Religion and Ethics Forum
Religion and Ethics Discussion => Philosophy, in all its guises. => Topic started by: Sriram on February 01, 2017, 05:42:36 AM
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Hi everyone,
What evidence do we have for any non material form of life? Problem is that, we gather all evidence only through our five senses. Only those things that we can see or hear or taste or smell or feel,...we consider as existing. We believe that things that we cannot sense cannot exist or at least, we cannot know of them.
This is obviously a wrong way to go about it because our senses have evolved for specific purposes on earth and we cannot rely entirely on them to give us all information about the world. The world could be much more complex than we imagine.
Suppose some people have a faculty through which they are able to sense certain forces, patterns and influences in our lives that we cannot sense through the other five senses...wouldn't they consider these influences also as a normal part of life? Of course they would!
I have mentioned many times about how we can never prove to a stubborn born blind person that Light exists. Even though Light exists everywhere all around them, blind people cannot sense it and if they are sufficiently stubborn, they could insist that it does not exist at all. And it is impossible to prove it to them conclusively.
However, some of the blind people may accept that something called 'Light' exists purely on faith because others are saying so.
Similarly, whatever patterns and influences are sensed by those people who have the extra faculty, cannot be communicated to those who do not have this ability. It is almost impossible. However, some people may accept on faith what is told by the others.
What are these patterns and influences and what causes them....we cannot say off hand. We just know that these occur. But it is possible that they relate to ... the Unconscious Mind.
We know from recent scientific research that what is often called the Unconscious Mind influences our decisions and our lives. We know that the Unconscious Mind creates placebo effects that can sometimes cure illnesses. It can foresee and forecast better than the rational mind. It is awake when the conscious mind is asleep.
It has been pointed out by scientists that unlike earlier impressions, the Unconscious Mind is actually very powerful and very influential. It is not just a memory bank as some people think. Some people have even compared it to a closet in the mansion.... where the Unconscious Mind is the mansion and the conscious mind is the closet. Many people including Freud have compared it to a iceberg where 90% is the hidden Unconscious Mind and only 10% is the seen Conscious Mind.
It is therefore possible that the subtle influences and underlying patterns that are sensed by many people are actually the working of the Unconscious Mind. Whether this Unconscious Mind is connected to an independent agency like the Spirit or Self cannot be said emphatically, but cannot be ruled out either. NDE's and other 'paranormal' experiences do point towards such an independent agency.
So...why do people have faith in an unseen power? Because they are able to sense the powerful influence of the Unconscious Mind in their normal lives even though we are unaware of its existence. What evidence do we have? There is plenty of evidence for the Unconscious Mind. We should just know how to connect the dots.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080414145705.htm
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/09/120910152011.htm
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20160315-the-enormous-power-of-the-unconscious-brain
Cheers.
Sriram
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Light.
All people who can see light have independent, objective knowledge of it, therefore a totally blind person has no reason not to believe that it exists.
Similarly, whatever patterns and influences are sensed by those people who have the extra faculty, cannot be communicated to those who do not have this ability. It is almost impossible. However, some people may accept on faith what is told by the others.
Similarly is entirely the wrong word to use. The 'extra faculty' has zero evidence for it and is not objective.
*sigh* I knew I shouldn't have read that OP! :D
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I have mentioned many times about how we can never prove to a stubborn born blind person that Light exists. Even though Light exists everywhere all around them, blind people cannot sense it and if they are sufficiently stubborn, they could insist that it does not exist at all. And it is impossible to prove it to them conclusively.
Lots of wavelengths of light are invisible, and we can't see them.
But they are still measurable.
http://www.livescience.com/50260-infrared-radiation.html
What the issue is, is claiming there is a form of light which we are unable to measure.
It's not being invisible that's the problem, it's not being able to confirm its there in some way.
It's measurability.
People are skeptical of any claim that can't be measured.
If I claimed that there was a different light that no one could see, scientists would expect me to show it in some way.
we are all blind in some spectrums of light, no one is saying they don't exist.
The problem is you can't just take people's word on it.
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What evidence do we have for any non material form of life? Problem is that, we gather all evidence only through our five senses. Only those things that we can see or hear or taste or smell or feel,...we consider as existing. We believe that things that we cannot sense cannot exist or at least, we cannot know of them.
Speak for yourself. Do you not accept the non-visible (vast majority) part of the electromagnetic spectrum? Atoms? There are endless things that rational humans accept (due to the evidence) that cannot be directly sensed.
I have mentioned many times about how we can never prove to a stubborn born blind person that Light exists. Even though Light exists everywhere all around them, blind people cannot sense it and if they are sufficiently stubborn, they could insist that it does not exist at all. And it is impossible to prove it to them conclusively.
However, some of the blind people may accept that something called 'Light' exists purely on faith because others are saying so.
This is idiotic and insulting to the blind. Just as most people accept (say) ultraviolet, so any rational blind person, open to objective evidence, will accept light. Zero faith needed.
Similarly, whatever patterns and influences are sensed by those people who have the extra faculty, cannot be communicated to those who do not have this ability. It is almost impossible. However, some people may accept on faith what is told by the others.
Drivel. Just as with ultraviolet and light for blind people, if there is evidence, it will be accepted.
Whether this Unconscious Mind is connected to an independent agency like the Spirit or Self cannot be said emphatically, but cannot be ruled out either. NDE's and other 'paranormal' experiences do point towards such an independent agency.
So...why do people have faith in an unseen power? Because they are able to sense the powerful influence of the Unconscious Mind in their normal lives even though we are unaware of its existence. What evidence do we have? There is plenty of evidence for the Unconscious Mind. We should just know how to connect the dots.
We've done NDEs (the clue is in what the N stands for) and the paranormal (no reliable evidence) before.
If you think the unconscious mind is connected to some ghostly thingy, then you need to define what that means and provide evidence for that - not the unconscious mind itself. Your "joining the dots" seems to mean "jumping to the conclusion I'd like"...
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Oh boy....
What evidence do we have for any non material form of life?
None, that I'm aware of.
Problem is that, we gather all evidence only through our five senses.
Firstly, there are significantly more than five senses. Secondly, most of the evidence we collect, in this day and age, is actually gathered by mechanical recording machinery, and only accessed via our senses after the fact.
Only those things that we can see or hear or taste or smell or feel,...we consider as existing. We believe that things that we cannot sense cannot exist or at least, we cannot know of them.
Not necessarily. Dark Matter and Dark Energy are both considered to probably exist, although we've not been able to directly detect them - we interpret what we can detect, and then hypothesise about what we might not be able to detect, what properties it might have, and then derive experiments to demonstrate those theories are correct. We don't rely our senses, we consider those things which demonstrably have an effect on other things to exist - if something has no effect then a) how are to we to tell that it exist, and b) what's the difference between it and something that doesn't?
This is obviously a wrong way to go about it because our senses have evolved for specific purposes on earth and we cannot rely entirely on them to give us all information about the world. The world could be much more complex than we imagine.
It could be, but unless you've got a methodology for determining what you are or aren't going to accept, you just have to accept every possible or impossible conjecture on the equal basis that someone's come up with it.
Suppose some people have a faculty through which they are able to sense certain forces, patterns and influences in our lives that we cannot sense through the other five senses...wouldn't they consider these influences also as a normal part of life? Of course they would!
Yep. And then, to convince the rest of us, they need to demonstrate it - like most of the great scientists of the past have done, in various ways.
I have mentioned many times about how we can never prove to a stubborn born blind person that Light exists.
Of course you can - you describe the effect, explain your idea of the cause, support it with the mathematics, predict from the theory the effect in a different situation, and then demonstrate that it happens. Blind people aren't stupid, they're blind, and they know they're blind. Maxwell's excellent demonstrations that light and magnetism are linked means that you can shine an infra-red lamp onto a blind person's hand and they can detect the heat - let's call that the sixth of your five senses - and they've detected exactly the same physical phenomenon (electromagnetism) from a different effect that it has.
