Yep "but I want magic"
What Should the Default Skeptical Position on Telepathy Be?
- Thread starter Fudbucker
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That makes nothing that could even be mistaken for sense in bad lighting.
"If reality isn't real, I get to invoke magic."
Okay but that's what... you... are... doing.
This isn't an intellectual or philosophical or even argumentative argument. It's setting up an emotional "gotcha."
Your argument is, literally, that if you can introduce some level of doubt to the base concept of reality then the big mean skeptics would no longer be allowed to introduce doubt to whatever magic you want to invoke because... reasons.
And your response will be a showy, trying-too-hard act of angry incredulity.
This isn't an intellectual or philosophical or even argumentative argument. It's setting up an emotional "gotcha."
Your argument is, literally, that if you can introduce some level of doubt to the base concept of reality then the big mean skeptics would no longer be allowed to introduce doubt to whatever magic you want to invoke because... reasons.
And your response will be a showy, trying-too-hard act of angry incredulity.
I'm claiming "reality isn't real"? No, I'm not. That doesn't even make sense. I'm claiming reality is most likely not materialistic, and if that claim is true, that entails certain things.
No, it's not. It's an argument that a certain model of reality (materialism) has failed to explain a fundamental aspect of the world we all experience: consciousness and subjective experience. Nothing could be more fundamental. It doesn't appear that it will ever explain it, and the possible explanations that have been offered all fall prey to reductio absurdum. Therefore, it's not a good model of reality.
YOU accusing someone of "angry incredulity"? Where's the irony meter when you need it?
.. therefore magic is real.
angrysoba
Philosophile
Try this at home. Or rather, don't.
1. Take one conscious human being.
2. Take one guillotine with a very sharp blade.
3. Slice the head off the conscious human being.
4. Human being is no longer conscious.
It appears the sharp blade managed to alter the consciousness of the human being, namely erase it.
Now try doing the above purely by telepathy instead of the guillotine.
"But... but.... but SCIENCE (dramatic music sting) can't explain THIS!" (Ignoring the fact that 99% of the time it is something can explain or doesn't recognize as valid) therefor the universe has to operate on magical random dream logic whenever I say it does."
Hokulele
Deleterious Slab of Damnation
If you have been married long enough, it really isn't hard to know what your husband is thinking. There's nothing supernatural about it. In fact, I would suggest that those who do not believe in telepathy experience it more frequently than those who do, because they notice it outside of the "spooky" coincidences.
A question, if you don't mind...
We have a number of senses. We can also send signals to others by sound, gesture and so on.
Apparently, belief in these does not go hand in hand with a metaphysical position. They can be and are studied. But apparently that has not yielded firm conclusions about the nature of reality or consciousness. Apparently no one expects any big, philosophical answers from the study of perception.
What makes telepathy so different?
Axxman300
Philosopher
First off, you are trying to use the PHILOSOPHICAL DEFINITION of Materialism as a SCIENTIFIC DEFINITION, and you can't do that for two reasons:
1. It's intellectually dishonest.
2. It allows you to rig the game (and this is a game to you) in your favor by using a definition where the acceptable answers are "...but what if?...but what about?".
Being delusional is your personal choice, but it doesn't count for proof of anything but being delusional.
Because you're using the wrong definition.
No philosophical theory will never explain science. It's like using a lawnmower in your swimming pool.
Neurology has done a lot of work on consciousness and discovered a few fantistic things about how the brain and the central nervous system work. You should read up.
Please don't go into law enforcement.
Based on what?
I live on the California coast. We have wildfires, landslides, earthquakes, and I live in a Tsunami-zone. My bar for radical change ranges from a cigarette tossed out a car window to complex forces of geophysics.
This is not my version of reality - it's just reality.
It's not a simulation. Bad analogy.
Yes I would be skeptical of telepathy.
Of all the things in the paranormal shopping mall, Telepathy would be THE EASIEST THING TO PROVE.
What's in the box? Who's in the room down the hall and what are they doing? Which playing card did I put in my back pocket this morning? What word did I write and seal in this envelope?
Those questions would be easy for a psychic to answer under controlled conditions if such a capability existed...and yet...nothing.
Why do you think that is? Why have real psychics continued to fail simple tests?
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theprestige
Penultimate Amazing
Yes, of course I would be skeptical of telepathy.
For the simple and obvious reason that this simulation does not seem to be simulating any kind of measurable, or even observable, telepathy.
