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From: rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Dr. Emmanuel Wu)
Newsgroups: net.religion,net.religion.christian
Subject: Re: Logic based on ... (start again again...) (CONCLUSION)
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Date: Sun, 28-Apr-85 16:40:20 EDT
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Posted: Sun Apr 28 16:40:20 1985
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> 		 You first reject all subjective evidence and then you
> 		 say that there is no evidence.
> 
> 	Same thing.  What good does it do you, you ask?  None.
> 	Because, as you yourself seem to acknowledge, such "evidence"
> 	is fraught with fallacy and flaw.  The reason for being "rigid"
> 	is to ensure that flawed preconceptions do not get "into the
> 	mix" that results in an (erroneous) conclusion.  It's that
> 
> But, if we all worked that way, nobody would ever discover anything. Everybody
> would curl up under a rock because they might make a flawed conclusion. What
> is so terribly wrong with making mistakes that one must eliminate such large
> areas of one's life so as to avoid making mistakes? Making mistakes is a
> terrific way to learn.

First off, when did I say it was bad (or desirable) to avoid making mistakes?
We're talking about scientific analysis, not living life, Laura.  Sure,
scientists may engage in intuitive speculation.  As I said once or thrice
before, the only intuition that's worthwhil is that which bears fruit:  if
an intuition results in a valid insight, great.  Not all intuition does.
It seems that those who do make discoveries are those who seem to know when
their intuition is potentially valid and those who aren't afraid to make
such intuitive speculations.

> 	The evidence, because of its extremely poor quality,
> 	is useless in determining the realities of the physical world.
> 
> I don't think that it is useless. I think it needs a great deal of further
> study. But this is true of anything which is not understood very well. 

It is useless in attempting to draw conclusions about the world.  It is useful,
PERHAPS, as a foundation for possible examination.  But given the state of
that "evidence", and its roots in, not an examination of the world, but an
imposition of patterns one would like to see in the world onto observations,
it is not at all useful.

> 	The nature of an individual human mind, the goings-on inside a
> 	particular person's head, yes, such experience is real to them
> 	and provides information about them.  But what does itsay in
> 	relation to the world at large?  Let's take a very poor example
> 	[Your example of the step-parent here.]
> 
> This example is only good if you assume that the child is mistaken about the
> step-parent. If the step-parent is actually beating the child then
> your analogy washes up.  How unfortunate for the child who tries to tell
> you that they have been beaten up only to be told that they are making it
> all up. I already know that I have a few flawed perceptions of my childhood
> (I know I remember things that took months as happening in much less time)
> but this does not make my recollections useless. It makes certain dogmatic
> statements I might make open to question, but this is not the same thing as
> ``useless''.

Hey, Laura, don't step on my example!!  As the creator, I defined it.  And
I said that the child WAS mistaken, that the child WAS engaging in
self-deception.  You may wishful think onto this that it actually happened,
but in my example it didn't.  I'm showing an example of how a human mind
may choose to impose its preconceptions onto experiences and come away from
them with a faulty viewpoint, and a faulty basis for making future decisions.
Why are you trying to change the story?  Leave the "wishful thinking" to
the girl in the scenario.

> 	Nor does it explain the other numerous times when you are
> 	overcome with a dread feeling and then nothing happens.  Or the
> 	times when something does happen that you had no
> 	"foreknowledge" of.  Or the times that you thought of someone
> 	and they DIDN'T call.  All these times are just as
> 	statistically significant as the times you mention, but somehow
> 	they don't counted into the mixture, making the times you
> 	mention seem more significant than they are. 
> 
> Rich, I am not sure that you are reading what I am writing. I told you I
> kept notes of these things. I don't get overcome by dread feelings all
> the time. I know who is on the phone when it rings far too often to be
> accounted for by chance. I kept records for 5 years about these things,
> all the while desparately looking for a reason to believe that they were
> *not* happening - because I was much more comfortable with a world view
> where such things *didn't* happen. 

I see no reason to believe that they are "happening" due to causes you would
seem to put forth.  Why do you?

> Eventually, I came to the grim conclusion that intellectual honesty required
> me to acknowledge that these things were happening even though it was going
> to be uncomfortable to deal with the skeptics, whose position I had a
> great deal more emotional sympathy with (but were either being intellectually
> dishoenst in denying that these things were happening (bletch) or who
> honestly didn't have these things happen to them (how odd - I wonder why?))
> and worse, to deal with the religious people I knew whom I quite frankly
> thought were crazy and whom I quite justifiably feared (the private school
> I was attending at the time taught that all relgious experiences, even
> those claimed by the born-again Christians and Charismatics were strictly
> from the devil and was big on ``corporal punishment as a way of beating
> the devil out of you''. I was already getting into trouble for being a
> discipline problem [translation -- questioning the authorities at the
> time and in general being a shit disturber] and had had my science fiction
> and D&D articles from Chainmail confiscated and had been publically
> strapped for playing D&D on school premises.)

