I think you’re arguing with the wrong person here. This doesn’t seem to follow any dialog we’ve had.
I don’t want it both ways. I think “paranormal” is a term that carries virtually no information at all. Hence, it is unneeded. Arguments about what the term ought to mean are a good indication it means nothing in the first place.
If you want to know what it does mean currently, however, Peter Morris was on the right track. A bunch of phenomena having nothing to do with each other are lumped together as if they have something in common. Whether bigfoot exists is a question for zoologists. Whether psi exists is a questions for psychologists, neurologists, physicists, etc. Cold fusion is a matter for phsicists to investigate. The only common thread is that people claim the phenomena are true and people of influence in the scientific community doubt that they are true (in varying numbers and with varying degrees of intensity).
In short, “paranormal” is a pejorative term. Then again, people who investigate the paranormal also use it, sometimes with enthusiasm. So I guess the situation could be termed complete chaos, with everyone involved getting something different out of using the term, and some like myself getting nothing.
I know; the original dialog was with SnakeSpirit and I will admit I made the assumption that your “Four down, one to go” statement (as well as your other posts in this thread) was more in support of his views than mine. In any case, nothing you’ve said in this thread inspires resistance, insecurity, fear or belligerance in me, but some of your statements easily qualify for eye-rolling contempt.
Now, it’s possible I have misinterpreted your rather cryptic “Four down” statement. I request a clarification.
I’ll fully agree with you on almost every point, with the largest exception being the part about Peter Morris being on the right track. He’s mixing in an unfortunate paranoia (and a truly bizarre fixation on James Randi) to come up with the notion that doubt consitutes proof, and presumably the greater the amount of doubt, the stronger the proof.
I don’t think I’d ever consider cold fusion as “paranormal,” though. When Stanley Pons and Martin Fleischmann made their (wildly premature, it turned out) announcement in 1989, they added theories on the mechanism of cold fusion. In constrast, claims involving ghosts or dowsing or the powers of crystals or other psychic phenomena are rarely if ever accompanied by even an attempt at plausible explanation, because if something measurable were involved, like electromagnetism or whatnot, it should be fairly easy to test for. It is the claim without provable explanation that cries “paranormal” to me and yes, it is a pejorative term.
All good points so far. From my reading of the thread the definition for debate is this:
Paranormal - A demonstrable ability or phenomenon which cannot be explained by the current scientific paradigm.
This is useful enough in many situations but here we are, like good scientists, specifically trying to falsify it by considering certain cases, such as medical treatments or meteorites, which I would simply label erroneous hypotheses which were subsequently easily falsified themselves. Heck, right now we could just appeal to black holes, quantum entanglement or even certain aspects of consciousness itself to satisfy that definition. A paranormal phenomenon or ability is not simply an “interesting” or “poorly understood” one. Something must surely be added to the definition.
And so I would strengthen the definition thus:
Paranormal - A clearly demonstrable ability or phenomenon which the current scientific paradigm asserts cannot happen.
We must therefore have some justification for considering that this ability or phenomenon runs counter to the current consensus rather than simply being an example of where science is currently uncertain. It must be an example of the current laws of physics (ie. those laws which have undergone a rigorous test of falsifiability and are based on criteria such as results which show significance at 1%) being broken rather than hypothesised laws in some or other “cutting edge” discipline.
In this way I would also suggest that historical wrong guesses do not conform to such a definition, since they didnot undergo rigorous testing and were based on a far lower “quality threshold” results-wise.
Finally, the word “clearly” aids us in finding genuine abilities or phenomenon which contravene the current paradigm: it must peek above the statistical noise just like any of those results which form the basis of the current paradigm. If, after years of testing, somebody shows an ability to call a coin-flip correctly 50.0001% of the time, is this really so Earth-shattering? One could surely chase such shadows for centuries: the non-existence of paranormal abilities is a reasonable null hypothesis to begin from.
Any thoughts?
My statements? I’ve hardly posted in this thread yet.
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Now, it’s possible I have misinterpreted your rather cryptic “Four down” statement. I request a clarification.
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Get rid of the eye-rolling contempt and you’ll be stronger. But contempt can also be a fun emotion to experience, in which we feel better than others. Still, it is not virtuous to feel so.
