Why do we follow superstition?
What makes a superstition effective and why do some people follow it religiously?
It comes from a cultural origin, but where does it rise from? How does it pick up?
Not everyone from one culture can simply agree like, "Tomorrow, the crow will be unlucky!"
"Yeah!" screams the crowd with enthusiasm.
It comes from a cultural origin, but where does it rise from? How does it pick up?
Not everyone from one culture can simply agree like, "Tomorrow, the crow will be unlucky!"
"Yeah!" screams the crowd with enthusiasm.
Comments (102)
We want and need ways to improve or affect the chances of things, and predict events. The more significance, the greater the demand. Then there is selection.
Plenty we agree with simply because someone said it confidently, or cleverly.
Some part of us always remains superstitious to some extent, no matter how rational we figure we are. If a loved one convincingly told you they had just seen a ghost, and you completely don't believe in that at all, and tell yourself that you're entirely positive, and that can't be... your heart rate will still increase, and a part of you is still all like "maybe though..."
As Wosret it is mistakenly thinking correlation is causation. I think the specific causal fallacy committed is post hoc ergo propter hoc.
However, the underlying assumption in pronouncing such thinking as fallacious is that we've got it right - as in our present scientific knowledge is true. That may be questioned by the astute or foolish - which depends on one's point of view.
Another example: Joseph Cambell was a mythologist who said something to the effect that shamans and wizards "fight the demons" so the rest of the tribe can fight the world. They're sort of a lightning rod for the psychological tension of the group.
This aspect of our lives requires accounting for, and I think that myths, or whatever "superstitions" persist need to be more than just useful, but true in at least some sense. There has to be something about them that resonates with our experience. It can't be all bluster.
(Y)
"It will never be plausible to say that mankind does all that out of sheer stupidity"
"Error arises only when magic is interpreted scientifically"
Wittgenstein 'Remarks on Frazer's Golden Bough'
The law works this way too, if you take part in a murder, you are a murderer. It's association through intent. How is this superstition?
When a group works together, toward an end, and one individual delivers the final act which concludes that end, why is it superstition to say that the success is of the group, rather than of the individual? I think it's just a matter of recognizing the fact that there is more to producing the final outcome, then the straw that broke the camel's back.
What careful studies suggest, however, is that actually 'professional' financial advice on investment is just terrible, so an astute astrologer might well do better. What we believe to be empirically built on reason - and read avidly and often pay for - is no better than a chimp with a marker pen. Read an old 2013 article about it here.
Superstition is the irrational behaviour of Others. I'm just a guy who takes his chances :)
There are also more private superstitions that Ann mentioned in the OP, which I would define as personal causal beliefs that are deemed to be both wrong and irrational.
Quoting Cavacava
I don't agree that it is wrong to explain magical, superstitious and even religious behavior scientifically. Frazer is a dubious and outdated source, but psychology and anthropology (and, more controversially, evo biology and neuroscience) have produced some interesting insights.
Here is a classic Skinner work on the superstitious behavior in... pigeons! (Conducted long before Witty issued his comments.):
Quoting Psychologist World
(Full paper here.)
Similarly, what does that demonstrate? That it's possible to mistake correlation for causation? Pretty sure we knew that... that birds aren't always right either? Shocking...
It hardly shows anything remotely close to the creation, and persistence of myths through multiple generations...
Things are more complicated with humans, I am sure (and probably with animals as well), but that mechanism is still a good first approximation.
What is worrisome is just how prevalent this sort of thinking is. Even the things that usually require lots of skepticism, like science, are themselves interpreted superstitiously, i.e. the prophecy that science will deliver us from all woe and evil. It's the 21st century Oracle of Delphi.
Probably the best defense against superstitious beliefs is to constantly go meta and analyze your foundations to make sure you're not making any ridiculous mistakes.
Other than that, all I see is insinuation.
By the way, no one was "tricking" the birds - the pigeons were fooling themselves all on their own. That was the whole point of the experimental setup: rewards were not correlated to pigeons' behavior in order to reinforce their "superstitions". The setup played the role of blind forces of nature that didn't care about pigeons' little tricks.
Well I have always disliked behaviorism, I think behaviorists tend to treat the data as the answer, which seems to be what the behaviorists are trying to do in the case you have cited. If the birds are that hungry, they will try to please in whichever way they recall (if squirrels can remember where they buried 200 nuts...) produced good results last time they were fed, if so. then then the Pigeon's remembered a simple dance step.
It was not superstitious behavior, it was successful behavior.
I am not quite sure what the scientific study of faith would tell us about faith, faith is magical thinking...no?
