[QUOTE=Contrapuntal]
Did you read the other thread? “Goofing around” comes pretty close. What he is doing is assigning certain definitions to certain words and referring back to those definitions in an endless loop whenever he gets called on it. QUOTE]
Liar. Absolute lie.
I have not assigned a definition to any word. I have cited the definitons of Webster, Cambridge, Oxford, American Heritage, Ultralingua and a couple I forgot. Take up your arguments with them.
You liar. I don’t get to assign definitions and I have not attempted to do so. Many, many others have attempted to redefine the word and assign a meaning they can accept. Not me. Liar.
Can you prove that there are things beyond human understanding? You have asserted it, and demanded of others that they prove their assertions. Should the same rules not apply for you?
How is a phenomenon different after a human understands it? Does it change when it moves from the paranormal to the normal? If not, what is all this lexicographical posturing about?
Is electricity paranormal to those who cannot explain it?
Can you explain electricity? Completely? If so, will you do so, as you have asked others to explain various phenomena? If not, does that make it paranormal?
Do you completely understand all phenomena that you would describe as normal? If not, does that mean that you are taking them on faith?
A proposal to redefine a word. Yes sireee…I’m the one assigning definitions.
Welcome to the alternate reality of SDMB, where words meanb what we want them to. Be sure to order a copy of our dictionary lest you be fooled by Cambridge.
The fact that the spittle is flying over such a minor point is telling. What you are doing is accepting the definitions that you prefer, rejecting the ones you don’t, and then acting as if every word in said definitions were absolutely true and crucial. Very few people would take your preferred definitions as axioms, or, using them as a starting point, arrive where you have.
If the realm of the paranormal exists, it does so independent of your ability to define it.
Everything that happens in this world observed or not is normal. Paranormal is a misnomer, a moot concept. That will end the argument.
Spiritual experiences and happenings are normal, and have been going on for thousands of years before the word paranormal was heard about.
Paranormal is a “science” word.
Now I know that science students are taught anything outside the scope of science doesn’t exist. But this is not true. Science is only a small part of this world, there are a multitude of things science can not explain, but they are still normal happenings.
It is unfortunate for us all, science included, that scientists believe they are the final authority or judge of what is true and what is not true. The future will decide, not scientists, what is truth.
We already tried that. Doesn’t work. Refer back to the “wart charmer” thread. The skeptical are willing to say that paranormal does not exist, that it is a joke, that it is a false term, right up to the point that someone offers money for proof of it.
Oh well. There’s a bit more to it than that. Blind adherence to dictionary definitions is to be avoided. Dictionary definitions *prove *nothing.
The thing is, while words are used to describe other words, you cannot assume a transitive property. You don’t get to say, for example, that if the word ‘unexplainable’ is part of one the definitions of ‘paranormal,’ then all things unexplainable by definition are paranormal. It simply doesn’t work that way.
And, while I have your attention –
Can you prove that there are things beyond human understanding? You have asserted it, and demanded of others that they prove their assertions. Should the same rules not apply for you?
How is a phenomenon different after a human understands it? Does it change when it moves from the paranormal to the normal? If not, what is all this lexicographical posturing about?
Is electricity paranormal to those who cannot explain it?
Can you explain electricity? Completely? If so, will you do so, as you have asked others to explain various phenomena? If not, does that make it paranormal?
Do you completely understand all phenomena that you would describe as normal? If not, does that mean that you are taking them on faith?
Well, that seems to be the crux of your problem, right there, Iknewit.
When it is said something is beyond the explanation of science, it is assumed to be beyond the explanation of science in all eternity. That is, that by itself it cannot possibly explained by science.
You mentioned UFOs as a paranormal event earlier on. Well, they aren’t. UFO’s are, by definition, Unidentified Flying Objects. (Even calling them Flying Objects goes too far, Phenomena would be better, IMHO, but UP as an acronym isn’t widely known).
