things. Of course I can't share your "ineffable" experience, but I can fully enter into your reasoning based on your experience. Let us say that your claim is that you "suddenly felt the presence of the Divine" or that you were "suddenly granted access to a higher level of consciousness" or what have you. O.K., great; now, tell me: is it impossible that these experiences were delusions? People under the influence of drugs claim such experiences all the time; should we concede that these "must be real" because we don't happen to share them?

Now, you're not fool enough to actually say what your experience was (because you know that if you your whole claim would collapse), but let us say that you say "no, there was something in my experience that could not have been produced by mental illusion"--great. O.K., now prove to me that it wasn't produced by a race of alien beings who have mind-control technology beyond our understanding? What's that? You can't prove that you say? Hmmmm.


Again, you're trying to pass judgement on something without sufficient information to be able to do so. Why should I come to the conclusion that it is more likely that mind-control aliens are playing pranks than that the experiences were actually more close to what they seemed to be?

Your conclusions are based on your own beliefs, experiences, knowledge and biases. You (a) don't know what I am actually talking about, (b) wouldn't know whether or not to believe me of I did talk about it and (c) wouldn't know how you yourself would respond if you were put in the position I was.

Why does it even matter? Why are my privately-held and privately-kept beliefs of any relevance to you?


So even if I grant you anything you care to claim about your experience, there's no course of reasoning that will get you from the experience to "therefore there must be a God" without committing a logical error.


I think you are basing this on your own belief that there is in fact no God. If you happen to believe God exists, or that mystical experiences can be real, then there is no reason to assume it is impossible that my experiences were what they seemed to be.


Of course I can't make the claim that "there is no such thing as a genuine mystical experience." That would be an absurd claim. It could very well be that God spoke to you. It could very well be God who made sure by an act of special providence that my microwave didn't blow up this morning. How could I prove otherwise. I'm not saying that I can disprove your "mystical" experience. I'm saying that you cannot logically use it--even to yourself--as proof of the existence of God.


Well, I disagree. I believe that if you experienced what I experienced, you too would accept it as evidence.

This is an impasse. The discussion has nowhere to go in this direction, and no reason to anywhere.

[Piscivore]

It's not that it wouldn't meet an objective standard. I can't show you the "evidence" at all. In order for you to be able to understand that "evidence", you would need to have lived my life as me.

Um... that's practically the defintion of "wouldn't meet an objective standard".

[Z]

<snip>

Well, I disagree. I believe that if you experienced what I experienced, you too would accept it as evidence.

This is an impasse. The discussion has nowhere to go in this direction, and no reason to anywhere.

Wrong. If you told us what you experienced, we could evaluate that experience and see if it is rational evidence or not.

But you're an intelligent guy, UE. Obviously. And, obviously, you're aware that the moment you reveal your life-changing evidence to us, it'll be torn to shreds and revealed to be insufficient evidence of anything, and your irrationality and illogical behavior will be fully exposed. You know it's true; but to admit it, even to yourself, is to admit you're not the rational, logical, and reasonable person you want to be. I know this, because I've gone the same route, and still do to some degree - except, unlike you, I can be honest with myself about my intellectual problems.

[Piscivore]

Wrong. If you told us what you experienced, we could evaluate that experience and see if it is rational evidence or not.

But you're an intelligent guy, UE. Obviously. And, obviously, you're aware that the moment you reveal your life-changing evidence to us, it'll be torn to shreds and revealed to be insufficient evidence of anything, and your irrationality and illogical behavior will be fully exposed. You know it's true; but to admit it, even to yourself, is to admit you're not the rational, logical, and reasonable person you want to be. I know this, because I've gone the same route, and still do to some degree - except, unlike you, I can be honest with myself about my intellectual problems.

Seconded.

[Gate2501]

Wrong. If you told us what you experienced, we could evaluate that experience and see if it is rational evidence or not.

But you're an intelligent guy, UE. Obviously. And, obviously, you're aware that the moment you reveal your life-changing evidence to us, it'll be torn to shreds and revealed to be insufficient evidence of anything, and your irrationality and illogical behavior will be fully exposed. You know it's true; but to admit it, even to yourself, is to admit you're not the rational, logical, and reasonable person you want to be. I know this, because I've gone the same route, and still do to some degree - except, unlike you, I can be honest with myself about my intellectual problems.

My text format ;)

You better be sure to include a full definition of your use of the word "illogical" along with your post. If you are referring to informal logic or the colloquial, the semantic snipers are currently lining up a headshot!

[lightfire22000]

Claiming to believe something is claiming to know it.

That's a controversial statement in its own right. I am ambivalent on the subject.



Nevertheless, I think it may be logical to hold an unjustified belief. Oftentimes, mathematicians demonstrate that solutions exist to problems without explicitly demonstrating what those solutions are. This type of thinking leads to a peculiar scenario.

A person has three choices, A, B, or C. He knows that one choice is the correct choice and the other two are incorrect. If he doesn't choose, he is automatically wrong. He has 5 seconds to decide.

The person does not have any basis for choosing A, B, or C. However, he must choose one or he is automatically wrong. This is where it is rational to hold an "unjustified" belief.

[Yoink]

Again, you're trying to pass judgement on something without sufficient information to be able to do so. Why should I come to the conclusion that it is more likely that mind-control aliens are playing pranks than that the experiences were actually more close to what they seemed to be?

I'm not saying it's "more likely" (although I think that argument could be made; there are lots and lots of planets out there, the possibility of life evolving on one of those planets and producing beings capable of producing a mind-control technology of some kind seems at least not to violate any known principles of physics etc.; whereas the existence of a "god" is in every possible way unprecedented in our experience). I'm saying that given that your experience is no more likely to be evidence of God than it is evidence of aliens or evidence of demons or evidence of delusion then only a path of false reasoning could lead you to conclude "this experience justifies my belief in the existence of God."

Your conclusions are based on your own beliefs, experiences, knowledge and biases. You (a) don't know what I am actually talking about, (b) wouldn't know whether or not to believe me of I did talk about it and (c) wouldn't know how you yourself would respond if you were put in the position I was.

And, as I have patiently explained above, none of these things are remotely relevant to the question of whether or not your experience justifies your belief. It may well be true that if I went through the same experience as you that I, too, would lose my ability to reason logically and that I would be convinced that I had personal proof of God's existence. I would, however, be wrong. Given that I would not be able to exclude the possibility of alien mindf**kery (as you yourself have acknowledged now) or of delusion, I would be simply incorrect to think that my experience--no matter how special to me--furnished me with justification of a belief in God.

Why does it even matter? Why are my privately-held and privately-kept beliefs of any relevance to you?

They matter in that you have brought them into a public discussion forum. If you don't want them discussed publicly, don't do that. Given that you have, I can only assume that somewhere deep down you want help with your reasoning; I'm trying to provide you with that help.

I think you are basing this on your own belief that there is in fact no God. If you happen to believe God exists, or that mystical experiences can be real, then there is no reason to assume it is impossible that my experiences were what they seemed to be.

Please read what I am writing, and not what you would like to imagine that I'm writing. I have already said that I cannot disprove the existence of God and that I cannot prove that your experience was, in fact, caused by God. I can't disprove that Obama's election was the direct action of God on earth, I can't disprove that every suicide bomber is directly motivated by God and receives a heavenly reward, I can't disprove that the flight of every sparrow is the direct manifestation of God's will. None of that means that any one of those things is "proof" of God's existence. Neither is the fact that you had an experience that you find hard to explain.

See, no "assumption of the nonexistence of God" up my sleeve.

Well, I disagree. I believe that if you experienced what I experienced, you too would accept it as evidence.

I do accept it as evidence. I accept it as evidence of the fact that you had an experience. Now, what proof do you have that that experience was caused by God as opposed to aliens or delusion? What's that? Nothing? Nothing at all? Why, how you do surprise me.

This is an impasse. The discussion has nowhere to go in this direction, and no reason to anywhere.

Well, it has the perfectly good "reason" of getting you to a better understanding of your own thoughts and a better understanding of what does and does not constitute a valid argument. There's no "impasse" here at all; there's simply a correct argument on one side and an incorrect argument on the other. Now, the fact that you refuse to acknowledge that your argument has been shown to be erroneous is simply your loss.

[UndercoverElephant]

I'm not saying it's "more likely" (although I think that argument could be made; there are lots and lots of planets out there, the possibility of life evolving on one of those planets and producing beings capable of producing a mind-control technology of some kind seems at least not to violate any known principles of physics etc.; whereas the existence of a "god" is in every possible way unprecedented in our experience). I'm saying that given that your experience is no more likely to be evidence of God than it is evidence of aliens or evidence of demons or evidence of delusion then only a path of false reasoning could lead you to conclude "this experience justifies my belief in the existence of God."


You aren't in a position to make that judgement. You have no way of knowing how likely it is, because you don't know what I am talking about.


And, as I have patiently explained above, none of these things are remotely relevant to the question of whether or not your experience justifies your belief. It may well be true that if I went through the same experience as you that I, too, would lose my ability to reason logically and that I would be convinced that I had personal proof of God's existence.


No, that isn't what I said. I said that if you went through the same experience then you would be able to reason logically that the experience was real, and significant. And you are not in a position to be able to tell me that this belief of mine is unjustified, because you don't know how I am justifying it.


I would, however, be wrong. Given that I would not be able to exclude the possibility of alien mindf**kery (as you yourself have acknowledged now) or of delusion, I would be simply incorrect to think that my experience--no matter how special to me--furnished me with justification of a belief in God.


I can only repeat the same thing: you are relying on your own imagination, and the limitations of your own current belief system, in order to pass judgement on something you have no knowledge of. As such, all you are doing is saying something about the limitations of your own current belief system, not about what is actually possible.


They matter in that you have brought them into a public discussion forum. If you don't want them discussed publicly, don't do that. Given that you have, I can only assume that somewhere deep down you want help with your reasoning; I'm trying to provide you with that help.


I discussed them publicly only to the extent that I wish to defend the claim that it is not necessarily unreasonable to hold a belief in God. It is impossible for me to avoid speaking about them to that limited extent, or people wouldn't have any idea what I was talking about.


I do accept it as evidence. I accept it as evidence of the fact that you had an experience. Now, what proof do you have that that experience was caused by God as opposed to aliens or delusion? What's that? Nothing? Nothing at all? Why, how you do surprise me.


Look...this is silly. I was an atheist and skeptic for 30 years. What eventually happened to me was completely outside the realms of what I had previously believed possible. It was beyond the scope of what I could previously have even imagined. You simply aren't in a position to rule out the possibility that a specific experience could lead a person to reasonably conclude that the most likely explanation for that experience was something genuinely spiritual, and not aliens playing pranks.


Well, it has the perfectly good "reason" of getting you to a better understanding of your own thoughts and a better understanding of what does and does not constitute a valid argument.


There is nothing wrong with my understanding of what constitutes a valid argument. It's not the argument that you are lacking. It's the PREMISES - the raw information.

Let me go one step further: If I told you in detail what happened to me then you would conclude that I was either (a) lying or (b) deluded. That is you would be far more likely to conclude that things like that simply DO NOT HAPPEN rather than that they happen and could be seriously misinterpreted. You would be very unlikely to conclude that it was likely that aliens were playing a prank on me. So in the end it would simply come down to you not believing such things could happen and therefore having to choose between whether I'm crazy or I'm a liar. If, however, such a thing were to happen to you, then you wouldn't, logically, be able to maintain the position that such things don't happen, and you'd have no choice but to accept it for what it is. Now...you can say till you are blue in the face that if it happened to you then you'd sooner believe it was alien pranksters rather than something spiritual, but you're still not in a position to make that judgement.


There's no "impasse" here at all; there's simply a correct argument on one side and an incorrect argument on the other. Now, the fact that you refuse to acknowledge that your argument has been shown to be erroneous is simply your loss.

WHAT argument?

[UndercoverElephant]

Wrong. If you told us what you experienced, we could evaluate that experience and see if it is rational evidence or not.


No you wouldn't, because you wouldn't be able to understand my explanation. Well, you'd be able to understand some parts of it, but not enough of it.


But you're an intelligent guy, UE. Obviously. And, obviously, you're aware that the moment you reveal your life-changing evidence to us, it'll be torn to shreds and revealed to be insufficient evidence of anything, and your irrationality and illogical behavior will be fully exposed.


You would no doubt tear something to shreds, namely your own incomplete and inadequate interpretation of what I would have told you. You wouldn't have torn to shreds anything I actually believe.


You know it's true; but to admit it, even to yourself, is to admit you're not the rational, logical, and reasonable person you want to be. I know this, because I've gone the same route, and still do to some degree - except, unlike you, I can be honest with myself about my intellectual problems.

Thanks for the psychoanalysis, but you aren't in a position to make the sort of judgements you are making. This stuff bounces off me like water off a duck's back, mate. I know what board I am on. These sorts of posts say far more about you, and your own psychological state and needs, than they do about me and mine.

I am ruthlessly honest with myself. I just happen to have more information to evaluate than you do and you are not in a position to conclusively know that I'm not. I know you think you are, but that doesn't mean it is true.

[Z]

No you wouldn't, because you wouldn't be able to understand my explanation. Well, you'd be able to understand some parts of it, but not enough of it.


If it were rational, reasonable, and logical, anyone should be able to understand it just fine (provided they are rational, reasonable, and logical to some degree).

What you've just done is admitted that your 'experience' is none of these things. Therefore, your belief in God is not rational, reasonable, or logical.

Here's UE:

"I believe in God because of an experience I had, but I cannot explain it."

UE, do you speak English? Do you have a grasp of logic, reason, and rationality? This is all that is needed to explain any logical, reasonable, or rational event. That you claim to be unable to explain it only exposes that your experience was, itself, irrational, illogical, and/or unreasonable - in short, you had a mental episode and came away a believer in God.

You hallucinated. That's pretty much it. Crazy. Insane. You snapped inside. There's no God involved, pal. Sorry, game over.

Too bad your own ego won't let you admit the truth to yourself - you might be able to heal yourself, if you could just admit the truth.

[Z]

I am ruthlessly honest with myself.

Clearly not, or you'd be able to explain your experience.

[UndercoverElephant]

Clearly not, or you'd be able to explain your experience.

How did you arrive at that conclusion?

[SumDood]

If, however, such a thing were to happen to you, then you wouldn't, logically, be able to maintain the position that such things don't happen, and you'd have no choice but to accept it for what it is. Now...you can say till you are blue in the face that if it happened to you then you'd sooner believe it was alien pranksters rather than something spiritual, but you're still not in a position to make that judgement.

How can you say how one would react to an event identical to yours? You don't know their life experiences, how they think or anything. How is it unreasonable to think that one who had the same experience as you would say 'okay, i'm batsh!t insane. Lock me up.'?

I respect your privacy in not disclosing the details of your experience, but can you come up with a hypothetical situation that you feel would have the same impact?

You are correct, i am not in a position to judge, but i can't even imagine an experience like that. If i witnessed something that i knew was impossible, unless there was video evidence supporting what i experienced, I would have to conclude it didn't really happen.

[UndercoverElephant]

If it were rational, reasonable, and logical, anyone should be able to understand it just fine (provided they are rational, reasonable, and logical to some degree).


No they wouldn't. In order to understand it they would have to understand my life history and whole belief system, from my perspective. This is completely impossible. It took us eight pages to establish what "illogical" actually means, and even now some people don't get it. If it takes eight pages to fail to achieve something that simple, how on Earth do you expect me to explain my whole life story and entire belief system and actually succeed in making people understand it properly?


What you've just done is admitted that your 'experience' is none of these things. Therefore, your belief in God is not rational, reasonable, or logical.


Eh?


Here's UE:

"I believe in God because of an experience I had, but I cannot explain it."

UE, do you speak English? Do you have a grasp of logic, reason, and rationality? This is all that is needed to explain any logical, reasonable, or rational event.


No it isn't. The sort of explanation you are talking about is a scientific explanation. To understand people, in this case me, is a lot harder. Sorry, but you simply haven't lived my life and don't understand how I view the world, or why. You don't have any chance of understanding it, either. I know this because if UE as he currently is tried to explain it to UE ten years ago, UE ten years ago wouldn't have been able to understand it either, and he had thirty years worth of knowing what it was like to be UE that you don't have.


You hallucinated. That's pretty much it. Crazy. Insane. You snapped inside....

Wanna know why I refuse to discuss these things? THIS is why. Because of the limitations of your knowledge and understanding of the nature of reality, you are forced to conclude I was crazy, or hallucinated or was just a liar. I already knew before the discussion started that you would end up coming to some conclusion of that sort. The alternative would be for you to fundamentally change what you believe about reality, and that's just not going to happen.

I say again: posts like these bounce off me like water off a duck's back. So some extremist atheist who doesn't even know what "illogical" means has concluded that anyone who reports mystical experiences is a deluded crank... Got anything to tell me that I don't already know? :rolleyes:

[UndercoverElephant]

How can you say how one would react to an event identical to yours? You don't know their life experiences, how they think or anything. How is it unreasonable to think that one who had the same experience as you would say 'okay, i'm batsh!t insane. Lock me up.'?


I'd fear for them if they did, because it is exactly the wrong time to lose your grasp on reality. Putting your hands up saying "I'm crazy" in the situation I was in would have been a means of attempting to hide from an inconvenient truth. If I thought I could have got myself off the hook with a strategy like that, I might have been attempted to pursue it. Unfortunately, I don't think it would have worked. IOW, if you are trying to deal with something unpleasant which is actually happening to you, then telling yourself that you are crazy and it's not really happening isn't much of a solution, because it'll probably go on happening. If you want to stop it from happening, you'd be better advised to start by admitting the problem is real, and not imagined.


I respect your privacy in not disclosing the details of your experience, but can you come up with a hypothetical situation that you feel would have the same impact?


No.

[Z]

How did you arrive at that conclusion?

Quite precisely. Our language contains terms and expressions - albeit, at times long, inconvenient ones - for every experience we ever have. It can be, at times, difficult to find the right terms and expressions for the experience, but our means of communication also includes the ability to cross-reference experiences in such a way that we can adequately express any experience in terms of others familiar to other people. This is facilitated by our common linguistic conventions, and the underlying assumption that experiences we have from common stimuli result in similar experiences in others. Hence, we know what each other mean when we say, 'it is salty' or 'it is hot'. This, of course, is based on a fundamental assumption that the physical world works in a rational manner, but it is a practical assumption.

We also have a considerable amount of knowledge about what causes sensations and experiences to happen contrary to ordinary form, such as synesthasia or hallucination. Some of this knowledge is contraversial - for example, the OBE situation - but even in these cases, the experiencer has at his or her disposal a full set of language tools allowing him or her to describe his or her experience.

Obviously, this relies on the extent and ability of the individual to use language effectively; however, you've shown little problem with being able to use language very effectively, when carefully scrutinized (though you do have a tendency to be unclear in how you are using terms, and appear to switch precise meanings when confronted).

Therefore, it is reasonable to assume that any experience you have should be able to be put into language. Assuming that you are a linguistic thinker - either oral or written - then you already think about your experience in terms of language anyway; however, if you, like me, are an iconic thinker, you may have some trouble associating the appropriate thought-icons into words. With sufficient effort, though, someone with a clear grasp of language, such as you've demonstrated, should be able to put any rational, reasonable, or logical experience into linguistic terms. You should, in fact, be able to put irrational, unreasonable, or illogical sensations into linguistic terms as well, but they would reveal themselves as such immediately.

I therefore conclude that you choose not to put your experience into linguistic terms for others because doing so exposes them as irrational, unreasonable, or illogical. There are two other options, though, that I can conceive: 1) you actually lack the terms, for whatever reason, to express your experience (which means you simply need to research similar experiences to find correlations in language), or 2) the experience in itself is somehow so contrary to reason, such as finding a square circle, that there is no way whatsoever to put it into rational terms without violating the basic principles of logic or rationality.

If you are simply having problems finding the right words for your experience, you might simply start by categorizing the experience methodically. For example, "which of your senses were involved with the experience?" might be the first question, and then continue from there.

I had an acquaintance, years ago, who believed with all his heart that God spoke directly to him. He was otherwise completely mentally stable, and was even given a clean bill of mental health from several experts. He simply heard a voice that guided him in moral questions. Oddly, he didn't go to church at all - he wouldn't even call himself Christian, simply because his voice never spoke of Christ or Jesus. He obeyed that voice even unto death - he died, I am told, trying to save a dog caught in a flash flood because God told him to do so (the person who pulled the dog out and witnessed my acquaintence's death claimed that was the last thing he said - "God told me to save that dog!").

Chances are, he as simply hearing his own inner voice, or some mild form of mental illness was involved. Or, he was hearing God. We'll never know for sure.

But at least he could express his experience rationally.

Surely you can do the same with your own experience! Or, at the very least, admit that your experience MIGHT be explainable by something other than God. There is no shame to admitting that possibility.

I apologize if, at times, I come off snooty or harsh-tongued (fingered?) about this. It's just that I do hold irrational beliefs, but at least I'm willing to discuss them. Your claim that you have evidence that God exists, but refuse to share that evidence, only undermines the validity of your claim to such a degree, that it reflects poorly on any other discussion you care to have. Frankly, I think it would better serve your purposes to express what your experience was, analyse it critically along with others here in a non-hostile fashion (not always possible in this place, but I for one would be willing to try), and move on to better and more exciting topics. Alternately, you would have been better served to never have mentioned it at all, since it serves no purpose beyond your personal beliefs, and not have had to put up with the tons of ridicule and borderline attacks you've suffered since posting here. More of what you have posted would be taken seriously if not for this unexplained belief in God you hold so dear. It is not the belief itself which undermines you (except, of course, in the eyes of our hardcore, militant atheist peers here); it is your unwillingness to discuss the nature of your experience, combined with your desire to express your belief anyway, that does.

Please take this post in the spirit in which I meant it - as friendly, concerned, and unselfish advice from someone who is neither an atheist nor a hard-core skeptic.

[Z]

No they wouldn't. In order to understand it they would have to understand my life history and whole belief system, from my perspective. This is completely impossible. It took us eight pages to establish what "illogical" actually means, and even now some people don't get it. If it takes eight pages to fail to achieve something that simple, how on Earth do you expect me to explain my whole life story and entire belief system and actually succeed in making people understand it properly?



Eh?



No it isn't. The sort of explanation you are talking about is a scientific explanation. To understand people, in this case me, is a lot harder. Sorry, but you simply haven't lived my life and don't understand how I view the world, or why. You don't have any chance of understanding it, either. I know this because if UE as he currently is tried to explain it to UE ten years ago, UE ten years ago wouldn't have been able to understand it either, and he had thirty years worth of knowing what it was like to be UE that you don't have.



Wanna know why I refuse to discuss these things? THIS is why. Because of the limitations of your knowledge and understanding of the nature of reality, you are forced to conclude I was crazy, or hallucinated or was just a liar. I already knew before the discussion started that you would end up coming to some conclusion of that sort. The alternative would be for you to fundamentally change what you believe about reality, and that's just not going to happen.

I say again: posts like these bounce off me like water off a duck's back. So some extremist atheist who doesn't even know what "illogical" means has concluded that anyone who reports mystical experiences is a deluded crank... Got anything to tell me that I don't already know? :rolleyes:

'Extremist Atheist'...

ROFL!

Um, UE - you're talking to Reverend White Wolf of the Correllian Nativist Tradition of Wicca, a priest in the Crystalline Star Temple. Though I've recently developed a more deist view on the nature of the Divine Being itself, I still believe in things like dragon spirits and faeries. I regularly practice dreamwalking - travelling into the dreams of other people - and have a daily meditation regimen to clear my chakras and keep my emotions in check.

So you'd have to add me on the 'deluded crank' side, not the 'extremist atheist' side.

And I know there's no way you'll believe me, but there is no life history or system of belief so alien to me that I cannot grasp the implications of any experience in context of their life history. It's one of the oddball traits I'm rather well known among my friends and close associates for, and one reason I rarely judge people who are honestly willing to discuss their beliefs harshly.

It is not your beliefs I rankle before; it is your unwillingness to honestly discuss them, in spite of asserting them in conversations, which ires me.

[Yoink]

You aren't in a position to make that judgement. You have no way of knowing how likely it is, because you don't know what I am talking about.

I make the blanket statement about any imaginable experience. That's any imaginable not any experience I consider likely or plausible. If you think I'm wrong, give me a hypothetical experience that would, in fact, be adequate grounds for belief in God. It doesn't have to be your experience. Or are you saying that you had the one and only possible experience that is adequate grounds to justify a belief in God?

In other words, I'm quite prepared to concede that a man appeared to you on flaming pie, or that an Angel of the Lord came down to you and penetrated you with a golden spear, or any form of divine experience you care to name. It still is not adequate justification for a belief in God.

No, that isn't what I said. I said that if you went through the same experience then you would be able to reason logically that the experience was real, and significant. And you are not in a position to be able to tell me that this belief of mine is unjustified, because you don't know how I am justifying it.

I don't really care how you are justifying it, because I know that there is no possible argument from any imaginable experience to a justified belief in God. Why? Because you can't rule out delusion or aliens. If you want to disprove my universal claim ("no imaginable") then, again, tell us a hypothetical counter example. (Prediction: you'll say "why should I bother?").

I can only repeat the same thing: you are relying on your own imagination, and the limitations of your own current belief system, in order to pass judgement on something you have no knowledge of. As such, all you are doing is saying something about the limitations of your own current belief system, not about what is actually possible.

I do not know how many times I have to write "I accept that 'God did it' is a possible explanation" before you'll notice it. I am not excluding God as a possible explanation of your experience. Here, let me write that again: I AM NOT EXCLUDING GOD AS A POSSIBLE EXPLANATION OF YOUR EXPERIENCE. Or maybe once more I AM NOT EXCLUDING GOD AS A POSSIBLE EXPLANATION OF YOUR EXPERIENCE. I'm saying that no possible experience you have undergone could prove that God is in fact the explanation of your experience.

I discussed them publicly only to the extent that I wish to defend the claim that it is not necessarily unreasonable to hold a belief in God. It is impossible for me to avoid speaking about them to that limited extent, or people wouldn't have any idea what I was talking about.Yes, and now that we know what you're talking about, we know that you are incorrect.

Look...this is silly. I was an atheist and skeptic for 30 years. What eventually happened to me was completely outside the realms of what I had previously believed possible. It was beyond the scope of what I could previously have even imagined. You simply aren't in a position to rule out the possibility that a specific experience could lead a person to reasonably conclude that the most likely explanation for that experience was something genuinely spiritual, and not aliens playing pranks.

Do please tell us all what the characteristic elements of an experience caused by aliens playing pranks are, such that you can be pretty sure that your experience wasn't that; that will, at least, be entertaining. Did you find the "alien prank characteristic" checklist in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, perchance?

There is nothing wrong with my understanding of what constitutes a valid argument. It's not the argument that you are lacking. It's the PREMISES - the raw information.

Again, we don't need the raw information because--again--there is no possible or conceivable experience that would be a valid basis from which to derive the conclusion "God exists."

Let me go one step further: If I told you in detail what happened to me then you would conclude that I was either (a) lying or (b) deluded. That is you would be far more likely to conclude that things like that simply DO NOT HAPPEN rather than that they happen and could be seriously misinterpreted. You would be very unlikely to conclude that it was likely that aliens were playing a prank on me. So in the end it would simply come down to you not believing such things could happen and therefore having to choose between whether I'm crazy or I'm a liar. If, however, such a thing were to happen to you, then you wouldn't, logically, be able to maintain the position that such things don't happen, and you'd have no choice but to accept it for what it is. Now...you can say till you are blue in the face that if it happened to you then you'd sooner believe it was alien pranksters rather than something spiritual, but you're still not in a position to make that judgement.

Lots of people have had inexplicable experiences and decided that they were crazy. People turn themselves into mental hospitals every day of the week. If someone suffering from schizophrenia goes off his meds and tells me that the man who lives in the lamppost is telling him to kill Sarah Palin am I required to believe that there is a man in the lamppost who wants Sarah Palin dead? Am I required to believe that the schizophrenic has sufficient reason to believe that even he can't persuade me? ("But he seems so sure!")?

You had an experience which, according to you, presents you with two options:

1) I had a mental breakdown
2) God exists and chose to reveal Himself to me

By your account, either one of these hypotheses explains the known facts equally well. We know of lots of people who have had mental breakdowns; we know nothing of the existence of God. Tell me again why the "best" explanation for your experience is the "God" one?

WHAT argument?

This one: your experience--no matter what it was--can easily be explained by known means, and by unknown means that are not "God," therefore there is no justification for your belief that that experience justifies your belief in God.

[Yoink]

I'd fear for them if they did, because it is exactly the wrong time to lose your grasp on reality. Putting your hands up saying "I'm crazy" in the situation I was in would have been a means of attempting to hide from an inconvenient truth. If I thought I could have got myself off the hook with a strategy like that, I might have been attempted to pursue it. Unfortunately, I don't think it would have worked. IOW, if you are trying to deal with something unpleasant which is actually happening to you, then telling yourself that you are crazy and it's not really happening isn't much of a solution, because it'll probably go on happening. If you want to stop it from happening, you'd be better advised to start by admitting the problem is real, and not imagined.

Let us hope that no schizophrenics or other people in need of psychiatric care are reading this discussion.

[UndercoverElephant]

'Extremist Atheist'...

ROFL!

Um, UE - you're talking to Reverend White Wolf of the Correllian Nativist Tradition of Wicca, a priest in the Crystalline Star Temple. Though I've recently developed a more deist view on the nature of the Divine Being itself, I still believe in things like dragon spirits and faeries. I regularly practice dreamwalking - travelling into the dreams of other people - and have a daily meditation regimen to clear my chakras and keep my emotions in check.

So you'd have to add me on the 'deluded crank' side, not the 'extremist atheist' side.

And I know there's no way you'll believe me, but there is no life history or system of belief so alien to me that I cannot grasp the implications of any experience in context of their life history. It's one of the oddball traits I'm rather well known among my friends and close associates for, and one reason I rarely judge people who are honestly willing to discuss their beliefs harshly.


No, it is more a case of who I choose to discuss them harshly with, and where. There really isn't any point in having that discussion here. I already know what the opposition will say, so there's nothing for me to learn.


It is not your beliefs I rankle before; it is your unwillingness to honestly discuss them, in spite of asserting them in conversations, which ires me.

No, what ires you is that you see all non-scientific beliefs as targets you should be shooting at, and I'm telling you I have a non-scientific belief but won't provide you with a target to aim at. You think this is because I'm scared to put a up a target which you'll rip to pieces. The truth is that it is impossible for me to put up the target. The gap between what you know/believe and what I know/believe is too big.

Why can't you just walk away from the discussion and allow me to continue to believe whatever I like? Why do you have a need to deride my beliefs, even though you don't know what they are? Is it because you, like PixyMisa, feel that my beliefs must be harmful to me and you are on an altruistic mission to save me from my damaging delusions? Or is it that you can't allow somebody to believe something fundamentally different to what you believe without being belittled for believing bad things?

I repeat: people are losing sight of the big picture here. There is a reason why the claims of Uri Geller, the creationists, the scientologists, Sylvia Browne and the Pope need to be challenged, either because they are causing social harm or because they are being used to fraudulently extract money from people. But some guy who claims to believe in God because of a personal experience but doesn't expect anybody else to accept this as evidence, isn't trying to earn a profit and generally isn't hurting anyone in any way because of this belief? Why is this such a problem? It looks to me like you are more worried about beliefs which aren't compatible with your own being taken seriously than you are worried about the original reasons why people attack the beliefs of the aforementioned persons/groups in the first place i.e. that those beliefs are in some way dangerous as well as incorrect.

[UndercoverElephant]

Let us hope that no schizophrenics or other people in need of psychiatric care are reading this discussion.

Indeed.

[UndercoverElephant]

I make the blanket statement about any imaginable experience. That's any imaginable not any experience I consider likely or plausible.


Imaginable by whom?


If you think I'm wrong, give me a hypothetical experience that would, in fact, be adequate grounds for belief in God. It doesn't have to be your experience. Or are you saying that you had the one and only possible experience that is adequate grounds to justify a belief in God?


It's the only one I can imagine. That doesn't mean there aren't others. In fact, it might be the case that for each person, there is only one that would be enough, and it would be different for every one of them.


In other words, I'm quite prepared to concede that a man appeared to you on flaming pie, or that an Angel of the Lord came down to you and penetrated you with a golden spear, or any form of divine experience you care to name.


