Does Chi exist ?

kurros

There may be some truth in that, but it does not obviate my point that we need objective, empirical data to determine the reality of the universe.

Ideas on chi lack this. Evidence is generally either subjective, or taking a form that is not acceptable to good rigorous scientific methods. Chi is vitalism, which I pointed out, is a discredited theory. If you want to suggest on a science forum that it needs to be taken seriously, then there is a duty on you to provide the right kind of evidence.
 
Skeptical said:
Woo

Quantum physics is weird indeed. However, I believe it because it is supported by objectively derived, empirical, and credible evidence. I do not mind that most such evidence is second hand. We cannot all carry out multi-million dollar experiments, and so we accept what is written up in peer reviewed and reputable scientific journals.

Subjective evidence is not acceptable. To say that you believe in the whichness of the why because you have felt it deep in your heart is simply not good enough. Almost any subjective sensation can be produced by drugs, direct electrical stimulation of the brain, starvation, meditation, extreme fatigue etc. Subjective is usually not true.

I am aware that your strongly experienced, direct first hand personal gnosis fits the category of subjective sensation. Thus it cannot be accepted as indicating something real.
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Skeptical,

you skipped over my question "Subjective is usually not true" then are there
any circumstances when it is true? an important point i think, and how would
we know it was true, could we know, scientifically?
 
Woo

That statement is a gross generalisation, of course. And there are exceptions. If I were to say : "I have a stomach ache. There is something wrong in my gut." I would almost certainly be right. The ache is subjective, but relates to something more.

However, my statement was more directed towards beliefs. If you believe in God due to a subjective feeling of the presence of deity, then I would say that you have nothing solid to demonstrate your belief. Such subjective feelings come from a wide range of sources, and as far as I can determine, none have any link to deity.


In the same way, if you want to demonstrate the existence of chi, you will need to demonstrate objective and empirical data. Otherwise you convince only the superstitious.
 
Skeptical said:
Woo

That statement is a gross generalisation, of course. And there are exceptions. If I were to say : "I have a stomach ache. There is something wrong in my gut." I would almost certainly be right. The ache is subjective, but relates to something more.

However, my statement was more directed towards beliefs. If you believe in God due to a subjective feeling of the presence of deity, then I would say that you have nothing solid to demonstrate your belief. Such subjective feelings come from a wide range of sources, and as far as I can determine, none have any link to deity.


In the same way, if you want to demonstrate the existence of chi, you will need to demonstrate objective and empirical data. Otherwise you convince only the superstitious.
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so you go to your doctor and he asks you to demonstrate your belief in your
tummy ache, is that satisfactory?
 
I think if it exists for you, it exists. If you can derive somthing from it that makes you somehow more than you were, then it exists for you. I see kids, and i remember being a kid unpolluted by adult rationale believing in assuming different personalities with different energies, and maybe it was a form of self delusion but it worked at the time. If it works, it exists on some level. Psychosematic perhaps, but the mind works on many different levels and despite our supposed wisdom there is much we still don't know. Who can say for sure?
 
ULTRA said:
I think if it exists for you, it exists. If you can derive somthing from it that makes you somehow more than you were, then it exists for you. I see kids, and i remember being a kid unpolluted by adult rationale believing in assuming different personalities with different energies, and maybe it was a form of self delusion but it worked at the time. If it works, it exists on some level. Psychosematic perhaps, but the mind works on many different levels and despite our supposed wisdom there is much we still don't know. Who can say for sure?
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skeptics demand objective empirical data, the only problem is there
is no such thing, ultimately all science has is theory, general relativity,
quantum mechanics yes, but no way to resolve the two, there is no
ultimate scientific truth, because we just don't know enough
about the Universe we live in. some of us believe we have found an
answer to that, the skeptics continue to ask for the data, if they would
take the time to turn inward rather than outward they just might
find what they are looking for. OM
 
woowoo said:
skeptics demand objective empirical data, the only problem is there
is no such thing, ultimately all science has is theory, general relativity,
quantum mechanics yes, but no way to resolve the two, there is no
ultimate scientific truth, because we just don't know enough
about the Universe we live in. some of us believe we have found an
answer to that, the skeptics continue to ask for the data, if they would
take the time to turn inward rather than outward they just might
find what they are looking for. OM
Click to expand...