I find the pyschology of the skeptics curious. As though they were the last bastion against the irrational: every last sin of belief must be prevented or punished, lest we revert to a past species-wide psychosis. This is odd in that most people, from the skeptics’ perspective, are not rational: the religious, those who believe in “paranormal” phenomena, etc. Even a sizable percentage of respected physicists and other hard-core types (7% IIRC) believe in God: that is, they have faith, the most irrational behavior of all.
I have my beliefs and belive, of course, that they are best. I don’t believe in a monotheistic God and feel that Catholocism is basically a bunch of tripe (I was raised Catholic, i.e., tortured Catholic-wise in my youth). I think priests are weird in that they deny their sexuality or practice it and lie about it. But I went to a Catholic college and was taught by brilliant Jesuit priests all kinds of great things. They were the farthest thing from “idiot” I can imagine, and the last thing I would do is sneer at them in the way that the skeptics in these threads sneer at (=eye-rolling contempt, etc.) the believers that participate here, and those who do not.
What’s up with that? I really don’t understand the contumely. It seems to spring from thinking that those who don’t agree with you 100% are worthy of “eye-rolling contempt.”
Okaaaaaay, care to explain in what way I will be “stronger” or more “virtuous”?
What follows is a gross generalization about skeptics. I don’t recognize any valid descriptions of me personally in it, so it doesn’t compel me to respond. Not being Catholic or Christian, I’ll withold comment on that part, too.
I’ll admit that I had to look up “contumely”, so I’ve actually learned something new from this thread, even if I don’t agree that anything I’ve said in this thread even remotely approaches a lie. And it’s your statements that prompt my contempt, not some trivial variation from me in your opinions. I casually post to numerous other threads and discuss things with people who disagree with me, but they only get eye-roling contempt when they say things that are patently absurd (if not outright insulting to my intelligence), and not just in simple disagreement. You can’t shift the burden to me so easily by trying to make me look intolerant, and even if you could this does not constitute support for anything you have said.
You will seem steadier and surer. Magnanimous. Mature. Adult.
It is the teenager or person in his/her early 20s that usually thinks s/he’s got the world figured out and anyone who disagrees is wrong and dangerous. As one matures, one sees that the world is full of ambiguity, dim corners, and seeming contradictions.
Also, the true adult realizes that a point of view is better transmitted through a kind, tolerant approach, rather than a mocking, condescending approach. This is why Randi seems immature to those who don’t agree with him.
This approach will also get a kind, tolerant person a new arsehole torn on television by people whose livelihoods depend on suppressing all discussion of what constitutes a fair cheatproof and luckproof test of their claimed abilities. His books and lectures are rather more rigorous and reasonable (even if he is arguably wrong in a few details) - I’d suggest these are better guides than his appearances on Letterman and the like, where he must fight blatant showmanship with the same.
Hey guys, I’m just curious which one of you it was that used to frequent “Randi’s” website and got into a big ass debate with him about divining rods? I don’t post or even visit other boards. I found this one first and figured, why bother? I’ve read (lurked) a bit on other message boards and found them ALL to be pretty biased or the staff just really sucked, so I said f~it and stayed home.
ANYWAY…who was it? I think I know but I’m not gonna mistakenly claim somebody that it wasn’t.
You sure? I was thing Roger… but hey man, I ain’t really doubting you. I just had somebody else in mind.
sKKKeptic - Randi fan. 
I think that’s the best definition I’ve heard.
By that definition:
In Lavoisier’s day, the current scientific paradigm asserted that meteorites could not happen. So, *at the time * they were paranormal.
Today, the current scientific paradigm asserts that meteorites **can ** happen (and do). So today, they are not paranormal.
One of the characteristics of ESP seems to be that action at a distance is just as strong as action close by. I know of no well-established scientific phenomena that shares this characteristic. From gravity to magnetism to light, the force diminishes with the distance. ESP, as generally defined, violates this law of physics.
You have just changed at least two parameters at once. Changing more than one at a time makes it impossible to tell which one is the influencing factor. From your statement, we cannot draw any useful conclusion except the example is fatally flawed.
