Is My Hypothesis Valid???

No, not really. Subjective "evidence" is only evidence if it is at least partially based on objective evidence; in the absence of any sort of observation the subjective experience is worthless. For instance, suppose the hermit talked to a villager who didn't really go along and look at things but got worked up enough by the villagers to have strong feelings about "stuff". The account of that villager isn't useful to the hermit at all because it cannot possibly convey even a warped view of reality, due to the complete lack of objective evidence.Feelings can color our perceptions of observations (in fact almost always do) but they cannot, on their own, convey information about reality. In the absence of objective evidence subjective "evidence" is meaningless, while on the other hand in the absence of subjective "evidence" objective evidence is accurate. What does this tell us?

No, that is completely backwards, where did you get this idea? Sane people perceive the world through their senses and use this to conclude *what* is consistent with reality!Only a lunatic would look at the world and modify it to fit some internal concept of reality; where could you possibly have come up with such a concept, and why do you think what you think internally has any effect on the truth of reality?

Reading comprehension dude, that was *your* position. You said you thought people looked at the world and tried to understand it in a way consistent with their beliefs about reality, aka priori assumptions. I said that people should look at the world and use that to adjust their concept of what reality is.This is the crux of the disagreement I think, so don't try to put your words in my mouth. If your position sounds crazy then entertain the idea that it actually is.

I certainly agree. Through our experiences of course. A priori knowledge is something you have independent of experience; such as, for instance, interpreting an experience that is not completely in line with your previous experiences as being misleading, and concluding that it must be something other than it appears. When you say ...our mind tries to understand the experiences in a way that is consistent with what we believe is reality, you are saying that your prior beliefs, as founded in observation as they are, always trump new observations. If a person followed this then reality could end up quite different from their internal view of it, since new experiences would be warped by their preconceived ideas.Instead I am saying that people (should) use observations to define their reality as a rule. When they experience something that differs from their previous experience they may suspect that the experience is deceptive or they lack complete information, but it is only through observation that they can actually confirm such things. This means that if further investigation reveals the experience to be genuine they don’t explain it away to somehow fit their internal conception of reality, they modify their internal conception of reality.It may seem like a subtle distinction of order or precedence, but it marks the difference between a religious viewpoint:
God made the world in 7 days!
What about these fossil records, eh?
God put them there!and a logical one:
God made the world in 7 days!
What about these fossil records, eh?
Well there is something else going on here it seems!

Sure, but that is because both methods are functionally equivalent in that case. The distinction is how you deal with experiences contrary to what you expected from reality. Your opinion appears to be that one should modify their perception of that experience to fit their concept of reality; my position is that you should modify your perception of reality to fit the new experience. Certainly, but this comes from changing your world view so that it does not conflict with the known evidence, not changing your perception of known evidence to fit your world view. I don't see how what you believe about reality has any bearing on if the experience is true or not. Consistency is great and all, but you cannot claim that ignoring conflicting evidence is the proper way of dealing with cognitive dissonance. This appears analogous to sticking your head in the sand and claiming that it solves the problem. Denying it is one thing, submitting to it is another. Thinking logically is not part of human nature and yet it is a valuable and important discipline. We learn things that are not part of our inherent nature because they are worthwhile, so stating that people naturally think in a flawed manner is not a reason to continue doing so. I think it stems from a small group of people willing to lie and misrepresent events to others "for their own good", which is then perpetuated by well-meaning people blinded by confirmation bias and goaded on by others with a vested interest in maintaining a moral and financial claim in their lives. No, hence the invention of "Faith" which does not require the application of evidence. Faith is confirmation bias drawn to its most extreme. No it isn't. The thread began asking "Is my hypothesis valid?" It did not ask "Is my hypothesis popular?" or "Is my hypothesis intuitive?" Logical validity is an idea which does not depend on the natural preference of humans to think in an emotional and disorganized manner, rejecting concepts that are difficult to think about or contrary to their upbringing. Conformity with others is certainly never going to trump direct experience, and if the "others" are unable to provide any evidence then if their views differ from what I perceive then they are extremely suspect. Peer pressure is not valid evidence if that is what you are implying.

Not really. Since the methods differ in how new experiences are handled, and we have already established that people don't come with inherent knowledge, then unless they changed their method at some point they should be quite different. The 99% figure would only be accurate if they were somehow duplicates in world view despite having fundamental differences in how they build said world view from observations. Why wouldn't I change my perception of those previous observations? If the new observations made it appear prudent then that would be the reasonable thing to do. For instance, suppose I observe a magician as a child who has never seen anything like it before. "Woo, he is doing magic!" Then I learn how sleight of hand works and I modify my perception of those events; I wasn't looking at magic as it appeared, I was looking at a performance.Also, sometimes conformity isn't practical. Assuming that two observations must be reconcilable isn't something that you can decree across the board. For instance, prior to the invention of the airplane people did not fly. Observing someone flying for the first time would be contrary to a wealth of previous experience that isn't inherently false. You don't have to reject either one; sometimes things just change. Exactly. This is why I find it strange that you have reversed the priority I would think is self-evident when investigating unexpected observations. Given that our understanding of evidence can change, presumably to become more accurate, if unexpected results appear then we would start by suspecting our internal expectations are flawed instead of telling ourselves that we didn't really see what we thought we saw. I can see how your beliefs about reality can be more or less correct due to the wealth of experience they have to draw on, but strength of belief has nothing at all to do with the veracity of the evidence. It does not matter how hard you believe that it is true, it does not make it true. I would say that they should proceed with cautious optimism. If on the other hand they discover that they were not sound of mind or body and cannot find any evidence to support their observation, they should seriously question the truthfulness of their observation.This is obviously the way it not only should be, but actually is in the world. Otherwise we would require a majority of our social group to experience a new observation simultaneously in order to accept it. We call this "Science". It seems to be working out fairly well.

