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Re:Parapsychology: the control group for science by gort on Saturday December 05, 2009 @03:50PM (#978598)
if it's true that there is such a thing as an ineffable experience, this means that the basic assumptions underlying all of science are false.

Isn't the fact that these experiences can be induced by using a physical collection of molecules to do something physical to the brain an indication that, actually, they're just the sort of physical processes that are compatible with materialistic science?

Re:Parapsychology: the control group for science by pmichaud on Saturday December 05, 2009 @03:59PM (#978612)
Of course it's compatible! But that doesn't rob it of its magic. Just because we discover the lever, doesn't prove there isn't something tugging on the lever.

I have a couple articles on my site about how the concept of the "supernatural" is incoherent, but that it doesn't matter: we experience such a small subset of "reality" that we need a concept "outside the normal realm of experience." I called it "Hypernatural," for lack of a better term already in use.

Re:Parapsychology: the control group for science by Alex3917 on Saturday December 05, 2009 @04:03PM (#978619)
The issue is that if a phenomenon is indescribable through either words or math then how can we collect any independently verifiable data? It would be impossible to create any laws governing such a phenomenon, because we would never be able to see whether or not the laws fit the past data and were capable of predicting the future.