Jacobs

[sk4p]

Dr. Jacobs and Budd seem very earnest and serious about their work, but at about 35:30 into the program Jacobs says something which seems kinda telling. He says that abductees generally answered one of his questions one way, and non-abductees generally answered it the other way. And I've heard him say that very same thing in other interviews as well.

That's called "begging the question". It is a logical fallacy. (The term is often used loosely in everyday speech to mean something slightly different.) It is closely related to circular reasoning:

"How do you know abductees have this experience?"
"Because they answered the question this way."
"But how do you know those people were abductees?"
"Because they said they had that experience."

You start by assuming that, one, there is such a thing as alien abduction in the first place, and second, that a particular subset of your sample are abductees, and voila, you've got it.

Another case of "Look, you guys seem quite reasonable and friendly, and your hypothesis is worthy of investigation, but boy oh boy there's this big hole in your logic that I need you to address before I'll be convinced."

--Shawn

 

[Ally]

I started another thread on this show but I was much harsher on these two because I have to take this subject serious and try to understand it as much as I can.

It is helpful to have someone listen to you and take you serious when everyone else is saying this is crazy. Aside from that I would not recommend hypnosis with either of these people just because they are too sold on their theory.

I can say this because I have tried hypnosis several times and I personally do not remember anything I don't remember from conscious memory while under. With Dr Mack I went under quite deep and only knew that when I needed to use the restroom during the session and he said OK go ahead and come back. When I stood up and was still under I thought wow I didn't know I was under this deep. It just felt like how one would feel using the restroom in the middle of the night half asleep and then go back to bed kind of.

At the time of seeing Dr Mack he thought most of my severe and damaging trauma was caused by humans. He also had another Dr with him working with us. At times I would talk about an experience and speak of it in the alien abduction paradigm and language where Dr Mack would point out to the other Dr.my "error" of interpretation and belief. I respected this knowing that it is easy to lump any weird experience into a certain worldview because that is what human beings do.

 

[bluecat]

SK4P,

You are absolutely correct. Begging the question is a type of circular arguement in which the truth of the conclusion is assumed in a premise. It's a bit like using the word you are defining in the definition.

By the way, the Christian fellow who was on last week constantly misused the term "begging the question." It does not mean, " this question begs to be answered," or "this question leads to this question."

bluecat