No. If we did that, we'd have religion.
 
The record of the scientific approach is very clear. In the last 400 years, humanity has progressed further in both understanding the universe, and in manipulating nature to our own benefit, than the roughly 200,000 years beforehand during which we have been Homo sapiens.

The approach woowoo recommends has been in force for all of that 200,000 years and has gained us next to nothing.
 
Skeptical said:
The record of the scientific approach is very clear. In the last 400 years, humanity has progressed further in both understanding the universe, and in manipulating nature to our own benefit, than the roughly 200,000 years beforehand during which we have been Homo sapiens.

The approach woowoo recommends has been in force for all of that 200,000 years and has gained us next to nothing.
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There's no doubt our technology and understanding of the physical
universe is advancing at an exponential rate, but i think you are
rather disingenuous to our ancient ancestors to suppose their
world view and ideas about the creation of the cosmos and their
own origins were of little or no consequence in the evolution of mankind.
There may have been a time when the belief in an afterlife was
the driving force behind new technological ideas, paleolithic cave
paintings and burial ritual, it would make a fascinating study, i'll
leave that for another time.

The objective and the subjective, inner and outer, we
can't separate the the two, all credit to the objective data set
that has given us our technology, without the subjective
we would be robots, some people really think we are. Then
there is the tricky question of truth, in either domain there
the absolute remains illusive.

The answer as always with these things is to embrace both aspects
but i would not want you to take my word for it, rather as an example
let me redirect you to the posthumous web site of one of the worlds
most famous mathematicians who died recently, Benoit Mandelbrot,
these words are on his home page and make my point better than
anything I can say:


"Seeks a measure of order in physical, mathematical or social phenomena
that are characterized by abundant data but extreme sample variability.
The surprising esthetic value of many of his discoveries and their unexpected
usefulness in teaching have made him an eloquent spokesman for
the "unity of knowing and feeling."


http://www.math.yale.edu/mandelbrot/
 
As far as I am concerned, our ancestors were simply human. No smarter, and no more stupid than we are. The occasional mega-genius among our paleolithic forebears, no doubt, came up with advances that moved humanity forward. A new way of chipping stone, perhaps.

However, progress accelerated when we developed the scientific method, and the practical, empirical process. The is no evidence that subjective feelings have ever contributed in any practical way to human progress.

Religious and 'spiritual' ways of thinking may have helped create entertaining tales, but it would be the practical craftsman among our ancestors that moved humanity forward, with better tools and techniques.
 
Skeptical said:
kurros

There may be some truth in that, but it does not obviate my point that we need objective, empirical data to determine the reality of the universe.
Click to expand...

I agree completely. I get paid to do science after all.

Skeptical said:
Ideas on chi lack this. Evidence is generally either subjective, or taking a form that is not acceptable to good rigorous scientific methods. Chi is vitalism, which I pointed out, is a discredited theory. If you want to suggest on a science forum that it needs to be taken seriously, then there is a duty on you to provide the right kind of evidence.
Click to expand...

I am not suggesting we just accept the ancient theory how it stands, but I do think it is interesting enough that it deserves the attention of modern research. After all we investigate traditional medicines to see what they really do and perhaps integrate them into western medicine; I feel the other aspects of traditional healing deserve similar attention. And of course people are doing this kind of research, I just did a search and one of the first things that came up was this:

http://tv.unsw.edu.au/video/tai-chi-for-diabetes-sufferers/videoRes/StdQuality

Ok the video seems to talk about arthritis rather than diabetes like I expected but oh well. Anyway that is a program developed at the UNSW Faculty of Medicine, so people do take it seriously. I know you'll say something about how that it isn't chi creating the benefit, but that hardly matters. There is still a lot to learn here I think.
 
woowoo said:
There's no doubt our technology and understanding of the physical
universe is advancing at an exponential rate, but i think you are
rather disingenuous to our ancient ancestors to suppose their
world view and ideas about the creation of the cosmos and their
own origins were of little or no consequence in the evolution of mankind.
There may have been a time when the belief in an afterlife was
the driving force behind new technological ideas, paleolithic cave
paintings and burial ritual, it would make a fascinating study, i'll
leave that for another time.