Even though Light exists everywhere all around them, blind people cannot sense it and if they are sufficiently stubborn, they could insist that it does not exist at all. And it is impossible to prove it to them conclusively.
The important bit there being, of course, if they are sufficiently stubborn - just like you can't convince someone that non-material claims in the absence of any sort of methodological framework for establishing their veracity have no validity. If I wanted to be particularly stubborn I could deny the existence of New Zealand, because I've not been there, but there is sufficient evidence from other sources for me to accept that it exists - to not accept it would be unreasonable on my part, not a flaw in the arguments.
However, some of the blind people may accept that something called 'Light' exists purely on faith because others are saying so.
You are confusing 'faith' with 'trust'. Trust is the acceptance of a claim because of circumstancial support (such as a reliance on personal testimony from a source considered reliable), whereas faith is the acceptance of a claim in the absence of any justification.
Similarly, whatever patterns and influences are sensed by those people who have the extra faculty, cannot be communicated to those who do not have this ability. It is almost impossible.
'Flatland', by Edwin Abbot is an entertaining expansion of this idea.
However, some people may accept on faith what is told by the others.
Or they may, as social creatures, trust some of what they've been told.
What are these patterns and influences and what causes them....we cannot say off hand. We just know that these occur. But it is possible that they relate to ... the Unconscious Mind.
And there's the leap of faith... The problem with people making claims of unsubstantiated sensory perceptions is that there is no way to independently or reliably validate them. Even blind people can operate machinery that can detect light intensity, frequency, direction of emanation.
We know from recent scientific research that what is often called the Unconscious Mind influences our decisions and our lives.
Yes.
We know that the Unconscious Mind creates placebo effects that can sometimes cure illnesses.
No, the unconscious mind can create placebo effects that mitigate some of the effects of illnesses, but the illness itself is still defeated by either the body's reasonably well-defined mechanisms or the external support of medicine.
It can foresee and forecast better than the rational mind.
It can't operate anything like as reliably, however, and is prone to false positives.
It is awake when the conscious mind is asleep.
Which is interesting, but of any particularly strong use.
It has been pointed out by scientists that unlike earlier impressions, the Unconscious Mind is actually very powerful and very influential. It is not just a memory bank as some people think. Some people have even compared it to a closet in the mansion.... where the Unconscious Mind is the mansion and the conscious mind is the closet. Many people including Freud have compared it to a iceberg where 90% is the hidden Unconscious Mind and only 10% is the seen Conscious Mind.
None of which changes that lack of reliability or improves the hit rate.
It is therefore possible that the subtle influences and underlying patterns that are sensed by many people are actually the working of the Unconscious Mind.
The problem isn't whether it's the unconscious or conscious mind that's generating these signals, but whether they are accurately interpreting the situation.
Whether this Unconscious Mind is connected to an independent agency like the Spirit or Self cannot be said emphatically, but cannot be ruled out either.
Many things can't be definitively ruled out, that's not a sufficient basis to accept them.
NDE's and other 'paranormal' experiences do point towards such an independent agency.
Or, to a tendency for the human subconscious to operate as though there were.
So...why do people have faith in an unseen power?
If we knew that, perhaps we'd be able to cure them of it?
Because they are able to sense the powerful influence of the Unconscious Mind in their normal lives even though we are unaware of its existence. What evidence do we have? There is plenty of evidence for the Unconscious Mind. We should just know how to connect the dots.
A long an error-ridden attempt to say there must be something spiritual, because some people feel that's the case. Argumentum ad populum is still not valid, even when you cite neuroscience for some elements of your argument.
O.
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Hi everyone,
...
So...why do people have faith in an unseen power? Because they are able to sense the powerful influence of the Unconscious Mind in their normal lives even though we are unaware of its existence. What evidence do we have? There is plenty of evidence for the Unconscious Mind. We should just know how to connect the dots.
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/04/080414145705.htm
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/09/120910152011.htm
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20160315-the-enormous-power-of-the-unconscious-brain
Cheers.
Sriram
Nothing spooky or controversial about unconscious mind. The vast majority of mind function does not need consciousness; we wouldn't get far in life if we had to remember to beat our heart or draw breath all the time. The more interesting thing to consider, is why we do have consciousness at all.
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Nothing spooky or controversial about unconscious mind. The vast majority of mind function does not need consciousness; we wouldn't get far in life if we had to remember to beat our heart or draw breath all the time. The more interesting thing to consider, is why we do have consciousness at all.
Presumably so that we can react quickly to the world around us, while unconscious stuff is managed elsewhere.
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Nothing spooky or controversial about unconscious mind. The vast majority of mind function does not need consciousness; we wouldn't get far in life if we had to remember to beat our heart or draw breath all the time. The more interesting thing to consider, is why we do have consciousness at all.
Why should the Unconscious Mind be spooky or controversial? You have this 'two boxes' problem. If something is not hard science it has to be woo or spooky or magic!!! A binary way of looking at things. ::)
The unconscious mind is a fact. It exists and is largely unknown and possibly unknowable.
Its possible that much of what people experience as extraordinary is in fact something generated by the unconscious mind. Why should this be controversial?
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Outrider,
If a born blind man is stubborn and skeptical, and does not want to believe your words or experiments...there is nothing you can do to convince him that there is such a thing as Light that is in fact falling on his body at that very moment....and forms a fundamental feature of life on earth.
My point is very simple. Merely the absence of one single faculty can make us completely cut off from a very fundamental and crucial aspect of life such as Light, to such an extent, that we can exist life long with no awareness of it what so ever. And no experiments or instruments can convince us of its existence unless we want to believe in it.....and nor can we actually know what it really is through these indirect methods. Only a direct experience through 'sight' can give us that.
Awareness of certain unseen aspects of life that we call 'spiritual', are similar. For many people spiritual forces and influences are as natural and as pervasive as light is to all of us....however skeptical others may be of them.
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Outrider,
If a born blind man is stubborn and skeptical, and does not want to believe your words or experiments...there is nothing you can do to convince him that there is such a thing as Light that is in fact falling on his body at that very moment....and forms a fundamental feature of life on earth.
My point is very simple. Merely the absence of one single faculty can make us completely cut off from a very fundamental and crucial aspect of life such as Light, to such an extent, that we can exist life long with no awareness of it what so ever. And no experiments or instruments can convince us of its existence unless we want to believe in it.....and nor can we actually know what it really is through these indirect methods. Only a direct experience through 'sight' can give us that.
Awareness of certain unseen aspects of life that we call 'spiritual', are similar. For many people spiritual forces and influences are as natural and as pervasive as light is to all of us....however skeptical others may be of them.
I believe X-rays exist, but I have never seen them.
I believe other wavelengths of light exist but I have never seen them either.
For both of the above, I do not WANT to believe in them, I am convinced by evidence.
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Outrider,
If a born blind man is stubborn and skeptical, and does not want to believe your words or experiments...there is nothing you can do to convince him that there is such a thing as Light that is in fact falling on his body at that very moment....and forms a fundamental feature of life on earth.
My point is very simple. Merely the absence of one single faculty can make us completely cut off from a very fundamental and crucial aspect of life such as Light, to such an extent, that we can exist life long with no awareness of it what so ever. And no experiments or instruments can convince us of its existence unless we want to believe in it.....and nor can we actually know what it really is through these indirect methods. Only a direct experience through 'sight' can give us that.
Awareness of certain unseen aspects of life that we call 'spiritual', are similar. For many people spiritual forces and influences are as natural and as pervasive as light is to all of us....however skeptical others may be of them.
Something of an elision between stubbornness and scepticism there. Stubbornness being a character flaw and all humans are flawed. Scepticism I would say in general terms as closer to being a virtue for any would be thinker or investigator; from Socrates to Feynmann, it is an attitude that challenges dogma and received wisdom with a 'question everything', 'take nothing just on someone's say-so' which has proved fruitful in eliminating the overwhelming majority of incorrect ideas to get closer to accurate understanding.
