So then you admit paranormal phenomena exist?
No. I admit the observation / experience occurred but not as interpreted as paranormal.
Yes contradicting what you said earlier does confuse people, as when you said: "It is why it is called "paranormal" - i.e. it defies scientific explanation." and now say "But merely being unexplainable does not make it paranormal." So in the attempt now to redefine the paranormal, are you now saying it IS explainable?
It is not so much contradicting as expanding on what is considered to be paranormal.
You need to be clear on what you are considering to be "paranormal": the observation or the explanation.
It is the explanations that are considered paranormal, not the observations themselves. Paranormal explanations are not supported by science.
But just because one considers an explanation to be paranormal does not mean that they think what was observed does not exist. This is a straw man that you continually raise and it is tiresome.
The scientific method implies the ability to test a theory for the cause of the phenomenon. We don't seem to have that luxury with the paranormal. The activity occurs whenever it wants to, responding to conditions we aren't aware of, by means of processes we have yet to explain. So to insist that the phenomena be testable as some replicable theory again is flawed. We don't need a theory to confirm paranormality. We have only to confirm whether it meets a criteria for being paranormal based on our knowledge of paranormal phenomena. For example, are the voices only registered on audio recorders? That suggests paranormality. Does the phenomena recur in place associated with tragic sudden death? That suggests paranormality. And so on and so forth.
The scientific method does not imply a test for the cause, but establishing the cause might be one aim of such tests. Others might merely be to establish correlations, with the cause of each being deemed unknown.
There is also no "knowledge of paranormal phenomena" - because for it to be knowledge it must be true. And that is the question that we are trying to answer.
While it is a valid method to assume characteristics and then test observations against those characteristics, one still does not show the cause of those characteristics as being "ghosts", for example. This is where rationality has to take over as to what we choose to believe or not believe as being the cause, or to simply say "we don't know" if that is more appropriate.
But you seem to want people to accept the evidence for the paranormal, and yet you argue that the paranormal is not subject to the normal requirements for establishing that evidence and so should be given some special dispensation?
Or it may require wholly new methods of epistemic validation, a process certainly not limited to scientific explanation.
Sure. Feel free to come up with something useful and workable in that regard.
Meanwhile the phenomena continues as it always has and is currently being studied and observed based on scientific principles by paranormal investigators. It's not like we need a workable theory to study the phenomenon itself.
Indeed. It is in the explanation of causes, for example, where you depart from science into the realm of paranormal.
We can certainly posit conscious agencies behind the transmission of voices and the appearance of humanoid forms. That's what the research has shown. It isn't just random physical effects of inanimate matter.
You can, but there is no scientific evidence for it, just anecdotal, or the willingness to jump on the paranormal bandwagon before eliminating all the more rational explanations... quite often due to some poor appreciation of what it means for something to be more rational.
How do you know D, E, and F weren't discounted? Are you saying there is an infinite amount of mundane possibilities that can never be fully discounted? That's ridiculous. And knowing what we know about paranormal phenomena we can definitely infer IT is a cause for the phenomena. IOW, conscious disembodied agencies can be inferred as causal agents.
There aren't an infinite, but there are usually far more than the paranormal investigator is willing to examine or perhaps capable of examining.
Until you get adequately robust testing, or even robust recording of the phenomena, such that all rational explanations can be negated, then you should not jump on the paranormal as an explanation.
We've been thru this already. The paranormal shows certain typical traits that qualify it as a KIND of phenomena. This we have learned over years of experiences with it. So it is NOT unsupported and has every right to being recognized as a phenomena in itself.
No, what people have done is reinforced an irrational and unscientific explanation through lazy attempts at science, anecdotal evidence, and through a process that has no rigour and only ever takes seemingly positive results as its sample base.
Under such a method you end up with "paranormal" almost by default. You hunt for positive results and make the findings fit the paranormal explanation you want.
So then the next anecdotal report of another scientist's findings will be taken as true, and so on and so on. It's still just anecdotal evidence to everyone except to the scientist who did the experiments.
Or everyone who subsequently reperforms the experiment, or who rely on the fruits of the experiments, in whatever form that may be.
But behind the acceptance of scientific reports is a robust method of data collection, as well as peer review, and some authority is quite often placed in that process.
But quite often the reports are merely theories that are not, and should not be, accepted as "true" but merely accepted as "supported by the evidence". You then get competing theories explaining the same data etc.
So no one disputes the chair moves due to some invisible agent, or the voice is uttered due to the same invisible agent, or the ball of light is a manifestation of that same agent?
No, what would not be disputed is that the chair moves, or that there were sounds, or that there is a light (or what appears to be a light) etc. By stating that it is "due to some invisible agent" is already making assumptions that are unwarranted.
That's not true. I posted a video of a chair moving in a haunted theater and got nothing but strings, doctored CCTV video, and even a puddle of water. There was no attempt to even acknowledge the reality of the chair moving due to an invisible agent. The movement of the chair by an unseen force, interpreted as a "ghost", was totally disputed and rejected.
Presumably because the other explanations were deemed to be more rational, requiring nothing but mundane causes rather than something for which no scientific evidence has ever been forthcoming. Could you prove that their explanations were all impossible?
This is done with every investigation. The mundane factors are ruled out, leaving only the paranormal. Thus they arrive at the conclusion of ghosts, which is further evidenced by the regularity of the phenomenon in a haunted location connected with death.
Almost every location on earth is connected with death at some point in its history. But no, it is not done with every investigation. In fact the only investigations it is done would be the ones where they uncover the mundane cause relatively quickly. It would simply be too time consuming and expensive to negate all mundane causes, which is why it does not happen.
But please show me one example of where they have exhausted all possible mundane causes, where there is no possible alternative other than "ghosts".
I'm suggesting that attributing the paranormal occurances to a low freq that had to be artificially produced in the prison itself doesn't prove the existence of those same low freqs without the speakers. That's just common sense.
Again, I didn't see the program, nor the detail of what they did or didn't do, so can't comment on that. But if they didn't show the existence or absence of the naturally occurring low frequencies, how does that lend any credence to "ghosts"? Are you claiming their lack of apparent rigour (if that is what they are guilty of) is support for the paranormal? Otherwise I wonder why you raised this example?