Not imaginative enough. Not even close. Sounds more like a scene from a 1950's hollywood epic.


I don't really care how you are justifying it, because I know that there is no possible argument from any imaginable experience to a justified belief in God. Why? Because you can't rule out delusion or aliens.


We are going around in circles now. I've already responded to this.


If you want to disprove my universal claim ("no imaginable") then, again, tell us a hypothetical counter example. (Prediction: you'll say "why should I bother?").


What you are asking me to do is the equivalent of trying to explain to a person who had never even taken LSD what it is like to take DMT. No description of an LSD trip adequately describes the experience of taking LSD, as anyone who as ever taken LSD will confirm. You are asking for even more. You're asking me to explain to a skeptic, who doesn't believe in any sort of paranormal phenomena at all and has certainly never experienced any, what it is like to experience extreme paranormal phenomena.

It CANNOT be done.


I do not know how many times I have to write "I accept that 'God did it' is a possible explanation" before you'll notice it. I am not excluding God as a possible explanation of your experience. Here, let me write that again: I AM NOT EXCLUDING GOD AS A POSSIBLE EXPLANATION OF YOUR EXPERIENCE. Or maybe once more I AM NOT EXCLUDING GOD AS A POSSIBLE EXPLANATION OF YOUR EXPERIENCE. I'm saying that no possible experience you have undergone could prove that God is in fact the explanation of your experience.


How do you know?


Again, we don't need the raw information because--again--there is no possible or conceivable experience that would be a valid basis from which to derive the conclusion "God exists."


Believe me, if you've never taken DMT, you can't imagine what it is like.


You had an experience which, according to you, presents you with two options:

1) I had a mental breakdown
2) God exists and chose to reveal Himself to me


Nope, those weren't the options. (1) wasn't on the list and (2) is a severe over-simplification.

Again, you are not in a position to make the sort of judgements you are trying to make. When you say things like "aliens could have been playing pranks" or "maybe you had a nervous breakdown" they are generalised explanations which apply to certain sorts of experiences but not to others.

Let me give you an example: let's imagine you are Worf in the episode of Star Trek where he starts flipping between time-lines. At first, the jumps are small and he doesn't want to acknowledge what is happening. But before long, he is leaping about into realities where he's the Captain and Picard is dead. NOW...can Worf turn around and say, "Oh well, I guess I must have gone crazy..."? Not really. He's found himself in a fundamentally altered reality and it hasn't altered back again. Telling himself he's crazy isn't actually going to help much, is it? If he's actually flipping around between timelines then telling himself he is crazy is to live in denial. It is the WEAK response of somebody who can't face up to what is actually happening to him, and it will achieve absolutely nothing because he's actually flipped timelines and he'd better start dealing with the consequences. Aliens playing pranks on him? Quite frankly, if there are aliens capable of playing pranks like that, they are indistinguishable from Gods anyway.


This one: your experience--no matter what it was--can easily be explained by known means, and by unknown means that are not "God," therefore there is no justification for your belief that that experience justifies your belief in God.

You don't know what it is that needs to be explained, and you aren't going to either.

I have been posting on this board long enough to know exactly how pointless it is trying to provide anecdotal descriptions of private mystical experiences. It ain't gonna happen. You want to talk about philosophy and religion? We can talk. You want me to be the entertainment in a circus sideshow? No can do.

[Z]

No, it is more a case of who I choose to discuss them harshly with, and where. There really isn't any point in having that discussion here. I already know what the opposition will say, so there's nothing for me to learn.



No, what ires you is that you see all non-scientific beliefs as targets you should be shooting at, and I'm telling you I have a non-scientific belief but won't provide you with a target to aim at. You think this is because I'm scared to put a up a target which you'll rip to pieces. The truth is that it is impossible for me to put up the target. The gap between what you know/believe and what I know/believe is too big.

Why can't you just walk away from the discussion and allow me to continue to believe whatever I like? Why do you have a need to deride my beliefs, even though you don't know what they are? Is it because you, like PixyMisa, feel that my beliefs must be harmful to me and you are on an altruistic mission to save me from my damaging delusions? Or is it that you can't allow somebody to believe something fundamentally different to what you believe without being belittled for believing bad things?

I repeat: people are losing sight of the big picture here. There is a reason why the claims of Uri Geller, the creationists, the scientologists, Sylvia Browne and the Pope need to be challenged, either because they are causing social harm or because they are being used to fraudulently extract money from people. But some guy who claims to believe in God because of a personal experience but doesn't expect anybody else to accept this as evidence, isn't trying to earn a profit and generally isn't hurting anyone in any way because of this belief? Why is this such a problem? It looks to me like you are more worried about beliefs which aren't compatible with your own being taken seriously than you are worried about the original reasons why people attack the beliefs of the aforementioned persons/groups in the first place i.e. that those beliefs are in some way dangerous as well as incorrect.

As long as you are admitting your beliefs are irrational, I'll drop it and move on.

Since you used the example from Star Trek, however, that was a situation in which a previously unknown physical phenomenon was occuring. If you've experienced a previously unexperienced physical phenomenon, that would be an exciting and amazing thing to discuss.

But it would not be proof of God - unless the phenomenon is that you can somehow enter Heaven physically and chat with the Old Lady herself. And even then - you'd have to entertain at least the possibility of alien tricks or Satan's delusions...

So my end point, then, is simply this: if you don't want your faith in God discussed, don't bring it up. Certainly don't tell us you've got a cookie in the jar, then refuse to even show us that the cookie's there. That only makes the OCD people around here even more determined to pry your tasty little secret out of you.

Part of the problem, though, is that you tend to be unwilling to discuss rationally any subject that removes God or immaterial experience from the picture, because of this unfounded faith in God you possess; hence, it colors every religious and philosophical discussion you partake in. No, it's not dangerous, per se, or deceptive; but it does undermine your ability to have a rational discussion on this forum, especially when you assert that you have evidence of God's existence. You can't even objectively enter a discussion in which God doesn't exist because of this alleged evidence. And for all we know, you're blowing smoke and lying about your experience in order to make it seem like you know something no one else does.

But you are right - this discussion is counter-productive. And I know, thanks to my own private mystical experiences, that God died giving birth to the Universe.

...well, at least it's one theory I have. The crystal dragon told me this story... but that's another thread.



NOW - all this has been VERY off-topic, in my opinion. This thread probably should die soon, since we've basically dug out the hidden roots of what you MEANT to ask (which, incidentally, isn't what you actually asked). I think I've been educated somewhat, as have others. YMMV. Shall we move on to something more interesting - like how dreamwalking might be possible?

[UndercoverElephant]

As long as you are admitting your beliefs are irrational, I'll drop it and move on.


But why on Earth do you think I started this thread? My beliefs aren't irrational. I just haven't attempted to justify them.



Since you used the example from Star Trek, however, that was a situation in which a previously unknown physical phenomenon was occuring. If you've experienced a previously unexperienced physical phenomenon, that would be an exciting and amazing thing to discuss.


It would be, if most of the people around here were capable of taking it seriously and responding in some other way than demanding of proof or telling me I'm mad. Unfortunately, we haven't even got the basics right. You, for example, still believe that Richard Dawkins is wrong to say that "consciousness is an immense problem for science and it's not even clear what the question is". You've got to learn to walk before you can be expected to run a marathon.


But it would not be proof of God - unless the phenomenon is that you can somehow enter Heaven physically and chat with the Old Lady herself. And even then - you'd have to entertain at least the possibility of alien tricks or Satan's delusions...

So my end point, then, is simply this: if you don't want your faith in God discussed, don't bring it up.


Impossible, I'm afraid. Whenever I take part in discussions on this board, people ask me all sorts of questions about what I believe and why. If I refuse to answer these even at the most basic level, then there's no point in me posting on this board at all.


Certainly don't tell us you've got a cookie in the jar, then refuse to even show us that the cookie's there.


Why? Because you can't cope if I do that?



Part of the problem, though, is that you tend to be unwilling to discuss rationally any subject that removes God or immaterial experience from the picture...


You mean I won't admit that naive materialism is true? Of course not. It's false. :D


NOW - all this has been VERY off-topic, in my opinion. This thread probably should die soon, since we've basically dug out the hidden roots of what you MEANT to ask (which, incidentally, isn't what you actually asked). I think I've been educated somewhat, as have others. YMMV. Shall we move on to something more interesting - like how dreamwalking might be possible?

The thread was an attempt to educate certain persons, including yourself, what the word "illogical" means. I fear it has not succeeded.

[Yoink]

Imaginable by whom?



It's the only one I can imagine. That doesn't mean there aren't others. In fact, it might be the case that for each person, there is only one that would be enough, and it would be different for every one of them.



Not imaginative enough. Not even close. Sounds more like a scene from a 1950's hollywood epic.



We are going around in circles now. I've already responded to this.



What you are asking me to do is the equivalent of trying to explain to a person who had never even taken LSD what it is like to take DMT. No description of an LSD trip adequately describes the experience of taking LSD, as anyone who as ever taken LSD will confirm. You are asking for even more. You're asking me to explain to a skeptic, who doesn't believe in any sort of paranormal phenomena at all and has certainly never experienced any, what it is like to experience extreme paranormal phenomena.

It CANNOT be done.



How do you know?



Believe me, if you've never taken DMT, you can't imagine what it is like.



Nope, those weren't the options. (1) wasn't on the list and (2) is a severe over-simplification.

Again, you are not in a position to make the sort of judgements you are trying to make. When you say things like "aliens could have been playing pranks" or "maybe you had a nervous breakdown" they are generalised explanations which apply to certain sorts of experiences but not to others.

Let me give you an example: let's imagine you are Worf in the episode of Star Trek where he starts flipping between time-lines. At first, the jumps are small and he doesn't want to acknowledge what is happening. But before long, he is leaping about into realities where he's the Captain and Picard is dead. NOW...can Worf turn around and say, "Oh well, I guess I must have gone crazy..."? Not really. He's found himself in a fundamentally altered reality and it hasn't altered back again. Telling himself he's crazy isn't actually going to help much, is it? If he's actually flipping around between timelines then telling himself he is crazy is to live in denial. It is the WEAK response of somebody who can't face up to what is actually happening to him, and it will achieve absolutely nothing because he's actually flipped timelines and he'd better start dealing with the consequences. Aliens playing pranks on him? Quite frankly, if there are aliens capable of playing pranks like that, they are indistinguishable from Gods anyway.



You don't know what it is that needs to be explained, and you aren't going to either.

I have been posting on this board long enough to know exactly how pointless it is trying to provide anecdotal descriptions of private mystical experiences. It ain't gonna happen. You want to talk about philosophy and religion? We can talk. You want me to be the entertainment in a circus sideshow? No can do.

O.K. it's pretty clear that you don't want an honest discussion, so I'm out of here. I will just note that the example you give from Star Trek is pretty hilarious. IIRC the episode in question is, in fact, the result of a powerful alien being--Q (if it isn't, there are certainly episodes in which Q does exactly that).

So, yeah--inexplicable experiences do not logically lead to the existence of God. Thank you for the example.

And a last thing. This thread was dishonest from the beginning. In my very first post in the thread I made it clear where I thought you were heading with this and why it was illegitimate. You denied then that you had anything more in view than the simple question of whether unjustified beliefs are "illogical," but in fact you have always been angling towards supporting your false claim that some experience in your past logically establishes the existence of God. That's a position that is completely unrelated to the question posed at the beginning of the thread.

[SumDood]

What you are asking me to do is the equivalent of trying to explain to a person who had never even taken LSD what it is like to take DMT. No description of an LSD trip adequately describes the experience of taking LSD, as anyone who as ever taken LSD will confirm.
Yes it can adequately describe it:

"it felt like my skin was crawling inside my head"
"i could hear every blade of grass in the world"
"i was trapped in the backseat, but i wasn't threatened"
"it was hard to grasp a single coherent thought"

Can a description fully convey the exact feeling one has on LSD? of course not. But what description of anything can do that?


Let me give you an example: let's imagine you are Worf in the episode of Star Trek where he starts flipping between time-lines. At first, the jumps are small and he doesn't want to acknowledge what is happening. But before long, he is leaping about into realities where he's the Captain and Picard is dead. NOW...can Worf turn around and say, "Oh well, I guess I must have gone crazy..."? Not really. He's found himself in a fundamentally altered reality and it hasn't altered back again. Telling himself he's crazy isn't actually going to help much, is it?

Not a very good example since time travel is not an impossibility in the star trek universe. (Nitpicking, i know, but how can i resist a star trek example?)


If he's actually flipping around between timelines then telling himself he is crazy is to live in denial. It is the WEAK response of somebody who can't face up to what is actually happening to him, and it will achieve absolutely nothing because he's actually flipped timelines and he'd better start dealing with the consequences.

People break from reality all the time (on law and order, at least). If any of my TV learning rings true, a traumatic event can cause someone to lose their grasp on reality. I would think it is a defense mechanism of the brain. In the example, Worf never has an experience that cannot be explained scientifically, (in his universe, of course) so the 'i'll just shut down my brain' defense never has to kick in.

Aliens playing pranks on him? Quite frankly, if there are aliens capable of playing pranks like that, they are indistinguishable from Gods anyway.

There are plenty of non-godlike aliens in the star trek universe who could pull this off. You could do it in the holodeck. Wasn't there an episode where that sort of exact thing happen to Riker? He was in a play, and the play became real, and he was in the holodeck, but thought he wasn't? And he started to think he was crazy?

[UndercoverElephant]

Yes it can adequately describe it:

"it felt like my skin was crawling inside my head"
"i could hear every blade of grass in the world"


To somebody who has taken LSD, that makes sense, sort of. To somebody who hasn't it's poetic gibberish with no real meaning.


Can a description fully convey the exact feeling one has on LSD? of course not. But what description of anything can do that?


Exactly. And in this case we are talking about the most extreme and indescribable experience of my life, and I've taken DMT.


Not a very good example since time travel is not an impossibility in the star trek universe. (Nitpicking, i know, but how can i resist a star trek example?)


How do you know it's impossible in this one?


There are plenty of non-godlike aliens in the star trek universe who could pull this off. You could do it in the holodeck.

No you couldn't. This was actual reality changing. It's not like being on the holodeck or taking hallucinogens, because the changes are permanent.

[UndercoverElephant]

O.K. it's pretty clear that you don't want an honest discussion


I have no idea what you are talking about. I have been 100% honest in this thread, just like I am at all times.


, so I'm out of here. I will just note that the example you give from Star Trek is pretty hilarious. IIRC the episode in question is, in fact, the result of a powerful alien being--Q (if it isn't, there are certainly episodes in which Q does exactly that).


No, in this case it wasn't Q. And Q, from our perspective, *IS* God. What can God do that Q can't?

[Yoink]

I have no idea what you are talking about. I have been 100% honest in this thread, just like I am at all times.

Dude, you're not honest with your self. Try starting with that.

No, in this case it wasn't Q. And Q, from our perspective, *IS* God. What can God do that Q can't?

I did a bit of Googling about this and found that you're right--it wasn't a Q episode. You know what else I found? First of all, Worf suspects that he must be going mad (smart fellow that Worf, shows very sound reasoning). He goes to the doctor, who tells him that he received a concussion. When inexplicable things continue to happen he describes them to his crewmates and asks them if they can come up with an explanation for them. Lo and behold, they run independent tests on Worf and confirm that something strange is occurring. They then seek out a physical phenomenon that accounts for these strange experiences and use the knowledge they have gained to put the world back to rights.

All very smart, very logical, very intelligent stuff. Now--do you perhaps notice what they didn't do? They none of them said "I am having experiences that I can't explain--therefore they must be being caused by God. The end." Can you perhaps spot the logical flaw in that chain of reasoning--which is perhaps the reason that the Star Trek TNG writers chose not to go down that road?

An inexplicable experience is proof of an inexplicable experience. A rational response to that experience is to seek an explanation. One explanation is that you were delusional (or in your case, I strongly suspect, under the influence of psychoactive chemicals). Another explanation might be that some previously unknown physical phenomenon had occurred. Or it might be that God, or some other superpowerful agent, was messing around with you for some reason. A rational person would seek to test these different possible explanations. If they were untestable (drugs weren't involved, there is no history of or repetition of psychotic breakdown, God doesn't appear to others to confirm his revelation to you; Lt. Data isn't around to help explain the previously unknown physical phenomenon, etc.) then an honest person would say "I had an inexplicable experience." A dishonest person says "well, I want it to be God, so I'm going to insist that it must have been God and refuse to ever discuss it openly so that I can cling to my unjustified belief."

[UndercoverElephant]

Dude, you're not honest with your self. Try starting with that.


I am always honest with myself. You don't know me from Adam. You also have no idea whether or not I am being honest. Can we cut out the personal attacks, please?


I did a bit of Googling about this and found that you're right--it wasn't a Q episode. You know what else I found? First of all, Worf suspects that he must be going mad (smart fellow that Worf, shows very sound reasoning). He goes to the doctor, who tells him that he received a concussion. When inexplicable things continue to happen he describes them to his crewmates and asks them if they can come up with an explanation for them. Lo and behold, they run independent tests on Worf and confirm that something strange is occurring. They then seek out a physical phenomenon that accounts for these strange experiences and use the knowledge they have gained to put the world back to rights.


OK, let's change the plot a bit. Let's say what happens is that instead of "everybody lived happily ever after" (after all, in Star Trek they have to restore reality at the end of the episode, so there can be another one), Worf just ends up in some other timeline, and he can convince nobody else that this has happened.

Now what?

[Maia]

UE, oh please, PLEASE don't tell me (well, us) that the mystical experience consisted of taking a 5HT2A receptor agonist. (there isn't a face-palm smiley, so just imagine one here.) That's what DMT is, but let me tell you, I get to take one three times a day. That's what Topamax (topiramate) is, too. It's not a psychomimetic drug, however-- clearly, it couldn't have the hallucinogenic function going on, or the FDA would NOT have approved it. (DMT, LSD, ketamine, and the rest of the psychomimetics are dissociative drugs at the NMDA receptor, and Topamax actually opposes that particular function.) It's an interesting med, let me tell you, perhaps the first of its kind. And there's actually a resurgence in the serious study of the psychomimetics, so we're learning much more about the exact science of what they do.

I just think that this entire thing was a little... well, what was really the point? This big mystical experience was sort of dangled in front of our faces and pronouncements were made about none of us could ever possibly understand it, and how it proved the existence of God, and how none of our criticisms could ever shake it, and how nothing about it was going to be explained, and nyah nyah nyah boo-boo, pretty much. ?????

[Yoink]

I am always honest with myself. You don't know me from Adam. You also have no idea whether or not I am being honest. Can we cut out the personal attacks, please?



OK, let's change the plot a bit. Let's say what happens is that instead of "everybody lived happily ever after" (after all, in Star Trek they have to restore reality at the end of the episode, so there can be another one), Worf just ends up in some other timeline, and he can convince nobody else that this has happened.

Now what?

How would that change anything? As a rational individual he's left with the same hypotheses as before:

1) I had a mental breakdown of some kind.
2) Some previously unknown but now undiscoverable physical phenomenon occurred.
3) God did it.
4) Q did it.
5) Some other alien did it.

How is he rationally justified in opting for #3 and saying "it must be #3"? Not only would he have no rational justification but he'd be factually incorrect. According to your hypothesis (the story remains the same except for the end) he'd have been the victim of a perfectly "natural" spatio-temporal phenomenon.

Look, you took some drugs and you really looked at the back of your hand, man. Great for you. Who knows, maybe you played Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon and synched it up to The Wizard of Oz at the same time and it just totally blew your mind. I don't know. What I do know is that there is no possible experience, medicated or unmedicated, that provides grounds for a belief in God. I also know that you are intelligent enough to know that yourself, which is how I know that you are being dishonest with yourself about the nature and significance of this experience. You like feeling special, you like the idea that you've been given the key to the mystery of the universe so you're refusing to actually examine the basis of that feeling rationally. That's dishonest.

[Yoink]

By the way, UE, regardless of whether your personal revelation occurred under the influence of psychoactive drugs, could you tell me something? If somebody takes DMT and afterwards says "I was abducted by aliens and taken to their highly technologically advanced civilization"--are they, in your view, justified in their belief (should they maintain such a belief) that they actually experience alien abduction and that they now "know" that aliens exist? Would you say that the person who said "you didn't take the drug and have the experience I had therefore you can't assail my reasoning" is making a reasonable argument that fully establishes the logical coherence of their claim?

If no--how would that person's argument differ from your own?

[UndercoverElephant]

How would that change anything? As a rational individual he's left with the same hypotheses as before:

1) I had a mental breakdown of some kind.


That wouldn't work, logically. He has a full life's-worth of memories from the timeline he came from, and none of those which account for the significantly different reality he now finds himself in. Does he propose that during this brief episode of breakdown, he invented an entire fictional life's-worth of memories? Not possible. Not a logically-acceptable explanation. Amnesia? Maybe. Mental breakdown out of nowhere, for no reason, over almost as soon as it started and along the way you invented several years worth of memories? Nope, that's not what happened.


2) Some previously unknown but now undiscoverable physical phenomenon occurred.


Well he knows for sure that some undiscoverable phenomenon that was previously unknown to him has occured. He doesn't know whether it as ever happened to anyone else. After all, nobody would have believed them anyway. And it's not clear that the phenomenon is physical. He's come from one physically-consistent timeline to another, but is the process of flipping timelines "physical"? Depends what you mean by physical.


3) God did it.
4) Q did it.
5) Some other alien did it.

How is he rationally justified in opting for #3 and saying "it must be #3"? Not only would he have no rational justification but he'd be factually incorrect. According to your hypothesis (the story remains the same except for the end) he'd have been the victim of a perfectly "natural" spatio-temporal phenomenon.


As stated in the previous post, from our perspective there is no difference between God and Q. Q is capable of far more than flipping people between timelines. Q can create entire realities on a whim. What more than that could God do to demonstrate that He was greater than Q? Destroy Q, perhaps?



Look, you took some drugs and you really looked at the back of your hand, man. Great for you. Who knows, maybe you played Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon and synched it up to The Wizard of Oz at the same time and it just totally blew your mind. I don't know. What I do know is that there is no possible experience, medicated or unmedicated, that provides grounds for a belief in God. I also know that you are intelligent enough to know that yourself, which is how I know that you are being dishonest with yourself about the nature and significance of this experience. You like feeling special, you like the idea that you've been given the key to the mystery of the universe so you're refusing to actually examine the basis of that feeling rationally. That's dishonest.

I skim-read this paragraph and decided a detailed read probably wasn't worth the bother. It would be nice if you could stop frothing at the mouth quite so much. :)

[Z]

That wouldn't work, logically. He has a full life's-worth of memories from the timeline he came from, and none of those which account for the significantly different reality he now finds himself in. Does he propose that during this brief episode of breakdown, he invented an entire fictional life's-worth of memories? Not possible. Not a logically-acceptable explanation. Amnesia? Maybe. Mental breakdown out of nowhere, for no reason, over almost as soon as it started and along the way you invented several years worth of memories? Nope, that's not what happened.


Although that does actually happen to a rare few people. There are strange mental breakdowns in which the person instantly 'remembers' an entirely different, fictional life and forgets their own life. They can be brought on by illness, injuries, and... drug use.

I skim-read this paragraph and decided a detailed read probably wasn't worth the bother. It would be nice if you could stop frothing at the mouth quite so much. :)

Intellectual dishonesty.

[UndercoverElephant]

UE, oh please, PLEASE don't tell me (well, us) that the mystical experience consisted of taking a 5HT2A receptor agonist. (there isn't a face-palm smiley, so just imagine one here.) That's what DMT is, but let me tell you, I get to take one three times a day. That's what Topamax (topiramate) is, too.


Err...

You take something like DMT three times a day? Three times in one life would be enough for me. :D

And no, I was just using it as an example of something indescribable and unimaginable until you've experienced it.


I just think that this entire thing was a little... well, what was really the point? This big mystical experience was sort of dangled in front of our faces....

It wasn't "dangled". Some people asked me some questions, I answered them, they asked me some more, and at the point where it became pointless answering them anymore, I stopped answering them.

My argument is, and always has been, that certain classes of phenomena which exist are both indescribable and unprovable. That causes a real problem for some of the people who post here. From their perspective, I'm cheating. I think that's what Yoink means by "dishonest."

[Robin]

I keep seeing this thread title and getting irritated.

Surely holding a belief is not a thing that can be classified as logical or illogical.

Surely only a statement or an expression of some sort could be considered logical or illogical.

[UndercoverElephant]

Although that does actually happen to a rare few people. There are strange mental breakdowns in which the person instantly 'remembers' an entirely different, fictional life and forgets their own life. They can be brought on by illness, injuries, and... drug use.

Reference, evidence, please. I've never heard of such an example and I suspect you just made it up.

[Z]

indescribable and unprovable = irrelevant.

[UndercoverElephant]

I keep seeing this thread title and getting irritated.

Surely holding a belief is not a thing that can be classified as logical or illogical.


Yup. Hi Robin. :)

Silly thread, eh?


Surely only a statement or an expression of some sort could be considered logical or illogical.

An argument can be considered logical or illogical. A set of statements or a single statement can be evaluated to see if they are logically consistent.

[UndercoverElephant]

indescribable and unprovable = irrelevant.

Not if it happens to you it isn't. It's irrelevant to anybody else, but not you.

[Yoink]

That wouldn't work, logically. He has a full life's-worth of memories from the timeline he came from, and none of those which account for the significantly different reality he now finds himself in. Does he propose that during this brief episode of breakdown, he invented an entire fictional life's-worth of memories? Not possible. Not a logically-acceptable explanation. Amnesia? Maybe. Mental breakdown out of nowhere, for no reason, over almost as soon as it started and along the way you invented several years worth of memories? Nope, that's not what happened.

There are well known and fully described mental disorders in which people wake up one day and are completely unable to recognize the people they've lived with their entire lives. This is not dementia. The mind is still working perfectly well, it still reasons correctly etc, the person is simply convinced that all the people dear to them in their life have been replaced with simulacra. I assume you think that these people would be reasoning correctly if they rejected "mental problem" out of hand as an hypothesis.

Well he knows for sure that some undiscoverable phenomenon that was previously unknown to him has occured. He doesn't know whether it as ever happened to anyone else. After all, nobody would have believed them anyway. And it's not clear that the phenomenon is physical. He's come from one physically-consistent timeline to another, but is the process of flipping timelines "physical"? Depends what you mean by physical.

Dude, by your own hypothesis this is the CORRECT EXPLANATION. You said it was all the same as the actual story except for the ending. So if he dismisses this option he is dismissing the actual cause. There really isn't a facepalm big enough.

As stated in the previous post, from our perspective there is no difference between God and Q. Q is capable of far more than flipping people between timelines. Q can create entire realities on a whim. What more than that could God do to demonstrate that He was greater than Q? Destroy Q, perhaps?

Q is immensely powerful, but in no other way like God as the vast majority of religious believers describe him. He's a trickster figure. But more importantly for this example, HE WOULD BE THE INCORRECT EXPLANATION. And so would "God."

I skim-read this paragraph and decided a detailed read probably wasn't worth the bother. It would be nice if you could stop frothing at the mouth quite so much. :)

And to think I called you intellectually dishonest. You sure showed me.

[UndercoverElephant]

By the way, UE, regardless of whether your personal revelation occurred under the influence of psychoactive drugs


It didn't.


, could you tell me something? If somebody takes DMT and afterwards says "I was abducted by aliens and taken to their highly technologically advanced civilization"--are they, in your view, justified in their belief (should they maintain such a belief) that they actually experience alien abduction and that they now "know" that aliens exist?


No.


Would you say that the person who said "you didn't take the drug and have the experience I had therefore you can't assail my reasoning" is making a reasonable argument that fully establishes the logical coherence of their claim?


No.


If no--how would that person's argument differ from your own?

I used the example of hallucinogenic drug experiences as an example of something which cannot adequately be described and cannot be understood unless you go through that experience yourself. However, it is well understood by people who have never taken LSD or DMT that both substances temporarily warp a person's perceptions of reality. There is a specific difference between this example and the Star Trek example I provided. In the example you've given, there is an experience and then the experience is over and everything goes back to how it was before. In the example I gave, the changes are permanent. If after the strange episode, everything returns to normal, then one always has to seriously consider the effects of drugs or a mental breakdown. If the change is permanent, these explanations don't work anymore.

[Yoink]

It didn't.



No.



No.



I used the example of hallucinogenic drug experiences as an example of something which cannot adequately be described and cannot be understood unless you go through that experience yourself. However, it is well understood by people who have never taken LSD or DMT that both substances seriously temporarily warp a person's perceptions of reality. There is a specific difference between this example and the Star Trek example I provided. In the example you've given, there is an experience and then the experience is over and everything goes back to how it was before. In the example I gave, the changes are permanent. If after the strange episode, everything returns to normal, then one always has to seriously consider the effects of drugs or a mental breakdown. If the change is permanent, these explanations don't work anymore.

In the Star Trek example god didn't do it and nor did Q. Go read some Oliver Sacks and you'll find that there are a multitude of brain disorders that can cause permanent alterations in the way people perceive the world. Would those people be reasoning correctly if they said "I now see the world differently, and the difference is persistent, therefore this difference cannot be the result of a brain disorder"? How do those people differ from you, UE? They are having an experience that you cannot share, they have a view of the world radically different from your own. Are you forced to concede that they are reasoning correctly from their experiences if they refuse medical care?

You're making an argument that a child could demolish, UE. A child would also recognize the "I've got a secret but you're not worthy of hearing it" game you're playing.

[UndercoverElephant]

You're making an argument that a child could demolish, UE.

Sorry, but the quality of your own arguments has seriously started to deteriorate in the last few frothing mouths. Erm, I mean posts.

Why are you so angry? :)

[Z]

Reference, evidence, please. I've never heard of such an example and I suspect you just made it up.

I have to retract this one - the closest I came is the condition called confabulation. Good article here: http://www.memorylossonline.com/pastissues/summer2000/confabulation.html

But not exactly what I recalled. Seems I remembered incorrectly.

[Yoink]

You know, UE; let's go back a second to the Star Trek example. An anomaly in the Space Time Continuum--a purely natural anomaly--bumps Worf from timeline A to timeline B. In timeline B he's captain, he's married to Deanna Troy etc. --the world is recognizable but very different, and all his memories pertain to timeline A. So he thinks "holy crap, did I have a stroke? What on earth is going on?"

Now in this version, Worf is--alas--like you. He thinks to himself "you know what, this has to be the work of Q; this is, after all, the kind of thing Q does, that must be the explanation." Notice that this is not good reasoning. Notice that this bad chain of reasoning has lead him to a secure belief that this was caused by Q; a belief that he thinks is well founded, but which, in fact, is not.

He finds out that in Timeline B, however, people haven't heard of Q. Worse, he finds that people are very skeptical of the possibility of the existence of a being like Q. So he decides he'd better no say anything about how he has come to know of the Q's existence (he doesn't want to be mocked for making a bad argument). He sits around on the bridge sulking to himself about how he knows Q is real and how his belief is completely justified and if only the other people had had his experiences they'd believe in Q too. But he refuses to talk about what happened to him or how he came to be in this wrong Timeline.

Now, it so happens that in Timeline B, Lt. Data is perfectly capable of figuring out what happened to Worf and also perfectly capable of sending him back to Timeline A. But because Worf won't talk about what happened to him, Lt. Data never receives the information he needed to set Worf straight. If Worf had behaved like an intelligent and rational person, he'd have learned that what he incorrectly attributed to the actions of Q was in fact the result of a perfectly natural (if rare) phenomenon. He would have discovered the flaw in his reasoning (Leaping from "Q could have done this" to "Q must have done this") and gone back to the right timeline. But, alas, being intellectually dishonest and cowardly Worf clings to his false belief and his erroneous justification for that belief and is stuck in the wrong timeline for the rest of his life.

What a sad, sad story. Don't you agree, UE?

[Yoink]

Sorry, but the quality of your own arguments has seriously started to deteriorate in the last few frothing mouths. Erm, I mean posts.

Why are you so angry? :)

I find intellectual dishonesty of your variety annoying. This particular post is a good example. I pointed out a gaping flaw in your argument (that according to your own hypothesis the Star Trek TNG scenario was premised upon a natural physical phenomenon, and that therefore that explanation--the correct explanation--could not be dismissed), and rather than address that you make a snide ad hominem attack.