Superstition does not arise from a lack of knowledge alone but from an indifference to knowledge. Superstition satisfies a will to power over matters of fact.
And the answer is because people are morons.
Superstition often seems to derive from associations between things in terms of their perceived qualities or even between the names used to refer to the things or their qualities. Names have often been believed to have a magical connection to the essence of the things they refer to. The idea of magical correspondence is at the root of superstition.
Superstition is always based on some conception of causation. The Eastern idea of Karma is a classic example of a magical (non-physical) conception of causation.
How do you differentiate faith in a supernatural being/power or what have you from superstition, both seem to me to be magical ways of thinking.
Superstition = black magic?
We can think rationally about God. This is what theology is all about. Or think of Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz , Hegel and the Russian sophiologists. God is not known rationally as a determinate, finite thing; in fact it is just the opposite.
I think superstition arises when the nature of what we might think of as supernatural is believed to be adequately known via the imagination, that is in a determinate way, analogous to how the natural is known.
Quoting Cavacava
Me too. The founder of behaviourism, J B Watson, believed that the very notion of 'mind' is itself a superstition. That is an example of the 'superstition of scientisim' in my book.
Quoting Thorongil
I don't quite agree with this answer. A lot of us follow it unconsciously. Let me clarify my question: Is religion a superstition, in a sense? The belief in something supernatural, is essentially what superstition is, so in a very hardcore way religion is a kind of superstition.
So are you calling most religious people morons? This would then mean that you are saying only you are the logical and rational person, which no person can be, and everyone else is dumb enough to believe in the "causation rather than correlation."
Please, explain your thoughts.
The cause of obsessions is probably some sort of anxiety about losing control of one's life. Pigeons, of course, lost control of their lives once they were put in the cage, so it's a miracle that they aren't all stark raving mad.
'Religion' doesn't have a single meaning; the word itself is polysemic (there's a useful bit of terminology).
It goes without saying that hardcore atheists like Richard Dawkins and Daneil Dennett see religion as superstition, but they show very little understanding of the subject.
As regards the supernatural - I don't think we know enough about nature to confidently declare what is 'super' to it. The division itself keeps shifting, many things we now take for granted would once have seemed supernatural. Again it's often based on the 'conflict thesis' between science and religion, which was developed by various 'scientistic' thinkers in the 19th century.
Their paper is interesting in that, despite discrediting Skinner's inferences, they then endorse a Skinnerist approach, rather bewilderingly.
I can see how Karma is superstition but is there a bigger reason as to why they use such a method to explain causation? I mean, if Karma is traced back to its purest action, won't they wonder where the first cause was?
I like that you brought nature into this. In an example scenario, there are some that can observe the birds, read their signs, and predict that it will rain. I would identify that as a scientific or natural reaction that only birds can sense, but this was considered (before science) a superstition. They've used what they know as causation/correlation to create this idea that a bird knows when it will rain.
Now, it's evolved into something that can be explained with science, but what is the human behavior that makes a person believe it so easily? Was superstition used as a guide in replacement of science?
I want to know what you link superstition with, because my question now would be: must we defend ourselves against 'superstition?' and how would one go about doing that?
Of course, I agree with how letting superstition lead a life would be dangerous, but completely letting go of all superstitions would mean we'd have to sacrifice some beliefs, too.
Careful, now. There are many things that science can explain about nature, and also a pretty big number that it cannot, some of which seem very simple or obvious.
Years and years ago, I read a pop science book called Supernature - it was hugely popular in the 1970s. I can't remember much of what was in it, but it had many truly eye-opening things that seem to deny scientific explanation (one I do remember is that oysters taken into a tank in the middle of continental America, and then taken down deep in a mine shaft, still open and close with the tides.)
Beware of the positivist narrative that 'rational science has displaced superstitious religion'. Whilst it is true in some ways, there are principles in religion - I think karma is a pretty good example! - that aren't going to be replaced by science any time soon. Remember, science deals with objective matters through quantitative analysis, and there are many aspects of life that are not amenable to that kind of methodology.
I'm thinking now, would superstition become a sort of meaning for the believer? Karma deals with experience; there's also Quoting Wosret Experience is also another thing science cannot deal with, so is superstition a way for people to attach meaning to something? What's the significance of that?
But there's a lot more to 'karma' than superstition. The meaning of the word, karma, is literally 'intentional action'; the ethical principle is that 'all intentional actions have ethical consequences'. Do you think that is necessarily a superstitious idea?
I see karma simply as superstition in the sense that superstition is come thing you cannot explain logically. When you ask why something is unlucky, superstition would answer with, 'it just is.'
Karma is interesting in that it concerns multiple lifetimes. We can use it to explain something, but we can't further that claim.
