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Originally Posted by David It may be a mistake to automatically assume that a theory of mental stuff would look so much like physical theory. |
All I'm assuming is that there will be some mechanism underlying consciousness, as opposed to entire human minds just existing out of nothing.
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However, what is needed to begin with is to collect some quality data rather than bicker over existing experiments! For example, determine once and for all if presentiment is an artefact or a genuine phenomenon. Do the same for some of Sheldrake's experiments. These experiments are fairly easily reproducible (i.e. they don't need long series of experiments to build up statistical significance), and could be exhaustively explored if it were not for the taboo.
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David, you're dreaming. You're living in a conspiratorial world in which some universal taboo is preventing the discovery of one of the most important aspects of human existence. This conspiracy has been going on for over 150 years, in spite of other paradigm-smashing discoveries that replaced entire chunks of science in less than 30 years. You're assuming that scientists give a flying crap about "prevailing philosophical ontologies" and care to protect some bit of philosophy that is basically irrelevant to their work.
The experiments are not fairly easily reproducible. There is no standard parapsychology experiment that can be performed by freshman parapsychologists at Duke University. It was going to be zener cards. Then it was going to be remote viewing. Then the Ganzfeld. Now it's supposed to be presentiment. The experimenter effect was rock-solid, except then Wiseman and Schlitz's third set of experiments failed to produce result for either of them.
Skeptics can come up with reasons to ignore some successful psi experiments, and believers can come up with reasons to ignore some failures. And that is precisely the reason we say that the experiments are not replicable.
~~ Paul