On Sat, Jul 19, 2003 at 10:09:12AM -0400, Robert J. Chassell wrote: > Erik, you are right, it is true that what goes on inside a mind cannot > be verified independently by others at this time. But that is not the > issue.
That may not be an issue you want to discuss, but that does not make it "not the issue". Debbi attributes some real physical meaning (i.e., independent of just the working of the mind) to these numinous experiences, and yet she has no evidence for this link. Even worse for her claim, the extreme lack of such evidence for some independent (of the mind) reality of these experiences over hundreds of years is strongly suggestive evidence that there is no such thing. > The question is the cause of reported numinous experiences. That is one question. A simple answer is something related to the functioning of the brain. That is of course, vague, and much more detail could be filled in. The problem I am discussing is that some people are attributing some information-carrying link between these internal, unverifiable, unreliable experiences and the physical universe outside the mind. Despite a pitiful lack of scientific evidence which is most reasonably interpreted as evidence AGAINST any such link. > (Note that you or I could verify that reports occur. Um, duh? How many times do I have to say that I do not dispute that some people report that they have some numinous experience? > As for cause: Deborah has hypothesized that something as yet unknown > outside the human body is what a person having a numinous experience > perceives. > More precisely, Deborah said > > ..., I think it's the manifestation of another sense (call it > sixth or seventh or spiritual if you like), which detects - albeit > imperfectly - a level of reality that we cannot currently describe > or measure, except in "soft" terms like metaphysical, higher > plane, spiritual, etherial, etc. That is hardly worthy of the scientific term "hypothesized". It is speculation or pseudo-science based on poor understanding of science and what is already known and tested by science. It does not specify how it can be falsified. It has no basis whatsoever in known science -- what repeatable experiment has ever shown that the human brain is so special that it can interact with matter or energy in ways different than all other matter in the universe, which interacts using the 4 fundamental forces of the universe (gravity, electromagnetic, strong, weak)? > Others have hypothesized that numinous experiences cause a person to > feel that they have had an undeniable experience caused by something > outside the human body, but that the mind is simply confusing > inner and outer experience, and that the body has this capability > intrinsically. This is a little better. It doesn't make the ignorant claim that all of physics is either wrong or all scientists for centuries totally missed such an important physical interaction. But I don't really see much of a prediction coming from this. Maybe this could be turned into a useful hypothesis by saying something like, "during `numinous experiences' there is no information transfer occuring between the brain and the rest of the universe other than the usual methods of human observation and interaction with the universe (touch, sight, sound, smell, taste, speech)". This makes a clear prediction and is falsifiable by observing and testing a new mode of information transfer with the brain. Since the claim has not been falsified, despite much effort by many people over the centuries, it is quite likely to be correct. > At the moment, to decide between these two hypothesizes, one can use > Occam's Razor: does an explanation that fits other already known > understandings of the world do a better job or a worse job than an > explanation that requires an additional, not yet known understanding > of the world? Yes, that is another way of saying what I wrote above. -- "Erik Reuter" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> http://www.erikreuter.net/ _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
