I am going to need more than a personal experience account, right? — Tom Storm

Yes, and that "more" could be other anecdotal information. It's evidence and evidence can confirm or disconfirm a theory. There's no reason, in principle, why anecdotal evidence can't confirm a supernatural theory. I posted a scenario just above your post. What do you think of it?

Pretty sure we can find thousands of people today who have been 'abducted and probed by aliens'. Do we have good reason to accept all these anecdotes? I would say no. — Tom Storm

Do we have good reason to deny all these anecdotes? I would say no.

My point is that when enough anecdotal evidence piles up, it's OK to conclude something strange is going on. — RogueAI

The plural of anecdote is not data.

Do we have good reason to deny all these anecdotes? — RogueAI

Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof.

That said, I think anecdotes can sometimes be interesting and they may well form a reason to investigate something further. But for the most part they are fairly useless in themselves.

I'll be a lot more interested the moment Southern Baptist's start seeing visions of Shiva and Hindus start seeing Mary Magdalene... :wink:

The plural of anecdote is not data. — Tom Storm

Of course it is. One eyewitness might not be enough to nail a suspect but 20 eye witnesses all agreeing on the same appearance is MASSIVE confirmation to the theory "The suspect was at the scene of the crime".

One person complaining to the city council about the new stoplight could be ignored, but 500 complaints means something got screwed up. The plural of anecdote clearly is data.

Tom:

Suppose I'm a research scientist you know really well, and I claim I have a guy I've given the ESP card test to 100 times and I say he aces it every time. What would you believe after that conversation.

:up:

Supernatural as a concept is intelligible. But declaring something supernatural seems, to repeat myself, presumptuous and foolish. — Art48

'Miracles are not against nature, but against what we know of nature' ~ Augustine.

One person complaining to the city council about the new stoplight could be ignored, but 500 complaints means something got screwed up. The plural of anecdote clearly is data. — RogueAI

You're confusing categories - perhaps an equivocation fallacy. We are talking here about feedback regarding a tangible matter of council business, not an anecdote about the improbable or impossible. Try getting council to deal with the matter of 'invisible vampires' hovering near the local tip....

What would you believe after that conversation. — RogueAI

I would believe nothing in either direction, it's just an anecdote. Isn't this the point we have been addressing?

If I cared about ESP testing I might say - 'So you think you have a good candidate for someone who has an ability? Let's test it independently with stringent conditions.'

I think we are probably done. You think anecdotes count as good evidence, I don't consider them good evidence. I get it... :wink:

"Blessed are the gullible ..." :smirk:

I think we are probably done. You think anecdotes count as good evidence, I don't consider them good evidence. I get it... :wink: — Tom Storm

I think there is middle ground here. An observation in science is a tiny (rigorously controlled in good research) anecdote. We did X (with these testing protocols and Y happened 83% of the time.

Also not all evidence that comes to us is from scientific research. IOW I think we are forced to take from anecdotal evidence and other non-scientific sources evidence, given what life and the world is like. And we all make important decisions - in the sense of having effects on ourselves and other poeple - based on evidence from not scientifically controlled sources.

We parent, vote, try to find romantic partners, succeed at work and in freetime activites, seek out contacts, friends, employers..... based on all sorts of anecdotal and other less than scientific research level rigor sources.

We can make it all binary. Scientific consensus items here. Don't believe in any important way anything else.

But no one does this. They may seem to take that as an official position, but I don't think they could get by actually living it.

And if we go back to say the 50s it was scientific consensus that speaking about animal emotions, intentions, etc. was all ungrounded speculation. Meanwhile animal trainers, pet owners, indigenous people all went ahead and acted like and believed that animals were subjects with these internal states. It was actually professional damaging to speak about animals as fellow subjects with experiences, goals, emotions, etc.

There are paradigmatic biases in what is investigated and what models are allowed.

This doesn't mean anyone should be compelled to believe things on anecdotal and other not as rigorous as science is supposed to be. But at the same time it can be quite rational to believe in things that are not currently supported by consensus science.

I use the phrase not currently supported, to make a category different from 'contradicts or seem to current consensus science'. Since I believe this can be seeming and not outright contradiction I don't rule out a person being rational who believe something like this either. However it's shakier ground.

Hundreds of folk say they saw Elvis alive after 1977. Apparently he must have faked his death and lives amongst us. He even showed up as an extra in Home Alone. :razz:

You may be right. I was talking specifically if we should believe claims about the 'supernatural' based on anecdotes. Needless to say this is a discussion lacking in precision and clarity and where supernatural begins and ends or what counts as supernatural is still open. I don't consider claims about animal behaviour supernatural, but I am not a scientist, so I'll leave it to others to comment further on this. I am also not trying to set myself up as some kind of scientistic fiend.

We parent, vote, try to find romantic partners, succeed at work and in freetime activities, based on all sorts of anecdotal and other less than scientific research level rigor sources. — Bylaw

Indeed, but I don't know what this has to do with my position. I never claimed people make all decisions based on careful reasoning and evidence. I certainly don't - I go by intuition a lot. (This still contains experience and judgement.) I simply made comment on whether I would accept a belief in supernatural claims (let's say gods, ghosts, demons) based on anecdotes. Answer: no.

