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False Premise

Entry 512, on 2007-04-13 at 23:20:09 (Rating 3, Skepticism)

As I said in my previous blog entry, I try to get some balance to my skeptical philosophy by reading and listening to some more credulous sources, and one source in this category is a podcast called "Skeptiko". The presenter has a clear bias towards believing in the paranormal, especially some sort of spirituality, although he has never really stated exactly what form this spirituality takes.

The annoying thing about listening to this material is that it is often a waste a time because the whole debate is based on a false premise. For example, what is the point in debating the process through which paranormal psychological phenomena act if there is no clear evidence the phenomena even exist?

Recently an episode of Skeptiko went into some detail discussing how quantum entanglement and various other esoteric physics processes might explain paranormal phenomena, such as ESP and PK. But what is the point in speculating about this when its highly doubtful whether the phenomena we are trying to explain even exist?

The initial premise of the debate is that PK (for example) exists and we need to explain it. But the evidence supporting all forms of psi phenomena is very weak. Until there is better evidence these phenomena exist, and what form they actually take, there's not a lot of point in pursuing detailed explanations.

An interesting claim made in the podcast was that paranormal phenomena are like a signal mixed in with a lot of noise. The reason the signal can't always be extracted reliably is that the noise is so great. But if we were listening to a broadcast which was so noisy that we got a different signal each time we listened to it, how seriously would we take the message? That's right, we wouldn't put a lot of faith in it, and rightly so. We would need to find a way to reliably reduce the noise before we accepted the message.

Another common claim on Skeptiko is that the "spiritual world" is separate from the physical world and therefore can't be examined by science. But is this true? If we perceive that spirituality exists there must be an interaction with the physical world, therefore scientific techniques can be used. There's really no excuse for it, there is just no way to justify the existence of a spiritual world given the current state of the evidence. This doesn't mean we shouldn't research this sort of thing, but we need to research it thoroughly and not assume something exists before there is evidence it really does. The worst form of logical error is basing a debate on a false premise!

Comment 1 (607) by MC on 2007-04-16 at 17:06:47:

I think it was Asimov who said 'you can't have any kind of meaningful discussion with anyone who is willing to abandon reason in their arguments'.

Comment 2 (608) by OJB on 2007-04-16 at 17:07:10:

The problem is that different people have different definitions of what "reason" is, and its actually difficult to argue in favour of the traditional scientific approach if the person you are debating with is prepared to accept a lesser level of proof.

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