"Why does bad luck always happen to me?"
"Well, it's karma. You must have done something equally bad in your previous life to deserve this."
That is only one interpretation of karma. I agree if it is used to justify misfortune, then it amounts to fatalism - 'it must be something I have done'.
But if interpreted as a regulative principle, i.e. 'acting with right intention produces positive results', then I don't see how such a belief can either be superstitious, or negative.
Karma is pretty cruel, though. I can't imagine how a person who is down on the level of poverty, ill, and constantly misfortunate can even think that what is happening to him/her is the burden she/he must bear for a previous life, and then still continue to live righteously.
That's where I think it becomes fatalism. I think if it is used to rationalise misfortune, then indeed that is cruel. That was a common argument from the Christian missionaries in Asia, against Hinduism and Buddhism, and there is some merit in that criticism. But, as I tried to stress, I think that is only one facet of karma. The other facet - the more important one - is that it means the individual is responsible for their fate.
The problem is that it is very commonly observed that bad things happen to good people and good things happen to bad people.
Sure, it's just that it tells against the theory of Karma is all.
It doesn't tell against Spinozistic notions of God, or against the idea of God-given rewards in the afterlife; although of course there can be no evidence or rational support for the latter, and only rational support for the former.
The problem with Karma seems to that there is no ordering infinite intentionality posited so no explanation as to how it could obtain.
Everybody has a past. The good were once bad and the bad were once good. The game is still on for Karma.
I find Karma quite sensible. For me it follows quite naturally just as laughter follows a good joke. Search all you can and you'll never find an uncaused cause. Is this the principle of sufficient reason?? Therefore it seems very reasonable to assume causation applies to human thought and action just as it applies to ALL things in the universe.
The claim is not that human actions are uncaused.
Then why?
Quoting John
Karma is not causation as it is ordinarily understood.
I understand Karma as thoughts and actions causing circumstances that befit the nature of these thoughts and actions. Isn't this a natural extension of causality as we know it.
You have a different take on Karma. What is it?
No causation as it generally understood consists in energetic physical interactions that are indifferent to any ethical qualities we might impute to actions.
What you're saying is that causation is a physical thing. So, what of the non-physical? Do you think the qualities of action are exempt from causation mechanics?
Bravery, love, hate, kindness are all non-physical and yet they cause physical manifestations such as saving someone from a fire, gift-giving, assault, etc.
Those emotions you mention are dispositions of physical bodies and physically felt; so I don't know what you mean by saying they are non-physical.
The alternatives are that (1) they don't have consequences or (2) that the consequences don't matter.
Someone might explain to me how those conclusions comprise the basis of an ethical theory which the 'principle of action' does not.
However, just as it is justified to take life as a one of a kind compared to inanimate matter, both being composed of the same stuff notwithstanding, it is also justified to contrast the physical body from the mental goings-on.
That is simple materialism.
Buddhism has always accepted karma. The word was often translated, in the works of European translators, as 'the law of cause and effect' and sometimes presented as being something like Newton's laws, albeit applying to the ethical domain, rather than to the movements of physical mass.
I think that kind of presentation was an example of what came to be called "Protestant Buddhism", which was the idea that Buddhism was a 'scientific religion', so as to appeal to the advocates of the European enlightenment. (In fact the word 'enlightenment' was chosen as the translation for the Buddhist term 'bodhi' for the same reason i.e. to appear scientific and not unlike European religions which were said to be superstitious by the 'enlightened' philosophers.)
However the early Buddhist text's presentation of karma was nothing like that at all. Here is an excerpt which casts some light:
Thanisarro Bikkhu.
One of the illustrations of this was the legend of Angulimala. That name means literally 'finger necklace' - and the reason this character had that name, is because he was a murderous bandit, who used to set upon travellers in the forest and kill them, and made a necklace out of their fingers. (He was, I suppose, what we would call today a 'serial killer'.)
Anyway, one day he set upon the Buddha, with the intention of making him the next victim; however the Buddha converted him, and he became a monk, and eventually an arhat. His is the only case of a murderer who joined the Buddhist order; and also an illustration of the way that karma is not all-powerful.
This is obviously a modern concessional interpretation of the understanding of Karma and is not in accord with the folk understanding of it. This reads more like cognitive behavior therapy. The notion of karma I am speaking about is some kind of superstitious belief such as for example that if you do evil you it might become your karma to be reborn in one of the Hells, or as a hungry ghost or as a toad or cockroach or whatever. I attended a Tibetan Buddhist course about twelve years ago in Sydney, and this kind of superstitious version is precisely what was taught there.
