Inner experience and doubtability
A little more on this puzzle about inner experience. No reason; I just find it interesting. I keep picking away at it. I suppose partly (or maybe mostly) because I know perfectly well that my instinct is simply to think the idea* is absurd – so that can be seen as a reason to try hard to consider the opposite. And there’s also the fact that Stannard obviously doesn’t think it’s absurd, and he’s obviously not just silly, so that’s another reason to puzzle. Plus it raises some interesting thoughts about memory and knowledge and so on – why some memories are harder to doubt than others, for instance. (In thinking about that I’ve had the mildly amusing realization that I can remember [just] brushing my teeth this morning, but can’t remember brushing my teeth on any previous morning whatever. Presumably all of us have precisely one memory of matutinal tooth-brushing, and all the others make up a blurred generic inferential group-memory.)
I conceded too much yesterday, I realized a few minutes after I abandoned the computer for the day. I think the problem is not quite with the inherent undoubtability of the experience itself – because it seems perfectly rational to believe one had a certain kind of inner experience – but with how one interprets it. Stannard seems to move seamlessly (i.e. without visible interpretation) from the experience to what the experience is. But that has to be the issue. He has An Experience when he prays; but it is just his interpretation that that experience is meeting God and understanding that God is love and forgiveness. I would say that’s the part that’s not rational. He takes it for granted himself, but that’s just what he shouldn’t do. He seems to be claiming that that is what he is unable to doubt – that that experience is one of meeting God, and what kind of being that God is. That seems different from, and stranger than, being unable to doubt one went running a few hours ago. One has a memory of traveling through space on one’s own legs, one remembers what one saw on the way, etc; one interprets that as ‘going running’ or ‘walking to the sculpture park and back’. That seems a not very far-fetched interpretation – and it is one that we could easily put into more precise terms (bipedal motion, X number of steps, T time taken, route on a map, etc). But interpreting an inner experience as meeting a loving forgiving God is a pretty different kind of thing. So – why is Stannard so unable to doubt it? I don’t think that is rational, and I’m not even sure I think it’s really reasonable any more.
Here’s one place I think Stannard makes a dubious inference:
‘I believe a lot of things about physics, not having personally done the experiments. And it is because I trust the people who have done the experiments. It seems to me that if you’re dealing with religious people, who all engage in this prayer activity, and time and again, they keep on coming up with the idea that they are in contact with someone, and yes, that someone does have the characteristics of love and forgiveness and all the rest of it – now that is repeatable, and I think to myself, well, why shouldn’t I trust these people that they are accurately reporting their experiences? What you look for is consensus…’
For one thing, what is ‘time and again’? How many is that? How universal is it? But for another, bigger thing, what is that ‘yes, that someone does have the characteristics of love and forgiveness and all the rest of it’ about? One, what someone? What does that ‘that’ refer to? Two, what does he mean the someone ‘does have the characteristics of love and forgiveness’? What does that ‘does’ refer to? He says it as if it’s as straightforward as size or weight, but (needless to say) it isn’t. Three, how do any of them know that this God has to have those characteristics? Four, how do they know their (cultural) expectation that this God will have those characteristics hasn’t simply shaped or indeed determined what their inner experience is? Five, what about all the reasons there are to think that a creator God would in fact not have those characteristics but other, more alarming ones? Six, what does the whole package mean – in what sense are they ‘in contact,’ in what sense is this ‘contact’ ‘repeatable,’ what is it about this repeatable contact that tells them this ‘someone’ has ‘the characteristics of love and forgiveness’?
And so on. And another thing (I raised both of these on the J&J blog earlier, but feel like raising them here too; excuse recycling) – there is a question about what kinds of experiences are more (rationally) doubtable than others. JS says he can’t doubt he went running this morning. Suppose you had a very intense inner experience this morning – suppose it exactly like the kind of experience Stannard has in prayer. (Obviously no one can confirm or deny that, so we can just suppose it.) I wonder if you would say or think you can’t doubt you had that experience – not just an experience, but that experience – an experience of that particular kind. I wonder if you would find it as inherently undoubtable as your having gone running – if you would find it undoubtable in exactly the same way.