If the quality of my arguments is deteriorating it should be nice and easy for you to counter them. I notice you're not doing that.

[UndercoverElephant]

You know, UE; let's go back a second to the Star Trek example. An anomaly in the Space Time Continuum--a purely natural anomaly--bumps Worf from timeline A to timeline B. In timeline B he's captain, he's married to Deanna Troy etc. --the world is recognizable but very different, and all his memories pertain to timeline A. So he thinks "holy crap, did I have a stroke? What on earth is going on?"

Now in this version, Worf is--alas--like you. He thinks to himself "you know what, this has to be the work of Q; this is, after all, the kind of thing Q does, that must be the explanation." Notice that this is not good reasoning. Notice that this bad chain of reasoning has lead him to a secure belief that this was caused by Q; a belief that he thinks is well founded, but which, in fact, is not.

He finds out that in Timeline B, however, people haven't heard of Q. Worse, he finds that people are very skeptical of the possibility of the existence of a being like Q. So he decides he'd better no say anything about how he has come to know of the Q's existence (he doesn't want to be mocked for making a bad argument). He sits around on the bridge sulking to himself about how he knows Q is real and how his belief is completely justified and if only the other people had had his experiences they'd believe in Q too. But he refuses to talk about what happened to him or how he came to be in this wrong Timeline.

Now, it so happens that in Timeline B, Lt. Data is perfectly capable of figuring out what happened to Worf and also perfectly capable of sending him back to Timeline A. But because Worf won't talk about what happened to him, Lt. Data never receives the information he needed to set Worf straight. If Worf had behaved like an intelligent and rational person, he'd have learned that what he incorrectly attributed to the actions of Q was in fact the result of a perfectly natural (if rare) phenomenon. He would have discovered the flaw in his reasoning (Leaping from "Q could have done this" to "Q must have done this") and gone back to the right timeline. But, alas, being intellectually dishonest and cowardly Worf clings to his false belief and his erroneous justification for that belief and is stuck in the wrong timeline for the rest of his life.

What a sad, sad story. Don't you agree, UE?

Yes. Good job I'm not Worf in your version of the story, eh?

I'm really not sure what point you are trying to make any more. You appear to have had an allergic reaction to the use of the word "God", without actually bothering to establish what the person using that word actually meant by it. Hence, frothing mouth.

Your position seems to be "whatever happens, it goddidn'tdoit." Which is all very fine, apart from the fact that you don't actually know what I mean when I say "God", and I have no idea what you mean. This thread was actually about what the word "illogical" means. It wasn't me who turned it into this pantomime.

[UndercoverElephant]

I find intellectual dishonesty of your variety annoying. This particular post is a good example. I pointed out a gaping flaw in your argument (that according to your own hypothesis the Star Trek TNG scenario was premised upon a natural physical phenomenon, and that therefore that explanation--the correct explanation--could not be dismissed), and rather than address that you make a snide ad hominem attack.

If the quality of my arguments is deteriorating it should be nice and easy for you to counter them. I notice you're not doing that.

Grrrr. Grrrr.

What do you think "physical" means?

If you're going to try to have a proper logical argument with me, you're going to have to define what the main words mean. You can start with "God" and "physical", please.

Quack.

[Piscivore]

I keep seeing this thread title and getting irritated.

Surely holding a belief is not a thing that can be classified as logical or illogical.

Surely only a statement or an expression of some sort could be considered logical or illogical.

What sort of belief cannot be expressed (aside for UE's "sooper sekrit" one, of course)?

[Robin]

What sort of belief cannot be expressed (aside for UE's "sooper sekrit" one, of course)?
You don't understand - the expression of a belief might be logical or illogical. The holding one is not a sentence or a statement or an expression and not something that can be evaluated as logical or illogical.

[Piscivore]

You don't understand - the expression of a belief might be logical or illogical. The holding one is not a sentence or a statement or an expression and not something that can be evaluated as logical or illogical.

You don't understand- beliefs are not thrust into our heads from the aether. There are always reasons- causes, if you will- for a belief (even the mystery one UE won't speak of), even if the person holding the belief isn't aware of (or actively trying to deny) them.

"Mother says god is watching me... Mother would not lie... therefore god is watching me"

"The Surgeon General says smoking kills... I smoke and I'm not dead... therefore he is wrong"

"I don't feel I have a say in my government... I'm not as well off as others... therefore the government is screwing me somehow"

All beliefs are either logical or not, whether they have been formally expressed or not.

[The Platypus]

This whole conversation is so ridiculous, because this game of "i had an experience" is a tactic that is taught in many religious groups and other cults.

It's a common one in any snake oil salesman's bag of pitches and tactics.

[UndercoverElephant]

This whole conversation is so ridiculous, because this game of "i had an experience" is a tactic that is taught in many religious groups and other cults.

It's a common one in any snake oil salesman's bag of pitches and tactics.

Well, it might be, if I was trying to sell something (even an idea). But I'm not, am I?

The true situation is that this board is full of people who want me to be selling something of this sort, because they want to be able to go through the process of "debunking" it. This thread was started to debate a point about logic. It eventually moved on to what UE believes and why he believes it because somebody asked me those questions, and all along I have made it quite clear that my spiritual beliefs are private and that I do not think there is any reason why anybody else should take any notice of them. Not much of a salesman, am I?

Not everybody who has spirirual beliefs also believes they should be imposed on or "sold" to anybody else. If anything, it is Randi-esque skepticism which is being "sold" here, not UE-style personal spirituality. I attack scientism and any other restrictive epistemological systems. I don't go around promoting any sort religious belief.

[Yoink]

Your position seems to be "whatever happens, it goddidn'tdoit."

O.K., this really is it for me in this tedious thread. I just want to highlight the rank dishonesty of this statement. I can point to post after post where I have insisted that it is impossible to prove that "god didn't do it." I have pointed out (once in bold read capital print) that I accept that it is possible that whatever mystical experience you had that God did it.

But because it would be inconvenient to you to acknowledge this, you just repeatedly lie about my position. You're not stupid and you clearly can read, so the only conclusion is that you are telling deliberate untruths--or, in other words, lying.

My argument is not, has not been, and never was that "God didn't do it." My argument is that you don't have sufficient proof that God did do it. That's all. Now--you may return to your regularly scheduled mendacity.

ETA: Anyone interested in knowing what UE's mystical experience was might want to consult this thread (http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=26291), which contains, inter alia, an account of the original experience. Suffice it to say that psychosis clearly cannot be ruled out although time-traveling and thought-reading aliens are also sufficient (if unparsimonious) ways of accounting for it. God, while also clearly possible, is, as always, the least parsimonious explanation imaginable.

[Maia]

[QUOTE=UndercoverElephant;5002559]Err...

You take something like DMT three times a day? Three times in one life would be enough for me. :D



Well, no, and I went on to say that that was kind of the whole reason why the FDA approved it. Topamax (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Topiramate) (I do hate Wikipedia, but sometimes it's the quickest way to provide some kind of a brief overview of a subject-- I know, I'm going to hell for using it here) does not have the hallucinogenic and dissociative effects of DMT, LSD, ketamine, or ayahuasca. It *does* share the same agonist effect at the 5HT2A serotonin receptor. Nobody really knows what this means, or even what an agonist does here, but the agonist action certainly does not seem to be the one which causes the hallucinations and weird loss-of-contact-with-reality experiences. That brings up a fascinating question: is there some core experience which the psychomimetic drugs share with Topamax, and if so, what is it? I think the answer is yes, and I actually do think it's germane to this board and to the questions posed here.

Some researchers have theorized that whatever this agonist effect is, it's responsible for the effects that Topamax seems to have against different types of compulsive and addictive behaviors, but nobody really knows. I take it three times a day, and even I couldn't tell you what the effects are. I never seem to have much luck with articulating them, so I guess there must be something ineffable about it all, but I'd say that one of the effects has to be a very different way of relating to anything which could be called a mystical experience.


Topamax seems to make everything more real. Quite honestly, it's the opposite of what I'd expect from something like DMT. It's like constantly being brought face to face with reality all the time and shown that living within the compulsions and the addictions is like being trapped in self-repeating little circles. It's like the doors of perception being thrown open, but nothing about walking through them is made any easier, and you realize that all your life, you've been staying in the same place, behind those doors. Which is why I think it's so hard for people to keep the positive effects of T going in the long run. It's a hard drug to take, because in my opinion, it makes it very difficult to keep hiding behind your illusions, but if I had to name a "skeptic's drug", I think Topamax would be it. Now, one thing which might be similar to the hallucinogenic drugs is that I think you have an amazing opportunity to go on an inward journey and really learn about yourself, but there are certain things normally associated with that kind of thinking and belief structure that you simply don't hold onto. Think of a mystical experience intensely grounded in reality. :)

[UndercoverElephant]

this thread

and another

http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=57934

[The Platypus]

Well, it might be, if I was trying to sell something (even an idea). But I'm not, am I?

The true situation is that this board is full of people who want me to be selling something of this sort, because they want to be able to go through the process of "debunking" it. This thread was started to debate a point about logic. It eventually moved on to what UE believes and why he believes it because somebody asked me those questions, and all along I have made it quite clear that my spiritual beliefs are private and that I do not think there is any reason why anybody else should take any notice of them. Not much of a salesman, am I?

Not everybody who has spirirual beliefs also believes they should be imposed on or "sold" to anybody else. If anything, it is Randi-esque skepticism which is being "sold" here, not UE-style personal spirituality. I attack scientism and any other restrictive epistemological systems. I don't go around promoting any sort religious belief.

But you are selling something, you are trying to sell the idea that you have had some "experience" that proved a particular god to you and gave you some sort of special knowledge that none of us have. You aren't selling your belief directly, yet, but rather indirectly buy claiming that it has been confirmed 100%...

Meanwhile, of course others are going to be curious and want to know whether or not you are bluffing, duh. You enticed them to want to know by making such a claim and starting this game in the first place.

As usual, of course you won't give details on that "experience" because it is all delusions that you were taught and encouraged to create for yourself. People spewing bull, never want to be challenged. These claims can never be thoroughly examined and questioned, because when people are delusional, dishonest, or both, that's usually how they get caught.

So instead you resort too playing this song and dance and pretending your some victim while you take pokes at the "debunkers" and blah blah blah...

Seen it, been there, done that, got the t-shirt. I have seen this hustle played countless times. It's a classic tactic the religious and many other hustlers play.

Of course this pitch doesn't work on everyone and you know that, that's why your compelled try to turn it around on the skeptics... But there's always a sucker or two in every crowd...

[UndercoverElephant]

But you are selling something, you are trying to sell the idea that you have had some "experience" that proved a particular god to you and gave you some sort of special knowledge that none of us have. You aren't selling your belief directly, yet, but rather indirectly buy claiming that it has been confirmed 100%...


I'm not "selling" it at all. In what way do you think I am "selling" it? Somebody asked me what I believe and I told them. They asked me because they wanted to knock it down. How is answering questions "selling" something?


Meanwhile, of course others are going to be curious and want to know whether or not you are bluffing, duh. You enticed them to want to know by making such a claim and starting this game in the first place.


I'm "enticing" them, now?

You are paranoid. Anyone would think I was the child-catcher in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.



As usual, of course you won't give details on that "experience" because it is all delusions that you were taught and encouraged to create for yourself. People spewing bull...


Like you, you mean? All of these judgements you are making are based on nothing but your own preconceptions and biases. They have nothing to with anything I've actually said or actually believe. You've invented an entire psychology for me, based on your own beliefs about why religious believers believe what they do. Then you have the gall to criticise other unknown and unnamed people for "spewing bull."

[UndercoverElephant]

Platypus.

What you have said to me is both completely unjustified and extremely offensive. All I have done to provoke the attack is to refuse to go into any detail about my own personal experiences or to proselytise my version of religion. Many people posting here appear to be annoyed at the fact that I am NOT doing what they stereotypically accuse religious believers of doing, and what you've accused me of doing. Platypus, the truth is that not only am I a very poor salesman, but I don't actually have anything to sell. I'm not selling life after death or happiness in this life or a God which looks after you. All I have done is honestly state that yes, I do believe in some sort of a God, and I do so on the basis of private experiences that are of no use to anybody else as evidence for anything at all. That's IT. From that, you have decided that...


But you are selling something, you are trying to sell the idea that you have had some "experience" that proved a particular god to you and gave you some sort of special knowledge that none of us have.


In what way am I "selling" this thing? You're right, mystics do make the claim that they have had some sort of insight in the nature of reality that non-mystics don't have. If you happen to want that, it's not my fault. I'm not selling it to you. I am merely stating my beliefs. I'm no more "selling" mysticism than you are "selling" skepticism.


As usual, of course you won't give details on that "experience" because it is all delusions that you were taught and encouraged to create for yourself. People spewing bull, never want to be challenged. These claims can never be thoroughly examined and questioned, because when people are delusional, dishonest, or both, that's usually how they get caught.

So instead you resort too playing this song and dance and pretending your some victim while you take pokes at the "debunkers" and blah blah blah...

Seen it, been there, done that, got the t-shirt. I have seen this hustle played countless times. It's a classic tactic the religious and many other hustlers play.


"Hustle"??? Do you even know the meaning of the words you are using? A Hustler is a con-man - a person who deliberately misleads people in order to defraud them of something valuable. What do you think I'm trying to defraud them of? And what right do you have to accuse me of deliberately misleading people?

In short, please stop spewing intolerant, innaccurate rubbish. Save it for somebody who actually comes here to promote their religion instead of vomiting it all over a person who has consistently refused to do so.

I repeat: the real reason you and various other people are angry is not because I'm selling anything but because I've refused to play along to the pre-written script that you've practised: the one that goes "Prove it!", followed by a smug, self-satisfied "Aha, you can't!" Because I won't play along, you've had to resort to claiming that I'm deliberately not doing so as a strategy to get people interested, like some sort of heroin dealer giving out free samples to schoolchildren. It does not appear to have occured to you that maybe the reason I won't play along is because I can't. My beliefs about God and religion, which are really just beliefs about causality, cannot be tested or proved by any sort of scientific test and cannot be evaluated by people who haven't directly experienced those things themselves. This is not some elaborate con-trick. It's in the nature of these things that they are unprovable. Why on Earth should God submit itself to being tested by humans? I realise you don't believe in God, but surely you can understand why, if it did actually exist, it would not be compelled by us:

James Randi: "Jump!"
God: "How high, James?"

Not much of a God, is it?

In what way are my beliefs negatively affecting you? Why do you have to be so nasty and bitter?

Here's what I think you are reasoning:

(1) Stuff like I'm describing doesn't happen. There is no God. There are no mystical experiences.
(2) UE claims that they do.
(3) (from 1&2) UE is wrong.
(4) UE is either deluded or lying, so I'm going to hypothesise about his psychological state and motives.

This, to get the thread back on topic, is a logically-valid argument. The problem is premise (1). You don't actually know that this stuff doesn't happen. It's just what you happen to believe. There's no scientific or logical reason for ruling out the possibility that mystics, at least sometimes, are reporting real phenomena that are genuinely spiritual. It's one thing to be skeptical about this - to refuse to believe it yourself. It's another thing entirely to mistake that skepticism for reliable knowledge that they do not happen and then go around psychoanalysing people based on that mistake. That's what this argument is really about: you want to be able to rule out the possibility that I'm actually telling the truth, and you can't. You want your own 100% certainty of the falsity of mysticism to be accepted objectively and publicly by everybody else, as if I was actually talking about young-earth creationism or some belief which was internally incoherent. Sorry, but not all forms of religious belief are quite so easy to knock down.

[slingblade]

Wow, UE. Why are you so angry?

[UndercoverElephant]

Wow, UE. Why are you so angry?

I'm not. I am offended and the reason is that somebody has made some extremely offensive and innaccurate claims about me. Read back through this thread, mate. Then don't ask me why I am offended, because it ought to be obvious: several people have decided to make highly personalised attacks on me, based on nothing but their own preconceptions. If I wasn't offended by this then there would be something wrong with me.

[Maia]

I'm not. I am offended and the reason is that somebody has made some extremely offensive and innaccurate claims about me. Read back through this thread, mate. Then don't ask me why I am offended, because it ought to be obvious: several people have decided to make highly personalised attacks on me, based on nothing but their own preconceptions. If I wasn't offended by this then there would be something wrong with me.
Actually, UE, I have read those other threads where you've posted about this same experience, and I have to say that I honestly don't get it. Why do you keep bringing it up without ever being willing to explain it and then being very defensive about it and telling everybody that they can't understand it? I don't see that anybody besides you is bringing it up in the first place, and if you do bring it up, you have got to know how people on this board are going to react to the way you're talking about it. You have to be aware that you're going to see the exact same kind of responses over and over, so I have a hard time seeing the point.

Now, I wouldn't just automatically say that you're delusional (or anything else, positive, negative, or otherwise.) I have no idea what happened to you, what it meant, how it changed you as a person, what it proves, how it fits into the grand scheme of things, or... well, you get the idea. But... how can I put this? The point of the Topamax post is that I have unusual experiences all the time. Instead of wrapping them up in mystery, I wish I could understand them better than I do. But there really aren't any qualitative studies with Topamax (there should be!) It's the first drug of its kind. Nobody knows what a lot of these effects mean. I've toyed with the idea of starting a thread called something like "Hey, what do you think of these weird experiences?", but I'm not sure it would last very long, because the way to get long, long threads around here seems to be to argue with everybody. But I wouldn't WANT to argue with everybody-- I'd want to explore the meaning of my experiences with others, and I just don't get the feeling that you want to do this. But in that case, why keep bringing them up??

[UndercoverElephant]

Actually, UE, I have read those other threads where you've posted about this same experience, and I have to say that I honestly don't get it. Why do you keep bringing it up...


For about the fifth time, I DON'T "keep bringing it up." People keep ASKING me what I believe why I believe it. What do you expect me to do? Refuse to answer the question? Make up some other answer that the honest one?


..without ever being willing to explain it and then being very defensive about it and telling everybody that they can't understand it?


It is impossible to explain it. At least it is impossible to explain it unless I happen to be talking to other people who have experienced something similar themselves, or to people who are well-versed enough in the history of philosophy to already have some idea what I am talking about. But on a board full of skeptics, half of whom don't even know what the word "logical" means? Are you kidding me??


I don't see that anybody besides you is bringing it up in the first place...


Oh yes they are. Time and again when I end up in these discussions, people DEMAND that I provide this information. They want to know, so they ask me. Then, if I answer, I get accused of "continually bringing it up". Can't you see that this is absurd? If you don't want me to talk about what I believe then stop asking me questions about it.


Now, I wouldn't just automatically say that you're delusional (or anything else, positive, negative, or otherwise.) I have no idea what happened to you, what it meant, how it changed you as a person, what it proves, how it fits into the grand scheme of things, or... well, you get the idea. But... how can I put this? The point of the Topamax post is that I have unusual experiences all the time. Instead of wrapping them up in mystery, I wish I could understand them better than I do.


So do I, Maia. That's why I took three years off work to go to university and study philosophy. Believe me, it wasn't a career move.


But there really aren't any qualitative studies with Topamax (there should be!) It's the first drug of its kind. Nobody knows what a lot of these effects mean. I've toyed with the idea of starting a thread called something like "Hey, what do you think of these weird experiences?", but I'm not sure it would last very long, because the way to get long, long threads around here seems to be to argue with everybody. But I wouldn't WANT to argue with everybody-- I'd want to explore the meaning of my experiences with others, and I just don't get the feeling that you want to do this. But in that case, why keep bringing them up??

BECAUSE PEOPLE KEEP ASKING ME!!!!!

All I have to do to provoke the questions is mention the word "God". I'm not an atheist. From that moment onwards, I will be bombarded with questions which are deliberately designed to get me to specify WHY I am not an atheist. The only answer I can give is the honest one: because of personal experiences. I then also state that since they are personal, and indescribable, that they are useless in terms of evidence or proof, and always will be. At that point the conversation should end. There is nowhere for it to go. But the skeptics here can't accept that. They want more. Which is why they end up trawling the archives for some second-hand report of something I said six years ago.

[The Platypus]

Totally expected response. Go into a big rant, blow smoke and put up mirrors, and point the finger at the other guy, it's all part of the tools of the trade.

When someone in the crowd exposes the snake oil pitch, the salesman must quickly put that down and discredit them, change it all around and confuse it, point the finger around, add in other stuff they didn't say, anything, lest they ruin the game and spoil the pitch. Save the hustle mode!

I have watched some of the best liars and hustlers in the world, and your as transparent as glass. If you didn't want to play this game you wouldn't keep waving around this "experience" like you keep doing. For someone that is claiming you aren't trying to get people to accept your "experience" as valid and real, you sure do keep pumping it and it sure is obvious that you are hoping they will...

[The Platypus]

Who are always the most despised, demonized and the biggest enemies of any cult, religion, hustle or lie?

Those that will not just believe without question. Hence all the digs at "skeptics"

Gee go figure...:rolleyes:

[I Ratant]

Just about any belief can be judged unjustified by anyone with a different belief.
Makes no difference whether either are wrong, or both are correct, or neither.
It's a judgment call, squared.
When the preponderance of evidence points to a specific belief as unsupported based on the evidence, then the holder, if persistent, can be labeled as the one holding the unjustified belief.
Flat earthers, etc.
It's what makes political parties, or religions, or car clubs, or Olympic competitions.
Different people have different opinions/beliefs on everything under (and over) the Sun.
Some will be quite belligerent, others will roll with the punches.

[PixyMisa]

It is impossible to explain it.
No. No it isn't.

Use words. They're good for this sort of thing.

At least it is impossible to explain it unless I happen to be talking to other people who have experienced something similar themselves, or to people who are well-versed enough in the history of philosophy to already have some idea what I am talking about.
We're here, and waiting.

But on a board full of skeptics, half of whom don't even know what the word "logical" means?
Affirming the consequent.

Are you kidding me?
No.

Oh yes they are. Time and again when I end up in these discussions, people DEMAND that I provide this information. They want to know, so they ask me. Then, if I answer, I get accused of "continually bringing it up". Can't you see that this is absurd? If you don't want me to talk about what I believe then stop asking me questions about it.
It's not that we don't want you to talk about it. It's that you claim that you have a valid reason for your beliefs, and refuse to discuss it.

So do I, Maia. That's why I took three years off work to go to university and study philosophy. Believe me, it wasn't a career move.
Oh, we believe you. We believe you.

BECAUSE PEOPLE KEEP ASKING ME!!!!!
Of course we do. You keep dragging in every kind of - frankly - absurd belief, and your reason for your belief is always "I don't want to talk about it".

All I have to do to provoke the questions is mention the word "God". I'm not an atheist. From that moment onwards, I will be bombarded with questions which are deliberately designed to get me to specify WHY I am not an atheist.
Well, duh.

The only answer I can give is the honest one: because of personal experiences. I then also state that since they are personal, and indescribable
UnercoverElephant, every other person on the planet is capable of describing their personal experiences. Even babies do this.

that they are useless in terms of evidence or proof
Bingo.


and always will be.
Certainly.

At that point the conversation should end.
Nope. Because it's based on a false premise.

There is nowhere for it to go.
Again, based on a false premise.

But the skeptics here can't accept that.
You want to talk about your beliefs, you have to be prepared to support them. It's not our problem, it's yours.

They want more.
Logic and evidence.

Which is why they end up trawling the archives for some second-hand report of something I said six years ago.
No. That's why we keep asking you to support your assertions, and you keep backing away into special pleading land. Which is what this entire thread is for.

[Yoink]

[snip]
Here's what I think you are reasoning:

(1) Stuff like I'm describing doesn't happen. There is no God. There are no mystical experiences.
(2) UE claims that they do.
(3) (from 1&2) UE is wrong.
(4) UE is either deluded or lying, so I'm going to hypothesise about his psychological state and motives.

This, to get the thread back on topic, is a logically-valid argument. The problem is premise (1). You don't actually know that this stuff doesn't happen. It's just what you happen to believe. There's no scientific or logical reason for ruling out the possibility that mystics, at least sometimes, are reporting real phenomena that are genuinely spiritual. It's one thing to be skeptical about this - to refuse to believe it yourself. It's another thing entirely to mistake that skepticism for reliable knowledge that they do not happen and then go around psychoanalysing people based on that mistake. That's what this argument is really about: you want to be able to rule out the possibility that I'm actually telling the truth, [snip]

And for the folks keeping score at home, here's where UE simply has to resort to outright lying. He knows that if he acknowledges the truth (that the argument he has been met with does not rely on an assumption that mystical experience is impossible, and that this has been explicitly pointed out to him over and over again) then he has no argument left at all. So he lies; to us and to himself.

[JAStewart]

D'oh I didn't read the poll.

[PixyMisa]

In what way am I "selling" this thing? You're right, mystics do make the claim that they have had some sort of insight in the nature of reality that non-mystics don't have. If you happen to want that, it's not my fault. I'm not selling it to you. I am merely stating my beliefs.
Which are absurd.

I repeat: the real reason you and various other people are angry is not because I'm selling anything but because I've refused to play along to the pre-written script that you've practised: the one that goes "Prove it!", followed by a smug, self-satisfied "Aha, you can't!"
Ad hominem, appeal to motive, affirming the consequent.

Because I won't play along, you've had to resort to claiming that I'm deliberately not doing so as a strategy to get people interested, like some sort of heroin dealer giving out free samples to schoolchildren.
Ad hominem, appeal to motive, affirming the consequent, false analogy.

It does not appear to have occured to you that maybe the reason I won't play along is because I can't.
Bare assertion. You have never tried.

My beliefs about God and religion, which are really just beliefs about causality, cannot be tested or proved by any sort of scientific test and cannot be evaluated by people who haven't directly experienced those things themselves.
Bare assertion, special pleading, false-to-fact.

Causality is objective, UndercoverElephant. It can always be tested.

It's in the nature of these things that they are unprovable.
The may be unprovable, but they are testable.

Why on Earth should God submit itself to being tested by humans?
Special pleading. If God interacts in any way with the Universe, it can be tested.

If God does not interact in any way with the Universe, He does not exist.

I realise you don't believe in God, but surely you can understand why, if it did actually exist, it would not be compelled by us:

James Randi: "Jump!"
God: "How high, James?"
False analogy.

Not much of a God, is it?
Yours? No.

In what way are my beliefs negatively affecting you? Why do you have to be so nasty and bitter?
In what way are our questions negatively affecting you? Why do you have to be so nasty and bitter?

Here's what I think you are reasoning:

(1) Stuff like I'm describing doesn't happen.
Correct. This is extremely well-established.

There is no God.
Correct.

There are no mystical experiences.
Correct, with one proviso: There are experiences which people mistakenly interpret as mystical. I've had these myself. Deja vu. Sleep paralysis. I was struck blind once. I've gone 54 hours without sleep, where things started to get a little weird. Hypnagogic hallucinations. All of these are perfectly normal.

(2) UE claims that they do.
Well, this is true.

(3) (from 1&2) UE is wrong.
That follows.

(4) UE is either deluded or lying, so I'm going to hypothesise about his psychological state and motives.
Appeal to appeal to motive. Neat!

No, UndercoverElephant. First we ask you to support your assertions. Then you adamantly refuse to do so. Then we get bored.

This, to get the thread back on topic, is a logically-valid argument. The problem is premise (1). You don't actually know that this stuff doesn't happen.
Yeah, we pretty much do.

It's just what you happen to believe.
No, it pretty much isn't.

There's no scientific or logical reason for ruling out the possibility that mystics, at least sometimes, are reporting real phenomena that are genuinely spiritual.
No, this is pretty much baloney.

The problem with this is that they can't do it. When put to the test, they simply can't do it. No matter what the claim is, they can never perform better by chance under controlled conditions. No-one. Not once. Ever.

This is enough. We don't need to entertain these claims any further. They can be safely assumed false until the evidence is provided.

And no evidence is ever provided.

It's one thing to be skeptical about this - to refuse to believe it yourself. It's another thing entirely to mistake that skepticism for reliable knowledge that they do not happen
Sorry, but you're wrong. This is reliable knowledge. It's not a metaphysical certainty, but that's not something we deal in anyway.

and then go around psychoanalysing people based on that mistake.
It's no mistake. But, while psychoanalysing people who believe in clearly nonsensical things is always tempting, it is, I agree, rarely productive.

That's what this argument is really about: you want to be able to rule out the possibility that I'm actually telling the truth, and you can't.
Yeah, we can. Because you're not saying anything.

You want your own 100% certainty of the falsity of mysticism to be accepted objectively and publicly by everybody else, as if I was actually talking about young-earth creationism or some belief which was internally incoherent. Sorry, but not all forms of religious belief are quite so easy to knock down.
No, wrong. It's your problem, not ours. (And we don't deal in certainties in the first place, which speaks to your lack of understanding of the skeptical process and the burden of proof.)

You provide the evidence. Until then, all your claims are dismissed. Sorry, but that's just how it works.

[PixyMisa]

D'oh I didn't read the poll.
It doesn't matter. The poll is an abject misstatement of the actual question, so the answers are pretty much irrelevant.

[UndercoverElephant]

And for the folks keeping score at home, here's where UE simply has to resort to outright lying.


I'm glad it's not you keeping score, since you apparently can't count. What on Earth are you gabbling on about?


He knows that if he acknowledges the truth (that the argument he has been met with does not rely on an assumption that mystical experience is impossible, and that this has been explicitly pointed out to him over and over again) then he has no argument left at all. So he lies; to us and to himself.

Look, you twit, I never offered any "argument" in the first place!!!

Do you stop to think before you post stuff, or do you just write the first thing that comes into your head?

All I said was that I believe something, for personal reasons, and that no other person is in a position to pass judgement about those things. That is true. Why can't you just accept it? What is the problem? Do you have some psychological need to prove that everyone who believes something you don't is wrong? Why can't you just say "UE believes X. I don't. He can't prove he's right, I can't prove he's wrong, so there's nothing left to discuss."?

[UndercoverElephant]

Totally expected response. Go into a big rant, blow smoke and put up mirrors, and point the finger at the other guy, it's all part of the tools of the trade.


WHAT trade???


When someone in the crowd exposes the snake oil pitch...


...then generally it is quite easy to identify what is being sold! :rolleyes:


, the salesman must quickly put that down and discredit them, change it all around and confuse it, point the finger around, add in other stuff they didn't say, anything, lest they ruin the game and spoil the pitch. Save the hustle mode!

I have watched some of the best liars and hustlers in the world, and your as transparent as glass. If you didn't want to play this game you wouldn't keep waving around this "experience" like you keep doing. For someone that is claiming you aren't trying to get people to accept your "experience" as valid and real, you sure do keep pumping it and it sure is obvious that you are hoping they will...

Totally paranoid. UE the oogey-boogey man! Sssss!

It's a woo! It's a woo! Mummy, Mummy, help me, 'cos the woo is going to get me!!! Nobody listen to UE! He'll poison your mind!!!

:D

Anyone got anything sensible to say?

[UndercoverElephant]

Who are always the most despised, demonized and the biggest enemies of any cult, religion, hustle or lie?

Those that will not just believe without question.

Oh.

My.

God.

I HAVE EXPLICTLY, REPEATEDLY STATED THAT I NEITHER WANT NOR EXPECT ANYBODY TO BELIEVE ME *AT ALL*.

And you have somehow managed to turn that into "UE hates us because we won't believe him without question."

You are mad. Completely bonkers.

[UndercoverElephant]

Just about any belief can be judged unjustified by anyone with a different belief.


Sure. I've openly admitted that I believe things which are both different to what is believed by most folks here and objectively unjustifiable. What I am objecting to is the implied or explicit claim that what I believe is necessarily incorrect - that it can't be subjectively justified. Skeptics have to accept that there are different levels of what they call "woo", ranging from stuff which can indeed be shown necessarily to be wrong to stuff might be right and can't be tested.


Makes no difference whether either are wrong, or both are correct, or neither.
It's a judgment call, squared.


And there's different sorts of judgement calls. If a person believes something which contradicts science, or contradicts something else they believe, then it is perfectly valid to point out the problem and claim that these beliefs are necessarily wrong. But if they just happen to believe something that the skeptic does not, is not trying to impose that belief on others and openly admits it is an untestable, personal belief then the skeptics just have to accept this. They have to resist the attempt to "debunk" it, firstly because it is un-debunkable and secondly because there is no reason to try to debunk it.

You can prove Uri Geller is a fake, that the Pope dispenses socially-damaging teachings and that creationists produce pseudoscience. You cannot debunk personal mysticism.


