RE: What philosophical evidence is there against believing in non-physical entities?
September 1, 2016 at 3:58 am
I'd like to weigh in on a tangent.
I've had a fair number of experiences which I think OTHERS would call paranormal, spiritual, religious, etc. These are pretty compelling experiences, as well-- much more than hairs standing up on the neck. We're talking clouds opening, beams of light shining down, interaction with apparent other entities, etc.
In same cases, these experiences come with some form or other of coherence-- there are rules which the experiences seem to follow, or patterns among sets of experiences which link them in some way. And in some cases, they share coherence with the rest of my life/world view. For example, I've experienced under LSD the effects of synaesthesia, where I smelled things I saw, saw sounds, etc. I've experienced lucid dreams in which I was able to very vividly and in details hear how musical instruments would blend together, something I have difficulty doing in waking life.
I'm not so sure that in these cases it matters so much whether the ideas and experiences come from an objective reality or from something exclusively in my own brain-- I suspect the neural correlates would be very similar.
/disjointed ramblings about experiences
I've had a fair number of experiences which I think OTHERS would call paranormal, spiritual, religious, etc. These are pretty compelling experiences, as well-- much more than hairs standing up on the neck. We're talking clouds opening, beams of light shining down, interaction with apparent other entities, etc.
In same cases, these experiences come with some form or other of coherence-- there are rules which the experiences seem to follow, or patterns among sets of experiences which link them in some way. And in some cases, they share coherence with the rest of my life/world view. For example, I've experienced under LSD the effects of synaesthesia, where I smelled things I saw, saw sounds, etc. I've experienced lucid dreams in which I was able to very vividly and in details hear how musical instruments would blend together, something I have difficulty doing in waking life.
I'm not so sure that in these cases it matters so much whether the ideas and experiences come from an objective reality or from something exclusively in my own brain-- I suspect the neural correlates would be very similar.
/disjointed ramblings about experiences
