The Paranormal (Where is it now?)

by George Jelliss , Crewe, Tuesday, February 10, 2009, 11:17 (5764 days ago) @ dhw

Here is a reply to DHW point by point. I've had to split in tnto two parts, since it exceeds the limit of 5000 words. - DHW: "Science, in the sense of scientific method" leaves a lot of leeway. Some might say that qualified medical practitioners such as David Turell and Pim van Lommel have applied scientific methods to their study of NDEs and OBEs, but you have already rejected such claims. Your interpretation of science and scientific method is no more (and no less) valid than theirs. - GPJ: I have rejected such claims because they are not based on scientific method. They are based on anecdote. What constitutes scientific method is widely agreed, it is not just a personal opinion of my own. - DHW: Perhaps, though, if you could forget God for now ("divine revelation"), we might look at this from another angle. What constitutes reality? Are you sure that science is capable of covering all realities? - GPJ: If you are claiming that there are phenomena that are not susceptible to study by scientific method, and thus constitute another kind of reality, what methods do you propose whereby these immaterialist phenomena can be studied? - DHW: I don't see, for instance, how science can give us "reliable answers" about the nature of love, the impact of music, the origin of ideas, and yet I don't think you would deny the reality of love, musical appreciation, or original ideas. You may be "convinced" that one day science will come up with a material explanation, and you may be right, but your conviction has no scientific foundation. It's a belief. - GPJ: Science already has reliable answers about such subjects as love, musical appreciation, and creative thought. The sciences that study these subjects, such as physiology and neurology and psychology are not as well developed as older subjects like chemistry and physics, but are able to provide answers, even if only provisional. - DHW: I would put NDEs and OBEs and various other apparently "paranormal" experiences in a similar category. I don't understand them, but I can't be sure they are not real, and so I must face the possibility that there may be levels of existence, communication, experience which cannot be accounted for in terms of the material world as we know it. The problem with materialism is that it refuses to countenance that possibility, - GPJ: NDEs and OBEs are experiences that happen and have natural explanations adequately explained by existing science. It is only where they are associated with a few paranormal claims that they are questionable. For instance the patient who claimed to see a shoe on the outside ledge of the hospital building while having an "Out of Body experience" (as reported in chapter 6 of David Turell's book). A proper scientific examination of this case would establish where the shoe came from, how and when it got there, whose it was, whether the patient was ever in a position to have seen it before, or knew the owner of the shoe, whether she was aware of the investigator's interest in paranormal occurrences and therefore likely to make up a story to please him, and so on.

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GPJ