I’ll volunteer the opinion that if I had such an experience, I wouldn’t find it undoubtable in the same way as a recent long walk down and up a steep hill. I can’t be certain of that, but that’s my guess. My guess is that as soon as I tried to think about it in order to see if I could doubt it or not, it would become too fuzzy to be undoubtable, in a way that a fresh memory of a walk down and up a steep hill doesn’t.
If I’m right about that, it seems to be another reason to think Stannard isn’t really rational to take his inner experience at face value. That kind of thing is or ought to be inherently more doubtable than other kinds of experience can be. (Maybe what I’m claiming is that inner experience is more like an older memory, which shifts and wiggles when you try to pin it down, than it is like a fresh one, which is more robust, and that that means it is more doubtable.)
*that it’s rational to take one’s own inner experience of meeting God at face value
Ha, at least I have some experience of this. Did you see The Island, the knockoff of Logan’s Run?
“When you really, really want something and ask the universe for it, God is the guy that doesn’t answer.”
I believe that the ‘experience’ of God that people report from prayer is entirely manufactured from projection and emotional self-manipulation.
God help me.
ChrisPer: What a hilarious quotation! I might watch that movie just to hear those words in context. The film’s premise struck me as too silly to bother with before, but if the writing’s clever…
More on point, I think this is where careful study of phenomenology – Merleau-Ponty especially – is useful. While it can be dense and difficult to turn inward and really analyze one’s own experience, doing so in a careful way can reveal claims like Stannard’s for the nonsense they are. I feel pretty darned certain that his prayer experiences don’t have the same kind of certainty that his everyday sensory experiences and immediate memories thereof do: I don’t see any reason to take his claim otherwise as anything but sheer apologetics rhetoric – the same as it has been every time a non-physicist has uttered it.
As Merlijn pointed out in another context, one mustn’t underestimate the human capacity for compartmentalization. Stannard would hardly be the first very careful thinker, scientist or otherwise, to turn off that critical faculty when an emotionally or ideologically preferred belief is on the examining table.
Absolutely G, which is why James Randi argues that when pseudo-sciences are being investigated the experts should always include a magician.
Ophelia – a big difference between your walk and Stannard’s vision of course is that if I wanted to verify your claim I could ask other people whether they saw you, check CCTV footage, etc. Can’t do any of that for the ‘vision thing’. Number 8 (or is it 9?) in the list of objections would surely be that there is no way of telling whether all these splendid people felt the presence of the same “God”. The existence of so many different religions suggests that the answer is “No”.
“I trust the people who have done the experiments. It seems to me that if you’re dealing with religious people, who all engage in this prayer activity, and time and again, they keep on coming up with the idea that they are in contact with someone”
I trust the people who have done the experiments. I trust religious people. I also trust transvestites, shapeshifters, small children who believe they’re Power Rangers, MBAs who believe that they make a positive contribution to the workplace, and Trekkies.
Sadly the fact that I trust them has nothing to do with whether they are right. And if I *didn’t* trust the people who did the experiments, they could still create antibiotics that would save my life from an infection or create ways of working with energy that could kill me on a battlefield.
Of course you don’t have to subscribe to an ideology to be affected by the actions or creations of its adherents. But with non-scientific thought it certainly helps.
I’m afraid that my opinion of Stannard, is that he ranks below Polkinghorne, and they are both “awa’ wi’ the fairys”.
How anyone with even rudimentary Pyhsics training, never mind the level these two have reached, can come to their irrational and not-based-on-evidence conclusions is beyond me, I’m afraid.
And I like Dirigible’s comments on “trust” as well …..
The trouble is that if God did manifest himself unto thee like this and you rationalized it away, POP! you’re fucked and off ta hell.
Indeed, that may well be the answer to that problem of how a loving God could just let us all go to hell: he does manifest himself unto us but we rationalize it all away as logically inconsistent with the experienced physical world. Which of course God is… by definition.
Herein lies a dilemma, no? G has said he would refute an apparent religious experience by analysing it in the light of his empirical knowledge and experience of the phisical world – but by doing so he is effectively predetermining his conclusion since even if real such an experience would not amenable to that kind of analysis.
