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Philosophy, Science, & The Unexplained - Main Thread

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I edited my last post to include extra info. I know I arrived late to the thread--I just wanted to contribute.

No, I think it's fine to go back to any thing on the thread and appreciate your comments! - the experiment you mention above - it's important to remember that that sort of argument is very speculative and rests on certain assumptions - assumptions that are in line with our cultural beliefs today and so aren't always easy to see. The value in Plantinga is to offer some very sophisticated arguments (and reading Plantinga is a humbling experience) that aren't easy to dismiss - this helps us see how much of what we think is
 
I'm not sure how you would measure our skills at navigating new situations vs. a dog's or a shark's. Our fight, flight or stand still like a deer caught in the headlights response is also an automatic response. Everything may feel like consciousness is running the show but i suspect that's just a small piece of our day to day processing.

Again, I never said that anything should be dismissed,
OK, I think we've got that part now and I would be equally remiss to deny the validity of your points as you would be of mine. Good discussion :).
... simply that the accuracy of what that strange object/occupant was, is really open to debate and its actuality is translated by a complex process involving both socializing influences as well as physiological ones that interpret what is there. Some may be accurate and some may describe a floating teapot in the sky because that's the limitation of our senses and what informs their renderings. The person standing right beside them may see a lampshade instead.
I don't think the above examples mean people literally see teapots or lampshades, rather, they're simply using those shapes as examples to convey what the shape of what they observed resembled, e.g. "It was like a saucer skipping across the water."
Some of these really bizarre stories of ufo's, for example, shake down with confused reports by multiple witnesses of the same sightings, or others where some people see floating discs and others see a just normal blue sky. Perhaps our physiological limits play a role in these cases?
When it comes to UFOs ( alien craft ), we can't dismiss the possibility that they have the means to directly influence our perceptions. However because direct mental manipulation is more exotic than other possibilities, it is more likely that alien craft have some sort of high tech active camouflage. So given a small window of observing time, and small differences in the times the object is observed by different people, combined with different viewing angles, differing descriptions of the same object can be rationally explained. There's no need to invoke the frailty of human perception because it is entirely possible ( if not likely ) that they all described with reasonable accuracy what was actually visible to them.
 
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It seems he's reinterpreting philosophical issues to shoehorn his belief in God. I see no distinction between God and the Great Pumpkin, even if one is "properly basic". There's no reason to attribute a religious experience to God's existence (i.e. his grounds for existing). One has been socially conditioned to suppose that a real experience (in terms of sensory perception) has some metaphysical, divine meaning.

People often over-attribute agency to inanimate objects when filtering data. Religious beliefs itself may have evolved out of small social tribes as an adaptation to foster co-operation between individuals, before humans transitioned to the agrarian stage. The author of one paper (can't remember) cites one experiment where participants were asked to observe two magnetic spheres interacting, and write down their reactions. Responses varied from "Oh, they're [the spheres] are kissing!", "They're dancing," and so forth. Of course, the spheres aren't really dancing. This is just our brain filtering data; it's organizing specific events so that we can relate to them on some level. The authors found that a similar mechanism may be responsible for the social origins of religion. This might be the paper I'm referring to: http://www2.psych.ubc.ca/~henrich/pdfs/BIOT_a_00018.pdf

http://www2.psych.ubc.ca/~henrich/pdfs/BIOT_a_00018.pdf

interesting paper . . . but I didn't see the experiment with the kissing/dancing spheres, the part about the Itza' Maya was fascinating though
 
Yeah, the dancing spheres must've been in another paper. There are other examples of people over-attributing agency to inanimate objects. Glad you liked it.
 
OK, I think we've got that part now and I would be equally remiss to deny the validity of your points as you would be of mine. Good discussion :).


Yes, it was. Well, can we go a little further, then?

I don't think the above examples mean people literally see teapots or lampshades, rather, they're simply using those shapes as examples to convey what the shape of what they observed resembled, e.g. "It was like a saucer skipping across the water."

I was thinking if the "bathtub UFO" at the time, but yes that's the classical line for what I was thinking.


When it comes to UFOs ( alien craft ), we can't dismiss the possibility that they have the means to directly influence our perceptions. However because direct mental manipulation is more exotic than other possibilities, it is more likely that alien craft have some sort of high tech
active camouflage. So given a small window of observing time, and small differences in the times the object is observed by different people, combined with different viewing angles, differing descriptions of the same object can be rationally explained. There's no need to invoke the frailty of human perception because it is entirely possible ( if not likely ) that they all described with reasonable accuracy what was actually visible to them.

Perhaps some descriptions are accurate, but after listening to many of Wendy O'Connors Faded Discs' witness reports & interviews I am very struck by their inability to find proper words to describe what they have seen. They almost seem befuddled trying to find words for that which they just can't explain.