The thing about them is that they aren’t, in and of themselves, paranormal. If we knew the time and place where one would be happening beforehand, we could set up a number of instruments to observe them and, with pretty high confidence, could change the name to IFO (Identified Flying Object). The reason we don’t do this is because we can’t go back in time to observe the Phenomenon properly to diagnose it.
The same thing happens with a load of events. We can’t observe them/document them enough because of different constraints --placement in time/space, instruments that aren’t able to record them properly, etc. etc. That doesn’t mean they don’t happen. It doesn’t mean either that they can’t be observed and/or explained with sufficient data. It does mean that we are limited in our powers to explain them.
Paranormal events are those that even when they are repeatable, reliably observable, etc. they simply cannot be reasonably explained. Spontaneous remission of cancer, for instance, doesn’t come into this picture, because (as far as I know) medicine doesn’t have complete knowledge (nor does it pretend to do) of the human body. There are gray and black areas which could come into play, because science is by no means a complete affair.
That’s a pure assumption on your part. I’d rather say that no such thing has ever happened and that I believe no such thing will ever happen than say I know for sure that no such thing can happen. Like I said, I don’t do belief well.
Bad example. In all cases “alternative” medicine that works fits in perfectly well with regular medicine, once the mechanisms are discovered. Alternative medicines where this is not the case, like homeopathy, basically have been found not to work. I don’t know of any major paradigm shift coming from an alternative medicine.
Un huh. And how long is enternity ? If a meteor crashed into Earth today, obliterating the human race, what is the plausibility and time frame of evolving human life again ? When we human consciousness and science reappear ?
Also, you rely on faith that anyhting observable is explainable although you admit we have observed some things for a very long time and yet have no explanation. Your argument is one of faith, not facts. Faith that the information will come, faith that it even exist. You don’t know. That is the crux of the word, that some things are ultimately unknown and unexplainable.
Prove it. Prove that anything is ultimately unknowable.
Can you prove that there are things beyond human understanding? You have asserted it, and demanded of others that they prove their assertions. Should the same rules not apply for you?
How is a phenomenon different after a human understands it? Does it change when it moves from the paranormal to the normal? If not, what is all this lexicographical posturing about?
Is electricity paranormal to those who cannot explain it?
Can you explain electricity? Completely? If so, will you do so, as you have asked others to explain various phenomena? If not, does that make it paranormal?
Do you completely understand all phenomena that you would describe as normal? If not, does that mean that you are taking them on faith?
Music follows rules and is studiable. Is it science?
I agree. The test I have for calling something paranormal is very stringent, and nothing demonstrated in the world today meets it. I’m pretty confident that nothing we will ever see will ever meet it. I’m a physicalist, and I don’t think there is anything in the universe that can’t be explained by some scientific theory, perhaps not yet discovered.
Well, actually the biggest problem with believers in the paranormal seems to be they don’t understand fraud or statistics, and find all sorts of spooky events in cases where either someone is pulling the wool over their eyes (Conan Doyle) or where some unlikely but expected experimental result turns up. I’ve been reading Skeptical Inquirer for a lot of years.
I can imagine a paranormal phenomena where the scientific method might not work - especially in the area of reproducibility. If we found a true violation of the conservation laws, that doesn’t make them invalid. Now, if you want to call whatever a scientist studies science, then it has become semantics. I don’t buy science as covering A and ~A. I have no trouble with a theory of magic, or magical engineers, the way it was treated in Unknown 65 years ago, but I have a problem with calling it science.
IKnewit
I’m not sure what you mean by this. AFAIK, science does not reject 'everything that has been observed etc." as paranormal. Scientists do reject things that aren’t repeatable and things that can’t be proved to have ever happened in the first place. What would you like? Should we start making research decisions based on anecdotes and testimonials? Or should it just be the things you happen to believe with no evidence?
Well of course scientists (and skeptics) will say yes when you ask them to explain something. Anything that actually happens, repeatably is subject to investigation and explanation. If you’re asking them to explain something that is not repeatable or that you can’t even prove to have happened, they’re going to give you the most likely explanations:
a) You are mistaken.
b) You are lying.
