The Paranormal (Where is it now?)

by John Clinch , Tuesday, January 27, 2009, 15:54 (5567 days ago) @ George Jelliss

I so agree. - There's nowt to explain. All these "inexplicable" coincidences and apparent presentiments are more than adequately understood if one has regard to the very human qualities of wishful thinking, and confirmation and selection biases - the sort of standard pattern-making that we humans have evolved to do. This is really basic stuff. - That bloggers on this site are prepared to dismiss this with a wave of the hand points to one thing - PSEUDOSCIENCE. The surest indicator that we're in the territory of witless pseudoscience is the tendency to seek to bolster True Belief (in this case, that all sorts of groundless nonsense from clairvoyance to ESP might be true) by the cherry-picking of what is grandly described as "evidence". Here, it is instructive that even the dreams of a small boy has been prayed in aid of the case for the pre-scientific idea "dreams can predict the future"! This is woefully inadequate and doesn't even get us to first base. There is no case to answer: the little boy's dream and every single recounted tale cited as "evidence" for the paranormal, when you dig deep enough, can all be accounted for by a dispassionate examination of human nature and how the mind works. - Let's apply Ockham's razor. - On the one hand, we have the True Believers' hypothesis which, although ill-focussed and vague, appears to contain one or more of the following elements: that our minds are (oh, sorry, "might be") profoundly independent of our brains and maybe even survive brain-death; that we can predict a reality that has yet to happen; and that we can see without the aid of the body or machinery. This is, by any stretch, an extraordinary and radical hypothesis that runs directly contrary all of the neuroscientific evidence and observable data. - On the other, we have all the well-established evidence that homo sapiens has evolved to be (for good adaptive reasons) a pattern-seeking creature; that this pattern-seeking leads us to believe that utterly unrelated things are causally connected (i.e. magical thinking); that our memory is highly selective and seeks confirmation of what we, as intelligent social animals, would like to be the case, often because it's socially reinforcing; that we story-telling creatures use reminiscences and anecdotes to bolster our sense of security, purpose and comfort and to dispel our fear of separation and death; and, if any exist, that we latch onto any confirmatory study to support what, a priori, we would like to believe. - Now, take step back and ask yourself: which of these two scenarios, that can both explain the paranormal, is LIKELY to be the case? Enter, Ockham: it is the one that requires the positing of fewer logically necessary entities. To go with the second scenario, we don't need to posit a radical mind/brain duality, overturn all of existing neuroscience, biology and pyschology and establish a new law of nature. As Hume said, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. What evidence is there for the first? Pisspoor evidence, that's what - and certainly none presented as to how this extraordinary dualism might work in reality. I must be right in saying that the True Believers have yet to present a single plausible hypothesis that has been tested and found to be accurate - or even worthy of study. However, if we go with the second scenario, no extraordinary evidence is required. It accords with what we know and accounts for it all. - Applying our friend Ockham, pseudoscience loses. But then, it always does. - You pseudoscience fans can harp on all you like about various stories that you think support your case. You may even like posing as mavericks, locked out of the discourse by a self-interested "scientific establishment". I don't want to put words in your mouths, but you are plainly seeking to overturn a weighty body of contrary evidence. To establish a case to answer, you're going to have to do much better than third-hand hearsay about what a child said he dreamt. Really! - Yes, I know you claim to have a handful of (disputed) studies on your side but you must ask yourselves why, if there were any grounds at all to take your hypotheses further, scientists just aren't interested. There's gotta be a Nobel prize in it! And if, in response to this posting, there is even a sniff of your old friend "conspiracy", then it will be clear that pseudoscience has you it in relentless grip.