Is My Hypothesis Valid???

I actually like the term "subjective evidence," but maybe it needs to be given a clear definition. I like to think of a scale that runs from subjective to objective. Any single individual's observations are subjective, but the degree to which his observations can be shared by others increases its objectivity. An observation can only be made with the five senses, and that includes observations made with the assistance of technology, such as microscopes, thermometers and Large Hadron Colliders.Now let's say you have a dream about a googlesplat, and then someone else has a dream about a googlesplat, and then another and another. Is this an example of a set of observations growing in objectivity?I would argue no because the observations were not made with the senses. They're just an assessment of internal experience, and while exchanging information about dreams can bring about feelings of shared experience, there's no objective foundation for considering such feelings as indications of having observed the same thing.But one can see how easily one can get into long discussions about whether dreams are objective evidence of anything. It could be argued that the description of the dream is itself evidence, and as more and more people give descriptions of similar dreams that they become evidence that these dreams are themselves actual evidence of something true about reality.To me this is information about human psychology, which is certainly part of reality, but not about any natural phenomenon outside the realm of the human mind. But RAZD doesn't see it that way, and I don't see how one could ever convince him otherwise.--Percy

RAZD's position can only be maintained by ambiguity, so I'd be surprised to see an unamibiguous statement from him. For instance, he says, "I am not interested in dreams and unconscious experiences, I am interested in experiences that occur while conscious and aware." He's say "experiences" instead of observations, so what does this even mean? Ambiguous statements like this are what forced you to ask, "If one has a waking 'vision' in the presence of others that none of those others can see I assume that this too counts as 'internal' evidence and is thus invalid by the terms you have cited above? Yes? Just to be absolutely clear."Until RAZD puts it unequivocally in terms of observations of natural phenomenon made with the five senses, we'll never know what he's really talking about. In order to maintain his position and not appear too unreasonable, RAZD is forced to keep his options open. It's not in his interest to nail things down unambiguously, and so I would be very surprised if he does. That's why so much of what he says is irrelevant or rhetorical, like "Perhaps the theory of Natural Selection just fell in Darwin's lap eh?" or "Tell me again: why was the fudge factor introduced? for fun and giggles?" What's he really mean? Who knows? Expressing your personality is fine, but not at the expense of clarity. It definitely feels like he's crafting his approach to these kinds of questions in a way designed to give him the answers he wants.If the term "subjective evidence" isn't a good one for this discussion, maybe we could instead assign observations a degree of confidence, with a single observation by a single individual having the lowest degree of confidence, and many observations by many individuals having the highest degree of confidence.If that's okay then the question becomes what is the observation and what is its degree of confidence? I think the question you posed in the opening post contrasting the relative validity of hypotheses about alien life and an intelligent designer is approached by asking what observations are involved. In the case of alien life, the hypothesis is valid because we've observed actual life. Just like we conclude from the fact that our world has a moon that other worlds might have a moon, we conclude that because our world has life that other worlds might have life.But the same reasoning cannot be applied to an intelligent designer. All claimed evidence is negative (i.e., "We don't know how this happened naturally, therefore an intelligent designer did it.") or completely circumstantial (i.e., "People design complex things, life is complex, therefore it must be designed."), plus there's the inevitable infinite regression that can only terminate in the supernatural or the unexplained, and so the intelligent designer is itself a supernatural explanation or, like simply giving something a label and calling it a solution, not an explanation at all.--Percy

Leaving aside any practical considerations of funding and time constraints and so on, observations of natural phenomena can be infinitely replicated. Observations of one-time events cannot be replicated, but they must be held to the same standards of replication as observations of natural phenomena. Many witnesses helps, but scores of mass sightings of UFOs and similar things tell us that isn't much help. Your average person isn't much of a witness.For one-time events you have to rely on upon the evidence left behind by the event, and that evidence can be observed and those observations replicated. Much can be learned of events like the Tunguska meteorite (no eyewitnesses) just by analysis of that data.Observations using the five senses are at the core of all objective analysis. At one point you mentioned empirical evidence not gathered by us first hand but recounted to us by someone else, and you seemed to imply that this represents a sliding scale of evidence, but I don't think we should even be talking of second-hand evidence. The original observation is evidence, and anything else is a game of telephone.Also, and this is an obvious point but I'll make it anyway, just like a million copies of the Bible is no more evidence than one Bible, a million people repeating what they'd been told about an observation made by a single individual is still just a single observation.--PercyEdited by Percy, : Clarify last para.

It is a pointless exercise to attempt to characterize the degree of subjectivity of individual personal experience. The back and forth about what's subjective and what's not is not relevant.What's important is the degree to which we can assure ourselves of what is true of reality by assessing many observations across many people. The IPU and the intelligent designer and God are all in the same boat in this regard - none have the requisite set of consistent observations across many people to conclude any objective reality.--Percy

To me the point you made with the aware but otherwise insensate intellect seems obvious. You established this as a baseline for the type of experiences that cannot constitute valid empirical evidence, and RAZD agreed with it.Using this baseline you then argue that internal experiences that are of the same nature as those of an aware but insensate intellect also cannot constitute valid empirical evidence. This would seem to be inarguable and sufficient to settle the discussion, and I don't understand RAZD's position.If RAZD uses this post as a springboard to launch another clarification, my only request is that it be short, as I think the great length of many of his posts works against him. It spreads his argument across too many paragraphs causing a loss of focus. If RAZD has a valid point then it must be one that you and I are missing, and the longer the post the harder it is to find it. Not every reply has to be an essay, not that RAZD is the only one here with this tendency.--Percy