Is the supernatural/paranormal subject to the scientific method?

Yes, we we come to realize that those supernatural encounters are actually coming from ourselves.

@ChazMaz what do you mean they are coming from ourselves? Do we create them, or do we imagine them?

Everything is subject to scientific method.

@DarkScribe I agree, but I am also certain that you do not believe the supernatural and paranormal to be real. The point of this question is to help me understand the mindset of the believer.

I say we create them, we imagine what is causing it.
I can imaging plenty. Not going to make it happen. And yes, I can imagine something to convince myself and others that want to believe the same thing.

But, when you add scientific methodology to the process. It turns into metal projection. We just want to believe/imagine it is something else.

@FireMadeFlesh I agree, but I am also certain that you do not believe the supernatural and paranormal to be real.

i have had a number of paranormal experiences – I have an inquiring mind and an adventurous nature.

Ultimately i think it depends on the specific type of paranormal event that you are wanting to test. Thomas Nagel would disagree that any paranormal event is subject to scientific method by way of the fact that by its very nature the word suggests something outside of the normal – very much like miracles. Scientific investigation explores the normality of the world in terms of identifiable laws. However one must consider that science is fallible and only relative to current knowledge. The paranormal may turn out not to be out of the normal after all.

They are and they have been, and that is how we know that they do not exist. They have never been replicable, there is no empirical evidence that any such phenomena have ever occurred, when specific events are examined they always turn out to be quotidian or to have been deliberate hoaxes.

We are, however, a nation which believes by a majority in the creation story over evolution, in the Virgin Birth, in the Assumption of Mary, and in thousands of other magical fairy tales with no basis in fact.

It is clear just by reading above how credulous some people remain, even reducing themselves to circular arguments about how the very definition of paranormal precludes sensorial confirmation or empirical proof. People love to be deluded.

What would happen to George Nouri if we could prove it all a hoax..cancellation? Maybe some stimulus dollars should be directed there then.

@pdworkin they love to be scared as well, hence the popularity of demons, werewolves, vampires, zombies and other such boogedy monsters.

i would have to say no. science is the study of nature and relaity and the observable world.

supernatural and paranormal would by deffinition be referring to things that are impossiblt to verify scientifically.

none the less, james randi does not seem to have any problems debunking things by subjecting people to scientific tests.

I agree with @poisonedantidote on this. The scientific method is a very precise and orderly way of proving a hypothesis, which requires the observer to have a slight control over their experimentation. You can’t really have a “control” ghost and a “variable” ghost the way you can have in a normal scientific experiment.

Similarly, even if you did try to prove something scientifically, paranormal/supernatural activity is incredibly subjective. Those who do not believe in the paranormal would not be able to repeat the scientific method with this material and get the same result, and even people who do believe often get different impressions of the supernatural.

To me, this has always been the case. It’s why the whole debate between the spiritual/supernatural and science exists.

If you apply scientific method to phenomena you suspect of being supernatural/paranormal, three things can happen:

1) You confirm them. Then they are no longer supernatural/paranormal. They are natural and normal.
2) You refute them. Then they don’t exist.
3) Your tests are inconclusive. You keep speculating.

A flash of lightning was once considered supernatural and explained by God being angry.

@mattbrowne
I think you just summed up everything I could have wanted to say about this, and more concisely than I would have. Well done, and thank you.

I can only throw in this quote.

“Men think epilepsy divine, merely because they do not understand it. We will one day understand what causes it, and then cease to call it divine. And so it is with everything in the universe.” – Hippocrates (ca. 460–370 BCE)

No, it would exist outside the natural realm. i.e. it is not physical, not matter or energy, but rather transcends the 4 (or 10) dimensions we are directly aware of. Thus it cannot be observed in the scientific manner.

(I am answering with God of Judaism / Christianity in mind)

@Fyrius – Thank you, my friend. And thanks for the wonderful quote by Hippocrates! Yes, when it comes to explaining phenomena we observe in our universe, scientific method is the best way to do it.

