Is My Hypothesis Valid???

Pretty much, yeah. Sometimes I just like to see if I can write things out to greater detail. It does tend to make my posts long and likely tedious to read, however... I would say we have 2 basic choices:1. In keeping rational and as-objective-as-possible, IF we agree that what I've described is logical and largely free-of-error, then it would seem only prudent to begin further investigation. If the further investigation comes up empty-handed, it seems like we can confidently say we were mistaken.Empty-handed investigation is a difficult issue.
A) Is it empty-handed just because our technology isn't advanced enough or we can't figure out exactly what or where or how to test for the experience?
B) Is it empty-handed just because we were, actually, mistaken?Option A can never be ruled out specifically, it's the same problem preventing us from reaching absolute reality. And option B may be impossible to verify in itself. This proves for an extremely difficult pursuit of "the answer" before we even know the next experience we want to investigate. But, what exactly is the point of further objective investigation if we're not going to accept one of the possible answers? The fact that salesmen bank on our human nature to not let-go of option A is another human-weakness we should be fully aware of. That's why I recommend a reasonable walk through figuring out the Familiarity Factor and Importance Factor. Then we can work out a reasonable time/effort factor and proceed with reason and rationality on our side.The iffy side is deciding when enough is enough. What if I reach the end of my Time Factor and haven't got an answer? Do I accept I was likely mistaken? Or simply re-work my Familiarity and Importance factors to give myself more time? When does "searching for reality" become "a waste of time"? I'm not sure if I have an answer for that since even my "reasonable" system of Familiarity and Importance factors are based on totally subjective concepts. I'm just glad I'm not the one who feels that verifying ghosts is uber-important 2. I suppose we could just start believing it was true. But I don't see how this can be seen as reasonable. Especially if my descriptions in the previous posts are generally accurate. All human mistakes are "obviously real to you" until we are aware that they are mistakes. This doesn't mean that the experience in dispute must be a mistake. But it should give us a very large dose of reasonable doubt. I would agree. However, "being mistaken" (likely for an as-yet unknown reason) isn't the same as "being crazy." I certainly do not think it would be crazy or flawed to think that I was somehow mistaken. At least not until further investigation can be made. If the experience can be duplicated... then that only adds to validation. If the experience cannot be duplicated, the confidence that I was mistaken would increase greatly. It sucks, but it's really not hard for humans to be mistaken, it's an unappealing, inherent trait that we cannot ignore when searching for reality. Ghosts work the same for me, if it makes you feel better Then it's time to remember our inherent human flaws of easily being mistaken, and go through the system. Decide on your Familiarity Factor, decide on your Importance Factor, then figure out your Time Factor and investigate further. Perhaps you will find something. Perhaps not. If not, I do suggest that accepting an "I was mistaken" answer will free up your time for pursuing things that we do actually know are validated within our reality. But such a thing may be for all of us to decide on our own. This is the same issue as before on this forum. One man's "reasonable doubt" is another's "reason for passion". Since "reasonable" is itself subjective... trying to find a detailed, objective answer (as I'm trying to do) may be futile. I don't think of it so much as "discrediting them all as imaginary" as "not having an infinite amount of time to spend on things that I have highly reasonable confidence in for them being imaginary." After all, there certainly are some very important thing to spend time on that we do know are validated in reality (like loving our friends and family).

Your position seems much more reasonable now. We have some differences of opinion though: I don’t care as much as you do to be as-objective-as-possible. Objectivity can get in the way of some interesting subjective experiences.Although, if I’m in the lab then it’s a whole different story. Once the lab coat and safety glasses go on, all bets are off. But I don’t hold my general beliefs to the same level of scrutiny that I do with my experiments in the lab. I don’t have the same control outside of the lab. I have more confidence in my ability to tell fantasy from reality than you do. And I think not being able to tell fantasy from reality is a sign of being crazy. I don’t agree with that. I’ve had experiences that I had trouble telling if they were real or not. For the ones that were mistakes, I laughed at myself for how crazy I was acting. For the ones that I realized I wasn’t going crazy, I was left to ponder just what the heck I was experiencing. But that my experience could not be ‘validated’ never led me to think that it was most likely imagination, nor do I think it should. If it did, then I'd have some great experiences that I never investigated and I'd have lost a lot of learning about myself and this reality. Presumably, I just wrote them off because I couldn't handle accepting the possibility that there might be more out there than I am comfortable admitting without a huge pile of evidence. I think your confidence is misplaced and its causing you to miss out on entire aspects of reality.

