Why wouldn't you conclude that this "unknown reeason" was a hallucination? On what grounds are you dismissing the hypothesis exactly?

On the fact that I always see them and don't see such unusual things anywhere else. The fact that no one else ( a vanishingly tiny sample of humanity) I know can see them would be no reason to conclude that I don't possess a faculty that allows me to see what some, or perhaps many or even most, others cannot see.

Also, if they reliably appeared as real to me as a hedgehog would, and they responded by running into the bushes and hiding if I got too close, why would I not believe they were not merely hallucinations?

. I don't know, I just feel like there is no way to fully disprove Scepticism. — Hobbez

That's correct but the sooner you realize that the game isn't about proofs the better. Empirical claims are not provable. Proofs are pertinent to mathematics and logic, and even in that realm they're only relative to how particular systems of mathematics and logic are constructed.

Rather than proofs, your focus should be on why you'd believe any claim over the claim(s) that is contradictory to it. Focus on the reasons you have to believe a claim, where you should have reasons other than the fact that what a claim describes is possible, and beyond that you have to assess whether you have better and/or more reasons to believe one claim versus another. None of that is going to be about proof.

You are avoiding answering my question. What here constitutes reasonable evidence of this not being a hallucination?

Not at all. I'm saying that under the stipulated conditions I would have no good reason to think i was hallucinating. If you think I would have good reasons to believe that, then lay it out for me.

I'm baffled which stipulated condition you think rules out hallucinations here. Your point stretching makes it clear you don't have a good argument.

The fact that I am not a drug taker, do not suffer from mental illness or have any other unusual ecperiences. I shouldn't have to spell it out; a modicum of good faith should have already made it clear to you by now.

In any case you are simply prejudicially assuming that the default assumption should be hallucination; you are assuming what you need to argue for. Why should I suspect hallucination in the absence of the usual markers for it, as I have stipulated? I'm looking for an argument not merely an invocation of some assumed normative principle. It is precisely the value of such normative principles which is in question. It's laughable that you try to paint the situation to look like I don't have a good argument, when I don't need an argument to believe according to my experience, which is always the natural default, and it is rather you who are being asked to provide an argument as to why I shouldn't trust my experience.

Look at it from another angle; apart from any considerations about the objective truth of my belief (it's actual accordance with reality which cannot ever be known for sure anyway) what would it matter if I believed there were pixies there, if that belief is in complete accordance with my own repeatedly and soberly confirmed experience? What do you think the pragmatist, who acknowledges that the truth of the matter, in the normally understood correspondence sense, cannot be known and is hence irrelevant, will say would be the appropriate pragmatic considerations in a case such as this, where the choice would seem to be to either capitulate to the common opinion out of fear of what might be thought of me, or to follow what seems plain and irrefutably in accordance with my experience?

I've noticed that there haven't really been any crippling defeats in scepticism, which makes me wonder, can't you disprove any philosophy. You can read something such as Rene Descartes, with his 'I think, therefore I am' and I realised it was based on logic. So couldn't an Evil Demon fool you into believing in Logic? And once you say that, couldn't you just argue with any philosophy, saying 'How do you know?' and end it there. I don't know, I just feel like there is no way to fully disprove Scepticism. What do you think? — Hobbez

I think scepticism is fine. Then again, I determine nothing.

The fact that I am not a drug taker, do not suffer from mental illness or have any other unusual ecperiences. — John

Thus proving my point. All one can do is constrain one's uncertainty as to what might be the explanation by adding further constraining information. You can work to rule out empirical possibilities in this kind of fashion.

And yet, one can indeed constrain one's uncertainty like this. It is reasonable. And also, as I say, it starts with the attempt to eliminate the most obvious explanations, not by jumping straight to the most incredible.

In any case you are simply prejudicially assuming that the default assumption should be hallucination; — John

Yes. Of course I start with the most reasonable belief. It would be crackpot to do anything else.

rather you who are being asked to provide an argument as to why I shouldn't trust my experience — John

But that reason has already been stipulated. All your friends joining you at the bottom of the garden can see the hedgehog, but are now looking at you wondering about your sanity as you chatter away to the little pixies only you think you see.

Or maybe they slipped you the drugs and are now having a good laugh. That would certainly be a more plausible explanation rather than that you were experiencing something real, wouldn't you say?

And if you don't, then explain just why.

what would it matter if I believed there were pixies there, — John

Err....

Scepticism at its most basic is doubting what is generally taken for granted. You can be sceptical about specific things, or sceptical in a more general sense, in the sense of challenging conventional wisdom.

Scientific method relies on scepticism in the sense that it ascertains by observation and experiment what the real causes of some event or phenomena is. But science can also become a conventional belief-system, in the case of 'believing in the scientific worldview' which makes general statements about life, the universe and everything. A lot of what is described as scepticism nowadays is tacitly based on the idea of what is and what isn't felt to be 'scientifically respectable'.

I think a useful scepticism is to question conventional beliefs, the kinds of things that we normally assume to be true - especially those things that 'everyone knows'. That is a useful form of scepticism. Where it becomes a hindrance is when it starts to niggle and doubt for the sake of it. 'Oh yeah? Prove it!' Hardly any point debating that kind of scepticism.