The objective and the subjective, inner and outer, we
can't separate the the two, all credit to the objective data set
that has given us our technology, without the subjective
we would be robots, some people really think we are. Then
there is the tricky question of truth, in either domain there
the absolute remains illusive.

The answer as always with these things is to embrace both aspects
but i would not want you to take my word for it, rather as an example
let me redirect you to the posthumous web site of one of the worlds
most famous mathematicians who died recently, Benoit Mandelbrot,
these words are on his home page and make my point better than
anything I can say:


"Seeks a measure of order in physical, mathematical or social phenomena
that are characterized by abundant data but extreme sample variability.
The surprising esthetic value of many of his discoveries and their unexpected
usefulness in teaching have made him an eloquent spokesman for
the "unity of knowing and feeling."


http://www.math.yale.edu/mandelbrot/
Click to expand...
:bravo:
GOLD STAR
 
Skeptical said:
The is no evidence that subjective feelings have ever contributed in any practical way to human progress.
Click to expand...


Friedrich August Kekulé had a dream that helped him discover the benzene
molecule. Francis Crick was high on LSD when he first deduced the structure DNA.

There are other examples, they're not hard to find.
 
woowoo said:
Friedrich August Kekulé had a dream that helped him discover the benzene
molecule. Francis Crick was high on LSD when he first deduced the structure DNA.

There are other examples, they're not hard to find.
Click to expand...

Well if you want to look at it from that angle, every single scientific idea is an act of creativity, which is based on a hunch. The rigorous stuff comes later.
 
Woo

Both those examples are of people who had done enormous amounts of work and obtained enormous amounts of data from their projects. All that was needed at that point was to think it through. If the thinking was subconscious rather than conscious, what difference does that make? Those discoveries were based on objective empirical data, not on some subjective brainwave.
 
Skeptical said:
Woo

Both those examples are of people who had done enormous amounts of work and obtained enormous amounts of data from their projects. All that was needed at that point was to think it through. If the thinking was subconscious rather than conscious, what difference does that make? Those discoveries were based on objective empirical data, not on some subjective brainwave.
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is thinking something through, subjective or objective?
 
Woo
The point is that the result was from objective and empirical evidence. Not some burst of unfounded intuition.

Scientists do that all the time. It is called forming a hypothesis. And the circular nature of benzene, and the double helix nature of DNA were just hypotheses at the time. Where the idea for a hypothesis comes from is less important than what follows. The next part is even more important - using the hypothesis to make a predictive test.

At the end of the day, it is the data that counts.
 
Skeptical said:
Woo
The point is that the result was from objective and empirical evidence. Not some burst of unfounded intuition.

Scientists do that all the time. It is called forming a hypothesis. And the circular nature of benzene, and the double helix nature of DNA were just hypotheses at the time. Where the idea for a hypothesis comes from is less important than what follows. The next part is even more important - using the hypothesis to make a predictive test.

At the end of the day, it is the data that counts.
Click to expand...

it does not surprise me to here you discount the role of intuition.

what good is your data in the hands of a monkey, you make it sound
like we are no more than an adding machines, robots.
its a very one sided point of view, and one sided points of view are
invariably wrong. forming a hypothesis requires, intuition, insight and the creative
spark, there is no algorithm for that.
 
woowoo said:
it does not surprise me to here you discount the role of intuition.

what good is your data in the hands of a monkey, you make it sound
like we are no more than an adding machines, robots.
its a very one sided point of view, and one sided points of view are
invariably wrong. forming a hypothesis requires, intuition, insight and the creative
spark, there is no algorithm for that.
Click to expand...

What are you not getting. He did not downplay intuition. It is very important in the creative part of the scientific method as is the study and preparation that was mentioned. With the proper preparation the creation of the hypothesis happens sometime easily, sometimes in a dream, sometimes when relaxed or even while purposely attempting to create a hypothesis. As Skeptic says, it is what follows from that that is important.

It is not some vague feeling that chi is real and important it is designing a hypothesis to test and measure to verify whether you feeling is true or not.
What you want to do is just stop at the "I Believe" stage which can generally do more harm than good.
 
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