Not so, it is based on the Pali texts. The Buddha re-defined karma so it was no longer dependence on rites and rituals. I agree, Tibetan and other traditional forms of Buddhism have superstitious elements in them but I don't count the idea of karma among them. I can't see a more obvious fundamental ethical principle than 'as you sow, so will you reap'.
This is simply incorrect. Their idea of the operation of karma is most certainly a superstitious one. There may be non-superstitious understandings of karma, but unless it is understood as "instant karma" or the effect of one's actions on ones' actual states of mind, then it is a superstitious understanding. So, for example the karma of a murderer, a rapist or one who exploits people financially, would have to be understood as an inevitably tormented and miserable state of mind, now in this present life to qualify as non-superstitious. Do you think these kinds of understanding are convincing, and in accordance with experience?
Quoting Wayfarer
Yes, but when it comes to outward conditions the principle obviously does not hold. So, if those who do evil are not punished for it in an afterlife (Christianity) or another life (Hinduism, Buddhism), then the only other possible scenario in which the principle could hold is that their inner state is inevitably
one of misery.
No, I don't agree with that at all. I think there's some means by which the cumulative effects of actons shape experiences far into the future, by some means which is currently unknown to science. And because we can't accomodate it into the procrustean bed of scientific materialism, it is rejected as superstition.
Some concrete examples - there was a researcher named Ian Stevenson who dedicated 30 years to studying children who claimed to recall previous lives. His method was to interview the children and then attempt to correlate their stories against documentary evidence and eye-witness testimony.
That was one of more than two thousand cases that Stevenson documented. There were a large number he didn't proceed with. Of course, his research is mostly just dismissed because such things 'can't happen' (which I predict will be the case here also).
It isn't really. It allows that material causation is the only mode of activity for bodies. When it comes to thought, the mode of activity would be reason. I think Spinoza's way of thinking cogitans and extensa as attributes of substance or God makes very good sense. So, there can be no causation operating between the different kinds of modes that are expressions of these different attributes, because they are one thing being expressed in different ways. To posit causal relations between them would be to commit a category error.
So, in sum, reality is no more fundamentally material (extensa) than it is thought (cogitans). Materiality and thought are both expressions of 'something' (substance or God) which is not either exclusively.
Yes, in a sense. Or better: in certain forms.
Quoting Ann
Most of them are, yes. Most people in general are morons.
Quoting Ann
No, this is a non-sequitur. It's probably true that I am more intelligent than the average person, but I don't care much about intelligence. One could be intelligent but evil or miserable and an ignoramus but kind and compassionate. I would much rather be and/or be around the latter than the former.
If we have no scientific, logical or experiential reason to believe it, then it is, for us at least, superstition. I believe that would be a fair definition of the term. If you, for example, have a very powerful intuitive inner conviction that something is so, to the degree that you have absolutely no doubt about it, then your belief in it will certainly not count as superstition for you, you will have experiential reasons for your conviction; but for others it will nonetheless count as superstition. There doesn't seem to be any way of getting around that.
...such as that presented in the italicized quote above...
Now you are just being obscure.
The problem is it doesn't show any casual relationship with respect to the past and future experience.
If we accept those instances are as they are claimed, it only shows people have knowledge or memories of a life. Knowing who someone is, where they lived, what happened to them isn't the causation of future experiences based on what happened in the past. It's an experience of the present.
I don't think that section was there when I responded, but I might be mistaken.
In any case I don't see how such events if they are veridical would be evidence for karma at all. It's not even clear that they would support a belief in reincarnation as opposed to, for example, some kind of clairvoyance.
So let me get this straight - you're saying that even if there is documentary evidence that there are causal relationships that can extend from one life to another, this wouldn't constitute any kind of in-principle explanation for the idea that actions can have consequences in future lives. Is that what you're saying?
And, say it is 'some kind of clairvoyance'. How would 'some kind of clairvoyance' be any more or less credible? What does that add?
The point is it not evidence of karma. In such a case, there is no specification or relationship of earlier life compared to later life. Here the only consequences of causality shown is people remember events from an earlier life. It doesn't show, for example, that treating others better will mean your future life will be better. All it shows is that someone with particular memories of past life has been caused.
Well, it casts doubt on reincarnation. These experiences might just be a new person's knowledge and memory of someone else's life, which they mistake as their own. It's not really about being more or less credible, but rather that an instance of such clairvoyance is indistinguishable from reincarnation by the evidence.
FYI, the researcher concerned never said these accounts proved reincarnation; he simply said they suggest it.
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
The article from which that passage was quoted acknowledges this point. However, even if that is so, the possibility of there being cause-and-effect relationships between two apparently separate lives, casts doubt on the dogmatic assertion that there is 'no evidence' for such causal relationships.