Yes, exactly. Different situations can certainly call for different ways of deciding the Familiarity and Importance factors. In fact, once something has been identified as indeed being a subjective experience, objectivity can be ignored to allow for things as simple as "having fun". Like... I don't actually believe in astrology, but I do still read my horroscope every now and then just to see how cute it is. And I certainly look up my Japanese-animal-year on the paper-place-setting whenever I go to the local Japanese restaurant for a meal. I just understand that they are subjective, not objective, and have fun with them.Once you're in the lab (I'm guessing here...) you're also "working for someone else" as well. In which case, ethically, I'm sure you do your work at whatever standards you've signed up to enforce, even if your personal standards happen to agree when doing scientific things.Don't let my big fancy descriptions of Familiary and Importance add any sense of rigour that isn't actually there, though. I mean, with everyday-type stuff I don't actually think up some sort of factor... it's not even worth that time. Even with important things, I've never actually set a time/date for "enough is enough." I generally just figure those out for the best in how they feel. However, I do feel that the entire human race looking for evidence for ghosts/gods/supernatural and not being able to find anything for the history of man's existence is... enough. Perhaps.
But I'm going to re-state this as "I (Stile) have more self-confidence so I'm more okay with being wrong than you are." Seriously, though... I'm at a loss with how to judge such a thing. We'd have to specifically state exactly what sort of experience we're talking about, exactly what sort of past experiences we each have and exactly what sort of goals we have as well. Such a comparison seems rather involved for such a medium as an internet debate forum. What aspects are those? What do you gain or acheive from these aspects that you think I'm missing?

Hearing it makes it empirical, or at least possibly empirical. What Straggler is getting at, if I understand what he's been saying for three threads now, is that for something that by definition cannot be heard, touched, tasted, seen, or smelled, how can you grant any certainty to its existence if your basis for evidence relies on empiricality?

My point was that it’s not based on a decision but on ability. Outside of the lab where I cannot control all the variables, I cannot obtain the same level of evidence. But this doesn’t cause me to lose all confidence, nor even most of it. Its statements like those that make me think you’re relying too much on objectivity. There’s plenty of pictures and videos of ghosts out there. For you to say that we not been able to find anything is a stretch. Or at least a conflation of different evidences.It’s those statements that cause a problem with how we define ‘evidence’ in discussions like these. It’s that you’re putting the level of evidence for ghosts on the same level as random guessing or the IPU or whatever.To say that because we don’t have scientific evidence of ghosts then we have nothing at all is a problem in my book. We have something and it is not nothing. Huh? I don’t get it. I’m sorry but I don’t know what you’re talking about.You’re position relies on people being easily fooled into believe things so that you can place you confidence more on them being fooled than actually experiencing something in reality. My position relies on my ability to trust myself in that what I’m experiencing as reality really is reality and that I can place my confidence in my ability higher than the chance that I’m just imagining it. The entire spiritual side of existing. Learning more about yourself on the inside. Identifying how you can let your soul lead you. Learning what makes you you and how your ‘self’ comes about. Communing with god. Allowing ghosts to communicate with you. You know, all that crap

You can't and everybody knows that. You're saying that his whole point is a tautology and it takes 3 threads to say it? I doubt it.And what about those experiences where we don't know if they were empirical or not? Those aren't even touched by his point.Plus, I don't thinks its about certainty of existence. Its about whether it can even be evidence at all in the first place.

I have a sneaking suspicion that this all comes from the fact that RAZD is a deist, and objects to the IPU argument as a means to showing that believing in something without evidence, but disbelieving in something else that has the same amount of evidence (none) is inconsistent.Straggler has maintained that there is no evidence for a god. RAZD at some times says he has evidence, but doesn't want to discuss his beliefs. SO Straggler is trying to get around that by asking what RAZD considers evidence. Now that Straggler has gotten what he thinks is RAZD's admission that evidence requires empiricality, and that RAZD's inherently unknowable deity cannot be empircal and still inherently unknowable, he thus cannot have evidence for his deity.It's a long convoluted path they stagger, but it does lead to some interesting argumentation. It's sort of like a car wreck, you can't look away, yet you know someone's going to get hurt.

But the IPU is something that somebody just made up... Someone's beliefs on god come from a variety of inputs of which some could be considered some kind of empirical-type evidence, ie because they are things that a person actually feels, but they are not so empirical that they are 'scientifically verified'. So they don't have the same amount of evidence (none) but they do both lack scientific/empirical or "objective" evidence.If I'm alone and I hear something, is it empirical or not? It depends on if you're defining empirical as "able to be heard" or as "verified as heard".If you're defining it as "able to be heard", then RAZD's deity is not inherantly non-empirical as there has to be something there to bring it up in the first place but it remains somewhat non-empirical in the sense that it cannot be verified.If you're defining it as "verified as heard" then Straggler is simply being tautological. And the problem arises from Staggler's position that evidence is either empirical or non-existant butting heads with RAZD's position that not all evidence is empirical and that some evidence is less empirical than others.