If G heard the Voice of God he would dismiss it as an auditory hallucination (or as a piece of cheese or something)… even if it was indeed the VoG/. G, are you not concerned about the destiny of your eternal soul?
Yeah G, you’re so boned.
Outeast. If you heard such a voice, would you think it to be the voice of God? If so, how can you be so sure?
Well, what if God really did speak to me? How would I know not to reject it as a hallucination or delusion of some kind? Of course I could rationalize it away like a good little methodological naturalist with an Occam’s razor always to hand (tucked into my collar, perhaps)… but as I say, the tools I would then use would predetermine my findings. Or is it not so?
“Well, what if God really did speak to me?”
Well, outeast, we would need some test or other to distinguish between the competing hypotheses wouldn’t we? Can you think of any such test? What would convince you that it was God? Conversely, what would convince you that it wasn’t?
After all, if you subscribe to the Christian hypothesis (I’m just guessing here, but I might be wrong), then you must believe that all those people who have said that some other god was talking to them are wrong. How have you determined that?
Yeh – what outeast said. I’ve had it in mind to do a post on a thought experiment – perhaps there’s a mutation that gives some humans the ability to detect a (real) deity. Some humans have The Experience because they have that particular gene; others don’t because they don’t. That seems possible in principle if not in fact.
Whether the detected god would punish the non-detectors for not having the gene, however, is another question. But it’s out of our hands.
(On this view all proselytizing could be seen as just urging or ordering people to pretend to have a gene they don’t have. Seems a silly enterprise.)
I am not suggesting that false-though-seemingly-veridical experiences cannot occur – they do, all the time, hence the plausibility of naturalistic rationalizations. But if I really and truly felt the real and true presence of God it would (presumably) seem wholly true to me and yet be amenable to the same post rationlizations as anyone else’s delusions.
(PS You don’t need to preach to the choir, ok? I’m just trying to explore this problem with rationally testing experiences which if real might be quinessentially nonamenable to such testing.)
(I wasn’t preaching, just trying to follow some of the implications. I’ve been thinking about your objection myself. Well it is the obvious one of course – ‘Yes but if it is true then they are detecting something’ etc.)
“But if I really and truly felt the real and true presence of God it would (presumably) seem wholly true to me and yet be amenable to the same post rationlizations as anyone else’s delusions.”
I am not doubting that the experience might seem very true to you, but how sure could you ever be that your experience is due to God, and not due to any other possible explanation?
How would you rule out the possibility of it being a purely mental phenomenon? How would you rule out the possibility of it being a cartesian demon? How would you rule out the possibility of it being some other god? How would you rule out the possibility of it being the devil just trying to trick you? How would you go about distinguising between any of these possibilities?
If you cannot rule these other possibilities out, then do you think it is reasonable for you to be so sure that it was God? I am not 100% sure that it wasn’t God, but are you 100% sure that it was?
I shall repeat – many people throughout history have had similar very real seeming experiences that convinced them some other god was talking to them. Either they are wrong or you are wrong (or you are all wrong), since the Christian hypothesis does not allow for the existence of any other competing god. How should we make that distinction?
One test we might apply if for God to give you some information that you could not have known any other way? Some previously unknown scientific information, perhaps. Do you have any such information? If you have any other ideas for test, then I would be interested to hear about them.
If you cannot answer any of these questions, then why should others take you seriously?
I shall ignore your final comment.
“Indeed, that may well be the answer to that problem of how a loving God could just let us all go to hell: he does manifest himself unto us but we rationalize it all away as logically inconsistent with the experienced physical world.”
Outeast – do you really think that a loving God would allow such a thing to happen? Are you really serious that God would allow us to suffer eternal damnation purely because we thought the evidence for his existence to be too weak? Is that a crime for which a fitting punishment is eternal damnation?
Oh I get it, outeast was answering Nick. Never mind.
