Can we bring people back from the dead?

Discussion in 'Parapsychology' started by Alexander1304, May 21, 2015.

Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.
  1. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    16,600
    Sorry, but logic was here long before your glorious scientific method was ever formulated. So was sensory experience and confirming what's real. So when's the last time YOU used the scientific method?
     
  2. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  3. Kittamaru Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Adieu, Sciforums. Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    13,938
    Homo sapiens were around long before you and I Magical Realist... by your logic(al fallacy), that means we can't be homo sapiens...

    Logic being around before we designed a good method for reaching a conclusion doesn't mean anything... after all, just look at the Salem Witch Trials and other such phenomenon for proof... if they found a suspected witch, they burned her. If she died, she wasn't a witch... if she didn't, she was.

    Logic...
     
  4. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  5. Bells Staff Member

    Messages:
    24,270
    Humans question and discover things based on the scientific method without even realising it.

    It comes with living in the physical world.

    Which kind of ties in with the scientific method.

    Are you telling me that you have never test driven a car before? Tried a new dish or recipe from a recipe book based on your belief that it might taste good?

    Your logic might tell you that just because it looks good, does not mean it tastes good. So you embark on the scientific method to find out if it tastes as good as it looks. You study the recipe. Your hypothesis is that it tastes good because it looks good. You buy the ingredients and make it as per the instructions in the recipe. You predict it will taste really good. You then test it by tasting it, which involves the sensory experience of touching and tasting the food you just cooked. You then determine whether it did taste as good as you hypothesised and predicted.

    We do this in our day to day life without even realising it. We do it when we catch the train or bus and decide if we are going to sit down, from deciding if the seat looks clean and comfortable and deciding if you will be comfortable being seated for the whole trip, to even deciding what you are going to wear.

    I could go on and on.

    If you are brain dead or in a vegetative state and others have to do all the thinking for you, then sure, you might question how many times you use the scientific method to make a decision or to even decide if something is real. Not being a brain dead individual means that I do this without even thinking about it.

    Now, apply the same rules to things like ghosts or life after death. Until you can actually test it, or experience it, you can't ever really know for sure, can you? It's like visiting a food court and looking at the food on display and determining that it looks good, so it has to taste good and you reach over and grab it to take a bite. It looks like real food, but when you take a bite, you realise it's plastic. Just because you see that it looks like really nice food does not mean it is even food.

    It just means that just because it sounds real or looks real does not mean it is real.
     
  6. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  7. Yazata Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    5,902
    That's a great quote, MR. It captures my own thinking rather well.

    That doesn't mean that I embrace all the usual suspects, things like ghosts or UFOs. I don't entirely deny that there might be something interesting happening in these cases, but I suspect that whatever it is, it's being misconceived. Unidentified objects might be reported in the sky, but I'm not convinced that they are alien spaceships or that there's a giant government conspiracy to hide that 'fact'. Apparitions of some sort may occasionally appear, but I'm very skeptical about the claim that they are the spirits of deceased people.

    I'm more inclined to look for 'queerness' in what's most familiar, in things that when we are honest with ourselves we have to admit we still don't understand. Time is profoundly mysterious to me. Logic, mathematics and the so-called 'laws of nature' are mysteries. Causation still isn't understood. What kind of reality do unrealized possibilities have, if any?What is meaning and how do words have it? What's up with minds? Why does reality exist in the first place?

    Almost everything we encounter in our daily lives is mysterious, an eruption of the unknown.
     
    Last edited: May 27, 2015
  8. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    16,600
    Or science came along and reappropriated the common sense everyday logic of the ages for it's own agenda, labeling it its own special method. I prefer to call it it what it always was--logic and sensory experience.

    There are lots of methods tied to logic. Doesn't mean logic is suddenly those methods.

    I bought a new car last weekend. I test drove it. I looked it over. And I considered the cost. But I didn't use the scientific method. I just used logic and sensory experience and my own aesthetic judgment. Something all people do everyday.

    I cooked the recipe and tasted it and seasoned it as I went. That simple. It was a creative process not a scientific process. There was no elaborate hypothesizing and predicting and testing of the hypothesis etc. No scientific method involved at all.