Well, my suggestion was also to focus on the word “scientific” (ie. subject to rigorous tests of falsifiability based on results showing significance at 1% and the like). By that reading, the paradigm was not really “scientific” since nobody was trying very hard to falsify it, and it was based on rather baseless conjecture rather than good, solid results. This is why I suggested that “cutting edge” science was not really relevant to a discussion of the “paranormal”, since the paranormal is rather more about what the established, rigorously falsified paradigm says cannot happen rather than the hypothesised “educated guess” in eg. cosmology journals.
Science has tried as hard as it can for centuries to come up with candidates: I’d strongly recommend the autobiography of Susan Blackmore as an example of a lifelong career of trying really really hard to find something, anything, to get her a Nobel Prize in physics. How many careers like hers must end in failure before we conclude that our null hypothesis should not be discarded?
I’m willing to stipulate that meteorites were paranormal at one time; indeed, it wouldn’t surprise me to find out that other phenomena currently considered paranormal will at some point be proven otherwise.
However, and especially for phenomena that have undergone strict testing, there is a strong case for skepticism. I do not believe in telepathy, in psychokinesis, in clairvoyance, in precognition, in spiritualism. These phenomena have all undergone strenuous testing, by scientists who would dearly love to see the phenomena be real; nobody has been able to come up with a way to demonstrate them reliably.
Compare this to other areas of science. Folks who study quasars have come up with ways to observe them reliably. People who discover new species can show them off reliably. Meteorologists can test their predictions against weather patterns, and show themselves to be reliably accurate. Chemists create new chemicals with reliable properties.
Paranormalists, however, are so far outside of this tradition that they’re almost something else entirely. The only paranormalists who are within the scientific tradition–who can demonstrate anything reliably–are the ones who can demonstrate, reliably, under controlled conditions, that paranormal claims are not coming true.
It’s worth considering that spiritualism was also considered paranormal 200 years ago, as was telepathy, psychokinesis, clairvoyance, precognition. It’s extremely rare for a claim to progress from paranormal to normal, and with good reason: the laws of physics, while not perfect, are pretty darn good, and it’s rare for there to be major flaws in them at a level dealt with by humans on a regular basis.
Daniel
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Has it in fact been shown to be anything at all?
As others have pointed out, there’s a big difference between a statement that many scientists, even prominent scientists, believe to be true, and a statement that has been thoroughly tested.
For instance, most scientists do not believe that the Yeti exists. The Yeti is often lumped in with various paranormal claims. And yet if an expedition went into the himalayas, captured a yeti, and brought it back, everyone would happily change their minds, the primate-specialists would study that Yeti like there was no tomorrow, and no one would be particularly embarassed, nor have reason to be. Individual characteristics of the Yeti might shatter orthodoxy… for instance, someone might have published a paper arguing that no primate could be over 8 feet tall due to bone configurations, and if the Yeti was over 8 feet tall, that person would be proven wrong. But the Yeti does not (assuming he’s just a big non-supernatural ape) Violate The Laws Of Science.
The Yeti is not “paranormal” in any meaningful sense.
On the other hand, a strongly held belief of modern science is that genetic information is passed from generation to generation through DNA. That is something that has been tested, studied, used to detect disease, etc. If it turns out that genetic information is passed via K-rays, and DNA is irrelevant to the process, that would be a HUGE blow to the reputation of science, as a process. That really would be an example that future generations could use to point out that science can be wrong about just about anything.
And in the middle, somewhere, are things like ESP and dowsing. Any rational skeptic will not say “ESP has been 100% proven to not exist”. Rather, they’ll say “repeated testing has failed to demonstrate the existence of ESP, and as extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof, I find its existence very unlikely”. If ESP finally is proven to exist, that will obviously be a lot of egg on the face of science, but that’s not Breaking any Laws of Science, per se. It’s not like Newton’s 4th law states “ESP does not exist”.
My point being, whatever the hell Lavoisier said about meteors, it was a lot more like Yeti and a lot less like ESP, and even less like genetic K-rays. A “law of science” is not something that Lavoisier says or believes, or even something that most of the leading scientists say and believe. It’s something that has been tested, retested, studied, analyzed, and something which has a foundation of good, solid, reproducible results built up on top of it.
Lavoisier and his contemporaries may all have believed that meteorites didn’t exist, much as modern scientists typically believe that ESP doesn’t exist. But (and I’m repeating myself here), the existence of ESP doesn’t Violate the Laws of Science (unless ESP-speed communication is faster than the speed of light).
What claims?