- Joined
- Mar 22, 2009
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- 51
**NOTE: while inspired by replying to Elf on another of the sub-forums, this post can also be considered an independent OP on the "nature of the paranormal".
MachineElf said:
Elf, yeah.
And interesting though the anecdotes are in Tracy's (OOBE) thread, in the PUBLIC arena, they still resolve to a fireside tales mode. Publicly, when we try to investigate OOBEs, they seem to “resolve” as stories, or confabulations, and constructed perceptions, etc. That is curious. There are really only a couple of broad categories that can account for it, IMO. The first is that the paranormal and the anomalous and the miraculous are really a kind of elaborate “illusion”; something that only SEEMS to exist (albeit quite persuasively) when we are at a certain distance from empirical investigation. At that distance it survives on narrative energy, uncontrolled circumstances, a mixture of truth and fiction and deliberate lying that can never be entirely unpacked as to which is which. That’s the first possibility. And so of course as you tighten the screws of empirical investigation, the phenomena gradually shrink away until you have nothing left except a Cheshire smile at the point of true control.
The problem with this view is that it is a bit too dismissive of a little too much in the realm of personal experience. On the other hand, when the flow of information is not properly controlled, it is very easy for folks to assume that they know something by extraordnary means, when they may have known it by ordinary means. At the very least, that cannot be discounted outside the realm of anecdote.
The second possibility however is the skewed episteme I described above (see 'It Happened To Me subforum, thread by tracyk3337). This DOES take seriously the stories of people, but also points out that the situation is not as straightforward as simply doing “more scientific tests”. Something ELSE is involved here, and the profile of this “something” is very large as you look back across the (studied) history of these phenomena. Ian Stevenson, after decades in the field, when asked if he thought the individual reincarnates, said “it’s a grey area”. Yet hardly anyone could be said to have done more to “bring it in out of the grey” than he. He stands as a kind of human exemplum of how to investigate deeply problematic, anomalous stuff. Parapsychologists have noted the tendency for phenomena, almost perversely, to shrink upon investigation. Ghosthunters, at a more popular level, are aware of the inverse relationship between presence of detecting equipment and presence of phenomena. Not to say that they can never detect anything, just not repeatably in any easily definable way, and inversely to the determination for detecting.
There is scarcely a department of anomalous phenomena left untouched by the principle I alluded to before. I believe, myself, that it has to do with observation and that all of these phenomena have to do with consciousness, which is (in some sense) implicated in the emergence of the actual from the mere potential, even at cosmic level. Of course this is a large speculation, and I realize that. On the other hand, a hundred years of “psychical research / parapsychology” has not come to grips with what seems to me a red warning light flashing from all of these phenomena: that they operate on a skewed episteme, and that the gridlock of the “debate” between believers and debunkers needs to be transcended, as it is itself a part of the problem, and not a part of the solution. However, this is difficult for rational minded folks to take on board, including me. We want the world to operate by rational logic because that is how our minds and senses operate. I, too, want to “subject” these phenomena to “definitive tests”. I want the Fenwick / Parnia study to report. I want Tracy’s foreknowledge of the New Scientist cover to have been recorded somewhere prior to the event, so that it emerges from anecdote, etc. Yet at the same time I am aware that we may not be able to get this, that we may literally be barking up the wrong tree by asking these phenomena to behave in this way.
In some way it seems to me that these phenomena emerge from potential, and like quantum phenomena (which I suspect to be a variant of a similar larger principle), the strangeness of them can only “exist” while we are at a certain minimum “observation distance” from them. Related to this is a thought that the universe is not entirely a closed formal system. There is a Godelian “loophole” in the fabric of being, such that knowledge of existence can never formally complete itself. So far, if this be the case, we have broadly speaking not been pressed up against the problem with great urgency, because most of our science deals with actually quite straightforward phenomena, such as moving masses, fluid dynamics, etc. Approaching the understructure of the cosmos however, and into phenomena (or noumena) such as (possibly) consciousness, this luck might be about to run out, and we need a different kind of epistemology, not to mention ontology, not to mention mode of applied study, in order to grapple with this stuff.
What I am driving at is that the world seems to emerge from a deeper, although also more nebulous realm of ‘possibility’. This realm of potential becomes the world of the actual in the presence of mundane phenomena. But when we catch it in the process of becoming, as on rare occasion we can do, we attach various nomenclature depending on our specialty or disposition: “quantum behavior”, “synchronicity”, “the paranormal”, etc. The realm of potential is not overspecified as the realm of phenomena is. With THESE phenomena, their “existence” IS irreducibly associated with a finally unspecified (and unspecifiable) blur of potential. Which is to say (hopefully in a much less verbose way) that ambiguity is an ineradicable feature of their modus operandi. One cannot keep the quantum superposition AND observe it, down to the grain of empirical reality. At that point, it becomes empirical reality. You cannot have a ghost AND a Newtownian-style demonstration of its existence, because its nature, and the nature of all this special category of ‘phenomena’ is a weird supersposition of “existence” and “nonexistence”. The century-old believer/debunker argument is railroad-locked in a Newtonian, polarized conception of this problem and cannot break free of it. The very question that framework asks: does the paranormal exist? is the wrong question. It exists. And it exists not. It's a Boolean AND, not a Boolean OR. Meanwhile, while they ramble on in ever more stentorian tones, these events will keep happening to people, because they are part of the architecture of Being and Becoming.
