Saturday, January 30, 2010
Friday, January 29, 2010
Criss Angel Mindfreak, Jim Callahan, Uri Geller and lapses into pseudoskeptical bigotry in the NBC's TV show Phenomenon
Criss Angel
Jim CallahanI've been a great fan of Criss Angel since his beginning as a professional magician in TV. I consider him a first rate magician/illusionist and, probably, the most creative and original of the current professional stage magicians/illusionists. Perhaps he's the best of all the time.
You can imagine my surprise and disapointment when in 2007, in the TV program Phenomenon aired on NBC, Angel showed a raving pseudoskeptical side when attempted to debunk the work of one of his fellows magicians, the illusionist Jim Callahan, who made a trick where he supposedly communicated with dead persons.
This caused an altercation between both of them.
Wikipedia provides a summary of the event: "Starting in October 2007 he appeared as a judge on Phenomenon, with Uri Geller and in a CNN interview about the show he told Larry King "no one has the ability, that I'm aware of, to do anything supernatural, psychic, talk to the dead. And that was what I said I was going to do with Phenomenon. If somebody goes on that show and claims to have supernatural psychic ability, I'm going to bust [him] live and on television."
You can imagine my surprise and disapointment when in 2007, in the TV program Phenomenon aired on NBC, Angel showed a raving pseudoskeptical side when attempted to debunk the work of one of his fellows magicians, the illusionist Jim Callahan, who made a trick where he supposedly communicated with dead persons.
This caused an altercation between both of them.
Wikipedia provides a summary of the event: "Starting in October 2007 he appeared as a judge on Phenomenon, with Uri Geller and in a CNN interview about the show he told Larry King "no one has the ability, that I'm aware of, to do anything supernatural, psychic, talk to the dead. And that was what I said I was going to do with Phenomenon. If somebody goes on that show and claims to have supernatural psychic ability, I'm going to bust [him] live and on television."
On the October 31, 2007 episode of the reality show Phenomenon, Paranormalist Jim Callahan performed a summoning, purportedly of author Raymond Hill, to help discover the contents of a locked box.[18] Although fellow judge Uri Geller praised the performance, Angel called it "comical" and subsequently challenged both Callahan and Geller to guess the contents of two envelopes he pulled out of his pocket, offering a million dollars of his own money to whoever could do so. This led to an argument between Callahan and Angel, during which Callahan walked toward Angel and called him an "ideological bigot", with the two pulled apart as the show promptly went to a commercial break. Angel has since revealed the contents of one envelope and at the unveiling he challenged Geller one more time. Geller was unsuccessful, and the envelope was revealed to contain an index card with the numbers "911" printed on it for September 11, 2001. Criss' explanation was this: "If on 9-10 somebody could have predicted that 9-11 was going to happen, they could have saved thousands of lives". The other envelope's contents was scheduled to be revealed on the first episode of Season 4 of Criss Angel: Mindfreak. However, the contents of the other envelope were never revealed and remain a mystery to this day"
You can watch by yourself what happened in that altercation in this video:
Let's to make some comments and reflections:
1-In the wikipedia's link mentioned above, Angel says that: "no one has the ability, that I'm aware of, to do anything supernatural, psychic, talk to the dead."
Angel, like any other person, is free to have whatever beliefs he wants. This is not the point that I want to criticize here.
What I want to criticize is Angel's logical inconsistency. Angel says that he is not aware of someone having supernatural powers. From this premise, he deduces that such powers don't exist (this is obviously a non-sequitur. Ignorance of X is not evidence against the existence of X).
This fallacious inference explains Angel' next comment: "And that was what I said I was going to do with Phenomenon. If somebody goes on that show and claims to have supernatural psychic ability, I'm going to bust [him] live and on television"
Note that Angel has not interest at all in discover whether supernatural powers exist or not. He doesn't want to research the truth about the supernatural, because he doesn't believe in it (or more exactly, because he BELIEVES that such powers don't exist).
He assumes IN ADVANCE that such powers don't exist (because he's not aware of anybody having them) and, as consequence, if someone claims having them, such person is a liar and a fraud and deserves proper and public debunking (or "busting").
But Angel's assumption is true only if metaphysical naturalism (which excludes the supernatural) is true. However, according to his interview with Larry King before Halloween in 2007 said he still believes stronglyn God.
Note that, according to his own concession, HE IS A BELIEVER IN GOD (and therefore, he believes that a supernatural entity like God exists).
In other words, being a supernaturalist, Angel cannot exclude, in advance, the existence of supernatural powers existing on some human beings. Such powers could or not to exist, but the point is that if God exists, the supernatural exists, and therefore you cannot pose a priori arbitrary limits on where or who will possess such powers (after all, God could give to some particular person the power of being psychic or talking with the dead. Is not part of God's supernatural power the possibility to do that?)
2-But even if the supernatural doesn't exist and metaphysical naturalism is true, does it justify Angel's aggression, in TV, against a fellow illusionist/magician?
It's well known that many illusionists use ambiguous language when refering to their "powers". They try to appear like real psychics while saying or hinting that they're magicians only. This is part of the misdirection that is essential to the working of many illusions (magicians need to use psychological tricks to predispose the public in their favor).
As comments George Hansen in his paper "Magicians who endorsed psychic phenomena" : "Some magicians’ positive statements regarding psychic phenomena might be looked upon with some skepticism. In the mentalist literature, performers are frequently urged to claim genuine abilities even if they don’t believe in them. In other instances, magicians might make positive statements for publicity purposes. Such practices have led some to doubt any positive opinions magicians claim on the matter" (Emphasis added)
So, charitably, we have to understand Callahan's claims (in the context of his presentation) as part of his magic show. It's part of the misdirection and psychological methods common in magicians, mentalists and illusionists.
Why did Angel try to cause damage to Callahan's presentation and professional image with his silly and irrelevant "closed envelope" test? Professional jelousy? A need to discrediting the tricks of competing magicians?
3-Angel's attempt of debunking consisted in asking Callahan (and Geller) to "guess the contents of two envelopes he pulled out of his pocket, offering a million dollars of his own money to whoever could do so"
Leaving aside the ridiculous Randi-like million dollars challenge, the point is that such test doesn't disproves supernatural powers in general. The fallacious assumption is that if supernatural powers exist, then you can know by supernatural means the contents of Angel's envelopes. And given that (according to Angel) no one can do that, then supernatural powers don't exist.
You don't need to be a philosopher to see the simplistic and extreme fallacious nature of Angel's assumption.
For example, talking with the dead doesn't imply having the ability of being able to read a close envelope. Therefore, failing to see Angel's envelope is not evidence against the proposition that someone can talk with the dead. (Failing to pass Angel's test is evidence only against the specific proposition that the individual claimant is able to read or see the contents of a close envelope)
So, failing to pass Angel's test doesn't count as evidence against the existence of supernatural powers in general, or specific paranormal powers like psychokinesis or telepathy.
4-Even being able to see or read, or get an approximate to the contents of the envelope wouldn't convince a person like Angel that something "supernatural" is working. In the following video, what seems to be a Geller's fan, defends that Geller could actually discover the contents of Angel's envelope in that show:
For the record, in my opinion, the above video has not evidential value. And I think that Geller doesn't have paranormal faculties (he's a good illusionist).
But I also think that Angel's "closed envelope" test to Callahan and Geller is ridiculous and worthless and out of place.
5-Jim Callahan called Angel an "ideological bigot". I don't know if Angel is an actual bigot or not, but their behaviour in that show supports that hypothesis. He seems so biased against the existence of paranormal (or supernatural, in Angel's jargon) powers that he's emotionally intolerant of everything related to psychic faculties.
See Angel, Geller and Callahan's comments after their altercation, in this video:
Instead of worrying about magicians claiming supernatural powers, Angel should be worried by magicians who'd exposed his own tricks. For example, Val Valentino, known as the Masked Magician, has exposed the tricks of Angel (and other magicians) in a TV series called Magic's Biggest Secrets Finally Revealed.
For example, Angel is famous by his trick of walking on water:
The Masked Magician has exposed his trick here:
So with many other tricks. Angel should be worried about it, rather than engaging himself in pseudoskeptical and biased attempts of debunking of supposed parapsychological phenomena by magicians.
If Angel has a real interest in scientific evidence for psychic phenomena, he should read Dean Radin's books, Chris Carter's Parapsychology and the Skeptics book, or in Charles Tart's The End of Materialism book.
Links of interest:
-George Hansen's paper "Magicians and the Paranormal"
-George Hansen's paper "Magicians who endorsed psychic phenomena"
-Jim Callahan's website.
-Chris Angel Mindfreak's website.
Additional comment:
Callahan has offered $5,000 to James Randi if he fails Randi's test. Read the full story here.
So it seems that Callahan actually believes he has some psychic powers that he can prove under controlled conditions. But it seems Randi doesn't want to test him. (Perhaps Angel's attempted debunking in Phenomenon was a kind of trap to discredit Callahan, so Randi can dismiss him too).