This does not mean we can explain everything about our universe and conclusively answer every question people can come up with. Like “Why is there something rather than nothing?” or “What’s the purpose and the deeper meaning of our universe?” or “What’s the purpose and the deeper meaning of my own life?” or “How do persons ought to act?” or “What is wisdom?”

@mattbrowne
Thanks for giving me new material to post something about. XD

I would contend that science, or at least scientific thinking, is the mode of thought most suited to give us answers to any question about the universe – for example, it sheds light on questions like “what is the purpose and deeper meaning of the universe / my life” by revealing them to be products of a way of thinking that is al wrong.

Science teaches us not everything in the universe has a mind, and indeed that minds are very rare, contrary to our natural mode of thinking that would assign will and intention even to a computer that does not understand what you want it to do, a car that conspires against you by not starting, or a stapler that has its own opinions as to whether any pieces of paper are going to be stapled together today.

Similarly, science also teaches us that the universe is a natural phenomenon and should no more be expected to have a purpose than we should expect there to be a particular pragmatic reason why the Pyrenees are between Spain and France, and not between Germany and Poland. Science teaches us it’s nonsense to think they were deliberately put there so that the French would not be bothered by Spanish rain clouds, by someone who didn’t care about Germans getting soaked from Polish rain. And science teaches us it’s equally nonsense to think the universe is here to fulfil a purpose.

But as for wisdom and ethics, no, indeed, that’s philosopher’s territory.

P.S. This post is also an excellent demonstration of me not being concise.

@Fyrius – Yes, science can’t teach us about the purpose of the universe. The meaning of life? The purpose of life? Sure, survival. Replication. Evolution is a phenomenon we can observe. Scientific method revealed this to us. But the human mind (a product of evolution) wants to ask more questions. It doesn’t seem to be satisfied by just creating offspring. Besides, that would exclude homosexuals or childless couples. I think there’s a deeper meaning here as well. A purpose. And it has nothing to do with selfish genes and surviving and replicating.

To me spirituality means embarking on a lifelong journey of learning and searching for a purpose and a deeper meaning of our cosmos and our own life, while acknowledging that some sources of knowledge are beyond science and scientific method (see the other thread).

I just watched t&e exorcisim of Emily Rose last night. They debated this in the movie. It’s worth a watch.

@mattbrowne thank you that was exactly my point. thank you for putting it more succinctly

Well supernatural and paranormal things tend to have personal stories associated with them. For example, a specific ghost might haunt a specific place because of a specific story about something that happened in life that keeps their soul fixated on that place, because it isn’t complete for them. So it is an exceptional thing. It’s not like every time someone dies they stay around as a ghost, and ghosts can be fickle and appear when they want to. And skeptics might put them off and have them decide to pout and not show up.

So typical scientific approaches, such as trying to come up with laws for the behavior of ghosts, or of specific ghosts, isn’t going to work particularly well. Science hasn’t done a lot for explaining story-telling, either, for example. It doesn’t even try. Psychology is probably closest, and could try (and I’m sure does) to classify ghost stories (for example) and the conversations of people who talk about them. (Which is not to say that believers in the paranormal are crazy, BTW.)

I think it’s possible (even likely, or more or less true, depending on the topic) that phenomena labelled as paranormal or supernatural have real components that scientists don’t tend to look at but will eventually have things to say about.

If something happens it’s possible, therefore natural. There is no such thing as a “supernatural event”

@DarkScribe Sorry for the confusion.

@ParaParaYukiko If those who do not believe cannot replicate it, would that not indicate that it is a delusion? Surely anyone with appropriate education and instruction can undergo any experience.

@mattbrowne GA, thanks! If the phenomenon continued to give erratic and inconclusive results to every imaginable experiment, could we assume it was not subject to a pattern in the manner of science?

@Fyrius I love that quote! Thanks for sharing it.

@FireMadeFlesh – It could still have been done in the manner of science. Erratic and inconclusive results are possible. Every imaginable experiment means the imagination was based on the current level of thinking and knowledge. Einstein once said, problems cannot be solved by the same level of thinking that created them. A new level of thinking leads to new forms of experiments which might eventually lead to conclusive results.

