I had a discussion with a student today about religion and spirituality. Based on having seen someone who claimed to communicate with the dead some time back on Larry King and the book Hello From Heaven, I asked my student if she believed such a thing was possible. She said she did not. Then I asked her how she'd convince a blind person that such a thing as sight was real. For this, she had no answer.
This raises an interesting question about psychic abilities. How can anyone, who possesses a sense that others do not, prove that sense exists? A person born blind from birth has to take your word for it that sight actually exists and only does so because so many people say it is so. Does a sense, such as the ability to communicate with the dead, not exist because only a small minority possesses it?
We all rely on our senses almost exclusively when estimating the nature of our world. Part of the purpose of meditation is to turn ourselves off from the senses for awhile in order to experience something else. Unfortunately, most people are never able to disengage their sight, sound, touch, smell, and taste enough to find out if our other senses are covering up our ability to perceive another sense.
It's not so outrageous a possibility that the blaring stimulation one's nervous system receives could be making it hard to sense something else. After all, people who are inundated with sounds often say it is "too loud to think." If loud sounds, extreme temperatures, or bright light can impede your mental clarity, isn't it possible that the cacophony of sensory input in daily life is blotting out other more subtle sensations?
Our senses are also highly fallible. How often do you see something out of the corner of your eye yet upon closer inspection see nothing there. How common is it to be with someone and say, "Did you say something?" when nothing has been uttered. It's also not uncommon to have non-psychotic olfactory mini-hallucinations, though most people do not recognize them as hallucinations. They just think they smell something from a source they cannot locate.
Article comments
1 - duane
After all, people who are inundated with sounds often say it is "too loud to think."
Yeah, but if I'm having lunch at a sidewalk cafe, and a police car zips by with siren blaring, I can still taste my turkey sandwich. I can still see that they forgot the tomatoes, I can still feel that my coffee cup is warm, I can still smell the vegetable soup. Senses don't interfere with each other. An overload in one sense can dominate that particular sensory input -- the siren drowns out the sound of the waiter talking to customers at the next table, for example.
... isn't it possible that the cacophony of sensory input in daily life is blotting out other more subtle sensations?
Many things are possible. But is it likely? It wouldn't seem so. After all, it is possible that we are being manipulated through telepathy by extraterrestrials, but, as far as I know, there is no evidence for it. It is foolish to believe extraordinary claims without extraordinary proof. Or so my Mom used to say.
It might be impossible to describe one of the five senses to a person who lacks that sense. But I could easily design a means of proof demonstrating that there is such a sense that would convince the person. Where are the proofs of extrasensory perception?
In regards to the face on Mars, only nuts believed that there was actually an "intelligently designed" face. You didn't hear anyone from the scientific community making this absurd claim.
What I'm suggesting is that we at least be open to the possibility that our senses aren't all there is and that they aren't always right.
I am open to the possibility, and, indeed, our senses often fool us. But we have only our senses and our reason to evaluate the plausibility of phenomena that lack scientific support. It isn't enough to say that something is possible.
2 - Christopher Rose
What Duane said...
3 - brad schader
Brilliant piece. Robert Anton Wilson wrote a book once called "Reality is what you can get away with" and your article seems to go along the same plane. Reality is what we think it is and that is all. Each person has a different reality with different truths. Each of us only can speak of our own experiances and to dismiss something because most people do not believe it is a mistake always.
4 - Deano
"how she'd convince a blind person that such a thing as sight was real. For this, she had no answer."
I think you really need to develop a more sophisticated level of students, or maybe just work on their thinking skills a bit.... Devising a test whereby a blind person could test your ability to see is relatively sinple....
1). have blind person select an object with specific describable characteristics (i.e. spherical, smooth etc.) and place it out of physical contact of the subject.
2). The subject is not permitted to touch, smell or hear the object in question - they remain confined at a distance of say, 5 feet away.
3). The subject is then allowed to use their miraculous "sight" to visually observe the object and then describe it in exacting detail - obviously sticking to shape and or other physical characteristics, not feel or temperature (as the person can't sense those from a distance) and not colour because the blind person has no concept of those descriptive elements.
Within a very few minutes you would establish fairly quickly that the subject person had a sense that you didn't, the accuracy rate of the sense would be so high as to lay to doubt any question of whether the sense "existed" or not.
The problem with the whole "communicating with the dead" and pyschic powers is that they manifestly are not accurate, provable or demonstrable in a valid, accurate or logically testable manner. The tests done that record "successes" typically fail whenever they are repeated in a scientifically observable environment.
I honestly don't know whether psychic powers actually exist but I am highly skeptical given the sheer number of charletans, frauds and con-artists that have exploited people for so long. If some hidden "sixth sense" does exist, I question its usefulness as so few people have the ability to use it. Most psychic powers seem to be dependable only in helping create mediocure TV dramas....
5 - SHARK
"...What I'm suggesting is that we at least be open to the possibility that our senses aren't all there is..." --This sentence strikes me as absurd, hilarious, and imponderable.