That's the problem though, for the nature of evidence is is to suggest, not prove. If we take the accounts at face value, they no more suggest reincarnation then this type of clairvoyance. Now you want to say that, given the evidence, it's reincarnation that suggested over an equally supported theory of clairvoyance. That doesn't work.
So how about you listen to it! :)
The question of possibility and evidence are distinct. It's always possible that there are casual relationships between apparently separate lives. This fact doesn't specify whether there is evidence or not. It cannot cast doubt or lend support to questions of evidence because this true regardless of whatever evidence we might have-- even if we have, for example, evidence which shows no such causal relationships occurred at a particular time, it's still possible they might have. The question of evidence can only be dealt with by whether there is evidence or not.
Your argument doesn't make sense here. I mean does Stevenson have evidence consistent with casual links between apparently separate lives? If so, you have falsification of the assertion there is no evidence for such casual relationships. Assuming we take Stevenson's claims at face value, there is not just about last on assertions there is no evidence, for we know assertions of no evidence are wrong.
What I find particularly amusing in all of this though, is just how irrelevant reincarnation is to the question of causality and its significance. Even a careless investigation of causality reveals no-one lives separate lives. New life (whether it be someone else or your own) is always emerging and being affected by the actions which went before it. We don't need reincarnation to tell that how you behave now will affect future life.
Reincarnation is an incredibly selfish notion. It almost supposes that, if the care and respect of future life are to matter, it simply must be your life. So much energy is spent speculating or defending reincarnation, as if the meaning of ethics and respect for future life depends on it, when the simple presence of future life is enough to define that need.
Let's be clear here; I don't believe documented anecdotal evidence is ever good evidence for anything, unless the same anecdotal evidence is independently recorded by multiple investigators who we have good reason to believe are impartial concerning the question the evidence is being marshaled to answer. The anecdotes simply don't clearly establish any specific kind of causal link between past, now ended lives and present lives, so they cannot be supportive of the idea of karma.
Willow makes the point regarding the equivocal support for either reincarnation or clairvoyance (and we may well be able to concoct other hypotheses) in a way I storngly agree with, so there is no point me reiterating that.
Documentary evidence was used in all of these cases to corroborate the anecdotal evidence, and Stevenson collected and documented many of such instances. Of course, it is possible to deny it, or to believe that he was delusional - but it's still not the point. The point is that if there is such evidence:
then the dogmatic assertion that 'all causality is of the kind known to current science' is incorrect. That is the only point at issue.
In any case they are one-off instances; which could reasonably be written off to coincidence, increduliy notwithstanding.
His magnum opus was a massive two-volume study Reincarnation and Biology, which is presented very much like a regular medical science text - except for the subject matter.
Nowadays there is a widespread consensus that his methods must have been wrong, that he was easily duped, gullible, and so forth. I have read up on Stevenson, and I really don't think he was that easily fooled - had his research methods been applied to some less controversial subject, nobody would have batted an eyelid.
But the point at issue is as follows: you were very quick to state that there could be no evidence of anything like 'karma' on the basis that 'causation as it generally understood consists in energetic physical interactions'. So, the possibility of past-life memories is one subject where there is actual empirical evidence which goes against that.
But that is usually rejected - and why? Maybe on the grounds that 'it's the kind of thing superstitious people believe'! And that, in turn, is because belief in re-incarnation is a taboo in Western culture, on two grounds - first because it was made 'anathema' by the Catholics in the 4th C; secondly because it appears to undermine materialism. (I know from experience that discussion of it makes many people exceedingly uncomfortable.)
Stevenson observed that, in Western cultures, attitudes to his research were generally along the lines of: 'why research that? Everyone knows it's a superstitious myth'. In Eastern countries, the attitude was: 'why research that? Everyone knows that it happens all the time.'
So that is the point I'm making - that some things are categorised as 'superstitious', because they contravene accepted wisdom, or the way we see the world.
Modulo essentialism as regards causation.
Are you speaking only about reincarnation here or do you include rebirth as well? The Buddhist would say that there is no non-physical soul that gets reborn, just the five aggregates reconstituting themselves, which is very close if not identical to a materialist view.
The materialist view that the Buddha rejects is that at death and the breakup of the body, the elements return to their source, there are no further consequences of actions. That is categorised as nihilism. The opposite view is that there is an unchanging self or soul which continues to exist in perpetuity. So the 'two extreme views' are all variations of 'self doesn't exist' (nihilism) and 'self does exist' (eternalism). The 'middle path' is that the self, like everything else, exists in dependence on causes and conditions.
