Faith, evidence and the Unconscious Mind

[Udayana]

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.

[Sriram]

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.   

[Sriram]

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. 

[Enki]

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?

[Stranger]

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...

[Bramble]

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.
 

[Sriram]

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.

[Bramble]

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.

[ekim]

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.

[ekim]

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.

[Sriram]

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. 

[torridon]

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

[Sriram]

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.

[torridon]

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.

[Sriram]

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.

[torridon]

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.

[Sriram]

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? 

[Stranger]

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...

[jeremyp]

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.

[ekim]

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.

[Stranger]

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...

[torridon]

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.

[Sriram]

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.

[Stranger]

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.

[Outrider]

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.