The Paranormal (Where is it now?)

by dhw, Wednesday, January 28, 2009, 13:23 (5776 days ago) @ dhw

Part Two - There are two phases. 1) People claim to have acquired information they could not have known beforehand. You reject this, which means you consider every claim to be based on lies, self-delusion, wishful thinking etc., and that is your belief. You are welcome to it, but you should not assume that it is anything other than a belief. I have seen, heard and read enough to think that some claims are more likely to be true than false. This too is a belief. Science plays no part in it. Science plays no part in most areas of human relations, and if you are going to rely on scientific evidence before you trust people, you may have a few problems behind or ahead of you. So let me stress that, in the context of unknowable information being imparted, I am inclined to believe some claims for no other reason than that I find them convincing. For instance, I believe the evidence of my own eyes in the case of episodes I witnessed when living in Africa; I trust my wife when she tells me of her own experiences. David and BBella are strangers, and so the experiences are not as direct, but I would certainly not close my mind to their claims and call them (as you do implicitly) liars, self-deluders, or fools. The same applies to some ... not all, of course ... other cases I have heard or read about. And so, to conclude Phase 1), I believe it is more likely than not that unknowable information has been imparted to certain people in ways I do not understand. - 2) If the communication of unknowable information is possible, I would like to know how. Nothing to do with security, fear of death, social reinforcement. Speculation on possible explanations may well lead to what you like to call "pseudoscience" ... like "thought waves" ... but this is only speculation. I haven't a clue. I would not regard the fact that scientists aren't interested as proof of anything, but as it happens scientists are interested. David's latest post should set you right on that score, and as I reported in my post of 16 December at 12.29 under Other Forms of Life, there is to be a systematic US & UK study of NDEs involving 25 hospitals. Perhaps you will regard all of this as pseudoscience because real scientists don't bother with such phenomena, knowing just as you do that such phenomena don't exist. I believe one term for this approach is "confirmational bias".