Indeed, but I don't know what this has to do with my position. I never claimed people make decisions based on careful reasoning. I certainly don't - I go by intuition a lot. I simply made comment on whether I would accept a belief in supernatural claims (let's say gods, ghosts, demons) based on anecdotes. Answer: no. — Tom Storm

I believe you. I can see that the statements I was reacting to were in the context of that discussion. I read it as a more general claim.

I don't consider them good evidence — Tom Storm

I do. Obviously not all anecdotes. But I make decisions all the time that use anecdotes, often unconsciously, as evidence. I more or less have to. If I can check with scientific research and be pretty sure the research is not tainted by corporate funding, then I may well do that. I have other paradigmatic based criteria also. But there are all sorts of situations where I choose to consider anecdotes good evidence. I might wish I had great evidence, but it is good enough to sway me towards decision X, following pattern of behavior Y, giving Z a try and so on.

And for me it doesn't matter how the phenomenon in question is categorized. It could have been seen as elephants were being attributed psychic powers.

For example: people lving near elephants and then some non-African visitors thought that elephants could communicate over long distances - one non-African actually could feel what later was discovered to be the method of communication. — Bylaw

or that rogue waves were magical entities cast by Poseiden.

Rogue waves is another example. Current fluid physics/oceanography/meteorology ruled out the possibility of rogue waves. It wasn't possible given what they knew or 'knew'. It didn't fit then current models. Later after changes in technology confirmed what was dismissed as faulty emotional judgments on witnesses, then scientists sought out to explain what was going on.

What matters to me is the kinds of evidence I get and in many cases I cannot get evidence that matches the ideal rigor I wish it could.

Personally I think Supernatural is a poor term. It's a kind of unnecessary ontological claim (and one used by skeptics and believers alike).

↪180 Proof Hundreds of folk say they saw Elvis alive after 1977. Apparently he must have faked his death and lives amongst us. He even showed up as an extra in Home Alone. :razz: — Tom Storm

Sure, you can have terrible heuristics when dealing with anecdotes. Or you can have good ones. Anecdotes can come from people suffering psychotic breaks, from experts in their fields, from people you know, from combinations of these things, from people with clear motives, from people whose motives would go against them saying X was true, to anecdotes based on stories with constructions like 'it must have been X because Y' and that makes no sense to anecdotes where the same construction is used in way that makes sense.

If we read your comment (and of course one gets to be polemical) it is as if this example shows that anecdotes cannot and should not be used as evidence. I don't see it as this binary.

Right but in a philosophy forum it is an immediate claim to dualism — Bylaw

I don't think it necessitates dualism. Idealism, a monist ontology might be an equal explanation. But even if it does imply dualism, what of it?

Sure, but it's a good shorthand in ordinary conversation. — Tom Storm

Right but in a philosophy forum it is an immediate claim to dualism

Sorry I screwed up the formatting of my earlier post and deleted it.

UFO's seen in the sky as proof of aliens - No — Tom Storm

Now you are using the word proof. Before it was evidence.
UFOs seen in the sky by navy pilots on hundreds of occasions. This included only instances where they were near enough to see that the objects changed directions in ways other planes and balloons (and other usual suspects cannot).
Note, this doesn't mean it's aliens, could be some kind of human made craft. But I think it evidence that something very out of the ordinary is happening.
Not proof, yes.

Sure - sloppy of me. I worked with a guy who says it is proof. That's his understanding of anecdotes in action. I'm all across tic tac reports.

People seeing visions of god/s as evidence of God existing - No
People seeing a large monkey man as evidence of Bigfoot - No
People reporting their life turned around after they started believing in Allah as evidence of Allah - No
People seeing Elvis Presley at a filling station in Fresno as evidence that Elvis lives - No
People seeing a demon as evidence for Christianity - No
People claiming to have been abducted by aliens as evidence of aliens - No — Tom Storm

As for the rest. Yes, some people may think their single personal experience is proof. Those people exist. Also they make leaps in what it might be evidence for, such as in my UFO response.

However I think this is leaving out a lot of middle ground instances. Where some of the criteria I mentioned above for the speakers makes a difference.

I do follow a pragmatic theory of truth (a lot of the time) so this affects how I view things. I also see no reason to decide that if someone labels something supernatural it should be treated differently. The categorization may be wrong. I've met people who believe in some of those things, who do base their beliefs in part on anecdotal evidence, generally including their own experiences, but who do not assume that there is enough evidence for non-experiencers to be convinced by.

This thread, it seemed to me, began with the idea that we can rule out things like things batched under supernatural per se and anecdotal is meaningless and could never be evidence.

I think that's problematic because observations are anecdotes meeting criteria. (More criteria than the ones I mentioned around what we generally think of as anecdotes (scientific protocol stuff).)

