October 1, 2017

What Field Hockey can Teach us About Science



I had almost completed writing a post that responded to many of individual questions raised in the comments to two (1, 2) posts regarding B. Allen Wallace and his appearance on a couple of different skeptical podcasts a few years ago. Yet the format of answering questions didn’t make for the most interesting or easiest of reads, but through the act of writing those responses I did come to a unifying comparison that encapsulates many of those responses.

Field Hockey Vs. Science

I will compare the rules for the game of field hockey which were created in the Australian desert in an attempt to limit Canadian dominance of sports with hockey in the name and the rules of science. Take for instance this comment from Andree,

On Eastern there are a plethora of explanations about consciousness based on introspection observation, and this is also falsifiable method just like looking through a microscope. But to reproduce an experiment you have to be trained with this instrument, meditation, just like a scientist have to be trained with microscope to see a cell. But Western science just reject meditation as a consciousness observation method, and prefer to find the answers through correlation between physical properties of brain and mental phenomena. The last method is not wrong, but why reject a direct method?”

There are multiple things to address as a few interesting points are being made in that comment. The first question is, is introspective observation a falsifiable and measurable method, equivalent to looking through a microscope? To his point when someone looks through a microscope and comes to a conclusion they are seeing something subjective and independent, which is similar to someone undertaking the act of introspection and making observations. The only difference is the person is ‘the microscope’ in his example, but there is a barrier of effort that limits scientists to becoming the microscope that Eastern people sometimes dedicate themselves into becoming. Further, there could be years of experience needed in recognizing the results observed by looking through the microscope that doesn’t allow someone else to see those results, the same way that a person wouldn’t be able to understand the subjective introspection.

I think this is a very strong argument, but first-hand reports of subjective experience don’t exist with the same reliability as something seen under a microscope. Someone can be standing by and confirm the observation in a way that is simply not possible for subjective experience. It may be argued that each person would require training and the finding wouldn’t be able to be verified by anyone else, but a picture or video can be taken of the microscope results which can be examined thoroughly by numerous people in a way that subjective experience cannot be examined. A person can undergo the same training and experience something like what that other person is describing in the eastern tradition but this wouldn’t be the same as the examination of the same microscope results. That person would be experiencing their own version of that phenomena and not, as with the microscope, viewing that same material. This would, admittedly, be harder for something like pain, but there are still correlates which can be looked at.  

While I point out reasons to doubt the microscope to personal introspection analogy as being successful, it does lead to the more fundamental question, are the methods of science biased against eastern understandings? This is where field hockey rules can add to the understanding of science and bias.

Field hockey was created with the intention of keeping the Canadian's from taking over the sport. There was a process of which had Trey Parker and Matt Stone, in a collaboration with Australia, purposefully make the rules of field hockey to be biased against Canadians. The Australians and South Park creators knew that research has shown that Canadian hockey players are more likely to be left-handed shots, so they made it so field hockey has the rule where only right-handed sticks are legal.  

Similarly, science could be seen as having rules that are purposefully biased against eastern knowledge or ways of finding knowledge. Both field hockey and science are biased, as field hockey hates Canadians and science doesn’t accept eastern knowledge.

Yet there is an important distinction that can be made, field hockey rules are purposefully biased against Canadian’s in an attempt to keep Jean McMaplepoutine down and science's rules are basic and limited in nature. While it is the case that field hockey could have left-handed sticks without changing the game and it would work, the same isn’t true about the broadening of the scientific method.

Science can be stripped down to being based on falsifiability and measurability. To be able to test, measure and retest, rules of which cannot be broadened to include other methods that are subjective and/or largely unmeasurable as their inclusion would change science in such a way that it would no longer be science. To that end science isn’t biased against eastern understandings in themselves it just can safely ignore them as interesting, but not science until there are ways of testing them with measurability and falsification. Take for instance the claim that with mediation there isn’t the need for food or water, that’s interesting, testable, result of the subjective experience and has been tested. Claims of a similar nature have been made by 'the Iceman' Wim Hof which are very interesting in the regulation of body temperature, but also in other areas, although they seem to be exaggerated.  There was a reasonable skepticism about those claims, but they can and were tested in the same way any other claims would be.

This shows two different systems, one where rules exist in a way that is purposefully biased for arbitrary reasons and one where the opposite is true and rules exist in a purposeful non-arbitrary way.