It is a real problem though. But as far as I can see we’re just stuck with it – for the same kind of reason we’re just stuck with our own fallible versions of morality. We can only do the best we can do – and we have to do that. The alternative is making irrational leaps on the very remote chance that we’ll get it right. (I’m not preaching this to anyone who thinks otherwise, just working through implications.)
It’s a real problem because it is in principle possible that, say, there is a mutation that gives some humans an extra sense. But ‘possible’ isn’t ‘probable’ and humans mostly make horrible messes when they ignore the probable and go with the (very remotely) possible instead. We have to do our best; we have to work with what we’ve got. I think that still means Stannard is not being rational – which means I have to think Stannard would not be being rational even if he were right. Well, I do think that.
And I should point out that there have been studies that have attempted to verify the power of prayer. However, one of the biggest of these (and one that Stannard referred to, before the results were out) did not have a good result for the Christian hypothesis –
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/03/31/health/31pray.html?ex=1301461200&en=4acf338be4900000&ei=5088
Yes, I know, excuses can be found. Nevertheless, you have to admit that so far we have nothing substantial to go on other than what believers tell us is going on in their heads.
If you have any better ideas for tests, then please share them with us. Many of us would be keen to investigate this further.
Nick:
I’ve declared my atheism here often enough to have thought it unnecessary to do so yet again (and I was trying to hint as much when I suggested that you need not preach to the choir).
Try asking Stannard for this kind of proof – doubtless he would say that his nearness to God is enough. Or maybe he could add a footnote to his prayers: ‘Please God, give me a bit of totally new scientific information so I can prove I know you to Nick who doesn’t believe me?’ :)
OB:
We can only do the best we can do – and we have to do that. The alternative is making irrational leaps on the very remote chance that we’ll get it right.
But does this get us anywhere? If we reject ‘irrational leaps’ (which in this case is simply accepting a deep personal experience, which need not be that big a leap) then we’re basically forswearing anything other than methodological naturalism. Which thus predetermines the conclusions we will reach. Etc.
I guess all this really suggests is that actually we methodological naturalists are as stuck as the supernaturalists – our very approach rules out their conclusions and would do so even if they were right. :)
(Unless a God just happens to come along whose big thing is proving himself to methodological naturalists, of course…)
“but as I say, the tools I would then use would predetermine my findings. Or is it not so?”
This type of comment is often heard from those defending a metaphysical position based upon faith in supernatural entities (including gods) and events. The implication being that such things are just not amenable to scientific testing, and therefore science will always rule them non-existent. Thus, Metaphysical Naturalism’s position on the supernatural becomes just question begging.
However, in reality this is just not so, and in fact betrays a philosophical naivity. For the reasons behind this, I would suggest that you read the following –
http://richardcarrier.blogspot.com/2007/01/defining-supernatural.html
Or, if you’re feeling particularly ambitious, you might tackle this –
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/keith_augustine/thesis.html
“I’ve declared my atheism here often enough to have thought it unnecessary to do so yet again (and I was trying to hint as much when I suggested that you need not preach to the choir).”
Well, I misjudged you based upon your earlier comments in this post. Take my answers as being directed to Stannard instead if you like.
“Try asking Stannard for this kind of proof – doubtless he would say that his nearness to God is enough. Or maybe he could add a footnote to his prayers: ‘Please God, give me a bit of totally new scientific information so I can prove I know you to Nick who doesn’t believe me?’ :)”
Well, I shall be waiting for this, but I won’t hold my breath.
“then we’re basically forswearing anything other than methodological naturalism. Which thus predetermines the conclusions we will reach. Etc.”
Whilst that statement might possibly be correct for methodological naturalism, it is certainly not true for metaphysical naturalism. See my previous post. So, that makes your argument a non sequitur.
In the meantime, I’ll have to find myself a real Christian to question about the convictions of their religious experiences ;-)
I don’t think Stannard is saying prayer ‘works’ in the sense that it will re-grow a lost limb or get you that promotion, but that it makes people feel good. Which it probably does.
Praying for something seems contradictory, since surely any god who could be so defined must be aware of, and have intended, every vibration of every sub-atomic particle for the duration of the universe – Laplace’s Demon. To pray for a different outcome is to ask the deity to tinker with a necessarily perfect plan.