When the preponderance of evidence points to a specific belief as unsupported based on the evidence, then the holder, if persistent, can be labeled as the one holding the unjustified belief.

Flat earthers, etc.
It's what makes political parties, or religions, or car clubs, or Olympic competitions.
Different people have different opinions/beliefs on everything under (and over) the Sun.
Some will be quite belligerent, others will roll with the punches.

The key point is this: people are free to be as skeptical as they like about what I believe, but if they think they can show I am necessarily wrong then they are mistaken. The skeptics may believe I am wrong, and they may be very confident in that belief, but they are not in a position to claim they know I am wrong. That's why the accusations of "lies" and "delusions" keep being thrown at me. It is caused by an over-confidence in the skeptic's own belief system. They've either forgotten to be skeptical about their own beliefs, or, more commonly, they have an inadequate understanding of the limitations of science, an inadequate understanding of philosophy and as a result they think they know certain things about the nature of reality which in fact they do not.

"Skepticism" means "choosing not to believe X unless there is a good reason." If it turns into "We know X doesn't exist" when they know no such thing, then it's dogmatism, not skepticism.

ETA: What was this thread actually about? It was caused when a group of people tried to make the claim that what I believe is illogical. It is not. Those people either didn't understand what the word "logical" actually means, or they aren't capable of figuring out that what I believe is not, in fact, illogical. But why do they want to claim it is illogical in the first place? Answer: because it's not enough for them to be skeptical about what I believe, they want to go further and show that is also definately wrong - that it is necessarily the case that even from UE's perspective, it is unreasonable to believe such things. Anyone who tries to do that has bitten off more than they can chew. You don't know I am neccesarily wrong and you certainly can't prove that I'm necessarily wrong. For many people here, this isn't enough to satisfy them. They want to show the world that their belief system is the only valid one. And that is more like the behaviour of religious believers than anything I am doing. I'm not trying to force my belief system on anyone. I'm not insisting it is the only valid way to look at reality. It's the so-called "freethinking" skeptics who are doing this, whilst hypocritcally accusing me of "trying to sell snake oil." I think those people need to take a look in the mirror, and see whether maybe it is they who are dogmatically trying to enforce their beliefs as "established facts." The people who are criticising me aren't merely trying to "sell" their belief system. They are forcibly ramming it down my throat by attempting to claim that I am necessarily wrong and by implication that their way of looking at things is necessarily correct.

[Yoink]

I'm glad it's not you keeping score, since you apparently can't count. What on Earth are you gabbling on about?



Look, you twit, I never offered any "argument" in the first place!!!

Do you stop to think before you post stuff, or do you just write the first thing that comes into your head?

All I said was that I believe something, for personal reasons, and that no other person is in a position to pass judgement about those things. That is true. Why can't you just accept it? What is the problem? Do you have some psychological need to prove that everyone who believes something you don't is wrong? Why can't you just say "UE believes X. I don't. He can't prove he's right, I can't prove he's wrong, so there's nothing left to discuss."?

UE, you have repeatedly lied in this thread. You have repeatedly claimed that the argument against you is "God can't have done it, therefore you must be insane." You have explicitly claimed that that is the argument I am making against you.

This is a simple lie, as anyone who bothers to read this thread can show. I have said over and over and over again that it is perfectly possible that God caused your mystical experience. Just as it is perfectly possible that God causes my coffee machine to work in the morning. The argument you refuse to face because you know it is unanswerable is that "god did it" is not a parsimonious account of your experience. We are all familiar with pscychosis as a well-established phenomenon that adequately accounts for your experience; it seems unnecessary to reach for some extraordinary external explanation (and if we were to do so, alien beings playing tricks is still a more parsimonious explanation than a divine being playing tricks).

Now, I await your response which will be, once more, to say "you're just talking crazy talk! Why, you're babbling incoherently!"--because you simply cannot afford for one second to even acknowledge the nature of the argument against you because to acknowledge it would be to admit to yourself that you do not have the special evidence of God's existence that you claim to have.

So--what lie to you want to lead with this time?

[UndercoverElephant]

UE, you have repeatedly lied in this thread. You have repeatedly claimed that the argument against you is "God can't have done it, therefore you must be insane." You have explicitly claimed that that is the argument I am making against you.


It is you who is lying. I made a general suggestion that many people were thinking along those lines, and I'm right. It may or may not apply to you.


This is a simple lie, as anyone who bothers to read this thread can show. I have said over and over and over again that it is perfectly possible that God caused your mystical experience. Just as it is perfectly possible that God causes my coffee machine to work in the morning. The argument you refuse to face because you know it is unanswerable is that "god did it" is not a parsimonious account of your experience.


Not willing to face it? Again, I have no idea what you are talking about. We have discussed this. You claimed that I couldn't know it was a genuine religious experience because it might have been a prank being played by a Q-like alien. I acknowledged this, although I justifiably consider it to be an unlikely explanation (why should this alien play such a prank?), and also pointed out that from our perspective, there is no difference between God and Q. Read that again: from our perspective, there is no difference between God and Q. You appear to believe that if I learned that the cause of my experiences was not God, but a Q-like alien, that my world would come tumbling down. I have now made it quite clear to you that in fact it would make no difference at all. If there is a being who is that powerful and who is manipulating my reality, I am going to call it "God".


We are all familiar with pscychosis as a well-established phenomenon that adequately accounts for your experience


Rubbish. You are familiar with psychosis. You are not familiar with my experience. You appear to believe that you are capable of rationally "explaining away" something when you don't actually have any knowledge of thing you trying to explain away. That's pretty clever. Oh, no, wait, actually it's completely stupid.

What you are saying is this: "Whatever happened to you, I can explain it away without having to resort to mystical explanations." First problem: you don't know what happened. Second problem: the fact that you can explain it away, if you could do so, doesn't actually mean your explanation is the right one.



; it seems unnecessary to reach for some extraordinary external explanation


HOW DO YOU KNOW?

You have no idea what you are passing judgement on. You don't know. Stop pretending that you do.


(and if we were to do so, alien beings playing tricks is still a more parsimonious explanation than a divine being playing tricks).


So says you, who doesn't even know what the supposed "trick" was.


Now, I await your response which will be, once more, to say "you're just talking crazy talk! Why, you're babbling incoherently!"--


Nope, you're just making claims that you can't substantiate.


because you simply cannot afford for one second to even acknowledge the nature of the argument against you because to acknowledge it would be to admit to yourself that you do not have the special evidence of God's existence that you claim to have.


The nature of the argument you are presenting is this: "I know that it is unreasonable for you to believe what you believe, even though I don't know what evidence you are basing those beliefs upon." Yep, that's incoherent babble, and its coming from a person who can't walk away from this discussion without believing he has proved something which it is impossible to prove: that my beliefs are unreasonable even from MY point of view, not just yours. Your own skepticism isn't enough for you. You want me to be as skeptical as you are. Why? Why can't you just walk away and be satisfied with "I don't believe this"?

[Eyeron]

One of the weaknesses I see to logic is that it seems to ignore people's personal experiences and evaluates the argument alone.

For example, there is a kind of a schism in black communities, for lack of a better term. lighter skinned black people, such as Obama, often experiences bigotry towards them by darker skinned black people because of their racism against white people because the lighter skinned black people are too close to white people.

I'm sorry if this offends people, this subject is for the sake of argument only and to make a point about logic, but I've heard many black people say this themselves, that they have a strong distrust of lighter skinned black people. I've even heard Obama being criticized as being too white. But I have no evidence only personal anecdotes with which some will dismiss out of hand simply because it doesn't seem logical.

And there's this whole claim of absolute morality which states that truth only comes from logic, and nothing else.

So how is it justified to dismiss personal experiences like this? They aren't logical, but they are true beliefs.

[Maia]

Well... all I can say is that I'm not an atheist either, and I never pretend to be one. But I never get bombarded by anybody in any way, in any context. I don't pretend to know all the reasons why not, but I do know that I don't talk about the reasons why I'm not an atheist, and that might be why. Not just here; I really don't talk about them anywhere, and I don't know if I ever will. But I DO know that if I DID talk about them here, I could expect people to ask certain questions. That would be okay. :) The opinions other people have about my experiences do not diminish these experiences, and they also do not determine the subjective meaning of what they are for me. However, if I go around getting all upset at people for asking these questions and acting like skeptics, I can pretty much predict how things are going to go from that point on.

Also, I would like to mention the issue of "special pleading", because I think it's illustrated very well here. SP is not just a case of saying "I have an exception to a more general rule, and it may not apply to everyone," because there are clearly legitimate exceptions to every general rule, and well, they don't apply to everyone. However, you do have to make an extra effort, go the extra mile, to separate evidence from SP in a questionable case. For instance, if I ever DO want to start that Topamax thread, there might be a point where I'd throw my hands up and say, "I'm not sure if I can describe this to somebody who hasn't taken it." I HOPE I'd be able to avoid this, but OTOH, this is a drug which is demonstrably unlike anything else that's been available before (in effects, chemical structure, indicated uses, study outcomes, etc.) Also, only certain subgroups of people will react to it in certain ways, which is one of the most interesting things about it. It really MIGHT be impossible to understand certain things without experiencing this med, only a small number of people would be able to get this effect in any case, and there are legitimate reasons why all of these things would happen, each of which can be backed up by double-blind studies published in peer-reviewed journals. But in the case of a mystical experience, how do we know we couldn't understand it if we never read anything besides "I've had it, and I'm never going to tell you anything about it?" Do you see why it's impossible to see this as anything besides special pleading?

[Yoink]

By the way UE, here are some of the posts in which I make the point that the issue at stake here is parsimony, not the possibility of divine action:

One of the very first posts I made on this question, #234 (http://forums.randi.org/showpost.php?p=4998233&postcount=234):

Even if the experience was "God spoke to me directly in a vision" you have to ask yourself if it is more reasonable to believe that this experience was real or that it was a delusion--and the answer to that is clear, I think.

Post #246 (http://forums.randi.org/showpost.php?p=4998744&postcount=246):

That is, at the very most you could have had an experience which if not the result of delusion (and you can't rule that possibility out) is reasonable justification for belief in beings with powers unknown to homo sapiens sapiens. But that these powers are proof of divinity would be an unwarranted and unjustified step. Aliens, for example, remain in the frame.

In post #276 (http://forums.randi.org/showpost.php?p=5001455&postcount=276) I first directly correct your false claim that I am simply "assuming" that "God did it" is an impossible explanation:

Of course I can't make the claim that "there is no such thing as a genuine mystical experience." That would be an absurd claim. It could very well be that God spoke to you. It could very well be God who made sure by an act of special providence that my microwave didn't blow up this morning. How could I prove otherwise. I'm not saying that I can disprove your "mystical" experience. I'm saying that you cannot logically use it--even to yourself--as proof of the existence of God.

In post #284 (http://forums.randi.org/showpost.php?p=5001613&postcount=284) I continue to try to explain to you--not yet realizing that you simply cannot afford to honestly confront this argument--that the claim I am making is about proof not about possibility:

Please read what I am writing, and not what you would like to imagine that I'm writing. I have already said that I cannot disprove the existence of God and that I cannot prove that your experience was not, in fact, caused by God. I can't disprove that Obama's election was the direct action of God on earth, I can't disprove that every suicide bomber is directly motivated by God and receives a heavenly reward, I can't disprove that the flight of every sparrow is the direct manifestation of God's will. None of that means that any one of those things is "proof" of God's existence. Neither is the fact that you had an experience that you find hard to explain.

See, no "assumption of the nonexistence of God" up my sleeve.

By post #295 (http://forums.randi.org/showpost.php?p=5001959&postcount=295) it had become pretty obvious that you were just going to lie and lie and lie about this point because confronting it honestly would force you to acknowledge the flaws in your argument.

I do not know how many times I have to write "I accept that 'God did it' is a possible explanation" before you'll notice it. I am not excluding God as a possible explanation of your experience. Here, let me write that again: I AM NOT EXCLUDING GOD AS A POSSIBLE EXPLANATION OF YOUR EXPERIENCE. Or maybe once more I AM NOT EXCLUDING GOD AS A POSSIBLE EXPLANATION OF YOUR EXPERIENCE. I'm saying that no possible experience you have undergone could prove that God is in fact the explanation of your experience.

And yet despite my making the same argument for page after page after page you continue to simply lie and lie and lie about the argument being made to you. So here it is for the last time:

You had an experience you can't explain.
There are several possible explanations for that experience including, although not limited to:
1/ Mental breakdown of some kind.
2/ Time-traveling, mind-reading aliens playing around with you.
3/ God playing around with you.
We cannot rule out any of these on the evidence we have to hand. We do, however, know that mental breakdowns occur, that they produce experiences like those you describe, that people cling tenaciously to alternative explanations for their delusions. #1, therefore, requires no extraordinary premises and fits the known facts.

#2 requires a very extraordinary premise ("time traveling, mind reading aliens exist and they have some reason to play tricks on you"), so--while it cannot be excluded as 'disproven'--it is clearly a less satisfactory explanation than #1.

#3 requires an even more extraordinary premise than #2 ("God exists and for some reason has decided to play tricks on you"--why an omnipotent and omniscient being would decide to intervene directly and extraordinarily in His creation simply to make you have a bad time on Internet forums is utterly beyond me. That aliens might want to mess about with you by way or fun or experiment I can just about see; that God would do something so trivial passeth all understanding). Again, it can't be declared 'disproven.' It remains a possible cause of your reported experience. But it is clearly the least parsimonious explanation possible.

Consequently, your claim that you have sufficient justification on the basis of your personal experience to believe that God's existence has been proven incorrect. Q.E.D.

Now, I await your "You just start from the assumption that 'God Doesn't Exist'" reply.

[UndercoverElephant]

You had an experience you can't explain.


I had an experience I can't relate to you. Therefore you necessarily don't know what the experience was.


There are several possible explanations for that experience...


How would you know?


including, although not limited to:
1/ Mental breakdown of some kind.
2/ Time-traveling, mind-reading aliens playing around with you.
3/ God playing around with you.
We cannot rule out any of these on the evidence we have to hand.


YOU can't rule them out on the evidence YOU have to hand.

I can. I can rule out (1) and I rule it out on the grounds that I was perfectly sane beforehand, perfectly sane afterwards, and because the experience involved permanent changes to reality. Hallucinations go away. They don't cause permanent changes. I would also rule out (3), since God is not in the business of "playing games". I can't rule out (2), but see it as irrelevant, since any alien that powerful is, from our perspective, indistinguishable from God.



We do, however, know that mental breakdowns occur, that they produce experiences like those you describe


I haven't described them...

[UndercoverElephant]

One of the weaknesses I see to logic is that it seems to ignore people's personal experiences and evaluates the argument alone.

For example, there is a kind of a schism in black communities, for lack of a better term. lighter skinned black people, such as Obama, often experiences bigotry towards them by darker skinned black people because of their racism against white people because the lighter skinned black people are too close to white people.

I'm sorry if this offends people, this subject is for the sake of argument only and to make a point about logic, but I've heard many black people say this themselves, that they have a strong distrust of lighter skinned black people. I've even heard Obama being criticized as being too white.


Jesse Jackson is on record as describing him as "not black enough."


But I have no evidence only personal anecdotes with which some will dismiss out of hand simply because it doesn't seem logical.

And there's this whole claim of absolute morality which states that truth only comes from logic, and nothing else.

So how is it justified to dismiss personal experiences like this? They aren't logical, but they are true beliefs.

Very good point. When it comes to human affairs, science and pure reason are never enough.

[Yoink]

[blah blah blah]You appear to believe that you are capable of rationally "explaining away" something when you don't actually have any knowledge of thing you trying to explain away.[blah blah blah]

You forget that I found the earlier threads where your experience was, in fact, described.

And even if you described it falsely or inaccurately back then, it doesn't matter. There is no possible reported experience which could not be the result of delusion. There is, a priori, no account you could give that could not possibly be a delusion. It just cannot be ruled out.

This is true for every single one of us. None of our memories, none of our experiences--no matter how banal or how extraordinary--could not possibly be false. The only checks we have on such things are confirmations from others and confirmation from physical evidence (photos, mementos, written records etc.).

So it really does not matter that you no longer tell people what your experience was. It does not matter if the accounts you gave in the past were false or incomplete or what have you. There is no possible version of the story about which we could say "this cannot possibly be a delusion" simply on the basis of the particular type and sequence of events that you describe. The only way we could form such a conclusion would be in there was actual evidence to support the claim: witness testimony, physical evidence etc. But you have insisted all along that you are the sole witness of these events and that the events produced nothing in the way of physical evidence that could not be explained in a non-mystical way.

Therefore we are left, yet again, with psychosis as the most parsimonious explanation of the entire phenomenon.

[UndercoverElephant]

Well... all I can say is that I'm not an atheist either, and I never pretend to be one. But I never get bombarded by anybody in any way, in any context. I don't pretend to know all the reasons why not, but I do know that I don't talk about the reasons why I'm not an atheist, and that might be why. Not just here; I really don't talk about them anywhere, and I don't know if I ever will. But I DO know that if I DID talk about them here, I could expect people to ask certain questions. That would be okay. :) The opinions other people have about my experiences do not diminish these experiences, and they also do not determine the subjective meaning of what they are for me. However, if I go around getting all upset at people for asking these questions and acting like skeptics, I can pretty much predict how things are going to go from that point on.


But they aren't acting like skeptics. Skeptics say "I don't believe X because I have seen no justification for why I believe it." Strictly speaking, I'm not "skeptical" about young-earth creationism. "Skeptical" isn't strong enough. I'm quite certain the Earth is not 8000 years old. I am "skeptical" about the claim that there are intelligent aliens in the universe. Until/unless I am given a decent reason to believe such a claim, I won't believe it. My complaint is that some of the people here aren't very good at assessing this difference.



Also, I would like to mention the issue of "special pleading", because I think it's illustrated very well here. SP is not just a case of saying "I have an exception to a more general rule, and it may not apply to everyone," because there are clearly legitimate exceptions to every general rule, and well, they don't apply to everyone. However, you do have to make an extra effort, go the extra mile, to separate evidence from SP in a questionable case. For instance, if I ever DO want to start that Topamax thread, there might be a point where I'd throw my hands up and say, "I'm not sure if I can describe this to somebody who hasn't taken it." I HOPE I'd be able to avoid this, but OTOH, this is a drug which is demonstrably unlike anything else that's been available before (in effects, chemical structure, indicated uses, study outcomes, etc.) Also, only certain subgroups of people will react to it in certain ways, which is one of the most interesting things about it. It really MIGHT be impossible to understand certain things without experiencing this med, only a small number of people would be able to get this effect in any case, and there are legitimate reasons why all of these things would happen, each of which can be backed up by double-blind studies published in peer-reviewed journals. But in the case of a mystical experience, how do we know we couldn't understand it if we never read anything besides "I've had it, and I'm never going to tell you anything about it?" Do you see why it's impossible to see this as anything besides special pleading?

No. I don't understand why it is considered to be "special pleading" at all. This is not an exception. It's the rule. Mystical experiences are the textbook example of something which cannot be adequately described in words.

http://www.kfs.org/~jonathan/witt/t652en.html


6.522 There is indeed the inexpressible. This shows itself; it is the mystical.


Is that "special pleading"?

[Yoink]

I can. I can rule out (1) and I rule it out on the grounds that I was perfectly sane beforehand, perfectly sane afterwards, and because the experience involved permanent changes to reality. Hallucinations go away.

I'm sorry, the claim that you are "perfectly sane" at this point cannot be admitted as established. The claim that "hallucinations go away" is false. Many people suffer from hallucinations their entire lives.

There is also, of course, the possibility that you are simply lying. As we have lots of evidence of you lying in this thread already, it has to be said that that may be the most parsimonious explanation of all. You enjoy trolling the JREF with a false story of private revelation because it's guaranteed to get bites.

They don't cause permanent changes. I would also rule out (3), since God is not in the business of "playing games".

How else could you describe your experience than "playing games"? God upends the normal laws of the universe for what: so that you can troll the JREF forums? "Lo, I have pondered my creation and I see a flaw in it. There are not enough trolls on the JREF forums!"? I mean, if God had given you the secret to world peace or nuclear fusion or something then, sure, there'd be some vague coherence to it, but as it is, no.

I can't rule out (2), but see it as irrelevant, since any alien that powerful is, from our perspective, indistinguishable from God.

Nonsense. Aliens who can read minds and time travel but who use those powers just to make you into the JREF supertroll are clearly not "God." Time travel and mind reading abilities are ones that humans easily imagine acquiring themselves and we don't think of that as "becoming gods." If aliens were behind your "experience" what they did seems to have amounted to a prank.

[UndercoverElephant]

You forget that I found the earlier threads where your experience was, in fact, described.


By who?


And even if you described it falsely or inaccurately back then, it doesn't matter. There is no possible reported experience which could not be the result of delusion.


In which case, please don't bother refering to it. You are making a general claim, not something specific to me. You are claiming that no possible reported experience could not be the result of delusion. Which fits quite nicely with your assertion that you know what I believe is unreasonable, even though you don't know what I believe.

It may be the case that no possible experience could not be the result of delusion. That's not where the problem lies. The problem is that you are trying to make a judgement about a specific experience I have had, and the judgement you are making is about what is the most reasonable explanation. I am denying that you are in a position to tell me what is the most reasonable way for me to assess my own experiences, and I stand by that claim. You can obviously make some guesses as to what I might have experienced and what the most likely explanation was, but they are only guesses and they are based on far less information than is available to me. I don't have a problem with you coming to the conclusion that the most likely explanation is some sort of delusion on my part. I have a problem with you expecting me to accept that conclusion too. You weren't there, you're not me, you don't know what happened, you don't know what my mental state was and you don't know how knowledgeable I am about science, epistemology and metaphysics.

Why on Earth should I allow somebody else to tell me how best to interpret MY personal experiences? Would you?

I think for myself. I've done so since I was about five. I have no intention, aged 40, of allowing you to do my thinking for me.


Therefore we are left, yet again, with psychosis as the most parsimonious explanation of the entire phenomenon.

That is your best guess. Please don't expect me to accept your opinion as to how best I should interpret my own experiences.

[UndercoverElephant]

I'm sorry, the claim that you are "perfectly sane" at this point cannot be admitted as established. The claim that "hallucinations go away" is false. Many people suffer from hallucinations their entire lives.

There is also, of course, the possibility that you are simply lying. As we have lots of evidence of you lying in this thread already, it has to be said that that may be the most parsimonious explanation of all. You enjoy trolling the JREF with a false story of private revelation because it's guaranteed to get bites.



How else could you describe your experience than "playing games"? God upends the normal laws of the universe for what: so that you can troll the JREF forums? "Lo, I have pondered my creation and I see a flaw in it. There are not enough trolls on the JREF forums!"? I mean, if God had given you the secret to world peace or nuclear fusion or something then, sure, there'd be some vague coherence to it, but as it is, no.



Nonsense. Aliens who can read minds and time travel but who use those powers just to make you into the JREF supertroll are clearly not "God." Time travel and mind reading abilities are ones that humans easily imagine acquiring themselves and we don't think of that as "becoming gods." If aliens were behind your "experience" what they did seems to have amounted to a prank.

Goodbye, I am going for a drink.

[blutoski]

Claiming to believe something is claiming to know it.

Now you're quibbling. I believe that cannibalism is morally wrong, but I don't know for a fact that cannibalism is morally wrong. I can believe things without claiming to know them.

Many things cannot be proven, but holding them as beliefs is not wrong.

All arguments have hidden premises, and ultimately, the root premises are indefensible. Another example that comes to mind is that claiming something and its opposite at the same time (contradictory claims) means something's wrong with the argument.

[The Platypus]

Oh.

My.

God.

I HAVE EXPLICTLY, REPEATEDLY STATED THAT I NEITHER WANT NOR EXPECT ANYBODY TO BELIEVE ME *AT ALL*.

And you have somehow managed to turn that into "UE hates us because we won't believe him without question."

You are mad. Completely bonkers.

Your the one prancing around proclaiming your hallucinations as untouchable and i am the crazy one because i don't buy your baloney and called you on your little scam? And you create a delusion that ow that it's all about just me turning this around on you?

It's all my fault! LOL Ya...ooooooooook....LMAO!!!

[Yoink]

Goodbye, I am going for a drink.

Careful--you don't want to be back here with "irrefutable private evidence" of the existence of pink elephants.

By the way a perfect analogy for your situation occurred to me: alien abduction stories. The world is full of people who are apparently sincere, who claim to have been "perfectly sane" before the abduction experience and "perfectly sane" since the abduction experience. They also, often, claim that the experience left permanent, testable alterations in their bodies or their abilities (scars, for example). In many cases they do not appear to have other hallucinations or to be troubled by ongoing psychoses.

In most cases it is entirely impossible to disprove their claims. In most cases it remains perfectly possible--however unlikely--that aliens did, in fact, abduct them.

According to you, every single one of those people is justified in being personally certain that they were, in fact, abducted by aliens; every single one should simply reject out of hand any alternative explanation offered to them. And yet somehow I suspect that you will agree with me that if they applied the correct standards of analysis to their claims that they would be forced to admit that a well-defended hallucination or other such psychotic breakdown is a far more parsimonious explanation of their subjective experiences than alien abduction.

[UndercoverElephant]

Now you're quibbling. I believe that cannibalism is morally wrong, but I don't know for a fact that cannibalism is morally wrong. I can believe things without claiming to know them.


I can too. I believe George Mallory conquered Everest in 1924, but I don't know.

[UndercoverElephant]

Your the one prancing around proclaiming your hallucinations as untouchable and i am the crazy one because i don't buy your baloney....


Stop, go back and read what you wrote.

Do you really believe that I am saying you are crazy because you don't believe me? Does that logically fit with what I've actually been saying? I'm calling you crazy because what you are posting, supposedly in response to me, doesn't have any connection to anything I've actually been saying. This is a typical example. It doesn't matter how many times I tell you that I don't expect you to believe me, you remain convinced that what I am trying to do is to convince you to believe me. THAT is why I am calling you crazy. You are having an argument with your own hallucination. You aren't having an argument with me, because what you are saying doesn't make any sense as a response to any of things that I am saying.

I mean this quite seriously, my friend. Go back and read the last three pages. Either there is something seriously wrong with your ability to comprehend English, or you are so psychologically disturbed by what I am saying that it is distorting your perception of reality.

I am not, and have never been, trying to get anyone to believe me. Look at the title of the thread. It is about "unjustified beliefs". In the context of this thread that means "beliefs I cannot objectively/publicly justify." So WHY do you think I am trying to convince you to believe me? Why would I claim the belief in question is objectively unjustifiable if my purpose is to try to convince other people to believe it????

I am making a point about epistemology - what it is possible to know and how it is possible to know it. You, for some reason only known to yourself, are convinced I am trying to convert you to some sort of religious position, even though you have no idea what that religious position actually is. Looks pretty crazy to me.

:(

[UndercoverElephant]

Careful--you don't want to be back here with "irrefutable private evidence" of the existence of pink elephants.

By the way a perfect analogy for your situation occurred to me: alien abduction stories. The world is full of people who are apparently sincere, who claim to have been "perfectly sane" before the abduction experience and "perfectly sane" since the abduction experience. They also, often, claim that the experience left permanent, testable alterations in their bodies or their abilities (scars, for example). In many cases they do not appear to have other hallucinations or to be troubled by ongoing psychoses.


The analogy is not perfect, but it is usable. In most of those cases it would not make much sense for a third party to believe the story. As someone who wasn't there and is doing their best to make a rational choice as to how to assess the claim, you are very unlikely to conclude that the story isn't true. However, it's not impossible that some of the stories are true. This is a good example for another reason: personally, I'm skeptical about the existence of alien intelligence. So my own assessment of these stories is that the person in question probably experienced some sort of delusional episode. However, I would not go so far as to attempt to force a person who made such claims that the most reasonable explanation for them was that it didn't happen. At the end of the day, I wasn't there. If they are 100% convinced it really was an alien abduction, and they admit that there is no reason why anybody else should actually believe such an extraordinary story, then I would just leave it at that. They believe they were abducted by aliens and I don't. What's the problem with that??


In most cases it is entirely impossible to disprove their claims. In most cases it remains perfectly possible--however unlikely--that aliens did, in fact, abduct them.

According to you, every single one of those people is justified in being personally certain that they were, in fact, abducted by aliens;


No, that is not what I would say. I am not in a position to know whether or not those people are personally justified in believing that they were, in fact, abducted by aliens. I am in a position to conclude that most of them, maybe all of them, were not. But there's no way I'd try to convince somebody who was 100% convinced the experience was what it appeared to be that it is more reasonable for them to believe it was a hallucination. It is exactly the same epistemological situation, except this time I'm a skeptic rather than a believer.


every single one should simply reject out of hand any alternative explanation offered to them. And yet somehow I suspect that you will agree with me that if they applied the correct standards of analysis to their claims that they would be forced to admit that a well-defended hallucination or other such psychotic breakdown is a far more parsimonious explanation of their subjective experiences than alien abduction.

Nope, I don't believe anyone can force them to admit such a thing. To do so would be to mistake my very firm belief that real abductions by bona fide aliens don't actually happen with certain knowledge that they don't. In reality, most of the people who make such claims are idiots. They are the sort of people who also believe that the CIA was responsible for 9/11 and that Barack Obama doesn't have a US birth certificate. If I met a person who was clearly well-educacted, intelligent and lucid, and they made such a claim? Well, I'd still be 99% tending towards believing it was an unusual abberation, but there would be 1% that wondered whether maybe they might just be right.

[Yoink]

The analogy is not perfect, but it is usable. In most of those cases it would not make much sense for a third party to believe the story. As someone who wasn't there and is doing their best to make a rational choice as to how to assess the claim, you are very unlikely to conclude that the story is true. However, it's not impossible that some of the stories are true. This is a good example for another reason: personally, I'm skeptical about the existence of alien intelligence. So my own assessment of these stories is that person in question probably experienced some sort of delusional episode. However, I would not go so far as to attempt to force a person who made such claims that the most reasonable explanation for them was that it didn't happen. At the end of the day, I wasn't there. If they are 100% convinced it really was an alien abduction, and they admit that there is no reason why anybody else should actually believe such an extraordinary story, then I would just leave it at that. They believe they were abducted by aliens and I don't. What's the problem with that??



No, that is not what I would say. I am not in a position to know whether or not those people are personally justified in believing that they were, in fact, abducted by aliens. I am in a position to conclude that most of them, maybe all of them, were not. But there's no way I'd try to convince somebody who was 100% convinced the experience was what it appeared to be that it is more reasonable for them to believe it was a hallucination. It is exactly the same epistemological situation, except this time I'm a skeptic rather than a believer.



Nope, I don't believe anyone can force them to admit such a thing. To do so would be to mistake my very firm belief that real abductions by bona fide aliens don't actually happen with certain knowledge that they don't. In reality, most of the people who make such claims are idiots. They are the sort of people who also believe that the CIA was responsible for 9/11 and that Barack Obama doesn't have a US birth certificate. If I met a person who was clearly well-educacted, intelligent and lucid, and they made such a claim? Well, I'd still be 99% tending towards believing it was an unusual abberation, but there would be 1% that wondered whether maybe they might just be right.

Once again, UE, you're clinging to this idea that I'm saying "you must be wrong; it's impossible that God appeared to you." I'm not saying that. I'm saying that for any rational observer including you the most parsimonious explanation for what occurred is not that God did it.

I'm glad that you can see that you are in essentially the same position as an "alien abduction survivor." Now, if there was an alien abduction survivor on the JREF forum, who insisted that they had clear, undeluded memories of their abduction, that they were "sane" before and "sane" after the experience etc. etc. etc. (just like you and God, in other words) I would not say to them that their experience was impossible. I would not say to them that they had to admit it could not have happened. What I would say to them is that they as rational observers, regardless of their personal feelings as to the realism, consistency etc. of their memories of the experience would have to admit that the most parsimonious explanation of their experience is that they had a delusional episode and that their minds are working to build defenses for that delusion.

Or, to put the same point another way, let us say that tomorrow I find myself abducted by aliens. Let us say, for the sake of argument, that this actually happens. I get pulled up in a tractor beam, I get experimented on--the whole nine yards. Then I wake up in my bed the next day and, although I remember everything, I have no tangible evidence to show for the experience. Then even though the memories are my own, even though I will remember it as lucidly and as coherently as I now remember the banal events of yesterday, I will admit now in advance and hope that I will be lucid enough to admit then that the best available explanation of my memories is that I have had some sort of mental breakdown.