Bonus Take! –  Psi Will Never be verified by Science due to how it is ingrained with materialism which disallows it or it will never be verified because it is so biased against Psi that verification is impossible

I think many of the commentators to previous posts have the attitude that expressed in that description. I am not attempting to make a straw man, so if that isn't a fair summary than I am willing to change it, but I think that kind of arguments by psi proponents fundamentally underestimates the amount that scientists want to prove phenomena to be true, psi included. Any substantial finding in that area would instantaneously cause fame and fortune as it would be one of the most important findings in the history of science.This is why Daryl Bem and his tests received so much attention. Those tests were fairly well done and came to surprising results, but they failed to be replicated. 

The argument could even be made that science, as it currently exists, is biased in such a way that it would lean towards the proving the existence of psi-phenomena, due to there being a huge publishing bias towards new interesting results and the lack of interest in the publication of replications of other studies. Far from being ‘ingrained in materialism’ or having a system that works against Psi, the system is set up in favor of proving Psi, so long as it can be measured. I think this fact is a huge condemnation of the field, because if it existed in the way in which many people think it does then it takes a grand conspiracy to explain why it hasn’t been scientifically observed, on the scale of the level of conspiracy needed to believe in ‘chemtrails’ or ‘flat earth’.  The type of conspiracy so large that it falls apart under its own weight. 

11 comments:

  1. I think that science, as it currently exists, is biased in the opposite direction to what you propose in the final paragraph. There is a very strong taboo against venturing into the psi field as a researcher. The work and the funding involved is very low.

    At a 2015 conference on the problem of replication in psychology, which exists across the spectrum, not just in psi, one researcher - himself a critic of psi phenomena - had this to say:

    "I was at a conference last week where there were six neuroscience presentations. There were more people working in those labs than in the *whole world* on parapsychology. In terms of the person-hours that have been invested in [the] 100 years of research [in parapsychology], it amounts to about four months of North American social psychology."

    Parapsychology researcher Julia Mossbridge says that "meta-analyses of [paraspychological research] has about the same effect size as most mainstream psychology studies."

    You might be interested in this quite informative discussion showing how complex the issues in the field are:

    "Psychology and Parapsychology in Crisis": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fVbeq1WJ2Ok

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  2. There is most definitely a taboo against the venturing into psi and funding is low for a predictable reason, being that the results aren't encouraging enough for large-scale investment. This isn't to say their isn't positive results, just that there is a problem with reproducability and smaller results in better studies.

    I think that video, "Psychology and Parapsychology" is a good one not in advocating that Psi is real, just pointing out that Psi is being held to a higher standard than many other areas of psychology and science in general, which has led to results to be trusted more than they should be and not retested to an acceptable degree.

    Still if there are more replications performed and a higher standard being held to Psi than we should have greater accuracy in judging the results...which again has failed to be very convincing.

    I still stand by what I wrote in Science being set up to be biased towards the publication of interesting results and replication being less than ideal, which both work in favour of proving the existence of Psi. While you are correct to point out that their is a bias or taboo in going into Psi research, but with, what I view, as a reasonable bias.

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  3. Stephen, all of your points could be raised against physicalism:

    Nothing self-existently physical can be observed. What we "observe" are purely subjective impressions. We compare them with others and when we measure the results of our comparisons, the measurements appear to be stable. The fact that exactly the same thing would occur if we measured objects in our dreams (which perhaps more obviously consist entirely of mind-constructed images) shows clearly that the results of quantitative empirical ("empirical" meaning sensory experience, not all experience) measurement tell us nothing about the nature of the reality we experience.

    What you have done in the previous post and throughout this one is consistently conflate empirical investigation and philosophy (specifically, ontological questions)>

    The solution does not require a full blog post. It's very simple (and nobody I'm aware of in the field of science or philosophy of science has done it, because it can't be done).

    1. Define the word "physical" (and it can't be what most have done, throwing their hands up after trying everything else - "it's what physicists study")

    Since you won't be able to do that, try this to see why it can't be done:

    2. Describe an allegedly purely "physical" object like a stone without using ANY perceptual or conceptual qualia.

    You should really try this VERY energetically in order to understand why "physical" has no positive meaning.

    But I'll do it for you. Since nobody has ever been able to provide a positive meaning for the word "physical", there must be something wrong in that approach. There is. It's a religious not a scientific or philosophic term. It has sole a negative meaning.