In any case, regardless of whether Callahan has paranormal powers or not, in my opinion Angel's behaviour was incorrect.
In spite of all of this, I'm still a great fan of Angel's first class illusionism.
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
A brief comment on Frank Visser essay New Light on the Near-Death Experience
A reader brought to my attention an article on near-death experiences written by Frank Visser, founder of the website integralworld.net, a site dedicated to exploring philosopher Ken Wilber's theories and ideas.
I'll limit my post to Visser's comment on parapsychology, because I think Visser' opinion is misleading:
I'll limit my post to Visser's comment on parapsychology, because I think Visser' opinion is misleading:
"Parapsychology exists for over a century, but unfortunately after all these decades it cannot supply any well-established results. What is more, among those who study this field there are - in military terms - two groups: the hawks and the doves, or the sceptics and the believers. The believers state that the evidence for the paranormal is "overwhelming", and that those who after all these years still doubt it are members of the dogmatic Church of Science, are afraid of a paradigm shift, etc. On the other hand, sceptics state that the so-called evidence is shaky, often has a strong anecdotal flavor and does not hold up to scrutiny.
Sometimes, I have the idea that this could in large part be a matter of temperament. Some people are completely at home with the idea that ultimately everything can be reduced to matter (the materialist is philosophically an extravert); others attribute reality to their subjective feelings and thoughts (they are the philosophical introverts). May be there is a psychological for this fruitless battle between sceptics and believers, which frustrates the progress of this discussion. Both rationalize their emotional choice with ad hoc arguments, which make them feel comfortable. I myself am a dove who is very much interested in what hawks come up with... "
Some comments:
1-It's simply false that parapsychology cannot supply any well established results.
Whoever has read the best literature on parapsychology, in particular Dean Radin's books (The Conscious Universe and Entangled Minds) or Chris Carter's book Parapsychology and the Skeptics, will know that some of the result of parapsychology (like experiments in remote viewing) are well established according to the accepted criteria of science.
And this fact is agreed even by professional skeptics and debunkers. For example, professional debunker of parapsychology Richard Wiseman has recently conceded: "I agree that by the standards of any other area of science that remote viewing is proven, but begs the question: do we need higher standards of evidence when we study the paranormal? I think we do.
"If I said that there is a red car outside my house, you would probably believe me.
"But if I said that a UFO had just landed, you'd probably want a lot more evidence.
"Because remote viewing is such an outlandish claim that will revolutionise the world, we need overwhelming evidence before we draw any conclusions. Right now we don't have that evidence."
As I argued at long in this post, Wiseman is not questioning the scientific quality and results of the research on remote viewing, but rejecting the evidence on purely philosophical grounds. Noetic scientist Dean Radin has commented Wiseman's position: "Thus, a prominent skeptic agrees that (1) the study of remote viewing is an area of science, which should thoroughly obviate the skeptical epithet of "pseudoscience" once and for all. And (2) that when judged against prevailing scientific standards for evaluating evidence, he agrees that remote viewing is proven. The follow-on argument that this phenomenon is so unusual that it requires more evidence refers not to evidence per se, or even to scientific methods or practice, but to assumptions about the fabric of reality" (emphasis in blue added)
Professional writer Michael Prescott has a similar opinion about Wiseman's view: "But why exactly is remote viewing an "outlandish claim"? I think this is what begs the question, to use Wiseman's phrase.
His argument is a variation on the old saw that "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." There is some truth to this, but the trouble is, who can agree on what constitutes an extraordinary claim?
In a world where consciousness is restricted to the brain, remote viewing would indeed be extraordinary and outlandish. But in a world where consciousness can operate independent of the brain, remote viewing is exactly the kind of thing we would expect to see. We would also expect to see reports of out-of-body experiences, near-death experiences, telepathy, precognition, apparitions, and after-death communication. And we do! In fact, such things have been reported for thousands of years all over the world and are taken for granted by billions of people today, just as they were by most of our ancestors.
So there may be nothing extraordinary or outlandish at all about any of these phenomena. They only appear that way to those who start with the assumption that such things just don't happen" (emphasis in blue added)
And Wiseman is not the only prominent skeptic/debunker who concedes that some of the findings of parapsychology are technically correct from a scientific point of view while simultaneously tries to reject or undermine the evidence on philosophical grounds. Some years before Wiseman's concession, professional skeptic and debunker Ray Hyman conceded too that a particular research program on remote viewing had not flaws. In this technical paper, Hyman wrote: "The SAIC experiments are well-designed and the investigators have taken pains to eliminate the known weaknesses in previous parapsychological research. In addition, I cannot provide suitable candidates for what flaws, if any, might be present." (emphasis added).
If you respect the rule that you have to follow the argument and evidence where it leads, you're rationally forced to accept that the available scientific evidence of SAIC experiments in favor of remote viewing is good enough to support the existence of this phenomenon.
But as a professional debunker and member of CSICOP, Hyman is not allowed to do that. He needs to find any excuses to cast doubts on the results, even if the excuses are empirically unjustified and unproven. And Hyman found that clever excuse: "Just the same, it is impossible in principle to say that any particular experiment or experimental series is completely free from possible flaws. An experimenter cannot control for every possibility--especially for potential flaws that have not yet been discovered." (emphasis added)
How could you refute Hyman's skepticism based upon "potential flaws that have not yet been discoveried"? This kind of "skeptical" argument would apply to virtually any kind of scientific claim supported by evidence, provided you want to disbelieve it.
Perhaps Visser needs to have a better familiarity with the best evidence provided by parapsychology and how this evidence has made that prominent professional skeptics like Wiseman and Hyman concede the scientific quality of the research and the evidence, so they can reject them only on purely rhetorical and philosophical grounds.
I'd suggest to Visser to watch carefully these videos by Dean Radin:
2-In his essay, Visser points out: "Sometimes, I have the idea that this could in large part be a matter of temperament. Some people are completely at home with the idea that ultimately everything can be reduced to matter (the materialist is philosophically an extravert); others attribute reality to their subjective feelings and thoughts (they are the philosophical introverts). May be there is a psychological for this fruitless battle between sceptics and believers, which frustrates the progress of this discussion. Both rationalize their emotional choice with ad hoc arguments, which make them feel comfortable. I myself am a dove who is very much interested in what hawks come up with..."
Even though I think Visser is largely right about the psychological foundation of the controversy on parapsychology (I've discussed this aspects, as manifested in materialistic pseudo-skeptics in this post, although something similar could exist in some believers in psi too), Visser fails to stress the function that ideology by itself plays in this controversy.
The key to understand systematic and organized opposition to and debunking of psi research is IDEOLOGICAL. The ideology in question is ontological materialism, or more specifically, metaphysical naturalism.
This worldview IMPLIES that something like psi (and a fortiori, survival of consciousness like suggested by some cases of NDEs, mediumship and other lines of evidence) doesn't and cannot possibly exist. It's a matter of logical entailment. The premises of metaphysical naturalism imply the non-existence of certain phenomena and entities (like "souls" and, as consequence, such nonexistent souls cannot affect matter like in psychokinesis, or survive after death, like suggested by mediumship and some cases of NDEs).
Many people fails to understand this simple point, and thereby they're impressed or surprised by the existence of organized pseudoskepticism or militant debunking. Astute observers, however, if they understand the nature of metaphysical naturalism, would easily predict the existence of organized debunking, because the latter is the consequence of the former (more specifically, the public and theoretical defense of the metaphysical naturalistic worldview IMPLIES the attack, refutation, discreditation, invalidation and debunking of the evidence for psi and survival, because this evidence destroys, demolishes, refutes the naturalist worldview. Therefore, committed and self-proclaimed defenders of naturalism will be, NECESSARILY, debunkers and disbelievers of psi phenomena or any other claim inconsistent with naturalism).
A coherent metaphysical naturalist is not intellectually free to accept psi or survival evidence while being naturalist. If he's a believer in naturalist, he MUST be a disbeliever in psi and survival. (and the intensity or force of the belief in the truth of naturalism is proportional to the force and intensity of the disbelief in psi and survival)
As I said, Visser seems to be aware of this, but his essay doesn't stress the key importance of this philosophical factor. Psychology is important to understand why certain people are metaphysical naturalists; but by itself, psychology give us no philosophical and theortical tools to understand the implicit philosophical assumption that forces the use of the arguments and rhetoric of people like Hyman or Wiseman to reject valid evidence for psi.
If you want to objectively and philosophically confront the arguments of pseudo-skeptics, appealing to their psychology will be insufficient (it only explains their irrationality, their arrogance and delusions of feeling themselves as "brights", and their weird obsessions with creationism and God). You need theoretical, conceptual and philosophical tools to fully know and understand the kind of philosophical and ideological assumptions that colors these people's perspectives and arguments. Only philosophy can provide these tools.
3-Visser's comment on the emotional factor determining and influencing the positions about parapsychology is like a red herring that distracts us from the best evidence for psi.