Now, should the aliens then reappear--to me and to other people--and say "oh yes, we probed the bejasus out of you the other day; sorry about that, all part of learning how to serve man!" Then I will say "well, now I have to revise my understanding of that event; it appears that a psychotic episode is no longer the most parsimonious explanation. But in the absence of further corroborating evidence (as is your case) then for anybody--the experiencer or anyone else--the most parsimonious explanation is the one that does not appeal to unknown and unknowable forces in in order to explain what can be perfectly well explained with known forces.

[The Platypus]

Stop, go back and read what you wrote.

Do you really believe that I am saying you are crazy because you don't believe me? Does that logically fit with what I've actually been saying? I'm calling you crazy because what you are posting, supposedly in response to me, doesn't have any connection to anything I've actually been saying. This is a typical example. It doesn't matter how many times I tell you that I don't expect you to believe me, you remain convinced that what I am trying to do is to convince you to believe me. THAT is why I am calling you crazy. You are having an argument with your own hallucination. You aren't having an argument with me, because what you are saying doesn't make any sense as a response to any of things that I am saying.

I mean this quite seriously, my friend. Go back and read the last three pages. Either there is something seriously wrong with your ability to comprehend English, or you are so psychologically disturbed by what I am saying that it is distorting your perception of reality.

I am not, and have never been, trying to get anyone to believe me. I am making a point about epistemology - what it is possible to know and how it is possible to know it. You, for some reason only known to yourself, are convinced I am trying to convert you to some sort of religious position, even though you have no idea what that religious position actually is. Looks pretty crazy to me.

:(

Ya ya, you aren't trying to get anyone to believe you, even though you still continue to wave it around and around and beat that horse long after even you can see that it's dead... Gotcha...:rolleyes:

Funny how it's all about me now. I'm this and i'm that, blah blah blah.

Lets all just pretend that everything everyone else said before and since I posted hasn't happened. Like you were doing so great and everyone was just believing and hanging on your every word, until I came along and crazy old me, I just single handedly ruined it for you, being the only one doubting you. Just crazy old me, cuz i'm just craaaaaaaazy... Ya Ya that will fool everyone too...:eek: :rolleyes:

Gee even your smoke and mirrors diversions aren't original.

Now let's get back to reality!

If i was so far off the mark, why are you so worried about what i said, and obsessively focused now on just discrediting me. Why are you now doing everything and anything you can to focus this whole thing just on me, rant, accuse of this and that, make up crap, put words in my mouth, post little lists, 10 different angels at once, desperately trying to discredit and demean me, anything you possibly can come up with to throw diversions and protect this little game of yours. Why do you care so much about little old me suddenly? I am just some joe shmoe on the net, you don't know me, never will. If i am so wrong and If your experience was as real and as rock solid as you claim, i shouldn't be able to rattle your chain so badly, so easily. But just look at ya. You are acting more and more like a trickster that got exposed and is trying desperately to recover, with every post.

Poor thing, I ruined your little game and now you are all upset and rattled... LMAO...

Take a breath, relax, go have another drink and get a grip. Time for you to realize that you can't fool em all with the same old well known and often used trick, sometimes that's just the way it goes.

[UndercoverElephant]

Once again, UE, you're clinging to this idea that I'm saying "you must be wrong; it's impossible that God appeared to you." I'm not saying that.


Err...no, I'm saying that this:


I'm saying that for any rational observer including you the most parsimonious explanation for what occurred is not that God did it.


...is unjustified. I am saying that, epistemologically, you aren't in a position to know what the most parsimonious explanation is for them, assuming they are rational.



I'm glad that you can see that you are in essentially the same position as an "alien abduction survivor." Now, if there was an alien abduction survivor on the JREF forum, who insisted that they had clear, undeluded memories of their abduction, that they were "sane" before and "sane" after the experience etc. etc. etc. (just like you and God, in other words) I would not say to them that their experience was impossible. I would not say to them that they had to admit it could not have happened. What I would say to them is that they as rational observers, regardless of their personal feelings as to the realism, consistency etc. of their memories of the experience would have to admit that the most parsimonious explanation of their experience is that they had a delusional episode and that their minds are working to build defenses for that delusion.


And you would be unjustified in saying that, because you aren't in a position to legitimately make the judgement. You do not have access to the same amount of information that they do, and because of this, you are not in an epistemological position which allows you to accurately make that judgement.


Or, to put the same point another way, let us say that tomorrow I find myself abducted by aliens. Let us say, for the sake of argument, that this actually happens. I get pulled up in a tractor beam, I get experimented on--the whole nine yards. Then I wake up in my bed the next day and, although I remember everything, I have no tangible evidence to show for the experience. Then even though the memories are my own, even though I will remember it as lucidly and as coherently as I now remember the banal events of yesterday, I will admit now in advance and hope that I will be lucid enough to admit then that the best available explanation of my memories is that I have had some sort of mental breakdown.


And you are proud of this? You actually get abducted by aliens, you convince yourself that such an event is so unlikely that it is far more likely you went temporarily mad, end up believing something incorrect about the most extra-ordinary event in your one and only life, and you're offering this as an example of your own ability to think critically???

Je ne comprends pas.


Now, should the aliens then reappear--to me and to other people--and say "oh yes, we probed the bejasus out of you the other day; sorry about that, all part of learning how to serve man!" Then I will say "well, now I have to revise my understanding of that event; it appears that a psychotic episode is no longer the most parsimonious explanation. But in the absence of further corroborating evidence (as is your case) then for anybody--the experiencer or anyone else--the most parsimonious explanation is the one that does not appeal to unknown and unknowable forces in in order to explain what can be perfectly well explained with known forces.

Thanks for the advice, but I think I'll continue to think for myself. :)

[UndercoverElephant]

Poor thing, I ruined your little game and now you are all upset and rattled... LMAO...


Yes, I am. You sure showed me. Ta. :)

[The Platypus]

Yes, I am. You sure showed me. Ta. :)

Of course you are still going to play it that way, even now in retreat, but it's not as dramatic and personal as you want to play it up to be, i simply see through your game because you are far from the first to play it. But of course you must stick to the game, i understand.

As they say, don't hate the player, hate the game.

[Maia]

By who?



In which case, please don't bother refering to it. You are making a general claim, not something specific to me. You are claiming that no possible reported experience could not be the result of delusion. Which fits quite nicely with your assertion that you know what I believe is unreasonable, even though you don't know what I believe.

It may be the case that no possible experience could not be the result of delusion. That's not where the problem lies. The problem is that you are trying to make a judgement about a specific experience I have had, and the judgement you are making is about what is the most reasonable explanation. I am denying that you are in a position to tell me what is the most reasonable way for me to assess my own experiences, and I stand by that claim. You can obviously make some guesses as to what I might have experienced and what the most likely explanation was, but they are only guesses and they are based on far less information than is available to me. I don't have a problem with you coming to the conclusion that the most likely explanation is some sort of delusion on my part. I have a problem with you expecting me to accept that conclusion too. You weren't there, you're not me, you don't know what happened, you don't know what my mental state was and you don't know how knowledgeable I am about science, epistemology and metaphysics.

Why on Earth should I allow somebody else to tell me how best to interpret MY personal experiences? Would you?

I think for myself. I've done so since I was about five. I have no intention, aged 40, of allowing you to do my thinking for me.



That is your best guess. Please don't expect me to accept your opinion as to how best I should interpret my own experiences.

Ahhh. Back from such a nice evening at the Y. Lots and lots and lots and lots of kickboxing. :)

Anyway, you know, to play devil's advocate here, all of this seems fair enough, UE. You don't want someone else interpreting the meaning of your own subjective experience. BUT.. and it's an objection which I don't really see any way around... in that case, why don't you just say, "Y'all are never going to understand what my experience has been, so I'm not going to talk about it anymore," and then NOT do it? Clearly, the twain are just not meeting here, and they're not going to no matter how long this thread continues.

[Yoink]

Err...no, I'm saying that this:



...is unjustified. I am saying that, epistemologically, you aren't in a position to know what the most parsimonious explanation is for them, assuming they are rational.

Again, it's not a "for them" vs "for me" situation: it's a "for any rational being" situation.

And you would be unjustified in saying that, because you aren't in a position to legitimately make the judgement. You do not have access to the same amount of information that they do, and because of this, you are not in an epistemological position which allows you to accurately make that judgement.

I have access to all the information I, or any other rational being, needs. I know that delusion is a possible explanation, and I know that delusion is the most parsimonious explanation. It is therefore the explanation to be preferred until further evidence can be brought forth.

And you are proud of this? You actually get abducted by aliens, you convince yourself that such an event is so unlikely that it is far more likely you went temporarily mad, end up believing something incorrect about the most extra-ordinary event in your one and only life, and you're offering this as an example of your own ability to think critically???

Je ne comprends pas.

No, you really don't, do you. It's sad. You're so desperately wedded to the absolute certainty of this epiphany that you cannot afford to think rationally about it. The whole point here is the question of what are you rationally warranted to believe. I would certainly hope that I would be capable of recognizing that "I went mad" is a far more parsimonious explanation of an event for which I have no evidence and is wildly improbable than that the event actually occurred. I would, naturally, consider myself warranted to seek further evidence (you're the only one here who thinks this is all about deciding that X or Y "must have been what happened and that's the only possible explanation!"). But in the absence of such evidence I hope I would have both the humility and the strength of mind to doubt my own recollections.

Look, when I was a teenager I did witness a "UFO"--in the sense of "lights in the sky that didn't behave like a plane or a helicopter." But do I go around saying "I know for a fact that aliens are flying around in the sky because I witnessed it and nothing anyone else can say could make me begin to change my mind!" No, because I'm a rational being I say to myself: "A) I could simply have misunderstood some perfectly natural phenomenon; B) I may be misremembering the exact behavior of those lights, so without any video or other evidence there's just nothing to go on."

Similarly, I once did an experiment on telepathy with a friend of mine and produced results that were wildly unlikely from mere chance. I am capable, however, of recognizing that there may have been "tells" involved of which we were unconscious and that we did not have sufficiently rigorous controls on the procedure to rule that out.

In both cases it's perfectly "possible" that the true explanation is the improbable one. But I have sufficient reason to know that however cool it would be to think that I'd witnessed a UFO or that I had telepathic powers that neither of these experiences is adequate warrant to believe any such thing.

You, on the other hand, are so desperate to believe that God spoke to you and find it so central to your understanding of the world to believe that that you have made yourself incapable of thinking rationally about the situation.

Thanks for the advice, but I think I'll continue to think for myself. :)

Sadly, what you're doing is refusing to think at all.

[UndercoverElephant]

Ahhh. Back from such a nice evening at the Y. Lots and lots and lots and lots of kickboxing. :)

Anyway, you know, to play devil's advocate here, all of this seems fair enough, UE. You don't want someone else interpreting the meaning of your own subjective experience. BUT.. and it's an objection which I don't really see any way around... in that case, why don't you just say, "Y'all are never going to understand what my experience has been, so I'm not going to talk about it anymore," and then NOT do it?

Because this would just wind people up even more?

People ask me questions. You seem to be suggesting that even though what I'm saying is quite reasonable, I should refrain from discussing it around here because the folks won't like it. In which case, that is exactly why I shouldn't refrain from discussing it.

[UndercoverElephant]

Again, it's not a "for them" vs "for me" situation: it's a "for any rational being" situation.


But it's NOT an "any rational being situation", is it? We are talking about a case where one particular rational being has access to far more information than any others.


I have access to all the information I, or any other rational being, needs.


No you don't. Not in my case and not in your own example. In fact in your own example, it is demonstrable that you don't have enough information because you actually come to the wrong conclusion. Or rather it is worse than that - in your example everybody but the experiencee comes to the wrong conclusion based on inadequate evidence, but the experiencee himself comes to the wrong conclusion even though he has enough evidence.


I know that delusion is a possible explanation, and I know that delusion is the most parsimonious explanation. It is therefore the explanation to be preferred until further evidence can be brought forth.


And in the example you've given, you've managed to come to the wrong conclusion because you've allowed what is supposedly parsimonious to over-rule your direct memories of a real experience that actually happened. This is plain stupid. "Parsimony" is something we employ when we don't have enough information. You are using it to over-rule the true explanation of something where the person concerned does have enough information.

What do you think the point of critical thinking is? To go on believing the least-unusual thing, regardless of what is actually the truth? Do you also think "skepticism" means "not believing in woo even if you actually experience it yourself?" That's not skepticism. A skeptic always has to be open to the possibility of that black swan event. It's no use using your critical thinking skills to avoid believing in unparsimonious nonsense if at the point where you are presented with a truly unusual event, you are so skeptical that you manage to convince yourself that it didn't actually happen. That's called "getting it wrong."


No, you really don't, do you. It's sad. You're so desperately wedded to the absolute certainty of this epiphany that you cannot afford to think rationally about it.


Now you've reverted to claiming what I believe is irrational. Why not just say "illogical"?

I repeat: you are not in a position to know whether I am thinking rationally about it, because you don't have enough information. What you are trying to tell me is this: "If you are a rational person, then you'd disbelieve events such as these even if they are real, because they seem so unlikely to me that I can't bring myself to believe they actually happened." And you are trying to give me advice on what is rational??? How can thinking rationally lead you to exactly the wrong conclusion??? If events such as these actually happen to you then, if you're thinking critically and rationally, you will correctly judge that the event really happened. If you get it wrong, then something has gone wrong with the way you've analysed the evidence.



The whole point here is the question of what are you rationally warranted to believe.


The point is that if the event actually happened then you are rationally warranted to believe it happened. You must be, because it did happen!


I would certainly hope that I would be capable of recognizing that "I went mad" is a far more parsimonious explanation of an event for which I have no evidence and is wildly improbable than that the event actually occurred. I would, naturally, consider myself warranted to seek further evidence (you're the only one here who thinks this is all about deciding that X or Y "must have been what happened and that's the only possible explanation!"). But in the absence of such evidence I hope I would have both the humility and the strength of mind to doubt my own recollections.


The "strength of mind" of deny what actually happened and end up believing something which is wrong? That's not being strong-minded. It's being weak-minded. It is a failure to have the courage and strength of mind to recognise when you've been presented with valid evidence that some deeply-held belief was incorrect.


Look, when I was a teenager I did witness a "UFO"--in the sense of "lights in the sky that didn't behave like a plane or a helicopter." But do I go around saying "I know for a fact that aliens are flying around in the sky because I witnessed it and nothing anyone else can say could make me begin to change my mind!" No, because I'm a rational being I say to myself: "A) I could simply have misunderstood some perfectly natural phenomenon; B) I may be misremembering the exact behavior of those lights, so without any video or other evidence there's just nothing to go on."


And in that situation I would come to exactly the same conclusion as you did. So what? It's a different example.


Similarly, I once did an experiment on telepathy with a friend of mine and produced results that were wildly unlikely from mere chance. I am capable, however, of recognizing that there may have been "tells" involved of which we were unconscious and that we did not have sufficiently rigorous controls on the procedure to rule that out.

In both cases it's perfectly "possible" that the true explanation is the improbable one. But I have sufficient reason to know that however cool it would be to think that I'd witnessed a UFO or that I had telepathic powers that neither of these experiences is adequate warrant to believe any such thing.

You, on the other hand, are so desperate to believe that God spoke to you and find it so central to your understanding of the world to believe that that you have made yourself incapable of thinking rationally about the situation.


I repeat: you are not epistemologically in a position to make that judgement. In fact you have now dug yourself a significantly deeper hole than that, because you're claiming that even if you were in a position to make that judgement then you'd get it wrong.


Sadly, what you're doing is refusing to think at all.

No, mate. I'm quite in control of my powers of rational thinking. You are not. You are actually trying to defend the claim that when provided with direct, personal experience of some real phenomena that you currently don't believe happens, a rational person ought to allow their beliefs about how likely that phenomena is to be real to over-ride the direct evidence to the contrary with which they have been presented. You are actually claiming that real evidence of a real event should be ignored in favour of keeping your current belief system intact, even though it's incorrect. And you are then telling me that I don't know how to think rationally! :D

You've lost sight of the plot, Yoink. For you, "skepticism" has become the end in itself, rather than a filtering tool. You actually think that it is always irrational to believe you have been abducted by aliens even if you actually HAVE been abducted by aliens. You call this "being strong-minded." I call it "getting it wrong, because your critical thinking skills failed you at a crucial moment."

If I was actually abducted by aliens, fully conscious and lucid throughout the entire experience, and came away from it with several scars...then I'd like to think I have the strength of mind to actually accept that it happened rather than going into denial and incorrectly convincing myself that actually it was all just a delusion. There's nothing "strong-minded" about allowing your preconceptions and existing beliefs to over-ride actual evidence that those beliefs are incorrect.

[Yoink]

UE, there's very little point in anyone ever talking to you about any of this. You simply have an unquestioned and unquestionable faith in your experience and refuse any glimmer of rational thought in relationship to it.

For anyone following this thread though, let me point out where UE is erring.

To begin with, he assumes that no rational process of thought could lead to a false belief and that no irrational process of thought could lead to a true belief. This is so obviously untrue that I'm still rather stunned that he would cling to such an obviously broken reed, but I guess we should all be used, by now, to the weird distortions of logic that religion entails.

Here's one obvious example. Was it "rational" for an intelligent, well-educated person living in, say, 1750 to believe that Isaac Newton had fully and adequately described the physical laws governing planetary motion? Yes, of course it was. Was it correct? No, of course it wasn't

The question of what is "rational" is the question of what is warranted by logical argument from the available premises. If all the premises are true than the conclusions will also be true. The converse, however, is not the case. If the conclusion is true that does not mean that the reasoning that lead to the conclusion was sound or that the premises on which that reasoning was based were correct.

For example: let us say that the police catch someone whom they suspect of committing murder. Let's say that they find an eyewitness who picks that person out of a line up. They find a "bite-mark" expert who identifies a bite-mark on the suspect's arm as being "definitely" from the victim. They find a fingerprint expert who identifies a match with the suspect's fingerprints on the victim's purse. The guy is tried and found guilty.

Now, let's say you're God watching all this. But you also know that the eyewitness didn't actually see the crime, and picked the guy out because the cops had shown her a photograph of the suspect. You know that "bite mark" evidence is inherently bogus. You know that the fingerprint expert was in error, and the fingerprint he "matched" was actually someone else's.

Now, in UE's world, the question of whether or not the police, the experts and prosecutors "reasoned correctly" based on the available evidence hinges on whether or not the guy did it. If he actually did it then a perfect chain of unimpeachable logic lead to his conviction. If he didn't do it then there was clearly an appalling breach of reason somewhere in the process. But this is obviously incorrect. The prosecutorial argument has been built on false premises and faulty reasoning regardless of whether the suspect is guilty or not.

So when UE writes:

The point is that if the event actually happened then you are rationally warranted to believe it happened. You must be, because it did happen!We can see, though, that he is completely wrong. Regardless of whether or not the event "actually happened" one can have a warranted belief that it happened or have an unwarranted belief that it happened.

The other major error in UE's argument--one so trivial it's barely worth refuting--is an absurd overreliance on personal recollection. "I remember this happening, therefore it must have happened!" This, as I say, is obviously false. It becomes particularly toxic to rational thought, however, when it mixes with the "if it really happened then my memories of it happening are shown to be unimpeachable evidence" nonsense I've just debunked above.

Take, for example, my memory of a UFO sighting. UE agrees with me that I'm quite right to doubt my personal memories in that case. After all, we don't know what happened and it's more likely that I'm misremembering than that a UFO appeared. But by his own argument that "rational" weighing of probabilities would suddenly become "irrational" if we were somehow to find out that a UFO really did fly over me back then (the aliens contact us and reveal all of their previous flybys, for example). Again, this is like the case of the murder-suspect. What actually happened has nothing whatsoever to do with whether the argument for or against his guilt is a rational one.

ETA: Just a quick addition: I want to correct one more of UE's lies:

You are actually claiming that real evidence of a real event should be ignored in favour of keeping your current belief system intact, even though it's incorrect.I expressly said that the evidence should not be "ignored." I said that it would give me good reason to look for further corroborating evidence (to find out if any UFO's were reported as seen that night, for example, or to see if doctor's could identify any changes to my body etc.). But in the absence of any evidence to corroborate my personal recollection and with only that personal recollection to draw on it is obviously rational to consider the possibility of false memory and weigh the probability of false memory alongside the probability of actual alien contact.

I know if suits your personal delusion and the impressive defense mechanisms that you've built around it to think that what I'm saying is "if something doesn't fit your worldview, reject it out of hand" so it's important to be clear on this point. I am not saying that one should ignore a bizarre experience or refuse to consider the possibilities it opens up. I'm saying, simply, that if the lamp posts start talking to you, or a little man appears out of thin air and tells you that it's imperative you kill everybody whose name begins with G, or if aliens abduct you, or if God appears to you in a vision, then you should consider the possibility that these things may not be real; and that that would be rational behavior regardless of whether they were real or not. Now, if you can find other people who can hear the lamp posts talking, or see the little man, or if you can find evidence of the alien presence etc. etc. then you should, rationally, think that delusion is a less likely explanation of your remembered experiences. But you will still have been reasoning correctly to doubt in the first place regardless of whether or not that doubt is later confirmed.

[Z]

Well, this IS the whole reason UE embraces a non-materialist philosophy - so that he CAN claim that subjective experience trumps objective reality. Any other primary assumption, and he would have to accept that his subjective experience was wrong in some fashion. The idea that his memory was permanently altered via delusion or psychosis, or that he suffers an ongoing delusion or psychosis, is so anathemic to his ego, that he MUST accept the details of this history-alteration as absolutely real, in spite of the fact there is absolutely no objective evidence of it ever happening. And if his subjective experiences include something that is not objectively possible or supported, he MUST reject objective reality in favor of subjective reality.

And this is why he so fervently rejects the only logical system of thought, physicalism/materialism, in favor of non-material theories.

Or, to sum it up, only the insane reject physicalism/materialism/sciencism.

[UndercoverElephant]

UE, there's very little point in anyone ever talking to you about any of this. You simply have an unquestioned and unquestionable faith in your experience and refuse any glimmer of rational thought in relationship to it.


Do I detect a person who is running out of arguments? I think I might do...

I repeat yet again: you are not in a position to make that judgement.


For anyone following this thread though, let me point out where UE is erring.

To begin with, he assumes that no rational process of thought could lead to a false belief and that no irrational process of thought could lead to a true belief.


Errr...you now appear to have descended to simply making up arguments that have nothing to do with my own, and then claiming they are my arguments.


This is so obviously untrue that I'm still rather stunned that he would cling to such an obviously broken reed, but I guess we should all be used, by now, to the weird distortions of logic that religion entails.

Here's one obvious example. Was it "rational" for an intelligent, well-educated person living in, say, 1750 to believe that Isaac Newton had fully and adequately described the physical laws governing planetary motion? Yes, of course it was. Was it correct? No, of course it wasn't. The question of what is "rational" is the question of what is warranted by logical argument from the available premises. If all the premises are true than the conclusions will also be true. The converse, however, is not the case. If the conclusion is true that does not mean that the reasoning that lead to the conclusion was sound or that the premises on which that reasoning was based were correct.

For example: let us say that the police catch someone whom they suspect of committing murder. Let's say that they find an eyewitness who picks that person out of a line up. They find a "bite-mark" expert who identifies a bite-mark on the suspect's arm as being "definitely" from the victim. They find a fingerprint expert who identifies a match with the suspect's fingerprints on the victim's purse. The guy is tried and found guilty.

Now, let's say you're God watching all this. But you also know that the eyewitness didn't actually see the crime, and picked the guy out because the cops had shown her a photograph of the suspect. You know that "bite mark" evidence is inherently bogus. You know that the fingerprint expert was in error, and the fingerprint he "matched" was actually someone else's.

Now, in UE's world, the question of whether or not the police, the experts and prosecutors "reasoned correctly" based on the available evidence hinges on whether or not the guy did it. If he actually did it then a perfect chain of unimpeachable logic lead to his conviction. If he didn't do it then there was clearly an appalling breach of reason somewhere in the process. But this is obviously incorrect. The prosecutorial argument has been built on false premises and faulty reasoning regardless of whether the suspect is guilty or not.


But we weren't talking about a situation where there were false premises and faulty reasoning, were we? We were talking about a highly unusual event actually occuring and being witnessed by somebody. You have changed the example, claimed you know how I would assess that example and then attacked the answer you put into my mouth as if it was my own.


So when UE writes:

We can see, though, that he is completely wrong. Regardless of whether or not the event "actually happened" one can have a warranted belief that it happened or have an unwarranted belief that it happened.


Let's focus on the original example you gave, Yoink. We are talking about a case where an intelligent, sane, lucid person is actually abducted by real aliens. You have claimed that in such a situation, it would not be rational to believe that the event actually happened - that having directly witnessed it yourself would not justify you believing that it happened. This is an absurd claim. How can it not be warranted to believe something which actually happened to you, actually happened to you? Your answer is "it is a highly unlikely event", meaning "something I'm very skeptical about." It is YOU who are not being rational. You are claiming that when presented with an event which challenges your belief system, it is rational to refuse to believe it actually happened. How is that different to a creationist, who is very skeptical about evolution, coming into contact with some sort of incontravertible evidence supporting evolution and responding by thinking "Ah, looks like evidence of evolution, but it's so unlikely to actually be evidence of evolution that it is not rational for me to believe it!"? Total nonsense.


The other major error in UE's argument--one so trivial it's barely worth refuting--is an absurd overreliance on personal recollection. "I remember this happening, therefore it must have happened!"


It's not an error in my argument. I repeat: you are not in a position to make the judgement you are making. You do not know what happened or how accurate my personal recollection of it is. So this so-called "major error" is, like all of the other "errors" you think you can see, imaginary.

The rest of your post isn't actually addressed to me. You are addressing it to the rest of the board, presumably because you realise you've lost the argument and you're desperately trying to appeal to the audience in an attempt to convince them that you haven't.

My original point remains entirely untouched: you are not in a position to know what is or is not reasonable for me to believe about a specific direct experience of mine. You are in a position to know whether or not it is reasonable for YOU to believe it, but you also want to claim you know whether it is reasonable for ME to believe it, and for all your blathering nonsense, nothing you can say can put so much as a dent in that argument. You have now compounded your original mistake by trying to claim that even in the situation where we know the experience is genuine, it still wouldn't be rational to believe it.

I rest my case. Anyone who takes lessons on logic and critical thinking from you is a fool.

[Yoink]

Well, this IS the whole reason UE embraces a non-materialist philosophy - so that he CAN claim that subjective experience trumps objective reality. Any other primary assumption, and he would have to accept that his subjective experience was wrong in some fashion. The idea that his memory was permanently altered via delusion or psychosis, or that he suffers an ongoing delusion or psychosis, is so anathemic to his ego, that he MUST accept the details of this history-alteration as absolutely real, in spite of the fact there is absolutely no objective evidence of it ever happening. And if his subjective experiences include something that is not objectively possible or supported, he MUST reject objective reality in favor of subjective reality.

And this is why he so fervently rejects the only logical system of thought, physicalism/materialism, in favor of non-material theories.

Or, to sum it up, only the insane reject physicalism/materialism/sciencism.

No, I don't think you have to be "insane" to consider the possibility of metaphysical agents. I do accept (which you, obviously, don't) that "God did it" is a possible explanation for UE's experience. It's just one that has no evidence to support it and which one cannot have a warranted belief in.

I do wonder, I must say, what UE thinks this "God" he believes in is like. Clearly nothing like the Christian God. A sort of near-omnipotent prankster (like Q, evidently), evidently. I must say, the world we experience fits the hypothesis of such a god far better than it fits the hypothesis of the all-wise loving God of the Christians. The god who would say "heh, I'm going to screw around with UE today--just for the hell of it" is, no doubt, the same kind of god who would say "holocaust? Heck, why not!" It does make you wonder, though, what comfort it gives UE to feel he has "proof" of the existence of such a creature.

[UndercoverElephant]

Well, this IS the whole reason UE embraces a non-materialist philosophy - so that he CAN claim that subjective experience trumps objective reality.


Err...this is now getting surreal. I'm not claiming that subjective experience can "trump" objective reality. In the example Yoink suggested, the alien abduction was REAL. It actually happend in objective reality. So I'm not sure what point you are trying to make.


And this is why he so fervently rejects the only logical system of thought, physicalism/materialism...


:D

So physicalism is "the only logical ontology"? Okaaaaaaaay....


Or, to sum it up, only the insane reject physicalism/materialism/sciencism.

And it's insane to reject scientism. Wow! So anyone who believes anything at all which isn't based on scientific evidence, is insane.

This board never fails to amuse me.

[Yoink]

[blah blah blah]You have now compounded your original mistake by trying to claim that even in the situation where we know the experience is genuine, it still wouldn't be rational to believe it.[blah blah blah]

One question UE--and be very careful how you answer it: how do we "know" that this experience is genuine?

[UndercoverElephant]

I do wonder, I must say, what UE thinks this "God" he believes in is like.



Well, blow me down! Finally, you get around to asking the question you should have asked about ten pages ago when you first started losing your temper. Although you still haven't actually asked me.


Clearly nothing like the Christian God. A sort of near-omnipotent prankster (like Q, evidently), evidently. I must say, the world we experience fits the hypothesis of such a god far better than it fits the hypothesis of the all-wise loving God of the Christians. The god who would say "heh, I'm going to screw around with UE today--just for the hell of it" is, no doubt, the same kind of god who would say "holocaust? Heck, why not!" It does make you wonder, though, what comfort it gives UE to feel he has "proof" of the existence of such a creature.

Q is more like the Christian God than anything I believe in. Q is "more omnipotent" than the God I believe in, and is also anthropomorphised, unlike the God I believe in.

As soon as I said the word "God", you went off the deep end. You didn't bother actually trying to find out what I meant by that word. You still don't have much of an idea. But then, you don't bother trying to take all of the evidence into account, do you? You're quite confident you've already got sufficient information to make your mind up. Funny, that. It's almost as if you already know what your conclusion is going to be before you bother to do any thinking...

[Yoink]

Well, blow me down! Finally, you get around to asking the question you should have asked about ten pages ago when you first started losing your temper. Although you still haven't actually asked me.



Q is more like the Christian God than anything I believe in. Q is "more omnipotent" than the God I believe in, and is also anthropomorphised, unlike the God I believe in.

As soon as I said the word "God", you went off the deep end. You didn't bother actually trying to find out what I meant by that word. You still don't have much of an idea. But then, you don't bother trying to take all of the evidence into account, do you? You're quite confident you've already got sufficient information to make your mind up. Funny, that. It's almost as if you already know what your conclusion is going to be before you bother to do any thinking...

O.K., fine, I'll bite. What is your personal idiosyncratic definition of the word "God"?

But please don't forget to answer my last question:

How do we know that this experience is genuine?

[UndercoverElephant]

One question UE--and be very careful how you answer it: how do we "know" that this experience is genuine?

Because you STIPULATED it as such, Yoink. You gave the example of a person who is actually abducted by aliens. So the example is of a rational, sane, intelligent, educated, lucid person who is actually abducted by aliens and has vivid memories of the entire episode. We know it is genuine because we've defined it to be. The person in the example has to decide based upon all the information available, which includes his own experiences. According to you, the most reasonable thing for him to do is to deny that it happened and theorise that he temporarily went mad. According to me, it is perfectly possible that the person decides, based entirely on his own judgements about his own experiences, that it is reasonable to believe it actually happened. So why does he believe it, if he believes it? Because he trusts his own judgement. You are asking me to mistrust my own judgement and treat the situations as if my personal experiences were irrelevant. You are trying to claim that, in order to be rational, I should only take into account the amount of information YOU have about MY experiences. And you are talking nonsense.

[Gate2501]

The term "scientism" is extremely nebulous, and can range in meaning from a stance on the social sciences, to an outright strawman that even *I* would like to give a punch or two every once in a while. The term is so nebulous in fact, that it becomes almost useless in any discussion.

