Princhester responds to my earlier post:
"I think you are failing to see the wood for the trees. There is in fact a perfectly good theory as to how and why “psychic phenomena” behave as they do. And there are no indications that there is any difficulty at all with the question of experimental design.
The theory to which I refer is the theory that postulates that humans are fallible and that there are certain categories of belief that people often have despite those beliefs not having any objective foundation. This theory fits all the facts and is bourne out by experiment…
The phenomena may exist in the classic sense. Or the phenomena may be your perception that the phenomena exist.
I’m sure you’ve seen one of those little optical illusions in which two lines are drawn in a way that makes them appear to be converging, and yet if you measure their separation with a ruler, they are parallel.
One can form two theories about this. Firstly, that the lines are in fact converging: that the ruler is wrong, and what is needed is to develop “a new theoretical mechanism and an adequate and accurate experimental design” on the assumption that since the lines do converge, your current experimental design must perforce be wrong since it does not support your perceptions.
Or secondly that your perceptions are wrong.
I know which theory I’m going with."
One could easily make this argument about virtually any new field of experimental study…for example, in the early 20th century, physicists relying stringly on classic Newtonian models could (and did) certainly attack theories of particle behavior and relativity as being “outside the realm” of the experimental evidence. According to the classical view, certainly all of these particle physicists might merely be deluded and seeing only optical illusions, they claimed.
Let’s take a more recent example. Thirty years ago, most U.S. doctors dismissed acupuncture as outright quackery. According to classical Chinese medicine, acupuncture works by redirecting the unseen “life-force” or ch’i, in the body. Utilizing the type of American scientific arrogance that, in my opinion, borders on racism, the AMA and Western doctors said, in effect, “you people are idiots. Even though you claim to have been successfully using these medical treatments for 3000 years, we’re here to tell you that they don’t work and are quackery.” Why? Because we have no reference point in Western medicine to explain acupuncture. Therefore, 30 years ago, we simply dismissed it as quackery. We told the Chinese that they were mistaken; for 3000 years, in fact, they had been sadly mistaken. Now, a reasonably person might ask what would prompt Chinese doctors to practice medicine for thousands of years that didn’t work.
Thirty years later, acupuncture is hardly considered radical; it’s considered a adjunct to standard Western medical practice. Partly because some open-minded doctors stopped worrying about HOW it works and merely accepted the fact that it DOES work, many people have been relieved of serious, chronic and often painful conditions.
Dear Princhester, your argument succeeds on the grounds you have stated–i.e. that a more REASONABLE explanation fits the facts–only if you can tell me (with a straight face) that I am delusional, or that anyone else who has had a psychic experience is being fooled and is equally delusional. Naturally, we are not predisposed to accept this as a “reasonable” argument since we know very well that we are not delusional. For the same reason that Chinese doctors resented the fact that they were considered by Western doctors to have been delusional for thousands of years, those of us who have had personal experience with psychic phenomena find it equally appalling to be labeled as delusional fools. We might regret that you have not personally experienced such phenomena, and we recognize that those who have not experienced them can’t really understand the basis for our belifs. But on the face of it, your argument could just as easily be applied to you: in other words, you could also be missing the boat here–your (understandable) lack of experience is deluding you into believing that these phenomena do not exist.
I believe that the phenomena exist. I believe that they are (under certain conditions) reproducible. I believe that they represent a type of energy that is simply outside the bounds of our current models, but which is more closely related to quantum mechanics than to, say, the action of catecholamines or various neurotransmitters (I do have some background in neurophysiology and naturally, given my interests, I have spent many years considering physiological explanations). I simply believe that we need to exert more effort in developing a reasonable theory.
So, Princhester, to be fair I suppose I should also ask if you believe that doctors who practice acupuncture are also being fooled, since I used that as an analogy. If not, can you explain how it works?