And then because we all act based on anecdotes. I see that has twisted my reaction to your posts which are not following the OP line.

But if anecdotes are not evidence, period, well, most people are acting with great lack of care in relation to themselves and others and irrationally a large percentage of the time.

Got it

I forget what this thread is about. I think I was simply making the point that of the supernatural matters commonly posited - ghosts, gods, demons, spirits - I'm not inclined to belief in them even if there are lots of anecdotes in their support. I might have skipped the term anecdote and used 'personal experience' instead. Either way, it's getting late here, I have Covid and I may start speaking in tongues soon.

Well, what do you think of my criterion for "proof" of the supernatural in my previous post just before yours, Art? — 180 Proof

Do you mean presently-known laws of nature or known and unknown laws of nature. In the original post, Thor experiences something beyond the laws of nature his culture knows. Bylaw makes a similar point.

My point is that when enough anecdotal evidence piles up, it's OK to conclude something strange is going on. — RogueAI

Look at the original post. What was done to Thor could be done to his entire tribe, a wireless doorbell camera in each hut. And then there's the well-known scenario where someone knows a eclipse is about to occur, waves his hands, and the primitive tribe sees the sun go dark. A few minutes later, another wave of the hand restores the sun. In the mind of the tribe, the man has clearly demonstrated "supernatural" power.

Do you mean presently-known laws of nature or known and unknown laws of nature. — Art48

In principle any (mathematized) laws of nature. Remember: 20th c Conservation Laws are not significantly inconsistent with 17th c Newtonian Laws of Motion.

There's no reason, in principle, why anecdotal evidence can't confirm a supernatural theory. — RogueAI

We have better than anecdotal evidence for lightening; we have eye-witness testimony. I've even seen it myself. For centuries, lightening was thought to be supernatural. "A History of the Warfare of Science With Theology in Christendom" by Andrew D. White (you can find it online) has an account of how preachers condemned Ben Franklin's lightening rod as trying to frustrate the artillery of heaven. They couldn't explain it so they dubbed it "supernatural."

Google "frogs rain from the sky". Another natural event someone might dub "supernatural."

We just don't know everything that's possible. Walk on water? Change water into wine? Raise the dead? These all may be natural events that we haven't discovered how to do yet.

Bylaw made the point I was trying to make better than me. Indeed, I would say the vast majority of what we think we know about the world comes from anecdotal information. We make decisions based on it all the time.

Imagine Thor is a primitive person who lives in a hut. Imagine hiding a wireless doorbell camera that has a speaker somewhere in Thor’s hut. Thor enters and hears a voice, “Thor. I am God. Fall on your knees.” Thor looks around, confused; he can’t believe his ears. “Thor. Stop looking around and fall on your knees.” Thor complies. Later, he swears to everyone that he had a supernatural experience, that God spoke to him. When we perfect 3D free-standing holograms, we could project an image for Thor. Now, Thor would swear he heard and saw God, too. — Art48

What do you envisage happened when Thor found the hidden camera/speaker combo? (why did you choose one with a doorbell?). Who planted the camera/speaker? Technically advanced aliens? A time traveller? Why did you choose to reduce the deity Thor to a primitive person? Why is it not just 'Fred,' the primitive person?
Do you think it's possible to fool all of the people all of the time?

Pardon the late reply, 180 Proof.

I think that to observe a change in nature which within the constraints of the 'laws of nature' could not be caused, even in principle, by any natural event, force, or agent implies that that causal "something" is inconsistent with – not constrained by – the 'laws of nature'. — 180 Proof

Okay. So, logically a follow-up question for me is, how's it determined what, in principle, "the constraints of the laws of nature" are?

Given that the premise of your question does not convey what I've stated, I have no idea how to answer.

Supernatural as a concept is intelligible. But declaring something supernatural seems, to repeat myself, presumptuous and foolish. — Art48

I almost agree. Since our Epistemology (knowledge) is entirely based on sensory perceptions, we can never know anything that is outside-of (or above) Nature. However, since Ontology (being) is derived from rational inference, we can follow a chain of reasoning back toward it's source, even back in time : as Astrologers did to conclude that the beginning of our space-time (world-being) was an ex nihilo emergence from an unknown source.

Hence we have no empirical knowledge of anything before the beginning. So making positive epistemological "declarations" would be presumptuous. But it would not necessarily be "foolish", if our love of wisdom (philosophy) leads us to speculate into the darkness beyond the bang. As you said, we can conceive of a supernatural existence, but we can't perceive such a thing. Therefore, supernatural "declarations" are unsupportable, but preternatural "speculations" are legitimate for both scientists (multiverse) and philosophers (creator). If you are philosophically curious, it may enhance your personal worldview to bracket your known-world with a pre- and post- existence ontology. :smile:

PS__"In the beginning, God . . ." is a declaration. But, before-the-Big-Bang is like north-of-the-North-Pole" is an analogy. And the number-before-number-one is merely a mathematical challenge. Negative number, infinite number, imaginary number?