A question for scientists: Primary and Secondary qualities

[Mercutio]

1. Insistence on eating before other members of the family.
2. Refusal to eat with non-Hindus or to allow non-Hindus to touch his food.
3. Dislike for bearded persons (Moslems).
4. Fondness for sweets, especially rabri.
5. Reluctance to eat salty foods.
6. Refusal to eat garlic and onions.
7. Refusal to eat meat.
8. Refusal to eat eggs.
9. Liking for bhang.
10. Preference for wearing a loin cloth.
11. Rolling on floor preliminary to wrestling.
12. Interest in cars.
13. Interest in swimming.
14. Interest in previous family.

Ten of these fit my daughter perfectly! Do you think...?

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

About these traits, Stevenson comments that even if we could explain the informational aspects of the case by normal means, we would still need another hypothesis to explain its behavioural features.

Huh? Do we need another hypothesis to explain my kids' behavior?

~~ Paul

 

[Titus Rivas]

Behavioral features

Mercutio and Paul,

We're talking about strong behavioral features here that go beyond the usual likes and dislikes among children of a particular culture. Features that serve as markers to distinguish one child from other children.

Kind regards

Titus

 

[Mercutio]

Re: Behavioral features

Mercutio and Paul,

We're talking about strong behavioral features here that go beyond the usual likes and dislikes among children of a particular culture. Features that serve as markers to distinguish one child from other children.

We're also really talking about alpha level. To you, this is strong evidence. To me, this is a yawn.

I ask my students to pair up and look for similarities between themselves (as an exercise in skepticism regarding twin studies). Some find very few similarities ("we are both carbon-based life forms"), but I have had some come up with an astonishing list of 50 very particular and rare characteristics that they are in tremendous agreement on. Are they really twins separated at birth? Are they simultaneous reincarnations of the same soul? (BTW, are souls temporally limited? Could several people share the same soul in one lifetime? Perhaps we all do! Oh what tangled webs we weave...although I really would like to know that I do in fact share a soul with...a particular person...) No. This is called "fishing".

For someone so critical of the evidence and logic in favor of materialism, you are remarkably lenient in your standards here.

 

[Dancing David]

Re: Behavioral features

Mercutio and Paul,

We're talking about strong behavioral features here that go beyond the usual likes and dislikes among children of a particular culture. Features that serve as markers to distinguish one child from other children.

Kind regards

Titus

I understand wanting to be non sceptical, but this does not reach the level of scientific proof. The matching of ten traits is the matching of ten traits, so are any children who show those ten traits to be avathars?

This just seems to be more of the see-ing what you want to see phenomena, especialy since a lot of them could be choices made under the parents wishful powers. And so we could just have matching of the desired against the exclusion of the undesired.

If the child went and opened a secret compartment that had a hidden treasure, now that would be cool. If the child went a friend and said, hey what about that twenty bucks I loaned you way back when, or told some scandal that only one other person knew, that would make me less sceptical.

In the Tibetan monasteries they at least have some double blinds where the candidate has to chose possesions, some of which are the possesions of the former incarnate.

Interesting line of reseach, but still inconclusive to my mind.

PS You are correct when you say buddhism does not allow for incarnation, annatta is the teaching of 'no-soul', when there is the rebirth of karma, it is somewhat akin to the idea that evil acts beget evil acts. While the buddha never forbid his followers thier own paths he did teach annatta quite frequently..

 

[Dymanic]

Originally posted by Mercutio

BTW, are souls temporally limited? Could several people share the same soul in one lifetime?

That was going to be among my next questions. Viewing various incarnations as a succession of lifetimes would be meaningful only from the perspective of linear (earthly) time; from the soul's perspective, they would have to be happening all at once. How can we then speak meaningfully about 'growth' where souls are concerned, since a soul would be created with all its lives already a done deal?

 

[Mercutio]

That was going to be among my next questions. Viewing various incarnations as a succession of lifetimes would be meaningful only from the perspective of linear (earthly) time; from the soul's perspective, they would have to be happening all at once. How can we then speak meaningfully about 'growth' where souls are concerned, since a soul would be created with all its lives already a done deal?

And while we are at it, just how many angels can dance on the head of a pin?

 

[Titus Rivas]

Lenience

Remarkably lenient? Couldn't this be said about materialist fishing for evidence for their world view? The difference being that my evidence may be weak in your eyes, but the evidence for materialism is not only inexistent, it cannot exist.

Even if I were naive, you certainly aren't doing justice to your intelligence by adhering to any type of materialism. So for a rationalist it's highly preferrable to be as naive as I might be, rather than.... etc

But let's just leave it at that.

Titus

 

[Mercutio]

Re: Lenience

Remarkably lenient? Couldn't this be said about materialist fishing for evidence for their world view? The difference being that my evidence may be weak in your eyes, but the evidence for materialism is not only inexistent, it cannot exist.

once again, because subjective experience is irreducible, because you say so. Have you read any Oliver Sachs? Or Ramachandran? That which we infer (and despite your objections, it is most certainly an inference) is irreducible is (or so those damned materialists say) the product of multiple systems. When we muck around with one tiny pathway in the temporal lobe, for instance, these qualia which we have taken for granted simply are, are suddenly different. Of course, you may simply decide that the new pieces of qualia are now the irreducible ones. Yup, turtles all the way down.