That said, I actually disagree with the dogmatic view that 'the Buddha teaches there is no soul'. My view is, the Buddha teaches that there is nothing which doesn't change. So there is no 'soul' conceived of as a monolithic or unchanging entity, which remains the same while everything else changes. Later Buddhism devised the concept of 'citta-sant?na', 'mind-stream', which to all intents functions as a soul, although Buddhists will never agree that this is what it is, for dogmatic reasons.
Yes, I was just wanting to emphasize that karma-as-causation is not in keeping with the modern understanding of causation. We cannot formulate any adequate idea, in light of our general understanding of people and of the world, of how karma could possibly work.
I don't accept that these experiences, if they were truly as recounted, are necessarily "past-life memories". They could be some kind of glitch, like a "crossed-wire" ; which gives rise to a kind of clairvoyant recall of past events that may be 'stored' in eternity. They may be misconstrued as memories. I am not saying that past lives are impossible; I am saying that unless we have our own undoubtable memories of our own past lives, then we have no reason to believe in them.
Even if we had undoubtable memories of our past lives, would that give us any good reason to believe that we would have future lives; or any good reason to believe in karma? If I had a profound spiritual experience that revealed to me the intricate truth of the karmic relations of all beings, and it all seemed so lastingly self-evident to me that I was incapable of doubting it, then I would have good experiential reason to believe in karma. But the fact of such an experience would not give anyone else good reason to believe it.
Would you believe in something of little import to you or something that you were positively averse to on the basis of so little evidence as that provided by Stevenson's documented cases? In the interests of self-knowledge I think that someone who wants to believe in reincarnation should ask themselves why it is so important to them to believe such a thing. What difference could such a belief make, is such a belief necessary, a positive influence, or is it perhaps even detrimental, to the actualization of your desire to live a good life now, for example?
I understand that, but it is different from my own outlook. I am not materialist - I'm not meaning 'materialist' in the sense of 'pre-occupied with wealth and status', but 'materialist' in the sense of 'believing that the physical or material domain is the only reality'. I think the domain that the physical sciences study is only a very narrow range, it's like peaking through a gap in the fence, if you like.
Quoting John
Who is this 'we'? I don't want to persuade you or anyone to accept the idea of re-birth, as it is obviously a deep question and also as I noted, culturally foreign, but as far as I am concerned karma is no less real than gravity.
Quoting John
From the article mentioned previously.
And yet you give no account of it nor of why you find it so compelling. Also, I asked three salient questions in my last response; and you have not attempted to answer any of them. That's your prerogative, of course, but it doesn't bode well for discussion or trying to uncover the truth, if that is really what you are interested in.
I had some experiences as a child. It seems indubitable to me.
I will try and answer your other questions:
Quoting John
It seems obvious to me that if one's life extends beyond the boundaries of this current existence, then there are many possibilities. Conversely, if life is simply a material process, whereby bodies are born and then act out of their various drives and then die, then hedonism and the quest for physical security and pleasure would be the only real goods.
Quoting John
Don't you think that is a rather silly question?
I didn't get into this to explain or justify my views on this subject. It was simply a matter of rebutting your dogmatic assertion that 'all causation is physical' and that belief in the 'effect of intentional action' is superstitious.
If the influence of your life extends via your influence during life on those you share it with beyond your life then why should "hedonism and the quest for physical security and pleasure would be the only real goods"? That seems to reflect a very self-centred perspective.
Quoting Wayfarer
Why do you suggest it is a silly question?
I made no "dogmatic assertion" that all causation is physical; I just said that our only understanding of causation is one that is couched in physical terms. And I also have not claimed that intentional actions have no effects. You are distorting what I have said, so that you can comfortably dismiss it without having to address any of the difficult questions for your own position.
OUR only understanding. What WE think is the case. That is what is dogmatic - the presumption that you are representing 'our' views, and how 'we' think. Note the implied normativity.
I don't really mind whether you believe it or not. I'm not trying to persuade you. This is a philosophy forum and the philosophical point can be made very simply: if there is some means by which causes and effects can be demonstrated between separate lives, then there is a causal mechanism which 'current science' or 'physical science' doesn't understand. That at least allows for the possibility of karma. But notice that Scientific American piece I quoted concludes:
I am not aware of alternative well-formulated understandings. If you know of any, please give account of them.
This is nothing more than an appeal to authority; to one person's (fallible and unelaborated) opinion. What do you think is the actual reasoning implicit her statement if there is any?
Here's a brief recap of some of the points concerning 'past-life memories' and karma:
Quoting John
Quoting John
Quoting John
That was when I introduced the quotation from Stevenson's research, which I concluded with this remark:
Quoting Wayfarer
What more needs to be said? Time to move on.