When Visser asserts that psi research cannot suply us with well-established results, he's falling to the rhetoric and propaganda of mainstream pseudo-skeptics.
As shows the examples of Wiseman and Hyman mentioned above, informed professional skeptics have not refuted the best evidence for psi. Their skepticism is entirely based on a priori philosophical reasons and assumptions, not in scientific evidence as such.
Any neutral observer would understand that the opposition to some of the best psi results is not evidence based, but worldview-based.
This is why I consider Vesser's essay misleading regarding the specific point of the current status of parasychology and the actual nature of the controversy about it. However, his essay is very interesting and worth reading.
Some comments:
1-It's simply false that parapsychology cannot supply any well established results.
Whoever has read the best literature on parapsychology, in particular Dean Radin's books (The Conscious Universe and Entangled Minds) or Chris Carter's book Parapsychology and the Skeptics, will know that some of the result of parapsychology (like experiments in remote viewing) are well established according to the accepted criteria of science.
And this fact is agreed even by professional skeptics and debunkers. For example, professional debunker of parapsychology Richard Wiseman has recently conceded: "I agree that by the standards of any other area of science that remote viewing is proven, but begs the question: do we need higher standards of evidence when we study the paranormal? I think we do.
"If I said that there is a red car outside my house, you would probably believe me.
"But if I said that a UFO had just landed, you'd probably want a lot more evidence.
"Because remote viewing is such an outlandish claim that will revolutionise the world, we need overwhelming evidence before we draw any conclusions. Right now we don't have that evidence."
As I argued at long in this post, Wiseman is not questioning the scientific quality and results of the research on remote viewing, but rejecting the evidence on purely philosophical grounds. Noetic scientist Dean Radin has commented Wiseman's position: "Thus, a prominent skeptic agrees that (1) the study of remote viewing is an area of science, which should thoroughly obviate the skeptical epithet of "pseudoscience" once and for all. And (2) that when judged against prevailing scientific standards for evaluating evidence, he agrees that remote viewing is proven. The follow-on argument that this phenomenon is so unusual that it requires more evidence refers not to evidence per se, or even to scientific methods or practice, but to assumptions about the fabric of reality" (emphasis in blue added)
Professional writer Michael Prescott has a similar opinion about Wiseman's view: "But why exactly is remote viewing an "outlandish claim"? I think this is what begs the question, to use Wiseman's phrase.
His argument is a variation on the old saw that "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence." There is some truth to this, but the trouble is, who can agree on what constitutes an extraordinary claim?
In a world where consciousness is restricted to the brain, remote viewing would indeed be extraordinary and outlandish. But in a world where consciousness can operate independent of the brain, remote viewing is exactly the kind of thing we would expect to see. We would also expect to see reports of out-of-body experiences, near-death experiences, telepathy, precognition, apparitions, and after-death communication. And we do! In fact, such things have been reported for thousands of years all over the world and are taken for granted by billions of people today, just as they were by most of our ancestors.
So there may be nothing extraordinary or outlandish at all about any of these phenomena. They only appear that way to those who start with the assumption that such things just don't happen" (emphasis in blue added)
And Wiseman is not the only prominent skeptic/debunker who concedes that some of the findings of parapsychology are technically correct from a scientific point of view while simultaneously tries to reject or undermine the evidence on philosophical grounds. Some years before Wiseman's concession, professional skeptic and debunker Ray Hyman conceded too that a particular research program on remote viewing had not flaws. In this technical paper, Hyman wrote: "The SAIC experiments are well-designed and the investigators have taken pains to eliminate the known weaknesses in previous parapsychological research. In addition, I cannot provide suitable candidates for what flaws, if any, might be present." (emphasis added).
If you respect the rule that you have to follow the argument and evidence where it leads, you're rationally forced to accept that the available scientific evidence of SAIC experiments in favor of remote viewing is good enough to support the existence of this phenomenon.
But as a professional debunker and member of CSICOP, Hyman is not allowed to do that. He needs to find any excuses to cast doubts on the results, even if the excuses are empirically unjustified and unproven. And Hyman found that clever excuse: "Just the same, it is impossible in principle to say that any particular experiment or experimental series is completely free from possible flaws. An experimenter cannot control for every possibility--especially for potential flaws that have not yet been discovered." (emphasis added)
How could you refute Hyman's skepticism based upon "potential flaws that have not yet been discoveried"? This kind of "skeptical" argument would apply to virtually any kind of scientific claim supported by evidence, provided you want to disbelieve it.
Perhaps Visser needs to have a better familiarity with the best evidence provided by parapsychology and how this evidence has made that prominent professional skeptics like Wiseman and Hyman concede the scientific quality of the research and the evidence, so they can reject them only on purely rhetorical and philosophical grounds.
I'd suggest to Visser to watch carefully these videos by Dean Radin:
2-In his essay, Visser points out: "Sometimes, I have the idea that this could in large part be a matter of temperament. Some people are completely at home with the idea that ultimately everything can be reduced to matter (the materialist is philosophically an extravert); others attribute reality to their subjective feelings and thoughts (they are the philosophical introverts). May be there is a psychological for this fruitless battle between sceptics and believers, which frustrates the progress of this discussion. Both rationalize their emotional choice with ad hoc arguments, which make them feel comfortable. I myself am a dove who is very much interested in what hawks come up with..."
Even though I think Visser is largely right about the psychological foundation of the controversy on parapsychology (I've discussed this aspects, as manifested in materialistic pseudo-skeptics in this post, although something similar could exist in some believers in psi too), Visser fails to stress the function that ideology by itself plays in this controversy.
The key to understand systematic and organized opposition to and debunking of psi research is IDEOLOGICAL. The ideology in question is ontological materialism, or more specifically, metaphysical naturalism.
This worldview IMPLIES that something like psi (and a fortiori, survival of consciousness like suggested by some cases of NDEs, mediumship and other lines of evidence) doesn't and cannot possibly exist. It's a matter of logical entailment. The premises of metaphysical naturalism imply the non-existence of certain phenomena and entities (like "souls" and, as consequence, such nonexistent souls cannot affect matter like in psychokinesis, or survive after death, like suggested by mediumship and some cases of NDEs).
Many people fails to understand this simple point, and thereby they're impressed or surprised by the existence of organized pseudoskepticism or militant debunking. Astute observers, however, if they understand the nature of metaphysical naturalism, would easily predict the existence of organized debunking, because the latter is the consequence of the former (more specifically, the public and theoretical defense of the metaphysical naturalistic worldview IMPLIES the attack, refutation, discreditation, invalidation and debunking of the evidence for psi and survival, because this evidence destroys, demolishes, refutes the naturalist worldview. Therefore, committed and self-proclaimed defenders of naturalism will be, NECESSARILY, debunkers and disbelievers of psi phenomena or any other claim inconsistent with naturalism).
A coherent metaphysical naturalist is not intellectually free to accept psi or survival evidence while being naturalist. If he's a believer in naturalist, he MUST be a disbeliever in psi and survival. (and the intensity or force of the belief in the truth of naturalism is proportional to the force and intensity of the disbelief in psi and survival)
As I said, Visser seems to be aware of this, but his essay doesn't stress the key importance of this philosophical factor. Psychology is important to understand why certain people are metaphysical naturalists; but by itself, psychology give us no philosophical and theortical tools to understand the implicit philosophical assumption that forces the use of the arguments and rhetoric of people like Hyman or Wiseman to reject valid evidence for psi.
If you want to objectively and philosophically confront the arguments of pseudo-skeptics, appealing to their psychology will be insufficient (it only explains their irrationality, their arrogance and delusions of feeling themselves as "brights", and their weird obsessions with creationism and God). You need theoretical, conceptual and philosophical tools to fully know and understand the kind of philosophical and ideological assumptions that colors these people's perspectives and arguments. Only philosophy can provide these tools.
3-Visser's comment on the emotional factor determining and influencing the positions about parapsychology is like a red herring that distracts us from the best evidence for psi.
When Visser asserts that psi research cannot suply us with well-established results, he's falling to the rhetoric and propaganda of mainstream pseudo-skeptics.
As shows the examples of Wiseman and Hyman mentioned above, informed professional skeptics have not refuted the best evidence for psi. Their skepticism is entirely based on a priori philosophical reasons and assumptions, not in scientific evidence as such.
Any neutral observer would understand that the opposition to some of the best psi results is not evidence based, but worldview-based.
This is why I consider Vesser's essay misleading regarding the specific point of the current status of parasychology and the actual nature of the controversy about it. However, his essay is very interesting and worth reading.
Another good essay by Visser is this entitled "Three models of Immortality", which I hope to comment in another moment.
Thursday, January 21, 2010
A fictional dialogue between a survivalist/dualist and a materialist/skeptic (part 7)
This is part 7 of my fictional dialogues between a survivalist and a materialist:
Materialist: I'd like to discuss the epistemological support of your survival belief. My thesis is that, even if survival exists, it's irrational to believe in it, because "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence", and the evidence for survival (which is an extraordinary claim) is not extraordinary. Therefore, your belief in survival is not justified.