    Wow, so if everybody is using the scientific method on a daily basis, then I guess all those Bigfoot hunters, and MUFON ufologists, and paranormal researchers, are also using the scientific method too-- gathering data, forming hypotheses, testing the hypotheses, correcting the hypotheses, and confirming it again. Guess they're doing real science then since science is so common a method of verification.

    You could and often do. That's why I limit how much I respond to your ramblings. I don't have the time to cover every little non sequiter gripe you normally bring up. I prefer that people make their points briefly and cogently if at all.

    Only we don't call it the scientific method. We call it inference and deduction and sensory validation.

    Never before in my life have I mistaken food on a display for real food. 99.99999% of the food I see and smell before me is real food, and that's the power and reliability of sensory validation in our daily lives. The same sort of validation that paranormal researchers use in their field studies all the time.

    By far almost ever instance of something looking real is a case of it being real. Cars look like cars and ARE cars. People look like people and ARE people. Trees look like trees and ARE trees. OTOH, I can count on my hand the number of times I mistook something for being real. Figures in a wax museum? But even then I knew they were fake. A transgender person. I could still tell. We just don't live in a world where things are perfectly mimicked by other things that often. Sensory validation and logic is the key here--using sight, sound, smell, taste, or touch and weighing the probability of such being a fake.
     
    Last edited: May 27, 2015
  9. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    16,600
    I embrace the everyday wonders of reality right along with the more obscure and mysterious ones. That I am conscious at all of the world around me seems to me a miracle past all expectation. And at the same time I wonder what reality is when I am unconscious of it. What is REALLY going on out there, in the vast humming darkness? And does my inability to perceive it entail it is nothing at all, a void empty of possibilities? I suspect not. If there's one thing I'm sure of it's that reality vastly exceeds what we miniscule lifeforms have evolved to perceive of it. It makes no sense to think that the some .0000001 % of reality that we experience comprises enough of it for us to be able know what it is and what goes on in it. Our understanding of the world is hopelessly anthropocentric, haunted on all sides by an otherness that is transhuman, preternatural, noumenal, and wholly beyond our concepts of what is rational or even meaningful..
     
    Last edited: May 27, 2015
  10. Kittamaru Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Adieu, Sciforums. Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    13,938
    Wow... you are entirely incapable of admitting when you goofed. Science didn't "reappropriate" anything - it took "common sense logic" and defined a series of steps that, when followed, can ensure accurate, verifiable, and repeatable results.

    Uh huh - would you/ could you provide examples, or are you just flapping your gums again?

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!



    So, you are telling me that, in buying a car, you didn't:
    A) Ask a question (What kind of car do I want? What features do I want? Do I want a Car, Truck, or SUV? etc)
    B) Do background research (reviews on the car, average mileage, cost of ownership, etc)
    C) Construct a hypothesis (I want Car A, B, or C)
    Test with an Experiment (take car A, B, or C for a test drive)
    D) Analyze your data (did you like the way the car drove, did it have enough power, was it comfortable?)
    E) Determine if your results were in-line with your hypothesis (did Car A, B, or C meet your requirements)
    F) Repeat if needed (with other cars)
    G) Communicate your results (buy a car or not)

    Admit it MR... you are wrong. You use the Scientific Method in EVERYDAY LIFE without even thinking about it... it's what people do.

    Again... that IS the Scientific Method. You tasted it, made a decision on what it needed based on your prior knowledge, added seasonings, and re-tasted as necessary. That IS the scientific method - it doesn't have to be super detailed or written as a college dissertation!

    That's the thing - some of them may very well be (while others may just be looking to fool gullible folks like yourself) - however, using the scientific method does NOT guarantee accurate results when the testing is flawed or biased (example - testing a bit of DNA, determining you don't know what it is, and thus concluding it "must be Bigfoot" - that is not good science)

    In other words, you don't like when people reveal the glaring flaws in your arguments, and prefer them to just take what you want at face value? And you wonder why we call you out for your intellectual dishonesty...

    What's in a name? That which we call a rose by any other name would smell as sweet.
    You can call it what you will, that doesn't change the fact that such a decision making process IS the Scientific Method.

    Oh really? You must have never been to a good diner or restaurant then...
    A)

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!


    B)

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!


    C)

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!


    D)

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!


    E)

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!


    F)

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!



    Two of these images are of real food... the other four are fake. Can you pick the fakes out? I would bet my next paycheck you cannot... especially without being able to use ALL of your senses.
     