    "Physical" means not conscious, not intelligent, not sentient.

    There, now you know what it is. Biologist Richard Lewontin admitted as much when he said we must defend materialism with all we have, no matter how irrational or incoherent our defense, because the alternative (ANY alternative) is so much worse.

    That is not reason, that is blind faith. And that is at the root of all physicalism.

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    1. Its been a while but I'm m not sure I follow what your saying. If you're looking for capital T truth, you're not going to find it about any topic, except possibly that you exist as Descartes hyperbolic doubt led to.

      That said you don't need capital T truth to form a basis of probabilities on what you're seeing. I could be a brain in a vat or any such thing, but I don't have any reason to think that, that is the case.

      What we observe and then other people observe and verify seems to be very consistent. The laws of physics could well change moment to moment and it wouldn't be the case, but things seem steady and predictable. I agree that everything is a subjective impression but it does show a constancy that can be built upon in a way that wouldn't be possible with the changing rules in a dream. This again isn't to say there is any certainty, as Descartes showed, just that I don't think you need certainty, the bar isn't that high and can't be as everyone would live in a state of constant full skepticism.

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  4. You speak of the changing rules of a dream as if that was an empirical finding that has been proven.

    I remember reading Stephen LaBerge's claim that he had absolutely proven it was impossible to read text for more than a few seconds in a dream. Not long after, I found myself in a lucid dream recalling LaBerge's statement. I immediately conjured up a book and a watch, and read the text - which was perfectly clear, not blurry as LaBerge predicted - for a minute.

    As a thought experiment, imagine a dream that lasted for 2 months.

    Then imagine you and I have developed the ability to enter together into the same dreamscape.

    Is there any scientific experiment of the last 100 years that we could not observe being conducted in the dream?

    If not, then there's no reason to accept physicalism - or any other philosophic outlook, as long as we are limited to the currently accepted methods of science.

    The point of the comment is that science, as currently conducted, does not provide even a scintilla of evidence for one particular ontological view over another.

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  5. I appreciate the response, the use of good questions and examples in your comments and the construction of the problem that your having with what I wrote. While we disagree about things, I think it is very effective communication at a high level of discourse, without hostility or bad faith arguments. I thank you for that Don.

    I thought that the changing nature of the physics in dreams was part of the dreams defining quality, but I could be wrong about the essential nature of that.

    I think in the thought experiment given of a two week co-dream we could test the rules of nature to look for 'black swans' or results that conflict with other results. To use falsification to see if the reality we were experiencing existed in a consistent way, as does water freezing at specific temperatures or simple things like that as I'm not much of one to be able to run a double slit experiment or anything more complicated then maybe what Mendel performed.

    If everything was consistent then I would have no reason to treat it functionally different than our waking reality now, as it would appear that there was no difference. If there was a problem in the dream or, even, in our reality where the laws of physics changed with no rhyme, reason, or consistency then science wouldn't be an effective tool to learn anything in either situation.

    The reason then is not to ignore science because those same results could have been created in a dream, it is quite the opposite, it is that the process and tools of science would be just a useful in a dream if the dream had consistency in it's nature and physical laws. Again I'll make the caveat that capital 't' truth can never be established and there may always be a 'black swan' around the corner in the next test.

    Looking at the probabilities of the chair I'm writing in actually existing, it seems that I'd wager it does, but again I'd put it at maybe 95% certainty. If nothing was physical then what would account for the consistency of physically rules? Why would I confabulate the chairs existence, and its existence in the same specific way that other people confabulated it's existence?

    I have no way of knowing if what I see as green is the same thing someone else sees as green, but if we get together with other people it seems we experience roughly the same 'chair'. I think that, that shared experience in the nature of reality and the consistency/predictability of nature that has allowed things like satellites, space flight, me to write this on the internet, and coke zero (how does that have 0 calories and taste like coke? That's magic) at minimum shifts the burden of proof onto non-materialism to account for many different things.

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  6. Beautiful, clear response. I'm not so sure we disagree but that we are quite (actually very) far from having had sufficient clarification about some very basic things, like falsification (I assume you're aware it's been at least 20 years since Popper's idea about falsification was, how might one say it, falsified? Also that there are significant areas of science - astronomy, for example - where purely observational studies are fully accepted as legitimate research methodologies, holding as much value and respect, within their own context, as so called "controlled" studies - I say "so called" because there are such massively confused beliefs about so-called "causality" it would take quite some time to get to see what Rumi's observation might be applicable to uncovering some of the basic contradictions about people's belief about what science really is - "The entire Koran is teaching nothing from beginning to end but phenomenal belief in causation."

