Is Scepticism a process, or a belief system?

Dondeg,

Welcome to the board. I find your posts interesting reading and I hope you will continue to post.

Beth
 
haha, Meg, you caught me! Yeah, that's me all right. Talk about walking into a viper's den : ) (just kidding).

Seriously, I came here to talk about stuff because most people interested in those topics you mentioned are very dogmatic and unscientific. At least here, people take scientific thinking seriously, which I do too. And if you read any of my stuff, you'll see I try to be scientific about it. There is clearly something going on with these so-called "psychic" phenomena that is in need of serious explanation. Most of it of course is gulibility, suggestion and charlatanary. But, as somebody interested in understanding the human mind, there is a LOT we do not know, and I think that, here and there, in the occult literature, are clues that can help further our knowledge. Which is the basis of my writing on those topics.

Anyway, nice to meet you. Thanks for letting me keep my dollar! : )

Look forward to chatting more.

Don
 
I less than three logic said:
Sounds like the materialism and idealism are the belief systems here, not the skepticism as it appears that it can still be applied within both.
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My point is
Belief System1 + Skepticism = a belief system
just as
Belief System2 + Skepticism = a belief system.

The logical, a priori conclusion of Belief Sytem Materialism -- using reasonable and accepted definitions of what matter is -- is that god does not, cannot exist.

All Belief System Idealism can logically say is that god, should one exist, could be accomodated without destroying the system which is at most basic level mind/will/intent, the antithesis of matter.
 
Why is it so many skeptics can't spell worth s**te?

Post #1: "perjorative"
Post#10: "explicity"
Post#42: "gulibility"
Post#45: "gulibility"
Post#21: "challange" and "challanged" and "seperates" and "underlye"

By no means a comprehensive list, and I studiously avoided my own posts :)

Post 10 is probably only a typo, but Posts 1, 42, and 45 are errors.

Post 21 suggests that English may be a second language to the writer, or thinking is perhaps secondary to her/his principal mental activity :)

M.
 
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fls said:
Because so many people can't spell worth **** and skeptics are people (really....I'm not making that up).

Linda
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ALL of them? I know I am, but what evidence do you have that ALL skeptics are people? ;)

Seriously, I think of skepticism as a discipline. It's analogous to etiquette in that it's something we automatically apply to everything we do.

Just as there are sliding scales of politeness, there exists a whole continuum of skepticism, ranging from pure credulity to knee-jerk rejection of all claims. And, just as more polite people tend to get along better in the world, so do more skeptical ones (although, in both cases, it's possible to overdo it to the point of diminishing returns).

The big difference between skepticism and etiquette is that skepticism doesn't require interaction with others, and it doesn't go away when others are not in the room.
 
Originally Posted by fls
Because so many people can't spell worth **** and skeptics are people (really....I'm not making that up).
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aggle-rithm said:
ALL of them? I know I am, but what evidence do you have that ALL skeptics are people? ;)
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I've never encountered a non-person that was a skeptic. ;)

Linda
 
cj- Scepticism (I stick to the British spelling) is a simple process; the attitude that acceptance follows observation of the evidence.

We are all sceptical about some things- door-to-door salesmen, government statistics, whatever.

In the specific area of the paranormal , which is what this board is about, scepticism is exactly the same process we all apply every day.

However, we must also remember that any process applied over time accumulates data and those data show patterns.

The reason we are sceptical of government statistics is because , historically, they have been massaged to demonstrate what the party in power wanted us to think.

The reason we, as sceptics of the paranormal have what you may see as an a priori scepticism - often labelled a closed mind- is that when we study the data , collected over centuries, we observe a miserable pattern of non-event, human credulity and deception.

Had you made this criticism in 1600, I would have sided with you. The data were not in. But this is 2007 (or soon will be). The data, very largely are in. The laws of physics are much clearer now than then. Some things can be ruled out a priori, because the situation is not one of a blank slate.

There are things we know, which rule out other possibilities, among them perpetual motion and free energy.I may need to examine a perpetual motion machine in detail to know why it will not work, but I do not need to wonder whether it will work. It will not. This is not an a priori assumption. It is as hard a fact as any in existence.

Some possibilities persist. There may well be an unidentified animal in Loch Ness. There is nothing impossible about that. The probability of a Jurassic marine reptile being there, 9000 years after the Loch Lomond Stadial is slim to the point of unbelievability. Of course I cannot dismiss it 100% as I can the PMM, but I can confidently assign it a very low probability.

I have sometimes been offended by accusations of closed mindedness on some paranormal issues, from people who were profoundly ignorant of the reasons for my scepticism and who, seeing no good reason not to believe themselves, simply supposed I had none either.

I do not think I am closed minded to possibilities.

I think I filter probabilities through a screen of established facts.

There is a great difference.
 
Soapy Sam said:
... I may need to examine a perpetual motion machine in detail to know why it will not work, but I do not need to wonder whether it will work. It will not. This is not an a priori assumption. It is as hard a fact as any in existence.
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Hmm. Zero point energy, a universe expanding at an increasing rate, dark matter, Higgs, etc and I agree very very very near 100% against, yet???
 
RSLancastr said:
You have evidently never tried to convince a cat that a pill was good for him.
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Cats are ENORMOUSLY skeptical. Whenever you give them some kind of treat, no matter how much they've been begging for it, they approach it with extreme suspicion. "I don't know," they seem to say as they sniff it carefully. "It seems awfully CONVENIENT, this treat just sitting out in the open like this..."

Then the dog runs over and scarfs it up.
 
Hammegk- none of those are perpetual motion machines.
We agree, I think, that the laws of physics may have surprises in store; there may be a way to extract usable energy from quantum fluctuations, but we both know such technology does not exist on this world at present and is not going to turn up in an inventor's garage.
That knowledge is part of what I mean about patterns. Murphy's laws of thermodynamics are real. They will not change if we discover a way around them, that will simply define their scope more precisely.
 
Soapy Sam said:
Hammegk- none of those are perpetual motion machines.
We agree, I think, that the laws of physics may have surprises in store; there may be a way to extract usable energy from quantum fluctuations, but we both know such technology does not exist on this world at present and is not going to turn up in an inventor's garage.
That knowledge is part of what I mean about patterns. Murphy's laws of thermodynamics are real. They will not change if we discover a way around them, that will simply define their scope more precisely.
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I thought Murphy's law was : Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong.

THis is thermodynamics? Or is there another Murphy's law you're referring to?

:)
 
Originally Posted by fls
I've never encountered a non-person that was a skeptic.
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RSLancastr said:
You have evidently never tried to convince a cat that a pill was good for him.
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Okay.

Because so many people and cats can't spell worth **** and skeptics are people or cats (really....I'm not making that up).

/correction

Linda
 
Hammegk said:
The logical, a priori conclusion of Belief Sytem Materialism -- using reasonable and accepted definitions of what matter is -- is that god does not, cannot exist.

All Belief System Idealism can logically say is that god, should one exist, could be accomodated without destroying the system which is at most basic level mind/will/intent, the antithesis of matter.
Click to expand...
We went through this. I asked for the attributes of god that rules him out in materialism. You could not give me the attributes. These statements are meaningless.

~~ Paul
 
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