I'd say you're offering some perspective there, that might surely have some
effect on one's patterns and preconceptions, no?  And how one chooses to
interpret events?

> 	About meditation
> 	working on migraine headaches:  I can think of a number of very
> 	obvious physical reasons why relaxation of the brain and body
> 	might just cause alleviation of pain.  But those explanation
> 	don't seem to be of interest to you:  you are specifically
> 	seeking and assuming explanations that are outside the realm
> 	because you WANT to believe in such explanations. 
> 
> You keep harping on this one. I don't know. Is there anything I can say
> which will disuade you of this notion?  I do not see myself as working this
> way at all. I think that you miss out on some great questions here by
> assuming that ``there is an obvious physical reason'' which explains this.

Such as?

> I am allergic to certain orange colourings that are found in orange foods -
> especially orange cheeses. I think that stuff that I am alllergic to is
> called ``achiote'' -- it may be achiote in combination with something else
> that is put in cheeses, but it *isn't* carotene. Why should meditation
> help with poisoning? I don't know. My father's specialty (in the days when
> he could do lab work) is the effects of various chemicals on the brain.
> He doesn't know either. 

Thus, it MUST be some PARANORMAL/SUPERNATURAL phenomena.  Because *we*
don't know...

> Have you ever worked in a computer facility where there are thorough but
> surprisingly dim-witted operators? i have. the people I am talking about
> do not have any understanding of computer hardware, or operating systems,
> or even software in general. What they do have is a thick book of operator
> proceedures -- a list of ``if this goes wrong, do that''. They do it - all
> uncomprehendingly and mechanically. Quite often I feel that I am in such a
> position -- I don't have a systemetic and comprehensive understanding of
> what is going on - just a rather bizarre list of procedures, some of which
> make a certain amount of sense and a lot of which does not. What is worse,
> my procedures have been written down by other operators, many of whom I
> think had a poorer understanding of what is going on than I do. It is all
> highly unsatisfactory - especially since I harbour strong doubts that I
> will ever be able to understand more than a small part of it. It may require a
> better intellect than I or (worse yet) anybody has. I find the notion
> highly uncomfortable, since I would really like to understand everything -
> but I have to muddle through anyway with whatever I have.

You bet.  Just like the rest of us unfortunates, Laura.  Learn to live with
it.  It's going to be with you a long time.

> 	Someone else's subjective evidence matches my experience?  Perhaps we
> 	were both ingrained with similar notions of what such
> 	experience would be like, based on teachings about religion
> 	and/or deities.  
> 
> this doesn't explain why people of dissimilar backgrounds have similar
> experiences, or why one might have experiences which correspond to
> religious descriptions that one has never heard of. 

Gee, aren't all these people human, Laura, with certain ingrained human
qualities?  Could that possibly be it?  Have you spoken to any koala bears
who had similar experiences?  But, then, I said this in the last article.

> 	The fact that even the most sincere will not accept the
> 	problems with their own methodology of cataloguing the
> 	experience and analyzing it.
> 	"No, it's not based on those
> 	things you say, it's real because I say so and I'm sincere"
> 	doesn't cut it.  The fact that they refuse to acknowledge the
> 	problems with their own "evidence" is a form of "insincerity",
> 	though not what I'd call a "malicious" insincerity. 
> 
> Rich, this is blatantly false. This is not what happens at all. If, instead,
> you mean ``the most sincere will not dismiss all subjective things as being
> unintersting or unuseful because they are subjective'' then you are correct.
> But the literature abounds with discussion on the problems with the whole
> thing.

All literature is full of all sorts of stories.

> The first criticism is ``you are lying''. My canonical response to this is
> to tell the critic to go to hell.

The Scott Deerwester method. :-)  Sure, go to hell, there's no way you can
prove to me that my experience wasn't real, desite your evidence about the
human mind to the contrary...

> There are variations on how people say that to people, though. ``It's not
> real'' and ``that is only wishful thinking'' has been used that way in the
> past. It saves the critic from actually having to come out and accuse
> someone of mendacity, but, from the critics point of view exposes the
> mystic in front of an audience who can reach the ``lying'' conclusion without
> any help. Variations on this theme are ``you are a fraud'' and ``you are
> a charlatan''. I do not believe that this is what you have been asserting, but
> I am warning you that some people will take it that way.

And rightfully so.  Whether a deliberate charlatan or a misguided believer,
the end result is the same.
-- 
Otology recapitulates phonology.
					Rich Rosen    ihnp4!pyuxd!rlr