    I probably don't really have the time to do this, though your writing is so clear and intelligent I'm tempted to do so, but we really should, if we wanted to get clear, explore these subtle beliefs and suppositions about what "science" means (I know I had a quite radical shift, after having studied it as an amateur for 2 decades, when I actually began conducting research at the graduate level, in psychology).

    But here's a much simpler place to start.

    You say the burden is on the non-materialist.

    But if everything that science does can be done in a dream, in a non-material environment, with no difference (at least, in our thought experiment), then at the very least, the ontological question of the nature of reality - whether it is material or non material - is equal.

    Why choose one over the other?

    What do we know, absolutely, beyond question? Do we know directly, without question, of something we can call "matter" or refer to as "physical" - something which we absolutely, fundamentally know exists?

    What does 7th grade, middle school science tell us? You might, not having explored it, look at an apple in front of you, touch it, take a bite, and say, "well damn, here's matter right here, this is physical!

    But remember our dream. In fact, you know, when you look at an apple, all that is happening is that the brain has produced an image, processed from light reflecting off the apple.

    Isn't that what we learned back when we were 11 or 12? So according to this, there may be a "physical" or "material" apple "out there" (stay mindful of the host of assumptions we're making here - note also I'm not challenging them; they may be accurate, but keep in mind they're assumptions), but I have no direct contact with it.

    Stephen LaBerge, one of the world's leading experts on lucid dreams, has long observed that according to what has been unanimous among neuroscientists for decades, all that we know of the so-called "physical" world are images. The only difference, then, between "dream" and "waking" (another assumption, coming, by the way) is that "waking" = unknown "external" stimulus + images, and "dreaming" = "internal stimulus" (ie brain) + images.

    Let me pause here to state emphatically - because I've been sharing this view for over a decade and I would say about 99% of people who've never heard this assume I'm staking out an ontological position - I am most emphatically not and none of this will make sense if it seems I am. The only thing I'm doing here is taking the most simple, grade school data that basic science agrees with and observing what is actually empirical data and what are assumptions.

    That is, all I'm doing is attempting some epistemological clarification about "how" we know what we claim to know, not the ontological concern about WHAT the absolute nature of what we know is.


    CONTINUED:

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  7. PART TWO:

    Ok, so if all we know are images, the equation "Waking = external stimuli + images," has a very important non-empirical assumption - "external" stimuli. One of those external stimuli is the "brain.'

    Somehow, the brain guys (I'm intentionally using the male gender here because it seems that in general, men are much more attached to physicalism than women; can't point you to statistics, just a general sense) have left out one important thing. The apple, the sun, the rocks, the computer, Justin Timberlake, whatever is perceived is an image constructed by the brain, they tell us.

    But then, that 3 pound lump in the vat in my neuropsychology lab, the one I'm supposed to pick up and pick through, is also an image. But an image in what?

    Obviously, it's an image in awareness.

    Here's where things get tough. There is no word for what i'm pointing to that really works. By "awareness" I don't really mean anything to do with what we normally think of as "mind" - as in Descartes' "I think therefore I am.". I would say, "Stop thinking and it will become clear what I'm pointing to," but that is, well, easier said than done (it can be done, and it is the most extraordinarily peaceful, and ultimately joyful, state that can be. - well, no it can't be imagined!!).

    What is the so-called "world" but images in awareness.

    And "images IN awareness" supposes a duality which is conceptual, not experiential. One could just as easily say (and most philosophers will think they can easily pick this apart, and in a way they're correct because words are almost inevitably dualistic), "awareness patterning itself - no, seeming to pattern itself as a multiplicity of images."

    So, that was a hell of a lot of words for someone who said they didn't have much time (it's 5 AM and I usually meditate and do contemplative writing at this time but here we are:>)))

    TLDR:

    1. If there is no difference between dreams and waking, then the conclusion is not that the burden of proof is on the non materialist but rather, we must remain ontologically neutral.