If you would indulge me - one last personal story about hallucination. Once I was in a really bad car accident where my brother was driving and he fell asleep at the wheel (while we were listening to an album called Too Much Sleep - that's the obligatory synchonstic part of the story). His foot was heavy on the accelerator as we sailed through an intersection, just missing two cars going in opposite directions. I screamed about twenty feet before we were about to hit the ramp to someone's driveway. In front of us was a giant cube van parked beside a house.

When I screamed he woke up and slammed the breaks just feet before the driveway. Our little Chevette leapt into the air and hit the ashphalt about to crash into the back of the cube van. My brain could not accept what was happening so in the 1.5-2 seconds before the impact I experienced this lengthy surreal narrative where our car flew up into the sky, over the van, the trees in the backyard and then we were flying in the Chevette over the park behind the house. We continued over the neighbourhood block, the stars overhead - it was enchanting and with grace we touched down in our driveway. In the next instant I was back in the vehicle hurtling towards the back of the van. I heard my brain tell me, "Ok, we're going to crash. It's going to be bad but you're both going to be okay, don't worry." And then, mass, rollicking destruction, the crash of metal on metal, broken glass and sudden stillness.

Those were the days of seatbelts being optional, but when we got in the car that night to go home from late work shifts, I put on mine and he reciprocated. If not for that, death would have been certain. But we both walked away from that accident uninjured. The vehicle was a write off. My teenage brother did not speak to anyone for a week.

The point of my story. In moments of high excitement, where the brain can not comprehend what we are actually seeing, we don't need aliens to control our minds. Our minds just make stuff up right on the spot. Like a good computer it sorts through past experience and gives us an altered, albeit possible, reality to experience as far as the unconscious is concerned. Our brains are not being deceived, or even faulty. They are just trying to help us out when the chips are down. It's what it does.
 
Interesting. According to Hynek, the inability of a witness to properly describe a UFO experience lends credibility to the account. And this is normal, since such encounters are expected to be sudden, transient and bizarre.
 
Credibility may be certainly enhanced by bumbling witness reports. My contention is that what is seen vs. what is reported may be two very different types of oranges altogeher, or things that rhyme with oranges; because, the mind is struggling to comprehend the impossible event witnessed as they have no words for it.
 
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If you would indulge me - one last personal story about hallucination ...
Sure. That's an interesting anecdote. Thanks for sharing it again ( or am I having a psychic flashback ;) ) ?
... Our minds just make stuff up right on the spot. Like a good computer it sorts through past experience and gives us an altered, albeit possible, reality to experience as far as the unconscious is concerned. Our brains are not being deceived, or even faulty. They are just trying to help us out when the chips are down. It's what it does.
Let's also be reminded that you were fast asleep only moments before and that the experience lasted only seconds, so it's not all that surprising that under those circumstances, your mind would crossfade dream imagery with objective reality. Perhaps some bedroom alien abduction accounts are exactly this type of thing. But what gets me is when some skeptic comes along and exploits an example like yours to suggest that rather rare and brief quasi-conscious experiences like yours can be equated with the fully conscious unimpaired perception of natural events in such a way that it justifies dismissing all out-of-the-ordinary experiences as one-in-the-same type of experience. They're not.
 
Sure. That's an interesting anecdote. Thanks for sharing it again ( or am I having a psychic flashback ;) ) ?

Let's also be reminded that you were fast asleep only moments before...
Maybe only half a déjà vu? You misread. It was my brother who fell asleep. I was awake throughout the whole thing, eyes wide open, but still I was transported to another realm via my unconscious. It was a complete, dream like hallucination, replete with all the usual great sense of joy whenever you get to fly in a dream.

Intellect just does not help to negotiate such moments; because, lizard brain chemistry has just taken over in this survival moment. If anything, in such moments, we're not even getting an opportunity to use that part of our brain.
 
Maybe only half a déjà vu? You misread. It was my brother who fell asleep. I was awake throughout the whole thing, eyes wide open, but still I was transported to another realm via my unconscious. It was a complete, dream like hallucination, replete with all the usual great sense of joy whenever you get to fly in a dream.
Please excuse my assumption there.
Intellect just does not help to negotiate such moments; because, lizard brain chemistry has just taken over in this survival moment. If anything, in such moments, we're not even getting an opportunity to use that part of our brain.
I've heard accounts of similar perceptual distortions from people involved in car accidents, but that still doesn't change the validity of the rationale in my last post. All we might be able to infer from such experiences are that if something is seen during such experiences, for example when you experienced the hallucination of the car flying up into the sky, if you had also seen a UFO during that experience, it would be reasonable to question the objective reality of that UFO. But what about the case when someone sees a UFO clearly to begin with while not under some hallucinogenic state induced by a heavily traumatic experience? Is it reasonable for some skeptic to explain away every experience as something other than what was observed? I don't think so. Neither do you. So where do you think we need to draw the line?
 
