(August 22, 2024 at 7:39 am)Angrboda Wrote: I'd say intersubjective evidence is persuasive if the experience doesn't require coaching, practice, training, or foreknowledge. A person without prior experience will see a pencil appear to ben when placed in water. A novice told to meditate will not have the experience of a lifelong meditator. Why is really beside the point. The experiences are tainted by the possibility of bias and imagining.
Granted, the way we interpret our experiences is inevitably influenced by what we have learned.
But I don't think that training is invariably something that invalidates an interpretation. For some unusual or unsettling experiences, training may be very useful.
So we'd have to go back and analyze whether there are other reasons to accept or reject the interpretation of the person having the experience.
I think there is a danger of begging the question if we say that only those interpretations are valid which can be confirmed by a certain set of scientific means.