A good example are observations and experiments related to dark matter. We still got inconclusive results. We don’t know the nature of dark matter. But this does not mean that dark matter is a paranormal phenomenon. It’s very real.

@mattbrowne
You’re a nice and generally intelligent and educated guy, Matt, but whenever I question your fundamental assumptions, you just seem to ignore my arguments and pretend your beliefs remain uncontested.
I’m not even going to bother with the biophilic universe thing any more by now.

“Yes, science can’t teach us about the purpose of the universe.”
I just explained to you how science shows the very question to be ill-formed. It’s based on an assumption that is questionable at best and patently wrong at worst.

Before science got its stuff together, people believed the sun’s motions to be the result of a god in a chariot deliberately riding it across the sky, nightfall the result of a godess deliberately throwing her dark cloak over the world, lightning the result of a god deliberately throwing his bolts at things he’s angry at. Everything happened because the gods decided it should happen. Everything in nature had a purpose.
Modern science has shown this pragmatic view on nature to be a load of bunk. We now know nature does not work with purpose. Science teaches us forces of nature are neither sentient nor put in place by anyone sentient. Sunrise, nightfall or lightning have no purpose, they just happen.

And lest it elude you again, let me spell out what this means for you.

What makes you think the cosmos has a purpose?

And not only the results of science, but also the scientific method itself teaches us that you should be able to give a very convincing reason to think there must exist any such thing in the first place, before you can justifiably spend time and effort looking for what it might be.

So embark on a quest to find a purpose to ascribe to the cosmos if you will, but if in doing so you just presuppose a priori that the cosmos has any purpose at all, then I don’t think you are doing a very good job at looking for the truth. And I think you could learn much in this regard from the scientific way of thinking.
I do hope it’s the truth you’re after.

@Fyrius I love you when you explain how science works ^^

sure, you can use the scientific method on anything you’d like.
it doesn’t mean that it applies though.
assuming that supernatural stuff is real, the whole point is that it isn’t something that can be explained away by science.

@Fyrius – As explained before, the cosmos as a whole (including its very existence) having a purpose or not isn’t a scientific question. Scientific method can’t help up answering this philosophical question. We can’t observe the purpose using telescopes or microscopes. We can’t come up with experiments. The cosmos having a purpose is a belief. The cosmos not having a purpose is a belief.

Yes, I also think the forces of nature are not sentient. We can observe their phenomena they produce and come up with good explanations. I pointed out that to me spirituality means embarking on a lifelong journey of learning and searching for a purpose and a deeper meaning of our cosmos and our own life, while acknowledging that some sources of knowledge are beyond science and scientific method.

Well, I’ve learned some. I’ve found some. But I’m still learning. I’m still searching. Having debates with atheists is a wonderful opportunity to continue my search. I seems that you’ve found all your answers already. Or have you?

@mattbrowne: the problem with your stance is that you assume that a purpose exists to begin with. You “pointed out that to me spirituality means embarking on a lifelong journey of learning and searching for a purpose and a deeper meaning of our cosmos and our own life, while acknowledging that some sources of knowledge are beyond science and scientific method” and that is precisely the problem.

You’re making two big assumptions that aren’t supported by any kind of evidence: that the scientific method can’t work on some particular (and not proven to even exist) fields, and the second is that somehow, for some odd reason, the universe HAS to have a purpose.

Here’s the problem with this stance: how do you know that the fields that science can’t study exist? They have to affect your life, somehow, don’t they? And if they do they also have noticeable effects, don’t they? And if they do they can be studied via the scientfic method, period. And if they don’t then how do you know they’re there?

Let’s take, i dunno, astrology, just to beat a dead horse: double blind studies have been designed and put in action to test the efficacy of astrology. Astrology makes predictions, and prediction can be tested, and if they happen not to fullfill themselves at a certain ratio we can think, and rightly so, that it’s really just sheer chance being called in cause here.
The same goes for prayer: incidentally the only one seeing any benefits from intercessory prayer is the prayER not the prayee.

Just because we’re a species prone to bullshitting ourselves doesn’t mean we are right in doing so. And no it doesn’t get any more respectable an idea the more vague it gets.

