... While you could in principle map the neural activity and chemical changes that correlate to the feeling, the feeling is not transobservable. The feeling, in and of itself, is a piece of real, relevant evidence that is available only to the person experiencing it.
What I would argue is that the feeling doesn’t need to be transobservable in order to convey justifiable belief. The “force” of gravity, for example, isn’t directly observable and yet we seem to believe in it, simply as a result of the preponderance and regularity of its effects. If the effects of prayer and the exertions of angels could be demonstrated with the same mundane regularity as gravity, which is (in principle) accessible to and reproducible by anyone, then I’m sure these things would be accepted without much controversy.
Oh, and just for the record, vivid hallucinations with no external stimulus being infinitely more common than talking coyotes is not actually established; that's pretty much the heart of what we're discussing, isn't it? Reports--from people with no (other) symptoms of mental illness, no history of drug use, etc.--of seeing angels or feeling the presence of God are widespread and persistent. Now, your starting assumption (and it's certainly a reasonable, defensible starting assumption) is that each of these reports is an example of a vivid hallucination, because you have already concluded that angels and God do not exist.
I wouldn’t say so. The key difference here is not one’s assumptions regarding the existence of God (one could be a very sober deist, for example, and regard ecstatic phenomena with the same skepticism that I do) but, again, the transobservability of the object. There is a qualitative difference between a mass hallucination and something that is transobservable; that is, a skeptic -- and in principle any skeptic -- has the same access to the phenomenon that a “true believer” does, and the phenomenon is (again, at least in principle) reproducible.
A few months ago I saw an interesting demonstration of this -- on Sam Harris’s blog, I’m embarrassed to say. A martial arts master claims to be able to use his “chi” to defeat opponents. He has a school devoted to this discipline, where hundreds of students learn to use “chi” energy in combat, and can be seen being floored by their teacher, who is apparently able to command this mysterious force with great regularity. At some point, the master of the school offers $5,000 to anyone who can beat him. An MMA fighter takes up the challenge. He not only beats him; the chi master’s “powers” are completely ineffective. No one is more shocked by this than the master. He stands on the mat literally dumbfounded that his opponent isn’t simply flopping to the ground like his students.
So here we have a case where there is a shared experience, and a shared belief, and it all seems to be above board. There are hundreds of students in the school; not all of them are mentally ill, presumably, although one could perhaps make the case that they were brainwashed. The whole thing might look pretty convincing -- up until the moment it becomes accessible to a skeptic.
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Date: 2012-07-29 08:31 pm (UTC)What I would argue is that the feeling doesn’t need to be transobservable in order to convey justifiable belief. The “force” of gravity, for example, isn’t directly observable and yet we seem to believe in it, simply as a result of the preponderance and regularity of its effects. If the effects of prayer and the exertions of angels could be demonstrated with the same mundane regularity as gravity, which is (in principle) accessible to and reproducible by anyone, then I’m sure these things would be accepted without much controversy.
Oh, and just for the record, vivid hallucinations with no external stimulus being infinitely more common than talking coyotes is not actually established; that's pretty much the heart of what we're discussing, isn't it? Reports--from people with no (other) symptoms of mental illness, no history of drug use, etc.--of seeing angels or feeling the presence of God are widespread and persistent. Now, your starting assumption (and it's certainly a reasonable, defensible starting assumption) is that each of these reports is an example of a vivid hallucination, because you have already concluded that angels and God do not exist.
I wouldn’t say so. The key difference here is not one’s assumptions regarding the existence of God (one could be a very sober deist, for example, and regard ecstatic phenomena with the same skepticism that I do) but, again, the transobservability of the object. There is a qualitative difference between a mass hallucination and something that is transobservable; that is, a skeptic -- and in principle any skeptic -- has the same access to the phenomenon that a “true believer” does, and the phenomenon is (again, at least in principle) reproducible.
A few months ago I saw an interesting demonstration of this -- on Sam Harris’s blog, I’m embarrassed to say. A martial arts master claims to be able to use his “chi” to defeat opponents. He has a school devoted to this discipline, where hundreds of students learn to use “chi” energy in combat, and can be seen being floored by their teacher, who is apparently able to command this mysterious force with great regularity. At some point, the master of the school offers $5,000 to anyone who can beat him. An MMA fighter takes up the challenge. He not only beats him; the chi master’s “powers” are completely ineffective. No one is more shocked by this than the master. He stands on the mat literally dumbfounded that his opponent isn’t simply flopping to the ground like his students.
So here we have a case where there is a shared experience, and a shared belief, and it all seems to be above board. There are hundreds of students in the school; not all of them are mentally ill, presumably, although one could perhaps make the case that they were brainwashed. The whole thing might look pretty convincing -- up until the moment it becomes accessible to a skeptic.