I’m not sure where you’re getting the bit about; “It is not that we don’t have unexplained phenomenon etc.” but I’m not convinced that this is the case. We have a lot of people that claim to have seen/experienced something unexplainable, that doesn’t mean it actually happened. What is your evidence that unexplainable things have actually happened? Is it purely anecdotal? If so, that is pretty weak evidence for anything earthshaking.
I’m not sure whether this is evidence of anything at all. People do survive illnesses and injury without help. The immune system and other natural, known and explainable processes would probably explain your faith healing as well. If you get influenza and survive without medication, must it be something supernatural?
I strongly disagree with this. If you can prove that something actually happened it can be investigated and explained, even if new theories are required. If you want to claim that science cannot explain everything right now, then I’m right with you. That’s why research is going on all over the planet, to reduce the area that is unexplained. If you want to claim that there are things again, that actually happened that science can never explain, then I disagree. Like I said somewhere above, if someone can make something happen, then it can be investigated and explained. It could even require whole new bodies of knowledge but it can be done.
No, the question is still whether the paranormal exists. We don’t need to bother trying to explain things that may not even exist. What do you want? Should scientists use their time and funding to disprove the paranormal? How about the Easter Bunny? First it has to e shown that there’s something to be explained before spending resources to explain it. What’s so hard about this besides it being something you don’t like?
Sure, I agree that ball lightning used to be considered nonexistent. And then the evidence came in that it existed and people are trying to explain it. They may already have done so for all I know. That’s the way it is supposed to work. No reasonable person is going to waste time trying to explain something if they don’t think it exists. What would you like them to do and how far should they go in explaining things that may not even exist?
IKnewit
Well, I’m glad to have your opinion. Like a guy I used to know would tell me; “opinions are like assholes. Everybody has one and most of them stink.” Now, is your opinion worth anything? Can you back it up with evidence and research or is it worth about the same as my opinion on stellar physics?
To the extent that music is a phenomenon which can be studied by the scientific method, those rules you discuss being inferrable from this study, with hypotheses drawn up and then submitted to testing, then, yes, the study of music is science. Why not?
Voyager
On the first part, I tend to think of my attitude as confidence rather than belief. Belief is what I’m really trying to avoid. My own experience has been that if something is repeatable it can be investigated and explained, always. Admittedly, not everything is investigated because a lot of stuff just isn’t perceived as being worth it. Some other things need more research. Neither situation makes something unexplainable, just unexplained-to-date.
As far as the second part, I see that I was probably unclear. Basically, we agree and that probably was a bad example.
What I was thinking was about something like herbal medicine where a plant was part of alternative medicine and was then found to contain some useful substance. The useful substance would then be extracted, purified, or maybe just synthesized, and then used in the world of what I refer to as “real medicine” where the doc is a graduate of a medical school as opposed to the other kind of medicine. Anyway, I did not have any kind of sweeping paradigm shift in mind, just bits and pieces, and certainly not homeopathy or Rekei or other paranormal crap.
I agree wholeheartedly with this part of your post. If something actually happens then it is not “paranormal.” The problem is that people keep claiming things where they are mistaken or, in the case of many psychics and the like, they simply lie about it. Nothing happened and the demand is for scientists and researchers to explain something that isn’t real.
I don’t contend that telepathy exist or that black magic exist. What I do contend is that regardless of any faith that everything is ultimately explainable, there is a limit of scientific and human understanding. We simply can’t apply a word or words to something and call it explained. The placebo effect is one very real and reapeated occurance that no one can explain. We remove it from the realm of the paranormal not because it has been shown to be explainable, but because it has been shown to exist. We think we can explain it just because we know it exist, not because we have any evidence of any actual mechanisms that cause it to appear. The belief that even beyond our ability to observe there are events in the universe that are normal and explainable is just an argument of faith that we could explain everything if only we had the chance.
The disregard for limits of science and human understanding is no more than a faith based argument that is utterly as useless as claiming that God did.