Note that my claim is not about the existence or non-existence of survival (even though I think it doesn't exist), but about the rational justification of your belief in survival.
Survivalist: Interesting.
Given that the basic premise of your argument is the epistemic principle that "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence", I'll have to address this principle, because if that principle is misapplied, your whole argument collapses.
First, I'd like to concede that, in general, such principle is reasonable. You'd expect that a stronger claim be supported by a stronger evidence. But in that case, intellectual honesty demands that, in advance, you specify that would you accept as "extraordinary" evidence; otherwise, it leaves room for arbitrary dismissing of positive evidence for the claim that you want to reject (and pseudo-skeptics, rarely if ever, specify in advance and unambiguously what evidence for survival or psi would they accept)
But that principle is not absolute, that is, it has epistemic limitations for a truth-seeker and we can't be uncritical regarding it:
1)The world and its phenomena are not intrinsically ordinary or extraordinary; they're only ordinary and extraordinary regarding our background knowledge or our worldview, not in themselves. For example:
-The claim "Flu is caused by a virus" is considered ordinary for most people, because most people already accepts it as correct. But in 12th century, such claim would be considered ridiculous and extraordinary. (But note that viruses have always caused flu and thereby the claim "Flu is caused by a virus" has been always true, regardless of whether we consider such claim, and the evidence for it, as ordinary or extraordinary!)
-The claim "Stones falls from the sky" is currently considered ordinary by people who are familiar with meteorites; but such claim was considered ridiculous, false and extraordinary many years ago.
-The claim that ordinary macroscopic objects like chairs, balls and shoes are composed mostly of empty space and are not "compact" or "solid" in the common sense (which is true according our best current scientific theory: quantum physics) would be considered false and extraordinary in the 15th century. But despite this, such claim is true.
Materialist: But you're conflating the existence of a phenomenon with the rationality of the belief in it. What's at stake is the criteria for testing a claim (an epistemological problem), not the actual existence of the phenomenon (an ontological problem).
Survivalist: You missed my point. My whole point is to show that the concepts of extraordinary or ordinary are not an INTRINSIC property of specific claims, but a RELATIVE (=context dependent) property of them.
My above historical and factual examples show that the claims for the existence of a phenomenon is not intrinsically ordinary or extraordinary; and this implies that considerations about a claim being extraordinary or ordinary is not intrinsic to the claim itself or the methods to testing it, but that it's a property dependent on a BACKGROUND assumption (theoretical, metaphysical, etc.).
In other words, the claim "Stones falls from the sky" is not, intrinsically and by itself, ordinary or extraordinary. It's ordinary or extraordinary only regarding some context of knowledge which functions as a background to compare such claim with. This explains why such claim was considered extraordinary many years ago and it's considered ordinary in current times.
The claim is the same, but the jugdement of it as extraordinary or ordinary is not an intrinsic absolute property of such claim, but a relative property of it according to some background or context of knowledge.
Your fallacy consist in (explicitly or, mostly, implicitly) assuming materialism and metaphysical naturalism as the background and, from there, asserting that survival or psi is extrarodinary (and you're right that IF materialism and naturalism are right, THEN survival is "extraordinary" or, perhaps, even impossible; but the truth or falsehood of materialism is precisely part of what's at stake, so you're begging the question against the survivalist when you implicitly assume that materialism is true to argue that a claim of survival is extraordinary!)
2)Another problem and limitation of your "extraordinary..." principle, is that in many cases, everybody (including pseudo-skeptics) accepts an extraordinary claim based on completely ordinary evidence.
For example, the claim "Two planes have struck the Twin Towers in NYC the same day" is an extraordinary claim according to the background knowledge of the accidents and cultural history of NYC. But the evidence for it was pretty ordinary (videos, testimonies, TV news, etc.) .
In fact, almost each person (including the materialistic pseudo-skeptics) accepted the above extraordinary claim after watching videos like these:
No pseudo-skeptic (even the very common irrational ones) would reject the evidential value of such videos and say "I'm rational and skeptic, videos proves nothing. I want scientific, reproducible, doble blind laboratory studies providing evidence for your extraordinary claim about two planes crashing in the twin towers at the same day" or "I don't accept your evidence, because videos can be tricked!")
Actually, they accept this extraordinary claim based on ordinary evidence because such claim doesn't conflict with the pseudo-skeptic's materialist, atheist and metaphysical naturalist ideology, nor it's contrary to the scientific orthodoxy or establisment. So, it's entirely inside of scope of the pseudo-skeptic's ideological belief system.
Another example: Well-known TV presenter and expert in wild animals Steve Irwin was killed by a stingray some years ago.
The claim "Steven Irwin was killed by a stingray" is antecedently improbable and extraordinary according to the following criteria:
-He was a first rate hands on expert dealing with wild animals (including stingrays).
-More importantly, according to the scientific knowledge about stingrays, these animals are not violent or aggressive. According to this website on stingrays: "Stingrays spend the majority of their time inactive, partially buried in sand, camouflated from predatory sharks and larger rays. Stingrays are carnivores. They feed at night and eat crabs, shrimps, worms, small bottom dwelling fish. Many rays have jaw teeth to crush mollusks. Stingrays cannot see their prey. They use the sense of smell and electro-receptors to detect it. When threatened, their primary reaction is to swim away. However, if attacked, stingrays will use their barbed stinger" (emphasis added).
As a matter of fact, it's so monumentally improbable that a stingray will attack (let alone kill) any person, that in aquariums and marine zoos, children are enabled to play with stingrays, as you can watch in this video:
In fact, in certain places, it's common that divers and other people happily swin along stingrays, feed them, play and have fun with them without any rationally justified worry of being "attacked" by them (precisely because an attack by them is monumentally improbable), as you can see in these videos:
Since that Irwin wasn't a normal person dealing with animals but an EXPERT in wild animals and, moreover, he wasn't attacking the stingray, it's even more monumentally improbable that the stingray would attack him. And therefore, the claim that it did it is antecedently improbable and very, very, extraordinary.
But even if we accept (for the argument's sake) that Irwin attacked it (he didn't), it's still improbable that the stingray's attack would kill him, since that 1)Irwin is an expert in animals; and 2)It's extraordinarily rare that a human being, when exceptionally attacked by a stingray, be killed by it.
Regarding 2, according to this article published in the Washinton Post entitled "How deadly are stingrays", the author writes: " The animal's barbed tail delivers venom that causes excruciating pain, but it almost never kills. Several different figures for the number of recorded stingray-related fatalities have surfaced in the media, ranging from "about 30" worldwide, to "fewer than 20," to "only 17."
Note that stingrays' "almost never kills" and the fatalities caused by it are extraordinarily rare. In other words, it's possible that a stingray can kills, but it's IMPROBABLE (according to the scientific information we have about the behaviour of such animals and the number of deaths caused by them: only 17 in the moment of Irwin's death!).
However, the evidence of the extraordinary claim "Steve Irwin was killed by a stingray" was pretty ordinary (a video recording it, testimonies of a friend of Irwin and the autopsy).
No materialistic pseudo-skeptic would argue that he doesn't believe such claim because it's a extraordinary claim and the evidence is ordinary. He won't say "I don't accept such claim because videos proves nothing. Moreover, the witness is a friend of Irwin, and this make him biased. The supposed video was never published and so it cannot be studied; the pathologist who made the autopsy was a friend of Irwin and was biased too, and I need a replication of the autopsy by independent skeptical pathologists, etc." )
Given that "Irwin was killed by a stingray" is a claim that doesn't conflict with the pseudo-skeptic's ideology, the pseudo-skeptic accepts such extraordinary claim based on ordinary evidence. (But you could be sure that if pseudo-skeptics, for ideological reasons, would think that it's impossible that a stingray can kill someone, they would employ all the above excuses and many others)
Logical consistency would demand that pseudo-skeptics employ the "extraordinary claim/evidence" principle in each case, but they only apply it to reject evidence for psi, afterlife or other unconventional claim that is incompatible with atheistic materialism and metaphysical naturalism (and in general, with the pseudo-skeptic's beliefs in whatever topic).
Materialist: Again, I think you're conflating many things here.
Firstly, your example of the 9/11 terrorist attacks is not a extraordinary claim, because planes can crash against building and it's not a supernatural event inconsistent with known natural laws. The same is valid to your example on Irwin and stingrays.
Take for example someone who wins the lottery. Many people think it's improbable and extraordinary, but actually and as a matter of necessity SOMEONE has to win it.
Secondly, you're conflating the concept of "extraordinary" in everyday or common sense with the concept of extraordinary in scientific sense.
Survivalist: You're wrong.
First, you creates a straw man when you assert that my claim about the 9/11 is not extraordinary because "planes can crash against buildings". But it's not the claim I'm making.
My claim is "Two planes have struck the Twin Towers in NYC the same day", and this IS an antecedently improbable claim.
