by Sirona 131 Replies latest watchtower beliefs
Rapunzel,
I like that quote from Joseph Cambell. Indeed, I think it is closed minded to base our whole concept of reality on things which are recorded and tested - because not all things can be recorded and tested.
Its like "The Matrix". If the experience of being in a physical body is an illusion, how would we know?
Sirona
Hi Sunnygal
I agree that we need to lose some preconceptions in order to open up to the possibilities...
This thread reveals a horrible closed-mindedness in some people. I am willing to accept that many, if not most, instances of "paranormal activity" can be attributed to some other explanation. However I do see a case for certain phenomena existing and if they exist one day they'll be tested - much like the experiments I cited - and after a long time fighting against the scientific results some people will have to accept that some of these things DO HAPPEN.
Sirona
I would also like to point out the etymological ["true root"] connection in meaning of the two words, mysticism and mystery. As Andre Comte-Sponville states in The Little Book of Atheist Philosophy - "Though it is true that mysticism and mystery have the same root word, they are only words, and words prove nothing, The real mystery is not in words but in the world. It is in the spirit, whenever it starts asking questions or looking at reality from a different angle. What is mysterious? Being is mysterious - everything is mysterious! Again, Wittgenstein expresses it perfectly: 'Mysticism wonders not how the world is but that the world is.' This brings us back to the quesion of being ('Why is there something rather than nothing?'), except that it is no longer a question. Nor is it, quite, an answer. Rather it is an experience, a sensation, a silence."
I'd say that we're all making interpretations of everything we see. The perception of sight is very much a construct of sensory inputs collected and processed by different structures of the CNS. Thats kind of like an interpretation of the data, to me at least. Just that most of it is done at the preconscious level.
Perceptions are ostensible. What you see is a "what" that others can see. On the other hand, UFO's are "seen" in a different way. People see what they cannot identify. The impact made on them emotionally is a categorical one. What is this? It is Mysterious. The "mysterious" falls into a sort of black ops folder at that point. Imaginings, hallucinations, lore, urban myth coil around such mysterious and offer tantalizing "explanations". But, this is categorical and not verifiable.
Data isn't data unless and until several things occur. The least of which is a fitting into a practical scheme of the known.
The Periodic Table of elements is an excellent example.
What was known was placed on a chart. What was (as yet) unknown left blanks on the chart where___something___must go with certain pre-ordained characteristics. As elements were discovered they would invariably "fit" into the blanks.
In this case, what was UNKNOWN was a kind of cue for what to look for.
In the case of the Paranormal and the Mystical there is no practical body of actual knowledge into which discoveries fit.
Instead, what is unknown becomes a launching pad for fantastical speculations which have spawned a cottage industry of quacks, gurus, enlightened ones, and snake oil salesmen with wonderful smiles who dispense "knowledge" for the cost of a Hardback on the metaphysics shelf.
I place Deepak Chopra high on this list because he is a wonderfully intelligent spokesperson for this claptrap. I love his articles in the Skeptic magazines when he "rebuts" criticisms of various mysterious and mystical ideas.
I'm willing to be wrong. However, I need evidence.
In the case of the Paranormal and the Mystical there is no practical body of actual knowledge into which discoveries fit.
That is why investigators are seeking funding for experimentation.
In experiments such as those I cited, they have to replicate more than other accepted experiments! Why? Because the skeptics won't accept the results. They don't even want to accept the results now that they are there for all to see.
I'm willing to be wrong. However, I need evidence.
That statement alone makes you go up about 100 notches in my estimation. Not that my estimation should count so much, but there you go.
Sirona
I think it is closed minded to base our whole concept of reality on things which are recorded and tested - because not all things can be recorded and tested.
"Not all things can be recorded and tested" sounds like a conclusion which works as a premise.
How do you come by this premise in the first place?
Historically, we can observe that as science advances we discover more and more about the universe.
100 years ago we didn't know a fraction of what we know now.
So now...there is much more to be discovered and we cannot, at this time, devise adequate ways of discovering this new information and documenting it scientifically.
Sirona
Well, fascinating thread. It sent me back to read some words by Blaise Pascal this weekend (in between the Grand Prix, the Indy 500, and the sports car races at Lime Rock Park).
Pascal is one of my favorites: He practically personified the "duality" that I read into this thread (in his real life).
A great scientist/mathematician, he practically (along with his friend Fermat) invented statistical mathematics, and the precise logic of that part of his work stands to this day. And yet, statistical math is, in a way, sort of "mystical" in that it deals not with absolute sums or results, but rather in "probability". Math where you add things up but do not arrive at a set provable single answer. Yet, his writing on this subject reads just as clearly as an IBM manual for the machine language instruction set of one of their computers.
Such is "quantum physics", mentioned here several times earlier.
Pascal was also considered a great mystic - and, to top it off, a "christian" mystic at that. Here is a statement - from the Pensees, part 274:
"All our reasoning reduces itself to yielding to feeling. But fancy is like, though contraty to, feeling - so that we cannot distinguish between these contraries. One person says that my feeling is fancy, another that his fancy is feeling. We should have a rule. Reason offers itself; but it is pliable in every sense; and thus there is no rule."
I think it expresses my "feeling" on mysticism very well. It very like the koans of Hofstadter, the Goedel Law, or even the mind-bending "duality" of such artists as M.C.Escher. It is very like the underlying "truth" of quantum physics - even if we could know the position and momentum of every single particle in the whole universe, we could not predict the outcome of the universe any more than the exact shape and path of the next snowflake to fall.
It means that there are certain propositions that can be expressed by human language or thought, that by basic principle cannot be proven or disproven. They are demonstrably not sillyness (like the red string, or some longing for curative special water, or such). They are well-ordered thoughts that are simply beyond the power of language, science, or thought to analyze and prove. And I believe that such thoughts represent some of mankind's highest form of intellectual achievement.
This is what "Mysticism" represents to me, and as Narkissos has pointed out - why would you beat yourself up trying to prove something to be "real" that is simply not provable?
Thank you Rapunzel for the interesting information: my wife used to play this RSP (sang, kokhaz, gheichi) game as a little girl in Iran long before it became popular in Western schoolyards, whence my blind guess...
Thank you Sirona for your reply. The connection I see (rightly or wrongly) is that even when we put ourselves in "random" mode we unconsciously apply specific mental patterns or algorithms which are not strictly individual. Several minds working apart "at random" are then bound to produce a higher rate of coincidence than pure mathematical random. I don't claim it explains everything, I just suggest that this is a factor to be taken into account.
Several minds working apart "at random" are then bound to produce a higher rate of coincidence than pure mathematical random.
But many studies conducted in this manner do not show the same type of result. Many parapsychology studies have been thrown out because this effect didn't appear.
Therefore I don't agree.
Sirona