Yes, it was. Well, can we go a little further, then?

I was thinking if the "bathtub UFO" at the time, but yes that's the classical line for what I was thinking.



Perhaps some descriptions are accurate, but after listening to many of Wendy O'Connors Faded Discs' witness reports & interviews I am very struck by their inability to find proper words to describe what they have seen. They almost seem befuddled trying to find words for that which they just can't explain.

If you would indulge me - one last personal story about hallucination. Once I was in a really bad car accident where my brother was driving and he fell asleep at the wheel (while we were listening to an album called Too Much Sleep - that's the obligatory synchonstic part of the story). His foot was heavy on the accelerator as we sailed through an intersection, just missing two cars going in opposite directions. I screamed about twenty feet before we were about to hit the ramp to someone's driveway. In front of us was a giant cube van parked beside a house.

When I screamed he woke up and slammed the breaks just feet before the driveway. Our little Chevette leapt into the air and hit the ashphalt about to crash into the back of the cube van. My brain could not accept what was happening so in the 1.5-2 seconds before the impact I experienced this lengthy surreal narrative where our car flew up into the sky, over the van, the trees in the backyard and then we were flying in the Chevette over the park behind the house. We continued over the neighbourhood block, the stars overhead - it was enchanting and with grace we touched down in our driveway. In the next instant I was back in the vehicle hurtling towards the back of the van. I heard my brain tell me, "Ok, we're going to crash. It's going to be bad but you're both going to be okay, don't worry." And then, mass, rollicking destruction, the crash of metal on metal, broken glass and sudden stillness.

Those were the days of seatbelts being optional, but when we got in the car that night to go home from late work shifts, I put on mine and he reciprocated. If not for that, death would have been certain. But we both walked away from that accident uninjured. The vehicle was a write off. My teenage brother did not speak to anyone for a week.

The point of my story. In moments of high excitement, where the brain can not comprehend what we are actually seeing, we don't need aliens to control our minds. Our minds just make stuff up right on the spot. Like a good computer it sorts through past experience and gives us an altered, albeit possible, reality to experience as far as the unconscious is concerned. Our brains are not being deceived, or even faulty. They are just trying to help us out when the chips are down. It's what it does.


ive had an experience [singular] of 'slow motion of time' at high speed, around 120mph, i was driving early morning, tina turner belting out steamy windows, i was on a lap [fast lap] of the TT course, approaching a bend, not a brutal bend, a long sweeping bend between 2 fast straights, road was around 35/40ft wide, double white separating the 2 traffic flows.

as i entered i was as close to the kerb on my side of the carriageway as possible, 'straightening out' the bend as much as possible, and i had eased off the accelerator on the approach to the bend, and as i floored the accelerator again to get the grip and drive through the corner, at the same time chopping the nose of the bonnet across my side of the road to have one wheel straddling the centre white line's, to allow me to keep my foot flat to the floor, drive thru and comfortably handle the drift back out to the kerb on exiting the bend.

well feck me just as i was straddling the line and committed, the nose of a purple ford sierra pinching some white line, coming from the opposite direction appeared, and he was moving aswell having had a run down the straight approaching from his side, he must have shit himself, in yanking back off the whitelines i got into a tank slapper the front wheel hit the kerb and thru the car over completely to and in the opposite carriageway, and i exited the bend on the opposite side of the road still well in excess of 110 mph, it must of happened so feckin quick in reality, the only reason im alive is because time went into slow motion and even tho i got well out of shape, i was still in control, sure i was lucky there were no other cars behind him, but i drove the car out of that tank slapper, with my wing mirror getting bashed by undergrowth from the far hedge, and hearing the bodywork getting hit by over-hanging hedge plants as i got the car straightened out, only after i was out the other side of the bend and safe did my legs go, its a surreal experience having the time to think, and decision make, when in reality everything happens in seconds, it was like i viewed from outside in slow mo, yet i was hard on the brakes, off the brakes, flattened the accelerator again, just instinct i guess, and reacting to wherever the nose of the bonnet was pointing, being in a powerful front wheel drive car, having full rally spec suspension and shocks, and plain dumb luck also helped.

edit,

when i think back to my 20s [bikes] and my 30s [proper cars] i am pretty lucky to be around to tell the tale's really, all things considered, the TT course is a killer.
 