To see that, just imagine that you're in a shopping store and someone besides you, casually, say to you "Look, did you know that this morning a big meteorite just fell to the White House, destroyed it and killed the president of U.S?
Would you believe in such claim based on that casual testimony alone? Probably not, because you'd expect an event like that would cause a worldwide disorder, and you see no sign of it, except the claim of the such person.
"Meteorites falling on Earth" is a ordinary claim according to our current scientific knowledge, but "A big meteorite destroying the White House and killing the U.S. President" is an extraordinary claim and antecedently improbable given the known social effects of meteorites that often fall on Earth.
Your example of winning the lottery is a good one, because it shows your confusion. The unspecific claim "Someone won the lottery" is ordinary and probable according to our knowledge of how lottery functions.
But that a specific person (let's say, Jime Sayaka or any of the readers of my blog) will win the lottery is antecedently improbable and extraordinary. What's the probability that YOU will win the lottery for a prize of one million dollars if you play it tomorrow? Do you think it's probable that specifically YOU, out of the thousand of people participating in the lottery, will win it? Obviously, not, you're fully aware that it's a very improbable that you will win it, EVEN if "someone" surely will win it.
This is why you conflates a general, ordinary and probable claim (like "planes can crash against building" or "someone will win the lottery") with specific, extraordinary and antecedently improbable claims (like "Two planes crashed the same day against the Twin Towers" or "Jime Sayaka will win the lottery")
Regarding your argument that my example about planes in NYC is not extraordinary because it doesn't violates any natural law, it's simply irrelevant, because I'm examining the claim "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence", not the claim "Supernatural claims require extraordinary evidence".
Extraordinary is not equivalent to "supernatural" or events that violate natural laws. A claim could be considered "extraordinary" (according to certain criteria) even if it's consistent with natural laws (see my above examples, all of which are consistent with natural laws.)
Your fallacy consists in conflating extraordinary with supernatural (at most, the latter is a species of the former). I'm discussing the former in general, not the latter in particular.
Finally, your distinction of "extraordinary" in common sense and in science implicitly supports my point that "extraordinary" or "ordinary" are context-dependent (i.e. what's extraordinary in common sense could be ordinary in scientific sense), not an intrinsic absolute property of any given claim.
And this destroys your application of that principle against the belief in survival. You can only argue that the claim "survival exist" is extraordinary if you beg the question against the survivalist, that is, assuming that science proves or support materialism over survivalism; and your most important argument for it is the "dependence of mind on the brain" which (as I've proved in our previous dialogues) is question begging because you're explicitly or implicitly interpreting "dependence" in a materialistic sense alone and exclusively (that is, as "productive dependence", when what's at stake is precisely the kind of mind-brain dependence, if productive or transmissive).
Materialist: Even if you were right (and I don't think so) you have not proved that a claim like "survival exists" is probable or ordinary.
Survivalist: So what? I'm arguing against your objection that such claim is improbable, not making a positive case for its probability (which I think could be done).
Materialist: And you have not posed any better alternative that the principle that I'm defending.
Survivalist: Again, my purpose here is to show that your epistemological objection against my survivalist belief fails, not to make a treatise of epistemology or posing alternative rules to the one defended by you.
In any case, I propose the following rule: Claims (ordinary or extraordinary) require SUFFICIENT evidence (where "sufficient" is not determined by archair thinking or mainstream prejudices but only in a case-by-case empirical basis and according to the specific conditions of the claims in question and the probatory methods at hand. Given a specific claim and certain conditions specified in advance, we can know, also in advance, what would count as sufficient evidence for it. )
But I have no time to defend this epistemogical rule in this moment.
I just want to add that Marcello Truzzi, who originally coined the principle "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence", when discoveried that pseudo-skeptics used such rule to raise the bar and move the goal posts (to reject any positive evidence presented in favor of psi, survival or any other unconventional claim that pseudo-skeptics don't want to accept), tried to refute his own principle.
According to this website: "I might note here that it was Marcello, not Carl Sagan, who coined the often-misattributed maxim "Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence." In recent years Marcello had come to conclude that the phrase was a non sequitur, meaningless and question-begging, and he intended to write a debunking of his own words. Sad to say, he never got around to it." (emphasis in blue added)
Sadly, Truzzi died prematurely, and we'll never know what his refutation of that principle would be like. Possibly, Truzzi had defended a very qualified version of such principle (like I've done in this dialogue) making explicit its limitations and problems, possibly would stress the abuses and misapplications of it by professional pseudo-skeptics.
Materialist: I don't agree with Truzzi.
Survivalist: I do, but we could discuss this in another moment.
TO BE CONTINUED...
Previous parts of this dialogue:
-Part 1
-Part 2
-Part 3
-Part 4
-Part 5
-Part 6
Materialist: I'd like to discuss the epistemological support of your survival belief. My thesis is that, even if survival exists, it's irrational to believe in it, because "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence", and the evidence for survival (which is an extraordinary claim) is not extraordinary. Therefore, your belief in survival is not justified.
Note that my claim is not about the existence or non-existence of survival (even though I think it doesn't exist), but about the rational justification of your belief in survival.
Survivalist: Interesting.
Given that the basic premise of your argument is the epistemic principle that "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence", I'll have to address this principle, because if that principle is misapplied, your whole argument collapses.
First, I'd like to concede that, in general, such principle is reasonable. You'd expect that a stronger claim be supported by a stronger evidence. But in that case, intellectual honesty demands that, in advance, you specify that would you accept as "extraordinary" evidence; otherwise, it leaves room for arbitrary dismissing of positive evidence for the claim that you want to reject (and pseudo-skeptics, rarely if ever, specify in advance and unambiguously what evidence for survival or psi would they accept)
But that principle is not absolute, that is, it has epistemic limitations for a truth-seeker and we can't be uncritical regarding it:
1)The world and its phenomena are not intrinsically ordinary or extraordinary; they're only ordinary and extraordinary regarding our background knowledge or our worldview, not in themselves. For example:
-The claim "Flu is caused by a virus" is considered ordinary for most people, because most people already accepts it as correct. But in 12th century, such claim would be considered ridiculous and extraordinary. (But note that viruses have always caused flu and thereby the claim "Flu is caused by a virus" has been always true, regardless of whether we consider such claim, and the evidence for it, as ordinary or extraordinary!)
-The claim "Stones falls from the sky" is currently considered ordinary by people who are familiar with meteorites; but such claim was considered ridiculous, false and extraordinary many years ago.
-The claim that ordinary macroscopic objects like chairs, balls and shoes are composed mostly of empty space and are not "compact" or "solid" in the common sense (which is true according our best current scientific theory: quantum physics) would be considered false and extraordinary in the 15th century. But despite this, such claim is true.
Materialist: But you're conflating the existence of a phenomenon with the rationality of the belief in it. What's at stake is the criteria for testing a claim (an epistemological problem), not the actual existence of the phenomenon (an ontological problem).
Survivalist: You missed my point. My whole point is to show that the concepts of extraordinary or ordinary are not an INTRINSIC property of specific claims, but a RELATIVE (=context dependent) property of them.
My above historical and factual examples show that the claims for the existence of a phenomenon is not intrinsically ordinary or extraordinary; and this implies that considerations about a claim being extraordinary or ordinary is not intrinsic to the claim itself or the methods to testing it, but that it's a property dependent on a BACKGROUND assumption (theoretical, metaphysical, etc.).
In other words, the claim "Stones falls from the sky" is not, intrinsically and by itself, ordinary or extraordinary. It's ordinary or extraordinary only regarding some context of knowledge which functions as a background to compare such claim with. This explains why such claim was considered extraordinary many years ago and it's considered ordinary in current times.
The claim is the same, but the jugdement of it as extraordinary or ordinary is not an intrinsic absolute property of such claim, but a relative property of it according to some background or context of knowledge.
Your fallacy consist in (explicitly or, mostly, implicitly) assuming materialism and metaphysical naturalism as the background and, from there, asserting that survival or psi is extrarodinary (and you're right that IF materialism and naturalism are right, THEN survival is "extraordinary" or, perhaps, even impossible; but the truth or falsehood of materialism is precisely part of what's at stake, so you're begging the question against the survivalist when you implicitly assume that materialism is true to argue that a claim of survival is extraordinary!)
2)Another problem and limitation of your "extraordinary..." principle, is that in many cases, everybody (including pseudo-skeptics) accepts an extraordinary claim based on completely ordinary evidence.
For example, the claim "Two planes have struck the Twin Towers in NYC the same day" is an extraordinary claim according to the background knowledge of the accidents and cultural history of NYC. But the evidence for it was pretty ordinary (videos, testimonies, TV news, etc.) .
In fact, almost each person (including the materialistic pseudo-skeptics) accepted the above extraordinary claim after watching videos like these:
No pseudo-skeptic (even the very common irrational ones) would reject the evidential value of such videos and say "I'm rational and skeptic, videos proves nothing. I want scientific, reproducible, doble blind laboratory studies providing evidence for your extraordinary claim about two planes crashing in the twin towers at the same day" or "I don't accept your evidence, because videos can be tricked!")