  11. Kittamaru Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Adieu, Sciforums. Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    13,938
    Really? So paranormal "researchers" are able to touch, test, and smell bigfoot? Interesting... if they are that close, why are the pictures so terrible? Let me guess... bigfoot is technologically advanced and has an optic scattering field that makes it impossible for cameras to take clear pictures, right?

    See my example above...

    Really? Okay, here's another example for you - binaural audio. Two frequencies that are very close to one another are played, one into each ear - as a result, you hear a frequency that is between the two. Boom, audio can be spoofed.

    Harvard has taken this even further:
    http://hms.harvard.edu/news/harvard-medicine/tips-tricking-your-senses

    It's ridiculously easy to fool the human senses... but go ahead, keep believing that they MUST be right.
     
  12. Kittamaru Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Adieu, Sciforums. Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    13,938
    Hmph, you've been online several hours since these two posts, and just like my last few, have offered no reply.

    In that case, I can only conclude that you have conceded an accept that you cannot refute them.
     
  13. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    16,600
    "You might have learned about or participated in such activities as part of something your teacher described as the “scientific method.” It’s a sequence of steps that take you from asking a question to arriving at a conclusion. But scientists rarely follow the steps of the scientific method as textbooks describe it.

    “The scientific method is a myth,” asserts Gary Garber, a physics teacher at Boston University Academy.

    The term “scientific method,” he explains, isn’t even something scientists themselves came up with. It was invented by historians and philosophers of science during the last century to make sense of how science works. Unfortunately, he says, the term is usually interpreted to mean there is only one, step-by-step approach to science.

    That’s a big misconception, Garber argues. “There isn’t one method of ‘doing science.’”

    In fact, he notes, there are many paths to finding out the answer to something. Which route a researcher chooses may depend on the field of science being studied. It might also depend on whether experimentation is possible, affordable — even ethical.

    In some instances, scientists may use computers to model, or simulate, conditions. Other times, researchers will test ideas in the real world. Sometimes they begin an experiment with no idea what may happen. They might disturb some system just to see what happens, Garber says, “because they’re experimenting with the unknown.”

    The practices of science

    But it’s not time to forget everything we thought we knew about how scientists work, says Heidi Schweingruber. She should know. She’s the deputy director of the Board on Science Education at the National Research Council, in Washington, D.C.

    In the future, she says, students and teachers will be encouraged to think not about the scientific method, but instead about “practices of science” — or the many ways in which scientists look for answers.

    Schweingruber and her colleagues recently developed a new set of national guidelines that highlight the practices central to how students should learn science.

    “In the past, students have largely been taught there’s one way to do science,” she says. “It’s been reduced to ‘Here are the five steps, and this is how every scientist does it.’“

    But that one-size-fits-all approach doesn’t reflect how scientists in different fields actually “do” science, she says.

    For example, experimental physicists are scientists who study how particles such as electrons, ions and protons behave. These scientists might perform controlled experiments, starting with clearly defined initial conditions. Then they will change one variable, or factor, at a time. For instance, experimental physicists might smash protons into various types of atoms, such as helium in one experiment, carbon during a second experiment and lead in a third. Then they would compare differences in the collisions to learn more about the building blocks of atoms.

    In contrast, geologists, scientists who study the history of Earth as recorded in rocks, won’t necessarily do experiments, Schweingruber points out. “They’re going into the field, looking at landforms, looking at clues and doing a reconstruction to figure out the past,” she explains. Geologists are still collecting evidence, “but it’s a different kind of evidence.”

    Current ways of teaching science might also give hypothesis testing more emphasis than it deserves, says Susan Singer, a biologist at Carleton College in Northfield, Minn.

    A hypothesis is a testable idea or explanation for something. Starting with a hypothesis is a good way to do science, she acknowledges, “but it’s not the only way.”

    “Often, we just start by saying, ‘I wonder’“ Singer says. “Maybe it gives rise to a hypothesis.” Other times, she says, you may need to first gather some data and look to see if a pattern emerges."====https://student.societyforscience.org/article/problems-‘-scientific-method’
     
    Last edited: May 28, 2015
  14. Daecon Kiwi fruit Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    3,133
    Ah, so when unable to refute an argument or admit you were wrong, you just move the goalposts instead.

    Right.
     