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Scepticism I would say in general terms as closer to being a virtue for any would be thinker or investigator; from Socrates to Feynmann, it is an attitude that challenges dogma and received wisdom with a 'question everything', 'take nothing just on someone's say-so' which has proved fruitful in eliminating the overwhelming majority of incorrect ideas to get closer to accurate understanding.
Not to Sriram. It's a "Stage 2" "adolescent trait" to him, apparently.
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If a born blind man is stubborn and skeptical, and does not want to believe your words or experiments...there is nothing you can do to convince him that there is such a thing as Light that is in fact falling on his body at that very moment....and forms a fundamental feature of life on earth.
My point is very simple. Merely the absence of one single faculty can make us completely cut off from a very fundamental and crucial aspect of life such as Light, to such an extent, that we can exist life long with no awareness of it what so ever. And no experiments or instruments can convince us of its existence unless we want to believe in it.....and nor can we actually know what it really is through these indirect methods. Only a direct experience through 'sight' can give us that.
This is still an idiotic and offensive argument - your 'blind man' would have to be stupid and unwilling to accept evidence, not sceptical.
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Argumentum ad populum! Just because others are saying so why should he accept it?
What evidence does the blind man have for Light? It is something outside his comprehension, something he can't experience and something that according to him is not even necessary in the world. It is completely outside the natural world and completely unnecessary.The world is fine without Light. Everything else like gravity, sound, smell, taste work fine without it. Why complicate matters? Occums Razor...!
If Light exists everywhere....Prove it! Why is he not able to feel it? He is able to feel water and air and other things...so why not Light?
Some buzzing in one instrument and some heat from another instrument do not prove that something called Light exists!! That could be because of so many other reasons.
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Can you feel photons or gravitational waves?
If not, why would you believe in them?
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Argumentum ad populum! Just because others are saying so why should he accept it?
Do you accept (as I assume you do) that there are radio waves, ultraviolet, gamma waves, atoms, electrons, electrostatic fields, etc. etc. etc. just because of the number of people who say that they exist?
Likewise, any sane blind person would accept light.
This isn't rocket science, get a grip!
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Argumentum ad populum! Just because others are saying so why should he accept it?
What evidence does the blind man have for Light? It is something outside his comprehension, something he can't experience and something that according to him is not even necessary in the world. It is completely outside the natural world and completely unnecessary.The world is fine without Light. Everything else like gravity, sound, smell, taste work fine without it. Why complicate matters? Occums Razor...!
If Light exists everywhere....Prove it! Why is he not able to feel it? He is able to feel water and air and other things...so why not Light?
Some buzzing in one instrument and some heat from another instrument do not prove that something called Light exists!! That could be because of so many other reasons.
Your understanding of blind people is very sadly lacking. Those who are born totally blind have to work twice as hard as those who see in order to live their lives with some degree of independence. If you can name a blind person who does not believe that light exists, I shall be extremely surprised.
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Your understanding of blind people is very sadly lacking. Those who are born totally blind have to work twice as hard as those who see in order to live their lives with some degree of independence. If you can name a blind person who does not believe that light exists, I shall be extremely surprised.
I may be wrong but I think Sriram is trying to distinguish between a sighted person who knows that light exists because of personal experience and a blind person who believes that light exists through cogent explanations given by others who are sighted. There was quite a good short story by H. G. Wells called the Land of the Blind where a sighted person stumbled into a land where everybody was blind. He made a nuisance of himself trying to convince everybody that he had vision. The elders eventually decided that he was mad and that the cause was the deformities called eyes and that the cure was to remove them.
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I may be wrong but I think Sriram is trying to distinguish between a sighted person who knows that light exists because of personal experience and a blind person who believes that light exists through cogent explanations given by others who are sighted.
I suggest you go back and read what he has said. He has specifically rejected what sighted people might say:-
Argumentum ad populum! Just because others are saying so why should he accept it?
True to form, he's got a daft idea into his head that he thinks will justify the various varieties of woo that he likes to peddle and no amount of reason or logic is going persuade him of its daftness.
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I suggest you go back and read what he has said. He has specifically rejected what sighted people might say:-
True to form, he's got a daft idea into his head that he thinks will justify the various varieties of woo that he likes to peddle and no amount of reason or logic is going persuade him of its daftness.
OK, I'll leave him to clarify.
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I may be wrong but I think Sriram is trying to distinguish between a sighted person who knows that light exists because of personal experience and a blind person who believes that light exists through cogent explanations given by others who are sighted. There was quite a good short story by H. G. Wells called the Land of the Blind where a sighted person stumbled into a land where everybody was blind. He made a nuisance of himself trying to convince everybody that he had vision. The elders eventually decided that he was mad and that the cause was the deformities called eyes and that the cure was to remove them.
Thanks ekim. Yes...you're right.
Suppose a community of born blind people lived for generations on an island, they wouldn't know of anything called Light and would find it completely unnecessary (if somebody told them about it). Their life would go on normally with no idea of anything called Light.....though it exists all around them.
My point is that we could live all our lives completely oblivious of something that is a vital part of our life. This brings out the questionable nature of what we call knowledge...and our natural abilities and limitations to actually know the world around us.
My second point in the OP was about the Unconscious Mind that we know exists.....but about which we know very little, if anything. This part of us seems to have almost uncanny capabilities that we would not normally associate with natural physical laws or known biological functions. Maybe much of what we normally associate with spiritual experiences can be explained through the Unconscious Mind.
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Thanks ekim. Yes...you're right.
Suppose a community of born blind people lived for generations on an island, they wouldn't know of anything called Light and would find it completely unnecessary (if somebody told them about it). Their life would go on normally with no idea of anything called Light.....though it exists all around them.
Totally contradicting his previous posts, Sriram totally changes his analogy. Okay: humankind lived in ignorance of the non-visible part of the EM spectrum for most of its history. Then we discovered the rest, using the tools of science - notably scepticism: test everything - don't accept anything without evidence.
My second point in the OP was about the Unconscious Mind that we know exists.....but about which we know very little, if anything. This part of us seems to have almost uncanny capabilities that we would not normally associate with natural physical laws or known biological functions. Maybe much of what we normally associate with spiritual experiences can be explained through the Unconscious Mind.
Test everything - don't accept anything without evidence.
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Suppose a community of born blind people lived for generations on an island, they wouldn't know of anything called Light and would find it completely unnecessary (if somebody told them about it). Their life would go on normally with no idea of anything called Light.....though it exists all around them.
My point is that we could live all our lives completely oblivious of something that is a vital part of our life. This brings out the questionable nature of what we call knowledge...and our natural abilities and limitations to actually know the world around us.
Since Galileo at least, we have well understood the limitations of our natural senses. So, we build machines to do the detecting for us now.
My second point in the OP was about the Unconscious Mind that we know exists.....but about which we know very little, if anything. This part of us seems to have almost uncanny capabilities that we would not normally associate with natural physical laws or known biological functions. Maybe much of what we normally associate with spiritual experiences can be explained through the Unconscious Mind.
Mind has no direct access to the outside world; it exists in a cool dark moist environment completely enclosed by bone. One thing, therefore, that mind is not, is a sense organ. Mind can only work with data procured through its attached sense organs - eyes, ears etc. but itself, it captures no original data. If people are claiming spiritual experience, then it cannot be because their minds have some novel sensitivity to external stimuli that others cannot perceive, as in your blind man/sighted man analogy. Rather, spiritual experience is explained ultimately in the same way that all experience is explained, ie in terms of there being diversity in the way that minds process incoming information.
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Since Galileo at least, we have well understood the limitations of our natural senses. So, we build machines to do the detecting for us now.
Isn't that primarily as a result of the sense of vision? Would that have happened in the land of the blind?
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Isn't that primarily as a result of the sense of vision? Would that have happened in the land of the blind?
Since the 'land of the blind' is entirely hypothetical and there is no such thing, why do you think it helps at all in your argument?
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Since the 'land of the blind' is entirely hypothetical and there is no such thing, why do you think it helps at all in your argument?
It's an analogy which illustrates the position of those claiming to have a (spiritual) faculty which others dispute. There is an element of argumentum ad populum against such an individual. If nearly everybody had the faculty there would be little dispute. Similarly in the land of the blind if a sighted person tried to convince the population that there was a rainbow in the sky, they would dispute it and he would not be able to prove otherwise.