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at 8.18 is the exact place right on freeze at 8.18, i was going the same direction as the bike, and around 50mph slower, he is on closed roads, i only pinched as much white line as i dared, he makes it look easy doesnt he, but super impose the front headlight and bonnet suddenly appear, and you are truly there right with me, because that camera is seeing exactly what i was looking at.

im literally shaking looking at it and seeing in my minds eye the emerging car coming on at me, only difference is the white line was running under my drivers seat not up the centre of the car [my vision ], its the corner prior to it thats dodgy, its fast and real bumpy.

those days are long behind me, but driving that course is better than sex.

obviously time doesnt slow down, so your brain must go into over-drive and process info so quick it makes unfolding events seem much slower unfolding.

i also desribed a 20+ year ago event str8 from memory, only got the white line wrong, i thought they were double whites
 
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those days are long behind me, but driving that course is better than sex.

obviously time doesnt slow down, so your brain must go into over-drive and process info so quick it makes unfolding events seem much slower unfolding.

i also desribed a 20+ year ago event str8 from memory, only got the white line wrong, i thought they were double whites
I watched the video. That does look like fun, but better than sex? Manxman, you'll have to forgive me for this but I have to ask, are you sure you're doing it right? ;)

I thought your description was quite exceptional - superior to the video in fact. I also like the idea of the brain altering the sensory experience of time's flow by how our awareness tunes in to each piece of information. At such moments of high speed the brain must be completing calculations at incredibly rapid processing speeds as well. I wonder what test results NASA has done, along with simulations with high speed car racers, for the high speed decision making they have to make to succeed?
 
the course is 37 miles long l full lap, theres over 250 corners and bends like that, it is universally known as the most dangerous road race in the world, 100s of them arrive once a year from all around the world one fortnight a year to take part, they need the highest international racing liscences in the world to even be allowed to compete, and even then they have to wear orange luminous waist jackets so other riders know they are newbies and will get their lines wrong, and its still over- subscribed every year, all the main production bike teams come.

2 laps of the course then home for 7.30am and slip the wife a portion, now that's livin, i only did it when the roads were relatively dead, early mornings.
i would of donated one of my testicles to medical science to drive that course on closed roads
 
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But what about the case when someone sees a UFO clearly to begin with while not under some hallucinogenic state induced by a heavily traumatic experience? Is it reasonable for some skeptic to explain away every experience as something other than what was observed? I don't think so. Neither do you. So where do you think we need to draw the line?
It is definitely not reasonable for the skeptic to dismiss the improbable story unless there is reason to believe the witness has fabricated their story.

My line would be this: objects farther away, that may even perform unique flight path maneuvers, are still just lights in the sky. These are probably as accurately described as the witnesses are capable of doing. I think that close encounters with occupants, and with vessels so close that they also produce some strange heightned effect on the witness, should be considered carefully. Their details may be fudged, fuzzy or even inaccurate as the witness attempts to find descriptions for things they can comprehend i.e unique colors, motions, transformations, and beings.

As an example of what I'm talking about listen to Earley Patterson, on track 18 as he tries to explain some type of honeycomb element on the top of the backs of these catfish humanoids outside their flying saucer. He is just grasping at straws trying to name what he saw.

CE III Humanoid Encounters : Free Download & Streaming : Internet Archive
 
the course is 37 miles long l full lap, theres over 250 corners and bends like that, it is universally known as the most dangerous road race in the world, 100s of them arrive once a year from all around the world one fortnight a year to take part, they need the highest international racing liscences in the world to even be allowed to compete, and even then they have to wear orange luminous waist jackets so other riders know they are newbies and will get their lines wrong, and its still over- subscribed every year, all the main production bike teams come.

2 laps of the course then home for 7.30am and slip the wife a portion, now that's livin, i only did it when the roads were relatively dead, early mornings.
i would of donated one of my testicles to medical science to drive that course on closed roads

can't view the video - internet too slow - that is an open road and there was an oncoming car or were you on a closed course?
 
I wonder what test results NASA has done, along with simulations with high speed car racers, for the high speed decision making they have to make to succeed?

the guy on the bike answers that for you, i will edit in the time so you can hear his exact description, but he say it will take a whole week of practice to get your mind upto speed, he says i mean look how fast we are going, but after a week its alright, i can even pick out individual faces in the crowd, proof positive, and to demonstrate the point watch this guy lay the bike on its side so as to part company from it, otherwise he would of hit the wall at the junction not the wall on the other side of the road as the bike did, watch this, only the last showing of the crash ls at full speed [190mph] the first couple are slowed, watch him push the handle bars down to get clear, that without doubt saved his life.


this is being filmed at the spot where he puts the bike down, gives you an idea how fast 190mph is, now thats just feet away from where this guy underneath [2nd vid] decides to part company with his machine at that point, how fast iiis his brain working do ya reckon, the title says 160mph+, but i can assure you on the big bikes its 190mph




dont forget the first 2 are slowmo full screen is best, watch him push the bike away just as he leaves the frame, its very clear, in the 2nd slowmo..


and they just carry on racing, thats the isle of man for ya.
 
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