Deists aren’t better than christians just because they believe in something more undefined. Just like looking for a purpose isn’t much different from saying that the stars and the universe are influencing your life in some predictable way, related to us because we were born on a particular day, making those stars somehow related to us in a mystic way. It’s just a natural response to our wish to feel special and unique.

@Thammuz – Materialists will only find material evidence. I don’t know for sure if the fields that science can’t study exist. But I believe they do. I don’t know for sure if the cosmos has a purpose. But I believe it does. And I want to find out. You don’t and that’s just fine.

Astrology ventures in the field of physical phenomena. We can use scientific method to refute astrological claims. Therefore astrology is nonsense, at least the part of the supposed cause. There might be effects because of seasonal hormonal changes.

But science has limitations. And we don’t even need to cite Goedel for that. Here’s a very simple example:

Statement X = Science can explain everything

Note, that X is a statement about science, i.e. it’s a meta-scientific statement, not a scientific statement.

If X is true, it also means X is false, because there’s at least one statement in addition to everything. In logic, proof by contradiction is a form of proof that establishes the truth or validity of a proposition by showing that the premise that the proposition is false implies a contradiction.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proof_by_contradiction

@mattbrowne: the problem is that, again, you assume.

“Philosophical statements are twaddlecock” it’s a philosophical statement, and it’s about philosophy.

The problem with “Statement X = Science can explain everything” is that science doesn’t prove by assumption. Science proves by rational inquiry and empirical evidence. Therefore “science can explain everything” will only be scientific when we finally reach the absolute comprehension of everything, therefore provingthat indeed cience has explained everything. At that point science can explain everything will be a scientific statement.

Also, statements don’t NEED scientific explainations, phenomena need them. I can say “i love blue cabbage enemas” and that has nothing to do with sicence, science has no business explaining what the fuck i just said. Merging phenomena with statements is just like saying a doctor should be able to fix my TV.

The reasons why we act on the assumption that science has no limittions are simply pragmatic: firstly there’s no point in doing something you don’t think will work. Secondly we do have, let’s say, “clues” that the scientfic methosd works.

Unlike any philosophical discipline you can come up with, science can actually keep its promises: the pc you’re typing on, the home you live in, are all products of science, not of philosophical mind-masturbation. Furthermore Philosophy has, again, no way to be proven right or wrong, pick whatever philosopher you can come up with with sound logic and arguments, and i will find you somebody who says the opposite with equally good logic. Why? because they start off from different premises which most of the time are simply stated as obvious, see Descartes.

So in the end it’s just a matter of seeing whose premise is right. And how do we do that? by confronting it with reality. And that, my friend is still the scientific method.

@Thammuz – How does science answer the question “What is wisdom?” How do we apply scientific method?

@mattbrowne: Wrong question. It should be “Is there such thing as wisdom?”

You first have to experience the phenomenon you want to study so:
1) find someone who is wise.
2) find more people who are wise.
3) compare them.
4) find what they all have in common.
5) Public a peer reviewed study.
6) ????
7) Science!

But seriously, asking “what is word X” is a question for a dictionary, not a scientist. What is wisdom? whatever we define it to be, anybody thing fitting that description is wisdom. Just like “rose” means a particular kind of flower. The purpose of the scientific method is figuring out HOW.

Back to our “wisdom” example, after we found many wise people we could study their brains and find what they all have in cmomon, for instance a particular pattern in brainwaves or something, which would tell us ” that pattern is somehow linked to what we call “wisdom”, let’s dig deeper and see where this is going.
Or it might just prove inconclusive which would mean that wisdom isn’t a biological trait, making it product of experience.

P.S. Sorry if it took me so much to reply, for some reason i was unable to reply on any topic during all yesterday evening…

@Thammuz – My point is, you can’t come up with a set of axioms and rules for wisdom, invent some tests and apply scientific method and get a clear confirmation or not. Maybe you should read this relatively short article to truly appreciate the problem:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wisdom

If you’re a naturalist (or materialist), of course then there’s nothing beyond nature. Are you?