Actually, they accept this extraordinary claim based on ordinary evidence because such claim doesn't conflict with the pseudo-skeptic's materialist, atheist and metaphysical naturalist ideology, nor it's contrary to the scientific orthodoxy or establisment. So, it's entirely inside of scope of the pseudo-skeptic's ideological belief system.
Another example: Well-known TV presenter and expert in wild animals Steve Irwin was killed by a stingray some years ago.
The claim "Steven Irwin was killed by a stingray" is antecedently improbable and extraordinary according to the following criteria:
-He was a first rate hands on expert dealing with wild animals (including stingrays).
-More importantly, according to the scientific knowledge about stingrays, these animals are not violent or aggressive. According to this website on stingrays: "Stingrays spend the majority of their time inactive, partially buried in sand, camouflated from predatory sharks and larger rays. Stingrays are carnivores. They feed at night and eat crabs, shrimps, worms, small bottom dwelling fish. Many rays have jaw teeth to crush mollusks. Stingrays cannot see their prey. They use the sense of smell and electro-receptors to detect it. When threatened, their primary reaction is to swim away. However, if attacked, stingrays will use their barbed stinger" (emphasis added).
As a matter of fact, it's so monumentally improbable that a stingray will attack (let alone kill) any person, that in aquariums and marine zoos, children are enabled to play with stingrays, as you can watch in this video:
In fact, in certain places, it's common that divers and other people happily swin along stingrays, feed them, play and have fun with them without any rationally justified worry of being "attacked" by them (precisely because an attack by them is monumentally improbable), as you can see in these videos:
Since that Irwin wasn't a normal person dealing with animals but an EXPERT in wild animals and, moreover, he wasn't attacking the stingray, it's even more monumentally improbable that the stingray would attack him. And therefore, the claim that it did it is antecedently improbable and very, very, extraordinary.
But even if we accept (for the argument's sake) that Irwin attacked it (he didn't), it's still improbable that the stingray's attack would kill him, since that 1)Irwin is an expert in animals; and 2)It's extraordinarily rare that a human being, when exceptionally attacked by a stingray, be killed by it.
Regarding 2, according to this article published in the Washinton Post entitled "How deadly are stingrays", the author writes: " The animal's barbed tail delivers venom that causes excruciating pain, but it almost never kills. Several different figures for the number of recorded stingray-related fatalities have surfaced in the media, ranging from "about 30" worldwide, to "fewer than 20," to "only 17."
Note that stingrays' "almost never kills" and the fatalities caused by it are extraordinarily rare. In other words, it's possible that a stingray can kills, but it's IMPROBABLE (according to the scientific information we have about the behaviour of such animals and the number of deaths caused by them: only 17 in the moment of Irwin's death!).
However, the evidence of the extraordinary claim "Steve Irwin was killed by a stingray" was pretty ordinary (a video recording it, testimonies of a friend of Irwin and the autopsy).
No materialistic pseudo-skeptic would argue that he doesn't believe such claim because it's a extraordinary claim and the evidence is ordinary. He won't say "I don't accept such claim because videos proves nothing. Moreover, the witness is a friend of Irwin, and this make him biased. The supposed video was never published and so it cannot be studied; the pathologist who made the autopsy was a friend of Irwin and was biased too, and I need a replication of the autopsy by independent skeptical pathologists, etc." )
Given that "Irwin was killed by a stingray" is a claim that doesn't conflict with the pseudo-skeptic's ideology, the pseudo-skeptic accepts such extraordinary claim based on ordinary evidence. (But you could be sure that if pseudo-skeptics, for ideological reasons, would think that it's impossible that a stingray can kill someone, they would employ all the above excuses and many others)
Logical consistency would demand that pseudo-skeptics employ the "extraordinary claim/evidence" principle in each case, but they only apply it to reject evidence for psi, afterlife or other unconventional claim that is incompatible with atheistic materialism and metaphysical naturalism (and in general, with the pseudo-skeptic's beliefs in whatever topic).
Materialist: Again, I think you're conflating many things here.
Firstly, your example of the 9/11 terrorist attacks is not a extraordinary claim, because planes can crash against building and it's not a supernatural event inconsistent with known natural laws. The same is valid to your example on Irwin and stingrays.
Take for example someone who wins the lottery. Many people think it's improbable and extraordinary, but actually and as a matter of necessity SOMEONE has to win it.
Secondly, you're conflating the concept of "extraordinary" in everyday or common sense with the concept of extraordinary in scientific sense.
Survivalist: You're wrong.
First, you creates a straw man when you assert that my claim about the 9/11 is not extraordinary because "planes can crash against buildings". But it's not the claim I'm making.
My claim is "Two planes have struck the Twin Towers in NYC the same day", and this IS an antecedently improbable claim.
To see that, just imagine that you're in a shopping store and someone besides you, casually, say to you "Look, did you know that this morning a big meteorite just fell to the White House, destroyed it and killed the president of U.S?
Would you believe in such claim based on that casual testimony alone? Probably not, because you'd expect an event like that would cause a worldwide disorder, and you see no sign of it, except the claim of the such person.
"Meteorites falling on Earth" is a ordinary claim according to our current scientific knowledge, but "A big meteorite destroying the White House and killing the U.S. President" is an extraordinary claim and antecedently improbable given the known social effects of meteorites that often fall on Earth.
Your example of winning the lottery is a good one, because it shows your confusion. The unspecific claim "Someone won the lottery" is ordinary and probable according to our knowledge of how lottery functions.
But that a specific person (let's say, Jime Sayaka or any of the readers of my blog) will win the lottery is antecedently improbable and extraordinary. What's the probability that YOU will win the lottery for a prize of one million dollars if you play it tomorrow? Do you think it's probable that specifically YOU, out of the thousand of people participating in the lottery, will win it? Obviously, not, you're fully aware that it's a very improbable that you will win it, EVEN if "someone" surely will win it.
This is why you conflates a general, ordinary and probable claim (like "planes can crash against building" or "someone will win the lottery") with specific, extraordinary and antecedently improbable claims (like "Two planes crashed the same day against the Twin Towers" or "Jime Sayaka will win the lottery")
Regarding your argument that my example about planes in NYC is not extraordinary because it doesn't violates any natural law, it's simply irrelevant, because I'm examining the claim "extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence", not the claim "Supernatural claims require extraordinary evidence".
Extraordinary is not equivalent to "supernatural" or events that violate natural laws. A claim could be considered "extraordinary" (according to certain criteria) even if it's consistent with natural laws (see my above examples, all of which are consistent with natural laws.)
Your fallacy consists in conflating extraordinary with supernatural (at most, the latter is a species of the former). I'm discussing the former in general, not the latter in particular.
Finally, your distinction of "extraordinary" in common sense and in science implicitly supports my point that "extraordinary" or "ordinary" are context-dependent (i.e. what's extraordinary in common sense could be ordinary in scientific sense), not an intrinsic absolute property of any given claim.
And this destroys your application of that principle against the belief in survival. You can only argue that the claim "survival exist" is extraordinary if you beg the question against the survivalist, that is, assuming that science proves or support materialism over survivalism; and your most important argument for it is the "dependence of mind on the brain" which (as I've proved in our previous dialogues) is question begging because you're explicitly or implicitly interpreting "dependence" in a materialistic sense alone and exclusively (that is, as "productive dependence", when what's at stake is precisely the kind of mind-brain dependence, if productive or transmissive).
Materialist: Even if you were right (and I don't think so) you have not proved that a claim like "survival exists" is probable or ordinary.
Survivalist: So what? I'm arguing against your objection that such claim is improbable, not making a positive case for its probability (which I think could be done).
Materialist: And you have not posed any better alternative that the principle that I'm defending.
Survivalist: Again, my purpose here is to show that your epistemological objection against my survivalist belief fails, not to make a treatise of epistemology or posing alternative rules to the one defended by you.
In any case, I propose the following rule: Claims (ordinary or extraordinary) require SUFFICIENT evidence (where "sufficient" is not determined by archair thinking or mainstream prejudices but only in a case-by-case empirical basis and according to the specific conditions of the claims in question and the probatory methods at hand. Given a specific claim and certain conditions specified in advance, we can know, also in advance, what would count as sufficient evidence for it. )
But I have no time to defend this epistemogical rule in this moment.
I just want to add that Marcello Truzzi, who originally coined the principle "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence", when discoveried that pseudo-skeptics used such rule to raise the bar and move the goal posts (to reject any positive evidence presented in favor of psi, survival or any other unconventional claim that pseudo-skeptics don't want to accept), tried to refute his own principle.