I disagree. Each experiment is a unique event and would have to be observed by a majority in the community, otherwise if the results were contrary to general expectations then the weight of popular opinion would tell the observers that they should ignore that observation. Remember that we are talking about an individual person's method of interpreting their own experiences, not some sort of scientific hive-mind.More plainly, the scientists that performed the initial cold fusion experiment may have genuinely thought they observed cold fusion. They did not accept popular opinion and proclaimed the success of their experiments. Other scientists individually, or in groups small enough to be functionally individual when compared to the whole of the scientific community, went away to attempt to reproduce their results. Had they succeeded then we trust that they would also have gone against popular opinion and proclaimed their experiences as true, and the scientific community would have accepted the claims as peer-reviewed and verified. This does *not* require 50% of the scientific community to go out and perform the test.On the other hand, they could not reproduce the observations that were claimed. In fact neither could the original observers, which lead to them withdrawing their claims. They had done the reasonable thing and proceeded with cautious optimism (although a little short in the caution department, there are always outliers) *but* when they later discovered that they were not sound of "body" (their experimental methods were flawed, leading to their "senses" not sensing what they thought it did) and could not provide any evidence to support their observation they questioned the truthfulness of their observation.If scientists did not follow this method in general then discoveries would never be made. If they did as RAZD suggests then every time a scientist observed something contrary to conventional wisdom they would struggle and cavort to conform their understanding of that observation to that conventional wisdom. There isn't any provision in there for modifying the world view; RAZD appears to be claiming that experience equals truth, independent of reality!The salient benefit of science is that it is a framework to determine the truth of experiences. The scientific method does not require majority rule to conclude an experience is true, and provides very powerful methods of determining when misleading experiences are in fact false. There is no claim that this method is foolproof but it is logically sound compared to the proposed alternative.

That small group of scientists may be very social, but they are not the complete social group through which evidence is distributed. The scientific community distributes evidence without the vast majority of them ever being involved in the experimentation of a specific phenomenon; they do not require a majority of scientists to empirically experience an experiment in order to accept it. If this is indeed RAZD's point then I may have been confused by a statement that is at its heart rather vapid. If what he meant was that we should modify new evidence contrary to our world view in a way that is consistent to our beliefs, namely by *not* modifying that new evidence and instead altering our beliefs, then I agree with that concept. I suspect that is not what he intended to say though, because that means his statement conveyed almost no information whatsoever; what other way would you handle new information other than the way you handle new information? Those peers are not special representatives though; there is no group of elect scientists that vouch for large swaths of the scientific community and accept or deny experiences by proxy. The scientific community rather has rules about reproducing claims independently and once several independent sources can confirm those observations it is accepted or denied by each scientist independently. The trust is such in the system itself to have independent studies, and this means any scientist can participate in verifying claims without approval of the scientific community at large. The peer-review process is a system of determining the truth of claims through controlled vouching, not some sort of science-republic.

Perception as in understanding, not perception as in sensing. I will try to use observation and interpretation, etc. in the future.My view is that memories are in essence stored interpretations, not strictly stored observations. Our minds leave out the particulars of an observation and we are left with a general interpretation of the event. Perhaps a person with perfect recall functions differently. It will be interpret in a way that is conforming with an understanding of reality, but not necessarily the understanding of reality you had before the observation. The point is that an observation that is presumed to be accurate and yet is also contrary to your world view necessitates the alteration of the world view, not rejection in favor of conformity. Exactly. Notice the distinction; the new observation's interpretation is based as accurately as possible on the observation, and the world view is altered to conform to said observation's interpretation. This is contrary to your suggestion of altering the interpretation of the observation to match the world view in preference to matching the initial observation. That may be a common mistake people make, but confirmation bias is something to be avoided if possible. The truthfulness of an observation should be verified independently of how strong their usual interpretations are in support or opposition of the observation. On the first point, of course not. Their opinion has no merit whatsoever unless they can provide corroborating evidence. On the second point, we don't attempt to reconcile different unevidenced opinions. We can attempt to reconcile different observations, but opinions are not comparable on any meaningful or productive level.

That is not an experience, nor is it an accurate statement of reality. The concept of a ball is a definition applied to something with particular characteristics, as is a square. Refusing to apply it to a particular object has no bearing on reality; we could arbitrarily refuse to apply the term "sphere" (or oblate spheroid) to the Earth, but it does not change the reality of Earth's shape. Even logic itself is descriptive, and as such reliant on observation. You didn't address the question, unless you consider an inference the same thing as experiencing reality. Uhh, NO! We have evidence that points toward it being likely, but that is NOT EVIDENCE! Seriously, can you not tell the difference between suspecting and observing? Do you really think that just because we have evidence pointing toward something that it has to be true??Perhaps you can clarify your position, but it appears that you are completely loony. You seem to think that if you imagine something, or are lead to believe something is likely, that is necessarily *is*. As an extension of this you somehow conclude that when you hope or suspect something it is just the same as observing it. I suggest that holding such a position makes you completely off your rocker.

NO. No they cannot consider a thought experiment as experiencing reality. The fact that you would argue such a point is frankly shocking. It cannot be considered an experience of reality for one key reason: IT ISN'T REAL! It never HAPPENED!Excuse me for getting all high and mighty distinguishing reality from imagination, but we rational sentients are snooty that way. The void you refer to is the evidence that leads us to believe that life is possible elsewhere. We have access to that evidence directly, so what is your point? Cite? Show your reasoning please; turnabout is fair play, but you gotta' turn it about.