@mattbrowne
“As explained before, the cosmos as a whole (including its very existence) having a purpose or not isn’t a scientific question.”
I beg to differ. I do believe it is. Being a question about the universe it’s inside the interest of science, and science can tell us what to expect regarding its answer.

In particular, it tells us that the burden of proof is on you, my friend. And in the continued absence of any arguments why you would think the cosmos has a purpose, it is again science that tells us it is most reasonable to assume there is no such thing.
Not to even mention that everything we currently know about nature shows a trend of inanimacy and purposelessness.

Science is more than looking at test tubes and writing results on clipboards. Science is also a way of thinking, specialised in looking for the truth in a pragmatic way. And this way of thinking definitely has something to say about your question.

“I seems that you’ve found all your answers already. Or have you?”
I have found most of the questions people like you would ask to be nonsensical to begin with and stopped bothering to look for answers to these, spending my time instead on questions that matter.
I have working answers to most of these. I have yet to find out if they are right.

You also shouldn’t assume all science is materialistic. Physics and chemistry are, yes, but there are also abstract fields such as psychology or indeed linguistics, to which the material representation of their object of study is too indeterminate to be of any help until we find a way to read neuron firing patterns in detail.

@mattbrowne Seems to me like a quite definite concept: all you have to do is find people who pssess knowledge and have used it to their advantage to live a satisfying life.

The axioms are all there, in the definition. It’s just a matter of extrapolating the essentials, agreeing on a definition of what will be considered “wisdom” and then finding individuals that fit it, analyze them, find the points in common and voilà, wisdom is served.

@Fyrius – When you link sociology, psychology and linguistics to neurobiology it becomes materialistic. Actually, I don’t have a problem with that. Neurobiology is a wonderful science.

Suppose a deity doesn’t exist. There are still numerous questions science cannot answer. Not every question relates to phenomena we can observe. If people think science is omnipotent, they have not understood the very fabric of science.

@Thammuz – Seems like a wise answer. Now let’s ask 10,000 scientists and philosophers. Will the majority give a simple answer like you did and everyone agrees?

Of course not: for starters, leave the philosophers out of it. Then you have to create a consensus on what wisdom is. Only AFTER there is such consensus we will be able to work on this. They don’t agree now, but it is a necessary prerequisite that there is such an agreement, at least in the majority of the scientific community, in order to be able to apply that method and have people recognise the merit of the research.

It’s not that the definition i gave couldn’t be tested, it’s just that not every scientist would agree that what i tested and found/not found causes for is actually wisdom.
And that’s just a matter of semantics rather than science.

@mattbrowne
…fabric of science?

I notice you dropped the subject of the cosmos having a purpose or not. Very well.

Going with this delimitation of the topic, then, I contend that science covers more than the observable. I invoke my field once again; the only data we can base our investigations on are in themselves very inconclusive by nature. What generative linguistics does is trying to figure out the abstract rules that govern the ways in which the grammar manifests itself.
This arguably still relates to something observable, but strictly speaking, everything does, really. I think you’ll be hard-pressed to find any kind of subject matter that does not have any relation to anything observable at all – even wisdom manifests itself in observable ways that can be mapped statistically. There have been judgement experiments investigating how our sense of right and wrong works.
One interesting result was that people have much more objections to actively killing one person to save many others, than with deciding the same person should die instead of all the others if something else does the actual killing.

Even outside the Humanities, science deals with many hypothetical phenomena that have never been observed. There are a few in physics, pretty much the hardest science out there. Wormholes are an example, or strings. If I’m not mistaken.
If science couldn’t answer questions about things that cannot be observed, these things too would be outside the realm of science. As well as grammar and right and wrong. Obviously this is not the case.

Of course you can postulate phenomena that truly have no observable side at all, but for any such thing, it’s a very interesting question whether it exists at all. In other words, I think I can safely make the generalisation that all conceivable phenomena can be exhaustively divided into the observable and the hypothetical.

And I think you can understand why I think it’s preposterous to say science is inadequate to find out the truth about things you’re making up, and the conclusion that you’re making it up is not enough.

@Fyrius – You made it clear that science can tell us about the purpose of the universe. I hold a different view and of course there’s no scientific explanation why I hold this different view. Why can’t we just leave it at that? We don’t have to agree.