There are a number of metaphysical questions we can ask just from what I quoted. What do you mean by sound? Vibrations in the air, I take it. Well, does the air exist independent of our minds? Are we completely sure that sound works that way? That would require knowing that we don't live in a simulation, because if we do, there might not be anything like air in the real world, and our notions of what "sound" is could be completely off base.
How do you even judge the probability of whether this is a simulation or not? You can't, because you don't know how things would be different (if at all) if this was a simulation or not. All we have is what our senses tell us, and there's no reason to suppose they'd be telling us anything different if this were a simulation.
Even the word "we" is a loaded term. Are you sure other people exist, or is this a convienent assumption we just make?
The problem of determining whether our mundane senses accurately reflect reality has been around since Plato's Allegory of the Cave.
I'm not arguing for an extreme position like solipsism, but I'm pointing out that you can't escape metaphysics. It's always lurking in the background. Our conclusions about reality are influenced by whatever metaphysical framework we believe in, and I don't think materialism is a good framework. I've given my reasons why.
Which is a problem for materialism because when you assert there exists mind-independent stuff, you must have an explanation for how conscious minds can arise from this stuff, otherwise don't bother asserting it. Why is the brain in my head conscious, but if you put it in a blender and send an electric charge through it, it's not conscious anymore? Why does one particular arrangement of neurons and electrical impulses lead to conscious experience while other arrangements don't? We don't have the slightest clue.
If materialism can't explain something as simple as how consciousness arises from matter, what good is it? Why are people so invested in this idea that physical matter exists? You don't need mind-independent stuff in order to do science. It's a completely unnecessary assumption, but if you question it, "skeptics" come out of the woodwork and call you names and impugn your motives. It's totally bizarre. It's like a religion to some people.
I don't think it's different. I think it's a good explanation for the occasional mental synchronicities that we all experience. Coincidence is also an explanation, but I don't think it's as good an explanation. I can see being agnostic about the two explanations, but skeptics put coincidence on an extremely high pedestal and that's always baffled me.
If this is a simulation, how do you know there aren't "special" simulated people walking among us who are extremely good at telepathy and only use it when they're around each other? Or when they do demonstrate it, our memories of it are simply erased? How do you even determine the odds when you have no idea what kind of simulation the programmer is running or what their motives are? Perhaps the programmers are constantly intervening on a massive level, but only when they're not being observed.
See what kind of rabbit hole simulation theory is? You can't really believe anything, if it's true. Even mundane facts like how old you are would be up for grabs.
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Dave Rogers
Bandaged ice that stampedes inexpensively through
This denial of knowledge attack has no bearing on the fact that, in the absence of evidence indicating that telepathy exists, the default sceptical position is to conclude provisionally that it does not, and to demand sufficiently compelling evidence to justify any other belief. All the commentary Fudbucker is providing serves only to try to assert that we should believe that it only just doesn't exist rather than really, really not existing, and that the burden of evidence should somehow be less. It hardly matters; the evidence doesn't exist, so the sceptical position is that neither does telepathy.
Dave
Dave
kellyb
Penultimate Amazing
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Aren't you just describing a version of "brain in a vat"?
theprestige
Penultimate Amazing
By default, I remain equally skeptical of all these hypotheses that have so far yielded zero observations and measurements.
Simulation theory is really more like simulation idea. And the rabbit hole isn't actually very deep at all. Not once you realize that "reality could totally different from what you observe!" doesn't have any practical effect on how we relate to what we do observe.
Go ahead: Give us one practical application of the idea that telepathy may be real but unobservable.
Pretty much, but simulation theory is plausible. If computing power increases like it has been, we'll be running these kinds of simulations in the not too distant future. I can't see a plausible scenario where we wire billions of brains in vats together. What would be the point when you can just create a simulation?
The one caveat is that we don't know if you can simulate consciousness, and that's something we'll never be sure about. We do know, however, that a brain-in-a-vat would be conscious.
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I'm not making a practicality argument. This is a theoretical exercise on what the proper epistemic position should be regarding certain "extraordinary claims" (which I don't think are extraordinary at all).
kellyb
Penultimate Amazing
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My "epistemic position" is simple solipsism. Just the basic observation Descartes made back in the day when he broke it all down as far as it can go.
My skeptical position is the one that operates upon the assumption that objective reality exists, and things like telepathy should not be believed in without convincing evidence.