Yeah but it wasn't dismissed because "such things can't happen"; that is a distortion. Rather it was questioned/critiqued because, even it were accepted as veridical reportage, it doesn't unequivocally seem to support the conclusions you want to draw from it, or even support those conclusions more convincingly than alternative ones.
It seems to me that you are simply unable to discuss this rationally. You interpret any disagreement with your beliefs to be "dogmatism". You often disparage science, and I agree that science has its limitations; but the one thing about it I do admire is the scientific spirit, which consists in actively trying to disprove one's own pet theories, rather than indulging in confirmation bias.
Alternative ones being what? 'Some kind of clairvoyance' is the only one suggested. Oh yes, and 'chance'. Look, Stevenson's books are evidence, they include enormous amounts of documentation and witness testimony, all of which attest to the veracity of children with past-life memories. How much of that ought I to reproduce? 100 pages? 200 pages?
As for Buddhist doctrines of re-birth - how much of that do you think I can explain, here on a philosopy forum? The 'basic volumes' of Abhidharma are five several-hundred page volumes. And there's an enormous amount about that that I don't even claim to have read, or to understand.
If you're curious about such matters, I would be happy to discuss them, although maybe another forum might be a more suitable format, but I simply made the point in response to what seemed to me a categorical and automatic dismissal of 'karma' as superstition. If you want to continue to believe that, fine.
This is the confirmation bias John is talking about. You aren't critically checking your own hypothesis. When the evidence also its perfectly well with another account (clairvoyance), rather than accept it and further refine your method to specifically check for reincarnation (and find the evidence which demonstrates it), you just proclaim how your claim must be true because of the evidence.
A thousand billion pages of these accounts wouldn't be enough to show you claim because the problem is with your evidence. It doesn't show reincarnation to be the only theory consistent with the evidence.
You might provide me with a dissertation on the distinction between clairvoyance and past-life memories, then.
That's your job. Your claim is attempting to use evidence to show what has happened in the world is more consistent with reincarnation than clairvoyance. Otherwise, you claim is confirmation bias-- you're assuming the evidence shows what you prefer, rather than respecting what it does show.
I will say though, I don't think there is an effective distinction. A person is a living being in time, a body and experiences present at one point and not another. Both are define by a new body and the presnece of particular experiences. In these terms, the clairvoyant who believes themselves to be a new iteration of a former life is indistinguishable from someone reincarnated. Each is, in the present, a body and particular experiences (memories of an earlier life, a belief it was them, etc., etc.). There is no criteria which can specify how these states are "really a past life" or not.
We might say that, in this sense, reincarnation is only a sort of illusion. For any new life, past life cannot make any sort of difference. I, in the present, cannot control what I did in a past life (and how it impacted me in the present).
Let's say karma and "reincarnation" are true. To my past life, this is relevant. How I act then will determine whether my future life is pleasant or not, so if I want to have a great future life, I ought to behave back then.
For my present though, it doesn't make a difference. I'm stuck with results of whatever folly or wisdom my past self had. To my new life, it doesn't actually matter whether I'm someone else reborn or an entirely new person. Either way, I'm stuck with what previous lives caused for me, whether they were myself or someone else, be it through karma, bombs or poor nutrition, etc. Reincarnation is really just a particular way of understanding the identity of new life, nothing more than a personal experience that one's identity is the same as a life which went before.
My thoughts also - I think if clairvoyance occurs - if - then it's also possible that there are past-life memories. But according to physicalism, neither ought to be possible.
Quoting TheWillowOfDarkness
Not so. It's what you do now that counts. Otherwise, that's fatalism.
Not true. Physicalism has no problem with "past life" memories. Under it, they are particular emergent experiences. Entirely possible.
The real issue physicalism would have is the misuse of evidence and the confirmation basis. More or less the sorts of arguments you have made in the thread, where you treat past life memories as if they are more than that, as if they cross time, space, logic and identity to literally be a person who lived in the past.
Again, the issue is not that there can't be evidence (people may have memories or experiences of what happened to people in the past), but it is people like yourself misunderstand and misuse it, to make these supposedly significant claims, when it's really just awe at your own thoughts or feelings.
You're missing the point. I am not my past self, so the consequences relevant to it don't have impact on me. Thinking of myself as a past life reincarnated doesn't have can't alter anything that's been caused to my present through karma. The moment where it might have mattered (i.e. my past life chooses to do something to avoid horrible consequences for my future life) has gone.
It must be so convenient to be able to define any term in any way to suit any argument. Of course, it often requires sacrificing meaning.
I want to clarify, that in this thread I have not been trying to evangalize or persuade others of the truth or falsehood of re-incarnation. I myself don't know if it's true, although I have an inclination to believe that it is.