According to this website: "I might note here that it was Marcello, not Carl Sagan, who coined the often-misattributed maxim "Extraordinary claims demand extraordinary evidence." In recent years Marcello had come to conclude that the phrase was a non sequitur, meaningless and question-begging, and he intended to write a debunking of his own words. Sad to say, he never got around to it." (emphasis in blue added)
Sadly, Truzzi died prematurely, and we'll never know what his refutation of that principle would be like. Possibly, Truzzi had defended a very qualified version of such principle (like I've done in this dialogue) making explicit its limitations and problems, possibly would stress the abuses and misapplications of it by professional pseudo-skeptics.
Materialist: I don't agree with Truzzi.
Survivalist: I do, but we could discuss this in another moment.
TO BE CONTINUED...
Previous parts of this dialogue:
-Part 1
-Part 2
-Part 3
-Part 4
-Part 5
-Part 6
Friday, January 15, 2010
The ESP Enigma: The Scientific Case for Psychic Phenomena by Diane Hennacy Powell, M.D.
This book is an excellent resource for scientific discussion of the evidence for ESP.
Diane Hennacy Powell, a Johns Hopkins-trained neuroscientist, competently and brillantly examines and discusses the scientific evidence supporting the reality of psi phenomena, and the meaning and implications of this evidence to understand, on rational grounds, the nature of consciousness.
It's refreshing to see an objective discussion of a controversial topic like psi research in the competent hands of a rigurous and highly trained professional scientist like Dr.Powell.
The Time magazine (certainly, not a friend of parapsychology) published an neutral interview with Dr.Powell that you can read here.
One excerpts of the interview with her on William James and consciousness: "He believed consciousness is not just what's happening to the neurons in the brain. The brain is our instrument in focusing and organizing our consciousness. Just like a prism will take a white light with all these different frequencies and separate it so you can see the different colors of the spectrum. Rather than us experiencing everything that's happening all at once, our brain focuses us on the here and the now. It uses our sensory organs as guides as to what we should be focusing on. Experiments have shown that most psychic experiences occur when are sensory organs are muted, like when we're dreaming or having a near-death experience"
Diane Hennacy Powell, a Johns Hopkins-trained neuroscientist, competently and brillantly examines and discusses the scientific evidence supporting the reality of psi phenomena, and the meaning and implications of this evidence to understand, on rational grounds, the nature of consciousness.
It's refreshing to see an objective discussion of a controversial topic like psi research in the competent hands of a rigurous and highly trained professional scientist like Dr.Powell.
The Time magazine (certainly, not a friend of parapsychology) published an neutral interview with Dr.Powell that you can read here.
One excerpts of the interview with her on William James and consciousness: "He believed consciousness is not just what's happening to the neurons in the brain. The brain is our instrument in focusing and organizing our consciousness. Just like a prism will take a white light with all these different frequencies and separate it so you can see the different colors of the spectrum. Rather than us experiencing everything that's happening all at once, our brain focuses us on the here and the now. It uses our sensory organs as guides as to what we should be focusing on. Experiments have shown that most psychic experiences occur when are sensory organs are muted, like when we're dreaming or having a near-death experience"
Read this interesting article by Dr.Powell on Twin Telepathy.
Victor Zammit: Skeptics Demolished
In this video, retired lawyer and afterlife researcher Victor Zammit argues that closedminded skeptics (pseudo-skeptics) have not investigated and refuse to investigate the objective and repeatable evidence for the afterlife and psychic phenomena. He explains that 'closed minded-skepticsm' is a hindrace to progress. Yes, be skeptical by all means, but be an 'open minded skeptic' where you can perceive evidence with proper empirical equanimity. Victor makes six objections to extreme skepticism - he show specifically where these hard lined skeptics are wrong and refers to the website of Winston Wu http://www.debunkingskeptics.com.
My opinion is that certainly most pseudo-skeptics have not investigated the evidence (they think it's a waste of time investigating something that they know, in advance, that doesn't exist); but even if they investigate it, they won't be impressed by it, because they only accept evidence consistent with their anti-survival prejudices.
Contrary evidence is always rejected, relativized, altered, misread, misrepresented, subject to double standards, etc. to make it worthless, invalid or insufficient.
Marcello Truzzi, who was a co-founder and original member of CSICOP, soon realized the ideological, agenda-driven and biased mentality typical of professional pseudo-skeptics: "Originally I was invited to be a co-chairman of CSICOP by Paul Kurtz. I helped to write the bylaws and edited their journal. I found myself attacked by the Committee members and board, who considered me to be too soft on the paranormalists. My position was not to treat protoscientists as adversaries, but to look to the best of them and ask them for their best scientific evidence. I found that the Committee was much more interested in attacking the most publicly visible claimants such as the "National Enquirer". The major interest of the Committee was not inquiry but to serve as an advocacy body, a public relations group for scientific orthodoxy. The Committee has made many mistakes. My main objection to the Committee, and the reason I chose to leave it, was that it was taking the public position that it represented the scientific community, serving as gatekeepers on maverick claims, whereas I felt they were simply unqualified to act as judge and jury when they were simply lawyers" (Emphasis in blue added)
This essential irrationality and dishonesty which are well-known in true pseudo-skeptics is grounded on ideological reasons (belief in atheistic materialism, metaphysical naturalism and secular humanism) and in emotional reasons (hatred and resentment against the idea of God, religion, spirituality, and ultimate trascendence), making impossible that their reason functions properly.
So trying to convince a pseudo-skeptic with afterlife evidence (that is, evidence that destroys and demolishes the pseudo-skeptic's personal materialistic ideology or faith) is sterile. In advance, and regardless of the quality of your arguments or evidence, they'll consider your evidence false and fraudulent, and therefore, irrelevant. And specially, they'll interpret the evidence with the glasses of materialism (which is precisely the position destroyed by the evidence)
It's key to understand that, for several reasons (mentioned above and discussed in this blog), most pseudo-skeptics are not rational and, as consequence, are not sensible to rational argumentation (they're consistently unable to understand even the most simple, basic, elemental arguments for psi or afterlife).
Don't waste your time with ideologues and dogmatists. Rather, try to use your valuable time in searching the truth, consider both sides of the controversy, critically examine all the arguments, and draw the most rational conclusion, interpretation and explanation that accounts for all the relevant evidence.
And have fun while doing it.
Links of interest:
-Skeptic Richard Wiseman concedes that remote view is proven.
-Skeptic Michael Persinger gets evidence suggesting telepathy.
-My post on atheism, pseudo-skepticism and the Cosmic Authority Problem
My opinion is that certainly most pseudo-skeptics have not investigated the evidence (they think it's a waste of time investigating something that they know, in advance, that doesn't exist); but even if they investigate it, they won't be impressed by it, because they only accept evidence consistent with their anti-survival prejudices.
Contrary evidence is always rejected, relativized, altered, misread, misrepresented, subject to double standards, etc. to make it worthless, invalid or insufficient.
Marcello Truzzi, who was a co-founder and original member of CSICOP, soon realized the ideological, agenda-driven and biased mentality typical of professional pseudo-skeptics: "Originally I was invited to be a co-chairman of CSICOP by Paul Kurtz. I helped to write the bylaws and edited their journal. I found myself attacked by the Committee members and board, who considered me to be too soft on the paranormalists. My position was not to treat protoscientists as adversaries, but to look to the best of them and ask them for their best scientific evidence. I found that the Committee was much more interested in attacking the most publicly visible claimants such as the "National Enquirer". The major interest of the Committee was not inquiry but to serve as an advocacy body, a public relations group for scientific orthodoxy. The Committee has made many mistakes. My main objection to the Committee, and the reason I chose to leave it, was that it was taking the public position that it represented the scientific community, serving as gatekeepers on maverick claims, whereas I felt they were simply unqualified to act as judge and jury when they were simply lawyers" (Emphasis in blue added)
This essential irrationality and dishonesty which are well-known in true pseudo-skeptics is grounded on ideological reasons (belief in atheistic materialism, metaphysical naturalism and secular humanism) and in emotional reasons (hatred and resentment against the idea of God, religion, spirituality, and ultimate trascendence), making impossible that their reason functions properly.
So trying to convince a pseudo-skeptic with afterlife evidence (that is, evidence that destroys and demolishes the pseudo-skeptic's personal materialistic ideology or faith) is sterile. In advance, and regardless of the quality of your arguments or evidence, they'll consider your evidence false and fraudulent, and therefore, irrelevant. And specially, they'll interpret the evidence with the glasses of materialism (which is precisely the position destroyed by the evidence)
It's key to understand that, for several reasons (mentioned above and discussed in this blog), most pseudo-skeptics are not rational and, as consequence, are not sensible to rational argumentation (they're consistently unable to understand even the most simple, basic, elemental arguments for psi or afterlife).
Don't waste your time with ideologues and dogmatists. Rather, try to use your valuable time in searching the truth, consider both sides of the controversy, critically examine all the arguments, and draw the most rational conclusion, interpretation and explanation that accounts for all the relevant evidence.
And have fun while doing it.
Links of interest:
-Skeptic Richard Wiseman concedes that remote view is proven.