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Isn't that primarily as a result of the sense of vision? Would that have happened in the land of the blind?
Humans don't do echo location, like bats, but that hasn't stopped us from developing radar and sonar.
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Humans don't do echo location, like bats, but that hasn't stopped us from developing radar and sonar.
I'll bet the machinery wasn't developed by people without eyesight though.
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Humans don't do echo location, like bats
In a certain sense we do, actually - it's just a bit rubbish by comparison: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_echolocation
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I'll bet the machinery wasn't developed by people without eyesight though.
for what was measured, they are without sight. You are using argument by ignoring analogy here, and insisting on everything bring the same. Which means you are misrepresenting analogy
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If a born blind man is stubborn and skeptical, and does not want to believe your words or experiments...there is nothing you can do to convince him that there is such a thing as Light that is in fact falling on his body at that very moment....and forms a fundamental feature of life on earth.
Which doesn't change the fact of light. We don't deduce that light is real because some people believe it, or even because some people have working eyes and others don't, but because it behaves consistently regardless of who observes it or how.
My point is very simple. Merely the absence of one single faculty can make us completely cut off from a very fundamental and crucial aspect of life such as Light, to such an extent, that we can exist life long with no awareness of it what so ever. And no experiments or instruments can convince us of its existence unless we want to believe in it.....and nor can we actually know what it really is through these indirect methods.
Equally, though, some people believing that they have a special perception that's completely unreplicatable by independent means, undetectable by machinery, and has no detectable influence on the measurable elements of reality that have been validated doesn't make that special perception right.
Only a direct experience through 'sight' can give us that.
And yet an enormous number of people are willing to accept microwaves, radio waves, gravity, Higgs Bosons, electrons and the existence of the Kuiper belt.
Awareness of certain unseen aspects of life that we call 'spiritual', are similar.
No, it could be similar, but you'd still need something more than unsubstantiated (and contradictory) claims of people to support the idea.
For many people spiritual forces and influences are as natural and as pervasive as light is to all of us....however skeptical others may be of them.
And, once upon a time, so were magic, aether, humours...
O.
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Which doesn't change the fact of light. We don't deduce that light is real because some people believe it, or even because some people have working eyes and others don't, but because it behaves consistently regardless of who observes it or how.
Equally, though, some people believing that they have a special perception that's completely unreplicatable by independent means, undetectable by machinery, and has no detectable influence on the measurable elements of reality that have been validated doesn't make that special perception right.
And yet an enormous number of people are willing to accept microwaves, radio waves, gravity, Higgs Bosons, electrons and the existence of the Kuiper belt.
No, it could be similar, but you'd still need something more than unsubstantiated (and contradictory) claims of people to support the idea.
And, once upon a time, so were magic, aether, humours...
O.
You are not getting the point, Outrider. How do you even know that Light exists? It is because of your eyes. If humans did not have eyes, we would not have even known of Lights existence even though it exists all around us.
It depends entirely on our faculties and not because somethings exists or not. Lots of things could exist but we could be completely unaware of them simply because we lack the faculty to sense them. If one man had an extra faculty ...he would be able to sense something that others are incapable of. He will be unable to prove to them that such and such phenomenon exists because they lack the necessary faculty. As simple as that.
This analogy is meant to underline the fact that our knowledge is limited by our faculties.
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You are not getting the point, Outrider. How do you even know that Light exists? It is because of your eyes. If humans did not have eyes, we would not have even known of Lights existence even though it exists all around us.
It depends entirely on our faculties and not because somethings exists or not. Lots of things could exist but we could be completely unaware of them simply because we lack the faculty to sense them. If one man had an extra faculty ...he would be able to sense something that others are incapable of. He will be unable to prove to them that such and such phenomenon exists because they lack the necessary faculty. As simple as that.
This analogy is meant to underline the fact that our knowledge is limited by our faculties.
Humans, unlike sharks for instance, have no innate sense of electroreception; but we don't therefore deny it exists. Robins can navigate using the Earth's magnetic field; humans cannot, not being sensitive to it, so do we therefore deny magnetism ?
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How do you even know that Light exists? It is because of your eyes. If humans did not have eyes, we would not have even known of Lights existence even though it exists all around us.
It depends entirely on our faculties and not because somethings exists or not.
This is still utterly daft: how do you know that microwaves exist? Certainly not because you can sense them directly.
Lots of things could exist but we could be completely unaware of them simply because we lack the faculty to sense them.
Except that we are aware of many, many things that we have no faculty to sense directly. It is of course true that there may be other things that we are not aware of, but it certainly does not only depend on what we have an innate ability to sense.
If one man had an extra faculty ...he would be able to sense something that others are incapable of. He will be unable to prove to them that such and such phenomenon exists because they lack the necessary faculty. As simple as that.
We can't prove anything in the real world - what we do is provide evidence. If what this supposed person was sensing was actually a real external phenomenon that actually affects other things, then there should be some objective evidence for it. Just like microwaves or ultraviolet.
This analogy is meant to underline the fact that our knowledge is limited by our faculties.
One which completely ignores our faculty to deduce the existence of things from indirect evidence.
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You are not getting the point, Outrider. How do you even know that Light exists? It is because of your eyes. If humans did not have eyes, we would not have even known of Lights existence even though it exists all around us.
It depends entirely on our faculties and not because somethings exists or not. Lots of things could exist but we could be completely unaware of them simply because we lack the faculty to sense them. If one man had an extra faculty ...he would be able to sense something that others are incapable of. He will be unable to prove to them that such and such phenomenon exists because they lack the necessary faculty. As simple as that.
This analogy is meant to underline the fact that our knowledge is limited by our faculties.
Since, as you propose, this super-man is unable to prove to the others that what he senses actually exists, why should they pay him any attention? If this extra faculty is useful he should be able to prove it to them.
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Since, as you propose, this super-man is unable to prove to the others that what he senses actually exists, why should they pay him any attention? If this extra faculty is useful he should be able to prove it to them.
I think that was the point in the analogical story. The man couldn't prove that he could see a rainbow or the moon and stars and the blind decided that his aberrations were caused by his (to them) deformed eyes and the cure was to remove them. Much of the technology we have is like an extension to our senses and I suspect that the most dominant sense is vision.
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Ekim, yes. The sighted man in the story should have kept his calm and thought of a suitable way to demonstrate the existence and use of light, but his passion to be king destroyed him.
Really this is (again) a discussion about falsifiabilty, seems some have just not bothered to try and understand.
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Humans, unlike sharks for instance, have no innate sense of electroreception; but we don't therefore deny it exists. Robins can navigate using the Earth's magnetic field; humans cannot, not being sensitive to it, so do we therefore deny magnetism ?
torridon,
Can you prove to the blind people that Light exists? That is the question. The point is not about what you may consider as reasonable for the blind people to accept or reject.
My point is that unless the blind people are willing to trust you and willing to accept something completely outside their experience, it will be impossible for you to prove any such thing! Whatever experiments you may set up to prove it to them......it could easily be rejected and refuted by the blind people.
Even a very valid experience or phenomenon can be rejected by people because they are unable to experience it and no one can do anything about it.
About indirect evidence...it may or may not be accepted as evidence for a specific phenomenon depending on what seems logical to the people concerned. Just because people are running about without walking sticks or jumping over rocks is no proof that Light exists. It can be... but it need not be.
Just as NDE's can be proof of an after-life or it need not be, depending on how one wants to think of it. Nothing can be proved conclusively and absolutely to the complete satisfaction of the people who are blind to an experience....more so if they choose to be blind.
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Sriram #37
These posts of yours are, in my opinion, becoming more and more daft. Even a fictional story written by a well-known author is stretching even a very credulous person's disbelief.
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Sriram #37
These posts of yours are, in my opinion, becoming more and more daft. Even a fictional story written by a well-known author is stretching even a very credulous person's disbelief.