But the reason I brought it up, was to rebut what I saw as the fallacious idea that belief in karma, as such, is superstitious. I suppose it can be, but to the extent that it is, then I don't accept it. What I do believe is that 'all intentional actions have consequences'.
Where I suppose it becomes difficult is, do these consequences play out after death. The 'physicalist' attitude is of course they cannot, as humans are purely physical. Dead is dead. However, if one is not committed to that physicalist view - and I'm not - then it's not so clear-cut. But when you start to try and think through what it might mean, then obviously there are very many imponderables and difficult questions. I don't have answers to those, nor much desire to find out. The upshot is, right intention brings right results, and this is something that may well extend beyond this present life.
The problem isn't applicable just to physicalism. Dead is dead. It's true of minds, of identity, of logic.
The identity of life isn't just a "physical" question. To consider literal reincarnation, as in someone actually being someone of past life, one has to violate identity and logic, to claim the mind of another time and place is the same one as now. It's not just bodies and atoms which generate the issue. The mind itself is of a particular moment and identity.
These questions are not hard or difficult, at least in the sense of knowledge or reasoning. Indeed, they are perhaps some of the easiest question. It doesn't take much study to know you are a different person to others. Even the reincarnation narrative itself-- past life vs new life- has this embedded, such that a present life is understood not to be the life which went before it.
No doubt you aren't interested in answering these questions, but that's why your discussion of such issues is terrible. You simply aren't interested in the topic itself. You don't want that knowledge. You'd rather just have an understanding that whatever awe-inspiring belief or idea you are talking about affecting relevance.
It sort of runs back to the question of meaning. Mysticism and confirmation bias pivot around a need for meaning, a sort of expectation that one's own life or world (be it mental or physical) needs to be filled with meaning from the outside. It's not enough to be oneself, so there must be forces from the "beyond" which deliver sense or meaning. One picks an idea or something (God, First Cause, Karma, past lives, etc.) to act as a "meaning maker," to turn the meaningless itself into something worthwhile. In the approach, there is not a critical bone. It's only interested in the affirmation of the given idea that makes meaning.
A critical look at these sort of claims and they collapse. Take karma or the account of consequences intentional action. Is it true? Well, by what happens in the world, clearly not. Good people have terrible things happen to them. Bad people have great things happen to them. No doubt, in many cases even, people reap what they sow, but the world clearly doesn't work in the exclusive way karma or the account of consequences intentional action would have as believe.
Karma or the account of consequences intentional action function as heuristics, accounts linked to practices, where the goal isn't knowledge or understanding of the world as it is, but rather to learn specific ideas and practices. In this case, what's important is to learn to act kindly towards others, to help and assist people, rather than the opposite-- the fact they are telling falsehoods, that there is no necessary relationship between how you behave towards others and how you are treated, simply doesn't matter. It's about learning the ideas and practices of being kind and helpful towards others.
The "meaning maker" always works like this, an affirmation of an idea, belief or practice, such that no-one is left in the dark of their inadequacy, meaninglessness or immorality of self. In terms of logic and understanding though, it quickly becomes a problem. Since these the "meaning maker" is developed and defined as the only way out of inadequacy, it cannot be subject to any sort of rejection or dismissal, to do so would be leave only a world of nihilism. When the time comes to pick out the mistakes or shortcomings of the heuristic, it point blank rejects it, for it would mean the collapse of the belief and it function and saviour.
Consider the account that intentional actions always have specific consequences. In terms of knowledge about how actions play out in the world, what does this give you? What more does it say than, for example, the truthful description that much of the time people reap what they sow, but on some occasions people get away with being horrible or that good people end up failing? It does nothing more than generate the awe-inspiring illusion that the world is always just or benefits people who are good. The image of being saved which doesn't allow any sort of correction, for it would mean losing it's role as saviour. If people can behave badly and benefit from it, there is no longer inspiration to the account that intentional actions always have specific consequences. My life and world will no longer necessarily be just by engaging in the belief or practice. Meaning is no longer made.
A lot of your issues with "eliminative materialism" aren't really about it's claims about the meaninglessness of experience. They actually have a wider scope, to the rejection of "meaning maker" heuristics and the problem of meaning. You are really concerned about The Death of God, not merely materialists who deny consciousness or nihilists who reject meaning. As such, you are actually turned against a wider range of metaphysics and description of the world than you think you are. Any time there is a critical description that challenges the affirmation of a "meaning maker" heuristic, you will reject the criticism, continuing to assert was identified as mistaken. Knowledge would destroy the "meaning maker."
Fair comment.