An excerpt from Wikipedia:
Range of meanings

Standard dictionary definitions include the following applications of the term "scientism":

* The use of the style, assumptions, techniques, and other attributes typically displayed by scientists.
* Methods and attitudes typical of or attributed to the natural scientist.
* An exaggerated trust in the efficacy of the methods of natural science applied to all areas of investigation, as in philosophy, the social sciences, and the humanities.
* The use of scientific or pseudoscientific language.
* The contention that the social sciences should be held to the somewhat stricter interpretation of scientific method used by the natural sciences.
* The belief that some or all of the social sciences, such as economics and sociology, are not sciences (or not solely engaged in science) because they commonly do not hold to the somewhat stricter interpretation of scientific method used by the natural sciences.
* The belief that scientific knowledge is the foundation of all knowledge and that, consequently, scientific argument should always be weighted more heavily than other forms of knowledge, particularly those which are not yet well described or justified from within the rational framework, or whose description fails to present itself in the course of a debate against a scientific argument. It can be contrasted by doctrines like historicism, which hold that there are certain "unknowable" truths.
* As a form of dogma: "In essence, scientism sees science as the absolute and only justifiable access to the truth."

[PixyMisa]

Because you STIPULATED it as such, Yoink.
I see. So this knowledge only works in a meta-discussion of hypothetical situations.

You do understand that the real world is not a meta-discussion of a hypothetical situation, right?

[UndercoverElephant]

Yoink,

What this comes down to is a subjective judgement call. We have to make these all the time. In the real world, we have to make decisions based on partial information, much of it subjective. In many of those situations, there is no one conclusion that "all rational persons" would have to come to, especially if they all had access to different information.

Making subjective judgement calls like this is called "a black art." The term "black art" has come to mean all sorts of subjective judgement calls, although that phrase originally meant exactly the sort of judgement call I have been talking about - those connected with "the black arts." You have no right and no ability to tell somebody else how to make judgement calls of this nature. I might be really bad at making those judgements. I might also be very good at it. You have no way of knowing, just as I'd have no way of knowing regarding the alien abductee.

The specific judgement call being made in the abduction example is to do with a person's ability to assess the validity of their own experience of the abduction. They have to ask themselves all sorts of questions about what might have happened, what state of mind they'd been in, whether they had been taking drugs, whether the experience had some of "unreal" taint to it, or whether, honestly, they had been totally awake and lucid during the whole thing. Only the person who has had that experience is in a position to make that judgement call. It's no use expecting somebody-else to make it for them - somebody who didn't go through the experience themselves and doesn't have all the background information.

I don't know why you are having so much difficulty accepting this. Earlier in this thread you expressed surprise that so many people were refusing to accept a very simple point which you described as "about as controversial as saying the sky is blue." Well, now you're doing the same thing yourself. You really aren't in any position to tell somebody else what is the most reasonable way for them to interpret their own subjective experiences, and as long as they aren't expecting you to believe their interpretation, I don't understand why this causes you or anybody-else a problem.

[Gate2501]

UndercoverElephant,

You should perhaps consider that what this may all be about, is compartmentalization. You are using semantic ambiguity and informal fallacies to inhibit critical thought with respect to your experience. At every turn, when someone tries to evaluate your experience, you have a reason why it is "immune" to objective evaluation of any kind. Much like your God is made "immune" to the burden of proof, by way of an informal fallacy that has been brought up repeatedly in this thread, and the one which spawned it.

Could it be that you want to take this experience off of the table, because you are afraid to take it out of that box(metaphorically speaking), and view it in the harsh light of day?

[UndercoverElephant]

UndercoverElephant,

You should perhaps consider that what this may all be about, is compartmentalization. You are using semantic ambiguity and informal fallacies to inhibit critical thought with respect to your experience.


How do you know? You're making the same mistake that Yoink is - you are trying to make a judgement about how rationally I am evaluating my own experiences, and you simply aren't in a position to accurately do so.


At every turn, when someone tries to evaluate your experience, you have a reason why it is "immune" to objective evaluation of any kind.


It is "immune" because nobody but myself has all of the information I have. You yourself make all sort of judgements of this sort, and not for one second would you allow me to tell you how to make those judgements for you.


Much like your God is made "immune" to the burden of proof, by way of an informal fallacy that has been brought up repeatedly in this thread, and the one which spawned it.

Could it be that you want to take this experience off of the table, because you are afraid to take it out of that box(metaphorically speaking), and view it in the harsh light of day?

No.

Could it be that you are being forced to come up with theories like that because, at the end of the day, you simply don't believe I could be correct?

All of the things yourself and Yoink are posting are, whether you admit it or not, being driven by the assumption that whatever happened, it wasn't what UE thinks it was. You don't actually have any justification for accusing me of thinking irrationally or unreasonably, but since you believe the chances of me being correct are almost zero, you have to come up with reasons why I might continue to believe. All sorts of theories have been put forward, most of them involving some sort of failure to think rationally or psychological weakness on my point. Good for you. Keep the theories coming. As long you don't actually try to tell me what is reasonable for me to believe about my own experiences, I don't care. You can believe whatever you like.

[!Kaggen]

This board never fails to amuse me.
You're not the only one :D

[!Kaggen]

And you are talking nonsense.
Its not the first time

[Yoink]

Because you STIPULATED it as such, Yoink. You gave the example of a person who is actually abducted by aliens. So the example is of a rational, sane, intelligent, educated, lucid person who is actually abducted by aliens and has vivid memories of the entire episode. We know it is genuine because we've defined it to be. The person in the example has to decide based upon all the information available, which includes his own experiences. According to you, the most reasonable thing for him to do is to deny that it happened and theorise that he temporarily went mad. According to me, it is perfectly possible that the person decides, based entirely on his own judgements about his own experiences, that it is reasonable to believe it actually happened. So why does he believe it, if he believes it? Because he trusts his own judgement. You are asking me to mistrust my own judgement and treat the situations as if my personal experiences were irrelevant. You are trying to claim that, in order to be rational, I should only take into account the amount of information YOU have about MY experiences. And you are talking nonsense.

I thought that this question would reduce you to this sort of absurdity.

I stipulated that the event actually happened, yes. I did not stipulate that the person to whom it happened knew this for a fact, however. So, I ask again, how does that person--the person to whom it happened--"know" that it happened?

Let me help you to see the point (although I know perfectly well that you see it--at least subconsciously--which is why you have to resort to hysterical denunciation rather than actually address it):

A real alien abduction happens to person X.

After the event, person X has no independent evidence to support their memories of the abduction.

Person X is therefore left to decide which is the more probable: that he actually experienced what he remembers or that he had a mental breakdown of some kind which has left him with false memories.

The question of what is the "rational" conclusion for that individual is utterly independent of whether the event actually happened or not. That the event "actually happened" is not an available datum for that individual to use in his calculations. It is, in fact, the thing he is trying to decide whether or not to believe. To assume it is true would be the essence of circular reasoning.

Of course, that circle is a familiar one for you, UE--it's the circle you're wearing a deep, deep groove in right here in this thread.

You assume that your personal recollections must be true (why? "Because I'm sane and my memories aren't false; therefore my memories aren't false, which proves I'm sane"). Starting from that assumption it would certainly be "logical" to assume that you did indeed witness the breaking of the ordinary laws of physics. Unfortunately the premise is false. Personal recollection is always suspect.

As soon as you ask yourself "how can I be sure that I actually experienced what I recollect experiencing?" your entire position crumbles. Don't worry, though, I know you'll never be honest enough to ask yourself that question.

[Yoink]

Yoink,

What this comes down to is a subjective judgement call. We have to make these all the time. In the real world, we have to make decisions based on partial information, much of it subjective. In many of those situations, there is no one conclusion that "all rational persons" would have to come to, especially if they all had access to different information.

Making subjective judgement calls like this is called "a black art." The term "black art" has come to mean all sorts of subjective judgement calls, although that phrase originally meant exactly the sort of judgement call I have been talking about - those connected with "the black arts." You have no right and no ability to tell somebody else how to make judgement calls of this nature. I might be really bad at making those judgements. I might also be very good at it. You have no way of knowing, just as I'd have no way of knowing regarding the alien abductee.

The specific judgement call being made in the abduction example is to do with a person's ability to assess the validity of their own experience of the abduction. They have to ask themselves all sorts of questions about what might have happened, what state of mind they'd been in, whether they had been taking drugs, whether the experience had some of "unreal" taint to it, or whether, honestly, they had been totally awake and lucid during the whole thing. Only the person who has had that experience is in a position to make that judgement call. It's no use expecting somebody-else to make it for them - somebody who didn't go through the experience themselves and doesn't have all the background information.

I don't know why you are having so much difficulty accepting this. Earlier in this thread you expressed surprise that so many people were refusing to accept a very simple point which you described as "about as controversial as saying the sky is blue." Well, now you're doing the same thing yourself. You really aren't in any position to tell somebody else what is the most reasonable way for them to interpret their own subjective experiences, and as long as they aren't expecting you to believe their interpretation, I don't understand why this causes you or anybody-else a problem.

So other people's personal recollections are subject to rational doubt, but you have special personal recollections that come with guaranteed "this really happened" stickers?

UE, you're making a patently false argument. No matter what you recall happening, it is possible that it is a false memory. Your refusal to admit that self evident truth shows that you are not interested in an honest assessment of the event.

Once you admit that it is possible that the memory is false then you have to admit that the reasonable person must ask: "which is more likely; that I have a false memory of an event, or that the laws of physics were randomly suspended for a while"? Now, either of these is possible, but which is more likely? Which one do we have adequate warrant to believe? We know of people having complex memories of things that never occurred all the time; we know that this is an everyday occurrence. We know of no single adequately documented instance of the suspension of the laws of physics.

The conclusion is obvious. And no--this is not a "refusal" to believe in the possibility of metaphysical action, it's simply saying that the rational person accepts the more parsimonious account until such time as better evidence can be adduced.

[Gate2501]

Could it be that you are being forced to come up with theories like that because, at the end of the day, you simply don't believe I could be correct?

It isn't like that at all. I do think that you could be correct. I just think that it is unlikely. When you use informal fallacies(basically anti-critical thinking), to obfuscate and insulate your experiences that led you to believe, it makes it seem even more unlikely than it already was.


All of the things yourself and Yoink are posting are, whether you admit it or not, being driven by the assumption that whatever happened, it wasn't what UE thinks it was.

It very well could have been what you think it was.


You don't actually have any justification for accusing me of thinking irrationally or unreasonably, but since you believe the chances of me being correct are almost zero, you have to come up with reasons why I might continue to believe.

Do you know why we don't have any justification for accusing you of thinking irrationally with respect to your experience? Because you are masking it with semantic trickery, and informal fallacies(you do the "special pleading" one a lot). You are desperately denying access to your experience, I can only guess as to why.

I don't know if what your experience led you to believe was irrational in light of your experience. I do know that they tactics you are using to compartmentalize/obfuscate this experience run against critical thinking and informal logic.


All sorts of theories have been put forward, most of them involving some sort of failure to think rationally or psychological weakness on my point. Good for you. Keep the theories coming. As long you don't actually try to tell me what is reasonable for me to believe about my own experiences, I don't care. You can believe whatever you like.

I am not going to be one of those people that try to come up with alternative explanations for your experience. I will however say, that the least likely natural explanation is always more likely than a supernatural explanation.

[Yoink]

UE, here's a nice example for you to ponder--wrt the independence of the "rational" conclusion from what ultimately proves to be the "truth."

Have you heard of the so-called Wow signal (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wow%21_signal)?

You can click the link if you want to know more, but in brief, it's the closest thing we've ever seen to a sign of proof of intelligent life out there in space.

Now, we have an experience (the signal). It's an experience that could possibly have been caused by aliens. If it wasn't an error of some kind (a false reading), we have no explanation for it other than alien radio activity.

Now, would a rational person insist that the Wow signal is "proof" of alien activity? Of course not. It has never been repeated, there are many possible causes of error which require no extraordinary explanations etc. etc. It is obvious that any reasonable person will say "this is most likely to have been a random error of some kind" rather than insist "no, this is consistent with alien existence and I want to believe in alien existence, therefore it proves alien existence."

But what if--years from now--we discover that it was, indeed, a deliberate effort on the part of an alien civilization to contact us? Will that mean that people who decided that it was most probably an error reasoned falsely? Of course not. They reasoned correctly from the available evidence. What was actually "true" had no relationship to the question of "what are we most strongly justified in believing to be true."

[UndercoverElephant]

It isn't like that at all. I do think that you could be correct. I just think that it is unlikely. When you use informal fallacies(basically anti-critical thinking), to obfuscate and insulate your experiences that led you to believe, it makes it seem even more unlikely than it already was.


I haven't made any informal fallacies.


Do you know why we don't have any justification for accusing you of thinking irrationally with respect to your experience? Because you are masking it with semantic trickery, and informal fallacies(you do the "special pleading" one a lot).


You are yet to demonstrate why anything I have said constitutes "special pleading."


You are desperately denying access to your experience, I can only guess as to why.


This is silly. I am noy DENYING you access to my experiences. I can't know what it's like to be you either, but it would be absurd to claim you were "denying" me this information. That's just life. You're you. I'm me.

This whole conversation is now pointless. The point I am making is very simple and can't be refuted: nobody has the right to tell me what is or is not reasonable in terms of how I interpret my own experiences. All the rest of it is just people trying to make sense of what I'm saying in terms of their belief systems. I don't care how people who, from my perspective, have a flawed and restricted way of looking at reality, choose to interpret what I am telling them.

[Gate2501]

You are yet to demonstrate why anything I have said constitutes "special pleading."

Special Pleading:

God is immune to the burden of proof because evidence of god is not possible.

My personal experience that led me to believe what I do, is not open to objective critical analysis. Therefore, my beliefs are not unjustified, because you cannot examine them.

[UndercoverElephant]

UE, here's a nice example for you to ponder--wrt the independence of the "rational" conclusion from what ultimately proves to be the "truth."

Have you heard of the so-called Wow signal (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wow%21_signal)?

You can click the link if you want to know more, but in brief, it's the closest thing we've ever seen to a sign of proof of intelligent life out there in space.


I'm forty years old, I have been passionately interested in Astronomy since I was a small child, studied three sciences at A-level and subscribed to New Scientist magazine for nearly twenty years.

I don't need to click on the link. Stop patronising me.


Now, we have an experience (the signal). It's an experience that could possibly have been caused by aliens. If it wasn't an error of some kind (a false reading), we have no explanation for it other than alien radio activity.

Now, would a rational person insist that the Wow signal is "proof" of alien activity? Of course not. It has never been repeated, there are many possible causes of error which require no extraordinary explanations etc. etc. It is obvious that any reasonable person will say "this is most likely to have been a random error of some kind" rather than insist "no, this is consistent with alien existence and I want to believe in alien existence, therefore it proves alien existence."


Yup, that's what most reasonable people would say. In this case, the experiential component of the event isn't very important. Everyone had access to the data. This is an example of an indirect experience which can be objectively shared. Everyone who sees the readout is in the same position, epistemologically. It's not the same as an alien abduction or a mystical experience, where the experiencer is in a significantly different epistemological position to everybody-else.


But what if--years from now--we discover that it was, indeed, a deliberate effort on the part of an alien civilization to contact us? Will that mean that people who decided that it was most probably an error reasoned falsely? Of course not. They reasoned correctly from the available evidence. What was actually "true" had no relationship to the question of "what are we most strongly justified in believing to be true."

Yes, in this case, "WE" is appropriate. In the other cases we were discussing, it is not.

[UndercoverElephant]

Special Pleading:

God is immune to the burden of proof because evidence of god is not possible.



Yes, but how can this be a logical fallacy if the definition of God in question logically (deductively) leads to conclusion that no proof is possible?

You are trying to claim that something you call an "informal logical fallacy" is more important, logically, than a formal deduction. This cannot be so.

If proof of the existence of God is impossible then it makes no sense to talk about any "burden of proof of the existence of God." It is simply an issue about which we have to accept that no proof is possible.

UE: "There is no burden of proof about whether Shakespeare was the greatest ever writer, because no proof is possible."
Gate: "That's Special Pleading".

No it isn't.



My personal experience that led me to believe what I do, is not open to objective critical analysis. Therefore, my beliefs are not unjustified, because you cannot examine them.

Eh? That isn't what I've said. I said they were objectively unjustifiable - I can't justify them to you. I said they were justified to me. I did NOT say "my beliefs are not unjustified."

[Yoink]

I'm forty years old, I have been passionately interested in Astronomy since I was a small child, studied three sciences at A-level and subscribed to New Scientist magazine for nearly twenty years.

I don't need to click on the link. Stop patronising me.



Yup, that's what most reasonable people would say. In this case, the experiential component of the event isn't very important. Everyone had access to the data. This is an example of an indirect experience which can be objectively shared. Everyone who sees the readout is in the same position, epistemologically. It's not the same as an alien abduction or a mystical experience, where the experiencer is in a significantly different epistemological position to everybody-else.



Yes, in this case, "WE" is appropriate. In the other cases we were discussing, it is not.

You keep trying to claim that the fact that you personally experienced this mystical thing changes something. It doesn't. Again no matter what the experience was it is possible that it was a delusion. We know that it is possible because you have stipulated that you have no evidence other than your recollections.

In this case, we all have sufficient access to the evidence at hand: we all know (you included) that the evidence is nothing other than one person's personal recollections. The content of those recollections is utterly immaterial.

You--like the rest of us--are in the position of asking "which is more plausible, that my personal recollections no matter how vivid and coherent are false, or that the laws of physics were suspended for a while." The answer is pretty obvious.

(And P.S.: I wasn't patronizing you about the Wow signal: how was I to know that you've had this lifelong interest in astronomy?)

ETA: I should mention one caveat: if, during your mystical experience, you had received knowledge that you could not have received by normal means [e.g., you were given, say, the secret to perpetual motion] then that would be stronger evidence that something extraordinary had happened to you; it wouldn't amount to proof of 'God,' of course, but as you seem to be using 'God' in an idiosyncratic manner to mean simply 'something with powers we don't comprehend' then that would be strong evidence that you were acted on by some such being. But, again, your God simply screwed around with you to no particular purpose.

[UndercoverElephant]

Gate,

I'm getitng the impression you think that the claim that no proof of God is possible is "special pleading" because you think that the vast majority of claims should be subject to a burden of proof. This is not correct. Only certain specific situations is proof possible. These are basically scientific questions, but also include legal situations where the burden of proof is imposed via the moral/legal framework ("innocent until proven guilty"). What it does NOT include is any of the great metaphysical and epistemological questions. Is there a burden of proof on materialists to prove that materialism is true? No, of course there isn't, because it's impossible to prove it in principle. Now, if you are faced with a naive theist who makes claims about God which are scientifically testable, then you might well be able to demand proof. But if you are facing somebody like me, who has a good background knowledge of science and philosophy and whose concept of God is compatible both with existing science and mainstream philosophy, then you probably cannot demand proof. My belief in God is like your belief in Materialism: no proof is possible. If I am "special pleading" about no proof of God being possible then so are you with respect to materialism.

[Gate2501]

Yes, but how can this be a logical fallacy if the definition of God in question logically (deductively) leads to conclusion that no proof is possible?

Your conclusion was that no evidence was possible to plug into the burden of proof. The kind of deductive logic that would define God in such a way is necessarily bunk(unless you admit that he is a fantasy), because in doing so, you must admit that you cannot possible have gathered evidence to warrant making the claim that this God exists in the first place. Your definition of God is not compatible with the claim that he exists in reality.


You are trying to claim that something you call an "informal logical fallacy" is more important, logically, than a formal deduction. This cannot be so.

This isn't a peeing contest between branches of logical inquiry. Are all "formal deductions" insulated from informal logical fallacies? Once again, you are attempting to immunize your experiences and beliefs from critical thinking.


If proof of the existence of God is impossible then it makes no sense to talk about any "burden of proof of the existence of God. It is simply an issue about which we have to accept that no proof is possible.

Then what warrants you making the claim that this God exists in the first place? A flight of fancy? Or is it another "formal deduction" that is immune to all critical thinking practices?


UE: "There is no burden of proof about whether Shakespeare was the greatest ever writer, because no proof is possible."
Gate: "That's Special Pleading".

No it isn't.


Dishonest rubbish. I wouldn't ever call that special pleading. That is an apples and oranges comparison to an objective existential claim like "God exists".

When your crummy false analogies do not fool anyone, you add a fictional response from me?

Very poor taste dude.



Eh? That isn't what I've said. I said they were objectively unjustifiable - I can't justify them to you. I said they were justified to me. I did NOT say "my beliefs are not unjustified."

/sigh

[UndercoverElephant]

You keep trying to claim that the fact that you personally experienced this mystical thing changes something. It doesn't.


Of course it does! It means I am in a different epistemolgical position to you. If I'm correct, then it means that I know something that you don't.


Again no matter what the experience was it is possible that it was a delusion. We know that it is possible because you have stipulated that you have no evidence other than your recollections.


Makes no difference. Sure, it's not logically impossible that it was a delusion. That isn't what we are discussing. We are discussing whether or not you are in a position to tell me that my interpretation of the events is unreasonable.


In this case, we all have sufficient access to the evidence at hand...


No you don't. I have vastly more relevant evidence to hand than you do, because the experiences only made sense within the context of my own life history and belief system. You have a tiny fraction of the information which is available to me.

[Gate2501]

Gate,

I'm getitng the impression you think that the claim that no proof of God is possible is "special pleading" because you think that the vast majority of claims should be subject to a burden of proof. This is not correct. Only certain specific situations is proof possible. These are basically scientific questions, but also include legal situations where the burden of proof is imposed via the moral/legal framework ("innocent until proven guilty"). What it does NOT include is any of the great metaphysical and epistemological questions. Is there a burden of proof on materialists to prove that materialism is true? No, of course there isn't, because it's impossible to prove it in principle. Now, if you are faced with a naive theist who makes claims about God which are scientifically testable, then you might well be able to demand proof. But if you are facing somebody like me, who has a good background knowledge of science and philosophy and whose concept of God is compatible both with existing science and mainstream philosophy, then you probably cannot demand proof. My belief in God is like your belief in Materialism: no proof is possible. If I am "special pleading" about no proof of God being possible then so are you with respect to materialism.

A claim of existence is completely different than a philosophical position as far as the burden of proof is concerned.

You are making whack analogies.

There is a burden of proof on all positive existential claims.

[Yoink]

Of course it does! It means I am in a different epistemolgical position to you. If I'm correct, then it means that I know something that you don't.

Makes no difference. Sure, it's not logically impossible that it was a delusion. That isn't what we are discussing. We are discussing whether or not you are in a position to tell me that my interpretation of the events is unreasonable.

No you don't. I have vastly more relevant evidence to hand than you do, because the experiences only made sense within the context of my own life history and belief system. You have a tiny fraction of the information which is available to me.

You just conceded the argument UE. You accept that it could be a delusion. Great. Now you are in the position of trying to decide "which is more likely--that it was a delusion (possible, and entirely in accord with all known laws of physics etc.) or that it was a rupture of previously known laws of physics (the only evidence we have for the possibility of that is the very experience that is in question). The only reasons to plump for the second are the circular ones you've been parading endlessly through this thread.

[PixyMisa]

Of course it does! It means I am in a different epistemolgical position to you. If I'm correct, then it means that I know something that you don't.
Nope.

You had an experience. You told us this. Now we know you had an experience. We're even.

Makes no difference. Sure, it's not logically impossible that it was a delusion. That isn't what we are discussing. We are discussing whether or not you are in a position to tell me that my interpretation of the events is unreasonable.
We are, and it is.

You are putting your experience, which you refuse to properly describe, against all confirmed observations of everything ever.

Well, guess what? You lose.

No you don't. I have vastly more relevant evidence to hand than you do, because the experiences only made sense within the context of my own life history and belief system.
That sounds exactly like confirmation bias.

You have a tiny fraction of the information which is available to me.
Oh? Then why don't you tell us what we're missing?

[qayak]

Of course it does! It means I am in a different epistemolgical position to you. If I'm correct, then it means that I know something that you don't.

And this makes no difference what so ever.


Sure, it's not logically impossible that it was a delusion. That isn't what we are discussing. We are discussing whether or not you are in a position to tell me that my interpretation of the events is unreasonable.

This is backwards. The discussion is not about what is possible because anything is possible. The discussion is about what is probable and the probability of a delusion is very high versus that of reality being very low. As a result, we are in a better position to tell you that your interpretation of events is unreasonable than you are to tell us your interpretation is correct.


I have vastly more relevant evidence to hand than you do, because the experiences only made sense within the context of my own life history and belief system. You have a tiny fraction of the information which is available to me.

One simply needs to invoke Occam's Razor to explain what is wrong with your reasoning.

[UndercoverElephant]

Your conclusion was that no evidence was possible to plug into the burden of proof. The kind of deductive logic that would define God in such a way is necessarily bunk(unless you admit that he is a fantasy), because in doing so, you must admit that you cannot possible have gathered evidence to warrant making the claim that this God exists in the first place. Your definition of God is not compatible with the claim that he exists in reality.


Sorry, but that doesn't follow. I said no objective evidence is possible, the primary reason being that God is a cause, not something that can be caused. For us to be able to scientifically test something, then there is a requirement that that thing behaves deterministically: if you heat water up to 100 degrees, then it boils. It always boils. It can't choose not to boil. If you treat God like that, then it ceases to be God anymore. It has been reduced to some sort of metaphysical deterministic system. However, just because God can't be repeatably provoked into jumping when humans say "jump", it does not follow that God can't have an effect on reality which would be detectable to an individual human being in a specific set of circumstances. The thing that makes it objectively untestable is not that there is no effect on the physical universe, but that there is no way of recreating the conditions, and even if you could recreate the conditions then there is no necessity that the same thing will occur.

You can expand this to pretty much the whole of the "paranormal". "Paranormal" means "unusual" or "aberrant". It described phenomena which don't normally occur and don't necessarily obey the normal rules. If something currently considered to be paranormal actually turns out to exist then it will mean that it is behaving in a "normal" way. The very fact that you can scientifically test for it stops it from being "paranormal."


This isn't a peeing contest between branches of logical inquiry. Are all "formal deductions" insulated from informal logical fallacies? Once again, you are attempting to immunize your experiences and beliefs from critical thinking.


No I'm not. Do you think there is a burden of proof on materialists to prove materialism is true?

If not, then stop accusing me of logical fallacies for claiming the same about God.


Then what warrants you making the claim that this God exists in the first place?


You already know the answer to that question.


Dishonest rubbish. I wouldn't ever call that special pleading. That is an apples and oranges comparison to an objective existential claim like "God exists".


It's EXACTLY the same.





When your crummy false analogies do not fool anyone, you add a fictional response from me?

Very poor taste dude.

/sigh

Run out of arguments?

[UndercoverElephant]

And this makes no difference what so ever.


And your argument to back that up is....?


This is backwards. The discussion is not about what is possible because anything is possible.


Oh no it isn't. It isn't possible to make a square circle. Nor is it possible to build a perpetual motion machine.


The discussion is about what is probable and the probability of a delusion is very high versus that of reality being very low. As a result, we are in a better position to tell you that your interpretation of events is unreasonable than you are to tell us your interpretation is correct.


You can say that my interpretation seems unreasonable to you, given the amount of information available to you. You cannot tell me what is unreasonable for me, because you do not have enough information to make that judgement.

[UndercoverElephant]

You just conceded the argument UE. You accept that it could be a delusion. Great.


Err...no that isn't what we were arguing about, was it? I've never denied that it could be a delusion. Here it is again: we were arguing about whether or not you are in a position to tell me what is reasonable for me to believe about my own experiences. We were NOT arguing about whether it is possible that it was a delusion. I said about ten pages ago that if I told you what happened, you would reasonably conclude that it was probably a delusion.

Nice try, though. Did you hope I wouldn't notice?


Now you are in the position of trying to decide "which is more likely--that it was a delusion (possible, and entirely in accord with all known laws of physics etc.) or that it was a rupture of previously known laws of physics (the only evidence we have for the possibility of that is the very experience that is in question). The only reasons to plump for the second are the circular ones you've been parading endlessly through this thread.

How many different strawmen are you going to erect? Did I claim there was a "rupture in the laws of physics"? Nope, you just made it up.

[UndercoverElephant]

Nope.

You had an experience. You told us this. Now we know you had an experience. We're even.


Same logic as:

World war 1 veteran experiences hell at the Battle of the Somme. He tells you about it. Now you're even.

:rolleyes:

[Gate2501]

It's EXACTLY the same.

I'm sorry buddy, but a claim of existence "X exists", is not analogous to a claim that Shakespeare is a great writer "X is awesome".

It isn't EXACTLY the same.

It isn't even REMOTELY the same as far as the application of critical thinking to a claim is concerned.

[UndercoverElephant]

I'm sorry buddy, but a claim of existence "X exists", is not analogous to a claim that Shakespeare is a great writer "X is awesome".

It isn't EXACTLY the same.

It isn't even REMOTELY the same as far as the application of critical thinking to a claim is concerned.

It's the same as far as the application of science and objectivity are concerned. You cannot prove these claims are true. PERIOD.

[Gate2501]

It's the same as far as the application of science and objectivity are concerned. You cannot prove these claims are true. PERIOD.

Really?

Objective claims of existence, and subjective claims of greatness, are the same as far as the application of science and objectivity are concerned??

Really????

[UndercoverElephant]

Really?

Objective claims of existence, and subjective claims of greatness, are the same as far as the application of science and objectivity are concerned??

Really????

Really.

Claiming that God exists is not an objective claim of existence in the same sense that claiming the loch ness monster exists is. The loch ness monster is a species of large animal purported to live in specific body of water. God isn't usually considered to be physical and has no location. The only claim about existence which matters is the claim that God has some sort of causal effect over physical reality, and this claim isn't testable because, as explained above, these effects can't themselves be provoked by humans carrying out scientific tests.

So there are different reasons why the claim about God and the claim about Shakespeare cannot be objectively verified, but they equivalent insomuch as neither of them can be objectively verified.

[PixyMisa]

Same logic as:

World war 1 veteran experiences hell at the Battle of the Somme. He tells you about it. Now you're even.
For the purposes of knowing he had an experience at the Somme, yes, we're even.

Of course, there's no particular reason to doubt that a man of the appropriate age (are there any left alive today?) and nationality experienced hell at the Battle of the Somme. Lots of men did. It would be in accordance with recorded history, and of course with all our knowledge of every field of science. Occam's Razor says it's reasonable enough.

No part of that applies to your claims, whatever they are today.

[UndercoverElephant]

For the purposes of knowing he had an experience at the Somme, yes, we're even.

Of course, there's no particular reason to doubt that a man of the appropriate age (are there any left alive today?)

The last two British veterans of WWI died last month, within a week of each other. One of them, Henry Allingham, was the oldest man in the world (114) when he died. He lived in a blind veteran's home in my home city. I'm going on holiday next week with a person who taught him how to make pottery.

:)

Being told about the Somme, and actually living through it, are not "equal."

[PixyMisa]

Sorry, but that doesn't follow. I said no objective evidence is possible, the primary reason being that God is a cause, not something that can be caused. For us to be able to scientifically test something, then there is a requirement that that thing behaves deterministically: if you heat water up to 100 degrees, then it boils.
Wrong!

For us to experimentally test something, there is a requirement that the conditions are specified. If, under controlled conditions, sometimes it boils and sometimes it doesn't, we've learned something.

It always boils.Not necessary.

It can't choose not to boil.Of course it can. Well, not water, but in general, we perform experiments on that sort of system all the time.

If you treat God like that, then it ceases to be God anymore.Special pleading.

If it's a cause, it causes something. If it causes something, it can be measured. Indirectly, but that's no problem either.

It has been reduced to some sort of metaphysical deterministic system.If that's even meaningful, then it's false.

However, just because God can't be repeatably provoked into jumping when humans say "jump", it does not follow that God can't have an effect on reality which would be detectable to an individual human being in a specific set of circumstances.
In which case it is objectively testable.

The thing that makes it objectively untestable is not that there is no effect on the physical universe, but that there is no way of recreating the conditions, and even if you could recreate the conditions then there is no necessity that the same thing will occur.
None of that is required. We can't recreate the conditions in astronomy or geology or anthropology or paleontology. All we can do is continue to make observations.

And this works. It works just fine. And there is no sign of your God, anywhere, ever.

You can expand this to pretty much the whole of the "paranormal". "Paranormal" means "unusual" or "aberrant".Special pleading.

It described phenomena which don't normally occur and don't necessarily obey the normal rules.Special pleading.

If something currently considered to be paranormal actually turns out to exist then it will mean that it is behaving in a "normal" way.Special pleading.

