Re: useful models and the bounds of their usefulness

Posted by pork ^(oo)^ on April 02, 2001 at 21:46:40:

In Reply to: useful models and the bounds of their usefulness posted by isaacthe54 on April 02, 2001 at 11:04:41:

A serious consideration of the distinguishment between psychic phenomena and ordinary subtle sensory activity is essential to a realistic perspective, and your argument explains the problem well. I am biased toward skepticism, yet I am watchful for events that my skepticism cannot resolve. The idea is not to disprove the existence of psychic phenomena (which, I surmised earlier, is impossible), but to distinguish credible conclusions from questionable ones, and therefore to make my faith a worthy one; to dignify it, if you will, and to resolutely avoid the pitfalls of attitude that vex not only naive, uncritical advocates, but rigid dissenters as well.

If an instance of telepathy is ostenibly within the jurisdiction of the five senses, I'm apt to rule out telepathy altogether. A good rule to keep in mind (I know this sounds silly) is that if, at the moment of a telepathic exchange, you can see with your physical eyes or hear with your physical ears the person with whom you're exchanging thoughts, you may as well assume it's not telepathy. It's most likely a sign that your brain has a functional communicative instinct. This instinct works below the limen of your conscious attention, though it still works upon the input of your five cardinal senses.

Much testimony to the existence of psychic phenomena seems based on this ordinary sensory activity. I get the impression that these advocates are unaware of this phenomenon, or at least that they want to convince themselves that they are unaware of it, to maintain the feeble experiential foundation of their faith.

Many instances of telepathy are reported to have taken place when the two people in question were a few feet apart from each other, and looking into each other's eyes. There is something to be said for the remarkable phenomenon of nonverbal communication at such a complex level, but if we're talking about telepathy, we need to be able to rule out this influence.

Now, if person A thinks of person B and says the word "banana" to himself, and person B, on the other side of the world, impetuously takes a sheet of paper and sketches a banana at that very moment, then I'll start to wonder.

The only question: Why was it "banana?" :)

^(oo)^

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