Don't get stressed and agitated needlessly, Susan. Take it easy. My post was not meant for you. :)
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Don't get stressed and agitated needlessly, Susan. Take it easy. My post was not meant for you. :)
:D At 81 , feeling really well, and enjoying every minute of life, stress is totally absent from my life!!!
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:D At 81 , feeling really well, and enjoying every minute of life, stress is totally absent from my life!!!
Great! Keep it that way. :)
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Can you prove to the blind people that Light exists? That is the question. The point is not about what you may consider as reasonable for the blind people to accept or reject.
My point is that unless the blind people are willing to trust you and willing to accept something completely outside their experience, it will be impossible for you to prove any such thing! Whatever experiments you may set up to prove it to them......it could easily be rejected and refuted by the blind people.
Even a very valid experience or phenomenon can be rejected by people because they are unable to experience it and no one can do anything about it.
About indirect evidence...it may or may not be accepted as evidence for a specific phenomenon depending on what seems logical to the people concerned. Just because people are running about without walking sticks or jumping over rocks is no proof that Light exists. It can be... but it need not be.
This is getting dull. Once again: compare to microwaves, atoms, electricity, etc...
Either somebody is willing to accept objective evidence or they are not, in which case they are being stupid and stubborn - not sceptical.
Just as NDE's can be proof of an after-life or it need not be...
And here is an example of the unevidenced woo that you desperately want to justify... ::)
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To help clarify the situation perhaps somebody could describe how microwaves are evidenced.
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You put your pie in and set the timer, about a minute later you get a hot pie out. What more is needed?
Even people with no reading, writing or arithmetic can use them, no problem!
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To help clarify the situation perhaps somebody could describe how microwaves are evidenced.
ive got a big white metal box in my kitchen that warms stuff up , will that do?
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To help clarify the situation perhaps somebody could describe how microwaves are evidenced.
As has been pointed out, heating pies is probably the best evidence for most people in 21st century. :)
However, perhaps more relevant to the topic: electromagnetic radiation, including microwaves, were predicted (in theory) by Maxwell. Hertz demonstrated the existence of microwaves by building devices to transmit and receive them.
Of course visible light was 'predicted' by the same theory - the connection was made because of the theoretical speed of EM radiation matching the already measured speed of light. However, it's easy to see that, had we not been able to directly sense light, a similar demonstration may well have taken place...
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torridon,
Can you prove to the blind people that Light exists? That is the question. The point is not about what you may consider as reasonable for the blind people to accept or reject.
My point is that unless the blind people are willing to trust you and willing to accept something completely outside their experience, it will be impossible for you to prove any such thing! Whatever experiments you may set up to prove it to them......it could easily be rejected and refuted by the blind people.
...
I think you have that all wrong. It is not about proof, it is about what is reasonable. Proof is only available through abstract disciplines like pure logic and maths. In the real world, we accept what is reasonable in the broader context, that is the best we can do under the circumstances of partial knowledge. I can't prove that atoms exist and I can't see atoms, but I accept the concept of atomic matter on grounds of broader reasonableness. Your imagined blind people are not just blind to light, they are also blind to reason it would seem.
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As has been pointed out, heating pies is probably the best evidence for most people in 21st century. :)
However, perhaps more relevant to the topic: electromagnetic radiation, including microwaves, were predicted (in theory) by Maxwell. Hertz demonstrated the existence of microwaves by building devices to transmit and receive them.
Of course visible light was 'predicted' by the same theory - the connection was made because of the theoretical speed of EM radiation matching the already measured speed of light. However, it's easy to see that, had we not been able to directly sense light, a similar demonstration may well have taken place...
Thank you. I'm glad somebody could see the relevance of the question and that it's not about a label on a cooker. So developing the discussion further, if the human race had been born blind do you think that the existence of the electromagnetic spectrum (or even something as simple as a rainbow) would have been evidenced by using the remaining senses?
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So developing the discussion further, if the human race had been born blind do you think that the existence of the electromagnetic spectrum (or even something as simple as a rainbow) would have been evidenced by using the remaining senses?
The idea that humans would have evolved without sight but would otherwise be exactly the same is totally unrealistic and, as far as I can see, irrelevant.
It is possible to imagine intelligent beings who primarily use (say) echo location, would discover electromagnetic radiation via the study of electricity and magnetism in much the same way as Maxwell - but again that's not really the point.
The point is that we are currently in the position of being able to provide ample objective evidence and a well tested theoretical basis for EM radiation in general and light in particular, so Sriram's "blind man" would be being stupid and stubborn, not sceptical.
This is about the need for objective evidence before being willing to accept something. Sriram is just trying to undermine that by pretending that his stupid "blind man" is just being rationally sceptical. He just wants his various varienties of woo to be taken seriously despite the woeful lack of any supporting evidence...
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Thank you. I'm glad somebody could see the relevance of the question and that it's not about a label on a cooker. So developing the discussion further, if the human race had been born blind do you think that the existence of the electromagnetic spectrum (or even something as simple as a rainbow) would have been evidenced by using the remaining senses?
How can you answer such an hypothetical question? Even with eyes and modern human brains it look over 100ky to come up with the an idea of light anywhere near the modern concept. Even into the 2nd century most philosophers believed sight was possible because of the reflection of light that emanated from the eyes.
The point is that whatever may or may not exist somewhere, it;'s of no use unless it has an effect that can be recorded and allow us to build predictive models based on the data.
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Thank you. I'm glad somebody could see the relevance of the question and that it's not about a label on a cooker. So developing the discussion further, if the human race had been born blind do you think that the existence of the electromagnetic spectrum (or even something as simple as a rainbow) would have been evidenced by using the remaining senses?
ekim,
Exactly! A community of blind people would not find Light or its related phenomena at all relevant or necessary. They wouldn't know of its existence, they wouldn't be concerned about it and nor would they be able to investigate it. They would be completely cut off from those phenomena even though these things exist all around them.
This is perfectly reasonable... but the atheists on here do not want to acknowledge it because it could compromise their position of hard skepticism about anything for which evidence cannot be presented in the form in which they can sense it. :D
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I think you have that all wrong. It is not about proof, it is about what is reasonable. Proof is only available through abstract disciplines like pure logic and maths. In the real world, we accept what is reasonable in the broader context, that is the best we can do under the circumstances of partial knowledge. I can't prove that atoms exist and I can't see atoms, but I accept the concept of atomic matter on grounds of broader reasonableness. Your imagined blind people are not just blind to light, they are also blind to reason it would seem.
Ah!! so now its all about reasonableness and not evidence.
Ok....so its very reasonable to think that Emergent Properties arise due to an inner Intelligence and not by chance. You should be able to accept it (at least tentatively)!
Its also perfectly reasonable to think that we have a Self that is the Subject of all experience. Yet you argue that nothing of that kind exists. You want evidence for it.
It is perfectly reasonable to think that NDE's point to an after-life. Yet you want evidence and details about what the spirit is, its properties, how it bonds with the body, what it is made of etc.etc. before you will accept it.
Quite clearly what is reasonable does not satisfy you at all. Like the stubborn blind community, many of you are insistent on real direct evidence, even though it exists all around you.
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If a sighted person landed in a lost kingdom of blind people, and told them that he saw an aura around each person's head emanating from the multiple tentacles of a vast octopus like creature which inhabited the sky, would it be sensible for all the blind people to take his ideas on trust simply because he said that he had the capacity to see this creature? After all, he would say, the fact that you are unaware of its presence is simply due to you people lacking this extra sense of sight, which I have.
Or would it be sensible for the blind people to:
1) Establish, firstly, that he has this extra physical sense of sight
2) And then request that he shows them some form of objective evidence that substantiates what he has claimed.
before they accept it?
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Ah!! so now its all about reasonableness and not evidence.
How exactly, do you propose to arrive at reasonable conclusions about the world without evidence?
Ok....so its very reasonable to think that Emergent Properties arise due to an inner Intelligence and not by chance. You should be able to accept it (at least tentatively)!
Its also perfectly reasonable to think that we have a Self that is the Subject of all experience. Yet you argue that nothing of that kind exists. You want evidence for it.