  15. paddoboy Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    27,543

    Science and the scientific method are just a refinement of everyday logic and sensibility, without being burdened with religious or any other dogma or agenda.

    I actually alluded to such in the "Delusions of grandeur/conspiracy connection" thread earlier on today.
    Well put Bellsy!
     
  16. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    16,600
    So what argument was I unable to refute? What was I wrong about? How did I "move the goalposts"?
     
  17. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    16,600
    Hey everybody. Since I just found out I used the scientific method to buy my car last weekend, and I used it to cook my dinner the other night, I guess I use it when I take a dump too.

    1. Do I need to go?

    2. Sit on the toilet and see what happens.

    3. Form a brown hypothesis.

    4. Test the hypothesis by dropping it in water.

    5. Wipe..Procedure working? Yes.

    6. Flush the hypothesis.

    Wonder if this qualifies me for the Nobel prize!
     
  18. Bells Staff Member

    Messages:
    24,270
    A few things wrong with your statement.

    1) Science is not a person or an object that can "come along". Nor does science have an agenda (it isn't alive and cannot think).
    2) Labeling and naming things is common in science. It's how things are identified and labeled and named.. By scientists and every day observers of the physical and natural world.
    3) Heaven forbid you don't sound like a ring wing fundamentalist preacher ranting against "science".

    I would think it is kind of the other way around. Logic is the way in which you arrive at the conclusion, ie, through the scientific method.

    Yes. You used what is often referred to as the "scientific method".

    You cooked the recipe just because? No reason at all for it? You didn't cook it because you were hungry and thought it would fill you up? Or because you wanted to taste it to see what it tasted like? Or because you wanted to see how it would turn out?

    MR, everything we do, whether you want to admit it or not, or whether you wish to adhere to some quasi religious ideology and comments because you think that science has an agenda (chortle) or not, it is the scientific method.

    Yes they are.

    However they are still to provide proof of their existence. But the process is the same.

    Irony coming from the guy known for copying and pasting whole articles instead of just taking the points from them for discussion.

    Or you could save yourself time and just call it what it is.

    I suppose you might just use the big words in the hope they make you look more intelligent...

    So you have never had Japanese food or visited a Japanese restaurant or take out?

    Or visited Japan?

    It is an artform.

    For example:

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!



    Yummy looking gyoza's, aren't they?

    They even managed to get the glean of the oil from the pot and the moisture from cooking it right. If you saw that on a table, you'd think it was real. It's fake.

    Nope.

    Have you never watched a movie or TV show before? You do realise that while the blood and gore looks real in a movie, it isn't actually real, yes?

    And sometimes a car can look like a car or like a plane or both:

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!



    And sometimes, it might look like a car, and be completely fake, to great effect.

    You sure about that?

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!



    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!



    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!



    Which one is fake and not real people?


    You really sure about that?

    Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!



    That's in an aquarium. If it chopped it so that you only saw the trees, you would think it was a real tree.

    Bigfoot.
    Ghosts.
    Poltergeists.
    Fairies.
    Gnome like creatures terrorising a Mexican town.
    UFO's.
    Aliens.
    Science having an agenda.
    Vaccines causing autism.

    Care to tell us how many fingers you have on one hand? Because if you can count on your "hand the number of times you mistook something for being real", and those are all the things that you think happen to be real, then you really really either need to learn to count, or go and see a doctor and have the many extra digits removed from your clearly deformed hand.

    Then you clearly don't get out much.

    You mean just automatically going through the scientific method to determine if it is real or fake..?

    Thank you Jerry Falwell.
     
    Last edited: May 28, 2015
    Daecon likes this.
  19. Yazata Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    5,902
    When I read Sciforums, sometimes I'm reminded of religious fundamentalism. People here use the phrase ""The Scientific Method" in much the same way that a Baptist preacher uses the phrase "the Holy Biiiible". It's their anchor, the immovable rock that that supports all the rest of their beliefs and justifies their faith in their own superiority.

    Humans have been able to perceive their environment since long before they were human. Early hominids had eyes and ears, as do many animal species.

    I'm sure that paleolithic humans employed natural logic as well, even if they did so unconsciously and never tried to formulate the principles of reasoning as Aristotle did. I believe that natural logic is probably innate in human cognition. It might be older than that, since we can infer logical thinking of a sort from the behavior of animals as well.

