Debating World Views - Chapter 1: Epistemology and Experience - part 2

[mcdoogs87]

Would "magic" be correlated to supernatural events ie - events which defy natural law? or to events which the theist might call miraculous, ie. - life being possible in the universe? I find the exception to this analogy to be no one in our reality has ever evidently shown a supernatural event to actually take place. If I were shown supernatural impossibilities; it would be fair to say I believed it but I would remain open to the idea that I could have been mistaken lacking objective support.

[KnownNoMore]

@mcdoogs87

Magic is never clearly defined. I would say that magic would be the abbility to alter reality at will using your mind. So without any form of technology but as an inherent abbility.

So making objects suddenly appear, make yourself disappear and reappear as you can see the witch do in the clip. Flying on willpower alone, summoning demons, whatever. those kind of things.

[mcdoogs87]

@KnownNoMore btw I'm really enjoying all these videos.. My favorite new channel I'm subscribed to, I like that you have a lot of arguments I haven't heard before and are unbiased in your approach... keep up the good work

[TheNakedAtheist]

Is the story told from an objective third person view, or from Battler's perspective?

[KnownNoMore]

@TheNakedAtheist

Very good question and actually very difficult to answer because this is not totally clear at all. I would say it is told from a third person view, yet not an objective third person view... if that makes sense. You DO see magic take place, but that doesnt mean that you can trust what you see. When you dont see something happen from Battler's perspective you can't assume that it really happened that way. Thats pretty much all I can say.

[MonotonePeanut]

The other people? They are justified in believing temporarily and for the same reasons B-person wasn't justified. The extraordinary evidence required to believe that supernatural forces exist was met with the list at 9:47. For so long as that amount of evidence can be quantified and shown to reliably and repeatedly to (skeptical) third parties, the individuals subject to that evidence would be justified in believing in magic.

[MonotonePeanut]

Due to both the extreme lengths one must go to in order to account for the scenario presented in a naturalistic fashion (coma/matrix) and the ample list of supernatural occurrences presented at 9:47, I would say that B-person is not justified in holding a purely naturalistic world view !temporarily! <-key word. This view is entirely dependent on his ability to repeatedly and reliably demonstrate the existence of supernatural occurrences/abilities to (preferably skeptical) third parties.

[MonotonePeanut]

Slightly off i no, but! Higurashi is so awesome ^^ ~especially rena and when the characters see a problem and actually do what it takes to solve it, none of this morality or principles are important crap. See problem → fix it → end of story, <3 that mindset

[Abgef]

Battler takes naturalism to an extreme by denying the possibility...he should have been agnostic about it since the unexplained events are quite overwhelming.

Beatrice is justified (if she does exist & not merely a trick) since she herself is the witch.

[justicecallicles]

It sounded a lot like Agatha Christie's "And Then There Were None"... at least until the witch stuff started happening.

I place a lot of emphasis on the model of the world we build up over time and the ease or difficulty of merging a new theory into it. But that makes it hard to decide regarding a fictional world I don't know. If this happened in our world, I don't think I'd believe the witch theory. At least not so easily.

[justicecallicles]

(continued)

My background knowledge would much more easily cohere with the theory that my experience was being manipulated and that things were not as they appeared. I would judge that to be much more plausible.

Now, if others had relevant background experience that differed from my own, things that make magic seem less deviant in the order of things, I might see them being justified in believing. I don't personally know any such people, but I can conceive of them.

[Ephemerance]

As Edgar Allen Poe argues in the short-story Mesmeric Revelation, magic and supernatural are euphemisms for a form of the natural happenings that goes against our common-sense expectations of our limited understanding of reality. It is possible that stage magic or psychosis is responsible for everything that happens, but it is also possible that there is a different level of reality that defies our common-sense expectations is revealing itself.

[Ephemerance]

@Ephemerance

cont'd

In terms of your question, about what we should believe, I think it's a gamble either way, but I would opt for whatever keeps me more mentally active. This is why I prefer epistemological pluralism, because there is no reason to definitively choose one side or the other when it is indeterminable. Until evidence presents itself which excludes one theory and emphasizes the likelihood of the other, I believe it apt to remain ambivalent and continue to seek more information.

[KnownNoMore]

@Ephemerance

Could you perhaps name hypothetical evidence which would either exclude one theory or make one of the theories more likely?

[Ephemerance]

@KnownNoMore

Tricky dilemma. In some cases, the answer may always be indeterminable, like in the movie Inception where the main character can never be certain of what is dream and what is reality. But if we're talking about two different worldviews and how they may apply, it would be like comparing classical quantum physics to string theory. Certain pieces of empirical evidence may favour or exclude either model (until the model becomes reworked to match the information).

cont'd.1

[Ephemerance]

cont'd.1

In this way, I see worldviews to be very much like languages. You may have several different languages that validly express the same thing, some languages being closer or further in resemblance to each other (being able to adapt and translate easier into other world-views which are related).