Irreducibility by fiat is not a fatal blow to materialism.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Titus said:

Remarkably lenient? Couldn't this be said about materialist fishing for evidence for their world view? The difference being that my evidence may be weak in your eyes, but the evidence for materialism is not only inexistent, it cannot exist.

So you repeat ad nauseam.

Even if I were naive, you certainly aren't doing justice to your intelligence by adhering to any type of materialism. So for a rationalist it's highly preferrable to be as naive as I might be, rather than.... etc.

We all dumb as rocks; Titus really smart.

~~ Paul

 

[Dymanic]

Originally posted by Titus

...you certainly aren't doing justice to your intelligence by adhering to any type of materialism.

Yet, like Ian, you don't appear to have been as successful as you think you have at abandoning fundamental materialist axioms.

 

[Titus Rivas]

Which axioms?

Sorry Mercutio and Paul,

But I don't think it's very useful to continue our discussion on these subjects. We're probably all declared rationalists but our understanding of what that should mean clearly differs.

I would like to react to these words by Dymanic though:

Yet, like Ian, you don't appear to have been as successful as you think you have at abandoning fundamental materialist axioms.

Please clarify. I'm not aware of ever having endorsed any materialist axiom, let alone of continuing to do so. So in this sense, I haven't abondaned any of them, but then again neither was it my intention to do so. Or are you referring to something else?

Sincerely,

Titus

 

[Titus Rivas]

More information

Dancing David,

This just seems to be more of the see-ing what you want to see phenomena, especialy since a lot of them could be choices made under the parents wishful powers. And so we could just have matching of the desired against the exclusion of the undesired.

Well, all I can say here is that I've only presented you with one good case. If you're really interested and want to keep an open mind about this kind of research I really want to suggest to you that you read the original books and articles by Dr. Ian Stevenson , most of which were published by the University of Virginia.

Please regard my posts on this thread as only a very limited and brief introduction to this field.

I wish you all the best on this quest,

Titus

 

[Interesting Ian]

OK children, stop quarreling

Hmmm . . just got Ian Stevenson's latest book out of the library. Never read any of his books before. Flicking through it, it seems very well written. The first paragraph gets off to an excellent start. I quote.

This book reports cases suggestive of reincarnation in Europe. The cases provide evidence of varying strengths. Prior beliefs influence judgments about evidence; and they influence even more the primary observations that furnish the evidence. This makes knowledge about the belief in reincarnation important for the appraisal of the cases.

Absolutely spot on and an excellent point to make right at the beginning of the book. Nevertheless, after I've read it I'll start a thread about it and try to be as honest as possible in assessing how strong the evidence is.

A point worth making is that even if the majority of the cases were shown to have conventional explanations (an incredibly unlikely scenario), the most this would achieve is that we would have no good evidence that reincarnation occurs. This emphatically would not imply that reincarnation doesn't happen. After all, we have no evidence that reincarnation doesn't occur. So in that case why prefer the non-reincarnation hypothesis over the reincarnation hypothesis? If people mention the supposedly difficulties that reincarnation entails, well, all I can say is that I haven't been impressed with the objections raised so far.

Might take me some time to read it cos I'm reading other stuff and doing other things etc.

 

[Interesting Ian]

...you certainly aren't doing justice to your intelligence by adhering to any type of materialism.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


Yet, like Ian, you don't appear to have been as successful as you think you have at abandoning fundamental materialist axioms.

Dymanic, I don't even understand materialism, never mind embrace one of its fundamental axioms.

And are you ever going to say what the problems of interactive dualism are?

 

[hammegk]

Ian

The fundamental, upprovable axiom of materialism (and dualism) is that an objective, physical, world exists.

The problem with dualism is that if anything is causally effective or affective with that assumed "objective physical world", it too must be physical.

 

[Dymanic]

Originally posted by Titus

Please clarify. I'm not aware of ever having endorsed any materialist axiom, let alone of continuing to do so.

Your ideas about souls, consciousness, and reincarnation all seem heavily dependent on standard materialist assumptions regarding locality and temporality. In the 'afterlife realm' you claim exists, you tacitly assume the applicability of concepts such as now (versus then) and here (versus there). All of your notions about this afterlife are framed in such terms -- yet these concepts are meaningful only within the context of a physical world (the existence of which, as hammegk has just pointed out, is a materialist axiom).

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Hammy said:

The fundamental, upprovable axiom of materialism (and dualism) is that an objective, physical, world exists.

And it is for this very reason we should abandon ontology altogether. All hail epistemology!

~~ Paul

 

[Dymanic]

Originally posted by Interesting Ian

And are you ever going to say what the problems of interactive dualism are?

Boy, am I ever -- in fact, over and over, it would seem.

In the same breath with which it defines itself as a phenomenon independent of physical reality, dualism renders itself incapable of being interactive. Interactive Dualism is prima facie self-contradictory; it's an oxymoron.

 

[hammegk]

And it is for this very reason we should abandon ontology altogether. All hail epistemology!

~~ Paul

Or, better yet, cover our ears and shout Nah Nah Nah I Can't Hear You.