Well, you're ignoring the stipulations that I always see the pixies, and that I am well aware that others don't see them, and that I don't have any other unusual experiences.

This whole discussion about pixies has been a side issue, in any case; because I already acknowledged that empirical evidence is self-evidently the evidence of choice when it comes to empirical matters.

Also, exactly what is the "err" meant to signify? What would it matter if I was a sane, well-functioning, high achieving person in every way, who never experienced hallucinations ( leaving aside the question as to whether the unique case of the pixies are hallucinations or not) but because I happened to inexplicably constantly see pixies in my garden, I chose to believe that they were not hallucinations, while suspending judgement as to what they were (which I actually think would be the most reasonable course in the hypothetical example I have given).

Actually it is believed by some that people in the past really did see such entities as fairies and pixies; but that we have simply lost the capacity. Of course the modern explanation is going to be that they were hallucinating; see figments of their imaginations; but how many non-drug affected, non-'mentally ill' people experience such convincing hallucinations today? The other point is that most thinkers these days only allow for two possibilities; either something is objectively, observer-independently real or it is merely imaginary. Perhaps there are other possibilities we no longer allow due to our objectivised view of the world.

And you still haven't offered any argument as to why we should think hallucination would be the best explanation; you just keep asserting it over and over. Perhaps you should open up the throttle on the old mind a little; it might be in a bit of a rut.
;)

So your bottom line is scepticism about hallucinations and credulity about pixies. Cool.

:-}

I have taken a photo of fairies.


This is a high resolution image, http://www.anbdesign.co.uk/wood.jpg

I once started a thread with this photo on the internationalskeptics forum(James Randi forum). It was fascinating the lengths they went to to discredit what was before their eyes.

So I can see at least 22 good faces including some three dimensional looking beings in this photo and for someone who is new to it they probably can't see any of them.

How many can you see? Or do you deny they are there?

How many can you see? — Punshhh

None. Especially because I see no boots.

. As soon as we necessarily become involved in trying to understand how holding beliefs can be justified by their usefulness to us in more than merely practical ways, — John

I don't understand the idea there. What is useful to us in more than merely practical ways?

Not you again! I hope.

In one sense, a la personal identity, it's always me again, but in terms of (onto)logical identity (rather than personal identity), I'm different from moment to moment, we only have genidentity, so it's never me again, and your hopes are realized, just as if I were the genie of your dreams.

Phew that's a relief, the person I was thinking of would never have said that!

Anyway, I don't believe that you can't see any fairies, you just haven't looked hard enough. You're to skeptical, because your world view denies their presence.

If something contributes to a feeling of well-being, for example, that is distinguishable from something that contributes only to my project of building a house, in terms of the latter being merely practically useful and the former not being merely practically useful.

It doesn't really make sense to me because I think of practical and useful being two terms for more or less the same thing.

Who could ever want to 'disprove' (odd word) scepticism? I like to know that annoying little terrier is always snapping and yapping at my heels.

OK - none.

I have found it's difficult to explain to someone where to look and what to look for. I think it can raise some interesting issues about how perception affects empirical knowledge. Once a person has seen one of the faces, they always see it clearly whenever they look at the photo. It's as though it is really obvious and they can't easily imagine not seeing it. While someone who has not seen it can struggle and struggle and just not see it.

On the sceptics forum, they just kept sayings it's paredoila and wouldn't consider anything else.

Let me try and tell you where a face is. If you roughly divide the bottom and the left side of the photo into ten squares like a grid reference, Zero at the bottom left corner. There is a light brown tabby cat looking out towards you, but looking past you slightly to your right, in the second square across the bottom and first up, in fact it's chin is almost touching the bottom of the photo. It appears to be wearing a white bib under its chin.

Anyway, I am thinking that we are programmed to consider something like a face as an important thing in our environment and have highly acute perception of facial recognition. This suggests that we have a strong anthropocentric bias. The implication being that any ideology we find pragmatically useful, perhaps, is given a bias of importance and correctness above its station.

P.s. There is a cheeky green goblin in the dead centre looking to your right with a dark coloured tricorn hat on. A prize to who can see him first.

Don't know what it means to be practiced at that, but when I was a kid I had a room with board paneling full of knots, and I could see a lot of eerie faces. After looking for a minute or two, I see 9.

Good start, any in 3D. Have you seen the wolf man yet?

I was once in a state where I saw faces everywhere, I was in an emotionally unstable condition at the time. But I have retained the propensity to do it.

Fine, it's up to you if you want to deprive yourself of a perfectly valid distinction.

Yeah, a couple. Is the wolf man the bottom center stump thing?

No but I just saw a bat face there.
He is if you go by the grid reference I mentioned above. He is second square in from the left(if the photo is ten squares wide and a fraction over half way up. He is the darke green area and is looking out at you, but slightly down and to your right. The dark area is his chest and just above and slightly to the right is his face.

Whoops wrong thread. The trouble with late night messages.