What philosophical evidence is there against believing in non-physical entities?

[The Grand Nudger]

You specifically mentioned that there is a way to prove altered states after I mentioned that I cannot prove my own.

No, you keep telling me that you (and no one) can prove their subjective experiences.  I could quote you....but I shouldn't have to.

  I am not sure why you keep saying no one asked me to prove them. I did not say you asked me that.  I am simply making a statement that I cannot personally prove that.

You keep saying that you cannot prove your subjective experiences.

In fact there is no way to prove that anyone is experiencing altered states

OFC there is.....you referenced it yourself.  

or any subjective states.

-no one's asked you to do so, for the last time.

At most we can get a correlation between certain physical brain states and reported subjective states.

Irrelevant with regards to altered states.

I have said it is - slightly - annoying to have personal experiences dismissed.

You said you-strongly- disliked it.

I have gone on to say that it is not actually a huge problem if mine are dismissed personally but that such phenomena are useful to consider in general when research into them gives us good evidence for non-supernatural reasons for their existence.

And no, I do not believe I was day dreaming when I was extremely busy working at the time in the fast food industry.  I believe it was altered perceptual and audial phenomena combined with a loss of awareness of any sensations in my immediate environment.  That is an example of what I mean by an altered state.  A day dream would qualify, too, so it's sort of pointless to debate.

Beliefs are about as useful as anecdotes.  As I said, you;ve been equivocating on the term altered state.  The altered states you are referring to when you point to research are not simply daydreaming, or seeing things in a novel way - though some think that either of those might -cause- altered states.

I was looking for some better articles, but these two provide some definition with examples of an altered state of consciousness:

http://study.com/academy/lesson/altered-...-quiz.html

http://www.veryshortintroductions.com/vi...-chapter-7

I am not sure how profitable it is to debate this issue if I don't know what you mean by altered state of consciousness.  You seem to be excluding a day dream as an altered state for example, but I have seen that mentioned as an example of an altered state many times in articles and literature on psychology.

So maybe you were daydreaming, as long as it's an altered state?  Work with me...lol.

As for what conclusions I have come to that are dismissed besides thinking it was an altered states, do you mention that some of them were healing?  I am not going to go into huge detail, but some of them directly involved addressing certain emotions and integrating new perspectives on them.  I'm not sure what to say other than that some were very cathartic and resolved some emotional issues for me, so I said it was healing.  That is how I remember experiencing it.

They needn't have happened as you remember them, nor do they need to be altered states...for them to be cathartic.  You say they were healing, and that;s okay..only you would know that...but that doesn;t mean that your attriubution is correct..in fact it has nothing to do with or to say on -that- matter...which is the matter I dismiss.

I mention the fallibility of our memory and of our certainty in general because it was a good point you made, but it doesn't just apply to experiences that seem unusual.  It applies to mundane events and to more common altered states as well, the content of your day dreams included.  You cannot know you accurately remember the content of that state any more than I accurately recall the state I described.

I am really curious what you define an altered state as.

An altered state of consciousness (ASC), also called altered state of mind or mind alteration, is any condition which is significantly different from a normal waking beta wave state. The expression was used as early as 1966 by Arnold M. Ludwig and brought into common usage from 1969 by Charles Tart.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altered_state_of_consciousness