The problem for the rationalists is that it's ridiculous for anyone to believe they already know everything about how the universe works.
If you've never had any inexplicable experiences, it's easy to dismiss them. If you have - not so much. Especially if you're rationalist enough to be able to discount all the traditional rationalist explanations.
The experiences exist. Most psychics are useless. A tiny minority appear to have something interesting to say.
Reality is the ultimate judge of what needs to be explained. When reality does something unexpected, it's neither rational nor wise to jump up and down shouting loudly that existing models define everything that needs to be known with absolute precision and perfection, and therefore the unexpected thing didn't happen.
How is that a problem for rationalists? Isn't this just the 'science doesn't know everything' gambit?
- Jake If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
I am willing to accept that just like there are colourblind people and women with four colour pigments in they eyes, I might be lacking a "sixth sense".
The difference with colour vision is that it is actually possible to construct physical devices that analyse colour in more detail than the eye of any living thing can, and it is possible to identify the pigments that provide colour vision. So you can convince someone who suffers from dichromatism that there is something most other people can perceive and they cannot. We have met the enemy, and he is us — Pogo
provable? i don't know, maybe one day, maybe it's a fluke.
i suspect it is true, and if not is still an excellent metaphor.
i believe our senses are becoming finer tuned, though it's obvious other animals are way ahead of us in some departments.
it is also interesting to speculate if some back in pliny's time did see other colours, and how hard put they may have been to share their observations with those who thought them delusional. ~"When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate." Karl Jung~
The question is: is a colour seen if it doesn't have a name? Colours are identified as 'patterns' in the mind by the same process of finding signal in noise by which everything else is made mentally discrete. Yes, of course the photons are striking the retina at different frequencies, but the mind still has to find frequency difference 'of importance'. You can't be me, I'm taken
But since there are wavelengths of light at which all pigments will react, albeit at different relative intensities, the way the visual system responds to frequency is quite convoluted and indirect. We have met the enemy, and he is us — Pogo
The question is: is a colour seen if it doesn't have a name?
The answer is Yes, as Berkeley cognitive psychologist Eleanor Rosch in a series of studies on so-called "natural" categories in 1973-75.
However, more recent studies are finding nevertheless that language affects our categorization of perceptual continua and substantial evidence of cognitive color differences between different language communities, particularly on where the boundaries of these natural categories for colors are set, e.g.
Color categories: Evidence for the cultural relativity hypothesis (2004.10.15) - Debi Roberson, Jules Davidoff, Ian R.L. Davies and Laura R. Shapiro
Roberson, Davies, & Davidoff (2000) reported a series of experiments that set out to replicate and extend the work of Rosch Heider in the early 1970s (Heider and Olivier, 1972 and Rosch Heider, 1972). Rosch Heider's experiments had been particularly influential in promoting the view that language and cognitive experience are largely independent (in some cases, orthogonal). Investigating another traditional culture, Roberson et al. found substantial differences in perceptual judgments and memory performance between a language with eleven basic color terms and one with only five (Berinmo). These differences, unlike the data of Rosch Heider from Dani speakers, suggested that language not only facilitates memory performance, but also affects the perceived similarity of perceptual stimuli; a result also found in other cross-cultural investigations of color (Kay and Kempton, 1984 and Stefflre et al., 1966). <...> Perceptual continua such as color may thus be a special case for categorization with the consequence that the influence of culture (and language as the instrument of culture) may be strongest just for those `fuzzy' sets for which there are not obvious discontinuities in nature. Indeed, our recent developmental studies show that Himba children behave like English children in making color similarity judgments when both know no color names (Roberson et al., in press). Initially, both judge color similarity on perceptual grounds. Thereafter, the origins of the color categories in different societies might be constrained by different cultural or environmental needs (Nisbett et al., 2001, Sera et al., 2002, Wierzbicka, 1990 and Wierzbicka, 1992), but this question is beyond the scope of the present study. Whatever the origin of the observed differences between the color terminologies of different societies, linguistic categorization, in adults, appears isomorphic with cognitive representation. Perceptual space appears to be distorted at the boundaries of color categories, so that, even when two languages have the same number of terms and those terms cluster around similar points in perceptual space, speakers of those languages show significant differences in their cognitive organization of color space. Thus, when considering whether two sets of categories are effectively equivalent, the position of the category boundaries should be considered of, at least, equal importance with the category centers. [emphasis mine]
<...>
Perceptual continua such as color may thus be a special case for categorization with the consequence that the influence of culture (and language as the instrument of culture) may be strongest just for those `fuzzy' sets for which there are not obvious discontinuities in nature. Indeed, our recent developmental studies show that Himba children behave like English children in making color similarity judgments when both know no color names (Roberson et al., in press). Initially, both judge color similarity on perceptual grounds. Thereafter, the origins of the color categories in different societies might be constrained by different cultural or environmental needs (Nisbett et al., 2001, Sera et al., 2002, Wierzbicka, 1990 and Wierzbicka, 1992), but this question is beyond the scope of the present study. Whatever the origin of the observed differences between the color terminologies of different societies, linguistic categorization, in adults, appears isomorphic with cognitive representation. Perceptual space appears to be distorted at the boundaries of color categories, so that, even when two languages have the same number of terms and those terms cluster around similar points in perceptual space, speakers of those languages show significant differences in their cognitive organization of color space. Thus, when considering whether two sets of categories are effectively equivalent, the position of the category boundaries should be considered of, at least, equal importance with the category centers.