Scientific observation does not always mean direct observation. No probe has ever entered the core of our sun. Still, we’ve got a good idea of what’s going on. Same for the fourth minute after the big bang. Same for meteorite impact 65 million years ago. Same for fish evolving into amphibians. And so forth.

A hypothetical phenomenon can turn into a real phenomenon as science progresses, even without direct observation. If the LHC can simulate certain conditions we can be reasonably sure that somewhere else in our universe something similar is going on.

But we are always talking about natural phenomena. To me the deeper meaning of people’s lives cannot be rationally derived from observation. We can only speculate and believe. We can’t confirm or falsify our beliefs setting up scientific experiments.

@mattbrowne To me the deeper meaning of people’s lives* cannot be rationally derived from observation. *If any

@mattbrowne
“You made it clear that science can tell us about the purpose of the universe.”
Excuse me. I said it can tell us about the presence of a purpose of the universe. Important difference. And the whole point of everything I said so far.

“I hold a different view and of course there’s no scientific explanation why I hold this different view.”
What a strange thing to say.
I’m pretty sure freshman level psychology could tell you all the fine details about what makes you want to agree to disagree rather than continue to expose your precious beliefs to rational scrutiny.

“To me the deeper meaning of people’s lives cannot be rationally derived from observation. We can only speculate and believe. We can’t confirm or falsify our beliefs setting up scientific experiments.”
That makes perfect scientific sense if there never was any such thing in the first place.

You frustrate me. Have you even understood a single word I posted? If so, how can it elude you that you are completely missing the crucial central point of my argument that I repeated over and over again?

You continue to presuppose that our lives have anything that can be called a “deeper meaning”. You continue to posit this as a given, even though it’s the very thing we disagree about. Back up that assumption. Or admit that it’s unfounded.

Despite your impressive knowledge, you show that you don’t have an ounce of scientist in you. What would it take for you to reconsider a belief? We’ve seen that arguments you can’t refute don’t suffice.

Pardon the acrimony. I believe it was needed.

@Fyrius – If you don’t think I have an ounce of scientist in me, you shouldn’t waste your time debating with me. Besides, it’s not my intention to cause frustration or make someone bitter. I’m aware that the beliefs of some atheists does not permit them to think outside the non-God box. The belief is that there’s nothing but materialism. The notion of God giving the universe purpose and giving human beings meaning is incompatible with materialism. Let’s accept this fact.

There’s a book I’d like to recommend:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Finding-Darwins-God-Scientists-Evolution/dp/0061233501/

Perhaps it can give you new insights.

@mattbrowne
“If you don’t think I have an ounce of scientist in me, you shouldn’t waste your time debating with me.”
I concur.
The fact that I didn’t draw this conclusion the first time is to blame on my optimism. Now that you have failed the second and third chances I gave you, perhaps I should take my own advice and reconsider this naive assumption, and face the fact that on the fundamental level, you are too closed-minded for me to reason with.

By the way, it’s not “thinking outside the non-god box” that atheists refuse to do. It’s “thinking inside the god box.”
And in fact, I even find myself doing this all the time. The structural flaws are much more visible from the inside, to anyone with any insight into box building.
The science box is designed much more thoughtfully, and it’s more spacious to boot.

Well, it’s been my experience that some people are too close-minded to master the skill of nonviolent communication.

I’m polite enough under normal circumstances. I’m not going to handle people with kid gloves when they need to be confronted with their mendable flaws.

Why are we still talking?

I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings.

If you’re sincere about that, I appreciate it. Lurve.
You didn’t hurt my feelings, though. You only made me lose my patience.

I’m afraid I can’t apologise for what I said. Although I may have worded it more relentlessly than I needed to, I do think the essence of what I said is true.
I contend that your refusal to reconsider your beliefs is a very bad thing, and I will have to take it into consideration the next time I’m about to take you seriously on any theoretical issue. I’m sorry.
If you really care about my approval, you’ll have to learn to be more intellectually honest to yourself.

I recommend that either way. You’d do yourself more of a favour than me.