Nicholas Herrero

[Nicholas Herrero @Flochist]

@anti_minotaur In fairness, it did occur to me recently that if one thinks that they have achieved a perfectly comprehensive philosophical doctrine à la Hegel, it would follow that nothing could ever possibly come after it or further develop it to any substance.

[Nicholas Herrero @Flochist]

@anti_minotaur Tucker actually seems pretty marginal on the right now, though there are lots of RW streamer nationalists supported by schizophrenics and various third-worlders.

I, however, intended this to be more an implied criticism of you for doing exactly what Carlsbad is criticizing.

[Nicholas Herrero @Flochist]

@anti_minotaur “So true”

[Nicholas Herrero @Flochist]

@novusolus @AldousAsterion If the miracle had material effects then those effects could plausibly be analyzed via suitable scientific techniques. If there were material effects without any possible material causes then it would just obviously be the case that supernatural phenomena are real.

[Nicholas Herrero @Flochist]

@novusolus @AldousAsterion Repeatability is of course desirable in science, but not totally necessary—the Oh-My-God particle wasn’t an “unscientific” discovery for being (so far, largely) unrepeated.

[Nicholas Herrero @Flochist]

@novusolus @AldousAsterion It’s a theoretical cost in the sense some use when speaking of Occam’s razor. Whether all supernatural phenomena are sufficiently well explained only by the error theories required is of course the primary bone of contention.

[Nicholas Herrero @Flochist]

@novusolus @AldousAsterion It doesn’t undermine your point so much as it puts you and the materialist in the same rhetorical position—you need paranormal phenomena to be exactly rare enough that science can’t consistently pick it up but not so rare that it leaves us largely confident in our observations.

[Nicholas Herrero @Flochist]

@novusolus @AldousAsterion Then there’s no reason to think paranormal phenomena are totally beyond the scope of science except practically, which cuts against the science-versus-paranormal dialectic.

Basically, I think you could be accused of the same type of fine-tuning argument you used earlier.

[Avelum @novusolus]

@AldousAsterion That's a cost which a Materialist is rarely willing to pay, so he will say thought and being are exactly divergent enough to confabulate phantasms but not divergent enough to undermine empirical observation, logical inference and all the other prerequisites for natural science.

[Nicholas Herrero @Flochist]

@novusolus @AldousAsterion It seems implausible to me that there has never been a report of a paranormal phenomenon that was false. Surely someone lied about it at least once (e.g. Alexander of Abonoteichos). So you need to explain why people falsely believe paranormal phenomena too.

[Nicholas Herrero @Flochist]

@novusolus @AldousAsterion From my perspective, we’re all already committed to matter existing, some supernatural phenomena being fake, and error theories for why people believe the fake stuff. My position is that once committed to that, there is no need to suppose true supernatural phenomena as well.

[Nicholas Herrero @Flochist]

@novusolus @AldousAsterion The entities which these phenomena are attributed to has not stayed entirely constant and miraculous saints seem much less miraculous now than when St. Denis was around.

The theoretical cost is having supernatural entities when you already need error theories for false ones.

[Nicholas Herrero @Flochist]

@novusolus @AldousAsterion Unless they are actively avoiding detection or in principle materially undetectable, there’s no necessary reason why the entire Earth couldn’t be surveilled so as to detect paranormal phenomena. I’m not really seeing the principled scientific difference.

[Nicholas Herrero @Flochist]

@novusolus @AldousAsterion The paucity of modern paranormal phenomena compared to pre-modern accounts makes more sense on the view that paranormal activity was always basically fake in the same way that many modern social phenomena are fake. Positing paranormal realism explains little at great cost.

[Nicholas Herrero @Flochist]

@novusolus @AldousAsterion Radioactive decay also happens randomly, but it doesn’t put it outside the realm of science. Maybe we just need more ghost scintillators.

My main point is that the “dependability of our senses” itself can’t really be threatened by such uncommon occurrences, as you implied.

[Nicholas Herrero @Flochist]

@novusolus @AldousAsterion I think most people believed in ghosts, Gods, and paranormal activity like libs believe in modern white sundown towns. It wasn’t from direct, much less methodical and impartial, observation!

[Nicholas Herrero @Flochist]

@novusolus @AldousAsterion If something is common enough, it can be made repeatable, so it’s not very convincing that paranormal activity is simultaneously so rare as to be untestable but so common as to threaten the reliability of our senses:

[Avelum @novusolus]

@GreenClermont @AldousAsterion And how would you test such claims? The scientific method is statistical or aggregative, dealing with phenomena which are in principle accessible or repeatable at will, whereas if ghosts exist their shy personalities make appearances quite random.

[Nicholas Herrero @Flochist]

@novusolus @AldousAsterion But persistent religious and spiritual *belief* in itself is not threatening to scientific materialism. What would be threatening is direct empirical observations of paranormal activity at a frequency that would make non-material causes more likely than error.

[Nicholas Herrero @Flochist]

@novusolus @AldousAsterion Maybe I’m just genuinely ignorant of how persistent credible examples of paranormal phenomena were in history, but most of the stuff I’ve read give accounts that make the paranormal largely seem fanciful, rare, or more mysterious and indeterminate than directly convincing.

[Nicholas Herrero @Flochist]

@novusolus @AldousAsterion Did black people really observe the figure of a robed Klansman in that recent shoe ad? I’m sure many of them would report as much, but I’m quite happy to say that their reports should nonetheless be doubted without any fear of thereby undermining science.