So if the purpose of prayer is not a definite outcome, then it must be a way of seeking the ‘warm fuzzy’. In that sense it may well ‘work’. Never underestimate the placebo effect.
“I guess all this really suggests is that actually we methodological naturalists are as stuck as the supernaturalists – our very approach rules out their conclusions and would do so even if they were right.”
Yup. But what else can we do? I really don’t see what choice there is – I really don’t see what we can do other than our best. (And of course it’s always worth remembering that our best works for us and the other thing doesn’t. Now – that could all be a trick of the demon god’s, and one day the demon god will reverse everything and we’ll all be sent to hell and the takers of blind leaps of faith will go to heaven. Or maybe not. I still don’t see what else we can do. Pascal’s flutter says bet on the [Christian] god to be safe – but there are [apparent] dangers that way too – so I still don’t see what else we can do.) It’s true that if we stick to meth nat we won’t be able to tell they’re right if they are right – but that just seems to be a bullet we have to bite. That’s how fallibilism is.
“I don’t think Stannard is saying prayer ‘works’ in the sense that it will re-grow a lost limb or get you that promotion, but that it makes people feel good.”
Neither, really; he’s saying it works (for those it works for) as a way of meeting God. Those it doesn’t work for aren’t (in his view) doing it right. He’s very explicit about that. It’s definitely not merely feeling good, it’s having a relationship with a particular god, who “does have the characteristics of love and forgiveness and all the rest of it.”
That’s what’s odd, really – his experience is apparently very concrete, or as if concrete. In a way that’s why it’s hard to think he’s being rational in taking it at face value – how can a sane, functioning, awake adult genuinely think he ‘meets’ someone via inner experience? It’s exactly like those pagans who talk about meeting the goddess on inner journeys – they mean it very literally; and they’re completely mad.
“It’s true that if we stick to meth nat we won’t be able to tell they’re right if they are right – but that just seems to be a bullet we have to bite.”
I believe that you are conceding too much here. I think that we can define the supernatural in a non question-begging way that allows us to test for it – see my earlier post with the links.
It may be non-trivial to devise such tests, but it is not epistemologically impossible – which means that we do have the possibility of recognising such phenomena, if they exist.
Well, and furthermore, on the thought experiment I suggested – if there were a mutation that allowed some people to detect a god via inner experience, then that god wouldn’t (couldn’t) be supernatural. A god can’t be both supernatural and genuinely detectable by natural entities. Merlijn will probably come up with some reason it can be, but I warn you right now, I don’t believe it. (There’s dogmatic for you.)
I think that we can define the supernatural in a non question-begging way that allows us to test for it.
So? That’d just mean you were talking about something different…
“So? That’d just mean you were talking about something different…”
Sorry? I don’t understand your comment.
The God of traditional theism is a pure mind, composed of nothing else but mental powers and concepts. Hence, one could put a case (as OB did) that its existence cannot be confirmed directly (although I’m not convinced of that).
Nevertheless, we might make a good case by means of inference – which is a standard method in science when looking for hypothesized entities that cannot be observed directly.
Let me give you an example. Take the case of intercessionary prayer. If, for example, Christian prayer (and only Christian prayer) was able to consistently regrow amputated limbs in front of our eyes, then we could reasonably conclude that we were witnessing some supernatural phenomenon, so long as this power could be reduced to some nonmental mechanism.
We would not have proven the existence of God here – merely witnessed some supernatural phenomenon that might be taken to infer the existence of God.
Futher, if Christians were able to make Bibles appear out of thin air just by thinking them into existence, then this would be another supernatural phenomenon.
If these Bibles burnt the hands of those non-believers who touched them, but instantly cured the illnesses of those Christians who touched them, then we would be witnessing another supernatural phenomenon.
Also, imagine that at some specific moment every person on Earth received a direct message in their mind purportedly coming from God. These messages were in the language spoken by each person, and these messages were identical in content. Further, the message told of the truth of the Christian faith, and the erroneous nature of every other belief.