Some languages have more words to describe this or that depending on its focus. So in certain cases some languages might be better suited to negotiate problems than others; same for worldviews

c2

[Ephemerance]

cont'd 2

Interestingly enough, just as the number of words your language has to describe something influences how you categorize what you experience, so too does your worldview influence the way you observe things.

For example a tribe in Nambia lumps orange, red and pink under one name ("serandu"). When presented three objects that differed only by colour, they were unable to tell whether it was the same object or not. Worldviews may also limit our capacity to recognize differences.

cont'd 3

[Ephemerance]

cont'd 3

Which is perhaps why we find people who lump all unknowns under "supernatural" and never question it further (because their conceptual language is hindering how they break down information, in the same way that the Tribe's people in Nambia have trouble breaking down differences in colour).

From a utilitarian perspective, we want to be able to recognize and usefully break down as much information as we can. If muli-lingualism can boost our awareness and understanding [...]

cont'd 4

[Ephemerance]

cont'd 4

It follows that being pluralistic in our world-view might help our awareness and understanding of what we experience. There will always be certain weak points and strong point of any world view, and utilizing this may prove ultimately more beneficial than trying to champion one 'perfect' world-view.

But just as native English-speakers might not understand the benefits of speaking another language, so too will people endowed with only one worldview not likely see the benefit in another

[Gnomefro]

@Ephemerance "When presented three objects that differed only by colour, they were unable to tell whether it was the same object or not."

While I've never met anyone from Namibia, my introductory psychology textbook described this as the hard version of 'some name I forget's hypothesis and that it had little or no support from cognitive psychology. They explained it away as having to do with communication failure and not ability to distinguish colors.

[Gnomefro]

@Ephemerance The weak version of the same hypothesis said that people could have issues reasoning about situations where they lacked a useful vocabulary though, and this apparently had a ton of support. Just from my own experience I know that I don't have names for even the shades of green I see on a single leaf. That doesn't prevent sensory experience however.

[Gnomefro]

@Ephemerance If such examples happen to be true I suspect it will be for the same reasons Japanese have difficulty telling 'l' and 'r' apart - learned indifference to irrelevant information. I just have amazing problems seeing the same phenomena apply to vision in any other sense than inexperience in categorizing a certain class of sensory input according to some new scale. You'd think we'd experience flat areas in color charts due to this phenomena otherwise.

[wimsweden]

What is a "witch" and what is "magic"?

[KnownNoMore]

@wimsweden

Ah now those a two very good questions.

[Chopstewie]

As a side note a character like Battler is potentially an example against Atheistic claim that deal with god providing insufficient evidence of its existence, or arguments from non-belief, in which no effort expended by a deity would lead to belief (outside some early life indoctrination etc.)

[KnownNoMore]

@Chopstewie

you're  a whole lot of videos ahead ;)

[Abgef]

@KnownNoMore

i like these...pls continue making them

[MaximumAxiom]

So long as a natural explanation can be conceived of, I would argue that that explanation would override any of the supernatural explanations the witch has. Therefore Battler has reason to be skeptical of the witch's claims so long as he has reason to believe that the phenomena can be explained naturally. If it turns out to be the case that no natural explanation can ever suffice then obviously the witch wins, and a supernatural explanation must suffice.

[GetMeThere1]

My idea is that the answers to many difficult problems lie in PERSPECTIVE. A problem may seem insoluble, but changing (usually widening) perspective can show an easy solution. For theism vs atheism, one can consider: 1) People almost always are CERTAIN of their religion--for the obvious reason they were born into it (this perspective requires wide demographic knowledge). 2) Cultures are well known for inventing gods, and THOUSANDS have been invented (knowledge of history and cultures required).

[MisterEvil1]

"Any technology, sufficiently advanced is indistinguishable from magic." - Arthur C. Clarke

Just because you can't understand something now, doesn't mean you'll never be able to explain it, ever!

[KnownNoMore]

@MisterEvil1

That point is actually made in the anime itself and is giving as an advice to battler.... given to him by another witch, an enemy of Beatrice. That will be part of a future video.

[herbiepop]

If 'magic' exists but does not follow any internal 'laws' of its own then it cannot be distinguished from the chaos of various forms of mental illness that result in delusions. A person witnessing such chaos would only be justified in concluding that they were ill. If 'magic' follows consistent laws then it is merely a branch of science that is unknown.