Faith, evidence and the Unconscious Mind

[Udayana]

Does anyone else perceive dead horses being flogged?

[Sriram]

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.

[Enki]

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?

[Outrider]

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.

[SqueakyVoice]

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"?

[BeRational]

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

[ekim]

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.

[Enki]

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.

[Outrider]

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.

[wigginhall]

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