BTW: I don't possess a sense of RADAR, but I'll gaurantee that *Duane could describe it in such a way for me to be convinced that it exists.
*xxoo!
6 - SHARK
"...we are blind to what some people can sense and... they're not lying just because they can't offer proof of their ability."
And I believe you're Karl Rove.
7 - duane
Right backatcha Shark. Good to "sense" you around BC.
8 - Shari
Re #1 (Duane): Can you still taste your turkey sandwich when a siren blares by? Are you literally aware of it? My point isn't that one sense necessarily drowns out the obvious ones but people have had other senses dampened by intense stimuli.
#4 (Deano): Remember that my students are studying English and expressing themselves in a second language so don't be too hard on them. However, the situation you set up with the objects sounds pretty good but exactly the sort of thing that people would not believe if they were so inclined. I'm not saying your test is not valid but that is precisely the sort of thing magicians have been doing for years. You cannot prove you didn't somehow obtain foreknowledge of an object used in a test. Or, how can you prove you're not using technology to cheat? It's not like the other person can see what you've got.
#5 (SHARK): You contradict yourself when you say that it is "absurd, hilarious, and imponderable" that our senses aren't all there is but then state that you believe RADAR exists. Clearly, you already believe that our senses aren't all there is. You will accept that Deano, a person you don't know on the internet, can prove things to you because you both subscribe to the same set of beliefs about reality and can agree upon the type of logic that must be applied in order to verify things. I don't have a problem with that. I was suggesting a possibility and advocating open-mindedness.
9 - Deano
Sorry I failed to read your bio that indicated you were teaching in Japan. My remarks regarding your students acuman are hereby stricken...
Regarding the test, you could easily use (pardon the jargon) "double-blind" subjects to select the objects with no preliminary exposure to the subject. You can do this easily using a neutral third party as the witness to insure no information is passed. This is all easily testable and easily structred stuff - as are many of the tests used for psychic abilities that have been done in laboratory conditions. No one that I am aware of has ever managed to demonstrate any type of measurable, statistically relevant results that supported the existance of psychic powers.
I have no problem with open-mindedness and am well aware the the clear fallacy with a logical view of the world is that it is limited by the state of your understanding of the world. For example logically rocks can't fall from the sky....unless....you extend your viewpoint to encompass a wider universe.
My biggest problem with the supposed existance and claims of psychic powers is that I have yet to see that falling rock.
10 - Jeff Gill
"Then I asked her how she'd convince a blind person that such a thing as sight was real. For this, she had no answer."
Stand ten feet back and have him hold up as many fingers as they like. Tell him how many fingers he's holding up. Repeat as many times as nessecary.
If someone could do the same thing psychicly, I'd be convinced of their power.
11 - Shari
#9 (Deano): I respect your logic. And I agree with it. However, I'm suggesting that your inability to see the rock doesn't mean it's not actually there. I'm not suggesting it is there but that your senses inability to perceive something doesn't deny its existence.
#10 (Jeff Gill): Isn't the sort of test the sort of thing psychics have been using to "prove" their ability but people like James Randi show how they are cheating?
Would it be logical to assume a blind world would develop technology to accomodate their most important senses (likely touch and sound) much as the seeing world has focussed on visual (and auditory) technology? And if you accept that as a logical possibility, there would certainly be some sort of technology to detect the general shape of objects much like X-rays, ultrasound, RADAR and echo-location can do for us now. I would say that, in a world where everyone was blind, you couldn't prove you didn't use technology to cheat in such a test.
12 - Deano
*sigh*. The point is that the falling rock is an observable event - quantifiable and provable. Once that rock falls, you need to expand your perception of the world and develop a model that can logically and sensibly accomodate and explain that falling rock from the sky.
With psychic phenomena there is no falling rock, just the claim of one that no one else can see, touch or experience. Psychics power, until they can effectively prove otherwise in a repeatable, statistically valid and demonstratably uninfluenced test, are bunk. The Amazing Randy is correct.
13 - Tomas
Prove To a Blind Man That Sight Exists
It is possible to prove, yet it would not be the sight, and so the scientific truth would just increase the inferiority of the blind and induce his natural self-defense. However, I am deeply convinced that this isn’t your goal but otherwise. The title of your perfect article gives us not the assignment but the metaphor, pictorially expresses the relationship between the religion and spirituality. We are talking about the love and human oneness but taste a bitter smoke of the meaningless wars and face more than childish irritations of the honorable professors. What is the most fearful is that I do the same myself. Have a look. Instead of saying hearty thank you, dear Shari, I have involved into the reasoning, and I ask myself, what for? It is possible either to love or to talk about the benefits of the love. It is impossible to do both things at the same time. We can either rejoice at the results of the examination of our surroundings or stay in the gratitude for the precious gift of the faith that comforts and head up us, and helps to share the light with all around …
In other words, it would be grand to have cup of coffee with you.