---

Science fails to recognize the single most potent element of human existence.
Letting the reigns go to the unfolding is faith, faith, faith, faith.
Science has failed our world.
Science has failed our Mother Earth.
-System of a Down, "Science"He who makes a beast out of himself, gets rid of the pain of being a man.
-Avenged Sevenfold, "Bat Country"

Not RAZD's "inherently unknowable" deity. And as a side note, the only "evidence" for a god are similar to the evidence an hallucination or delusion would create...which leads me to consider it less than convincing. Empircal doesn't mean verified, it merely means objective or, perhaps, able to be verified. RAZD himself has said his deity is inherently unknowable, which seems to mean unempirical. Which is what set Straggler off on his quest. This is the whole thrust of this thread. Straggler indeed asserts that evidence must be empirical or it fails the definition of evidence. He claims to have gotten RAZD to admit that evidence must be empirical, and thus claims victory. RAZD then asserts that Straggler has misrepresented what he's said and so the cycle continues.I happen to agree with Straggler. A feeling in your mind doesn't constitute evidence, it at best could point to a possibility. Straggler, I think, would admit the possibility, but would hold it in the same category as the possibility that any other mythical creature could exist, but that it is so unlikely as to be disregarded barring any evidence indicating its presence.

I'm not going to speak for RAZD, but the Diests' god is not "unknowable" in the sense that there is nothing empirical at all about it. A quick look at the wiki page on deism shows:

quote:

---

Deism is a religious and philosophical belief that a supreme God created the universe, and that this and other religious truth can be determined using reason and observation of the natural world alone, without the need for faith.

---

bold added for emphasisWhat they mean by "unknowable" is to contrast it with theism which has a god that can be communicated with or "known". How many times have you experienced this "evidence" for god and how many times have you hallucinated? If you have little experience with either then I'm not really interested in your speculative opinion on the matter, no offense. Um, the word "empirical" has broader definitions, plural, than that. I can see how it seems to mean that to someone who sees things dichotomously as either "empirical" or "inherently unknowable", but for someone who sees things as a continuum, they do not have to be the same. And what RAZD, and now I, is saying is that the feeling in our mind that constitutes evidence for a belief in god is different than that for a belief in some random mythical creature. Without a belief in god, you and Straggler are resorting to labeling all "non-empirical" evidence as "none" so that you can make the amount of evidence for god the same as that for a random mythical creature. But without the belief, how can you even compare it? Its even gotten down to quibbling about how all empirical evidences becomes feelings in your mind before they get to you and how and if we can even tell the difference between the two in first place. It comes down to differences in how much we're relying on validation of our evidences before we allow ourselves to be convinced to belief by them. There's probably a gradient from 'none to absolute' validation that different people need for being convinced of a gradient of 'mundane to important' beliefs like Stile is describing with his "Familiarity" and "Importance" factors.I don't think that labeling Evidence with either "empirical" or "none" is helping.

Hi Catholic Scientist And yet you too noted the faulty logic of his argument constructed to rule out the possibility (Message 206). It could be just another way to try to limit evidence to what he finds acceptable, so he can maintain is convictions.Enjoy.

---

we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand
Rebel American Zen Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...
to share.

---

• • • Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click) • • •

Hi Stile, and thanks again for your perspective. Can you explain why you have this impression? I'm curious, because it seems everyone else keeps bringing this into the discussion.While this may be an interesting topic all on it's own, it is not my interest. See Message 138 for any clarification on this score. Rather, what I am interested in is determining concepts of reality, and what methodology we can use, once we are outside the realms of science in it's strict application of methodology and testing. Are you saying that your a priori assumption of the discussion involving supernatural elements flavored your response and that it will be different if those are specifically excluded? But they are only familiar once they, or similar experiences, have occurred many times. In other words, once they are validated by other experiences. The experiences of driving in traffic and of finding granite rocks in exotic (to us) fields fall into this type of experience. The importance can be different for different people. A lot of people do not look at birds to see what species they are, they may know a few common "backyard" birds, but wouldn't know - or care - about the difference between a seagull and a tern. They probably would not look at the bill of a seagull to see if the black spot on one side near the tip was also on the other side, identifying the bird as a "ring-bill" gull, while this difference is important to a birder.I would say the difference is more between expected and unexpected experiences. Rocks on the moon, rocks on mars, rocks on the Titan = expected, so finding rocks in those locations was not a big surprise. Finding evidence of life would have been more of a surprise although not totally unexpected.Hence the experience of a unique single observation made one time by an aware and conscious person of something unexpected, like the sighting of a never before known possible unicorn-like animal in a remote relatively unexplored area. Even with two horns it would be unexpected, as it could be a new species, like was found in Vietnam. Message 211
Exactly: if it is evidence of reality then it should be relatively logical that more evidence could be found, like finding two large mammals in Vietnam, or finding a surviving Ivory Billed Woodpecker in Louisiana 50 years after conventional wisdom said they were extinct. Neither do I. The most you could reasonably say, imho, is that - in the absence of further evidence per option 1 - there is a possibility of it being true, but this is a far cry from believing it is *absolutely* true. In the same vein, I can't see how anyone could reasonably believe is was *absolutely* false. One could have highly skeptical doubt and one could operate on a tentative working hypothesis, but neither would logically involve an *absolute* decision. Yes, here you get into the problem of proving a negative, so this makes falsification a problem. The most you can say is that your skepticism increases without secondary validation. After 49 years of trekking the swamps of Louisiana would leave one highly skeptical of finding an Ivory Billed Woodpecker, but one more year could wipe that away. Yes, they seem real until you have further evidence, in this case evidence that invalidates the original impression. But being skeptical also does not mean ruling out possibilities, just a spectrum of skepticism based on the degree of unexpectedness of the experience.Enjoy.

