birch:
you just contradicted yourself and are not thinking 'clearly'. what particular phenomena are you referring to or are you just sweeping all phenomena (typical) as bunk?
I haven't referred to any phenomena as bunk.
My entire previous post invited you to follow evidence where it leads, rather than making assumptions. Did you miss the point?
... and what particular phenomena to "much simpler mundane explanation' are you referring to, again?
I wasn't referring to any particular phenomena. Often, we need to investigate on a case-by-case basis, because there are often different kinds of mundane explanations and various ones are applicable in different cases.
What I am saying is that if mundane explanations can't be ruled out, then there's no need to introduce paranormal explanations, in any given case.
... who said they are invoking ghosts (besides the fact you don't know if it exists or not but believe you do)? didn't i say that not all paranormal phenomena has to do with ghosts as even skeptics stereotypically jump to as conclusions as well?
I was only making up an example that happened to use ghosts there. Substitute any paranormal phenomenon you like, the principle is the same.
...this is because you don't have much experience with paranormal phenomena ...
I'm not sure what you're saying here. I have already told you that I have quite a lot of knowledge of the so-called paranormal, accumulated over the years, so in that sense I have quite a bit of experience in examining paranormal claims.
On the other hand, maybe you're saying that if I only experienced paranormal phenomena directly myself, then I'd be a believer, and that my lack of direct experience is why I don't believe. In other words, you might be saying that only people who claim to have had paranormal experiences are qualified to discuss the reality of the phenomena. The problem with that is that personal experiences are inevitably subjective. People are prone to misinterpreting what they see, hear and otherwise sense, under the right conditions. People can also be "primed" by their own prior knowledge and conceptions to misinterpret things in particular ways. In other words, people are fallible, and direct experience is no guarantee that one's interpretation of an experience is the correct interpretation.
This is why Magical Realist is so very wrong when he claims that eyewitness testimony of the paranormal "stands on its own". It never does. It stands with all the falibilities and biases of the eyewitnesses. This is why objective evidence is so important. It is why independent confirmation is important. It is why, in many cases, repeatability (preferably under controlled conditions) is important.
... or haven't considered different angles or hypothesis behind these unexplained phenomena that don't always have cursory and easy trivial explanations so you expect and assume others believe they are all ghosts. see?
To stick with ghosts as an example, it can be far easier to just label a fuzzy blur in a photo, that looks like a face, as a ghost, rather than thinking about what
else could have caused a face-like blur. The paranormal is often lazy. It starts with an assumption and rarely investigates beyond that.
in the case of paranormal phenomena, there is simply 'inconclusive' for most cases that can't be debunked. is that still rattling your chain? or is there still that itch to scratch to bring down an definitive hammer on it?
I thought I'd already had this discussion with you, but maybe I had it with somebody else.
Just to be clear: I'm quite comfortable with uncertainty. I'm quite happy to say "I don't know what that fuzzy blob in the photograph is". I find that, in general, it is the true believers who want to insist that the blob must be a ghost or an alien spacecraft or whatever. I recognise that many cases are actually impossible to resolve one way or the other, due to lack of sufficient evidence. But the believers always default to: "If it can't be debunked, then it counts as evidence of the paranormal". It doesn't.
besides, james r, i wonder if you are of the mind that blindly assumes that people who believe in paranormal, esp, astral projection/travel, astrology or even ghosts are all of average intelligence and therefore stupid and lack critical thinking ability.
Not at all.
It's not a matter of intelligence. Michael Shermer wrote a book on this called
Why People Believe Weird Things. I agree with what he says there. People who believe in the paranormal don't necessarily lack intelligence. The problem is often that they
start believing for basically irrational reasons, and
then apply their intelligence to defend their unsupported belief by rationalising it in various ways to other people and, more importantly, to themselves.
If you're a conspiracy theorist, for example, then you might be very intelligent indeed. You might be able to come up with lots of good reasons why the government would want to suppress information and control people, and you might find ingenious ways to explain various facts to fit your favorite conspiratorial ideas. If you believe in a CIA conspiracy to shoot Kennedy, then you might well be able to fit all the known facts into that theory, although it will require you to make a whole raft of unproven assumptions. At the family BBQ, you'll be able to counter all objections to the conspiracy theory. You'll have an answer for every objection to your theory. But you won't be able to prove your core assumptions. So what's wrong? What's wrong is that you
started with a set of unproven assumptions, and then built the rest on that shaky foundation.
Take astrology as a different example. Suppose you get your horoscope done and it seems to accurately predict some events in your life. So, you decide that astrology works. You don't have to be stupid for that. Your horoscope really did say you'd meet a new man this week, and you really did, so there must be something to it, right? So you decide to study up on it. You read a lot of books. You go to astrology conventions. Maybe you set yourself up as a professional astrologer, casting horoscopes for other people who often tell you that you got it right. But in your studies you also learn that astrological prediction is a tricky business. The stars can be misinterpreted. Sometimes you don't see things in the stars because you don't look hard enough in the right way, but after the events that occur you can make it make sense, you understand where you went wrong that time. It takes intelligence to keep all the exceptions and flaws and complications of the astrological system in mind; it's a big, complicated area of study. So what's wrong here? The same thing as with the conspiracist: you
started with the unproven assumption that astrology works, and built up from there, based on what is actually, provably, a shaky foundation. Maybe you didn't know about the power of coincidence. Maybe you blinded yourself to how vague a lot of astrology is. Maybe you counted the hits and forgot the misses too many times.
So, we've covered intelligence. It's not about lack of intelligence.
As for critical thinking, that's a different matter. People believe weird things uniformly because they don't think critically, at least not about the right things. They don't think critically about those foundations. Rather, they take the foundations as a given. Aliens are visiting earth. The Illuminati control the world. Homeopathy cures diseases. Or whatever.
Critical thinking is not an automatic skill. It's a learned skill. And the best method we have for evaluating evidence properly is the scientific method. So, training in how to think like a scientist is vital (even if it's not explicitly described that way). It also needs practice.
as a matter of fact, there are just as many of lower to average intelligence who would side with you on these matters and are very literal and think all these subjects are silly, ridiculous and completely imaginary. this is because they also take the world at face value and if they did not experience something, they don't believe it either. it doesn't take a genius to be a literalist either. either side of the coin, brother.
That is true. Lots of people believe that Lee Harvey Oswald was a lone gunman, and they accept
that as a foundational fact, without knowing much about the evidence that supports the idea. The fact that they are most likely correct does not necessarily mean that they are capable of making a convincing argument for their theory. That, too, requires knowledge of the evidence and the ability to evaluate it.
One other thing I should add is that in many cases we lack personal expertise to decide what to believe about things. So what we do instead is trust somebody else to tell us what is true. This can be a problem if the trusted person or organisation is actually unreliable, or built on its own shaky foundation. There's no easy solution to this. Trust is necessary. Trusting the right people is important. Knowing how to tell who is trustworthy is difficult. But intelligence and critical thinking can help a lot with that, too.