    No, the fallacy here (it's an historical fallacy in your case) is trying to equate "common sense" that human beings have presumably shared for as long as they were human, with some largely mythical "Scientific Method".

    The whole idea of "the Scientific Method" is a modern creation. After Natural Philosophy experienced explosive success in the 17th century, in the Galileo to Newton period, 18th century European intellectuals were electrified. They wanted to understand why physics and cosmology had experienced such remarkable success. They wanted to understand what set the new mode of thinking apart, and what made it different from medieval theology and scholasticism and from traditional age-old craft industries like pottery and black-smithing. And they wanted to capture the lightening in a bottle, thinking that if they could identify what made the new mode of thinking so successful, then it could be applied to all of human life, thus creating a paradise on Earth. That was the motivation for 'the Enlightenment' and it's still implicit in a great deal of political thinking today (typically of the left variety).

    In the 19th century, accepted wisdom kind of settled on a simple hypothesis-testing schema as their answer. It did seem to mark the new "science" off from medieval theology and scholasticism pretty well, since it caught the idea of forming new original hypotheses and then testing them against nature, not according to their conformity with the writings of ancient authorities. Unfortunately, it's basically just a restatement of trial-and-error, and it doesn't distinguish 'science' from traditional crafts.

    I get the impression that Sciforums is willing to embrace that difficulty, in hopes of pushing the understanding of human history in a hard-scientistic direction. The goal seems to be to attribute all of human progress since the stone-age to the employment of a single cognitive procedure that they get to define and officiate. The cost is making 'the Scientific Method' so vague and general that it loses most of its content and historical specificity. The original question of explaining the 'Scientific Revolution' and the rise of modern science is lost entirely. If "the Scientific Method" becomes a synonym for human cognition in general, it doesn't explain why the 17th century developments were so fruitful and why modern science is so extraordinary.

    In real life, I think that the success of the 17'th century 'scientific revolution' was largely fortuitous. It was the result of applying mathematics to a class of physical problems where the underlying physical principles (physical 'laws') just happened to exist and just happened to be simple enough to be modeled in terms of the mathematics available. If the 'revolution' can be attributed to the introduction of a new method, then it was the introduction of mathematical physics. Unfortunately, that's a subject that simplistic layman's-level trial-end-error accounts of 'the Scientific Method' rarely bother to address. One of the reasons why the Enlightenment dreams of the universal applicability of scientific method to human life in general have largely failed, is that there aren't any simple underlying physics-style laws governing the dynamics of historical and social change, as much as 19th century Europeans sought them.
     
    Last edited: May 28, 2015
  20. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    16,600
    Everybody hear that? Everything we do is the scientific method! We're all doing science all the time. Which is ofcourse ridiculous. As Yazata points out, the scientific method has become so absurdly generalized as to become vacuous of all meaning. It's not even the revered method that distinguishes real science from other fields of study anymore. This is a case of throwing out the baby with the bathwater. In their defense of the scientific method, they have reduced it to mere common sense. Which is maybe what it all was to begin with. See my article on "The Myth of the Scientific Method."

    None of those things mentioned involve mistaking something that merely looked like something for being that something. I haven't even seen any of those things personally. So how could it be a case of me seeing them and mistaking them for being something else?
     
  21. Magical Realist Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    16,600
    Excellent point. It also underscores the whole reason worshippers of scientism hold on so tightly to there being some exclusive scientific method that distinguishes true science from pseudoscience. It enables them to explain why science gets accurate results while pseudoscience doesn't. But by generalizing the scientific method beyond what it is usually claimed to be it can no longer be used this way. If it's just logic and common sense, then true science becomes impossible to define because everything becomes science. Finding my car keys. Vacuuming my carpet. Taking a bath. Winning the lotto. No longer is it even a strict methodology only scientists adhere to. And so science becomes as ambiguous and vague as ever.
     
  22. origin Heading towards oblivion Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    11,888
    Well that is really strange. The bible is a set of beliefs that have no supporting evidence and involve events that violate logic and experience. The scientific method is a way to use experimentation and observation to discern how the universe works. So they are not even close to having the same meaning or intent.
     
  23. Daecon Kiwi fruit Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    3,133
    Wow, you really are deluded.
     
Thread Status:
Not open for further replies.

Share This Page