Now, these things on their own do not prove the existence of God, but the evidence would be accumulating. And, what’s more, they could all be tested empirically. Their non-existence doesn’t disprove the Christian hypothesis, but their existence would lend it substantial weight.
Well, if we can define the supernatural in a non question-begging way that allows us to test for it, surely by the same token we can also define it in a way that does not allow us to test for it, so that would be why ‘That’d just mean you were talking about something different’ – no?
“surely by the same token we can also define it in a way that does not allow us to test for it”
Yes, we could. But, in that case it would be by saying that these supernatural entities, powers, events, substances have no effect that is detectable within the material universe – which makes the whole discussion rather pointless, don’t you think?
So long as we are able to detect these things within the material universe, then we can examine them. Otherwise, it would seem that we are left with the no true Scotsman fallacy again? Anything observable cannot be supernatural by definition…
By the same token, it is possible to define God in such a way that its existence or non-existence makes no difference whatsoever to the universe as we find it. That is, God exists, but makes the universe look and behave exactly as we would expect to see it if it is purely natural.
However, whilst such a definition prevents us from testing our competing hypotheses, this is not the God that Christians believe in, for example.
This started by outeast saying that, “Well, what if God really did speak to me? How would I know not to reject it as a hallucination or delusion of some kind?…the tools I would then use would predetermine my findings. Or is it not so?”
So, to stick to the example of religious experiences, we could certainly infer scientifically that there was some supernatural event taking place, rather than it just being a natural mental process.
For example, imagine that God’s supposed messages to Christians consistently gave us pieces of scientific knowledge that were not only beyond their understanding, but beyond that of all scientists. And imagine if these were confirmed one by one.
Imagine if Christians (and only Christians) received messages that told them what other people were thinking with 100% accuracy. This might be tested, by getting people to think of cards, for example. Imagine if Christians could tell us in thousands of cases, with 100% accuracy, what cards people were thinking of. Again, there would be some supernatural phenomenon going on here.
Imagine if intercessionary prayer was consistently observed to work.
So, what I am saying is that if might have been the case that we could observe such supernatural events happening when Christians say they are receiving messages from God. Whilst these wouldn’t prove the existence of God, we would definitely have something very interesting going on. Moreover, we could test this empirically.
Now, of course in reality this doesn’t happen. Christians only seem to recieve vague messages full of banalities, cliches, or erroneous information. This suggests that there is no phenomenon to explain, and that it is all in their minds. This doesn’t disprove the hypothesis that they are communing with God, but does make it increasingly unlikely.
So unlikely, in fact, that I think to believe it to be a conversation with God becomes irrational – which was where we started.
Yeah. I do think it’s irrational. And it seems more irrational rather than less, the more I think about it. (I’d quite like to quiz him about it, in a way. I’d like to know, for one thing, what the experience is like – is it like, say, going for a run or a walk? Or is it like thinking about doing that? Is it like actually having a physical this-world experience, or is it like imagining or remembering doing so. There’s a huge difference between those two things. G’s hypnogogic experience seemed like the former, not the latter. If Stannard’s is like the latter [and it seems unlikely that it could really be like the former] then it’s all the less convincing, thus all the less rational of him to take it at face value. It’s all rather mystifying – in more ways than one, come to think of it.)
It’s just that I think (like outeast) that it’s worth noting that if Stannard were right, we wouldn’t know it.
If prayer worked, then “psi” would work.
And it doesn’t.
Remember the evolutionary argument against “psi”……
Stannard is deluding himself. Hios faith might not move mountains, but has certainly obscured his vision.
I’m reminded of the R.A.Heinlein quote:
“If you pray hard enough, you can make water flow uphill.
How hard do I have to pray?
Hard enough to make water flow uphill, of course!”
I suppose I’m by and large in agreement with OB on this issue. I’m uncomfortable sometimes with the way the concept of rationality is used in discussions concerning religion – but one hallmark of rationality should be, I guess, that another person is able to grasp the structure and validity of an argument. There’s an intersubjective element here. Veridical experiences, if that they are, are pretty much beyond that by definition.