It is perfectly reasonable to think that NDE's point to an after-life.
You see, just saying that something is 'perfectly reasonable' is not in the least bit convincing. How are you going to justify any of these claims: what is your reasoning?
Quite clearly what is reasonable does not satisfy you at all. Like the stubborn blind community, many of you are insistent on real direct evidence, even though it exists all around you.
There is ample objective evidence for light - in exactly the same way as there isn't for your claims above...
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My point is that we could live all our lives completely oblivious of something that is a vital part of our life. This brings out the questionable nature of what we call knowledge...and our natural abilities and limitations to actually know the world around us.
I think it is fairly uncontroversial that humans are oblivious to a great deal. Whether this is an issue that should necessarily concern us is a very different matter. Like other animals we evolved a variety of sensory abilities that helped us to survive, and we use data from these senses to model the appearance of a world which, for all practical purposes, we take to be 'the world'. Other creatures will model their worlds according to their own faculties. Such Umwelten overlap but will not necessarily be contiguous. It doesn't follow from this that any particular organism suffers from a deficiency of some vital knowledge of the world. We manage quite well without sophisticated echolocation, for example, or the ability to see and hear at wavelengths and frequencies available to other animals. The point is that all creatures are necessarily limited and this isn't in itself obviously a problem. How could it be otherwise?
The suspicion that the universe is harbouring some kind of vital secret that it discloses only to a select few seems to be a peculiarly religious preoccupation. With what faculty exactly do these chosen ones discern this hidden knowledge and how is it that they alone possess this facility? More to the point, why do they so manifestly not agree on what it is that they perceive with their special senses? In light of this, how should the rest of us view the strange and varied claims of those who purport to have access to a vital but intangible dimension of experience? Clearly we cannot believe all of them so on what grounds might we judge which should be taken seriously and which dismissed? We cannot even rely on the claim that a particular spiritual method will yield similar knowledge. The historical Buddha, for example, trained in meditative methods that took the existence of a True Self for granted and yet it led him to refute the same. Do we believe him or his teachers?
But it seems to me that there is something more fundamental here that should enlist our caution. Is it not a bizarrely paranoid neurosis to worry 'that we could live all our lives completely oblivious of something that is a vital part of our life'? There must be a potentially infinite number of allegedly vital things we don't know, yet strangely we carry on without them and not obviously any the poorer for it. How might we even judge whether a given claim of vital knowledge is indeed vital? Would it be vital for everyone or just those who seem unable to cope without it? Might it not be more pertinent to ask why some people seem to need such beliefs while others manage perfectly well without them? Which of these two groups is deficient? The belief that there is vital secret knowledge to be sought is surely itself a sign of something psychologically lacking. Why is it that for some the (everyday) world is not enough? I think Thoreau once wrote that a person is rich in proportion to the number of things they can do without. Maybe the greatest wealth lies in being content with our limited earthly life. After many years of meditation the first Zen patriarch is said to have announced, 'In truth there is nothing to find.' Perhaps that is the secret we need to discover.
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Bramble,
When after decades of search and quest, people say that there is nothing to find...they mean externally. The ultimate discovery is the Self within. Know Thyself. There is nothing else to find.....I agree.
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Sriram,
Bodhidharma wasn't searching for external things. Had he been doing so I doubt he'd have spent so long staring at a cave wall. When asked by the Chinese emperor who he was he famously replied, I don't know.
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After all, he would say, the fact that you are unaware of its presence is simply due to you people lacking this extra sense of sight, which I have.
Or would it be sensible for the blind people to:
1) Establish, firstly, that he has this extra physical sense of sight
2) And then request that he shows them some form of objective evidence that substantiates what he has claimed.
before they accept it?
Yes that is reasonable. The difficulty is that if he said he could see a blue sky overhead with some dark clouds ahead of him and a rainbow, how could the blind validate his claim to vision and how could he substantiate his claim? The man of vision has the option of remaining silent because of the difficulty or he is motivated by the joy he gains from his experience that he endeavours to discover a way of 'opening the eyes' of others so that they may experience the same.
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Bramble
(1)How might we even judge whether a given claim of vital knowledge is indeed vital?
(2). Would it be vital for everyone or just those who seem unable to cope without it?
(3)Might it not be more pertinent to ask why some people seem to need such beliefs while others manage perfectly well without them?
(4) Which of these two groups is deficient?
(5) The belief that there is vital secret knowledge to be sought is surely itself a sign of something psychologically lacking. Why is it that for some the (everyday) world is not enough?(6) I think Thoreau once wrote that a person is rich in proportion to the number of things they can do without. Maybe the greatest wealth lies in being content with our limited earthly life. After many years of meditation the first Zen patriarch is said to have announced, 'In truth there is nothing to find.' Perhaps that is the secret we need to discover.
(1)It might not be about knowledge, vital or otherwise. It might be about realising potential e.g. vision in the analogy, or inner joy and well being.
(2)Not necessarily vital but it might be life enhancing.
(3)Yes it is pertinent, just as it is to ask why some need mobile phones whist others manage without them. It should be left to the individual to decide.
(4) It depends upon what you mean by deficient.
(5) You might be right but it might not be about gaining knowledge. Is there something psychologically lacking in those who spend a fortune in sending probes into space, is the everyday world not enough?
(6)Perhaps so. Seek and you shall not find.
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Sriram,
Bodhidharma wasn't searching for external things. Had he been doing so I doubt he'd have spent so long staring at a cave wall. When asked by the Chinese emperor who he was he famously replied, I don't know.
Yes...there are various stages that one passes through while searching for the Truth. First is the external search...which takes decades. Then comes the internal quest...which also takes several years. After that comes the realization. So...at what stage Bodhidharma said what, is difficult to say.
That is why sometimes we find apparent contradictions in the statements of different sages and seekers. Their teachings and statements relate to their own stage of quest and also often the stage in which the pupil or audience is.
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Ah!! so now its all about reasonableness and not evidence.
Ok....so its very reasonable to think that Emergent Properties arise due to an inner Intelligence and not by chance. You should be able to accept it (at least tentatively)!
Its also perfectly reasonable to think that we have a Self that is the Subject of all experience. Yet you argue that nothing of that kind exists. You want evidence for it.
It is perfectly reasonable to think that NDE's point to an after-life. Yet you want evidence and details about what the spirit is, its properties, how it bonds with the body, what it is made of etc.etc. before you will accept it.
Quite clearly what is reasonable does not satisfy you at all. Like the stubborn blind community, many of you are insistent on real direct evidence, even though it exists all around you.
It is not an either/or, choose between evidence and reason, we use them both. Over time we build up explanatory models that are based on evidence and when new evidence comes to light we question our models. That doesn't mean that we abandon our models lightly - a small piece of contrary evidence would not necessarily overturn a model drawn from thousands of pieces of evidence, that would be reckless, like throwing away a baby in order to drain the bath. Your ideas on self and afterlife might have an intuitive feel to them but they lack any significant supporting evidence in a scientific sense with which to challenge the scientific synthesis drawn from physics up to biology
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It is not an either/or, choose between evidence and reason, we use them both. Over time we build up explanatory models that are based on evidence and when new evidence comes to light we question our models. That doesn't mean that we abandon our models lightly - a small piece of contrary evidence would not necessarily overturn a model drawn from thousands of pieces of evidence, that would be reckless, like throwing away a baby in order to drain the bath. Your ideas on self and afterlife might have an intuitive feel to them but they lack any significant supporting evidence in a scientific sense with which to challenge the scientific synthesis drawn from physics up to biology
All that is fine. If people cannot sense the evidence...how do they know of the existence of something? That was my question.
You answered that reasonable surmise can be made even without evidence. In the case of the blind community, this amounts to saying that anecdotal evidence or the opinion of people is sufficient to come to a reasonable (if tentative) conclusion about the existence of something. That is what the blind people can be expected to do....reasonably.
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All that is fine. If people cannot sense the evidence...how do they know of the existence of something? That was my question.
