"As the Deer"/ David Nevue (one of my current fave pianists)... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMOAmTtoa9A
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"As the Deer"/ David Nevue (one of my current fave pianists)... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XMOAmTtoa9A
Loved it, Tailor. For me the music has a soothing quality that goes well with the innocence of deers.
Nice music by David Neveu. It has a soothing quality.
Pam was trying to find ways to fool the dog. At 0:53, there is this text: "I did not tell my parents where I was going or when I would be back." The dog still knew. This doesn't work for all dogs. If it did one would be able to use a mechanistic model to predict future behavior.Quote:
Originally Posted by Danik 2016
Yes/No. You probably find me very stubborn, but the fact is I am really sceptic about the scientific value of this kind of videos (even admiting that the story is cute.). You have to basically rely on what they tell you and show you. I suppose it is not difficult to mount this kind of videos. It must be like filming animals for the cinema. For example, one in fact sees the dog waiting at the window or at the door. But how one could be sure that he is really waiting for Pam? He may be waiting for someone else or for a bowl of food. It may all be an illusion or it may all be true. But from a more scientific point of view there are not enough proofs.
It could be all fake. One has to be careful about what people report, including what skeptics assert. If it doesn't convince you, that is fine.
Ok, Yes/No.
I found this video. Couldnīt follow every single word because the lady speaks very quickly but the explanations are very clear.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PqjdRAERWLc
That is a good video. I will look at others in the series.
I like the Pyrrhonian skepticism position. In going further than the Academic skeptics, they not only doubted and thereby implied that knowledge was impossible, but they also doubted this "knowledge was impossible" knowledge. Knowledge might well be possible. Our views of reality might contain some truth. I assume they would not insist that we "prove" that we know what we know.
I kind of like the situation that we cannot know things "for sure". Our specific perspectives on reality suggest to me that this is what we should expect. We should expect to know things about reality, but not for sure. Pragmatically we accept what we want to accept as evidence.
To get back to the psi experiences with Pam's dog, Rupert Sheldrake did some experiments related to this phenomena. There are people who call themselves "skeptics" who doubt Sheldrake's results. There are other people (such as myself) who also call themselves "skeptics" who mistrust these skeptics and think of them as "pseudo-skeptics" or "dogmatic skeptics". Who's right? Given the Pyrrhonian skepticism no proof is possible. We just have to make a choice, which of the various positions we will accept and which reject.
Here is a video of Sheldrake answering a question about James Randi, one of the skeptics who doubts his work. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YB3SAD-gHTc
I listened to the video and I also had a look at Rupert Sheldrake himself. Here is the Wikipedia article for who else might want to follow this discussion as I suppose you did your own research on him: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rupert_Sheldrake
I found out that the man has a very solid university background (Cambridge);on the other hand as a scientist he is a very controversial character. That in itself is not necessarily a problem. Quite a lot of the greatest scientists were criticized and some of them even pursued before they were accepted and celebrated by the mainstream. Ironically in the university where I studied 40 years ago they were addept of a strict US behaviorist pattern with variables control and so on. An experiment like the one with Jaitee wouldnīt be considered complete. One would have had to register his complete behavior story with Pam, and specially the coming home routine. But the scientific parameters are changing as everything else is. But I think it is still too early to say if this man is really inovating science (the dog experiment is only one of his inovations). Only time will tell.
I think one needs to make sure experiments (of all kinds) are blinded: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blinded_experiment This is especially true given evidence of psi. I see the experiment with Jaytee as mainly documenting the phenomena, a case study, while the results could be reproduced. There isn't any theory being tested by this documentation. Sheldrake has a theory of morphogenic fields that I don't understand. Fields seem to me to be spatially constrained and require a numerical value at each point of space. Psi seems to transcend space.
I've been watching the Wireless Philosophy videos on epistemology that you showed me earlier. At the moment I suspect all the solutions trying to go beyond skepticism have some problem with them. They should be looking for the good that is in skepticism rather than trying to resolve it. There is this "brain in a vat" fantasy that comes from AI dreaming, however, if one looks at "social mood", that would behave in a similar way influencing our knowledge from outside of us as individuals. It is a better metaphor than Descartes' demon or brain in a vat for influences on what we claim to know, and is very likely real. I think a general solution around the problem of knowledge is not to put "knowledge" and "belief" against each other, but to use these as degrees of confidence on what we think is true where we are more confident of knowledge than beliefs and there being some falsity in each. The series of videos clearly explain the various positions.
Blinded experiments are often used, to my knowledge to test new medicines. In this case, if the experiment was performed in the way we are told, it was blinded inasmuch as neither Pam nor Jaitee were informed, when Pam was coming home. I think, with psichological experiments you have to have some fixed parameters so that you can repeat the experiment and compare results. My concern with this idea of the animal sensing when his/her owner comes back is atributing certain powers to animals (or to humans for that matter) without being sure about it. As all things are handled today with both eyes directed to the media, these dogs would be taken to talk shows and similars to demonstrate their abilities.
I watched only one of these videos, in fact in didnīt know there were more. My idea was to find a didactic definition of skepticism for our discussion. I didnīt quite get this idea of "brain in a vat", the rest seemed easy to understand.
"I think a general solution around the problem of knowledge is not to put "knowledge" and "belief" against each other, but to use these as degrees of confidence on what we think is true where we are more confident of knowledge than beliefs and there being some falsity in each."
I think you are right there and that it is a very occidental dicotomy where "knowledge" stands for science and "belief" for religion. I hope there are systems of thought where both can exist together.
My skepticism goes mainly against people and methods who want to play with the good faith of other people.I am Brazilian and the patron of my astrological sign is St. Thomas.
Funny impression just now when looking after many days at
http://nutiminn.is/kattarshians/
The cats were asleep as usual, but I couldnīt spot Thor (the yellow one)immediately. But then he woke up and put his head up looking as if in my direction and went to sleep again.
That dichotomy between "knowledge" (science) and "belief" (religion) is what bothers me also. The video prior to the one you linked to showed a difference between the two. One has to add onto belief stuff in order to get to knowledge. Although I disagree with that view, it is good to hear the position summarized in those videos with the key ideas expressed clearly.Quote:
Originally Posted by Danik 2016
I just watched another of those videos:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xehTcQeqDWs
What I like about the two I watched itīs that they are very clear. Very complex issues appear in a simplified form.
I read Descartes famous demonstration way back but I canīt remember him mentioning the evil genius. The funny thing is that the way to overcome skepticism seems to be to revert to the every day experience of your senses.
The most resistent animal of the world?
Meet the tardigrade:
http://www.sciencealert.com/new-stud...indestructible
The tardigrade radiation protection is impressive.
They did mention that it might help us avoid radiation poisoning once we left the magnetosphere around earth. That is one of the main reasons to claim that we never sent humans to the moon.
I don't see any way for us to overcome skepticism. We might think we have achieved it as Descartes did or Russell but then problems arise. True for everyday experiences we can have near 100% confidence in what we experience, enough to allow us to function reliably, but for the big issues our knowledge is just a belief system we are deluded into thinking is more than a belief. I don't see anything wrong with that.