-Skeptic Michael Persinger gets evidence suggesting telepathy.
-My post on atheism, pseudo-skepticism and the Cosmic Authority Problem
Monday, January 11, 2010
Steven Novella on Raymond Tallis's thoughts on consciousness
In a recent blog post, Steven Novella has commented on some ideas expressed by Raymond Tallis in some articles (like this one and this one).Let's examine some of Novella's arguments against Tallis.
Tallis argues that "Even if we were able to explain how matter in organisms manages to go mental, it is not at all clear what advantage that would confer. Why should consciousness of the material world around their vehicles (the organisms) make certain (material) replicators better able to replicate? Given that, as we noted, qualia do not correspond to anything in the physical world, this seems problematic. There may be ways round this awkward fact but not round the even more awkward fact that, long before self-awareness, memory, foresight, powers of conscious deliberation emerge to give an advantage over those creatures that lack those things, there is a more promising alternative to consciousness at every step of the way: more efficient unconscious mechanisms, which seem equally or more likely to be thrown up by spontaneous variation"
Note that Tallis' point refers the function of consciousness in the context of the evolutionary origin of consciousness. If qualia doesn't correspond to anything existing in the external world, then it's obviously problematic to explain consistently how qualia would offer some adaptative biological adventage which would favor the survival of organisms.
Amazingly, Novella misreads and misrepresents Tallis' argument, and replies to him with this straw man: "One error is Tallis’s reasoning is the unstated assumption that evolution will always take the most advantageous path to survival. There may be more efficient methods of survival than consciousness, but so what."
But Tallis is not assuming that evolution will ALWAYS take the most advantageous path to survival. His point is that SOME advantage consciousness has to offer to survival if we want to make sense of consciousness from the perspective of evolutionary theory (that is, whether we want to understand consciousness in a way consistent with Darwinian theory of evolution).
Based on Novella's above straw man, he continues with this irrelevant remark: "One might as well ask why birds fly, when it is such a waste of energy and there are more efficient ways of obtaining food and evading predators"
But flying offers an adaptative advantage: they enable birds to get food, to escape predators, etc. Perhaps it is not the most efficient way to do that, but it's at least partially efficient to do it. However (and this is Tallis' point) if consciousness and qualia don't correspond to the external world, how could you explain its (at least partial) efficiency for survival?
Novella continues with this red herring: "Life through evolution does not find the solution to problems, but many solutions. Life is also constrained by its own history – so once species heads down a certain path its descendants are constrained by the evolutionary choices that have been made"
What the hell has that to do with Tallis' argumentation?
Novella says: "His arguments are ultimately extremely evolutionarily naive. They are excessively adaptationist, for example. Not everything that evolves was specifically selected for in all of its aspects. There are many epiphenomena – properties of life that arise as a side consequence. That is because life is messy."
So what? Is Novella suggesting that consciousness is a epiphenomenon? If the answer is yes, then he has to explain how could he be talking about consciousness when it is not causally efficacious and, therefore, cannot produce any effect on your own consciousness (what would imply that you cannot talk about consciousness).
But then Novella speculates about the possible advantages of consciousness (which is logically inconsistent with epiphenomenalism and hence with his above implicit suggestion that consciousness could be an epiphenomenon): "Tallis also fails to consider possible advantages for even primitive consciousness, or how it may emerge out of neural functions that themselves provide useful functions"
But then, is consciousness an epiphenomenon or not? Novella seems to be so desperate to contradict Tallis that his objections are mutually inconsistent.
Let's see more of Novella's irrelevant replies to Tallis.
Tallis argues that "It is about the deep philosophical confusion embedded in the assumption that if you can correlate neural activity with consciousness, then you have demonstrated they are one and the same thing, and that a physical science such as neurophysiology is able to show what consciousness truly is."
Note that Tallis is referring to the neuroscientifc assumption that "neural activity" is identical with consciousness (based on the correlation of the former with the latter). A is correlated with B, therefore A is B (this kind of fallacious reasoning underlies the materialistic interpretations of neuroscience, and is this assumption what Tallis is commenting on).
But look how Novella, playing with words, criticizes Tallis' argument: "Here is commits a bit of a straw man in saying that the position of neuroscience is that brain activity and consciousness are “one and the same thing.” I prefer the summary that the mind is what the brain does."
But the summary that the mind IS what the brain does is not the same than saying that the mind IS (identical to) a function of the brain? If the brain does X, and the mind IS what the brain does (X), then the mind is (identical to) X.
Note that the "is", as used by Novella, implies identity (he's identifying consciousness with a certain brain phenomenon).
Evidence of this is that Novella confirms the identity of consciousness and the brain function many times in his article (destroying his own objections). For example: "Consciousness is a brain phenomenon – a dynamic manifestation of brain function" (Consciousness = a dynamic manifestation of brain function. Emphasis in red added)
In the conclusion of his article, Novella is again explicit in the assertion that the mind IS a brain function: "In my opinion Tallis does not put forward one valid argument against a purely materialistic neuroscience view of consciousness – that consciousness is brain function" (Emphasis in red added)
And "But I am curious as to what Tallis thinks consciousness is, if it is not brain function and its existence cannot be explained by Darwinian evolution" (emphasis in red added)
These textbook examples of illogical thinking and inconsistency are based upon Novella's desperate attempt to contradict Tallis' argumentation.
In fact, Novella misrepresents Tallis' argument in this way: "Again, I find this little more than word play, originating from the false premise that the neuroscience position is that consciousness is identical to the brain"
But Tallis didn't say that consciousness is identical to the brain (so Novella is guilty of another straw man), but to neural function (which is part of the brain). And remember that is Novella himself who says that consciousness IS a brain function! (If you're confused, don't worry, this is part of Novella's strategy when playing with words)
Tallis argues: "If it were identical, then we would be left with the insuperable problem of explaining how intracranial nerve impulses, which are material events, could “reach out” to extracranial objects in order to be “of” or “about” them."
Tallis is referring to the intentionality of consciousness. For example, when you think "this is Jime's blog", you're mentally referring to this blog (which is independent of your concept of it). So your mental concept is ABOUT or has as referent something external to the concept itself (in this example, my blog).
Novella is completely ignorant of this basic concept of intentionality of mental states. And this solid and consistent ignorance explains Novella's ridiculous question (in reply to Tallis): "And what does he mean – exactly, operationally – by “aboutness”. Does he mean the abstract concept? How an object is represented in the brain? These all have neural correlates too"
Please, don't laugh so loud. Ignorance is unavoidable (all of us are ignorant about certains matters). But it's annoying when you're not aware of your own ignorance and pretend to refute other people's arguments when you have absolutely no idea what are you talking about.
Obviously, Novella has never read anything about intentionality. But he's not only ignorant of this, he's ignorant of his ignorance too.
Even a cursory reading of the wikipedia entry on intentionality would have taught him that "The term was later used by Edmund Husserl in his doctrine that consciousness is always intentional, a concept that he undertook in connection with theses set forth by Franz Brentano regarding the ontological and psychological status of objects of thought. It has been defined as "aboutness", and according to the Oxford English Dictionary it is "the distinguishing property of mental phenomena of being necessarily directed upon an object, whether real or imaginary".[2] It is in this sense and the usage of Husserl that the term is primarily used in contemporary philosophy" (emphasis added)
(I don't rely so much in wikipedia, but I mention it here because even the most inept person would find there the definition of intentionality as used in philosophical jargon. So Novella's ignorance is unjustified and is evidence of the level of his intellectual rigour)
Tallis' point is that if consciousness is (identical to) a brain function, then it's very problematic to explain consistently and rationally how consciousness could be "about" (directed upon) external objects existing beyond itself (e.g. in the physical world). Note that this kind of aboutness is not something physical (like a animal that send a venenous outside of its body) but conceptual (a concept which is ABOUT something outside, different and beyond itself, that is, that represents and directs upon something external, different and beyond itself).
The fact that such processes have neural correlates is irrelevant to Tallis' argument, because neural correlates (as neurophysiological and electro-chemical processes) don't refer to other objects existing outside and beyond themselves, but consciousness does.
Most of Novella's objections are based on his laboriously-adquired and sophisticated ignorance of key philosophical concepts, on a superb skill to think inconsistently and illogically, and on his childish desire to contradict Tallis even in the points where Novella agrees with Tallis! (for example, in the idea that for mainstream neuroscience, consciousness IS a brain function)
Links of interest:
-Article "The Immaterial Aspects of Thought (James Ross)"
-Materialist philosopher William Lycan's paper on dualism.
-Eugene Wigner's paper "Remarks on the mind-body problem"
-Article "Some notes on skepticism"
Monday, January 4, 2010
Where Richard Dawkins goes wrong on his argument for the improbability of God by professor of philosophy Alvin Plantinga
Where Richard Dawkins goes wrong from CPX on Vimeo.
Sunday, January 3, 2010
Who Designed The Designer? a response to Richard Dawkins' The God Delusion by Dr. William Lane Craig
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)