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May 24, 2013, 2:54am

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Topic: The Richard Wiseman Challenge (Read 398 times)

don s
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Re: The Richard Wiseman Challenge
« Reply #15 on Apr 13, 2012, 8:35pm »

hi anon - I hope you don't mind, but I'd like to invite you over to "The Anon Challenge" where I hope you'll help me answer that question.

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don s
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Re: The Richard Wiseman Challenge
« Reply #16 on Apr 13, 2012, 8:53pm »

Andy I thought I answered you over in "Discussing the RW Challenge." I also offered an answer of a sort in "The Anon Challenge". I agree with you. From your perspective, materialism and panpsychism answer the questions I raised. I agree, again, from that perspective, what you say makes sense to me.

I would still be interested in hearing from someone on this thread who is interested in the challenge (or can answer anon, and provide a link here or over at the "Anon challenge" that discusses psi in the manner I've requested. I'm not aware of it ever having been done, but I truly hope I'm wrong. I'd much, much rather read about it than continuing to explain it here.

So, if you know of anywhere where this kind of thing has been discussed, please, let me know. Thanks!

(anon - again, I'm not talking about anything in the "Shaving Science" paper, nothing about illusionism or mentalism, or idealism; just some thorough discussion of the implications of psi being real and how it would radically change all areas of science, with many, specific, detailed examples)

Thanks again!

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Andy Smith
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Re: The Richard Wiseman Challenge
« Reply #17 on Apr 13, 2012, 11:06pm »

You sure sound like an idealist to me, Don. Right out of the pages of George Berkeley. Which is not meant to belittle the position. Berkeley had some fairly sophisticated arguments. But the point is, the implication that you or Prem is raising some idea that others have not fully appreciated is nonsense. Idealism has been thoroughly criticized on a number of grounds by many philosophers. Regardless of whether or not you accept those criticisms, you can’t maintain that philosophers aren’t adequately aware of it. That the need to take some challenge.

In the final analysis, I think it comes down to personal preference. You note that we know the world only through our perceptions of it (“to be is to be perceived” was Berkeley’s famous way of putting it), and conclude that there is no material world independent of this awareness. Most scientists and philosophers note that objects apparently continue to exist when no one is aware of them, and also that different people apparently perceive them in much the same way, and conclude that there has to be something out there independent of any awareness of it.

I think the only way idealism can address the latter is by postulating that there is one universal awareness that in effect creates the perceived world. This is Berkeley’s God in the quad. Since this awareness is continuous, all its perceptions have an eternal existence. I guess that then all our individual perceptions are then partial realizations of this world. This is why our individual perceptions of the world are so similar.

But you still have to explain why so much in this universal awareness follows regular patterns that we call scientific laws, why so many phenomena tend to be highly predictable, why there are some things and not other things. It seems that this world created by a universal awareness is highly constrained, that it couldn’t be and can’t be a matter of anything goes. In other words, at a certain point, the world appears to be exist and develop in a manner that is so independent of awareness that for all practical purposes it might as well be independent of it. That is, even if all material phenomena are the perceptions of some universal mind, they still have a life of their own. They behave as if they were independent. Paranormal phenomena, if they do exist, are so rare that they really don’t impact this argument.

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