You answered that reasonable surmise can be made even without evidence. In the case of the blind community, this amounts to saying that anecdotal evidence or the opinion of people is sufficient to come to a reasonable (if tentative) conclusion about the existence of something. That is what the blind people can be expected to do....reasonably.
I cannot sense atoms either, not infrared radiation. My own innate senses only reveal a tiny fraction of the available information. But we have built machines with much greater sensitivity so that provides the reasonable evidence that we cannot perceive directly.
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I cannot sense atoms either, not infrared radiation. My own innate senses only reveal a tiny fraction of the available information. But we have built machines with much greater sensitivity so that provides the reasonable evidence that we cannot perceive directly.
You are not answering my question. If you had been a part of a blind community how would you have accepted the existence of Light? Just tell me that.
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You are not answering my question. If you had been a part of a blind community how would you have accepted the existence of Light? Just tell me that.
We are all part of a blind community already. We are blind to infrared, to microwave, to gamma ray to xray, we are deaf to ultrasound, we are insensitive to magnetism and weak electrical fields. The entire human race is already blind to all these things and yet we don't disbelieve them.
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We are all part of a blind community already. We are blind to infrared, to microwave, to gamma ray to xray, we are deaf to ultrasound, we are insensitive to magnetism and weak electrical fields. The entire human race is already blind to all these things and yet we don't disbelieve them.
You are avoiding the question...torridon! If you had been part of a blind community how would you have known of Light?
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We are all part of a blind community already. We are blind to infrared, to microwave, to gamma ray to xray, we are deaf to ultrasound, we are insensitive to magnetism and weak electrical fields. The entire human race is already blind to all these things and yet we don't disbelieve them.
You are avoiding the question...torridon! If you had been part of a blind community how would you have known of Light?
And you are avoiding torridon's point.
In fact it would be trivially easy to test a sighted person's ability to detect objects at a distance. For example, just prepare a room full of objects, take them to the doorway and ask them where all the objects are - QED. This would immediately take the claim of light and sight out of the realms of unsupported assertion or anecdote.
The more technical you want to get about exactly what light is would require increasingly sophisticated scientific tests - just like those we use to detect and investigate the things we are 'blind' to.
The fact is that if somebody claims to be able sense something that other people can't, and that 'something' has any impact outside of their minds, then they need to provide some sort of evidence (if they want anybody else to accept it, anyway). As the above example shows, we don't necessarily need to know exactly how it works, just that it does and is real. If it has no direct impact on the world outside of their minds, then it might be real but the rest of us cannot possibly know that it is...
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You are avoiding the question...torridon! If you had been part of a blind community how would you have known of Light?
How do we know about the strong and weak nuclear forces? We examine phenomena we don't understand, come up with ideas for a mechanism and then test those ideas.
The blind person would observe phenomena such as it's warm during the day and cold at night or that plants grow and start designing experiments to test their ideas about what causes the phenomena.
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To be fair to Sriram though, he was talking about light. That test is for objects at a distance which bats can locate. A better test would be if the objects were variously coloured, but then how would the blind be able validate the claim? I think the blind would still be sceptical about his outrageous claims of sky and clouds and rainbows but might concede that he had an unusual ability but in the meantime offer him some psychiatric help in case he becomes a threat to others.
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To be fair to Sriram though, he was talking about light. That test is for objects at a distance which bats can locate.
In the context, that is irrelevant. Sriram is trying to reduce a sighted person's claim of light to "anecdotal evidence" or "opinion" (so that it matches the 'evidence' for his favourite woo):-
In the case of the blind community, this amounts to saying that anecdotal evidence or the opinion of people is sufficient to come to a reasonable (if tentative) conclusion about the existence of something.
The simple test I outlined would immediately provide verifiable and objective evidence of an ability that the blind community did not have. Further (scientific) investigation could uncover the details, in exactly the way we investigate things that we cannot sense directly - as several people have pointed out...
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To be fair to Sriram though, he was talking about light. That test is for objects at a distance which bats can locate. A better test would be if the objects were variously coloured, but then how would the blind be able validate the claim? I think the blind would still be sceptical about his outrageous claims of sky and clouds and rainbows but might concede that he had an unusual ability but in the meantime offer him some psychiatric help in case he becomes a threat to others.
Maybe a better scenario would be about colour vision, since colour is (arguably) all in the mind, being a qualia. A newcomer with normal colour vision to an island full of colour blind people would not be able to describe what redness is like or blueness is like to the islanders despite the fact that they could build detectors to discern different wavelengths of light.
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Maybe a better scenario would be about colour vision, since colour is (arguably) all in the mind, being a qualia. A newcomer with normal colour vision to an island full of colour blind people would not be able to describe what redness is like or blueness is like to the islanders despite the fact that they could build detectors to discern different wavelengths of light.
You are talking about people who can see. Once that faculty is available...we can build detectors to detect color changes. No problem.
But with people who have no vision at all. It is impossible to convince them about the existence of Light merely through some experiments and instruments. The blind people have no way of knowing that the results of the experiments are due to Light or something else. They have no option but to trust the people who can see.
Finally its all about trust. Even today we accept that there is something called Dark Matter that is five times more abundant than normal matter, existing all around us...and yet is completely undetected by all our senses and instruments. We rely entirely on the calculations and inference of scientists. For all we know Dark Matter may not exist at all and could get disproved in a few years.
The situation is the same with the blind people. Unless they trust people, they need not accept the existence of Light...and they would be perfectly correct in their skepticism.
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But with people who have no vision at all. It is impossible to convince them about the existence of Light merely through some experiments and instruments. The blind people have no way of knowing that the results of the experiments are due to Light or something else. They have no option but to trust the people who can see.
Are you suggesting that the lack of sight would inevitably mean lacking the ability to do science? That blind people are unable to do scientific experiments, construct hypotheses and test the results?
As has been pointed out several times (and totally ignored by you), we have been able to establish the existence of many, many things that we cannot directly sense. Why do you think blind people would be unable to do likewise?
Unless they trust people, they need not accept the existence of Light...and they would be perfectly correct in their skepticism.
What you have described has nothing to do with scepticism. You have described people who are not only blind but unable or unwilling to do a simple experiment to prove that the person claiming sight actually had an extra sense (#67), and then unable or unwilling to follow that up with science.
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You are not getting the point, Outrider. How do you even know that Light exists? It is because of your eyes. If humans did not have eyes, we would not have even known of Lights existence even though it exists all around us.
And yet we discovered magnetism...
It depends entirely on our faculties and not because somethings exists or not. Lots of things could exist but we could be completely unaware of them simply because we lack the faculty to sense them.
Absolutely agree with you on that. What I don't agree with you on are two things: 1 - that blind people have no way of accepting the concept of light; 2 - that we are limited to knowledge of things our sensory organs can directly detect.
If one man had an extra faculty ...he would be able to sense something that others are incapable of.
Perhaps, yes.
He will be unable to prove to them that such and such phenomenon exists because they lack the necessary faculty. As simple as that.
Unlikely - replicating human senses with mechanical equipment is one of the foundations of science, to mitigate for precisely those sort of perceptive variations. If you can detect it but we can't replicate that detection, well then we have to ask what makes you think you're detecting something in the first place.
Those things that we can't detect directly we developed means of demonstrating by way of their various effects - if something has no effect, in what way does it exist? If it has that effect, we don't need on person's peculiar sensory capacity.
This analogy is meant to underline the fact that our knowledge is limited by our faculties.
I get that, but it fails on a number of points: blind people have access to light-detecting equipment; electromagnetic radiation, of which visible light is an example, has other physiological effects which blind people can directly detect; most of the physical phenomena that science can demonstrate are not directly detectable by human senses.
O.
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Does anyone else perceive dead horses being flogged?
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I get that, but it fails on a number of points: blind people have access to light-detecting equipment; electromagnetic radiation, of which visible light is an example, has other physiological effects which blind people can directly detect; most of the physical phenomena that science can demonstrate are not directly detectable by human senses.
O.