Oops, time to stop rambling myself 8)
MachineElf said:
Elf, yeah.
And interesting though the anecdotes are in Tracy's (OOBE) thread, in the PUBLIC arena, they still resolve to a fireside tales mode. Publicly, when we try to investigate OOBEs, they seem to “resolve” as stories, or confabulations, and constructed perceptions, etc. That is curious. There are really only a couple of broad categories that can account for it, IMO. The first is that the paranormal and the anomalous and the miraculous are really a kind of elaborate “illusion”; something that only SEEMS to exist (albeit quite persuasively) when we are at a certain distance from empirical investigation. At that distance it survives on narrative energy, uncontrolled circumstances, a mixture of truth and fiction and deliberate lying that can never be entirely unpacked as to which is which. That’s the first possibility. And so of course as you tighten the screws of empirical investigation, the phenomena gradually shrink away until you have nothing left except a Cheshire smile at the point of true control.
The problem with this view is that it is a bit too dismissive of a little too much in the realm of personal experience. On the other hand, when the flow of information is not properly controlled, it is very easy for folks to assume that they know something by extraordnary means, when they may have known it by ordinary means. At the very least, that cannot be discounted outside the realm of anecdote.
The second possibility however is the skewed episteme I described above (see 'It Happened To Me subforum, thread by tracyk3337). This DOES take seriously the stories of people, but also points out that the situation is not as straightforward as simply doing “more scientific tests”. Something ELSE is involved here, and the profile of this “something” is very large as you look back across the (studied) history of these phenomena. Ian Stevenson, after decades in the field, when asked if he thought the individual reincarnates, said “it’s a grey area”. Yet hardly anyone could be said to have done more to “bring it in out of the grey” than he. He stands as a kind of human exemplum of how to investigate deeply problematic, anomalous stuff. Parapsychologists have noted the tendency for phenomena, almost perversely, to shrink upon investigation. Ghosthunters, at a more popular level, are aware of the inverse relationship between presence of detecting equipment and presence of phenomena. Not to say that they can never detect anything, just not repeatably in any easily definable way, and inversely to the determination for detecting.
There is scarcely a department of anomalous phenomena left untouched by the principle I alluded to before. I believe, myself, that it has to do with observation and that all of these phenomena have to do with consciousness, which is (in some sense) implicated in the emergence of the actual from the mere potential, even at cosmic level. Of course this is a large speculation, and I realize that. On the other hand, a hundred years of “psychical research / parapsychology” has not come to grips with what seems to me a red warning light flashing from all of these phenomena: that they operate on a skewed episteme, and that the gridlock of the “debate” between believers and debunkers needs to be transcended, as it is itself a part of the problem, and not a part of the solution. However, this is difficult for rational minded folks to take on board, including me. We want the world to operate by rational logic because that is how our minds and senses operate. I, too, want to “subject” these phenomena to “definitive tests”. I want the Fenwick / Parnia study to report. I want Tracy’s foreknowledge of the New Scientist cover to have been recorded somewhere prior to the event, so that it emerges from anecdote, etc. Yet at the same time I am aware that we may not be able to get this, that we may literally be barking up the wrong tree by asking these phenomena to behave in this way.
In some way it seems to me that these phenomena emerge from potential, and like quantum phenomena (which I suspect to be a variant of a similar larger principle), the strangeness of them can only “exist” while we are at a certain minimum “observation distance” from them. Related to this is a thought that the universe is not entirely a closed formal system. There is a Godelian “loophole” in the fabric of being, such that knowledge of existence can never formally complete itself. So far, if this be the case, we have broadly speaking not been pressed up against the problem with great urgency, because most of our science deals with actually quite straightforward phenomena, such as moving masses, fluid dynamics, etc. Approaching the understructure of the cosmos however, and into phenomena (or noumena) such as (possibly) consciousness, this luck might be about to run out, and we need a different kind of epistemology, not to mention ontology, not to mention mode of applied study, in order to grapple with this stuff.
What I am driving at is that the world seems to emerge from a deeper, although also more nebulous realm of ‘possibility’. This realm of potential becomes the world of the actual in the presence of mundane phenomena. But when we catch it in the process of becoming, as on rare occasion we can do, we attach various nomenclature depending on our specialty or disposition: “quantum behavior”, “synchronicity”, “the paranormal”, etc. The realm of potential is not overspecified as the realm of phenomena is. With THESE phenomena, their “existence” IS irreducibly associated with a finally unspecified (and unspecifiable) blur of potential. Which is to say (hopefully in a much less verbose way) that ambiguity is an ineradicable feature of their modus operandi. One cannot keep the quantum superposition AND observe it, down to the grain of empirical reality. At that point, it becomes empirical reality. You cannot have a ghost AND a Newtownian-style demonstration of its existence, because its nature, and the nature of all this special category of ‘phenomena’ is a weird supersposition of “existence” and “nonexistence”. The century-old believer/debunker argument is railroad-locked in a Newtonian, polarized conception of this problem and cannot break free of it. The very question that framework asks: does the paranormal exist? is the wrong question. It exists. And it exists not. It's a Boolean AND, not a Boolean OR. Meanwhile, while they ramble on in ever more stentorian tones, these events will keep happening to people, because they are part of the architecture of Being and Becoming.
Oops, time to stop rambling myself 8)