[emphasis mine]
but can one extrapolate to suggest that a lack of language (or in this case, the lack of a name or any cultural value in naming) leads to non-categorization? ;-)
To bring out the chestnut again: my father, a non-artistic accountant, could only see the difference between 3 or 4 greens on a Dulux colour paint chart (though he could identify darker and lighter greens). My 7 years art training meant that I could differentiate over a whole range of greens of similar tone. I'm guessing - but maybe by a factor of 10. My dad just couldn't see them. You can't be me, I'm taken
I shall have to look up some experiments in this field. You can't be me, I'm taken
Language Log: Sasha Aikhenvald on Inuit snow words: a clarification
The story about Inuit (or Inuktitut, or Yup'ik, or more generally, Eskimo) words for snow is completely wrong. People say that speakers of these languages have 23, or 42, or 50, or 100 words for snow --- the numbers often seem to have been picked at random. The spread of the myth was tracked in a paper by Laura Martin (American Anthropologist 88 (1986), 418-423), and publicized more widely by a later humorous embroidering of the theme by G. K. Pullum (reprinted as chapter 19 of his 1991 book of essays The Great Eskimo Vocabulary Hoax). But the Eskimoan language group uses an extraordinary system of multiple, recursively addable derivational suffixes for word formation called postbases. The list of snow-referring roots to stick them on isn't that long: qani- for a snowflake, api- for snow considered as stuff lying on the ground and covering things up, a root meaning "slush", a root meaning "blizzard", a root meaning "drift", and a few others -- very roughly the same number of roots as in English. Nonetheless, the number of distinct words you can derive from them is not 50, or 150, or 1500, or a million, but simply unbounded. Only stamina sets a limit.
Language and mental categories are more than vocabulary. My wife can use much more words for colors than I do, yet I don't think she actually sees more colors than me - her additional vocabulary (taken from "real world items" in the fashion of rose and orange) makes sense to me.
I'd bet there would be more success looking for vocabulary determining conceptualisation in the more abstract categories of language - Do you have a conceptual category for your maternal cousins as opposed to your paternal ones ? Many people do... Un roi sans divertissement est un homme plein de misères
I can't think of any colour neologisms on English. But someone will no doubt prove me wrong. Colour names have changed over the millennia, but that is the natural morphing/erosion of language - another process. You can't be me, I'm taken
What about experiences that are not shared and not repeatable?
There's a difference between repeatability, verifiability using instruments, and the existence of a model which makes verifiability possible.
Many phenomena and experiences - some mainstream, some not - are repeatable, but can't be verified instrumentally, and have no model to describe them. Hypnotism is one example. No one knows how hypnotism works, but theatre entertainers make a living persuading people they're chickens or that the theatre is burning down. This makes it repeatable - or at least observable - without instruments. So it's accepted, more or less, even when there's no model.
Less observable is acupuncture. Acupuncture has a model - meridians and chi - but it's not a scientific or mainstream one. There is some evidence that it has a range of effects, but conclusive research is hard to find.
And that's one part of the problem. There are many reasons why conclusive research is hard to find, but one of them is that it is assumed that acupuncture does nothing, therefore there's no point in studying it. Studies are expensive and difficult to fund, and there's strong systemic pressure for scientists to study certain subjects and ignore others. So any evidence that might exist becomes less visible, making it easy for conservative rationalists to say 'There's no evidence.'
It's also part of the conservative rationalist toolkit to say 'Science has no model for this, therefore it can't exist'. This is a much more annoying argument - it's sloppy, intellectually dishonest, and not particularly rational.
What about psychic phenomena? Ian Stevenson spent his life looking at evidence that suggested reincarnation.
The suggestion of this is enough to make conservative rationalists blow a gasket. But look more closely at these criticisms and you'll see none of them deal with the evidence in detail. They're superficial comments about the places where Stevenson's views could be seen to conflict with the scientific mainstream. And yes - explicitly - we also have a criticism that these experiences can't exist because there's no model for them.
Which is interesting enough, but the evidence is what it is, and includes 30,000 studies looked at in some detail.
Now, it seems the honest thing to do here is to look more closely at the studies and check them for statistical errors, errors in interpretation, and possible repeatability.
Arguing that something is impossible 'because I don't understand how it can't be' doesn't cut much ice when there's at least enough of a hint to suggest that something - even if it's not exactly the claimed thing - is happening.
The point here is that subjective phenomena are usually perfectly repeatable, but they need an open mind and consistent attention, and they rarely get this. I know at least one researcher who believes that the accumulated evidence for certain paranormal events is at least as statistically significant as that for certain drug trials - and that's on the basis of thirty years of work at the fringes of academia in literally just two or three tiny labs, with next to no mainstream funding.
So why isn't there more interest? Typically there are presuppositions and prejudices on both pro- and anti- sides which make honest attention unlikely - the antis preferring to dismiss some subjects without looking at the evidence, and the pros tending to embroider them into a belief system which is often just as rigid in its own alternative way.
The real battleground isn't the evidence itself, such as it is, but the implied moral structures and narratives that people build on opposing sides of it.
So personally, since the only thing you can say about closed narratives is that they're usually wrong, I'm happy with a rather fuzzy agnosticism, and willing to admit that I have no idea if the universe is rational, helpful, hostile, indifferent, chaotic, ordered, or any other adjective.
So far I've only seen a very small slice of it, I have no idea how my own mind works, much idea about what's inside it, and I'm still learning what it can and can't do - which is why I think it seems premature to be too evangelical about certainty in any direction.
the police forces of the world (that use them) agree with you.
great summation tbg.
i hope you had a nice few days away, you were missed! ~"When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate." Karl Jung~