I suppose I would hold it as a distinct possibility that some of these experiences are exactly what they are said to be – i.e. God talkin’ at ya. But there’s the (probably unsolvable) issue of the extent to which our preconceived attitudes influence them. The mystic’s direct communication with the divine might be the atheist’s hallucination – and both may be “really” either. There’s no way to know.
Nick: your examples do not suffice to sustain the scientific testability of putative supernatural events. Suppose that indeed Christians have 100% accuracy in card-reading. It can be inferred that something supernatural is going on, but it cannot be scientifically inferred. Because you cannot let go of the idea of causality, of natural necessary and sufficient causes in this case, while holding on to them in other ones. Once you allow for them, it becomes difficult to aprioristically rule out as an explanation that the planets are moved by invisible leprechauns standing on the shoulders of other leprechauns. Aside from this, and probably more importantly, “God” in the traditional sense of the word is simply nonsense as a scientific cause. It’s an unlimited being. It’s impossible to specify anything that could *not* be caused by God, any place where the supposed cause is absent. We can specify that heat causes water to boil because water that it cold tends not to. We can specify that the Parthenon was built by humans in that there are things on the world that are not – and we have an idea of what humans can and cannot do. Not so with God.
In other words, in case of card-reading Christians and other miraculous, seemingly supernatural events, the scientific position would have to be: “Gee. That’s interesting. Can’t (yet) explain it.” – but nothing more.
One can argue that in a world where supernatural events such as mind-reading etc. are commonplace, science could probably not arise and be succesful. The obvious success of naturalistic explanations can be taken as a pragmatic validation of metaphysical naturalism with regards to the physical world. Not metaphysical naturalism wholesale, mind you. I.e. research in the humanities tends to assume, either as a provisional methodological principle or overtly and philosophically, that agency, purposeful action in human history etc. is real – constrained but not determined by the physical world. So here we have something not quite natural, but not supernatural either.
But even if one were to place one’s bet on a total and scientifically succesful reduction of mind to matter, the above would be a philosophical point, not a scientific one.
Merlijn – OK. Remove the word science, and replace it with metaphysical naturalism. Science was just a quick shorthand to increase the readability of my comment. However, since you have called me on it, I will replace it with waht I had in mind all along. Science uses methodological naturalism as its methodology and, in theory, rules the supernatural out of court. Metaphysical naturalism has no such limitation however.
I fundamentally disagree with your hypothesis that metaphysical naturalism can have nothing to say about apparent supernatural events (other than ‘something interesting is going on here’), if this is in fact your thesis (now that I have substituted metaphysical naturalism for science).
I think we might, for example, define a candidate supernatural events thus –
(1) the cause of the event cannot be identified as any known physical force or entity nor is it supervenient upon any known physical force or entity; (2) the cause of the event cannot be located in space and time;
(3) the event defies all attempted scientific explanations thus far;
(4) the event appears to violate well-established scientific laws (as distinguished from genuine laws of nature);
(5) the event is highly improbable if it solely has known natural causes; and
(6) the event exhibits apparently purposive or intelligent behaviour.
If such an event was ever observed, we would initially attempt to explain it by natural means. Ultimately, however, if no such explanation was forthcoming, it would be labelled as an apparent supernatural event, and more research would be done.
These events I listed earlier, but I shall repeat them –
1) Take the case of intercessionary prayer. If, for example, Christian prayer (and only Christian prayer) was able to consistently regrow amputated limbs in front of our eyes, then we could reasonably conclude that we were witnessing some supernatural phenomenon (so long as this power could not be reduced to some nonmental mechanism).
2) Futher, if Christians were able to make Bibles appear out of thin air just by thinking them into existence, then this would be another supernatural phenomenon.
3) If these Bibles burnt the hands of those non-believers who touched them, but instantly cured the illnesses of those Christians who touched them, then we would be witnessing another supernatural phenomenon.
Any of these events would be labelled as supernatural events by the criteria I have defined. If you think that metaphysical naturalism could only say, “something interesting is going on here”, then I beg to differ.