Outrider,
Instruments are nothing but sense extensions. We are in some way able to sense their results and we trust scientists enough to believe that their instruments are indeed working correctly and indeed measuring what they are designed to detect and that their inferences are indeed sound.
I agree we can detect, experiment with and accept many things that we cannot directly detect with our senses. Dark Matter is one of them, as I have stated many times.
But it requires trust and a mature inclination to accept that many things can exist that are beyond our five senses and our direct experiences. If people insist only on hard evidence for everything, they will not accept anything that they cannot sense. This includes even such a pervasive thing as Light. This was my point in this thread.
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Yes that is reasonable. The difficulty is that if he said he could see a blue sky overhead with some dark clouds ahead of him and a rainbow, how could the blind validate his claim to vision and how could he substantiate his claim? The man of vision has the option of remaining silent because of the difficulty or he is motivated by the joy he gains from his experience that he endeavours to discover a way of 'opening the eyes' of others so that they may experience the same.
Well, to respond to the idea that the man has such a sense of vision in the first place, the blind men could examine him to see if his physical make up is different to theirs, i.e. they could establish that he has eyes, which they do not have. If they are not able to establish the location of the sense that he claims to have, then they would have to examine any differences which might point to the fact that he is correct when he says he can see extraneous objects. E.g. they might find that he is less likely to bump into things, or he can describe to them, from a distance, an object which they can only discern by their sense of touch, or he might be able to predict a rain shower before it happens.
However, even if they establish that he has this extra sense, this would only be part of the picture(no pun intended). They would then have to establish that what he is telling them is correct. In other words, is what he was seeing a reasonably accurate representation of the reality that surrounds them, or, for instance, an hallucination on his part.
So, for instance, if he saw a rainbow and some dark clouds, described in detail the linkage between the rainbow and the dark clouds, and also predicted that rain has recently fallen, they would at least be able to test his predictions to some extent. However, if he suggested that he saw a vast octopus like creature in the sky, and auras around people's heads, both of which he insisted as not being able to be discerned by any of the other senses and having no impact whatever on the blind people, why should they believe him?
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Instruments are nothing but sense extensions.
Not only are they extenders and enhancers, but they are also a way to remove some of the cognitive errors and biases that we introduce. Mechanical readings are an impartial, objective set of data - that data is then turned into information by subjective understandings, but the biases and inaccuracies of the measurement have been massively reduced.
We are in some way able to sense their results and we trust scientists enough to believe that their instruments are indeed working correctly and indeed measuring what they are designed to detect and that their inferences are indeed sound.
That trust is important - that's trust because of an acceptance of the effectiveness (and awareness of the limitations) of the methodology, and an understanding of the body of evidence underlying the claims. It's not blind faith, it's earned trust, and that trust is as valid from, say, a blind-person as it is from anyone else.
I agree we can detect, experiment with and accept many things that we cannot directly detect with our senses. Dark Matter is one of them, as I have stated many times.
But it requires trust and a mature inclination to accept that many things can exist that are beyond our five senses and our direct experiences. If people insist only on hard evidence for everything, they will not accept anything that they cannot sense. This includes even such a pervasive thing as Light. This was my point in this thread.
But that's just not the case. I accept the existence of electrons. I've never seen one, myself, I've not anything more than a mathematical model of their existence and nature, and yet I accept their existence, and I accept that there's hard evidence of it within published papers and peer-reviewed articles and journals. I'm as sure of the existence of electrons as I am the existence of my children - I'd not pretend we know as much about them, necessarily, but we've a reliable model.
I get what you're trying to say, that there's an element of trust in accepting scientific claims, and coupled with that is the understanding that all scientific claims are provisional.
I think you're also overlooking the cognitive bias that people have that their own senses are trustworthy - the whole 'blue/black or white/gold' dress meme(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dress), or the shiny legs one, if you prefer, shows that even when we do have our own senses, they are unreliable. We can measure the light frequency for a particular element with a machine and get a definitive answer, or we can sit around debating our subjective impressions - if we can't agree whether a dress is blue or white with our own eyes, why would we presume that being able to see the light is any sort of guarantee of anything more than 'there's something to investigate'.
O.
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I think you're also overlooking the cognitive bias that people have that their own senses are trustworthy - the whole 'blue/black or white/gold' dress meme(https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_dress), or the shiny legs one, if you prefer...
Outrider,
What was "the shiny legs one"?
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Outrider,
What was "the shiny legs one"?
It's very good.
When I first saw it I thought shiny legs, but when I knew what I was really looking at, I cannot now see shiny legs.
Funny how the mind works
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Well, to respond to the idea that the man has such a sense of vision in the first place, the blind men could examine him to see if his physical make up is different to theirs, i.e. they could establish that he has eyes, which they do not have. If they are not able to establish the location of the sense that he claims to have, then they would have to examine any differences which might point to the fact that he is correct when he says he can see extraneous objects. E.g. they might find that he is less likely to bump into things, or he can describe to them, from a distance, an object which they can only discern by their sense of touch, or he might be able to predict a rain shower before it happens.
However, even if they establish that he has this extra sense, this would only be part of the picture(no pun intended). They would then have to establish that what he is telling them is correct. In other words, is what he was seeing a reasonably accurate representation of the reality that surrounds them, or, for instance, an hallucination on his part.
So, for instance, if he saw a rainbow and some dark clouds, described in detail the linkage between the rainbow and the dark clouds, and also predicted that rain has recently fallen, they would at least be able to test his predictions to some extent. However, if he suggested that he saw a vast octopus like creature in the sky, and auras around people's heads, both of which he insisted as not being able to be discerned by any of the other senses and having no impact whatever on the blind people, why should they believe him?
The H. G. Wells story was also about mass prejudice. There was only one sighted man and the blind population had organised the land to correspond to their available senses. They could move around as easily as him and because they were all blind this was the normal way to be. His babbling on about his special faculty caused them to treat him as abnormal. They did examine his physical makeup and decided that his eyes were the problem and that they should be removed to cure him and make him normal, sane and free from woo.
I agree that there is no reason to accept the special claims of another as there is plenty of scope for self deception. The onus of proof is usually on the individual claimant but it is not helped by mass resistance or prejudice. The same happens in the case of some who break free from religious or political prejudice, they are often crucified one way or another.
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The H. G. Wells story was also about mass prejudice. There was only one sighted man and the blind population had organised the land to correspond to their available senses. They could move around as easily as him and because they were all blind this was the normal way to be. His babbling on about his special faculty caused them to treat him as abnormal. They did examine his physical makeup and decided that his eyes were the problem and that they should be removed to cure him and make him normal, sane and free from woo.
I agree that there is no reason to accept the special claims of another as there is plenty of scope for self deception. The onus of proof is usually on the individual claimant but it is not helped by mass resistance or prejudice. The same happens in the case of some who break free from religious or political prejudice, they are often crucified one way or another.
Yes, I know. I read the story a long time ago. But the point about the mass prejudice inherent in The Country of the Blind, which might well be a result of stubbornness or fear or whatever, bears little relation to the reasonable responses that people have made on this thread. Actually, to my mind, the challenge was clearly dealt with by BeRational in post 9,(before you brought the story in Post 17) by saying:
I believe X-rays exist, but I have never seen them.
I believe other wavelengths of light exist but I have never seen them either.
For both of the above, I do not WANT to believe in them, I am convinced by evidence.
And, as far as I can see, all the responses so far have not shown any prejudice at all, unless, of course, you count scepticism and pursuit of evidence as prejudice, which I don't. I am much more interested in on what grounds we would accept/reject/keep an open mind about the sighted man's insistence that he has another sense which the others in your analogy do not have.
After all, I find it quite an interesting thought experiment, and not at all given to simple answers. :)
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Outrider,
What was "the shiny legs one"?
This one - http://www.bbc.co.uk/newsbeat/article/37786981/are-these-legs-shiny-or-legs-with-white-paint-on-them
O.
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That's interesting in art, where many effects such as shininess and sky effects and sea effects, are conveyed by white paint. But we accept them usually.
http://tinyurl.com/zgkv4q4