The very fact that you can scientifically test for it stops it from being "paranormal."Special pleading.

No I'm not. Do you think there is a burden of proof on materialists to prove materialism is true?It can't be proven true. But it's not relevant. Materialism has no causal effect on anything at all, and no-one ever suggested it did.

If not, then stop accusing me of logical fallacies for claiming the same about God.Special pleading.

You already know the answer to that question.Special pleading.

It's EXACTLY the same.Special pleading.

Run out of arguments?Ad hominem.

[Maia]

For anyone following this thread though, let me point out where UE is erring.

To begin with, he assumes that no rational process of thought could lead to a false belief and that no irrational process of thought could lead to a true belief.

[snip]



It's not exactly that I disagree with you, Yoink, but I would take a different tack on this. I think where the problem lies is more along the lines of this: for some reason, UE won't just say, "Okay, no matter what my belief structure is, no matter what my experience was, no matter what my beliefs are about its meaning, no matter how impossible I feel it is for you to understand it, no matter how determined I am to not explain it to you, we are clearly never going to get anywhere with this entire argument. So I'm going to stop posting about it. You think what you want, and I'll think what I want."

It's UE's right to interpret his own experience, but if it's thrown out on the table without ever being actually explained, complete with lots of "you're not capable of understanding this", then it's not very hard to predict that on a board of skeptics, some people are going to say it can be explained by delusions and so forth. If UE could be less defensive and could phrase the dialog differently, I don't think he'd be reading all of the "delusional" and "psychosis" type responses. (!) I mean, I don't think those are the most helpful things to say either. But people have the right to respond as they see fit, and again, those responses are going to be determined by the way the entire dialog is going. If someone starts out with an argumentative and confronting tone, saying that they have all kinds of secret knowledge that nobody else can possibly understand, they're going to get a certain type of response from most people-- it's just common sense.

[UndercoverElephant]

Sorry Pixy, but you're back to the one-word "rebuttals."

Anyone can write the word "Wrong!"

This is why I ignore your posts.

[PixyMisa]

Being told about the Somme, and actually living through it, are not "equal."
They're not the same. But if someone tells me about their experience at the Somme - or at Iwo Jima, or Basra - then I know that they report having had an experience at wherever. And if they are of an appropriate age and nationality and gender, then I have no particular reason to doubt them (unless the details are factually problematic). So we are indeed equal for knowing that this person had an experience at wherever.

Same goes for you. You had an experience. Okay, fine. You told us. Now we're even.

To go further, we have to examine the evidence. You say there isn't any? Fine. We throw out your claim. Not a problem. Done.

That was easy, now, wasn't it?

[PixyMisa]

Sorry Pixy, but you're back to the one-word "rebuttals."

Anyone can write the word "Wrong!"

This is why I ignore your posts.
UndercoverElephant, you've been posting the same hapless misunderstandings of the scientific method for as long as I can remember. They're still wrong. Logically incoherent, factually false. There's little left to say.

[PixyMisa]

Except this: It wasn't just one-word rebuttals. Everyone can see that. The post is right there. You just haven't addressed any of the points I made refuting your claims.

[UndercoverElephant]

It's not exactly that I disagree with you, Yoink, but I would take a different tack on this. I think where the problem lies is more along the lines of this: for some reason, UE won't just say, "Okay, no matter what my belief structure is, no matter what my experience was, no matter what my beliefs are about its meaning, no matter how impossible I feel it is for you to understand it, no matter how determined I am to not explain it to you, we are clearly never going to get anywhere with this entire argument. So I'm going to stop posting about it. You think what you want, and I'll think what I want."


I am not going to back down while there are people making factually incorrect claims about the most simple things I'm saying. The thread was started because, as the poll shows, about half the people on this board do not understand what the word "illogical" means. Eventually it turned into various people claiming that whilst I wasn't technically being illogical, what I believed was necessarily unjustified. This is not correct either, and it has absolutely nothing to do with the specifics of what I believe. There is a general point about epistemology here and it is as simple as the general point I was making about logic. Am I going to walk away from that without defending my ground? No, I'm not. I have, however, repeatedly stated that what I believe is of no relevance to anybody else and that there is no point in me discussing it. It's not my fault that the skeptics here won't accept this. They seem to think that all I have to do is tell them what happened, and they can rationalise it away for me. What is the point in going through this procedure? There is none. I am well-educated scientifically and was a skeptic myself for many years. I don't need anyone to tell me that "it could have been a delusion." The whole thing is just an exercise in those people proving to themselves what they already believe about claims like these, although in fact it proves nothing at all. From the moment I said "I can't objectively justify these beliefs", this branch of the debate should have ended. Please don't blame me for the fact that it didn't. The people who are arguing with me weren't satisfied with me acknowledging that they are objectively unjustifiable. They want to prove that they are also subjectively unjustifiable. They cannot do so, but won't stop trying. Not my fault...


It's UE's right to interpret his own experience, but if it's thrown out on the table without ever being actually explained, complete with lots of "you're not capable of understanding this", then it's not very hard to predict that on a board of skeptics, some people are going to say it can be explained by delusions and so forth.


It wasn't even "thrown out on the table." I was told the following: "if it is impossible to justify something objectively, then it is also impossible to justify it subjectively." This claim is simply false. The conclusion does not follow from the premise. In order to show that it is false, you have to give an example of how it might be possible to justify something subjectively which can't be justified objectively. Again, this is just a fact of life. It's not my fault if some of the people here can't cope with it.



If UE could be less defensive and could phrase the dialog differently..


You're kidding. How is it possible to be "less defensive" when I am routinely subjected to personal attacks?


, I don't think he'd be reading all of the "delusional" and "psychosis" type responses.


Oh yes I would. Those accusations are necessary as part of the "rationalisation" process. It almost certainly didn't happen, UE believes it did, therefore he must be delusional. Makes perfect sense, provided you agree with the premise "almost certainly didn't happen."

NONE OF THAT MATTERS. What I believe has no negative effect on anybody-else. I am not trying to convert anyone, defraud anyone, impose moral judgements on anyone or ask anyone to believe anything they don't already believe. The discussion is being driven by the needs of certain people here who aren't willing to accept that there could be any other reasonable way of understanding the nature of reality apart from their own. They aren't satisfied with their own skepticism and with the debunking of debunkable claims. They want to enforce the scientistic/materialistic/deterministic view of reality as the only reasonable worldview, and in order to do so they need to try to prove that what I believe is unreasonable, even for me, and without knowing why I believe what I do. THAT does matter. It is an attempt to turn science and skepticism into something more like a cult, where the belief system is enforced and where any percieved threat to that belief system is ruthlessly attacked.

[UndercoverElephant]

Maia,

I'll tell what really winds me up. It's people who pride themselves on their knowledge of the world and their ability to think critically, but who in fact haven't taken the time to properly educate themselves about the basics of philosophy. Not only do half of them not know what the word "illogical" means, they don't even take any notice when it is repeatedly explained to them what it does mean. Those same people wouldn't take such a cavalier attitude towards science. They wouldn't think "Ah, anyone can do this, doesn't matter if I don't know what the basic terminology means or anything about the history of this subject. I can be a critical thinker without knowing anything about philosophy. Pah! Philosophy! What a waste of time that is. Science is all you need to be a critical thinker!"

This combination of ignorance and arrogance is really quite unpleasant. Somebody has to challenge it, and it might just as well be me.

What I specifically believe about religion is irrelevant. What matters is the following argument:

Genuine mystical experiences are possible. Skeptics have never experienced such things (or they wouldn't be skeptics.) It is therefore possible that some people have access to some sort of knowledge or perception of reality which skeptics do not. It is possible that those people actually know something about the nature of reality that skeptics can't know.

The above argument can't be refuted, unless you want to deny that genuine mystical experiences are possible, which is a very hard claim to back up. And because it can't be refuted, it means there is a potential epistemological imbalance between the two sides. The skeptics have no way of knowing whether such things are real, regardless of how strongly they disbelieve them. But if the mystics are right, then they do have a means of confirmation available. This situation can never change. It will always be so. There will always be mystics and always be skeptics, and the skeptics just have to accept that there is nothing they can do about this. You can't use science or logic to refute personal mysticism.

Geoff

[Gate2501]

Genuine mystical experiences are possible. Skeptics have never experienced such things (or they wouldn't be skeptics.) It is therefore possible that some people have access to some sort of knowledge or perception of reality which skeptics do not. It is possible that those people actually know something about the nature of reality that skeptics can't know.

The above argument can't be refuted, unless you want to deny that genuine mystical experiences are possible, which is a very hard claim to back up.

Right, it is possible that I could "experience" just about anything, because everything that I "experience" is filtered through an organ in my skull that can go completely haywire(I am not saying that this is what happened to you!). We can also develop false memories of past "experiences" that may not have even occurred.

If you want to say that this experience was anything more than natural(see above), then we do not have to refute anything so long as you can not produce evidence to support or warrant this claim.

We are not saying that genuine mystical experiences are not possible. We are simply rejecting your claim that they are pending evidence. To say that they are possible because we cannot prove that they are not possible, once again, is a plain and simple logical fallacy. Your quote above is almost the most clear cut example of shifting the burden that I have ever seen in the wild!

[UndercoverElephant]

Right, it is possible that I could "experience" just about anything, because everything that I "experience" is filtered through an organ in my skull that can go completely haywire(I am not saying that this is what happened to you!). We can also develop false memories of past "experiences" that may not have even occurred.

If you want to say that this experience was anything more than natural(see above), then we do not have to refute anything so long as you can not produce evidence to support or warrant this claim.


Fine. Since I'm claiming no such evidence is even possible, this is a non-starter.



We are not saying that genuine mystical experiences are not possible. We are simply rejecting your claim that they are pending evidence.


Fine. It would be very strange if you chose to believe me, after all.


To say that they are possible because we cannot prove that they are not possible, once again, is a plain and simple logical fallacy.


And I didn't say that. I said they are possible. I said you'd find it hard to claim they are impossible. I didn't say they are possible because you can't prove they are impossible. They are two independent propositions.


Your quote above is almost the most clear cut example of shifting the burden that I have ever seen in the wild!

There isn't any burden of proof. You cannot place a burden of proof on somebody to prove something that they themselves claim is unprovable. You can say "I don't believe it, because there's no objective evidence and no subjective evidence available to me" but you can't legitimately demand that somebody prove it.

[Maia]

We can also develop false memories of past "experiences" that may not have even occurred.



All right, y'all, please, don't keep saying this. Here's why: there is no such thing as "False Memory Syndrome". It certainly isn't in the DSM-IV-TR; it isn't recognized by the American Medical Association, American Psychological Association, or American Psychiatric Association. It's actually demolished in the Skeptic Wiki (http://skepticwiki.org/index.php/False_Memory_Syndrome). I'm also on the oldest Dissociative Disorders list-serv in existence, we have most of the world's experts there (I'm humbled to be on it, personally!), and they rip FMS to shreds pretty regularly. This isn't to say that it's impossible for anyone to ever have a false memory of any occurrence, but early studies which seemed to indicate that false memories could be artifically induced have been completely debunked. Don't keep it going on a skeptics' forum!

That being said, I suppose you could say people are constructing arguments on better grounds anyway, if this was really something where there was any point in arguing against it. But again, I just don't think it is. I don't see this argument going anywhere. If anything, I've seen some good arguments for why UE would be a lot better off just telling us more about what the experience was, because people are ripping it to shreds anyway, so there doesn't seem to be that much point in keeping it a mystery-- but I don't really see this as something that's likely to happen.

[Gate2501]

There isn't any burden of proof. You cannot place a burden of proof on somebody to prove something that they themselves claim is unprovable. You can say "I don't believe it, because there's no objective evidence and no subjective evidence available to me" but you can't legitimately demand that somebody prove it.

The special pleading... it buuuuuurns!!!

Sorry buddy, but you made a claim: "Mystical experiences are possible".

If you are referring to some subjective experience that has no bearing on objective reality whatsoever, then I have no beef with you. There isn't a burden of proof with respect to that. You would have to admit though, that your experience was entirely natural, and not mystical.

The minute you claim that this subjective experience is a part of objective reality, your claim bears a burden of proof.

Saying that it is unprovable(no evidence possible) AND *real* with respect to objective reality, is not coherent.

[Gate2501]

All right, y'all, please, don't keep saying this. Here's why: there is no such thing as "False Memory Syndrome". It certainly isn't in the DSM-IV-TR; it isn't recognized by the American Medical Association, American Psychological Association, or American Psychiatric Association. It's actually demolished in the Skeptic Wiki (http://skepticwiki.org/index.php/False_Memory_Syndrome). I'm also on the oldest Dissociative Disorders list-serv in existence, we have most of the world's experts there (I'm humbled to be on it, personally!), and they rip FMS to shreds pretty regularly. This isn't to say that it's impossible for anyone to ever have a false memory of any occurrence, but early studies which seemed to indicate that false memories could be artifically induced have been completely debunked. Don't keep it going on a skeptics' forum!

That being said, I suppose you could say people are constructing arguments on better grounds anyway, if this was really something where there was any point in arguing against it. But again, I just don't think it is. I don't see this argument going anywhere. If anything, I've seen some good arguments for why UE would be a lot better off just telling us more about what the experience was, because people are ripping it to shreds anyway, so there doesn't seem to be that much point in keeping it a mystery-- but I don't really see this as something that's likely to happen.

What about that study which was done on mice, proving that their memories were deleted and rewritten each time they were accessed? They were able to make them forget things by inhibiting the re-remembering process I thought?

Doesn't work the same for humans? I am honestly asking.

Edit: and I actually HAVE a false memory of kissing a girl at summer camp when I was a teenager(pathetic I know). I know it to be false, because I met the girl later in life and know her still to this day. I also can remember knowing it wasn't true long ago.

[PixyMisa]

I'll tell what really winds me up. It's people who pride themselves on their knowledge of the world and their ability to think critically, but who in fact haven't taken the time to properly educate themselves about the basics of philosophy.
Well, it's a good thing that we don't have any of those here, isn't it?

Not only do half of them not know what the word "illogical" means
Sorry, but as has been amply demonstrated, it's you that's wrong, and your statements of the problem in the opening post and the poll are likewise wrong.

they don't even take any notice when it is repeatedly explained to them what it does mean.
Because you're wrong.

Those same people wouldn't take such a cavalier attitude towards science.
False analogy.

They wouldn't think "Ah, anyone can do this, doesn't matter if I don't know what the basic terminology means or anything about the history of this subject.
Strawman.

I can be a critical thinker without knowing anything about philosophy. Pah! Philosophy! What a waste of time that is. Science is all you need to be a critical thinker!"
Strawman.

This combination of ignorance and arrogance is really quite unpleasant.
Ad hominem.

Somebody has to challenge it, and it might just as well be me.
Affirming the consequent.

What I specifically believe about religion is irrelevant.
Special pleading.

What matters is the following argument:

Genuine mystical experiences are possible.
Bare assertion.

Skeptics have never experienced such things (or they wouldn't be skeptics.)
Bare assertion, affirming the consequent.

It is therefore possible that some people have access to some sort of knowledge or perception of reality which skeptics do not.
Affirming the consequent.

It is possible that those people actually know something about the nature of reality that skeptics can't know.
Affirming the consequent.

The above argument can't be refuted
The above "argument" is nothing more than a string of logical fallacies. It refutes itself. Also, negative proof fallacy.

unless you want to deny that genuine mystical experiences are possible
What is a "genuine" mystical experience?

which is a very hard claim to back up.
No, it's very easy: We say, we don't believe these things happen; there is no evidence. If you claim that they do, the burden of evidence is yours.

And because it can't be refuted, it means there is a potential epistemological imbalance between the two sides.
Special pleading.

The skeptics have no way of knowing whether such things are real, regardless of how strongly they disbelieve them.
Begging the question.

But if the mystics are right, then they do have a means of confirmation available.
Begging the question.

This situation can never change.
Affirming the consequent.

It will always be so.
Affirming the consequent.

There will always be mystics and always be skeptics, and the skeptics just have to accept that there is nothing they can do about this. You can't use science or logic to refute personal mysticism.
Special pleading, argument from ignorance.

Geoff, when you deign to post something that isn't a logical fallacy, let us know.

[PixyMisa]

All right, y'all, please, don't keep saying this. Here's why: there is no such thing as "False Memory Syndrome". It certainly isn't in the DSM-IV-TR; it isn't recognized by the American Medical Association, American Psychological Association, or American Psychiatric Association. It's actually demolished in the Skeptic Wiki (http://skepticwiki.org/index.php/False_Memory_Syndrome). I'm also on the oldest Dissociative Disorders list-serv in existence, we have most of the world's experts there (I'm humbled to be on it, personally!), and they rip FMS to shreds pretty regularly. This isn't to say that it's impossible for anyone to ever have a false memory of any occurrence, but early studies which seemed to indicate that false memories could be artifically induced have been completely debunked. Don't keep it going on a skeptics' forum!
You're seriously over-stating the case here.

False memory syndrome is highly dubious. False memories are real, and extremely common, and can easily be induced, and frequently are, even inadvertently.

[UndercoverElephant]

That being said, I suppose you could say people are constructing arguments on better grounds anyway, if this was really something where there was any point in arguing against it. But again, I just don't think it is. I don't see this argument going anywhere. If anything, I've seen some good arguments for why UE would be a lot better off just telling us more about what the experience was, because people are ripping it to shreds anyway...


Ripping what to shreds? Answer: their guesses as to what I might be talking about. They are ripping to shreds their own preconceptions of what they think I probably believe, based on their own previous assessments about what other people believe, and why.

[UndercoverElephant]

The special pleading... it buuuuuurns!!!


This is getting boring. Do you think if you say "special pleading" enough times, it will become true?


Sorry buddy, but you made a claim: "Mystical experiences are possible". If you are referring to some subjective experience that has no bearing on objective reality whatsoever, then I have no beef with you. There isn't a burden of proof with respect to that. You would have to admit though, that your experience was entirely natural, and not mystical.

The minute you claim that this subjective experience is a part of objective reality, your claim bears a burden of proof.


No it doesn't, and I've already told you why not. You are depending on the following implicit argument: "If something has a causal effect on physical reality, it is necessarily investigable by science." WRONG. It depends entirely on the nature of that effect, specifically that the effect can reliably be recreated and reproduced by human actions.

Please don't make me repeat this any more times. And please don't try the "if science can't detect it then neither can you" line, because that is also incorrect.



Saying that it is unprovable(no evidence possible) AND *real* with respect to objective reality, is not coherent.

Oh no it isn't. :rolleyes:

What on Earth gave you the idea that all forms of causality are necessarily scientifically testable? The claim is false, unsupported, unsupportable and I've never seen a serious scientist or philosopher make it. I've only ever seen it posted by people like you on boards like this one. What you are saying was shown to be wrong over 200 years ago by Hume and Kant.

[Yoink]

Err...no that isn't what we were arguing about, was it? I've never denied that it could be a delusion. Here it is again: we were arguing about whether or not you are in a position to tell me what is reasonable for me to believe about my own experiences. We were NOT arguing about whether it is possible that it was a delusion. I said about ten pages ago that if I told you what happened, you would reasonably conclude that it was probably a delusion.

Nice try, though. Did you hope I wouldn't notice?



How many different strawmen are you going to erect? Did I claim there was a "rupture in the laws of physics"? Nope, you just made it up.

So, UE, when you said this (http://forums.randi.org/showpost.php?p=698968&postcount=74):

I have something else to tell you. The day that the people on randi.org finally gave up trying to refute my proof, and for the following 3 or 4 days some VERY VERY strange things happened to me. I have spent my whole life being a rationalist/scientist. I know what the laws of physics allow and do not allow. I am of sound mind and I am no fool. But for those 4 days I REPEATEDLY experienced MAJOR BREACHES OF THE LAWS OF PHYSICS. Possibly the strangest of all was the appearance on my desktop at home of a document giving clear and conscise answers to most of my remaining philosophical questioins, and explaining in detail various metaphysical mechanisms underlying mysticism and the secrets of creation. I kid you not. This ACTUALLY HAPPENED. There is no way that anybody hacked their way into my machine at home. I just thought thoughts, switched on my PC and there was a document (called 'synopsis') directly specifically at me, and it appeared FROM NOWHERE. THis was only a small part of a whole bunch of phenomena of a similar INEXPLICABLE nature.

You were, what, trolling?

O.K., let's assume you were trolling then. This isn't your "mystical" (your word, from several occasions in this thread) experience. Let's assume that your "God" is one who is entirely bound by all the laws of physics.

Cool--then this thread is nothing but trolling. That's an absurd definition of "God." If I define "God" to mean "ham sandwiches" and then go out and say "I've proven the existence of God" while refusing to let people know that what I really mean is that "I've proven the existence of ham sandwiches" then I'm just wasting everybody's time.

If the "experience" you had involved no breaches of the known laws of physics, if it had no 'metaphysical' aspect to it at all, then it is not a "mystical" experience and cannot be taken as proof of the existence of God.

If, however, it was the experience that you have described before on this forum (if you weren't lying then but are lying now--take your pick: either way you're confessing to being a liar) then it did involve breaches in the known laws of physics, so once again my position stands:

1/ You admit that it is possible that this memory is false.
2/ You have more than adequate proof of the possibility of false memory.
3/ You have no proof of the existence of this "God" other than your personal experience, which you admit may be a false memory.
4/ You are forced, then, to choose which is more likely: that a well-known and familiar experience occurred (the creation of a false memory) or that something occurred for which the only evidence even of its possibility is the very experience that is in question.

Of course, if you were lying then but aren't lying now (the experience involved no breaches of the known laws of physics) we need to know what did happen before we can make any assessment at all of the relative probability that you really experienced it vs. that you are suffering from delusions. Maybe you dropped something and it fell to the ground and you decided you would call gravity "God" and go and troll the JREF forums? Who knows?

[UndercoverElephant]

Yoink,

You are now resposting things that were posted my by at the time, when I was still trying to work out what was going on and how it could be accomodated by science.

I have repeatedly stated that I wish to have discussions about general situations, not to focus on anything which is too personally related to me. I could allow myself to get drawn into a detailed discussion of those events, but it would be a major mistake if I were to do so. You've already stated that it does not matter what the specific nature of my experience was. Are you willing to stand by that? If so, why are you deliberately trying to provoke me into a further detailed discussion of my own experiences?

In this thread, when I've talked about what I have experienced, I was NOT merely refering to one event on one day. I was refering to a whole series of events which occured over a period of more than a year. Since then, I've spent three years at university during which time I learned, among other things, quite a lot a boundary between physics and metaphysics and about epistemology and various other relevant things. What I described as "breaches in the laws of physics" at the time I have since learned do break any physical laws, thanks to the probabilistic nature of quantum mechanics. The events were highly improbable, not physically impossible.

I have no intention of continuing a discussion based on something I posted over six years ago which gives a partial and rather frantic description of events which, at the time, were completely turning my life upside-down. I am not willing to continue this discussion with you. Your dishonourable tactics and your continual personal insults make it impossible. You are trying to force me to discuss things which it is inappropriate and pointless to discuss. Since you cannot keep it generalised rather than specific to myself then the debate is over. What you have done is roughly similar to finding somebody's old school workbook, quoting something they wrote in it, and then demanding they defend it now. It's "heads you win, tails I lose", isn't it? Either I have to defend something I wouldn't have written today, or I have start going into details about personal experiences that I have already stated I have no intention of discussing. Well done, you've forced an end to the discussion, even if you couldn't actually win the debate and had to resort to Darat-style dirty tactics.

[Yoink]

Yoink,

You are now resposting things that were posted my by at the time, when I was still trying to work out what was going on and how it could be accomodated by science.

I have repeatedly stated that I wish to have discussions about general situations, not to focus on anything which is too personally related to me. I could allow myself to get drawn into a detailed discussion of those events, but it would be a major mistake if I were to do so. You've already stated that it does not matter what the specific nature of my experience was. Are you willing to stand by that? If so, why are you deliberately trying to provoke me into a further detailed discussion of my own experiences?

In this thread, when I've talked about what I have experienced, I was NOT merely refering to one event on one day. I was refering to a whole series of events which occured over a period of more than a year. Since then, I've spent three years at university during which time I learned, among other things, quite a lot a boundary between physics and metaphysics and about epistemology and various other relevant things. What I described as "breaches in the laws of physics" at the time I have since learned do break any physical laws, thanks to the probabilistic nature of quantum mechanics. The events were highly improbable, not physically impossible.

I have no intention of continuing a discussion based on something I posted over six years ago which gives a partial and rather frantic description of events which, at the time, were completely turning my life upside-down. I am not willing to continue this discussion with you. Your dishonourable tactics and your continual personal insults make it impossible. You are trying to force me to discuss things which it is inappropriate and pointless to discuss. Since you cannot keep it generalised rather than specific to myself then the debate is over. What you have done is roughly similar to finding somebody's old school workbook, quoting something they wrote in it, and then demanding they defend it now. It's "heads you win, tails I lose", isn't it? Either I have to defend something I wouldn't have written today, or I have start going into details about personal experiences that I have already stated I have no intention of discussing. Well done, you've forced an end to the discussion, even if you couldn't actually win the debate and had to resort to Darat-style dirty tactics.

Oh Christ--"it's not metaphysics, it's quantum!"

You're a troll. Goodbye.

[Gate2501]

Oh Christ--"it's not metaphysics, it's quantum!"

You're a troll. Goodbye.

Quantum uncertainty is a favorite "gap" for folks to cram God or Magic into.

They ignore the fact that quantum effects are not seen on the macro scale outside of substrates like superfluids and superconductors.

[Yoink]

Quantum uncertainty is a favorite "gap" for folks to cram God or Magic into.

They ignore the fact that quantum effects are not seen on the macro scale outside of substrates like superfluids and superconductors.

Yeah. Be great to see the equations he derived to explain the quantum effect of the magically appearing "Summary" paper that contained all the "secrets of creation." I'll bet he was up all night working on those!

[Yoink]

What I can never understand about quantum woo is that people like UE want to have it both ways. "Oh, it's not mystical, it's just quantum!" "But you said you had proof of God." "Oh, quantum is totally God, dude."

I mean, if it's "quantum" then it's just good old physics; no god or woo required. It's as if "quantum" is some sort of magic word that allows you to say "I met a fairy today" without anybody being allowed to say "so...have your forgotten to take your meds again?"

"Meds? What do you mean? Aroint thee, witch: quantum quantum quantum!"

"Oh, sorry, I didn't know you knew the magical word of power. So, how big was this fairy?"

[Gate2501]

Yeah. Be great to see the equations he derived to explain the quantum effect of the magically appearing "Summary" paper that contained all the "secrets of creation." I'll bet he was up all night working on those!

I'm going to stay away from his old claims.

People like to cite QM as allowing almost anything to be possible, what they don't realize is just how improbable it is that some sort of quantum effect could occur on the macro scale of everyday life. It is so insanely improbable that it is virtually impossible.

[Yoink]

I'm going to stay away from his old claims.

People like to cite QM as allowing almost anything to be possible, what they don't realize is just how improbable it is that some sort of quantum effect could occur on the macro scale of everyday life. It is so insanely improbable that it is virtually impossible.

Certainly orders of magnitude more improbable than someone having a psychotic breakdown (or being a troll).

[UndercoverElephant]

Oh Christ--"it's not metaphysics, it's quantum!"

You're a troll. Goodbye.

And you are an idiot. See you later.

[UndercoverElephant]

I'm going to stay away from his old claims.


Having to get into a detailed discussion about the relationship between QM and causality was one of the reasons why I avoided going there. It just isn't worth the bother, since, as usual, most of the people offering opinions don't know what they are talking about.

[Yoink]

Having to get into a detailed discussion about the relationship between QM and causality was one of the reasons why I avoided going there. It just isn't worth the bother, since, as usual, most of the people offering opinions don't know what they are talking about.


You know, that is definitely true.

So tell us, what academic qualifications do you have in the field? You mentioned studying philosophy for three years at university. Did you have an advanced degree relating to subatomic physics before that?

[UndercoverElephant]

You know, that is definitely true.

So tell us, what academic qualifications do you have in the field? You mentioned studying philosophy for three years at university. Did you have an advanced degree relating to subatomic physics before that?

My degree was in philosophy and cognitive science. I have an A-level in physics and a good layman's understanding of the scientific bits of quantum theory. If you want to understand the relevance of QM to this debate then you need to understand three things. First, you have to understand what questions the scientific part of the theory leaves unanswered, second, you need to understand the main differences between the various metaphysical interpretations of QM, third you need to understand how those metaphysical interpretations of QM relate to the rest of metaphysics, epistemology and philosophy of science. If you've read and understood "In search of Schroedinger's Cat" you will have enough of a grasp on the first element, although most of the people I encounter are deeply mistaken about what Shroedinger himself believed, and why. A lot of people who have a reasonable understanding of science in general have not got a particularly good grasp on the second element, not least because it is actually philosophy and not science. But the biggest problem is the third part of the equation, because QM raises questions that go right to the guts of the philosophical issues dealt with by people like Kant. A lot of people who encounter this issue simply do not understand either how difficult it is to get your head around that stuff, or why and how much it matters in a situation like this one.

One of the biggest myths is that in order to understand this debate, you need to understand the advanced mathematics of QM. You don't. And understanding the mathematical, scientific parts of it don't actually help much in understanding the philosophical issues that are raised. That is why students of QM are routinely told to "shut up and calculate" when the inevitable philosophical issues turn up. If you actually want to apply QM to make some electronic component or carry out some experiment, then you need the maths. If you want to answer questions about how QM might be related to the philosophical issues surrounding causality, consciousness and the nature of reality, then you need knowledge of the history of metaphysics and philosophy of science.

For every person who turns up on this board talking about "quantum spirituality" or "quantum xxxxxxx", where xxxxxxx can be just about anything and the theory can have little or nothing to do with quantum anything, there is a "skeptic" who, upon hearing quantum mechanics spoken of in the same breath as consciousness or free will, will pronounce that the theory is absurd and that there's absolutely no reason to connect the two issues. Both groups are wrong. The truth lies somewhere in the middle, and trying to get a grasp on it takes time and effort. Previous experience tells me that most people aren't willing to take that time or make that effort, not least because in both cases they are rather attached to their simplistic, inadequate understanding of the situation. The woo-woos want QM to have proven their particular sort of woo is possible, or exists, and the "skeptics" want to deny that there are any big philosophical questions being raised at all, or at the very least they want to claim that one day science will be able to sort them out, which it won't, because the questions don't even make sense from a strictly scientific POV. If you want to get to the bottom of this then you have to take a step back from that whole dynamic, re-examine the words and concepts you are using to talk about the problems being raised and try to disentangle the science, the metaphysics and the epistemology. Before that is done, the discussion generally consists of people asking wrong or meaningless questions and recieving incorrect and meaningless answers.

[Maia]

You're seriously over-stating the case here.

False memory syndrome is highly dubious. False memories are real, and extremely common, and can easily be induced, and frequently are, even inadvertently.

Oh, they do exist. No doubt about it. However, the evidence that they're common or that actual false memories, particularly those of importance, are easily induced really isn't there. (Y'all may be thinking of the much-discredited shopping mall experiment-- and no, the mouse thing doesn't work. Now, about the girl at summer camp... I am SO not even going there. ;) All I can say is that it HAS been known to happen.) But anyway. Suffice it to say that it's a very complex phenomenon. I'm just remarkably unfond of the FM argument, and I think there are much better grounds on which to argue here. Look, I"m REALLY not going to go there as far as what those might be.... (Maia really, really Does Not Go There, but to Dick's Sporting Goods instead. :) )

[Yoink]

Oh, they do exist. No doubt about it. However, the evidence that they're common or that actual false memories, particularly those of importance, are easily induced really isn't there. (Y'all may be thinking of the much-discredited shopping mall experiment-- and no, the mouse thing doesn't work. Now, about the girl at summer camp... I am SO not even going there. ;) All I can say is that it HAS been known to happen.) But anyway. Suffice it to say that it's a very complex phenomenon. I'm just remarkably unfond of the FM argument, and I think there are much better grounds on which to argue here. Look, I"m REALLY not going to go there as far as what those might be.... (Maia really, really Does Not Go There, but to Dick's Sporting Goods instead. :) )

False memories need not be either common or "easily induced" to be almost infinitely more probable than "quantum" events leading to the miraculous appearance of philosophical papers containing the answers to the secret of creation. They need only be "known to be possible."