Without having some means for identifying candidate supernatural events, metaphysical naturalism would become question begging, as it would presume all events that can be observed to be natural (whether we can explain them yet or not). However, despite what some may think, metaphysical naturalism is not so naive a framework that it has not considered this potential flaw, and resolved it in a coherent way.
If you really want to read more about how metaphysical naturalism might classify supernatural events, then I would suggest the following –
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/keith_augustine/thesis.html
But Nick – metaphysical naturalism does rule out supernatural events. Aprioristically. It’s the whole point of it. Science, or methodological naturalism, does not rule the possible existence of supernatural events out of court – but it cannot by definition analyze them (at most, scientists may try and fail various naturalistic possible explanations for a supernatural event). Metaphysical naturalism as a position does rule out supernatural events. So yes, in a way it is question-begging. As all philosophical systems somehow are.
Suppose we would observe a clearly supernatural event. Science would not be able to establish that that is what we are dealing with: it would, at most, be able to negate a supernaturalist hypothesis by finding a natural explanation. Metaphysical naturalism would be in less trouble than one might think. Because it would be possible simply to stipulate that the event in question has an eccentric but natural explanation that simply hasn’t been found yet. On a personal level, people who hold to metaphysical naturalism might be moved to abandon the position after observing a supernatural event – but the philosophical position itself would not be falsified. It would at most grow a teeny weeny bit less plausible.
This is much less damning than it might seem at first. Science is second to none in trying to account for events in the physical, spatiotemporal world. Metaphysical naturalism at least inspires one to keep searching for such explanations. Which is methodologically superior to labelling a scientifically unexplained event as supernatural – even if it really is a supernatural event. One may be personally convinced one has witnessed a miracle – but scientifically, we must never stop investigating the possibility one has not. In that sense, my own philosophical position is closer to naturalism than to some kinds of theistic supernaturalism: I do not believe God meddles with spatiotemporal events in contravention of physical laws.
So: science/methodological naturalism cannot positively establish the existence of miracles, and that’s a good thing. Metaphysical naturalism rules out the supernatural a priori, which is in many ways a good thing as well.
“Metaphysical naturalism as a position does rule out supernatural events.”
You’re missing the whole point Merlijn, and you’re reasoning is fundamentally flawed.
If there are supernatural events, then metaphysical naturalism is falsified. However, it does define what would constitute these supernatural events, thus allowing itself to be falsified. In that way, it is like a scientific theory. This idea is explained in some depth in the paper that I sent you a link to, so clearly you haven’t read it – http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/keith_augustine/thesis.html
If metaphysical naturalism did not allow itself to be falsified in this way, then it would indeed be question-begging, as it would be ruling all events as natural, whether they could be explained or not. However, it is not question-begging, since it defines a whole class of events – supernatural events – that it predicts cannot exist.
However, if they were found to, then metaphysical naturalism would be falsified.
If you do not agree with me on this, then I would suggest you first read Carrier’s post on the subject here – http://richardcarrier.blogspot.com/2007/01/defining-supernatural.html.
If you still disagree, then you might post your comment to him, as I would be interested to see his reply.
Oddly enough, I’m with Merlijn on this.
And yes, Drs Rhinoceros and Snake are on the right tracks.
However, we are forgetting that, so far, MN has always worked. Possible spernatural causes get thineere and thinner on the ground, as our physical knowledge increases – in fact it is another version of the “god-of-the-gaps” argument.
Particularly, as there is a very well-known case of Augustines case(2) which is known to be within the testable realm of physics.
Namely the indeterminacy of knowing the position AND momentum of a single particle at any one instant. But QM works quite well, thank you, and smears out to classical physics, as soon as large numbers of particles are involved – somewhwere between 500 and 5000 usually.
What bothers me, and no-one has commented on is the gross intellectual dishonesty (to put it at its mildest) of christian, new age, and other religious and “woo” apologists who want BOTH science, and all its engineered benefits, AND mysticism and miracles.
Which are incompatible.
Oops.
Merlijn. I’ve only just got around to reading your final comment, as I’ve been away.
I think that we’re just going to have to agree to disagree here. Your arguments don’t convince me, and vice versa. However, I don’t have the time to go over this debate indefinitely.