    2. If we agree for the moment on ontological neutrality, and we also consider that in our waking state, all we know directly, without adding any extra assumptions, are images in (non personal, non individual!) awareness, then the burden of proving the non-empirical assumption that a purely non-mental, non-sentient, non-intelligent, non-conscious, non-aware, non-living "physical" "stuff" underlies our experience lies with the materialist, who wishes us to believe in something for which it is impossible to provide any empirical evidence.

    3. But we have to believe in dead, stupid, unconscious physical stuff because how else to explain: (a) how we appear to experience a world in common; and (b) how so called "laws of nature" appear to function so consistently?

    So we could start by looking more closely at whether it is correct to say that except for the questions in #3, science provides us with no empirical data that lead us to favor any particular ontological view; that is, science, properly understood, is ontologically neutral.

    Then we could consider whether, despite the fact that empirical data do not directly point us to a particular ontological view, some reflection on that empirical data suggests the burden of proof is on the physicalist, not the non physicalist.

    Finally, having gone through those two considerations VERY (I mean, very, slowly, perhaps over some months), we could then explore #3.


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  8. PART 3 of response:

    A young friend of mine, some years ago, having lived most of his teens and early 20s, prior to entering grad school for physics, had been a died-in-the-wool physicalist. For some reason - unusual open mindedness, perhaps? - he became fascinated when I noted the Nobel Prize winning physicist Stephen Weinberg's quandary when a physicist friend of his told him, "You know, science doesn't really explain anything, it only describes.". It took SIX MONTHS from the time I challenged him to tell me why, allegedly a trillionth of a second after the big bang, when the patterns we refer to as "laws of nature" came into being, we should assume that physicalism can provide an answer as to why those patterns continued in the next trillionth, and next trillionth, and next trillionth of. a second.

    Ok, so my "TLDR" was too long also. Ok, I gotta do some writing and contemplation! That was fun. Hope it didn't drive you totally crazy:>))

    Stay safe and stay at peace.


    PS: I tend to think, having had these conversations not just over the last 10 years, but in some form for nearly 50 years, that doing this in writing, or even in verbal in-present conversation, is highly ineffective. When Jan and I get through about a year of our marketing for our online course, we're looking forward to making some middle school level videos illustrating these points. You need time to "chew over" the virtual apple to really get the feel of this, and to be mindful of the voluminous assumptions which fly tend to by unobserved as these points are made (and more important, the clinging, attachments and beliefs and assumptions that the more primitive parts of our brain empower in order to maintain the fiction of being an independent, separate material "self" with Real existence, which is the ultimate source of all our delusions and all of our suffering).

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  9. Hope I'm not driving you crazy. I understand you're a grad student (having gotten 3 grad degrees myself, my heart goes out to you!). So here is a TRULY short observation:

    What constitutes scientific experimentation?

    1. (a) observe sensory phenomena (ie the images that appear in Awareness). If an observational science like astronomy, (b) reduce the phenomena to abstract/digital ie measurable aspects of those phenomena, and (c) develop theories regarding these patterns.

    2. If an area of science involving control and prediction, (a) observe phenomena; (b) (b) reduce the phenomena to abstract/digital ie measurable aspects of those phenomena, (c) isolate variable and non-variable aspects of the measured phenomenon, and while varying one aspect, note correlative (mislabel 'causation') AND purely quantitative changes in the other aspect.

    If we examine our experience closely, we can see that what is truly quantifiable is an infinitesimal portion of our mostly qualitative experience.

    Science is a wonderful invention of the human intellect, and it is extraordinary in what it can do. It has utterly no capacity to make ontological pronouncements, and the attempt to try to do so through science is, ultimately, the end of science and beginning of religion.

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  10. I see there's been no additional comments. I have a much simpler approach. Start with the old does a tree make a sound if it falls in the forest and nobody hears it.

    If by "sound" you mean the experiential qualia of hearing, then the answer is no. If you mean atmospheric movements, then the answer is yes.

    So if you want to understand what scientists believe is the foundation of the universe, start by eliminating all "sound" (as experience)

    Then do the same for sights, tactile sensations, tastes and smells, and you are left with what Alfred North Whitehead described as bare nothingness.

    Now, what do scientists do? They abstract quantitative measurements FROM these very sights, sounds, etc that have now disappeared. Remember, it started from experience, all of the data that led to the belief in some "material laws" or "physical stuff."

    So with the physicalist or materialist, what you have is this: Abstract numerical concepts, derived from sense experience, are believed to be the source of that experience.

    This is not science, it is pure delusion!

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