---

we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand
Rebel American Zen Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...
to share.

---

• • • Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click) • • •

Hi Perdition, Repeat after me: (a) Faith is believing without evidence or logic, by definition. This does not mean that you need to believe every little thing that has no evidence to believe one, because it is necessarily non-logical, and applying the rules of logic is pointless. Once you realize that, you will find the IPU argument useless - those that believe will continue to believe regardless. Why? because belief is without evidence or logic. Go back to (a).The best one can claim is that there is a logical fallacy involved, and yet even that *best argument* does not mean that the belief is false, just that it is not based on evidence or logic, and you are, curiously, once again, back at (a). Huh? Sorry, no, but fascinating. I don't need evidence -- if in doubt see (a) -- so this is a false assumption on your part.Why do you suppose every atheist, or so it seems. feels an absolute need to discuss gods etc in this topic? Care to count the number of times I've said no?Care to explain the seeming impossible discussion of subjective evidence without deities? Does it? What I have been doing is to show Straggler that his position is false, even with evidence that meets his criteria. Evidence of reality can be experienced *one* time by *one* aware and conscious person through their senses, and it is *still* evidence of reality.The problem is not with having evidence of reality, but with ascertaining whether or not the experience is actually involving reality, and you just cannot do that with a singular experience. But one does not need to know that in order to form testable hypothesis based on logic and the singular experience, and to use those for further investigation.Straggler wants to have his cake and eat it too: he wants to only use objective known evidence of reality to then test for objective reality. It's like only looking at red cars, and then deciding that only red cars are well built. The fact that the well built cars you find are red is not due to only red cars being well built, but to only looking at red cars. Curiously, I don't need to explain why I like green, even though I have no evidence that green is a superior color, nor is there a logical reason to like green, I just find I like green. Does this mean that my failure to like pink is a logically inconsistent position?Now IF I tried to convince you that green was the best color *ever*, then I would need some reason for this. Interestingly I am not trying to convince anyone that green is a superior color, because preference is a personal matter.Enjoy.

---

we are limited in our ability to understand
by our ability to understand
Rebel American Zen Deist
... to learn ... to think ... to live ... to laugh ...
to share.

---

• • • Join the effort to solve medical problems, AIDS/HIV, Cancer and more with Team EvC! (click) • • •

I understand your position, or at least I think I do. I was merely trying to let CS know what the genesis of this thread was and why Straggler keeps bringing up the nature of evidence. It's his axe to grind, not mine.I personally, try to keep my beliefs logically consistent and rational, and you don't seem to require that. That's fine by me, we all have our own world-views.

Then wouldn't it be more clear to say their god is "unknown" rather than "unknowable?" I have hallucinated before. Usually brought about by extreme sleeplessness, but I have on occassion hallucinated for other reasons. I have not experienced any "evidence" for god, and I suppose I can't say with 100% certainty that they are one and the same. Perhaps you could tell me how the two experiences differ? The definition I believe Straggler is using (and how I am reading the debate) is through definition 3. This may be one of the reasons some of us kind of speak past each other. I do indeed see things as either empirical, able to be experienced (through the senses), or inherently unknowable. Why is your belief in your god different from a Druid's sincere beliefs, or a Shintoist's sincere beliefs in animism? Why is your belief some special kind and theirs is mere delusion? What sets you apart as being able to tell what's real, and they get confused by mythical creatures?Can you at least see how, from an outsider/non-believer's standpoint, all these beliefs (as sincere as they all are) look to be the same and just as improbable? We're merely being consistent. We have no belief in garage demons, dragons, animistic spirits, Shiva, Allah, YHWH, and fairies. You, however, agree with us on all counts but one...what makes your exception worthy of being excluded from the disbelief of all other possible sincerely held beliefs?