[Maia]

Well, let's just say that I was thinking of some explanations besides false memories OR quantum events, but I shall leave such ideas for others to perhaps expound upon. (Not Touching It With A Twenty Foot Pole, Maia really takes off for Dick's Sporting Goods at last.)

[Yoink]

My degree was in philosophy and cognitive science. I have an A-level in physics and a good layman's understanding of the scientific bits of quantum theory. If you want to understand the relevance of QM to this debate then you need to understand three things. First, you have to understand what questions the scientific part of the theory leaves unanswered, second, you need to understand the main differences between the various metaphysical interpretations of QM, third you need to understand how those metaphysical interpretations of QM relate to the rest of metaphysics, epistemology and philosophy of science. If you've read and understood "In search of Schroedinger's Cat" you will have enough of a grasp on the first element, although most of the people I encounter are deeply mistaken about what Shroedinger himself believed, and why. A lot of people who have a reasonable understanding of science in general have not got a particularly good grasp on the second element, not least because it is actually philosophy and not science. But the biggest problem is the third part of the equation, because QM raises questions that go right to the guts of the philosophical issues dealt with by people like Kant. A lot of people who encounter this issue simply do not understand either how difficult it is to get your head around that stuff, or why and how much it matters in a situation like this one.

One of the biggest myths is that in order to understand this debate, you need to understand the advanced mathematics of QM. You don't. And understanding the mathematical, scientific parts of it don't actually help much in understanding the philosophical issues that are raised. That is why students of QM are routinely told to "shut up and calculate" when the inevitable philosophical issues turn up. If you actually want to apply QM to make some electronic component or carry out some experiment, then you need the maths. If you want to answer questions about how QM might be related to the philosophical issues surrounding causality, consciousness and the nature of reality, then you need knowledge of the history of metaphysics and philosophy of science.

For every person who turns up on this board talking about "quantum spirituality" or "quantum xxxxxxx", where xxxxxxx can be just about anything and the theory can have little or nothing to do with quantum anything, there is a "skeptic" who, upon hearing quantum mechanics spoken of in the same breath as consciousness or free will, will pronounce that the theory is absurd and that there's absolutely no reason to connect the two issues. Both groups are wrong. The truth lies somewhere in the middle, and trying to get a grasp on it takes time and effort. Previous experience tells me that most people aren't willing to take that time or make that effort, not least because in both cases they are rather attached to their simplistic, inadequate understanding of the situation. The woo-woos want QM to have proven their particular sort of woo is possible, or exists, and the "skeptics" want to deny that there are any big philosophical questions being raised at all, or at the very least they want to claim that one day science will be able to sort them out, which it won't, because the questions don't even make sense from a strictly scientific POV. If you want to get to the bottom of this then you have to take a step back from that whole dynamic, re-examine the words and concepts you are using to talk about the problems being raised and try to disentangle the science, the metaphysics and the epistemology. Before that is done, the discussion generally consists of people asking wrong or meaningless questions and recieving incorrect and meaningless answers.

Either you have an argument or you don't. If you have one, make it. If not, stop this tedious trolling.

You said you had proof of "god" and that you had a "mystical" experience. Clearly you were lying about that as you now claim that you had an experience that is perfectly explicable with a proper understanding of quantum physics. O.K., we'll skip over the lie about "God" and run with "an experience so amazing that if you didn't have UE's advance knowledge of Quantum Mechanics you'd be likely to think it was proof of God." O.K.?

That implies that something extraordinary happened to you. Certainly the experience you originally described (the miraculous appearance of a philosophical paper not written by yourself that explained the secrets of the creation of the universe) would qualify such an extraordinary event (odd that you can't simply produce the paper as evidence, though).

But let us stipulate that you were simply lying about that event (for whatever personal reason that motivated you at the time), but that you nonetheless had some event that, if it actually happened, would constitute proof of the existence of "God" if you didn't know enough about Quantum mechanics to explain it properly.

Now, you don't want to tell anybody anything about the details of this miraculous-but-actually-perfectly-explicable-by-QM event. O.K., great. Then tell us how quantum properties can produce macro-level events of such a kind that we would be forced to reach for "god did it" if we didn't know, in fact, that Quantum did it.

Give me an example of the sort of thing that you would claim can happen that would leave the ordinary observer (unlearned in the mysteries of QM) saying that the ordinary laws of physics had been suspended and show how a proper understanding of QM explains these apparently "mystical" events.

To do that you needn't say a single thing about your own mysterious-but-not-actually-mysterious experience. If you can't do that much then you are obviously just trolling.

[PixyMisa]

And you are an idiot. See you later.
That may or may not be the case. It's irrelevant, because he's exactly right.

You are more likely to win the lottery every week for the next decade, just by happening to pick up a ticket someone accidentally dropped in the street, than you are to see a macro-scale quantum event that looks like retro-cauality.

Far more likely.

What you are suggesting is utterly absurd. Remember when I told you that you shouldn't have studied philosophy, but statistics? It's never too late.

[PixyMisa]

Oh, they do exist. No doubt about it. However, the evidence that they're common or that actual false memories, particularly those of importance, are easily induced really isn't there.
I'm thinking of situations where two people disagree on something that they both witnessed just seconds ago. This happens constantly.

One or two mistakes and good old confirmation bias is all you need. And we all do this from time to time. Think we have established a certain fact, follow a chain of reasoning, collect evidence, and then... Oh. Never mind.

There's a little Emily Litella in all of us.

(Y'all may be thinking of the much-discredited shopping mall experiment-- and no, the mouse thing doesn't work.
What?

Now, about the girl at summer camp... I am SO not even going there. ;) All I can say is that it HAS been known to happen.)
I'm thinking, for example, that if you give people a short lecture debunking a particular urban legend (say), and then ask them about it some time later, people are more likely to think the legend is true. They recall that they heard something about it, and forget that they heard it was false.

Memory is a mess.

[UndercoverElephant]

Either you have an argument or you don't. If you have one, make it. If not, stop this tedious trolling.


What do you think "troll" means?

You are an idiot. Welcome to UE's ignore list. You can have a nice chat with Pixy, who is the only other person currently on it.

[Yoink]

What do you think "troll" means?

You are an idiot. Welcome to UE's ignore list. You can have a nice chat with Pixy.
Well, I guess this is about as close as trolls ever come to admitting that they were trolling.

[Yoink]

Actually, just to answer UE's question: "what do I think 'troll' means"--I think a troll is someone who comes on a website and tries to provoke people into arguments by maintaining absurd positions that they don't actually believe in.

I've been trying to decide throughout this conversation whether UE is a troll or just suffered a psychotic breakdown some time in the past and has dedicated his life to defending that breakdown from further analysis.

For a while, though, I've been leaning towards "troll" as the best explanation for what's going on here. For a start, if you look at that original account of the "mystical" experience, it's weirdly detailed and specific. I can see this being the real content of someone's delusion, but I can't see someone persisting in that particular delusion as they began to recover from the original psychotic break (although, of course, UE does shy away from that original version of the story). I mean, you have the problem of the disappearance of the god-given "answers to life the universe and everything" to contend with.

Looking at that original account, though, it looks much more like a hypothetical "o.k., assume that this happened...wouldn't you then have to concede..." kind of thing. My guess is that UE originally tried it out like that, but then got hooked on the controversy the argument generated (because what could be a better red rag to skeptical bulls?). So over the years he's refined the lure, but still keeps trolling these waters on a regular basis looking for people to argue with.

Of course, what he really wants to hook is the people who start from the "it couldn't possibly have happened" position (which is why he kept desperately trying to pretend that that was the argument I was making) because with those people he can extend the argument indefinitely, and to taunt them for being "dogmatists" rather than "skeptics."

Ah well, troll or loony I'm sure he'll be back soon looking for new people to try his "god spoke to me in private but I really, really, really don't want to talk about it" shtick on very soon.

[PixyMisa]

Yoink,

You are now resposting things that were posted my by at the time, when I was still trying to work out what was going on and how it could be accomodated by science.
Yes. And?

I have repeatedly stated that I wish to have discussions about general situations, not to focus on anything which is too personally related to me.
Okay, general situation: What you are claiming does not happen, ever.

I could allow myself to get drawn into a detailed discussion of those events, but it would be a major mistake if I were to do so.
A mistake in what way?

You've already stated that it does not matter what the specific nature of my experience was. Are you willing to stand by that? If so, why are you deliberately trying to provoke me into a further detailed discussion of my own experiences?
If you ever want to understand your experiences, you will need to discuss them.

In this thread, when I've talked about what I have experienced, I was NOT merely refering to one event on one day. I was refering to a whole series of events which occured over a period of more than a year.
Okay then. What were these events?

Since then, I've spent three years at university during which time I learned, among other things, quite a lot a boundary between physics and metaphysics and about epistemology and various other relevant things.
As I have said a number of times, this was exactly the wrong course to take. If you had studied statistics and psychology, you would have the tools to understand what you experienced. Instead, you were handed the tools to falsely inflate your experiences into cosmic law.

What I described as "breaches in the laws of physics" at the time I have since learned do break any physical laws, thanks to the probabilistic nature of quantum mechanics. The events were highly improbable, not physically impossible.
That's exactly what a breach in the laws of physics is. If the moon suddenly turned into milk overnight, that would be a clear breach of the laws of physics. But it could happen. And we can actually calculate how improbable it is.

I have no intention of continuing a discussion based on something I posted over six years ago which gives a partial and rather frantic description of events which, at the time, were completely turning my life upside-down. I am not willing to continue this discussion with you. Your dishonourable tactics and your continual personal insults make it impossible.
He quoted your own words.

Are those words a true statement of events or not?

Yes?

Or no?

You are trying to force me to discuss things which it is inappropriate and pointless to discuss.
It is neither inappropriate nor pointless. You just don't want to talk about it. That's your problem.

Since you cannot keep it generalised rather than specific to myself then the debate is over.
Okay, generalised: These things do not happen, ever. Debate over.

That was easy, now, wasn't it?

What you have done is roughly similar to finding somebody's old school workbook, quoting something they wrote in it, and then demanding they defend it now. It's "heads you win, tails I lose", isn't it?
Nope.

You could defend it. If it's true, it's still true.

Or you could say, no, that's not quite what happened; here's what I think actually happened according to my later, more complete understanding.

Or you could machine-gun the thread with logical fallacies any time you are contradicted, removing any chance of ever getting anywhere.

You are the one who chose door number three.

Either I have to defend something I wouldn't have written today
So don't defend it.

or I have start going into details about personal experiences that I have already stated I have no intention of discussing.
That's your problem. Entirely your own problem.

Events such as those you fail to adequately describe do not happen. If you want to base any argument on such events happening, you have to produce the evidence for said events.

Because, as we know, these things do not happen.

No, mystical experiences are not real. No, psychic abilities do not exist. No, retrocausal events do not happen.

Never. Ever. To anyone. If we ask for evidence.

All sorts of weird stuff can happen if you don't ask for evidence. And all of it promptly vanishes when you do.

Hell, never mind studying statistics and psychology. Just watch old episodes of Scooby Doo.

Well done, you've forced an end to the discussion, even if you couldn't actually win the debate and had to resort to Darat-style dirty tactics.
Byeee!

[Yoink]

Well, I did get one thing out off this argument. I learned about a whole new branch of woo. I've never come across "quantum retrocausality" before.

There really is no end to the varieties of nonsense people will believe, is there?

[PixyMisa]

I call it "postmodern bidirectional causality". This isn't the first time I've run into it. :boggled:

[Gate2501]

Well, I did get one thing out off this argument. I learned about a whole new branch of woo. I've never come across "quantum retrocausality" before.

There really is no end to the varieties of nonsense people will believe, is there?

Quantum woo is nothing new. Quantum uncertainty creates an uber *Gap* statistically speaking, to insert whatever wackiness you would like into. What most of these people don't understand is what Pixy mentioned earlier:

Macro-scale quantum events which violate physical causality are not literally impossible, but they are virtually impossible. No known instance of this occurring has ever been documented, and it is so improbable that it probably will never happen outside of an infinite timetable.

If anyone could provide some evidence to support the claim that QM allows for macro-scale causal violations in the real world(everyday life, not some one in a *number so big that it does not have a name* chance), I'd love to see it. /poke UCE

[UndercoverElephant]

Quantum woo is nothing new.


And quantum retrocausality isn't "woo". That part is actually science. Like I said, most people have no idea what they are talking about when it comes to this subject.


If anyone could provide some evidence to support the claim that QM allows for macro-scale causal violations in the real world(everyday life, not some one in a *number so big that it does not have a name* chance), I'd love to see it. /poke UCE

What do you mean by "causal violations"? Violating what, exactly? Several interpretations of QM allow for such things. MWI is a good example, since it claims that all possible outcomes occur in an almost infinite array of parallel timelines. It is a necessary consequence of this claim that in at least some of those realities, very, very improbable things happen.

[Gate2501]

And quantum retrocausality isn't "woo". That part is actually science. Like I said, most people have no idea what they are talking about when it comes to this subject.

I am a layman, but as far as I know... Retrocausality is more philosophy than established science. There are a few theories that would allow for it, but nothing falsifiable.

You could read the wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retrocausality

But I am sure you already know all of that? I like this part:
As pseudoscience

Outside the mainstream scientific community, retrocausality has also been proposed as a mechanism to explain purported anomalies, paranormal events or personal events, but mainstream scientists generally regarded these explanations as pseudoscientific.

They have an entire area devoted to retrocausal woo! :cool:


What do you mean by "causal violations"? Violating what, exactly.

Physical causality on the macro-scale.

[Yoink]

Quantum woo is nothing new. Quantum uncertainty creates an uber *Gap* statistically speaking, to insert whatever wackiness you would like into. What most of these people don't understand is what Pixy mentioned earlier:

Macro-scale quantum events which violate physical causality are not literally impossible, but they are virtually impossible. No known instance of this occurring has ever been documented, and it is so improbable that it probably will never happen outside of an infinite timetable.

If anyone could provide some evidence to support the claim that QM allows for macro-scale causal violations in the real world(everyday life, not some one in a *number so big that it does not have a name* chance), I'd love to see it. /poke UCE

Oh, I've come across LOTS of junk science wedged into that gap: just the specific idea of "retrocausality" hadn't crossed my radar screen before.

[UndercoverElephant]

Physical causality on the macro-scale.

I still don't really know what you mean.

All I have claimed regarding QM is that it allows for events which are not physically impossible, but sufficiently improbable that if you actually witnessed them, you may well be justified in believing it was the result of some sort of woo-like causality. In non-MWI versions of QM, such events are possible, but so unlikely that they can be disregarded (unless they actually happen, of course.) But under MWI it is absolutely guaranteed that in some places in the massively-branching MWI multiverse, unbelievably unlikely events are actually occuring. If you believe MWI is true, you must also believe this is true.

I don't believe MWI is true, but I do believe that unbelievably improbable events occur. The difference is I believe the events to be the result of normally-hidden forms of causality whereas in MWI they are simply the result of randomly ending up in some highly-improbable branch of the multiverse. Which option you choose doesn't make any difference to the science, because the maths doesn't change: if these events are possible under MWI, then they are possible under the other versions also. But how you interpret it does make a difference to what else it is possible for you to believe. MWI is logically inconsistent with other things I believe, which is one of the reasons I reject it.

[Gate2501]

Oh, I've come across LOTS of junk science wedged into that gap: just the specific idea of "retrocausality" hadn't crossed my radar screen before.

I think that the first time I heard of it was some tachyon related stuff in Star Trek, or one of those shows(Stargate, etc.).

It is one of those things like time travel that might be allowed to happen, but we really currently have no way of knowing, and we do know that it hasn't been known to ever actually happen.

[PixyMisa]

And quantum retrocausality isn't "woo". That part is actually science.
It's hypothetical at most. And as you are applying it, it is the opposite of science.

Like I said, most people have no idea what they are talking about when it comes to this subject.
Very true.

What do you mean by "causal violations"? Violating what, exactly? Several interpretations of QM allow for such things. MWI is a good example, since it claims that all possible outcomes occur in an almost infinite array of parallel timelines. It is a necessary consequence of this claim that in at least some of those realities, very, very improbable things happen.
There's a hint, right there: Very, very improbable things are very, very improbable. The magic word "quantum" does not change this one iota.

If you have to postulate an infinity of other universes to support your claim, you've got a problem.

[Yoink]

And quantum retrocausality isn't "woo". That part is actually science. Like I said, most people have no idea what they are talking about when it comes to this subject.



What do you mean by "causal violations"? Violating what, exactly? Several interpretations of QM allow for such things. MWI is a good example, since it claims that all possible outcomes occur in an almost infinite array of parallel timelines. It is a necessary consequence of this claim that in at least some of those realities, very, very improbable things happen.

You know, they really need a facepalm emoticon. UE has me on ignore, but I'm sure some kind soul will point out to him that the fact that "very improbable things do happen" has no bearing on whether a given event is a "very improbable" one.

A random keystroke generator will, eventually, produce a concise explanation of every phenomenon in the universe. That doesn't mean that the best way to write such an explanation is to sit at your keyboard and mash keys at random.

Somebody has to win the lottery eventually. That doesn't mean that the ticket you have in your pocket has any realistic chance of winning.

If magical philosophy theses might eventually appear from nowhere (I think there's some missing steps that get this one even to the 'theoretically possible' level, but hey, let's roll with it), that doesn't make it any more likely that what UE thinks he witnessed actually was that one-in-a-billion-to-the-billionth-power event.

[PixyMisa]

I still don't really know what you mean.

All I have claimed regarding QM is that it allows for events which are not physically impossible, but sufficiently improbable that if you actually witnessed them, you may well be justified in believing it was the result of some sort of woo-like causality.
Yes. These events do not happen. The sort of thing you're claiming would not, statistically speaking, happen anywhere in the Universe in the lifetime of the Universe.

So we can comfortably say that, statistically speaking, it did not happen to you, either.

And it most certainly did not happen to the rag-bag of mystics and psychics who claim this sort of thing every minute of every day.

In non-MWI versions of QM, such events are possible, but so unlikely that they can be disregarded (unless they actually happen, of course.) But under MWI it is absolutely guaranteed that in some places in the massively-branching MWI multiverse, unbelievably unlikely events are actually occuring. If you believe MWI is true, you must also believe this is true.This doesn't change the probability of it happening to you at all. It's still, for all practical purposes, zero.

I don't believe MWI is true, but I do believe that unbelievably improbable events occur.Go back to college. Take some statistics classes this time. This is an absurdity.

The difference is I believe the events to be the result of normally-hidden forms of causality whereas in MWI they are simply the result of randomly ending up in some highly-improbable branch of the multiverse.You're invoking magic magic, as well as quantum magic?

Which option you choose doesn't make any difference to the science, because the maths doesn't changeOkay, if the maths doesn't change, you're not invoking magic. You're just talking nonsense. Enormously improbable events are not a new form of causality. They are just enormously improbable.

if these events are possible under MWI, then they are possible under the other versions also. But how you interpret it does make a difference to what else it is possible for you to believe.No. It makes no difference, because as you pointed out, the maths doesn't change.

[UndercoverElephant]

I think that the first time I heard of it was some tachyon related stuff in Star Trek, or one of those shows(Stargate, etc.).

It is one of those things like time travel that might be allowed to happen, but we really currently have no way of knowing, and we do know that it hasn't been known to ever actually happen.

Right...well there's a direct connection between what I'm calling "macroscopic retrocausality" and what I just posted about MWI. I'm stating that I believe I have witnessed extremely improbable, but physically possible, events. One of the things which made those events extremely improbable is that they gave the subjective impression that something in the relatively distant past had been caused by something in the recent past or in the present. NOW...if MWI was true, then it is also absolutely guaranteed that events will occur (somewhere) which give precisely this impression. In that case, it would be an illusion - the appearance of something meaningful which was actually the result of just randomly ending up in an incredibly weird branch of the multiverse. This is actually a logically possible explanation for everything I am talking about in terms of potential "woo." The reason I don't believe it is true is because from my POV, there are what look like better explanations available. But the point I'm making is this: the very fact that this MWI explanation is possible shows that under any metaphysical interpretation of the science, such events are indeed possible. They are "allowed for."

[UndercoverElephant]

Yes. These events do not happen. The sort of thing you're claiming would not, statistically speaking, happen anywhere in the Universe in the lifetime of the Universe.

This is what I mean by people not knowing what they are talking about.

If MWI is true, then they are guaranteed to happen to somewhere in the multiverse.

[Yoink]

Right...well there's a direct connection between what I'm calling "macroscopic retrocausality" and what I just posted about MWI. I'm stating that I believe I have witnessed extremely improbable, but physically possible, events. One of the things which made those events extremely improbable is that they gave the subjective impression that something in the relatively distant past had been caused by something in the recent past or in the present. NOW...if[i] MWI was true, then it is also absolutely guaranteed that events will occur which give precisely this impression. In [i]that[i] case, it would be an illusion - the appearance of something meaningful which was actually the result of just ending up in an incredibly weird branch of the multiverse. This is actually a logically possible explanation for everything I am talking about in terms of potential "woo." The reason I don't believe it is true is because from my POV, there are what look like better explanations available. But the point I'm making is this: the very fact that this MWI explanation is possible shows that under [I]any metaphysical interpretation of the science, such events are indeed possible. They are "allowed for."

Wow! The woo is strong in this one.

"It's possible, because of quantum! But I happen to know that God did it. But you can't scoff at my belief that God did it...because of quantum, wot makes it possible!"

Must be trolling--surely?

[Yoink]

This is what I mean by people not knowing what they are talking about.

If MWI is true, then they are guaranteed to happen to somewhere in the multiverse.

And that you are not in that part of the multiverse is guaranteed to be so overwhelmingly probable that there is no point in considering the alternative.

[PixyMisa]

This is what I mean by people not knowing what they are talking about.

If MWI is true, then they are guaranteed to happen to somewhere in the multiverse.
And, as Yoink pointed out, they are guaranteed not to happen to you.

MWI is irrelevant. The maths doesn't change. You said it yourself. The maths doesn't change. The chance of something happening to you is exactly the same whether MWI is true or not.

The maths doesn't change.

There is no spoon, either, and the cake is still a lie.

[UndercoverElephant]

And, as Yoink pointed out, they are guaranteed not to happen to you.


Oh boy....

Lessons in critical thinking, eh? :D

His posts are even more amusing when channeled though yours.

[Beth]

Quantum woo is nothing new. Quantum uncertainty creates an uber *Gap* statistically speaking, to insert whatever wackiness you would like into. What most of these people don't understand is what Pixy mentioned earlier:

Macro-scale quantum events which violate physical causality are not literally impossible, but they are virtually impossible. No known instance of this occurring has ever been documented, and it is so improbable that it probably will never happen outside of an infinite timetable.

If anyone could provide some evidence to support the claim that QM allows for macro-scale causal violations in the real world(everyday life, not some one in a *number so big that it does not have a name* chance), I'd love to see it. /poke UCE

Assuming that such events actually occur, how could one be documented or verified in our world?

[Gate2501]

Oh boy....

Lessons in critical thinking, eh? :D

His posts are even more amusing when channeled though yours.

Pixy is right, even if MWI is true, it wouldn't alter the way probabilities work.

High probability events will still happen more often.

Low probability events will still happen less often.

Super ridiculous ultra low probability events will still be virtually impossible in your particular world, albeit literally happening in some very very very improbable corner of the multiverse.

[UndercoverElephant]

Assuming that such events actually occur, how could one be documented or verified in our world?

They couldn't unless they not only happened, but happened (a) in just such a way that lots of people witnessed them and (b) more than once. That's not just highly improbable - it's highly improbable cubed. ETA: unless you are talking about an interpretation like mine, where the event is the result of hidden causality, not randomness, in which case we have a slightly different set of problems, deriving from the precise nature of the forms of causality we are talking about.

[Yoink]

They couldn't unless they not only happened, but happened (a) in just such a way that lots of people witnessed them and (b) more than once. That's not just highly improbable - it's highly improbable cubed. ETA: unless you are talking about an interpretation like mine, where the event is the result of hidden causality, not randomness, in which case we have a slightly different set of problems, deriving from the precise nature of the forms of causality we are talking about.

Boy...do we ever have a set of problems!

[Gate2501]

They couldn't unless they not only happened, but happened (a) in just such a way that lots of people witnessed them and (b) more than once. That's not just highly improbable - it's highly improbable cubed. ETA: unless you are talking about an interpretation like mine, where the event is the result of hidden causality, not randomness, in which case we have a slightly different set of problems, deriving from the precise nature of the forms of causality we are talking about.

I don't disagree with this.

It would seem that the collection of evidence for such an improbable event would be a monumental task, unless some sort of permanent scar was left behind on reality. I suppose in this case, we should perhaps leave the request for evidence at the door, and appeal to the fact that these things are ultra ultra low probability, and effectively never happen.

[UndercoverElephant]

Pixy is right, even if MWI is true, it wouldn't alter the way probabilities work.


I didn't say it would.


High probability events will still happen more often.

Low probability events will still happen less often.


That's if MWI is true. I believe it to be FALSE.


Super ridiculous ultra low probability events will still be virtually impossible in your particular world, albeit literally happening in some very very very improbable corner of the multiverse.

Not if the interpretation of QM stipulates that the "raw" probabilities are sometimes influenced by hidden forms of causality. MWI describes a system where the actual outcome is probabilistically random and under that system what you are saying is true. I support an interpretation involving hidden variables instead, which means that sometimes the supposed randomness isn't actually random. I don't believe in any MWI multiverse. I don't rule out some branching, but not on a mind-boggling MWI scale.

[PixyMisa]

Oh boy....

Lessons in critical thinking, eh?
Yes. Pay attention.

His posts are even more amusing when channeled though yours.
Glad you're amused. Now, as to those statistics classes I recommended?

[UndercoverElephant]

I don't disagree with this.

It would seem that the collection of evidence for such an improbable event would be a monumental task, unless some sort of permanent scar was left behind on reality.


It might be monumental even if there was a permanent scar. I believe history is riddled with such scars, but trying to prove this would be almost impossible.


I suppose in this case, we should perhaps leave the request for evidence at the door, and appeal to the fact that these things are ultra ultra low probability, and effectively never happen.

Objectively, yes. But how do you think you would you feel if such a thing actually did happen, and happened to you?

[UndercoverElephant]

It might be monumental even if there was a permanent scar. I believe history is riddled with such scars, but trying proving would be almost impossible....


Not that this has stopped somebody trying:

http://www.amazon.com/World-History-Eonic-Effect-Civilization/dp/1436318688

ETA: the above author is attacking Darwinism (in a rather novel way). I have my own views on how this might effect Darwinism and I'm not trying to defend this author's views. He just happens to be talking about a rather similar sort of "scar" as the one you alluded to, and ends up having to write about the whole of human history in an attempt to identify it.

[PixyMisa]

They couldn't unless they not only happened, but happened (a) in just such a way that lots of people witnessed them and (b) more than once.
Wrong and wrong.

You just need it to happen once and leave some lasting but incredibly improbable objective effect. (I.e. not just in the minds of the witnesses.)

That's not just highly improbable - it's highly improbable cubed.Only squared, and that's if you agree with (b), which is wrong. (a) is scarcely less possible than having one person witness the event.

ETA: unless you are talking about an interpretation like mine, where the event is the result of hidden causalityYou keep asserting this. You have shown neither logic nor evidence to support it.

not randomnessHow do you tell the difference?

in which case we have a slightly different set of problems, deriving from the precise nature of the forms of causality we are talking about.Um, no. In the case of quantum mechanical randomness, there is some very very tiny chance of these events happening. Effectively zero, but not absolutely zero.

But since there is no such thing as "hidden causality", the probability in that case is zero.

[PixyMisa]

It might be monumental even if there was a permanent scar. I believe history is riddled with such scars, but trying to prove this would be almost impossible.
Name one.

Objectively, yes. But how do you think you would you feel if such a thing actually did happen, and happened to you?
Do I have objective evidence that this actually did happen? Or is it just in my mind?

If it were just in my mind, I'd assume I was mistaken.

[UndercoverElephant]

Name one.


The existence of the state of Israel.

Goodnight.

[PixyMisa]

The existence of the state of Israel.
Self-fulfilling prophecy. Your standards of evidence are so low as to be actually negative.

[Yoink]

Name one.


Do I have objective evidence that this actually did happen? Or is it just in my mind?

If it were just in my mind, I'd assume I was mistaken.

Bravo PixyMisa, how nice to see that there are other people who are not such monumental egotists that they are willing to call their own recollections and judgments into question.

Oh UE, if only you could learn from PM's example.

[Yoink]

The existence of the state of Israel.

Goodnight.

"There I was, right, just sittin' there, mindin' me own business when suddenly BAM, out of nowhere, there was the bloomin' State of Israel! 'Ow else could I explain this other than as an act of 'idden causality, I asks yer?"

You know, UE, "it's quantum" is actually less stupid as bogus arguments go than "it's hidden causality."

[makaya325]

That would make it alogical rather than illogical.

Hey, as long as the individual does'nt push their beliefs on others, while holding their personal reasons for a certain belief, the belief is not illogical.

EX: Person one believes bigfoot exists, based on personal experience, while still realizing the lack of evidence-not an illogical belief

ex: person #2 believes in bigfoot, claiming that their own encounter is evidence that it exists, while dismissing the counter arguements and rational explanations that threaten their held belief of bigfoot.

[The Platypus]

I said pages ago he was just playing a game... Told ya... :D

[Maia]

I'm thinking of situations where two people disagree on something that they both witnessed just seconds ago. This happens constantly.

One or two mistakes and good old confirmation bias is all you need. And we all do this from time to time. Think we have established a certain fact, follow a chain of reasoning, collect evidence, and then... Oh. Never mind.

There's a little Emily Litella in all of us.


What?


I'm thinking, for example, that if you give people a short lecture debunking a particular urban legend (say), and then ask them about it some time later, people are more likely to think the legend is true. They recall that they heard something about it, and forget that they heard it was false.

Memory is a mess.

Okay. We weren't talking about the same thing to begin with. :) I get it now, and it's all good. The "shopping mall" experiment referred to a study which was exceptionally flawed, and which was attempting to establish something far, far more along the lines of "false memory syndrome". What you're talking about is (well, I think, anyway), more similar to the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm (http://www.uark.edu/misc/lampinen/read/toglia99.html). With UE, I have to say that I just doubt FM is really the best explanation of what we're talking about, that is, the one which fits the available facts (such as they are) the most closely. What we ARE talking about... ermmmm...... PM me if you really want to know what I think about that.

[PixyMisa]

Bravo PixyMisa, how nice to see that there are other people who are not such monumental egotists that they are willing to call their own recollections and judgments into question.
Well, I mean:

Number of times I've been mistaken: Several.

Amount of evidence for retrocausality: Zero.

Several was larger than zero, the way they taught us in the first grade. So it's more likely I'm mistaken than that the Universe did a back-flip.

It doesn't seem that complicated to me.

[PixyMisa]

Okay. We weren't talking about the same thing to begin with. :) I get it now, and it's all good. The "shopping mall" experiment referred to a study which was exceptionally flawed, and which was attempting to establish something far, far more along the lines of "false memory syndrome". What you're talking about is (well, I think, anyway), more similar to the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) paradigm (http://www.uark.edu/misc/lampinen/read/toglia99.html). With UE, I have to say that I just doubt FM is really the best explanation of what we're talking about, that is, the one which fits the available facts (such as they are) the most closely. What we ARE talking about... ermmmm...... PM me if you really want to know what I think about that.
Yes, thanks, just that sort of thing. If "false recall" is the accepted term, I'm more than happy to use that to avoid confusion.

I don't think false recall alone would account for what UndercoverElephant experienced. I think it's more complex than that. But I do think it's easily explained by a combination of normal psychology (not psychosis) and some moderately unlikely coincidences. The principle of oddmatches is all about this sort of thing - synchronicity and whatnot, explained by statistics and psychology. If you don't understand the statistics and the psychology, it's very easy to hugely overestimate the significance of such a pattern of events.

[Beth]

They couldn't unless they not only happened, but happened (a) in just such a way that lots of people witnessed them and (b) more than once. That's not just highly improbable - it's highly improbable cubed. ETA: unless you are talking about an interpretation like mine, where the event is the result of hidden causality, not randomness, in which case we have a slightly different set of problems, deriving from the precise nature of the forms of causality we are talking about.

Well, I don't see any way such events could be verified, but I was hoping one of the people who was asking for such evidence would indicate what they are looking for.