"Perplexed in Peoria"  wrote
>
> > Consider the claim:
> >
> > (S)  The wizard in the film supernaturally transmuted the lead into
> > gold.
>
> Scientists are not particularly interested in this claim.  Their interest
> is more likely to focus on a slightly different claim:
>
> (S')  The wizard can repeat the feat at will.
>
The problem with alleged magic is that we don't know the rules. For instance
I can measure the capture rate of Drosera rotundifolia (a carnivorous
plant), but to ask me to repeat the observation in central Leeds, or in
winter, would be unreasonable. This is pretty obvious. What may put a cloud
of suspicion under the whole affair is that I would probably refuse to
measure the capture rate of a patch chosen at random. The reason is that the
plants grow in marshes, and trying to count insects causes unacceptable
damage to other plants, due the amount of trampling you have to do. Thus we
choose plants that grow next to paths.

Similarly there might be lots of conditions that have to be satisfied before
the wizard can transmute lead to gold. What people who claim supernatural
abilities often claim is that the presence of sceptics causes pyschic
"blocking". This claim isn't actually all that implausible, if humans did
evolve psychic abilities, like mindreading, then the ability to block the
psychic powers of an enemy would be strongly selected for. If blocking is
cheaper than performing the act, you could have the situation where everyone
is blocking all the time, except on a few rare occasions.

However, of course, if the wizard cannot repeat the transformation under
controlled condition, the of course one would instantly suspect fraud.
>
> > 2.   In what sense is S unscientific or "beyond the bounds" of
> > science?
>
> S is unreproducible.  However, I don't think that S' is beyond the bounds
of
> science.  Merely beyond the bounds of the current orthodoxy.
>
If you can't reproduce your phenomena, it is much harder to investigate.
However in biology there are quite frequently phenomena which are hard to
reproduce. For instance there is a report of a chimpanzee using the sign for
"elephant" whilst messing about with some rubber tubing. Was she pretending
that the tubing was a trunk? We don't know, and you cannot expect to get the
same behaviour every time a chimpanzee is given a rubber tube to play with.

Similarly, if the wizard gives us one video tape, and refuses to provide any
other evidence foir his ability to tranmute lead to gold, then it becomes
very difficult to investigate. Since the claim is so large, the natural
tendency is to reject it. (A William Morse pointed out, if the wizard had
claimed to have eaten a hamburger at McDonalds, and provided no evidence
save a video clip of himself in the restaurant, we would accept that as an
unusally well-attested account of a meal).
>
> Therefore, I tend to read "supernatural" as "not yet subject to
explanation by
> the scientific body of knowlege".  I am doubtful that any real,
reproducible
> phenomenon could be "supernatural" in the sense that it is beyond the
> scientific methodology.
> Certainly your hypothetical scenario is not beyond the methodology.
>
To a chimpanzee, a television is "supernatural", because chimpanzees have
the ability to understand how to use a television, but not the principle on
which it works. It is quite possible that we may come across phenomena that
are to us as television sets are to chimpanzees. In fact, it is possible
that there are many such phenomena, but that we are not good at recognising
them.
---
þ RIMEGate(tm)/RGXPost V1.14 at BBSWORLD * Info{at}bbsworld.com

---
 * RIMEGate(tm)V10.2áÿ* RelayNet(tm) NNTP Gateway * MoonDog BBS
 * RgateImp.MoonDog.BBS at 11/29/04 6:19:57 AM