Ectoplasm and apportations of a physical medium

(Nov 23, 2016 04:40 AM)Magical Realist Wrote:

Quote:Believing is not factually knowing. If you have indisputable evidence then you shouldn't have to believe. Are you trying to get everyone to share your belief or to accept that your belief is fact?

Actually philosophers generally define knowing as "justified true belief." So yes it is believing. Even science is about believing what they tell you.

Quote:At no time have you ever posted genuine irrefutable evidence for your primary belief(paranormal exists).

No evidence is irrefutable. Even a DNA test can be faked or contaminated. Does that mean that evidence is unreliable? No..just because evidence for ufos and the paranormal, or DNA evidence for that matter, can be faked doesn't mean it is therefore unreliable. This is a subtle but crucial distinction most debunkers fail to make.

Then the evidence for the paranormal you put forward can be proven false(refutable), and if it is false it can still be trusted(reliable)? I'm afraid you've lost me on this one.

Speaking casually, I admit when I read your 'evidence' stories that a certain part of my mind hopes that this is the one that will justify all the time you put in working with so called paranormal events, things. However, I'll read something and think 'that could be faked' or 'this photo is useless', etc. What's most damning is the evidence you provide. There are irregularities in every 'evidence' post, yet you refuse to heed your audience who are saying either directly or indirectly that it isn't good enough. Does berating them when confronted with criticism symbolize some mild form of megalomania (my way or the highway attitude). Perhaps it's self-absorption, only your interests are important? I don't understand why you keep throwing this stuff out there if the response(s) are always the same. Ever think of changing tactics?

(Nov 24, 2016 03:13 AM)Zinjanthropos Wrote: There are irregularities in every 'evidence' post, yet you refuse to heed your audience who are saying either directly or indirectly that it isn't good enough. Does berating them when confronted with criticism symbolize some mild form of megalomania (my way or the highway attitude). Perhaps it's self-absorption, only your interests are important? I don't understand why you keep throwing this stuff out there if the response(s) are always the same. Ever think of changing tactics?

Nah, he just has a persecution complex. The goal is not to communicate or convince, but to illicit justification to feel persecuted.

Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson

(Nov 24, 2016 03:36 AM)Syne Wrote:

(Nov 24, 2016 03:13 AM)Zinjanthropos Wrote: There are irregularities in every 'evidence' post, yet you refuse to heed your audience who are saying either directly or indirectly that it isn't good enough. Does berating them when confronted with criticism symbolize some mild form of megalomania (my way or the highway attitude). Perhaps it's self-absorption, only your interests are important? I don't understand why you keep throwing this stuff out there if the response(s) are always the same. Ever think of changing tactics?

Nah, he just has a persecution complex. The goal is not to communicate or convince, but to illicit justification to feel persecuted.

Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson

It would be one of the stranger cases. Not like there's hundreds of members to be persecuted by here. For some reason I don't feel privileged. I'd feel a little uncomfortable knowing you were right. 

I got concerned for MR when I read the irrefutable/unreliable explanations. Maybe he didn't express it well enough to make his point so I'm willing to give him another shot. There was a response from him yesterday in which he declared that you could now see .....

Quote:

Quote:the absurdity of dismissing all the evidence for ufos and the paranormal as conspiratorial fabrications just to deceive people for the hell of it.

I'm still trying to figure that one out.

Quote:Then the evidence for the paranormal you put forward can be proven false(refutable), and if it is false it can still be trusted(reliable)? I'm afraid you've lost me on this one.

In as much as any evidence can be claimed to be fraudulant and indeed could be, no evidence is irrefutable. That goes for ufo and paranormal evidence as well. But possibility of fraud doesn't make the evidence unreliable. The evidence is still evidence, even if it isn't irrefutable.

Quote:Speaking casually, I admit when I read your 'evidence' stories that a certain part of my mind hopes that this is the one that will justify all the time you put in working with so called paranormal events, things. However, I'll read something and think 'that could be faked' or 'this photo is useless', etc. What's most damning is the evidence you provide. There are irregularities in every 'evidence' post, yet you refuse to heed your audience who are saying either directly or indirectly that it isn't good enough. Does berating them when confronted with criticism symbolize some mild form of megalomania (my way or the highway attitude). Perhaps it's self-absorption, only your interests are important? I don't understand why you keep throwing this stuff out there if the response(s) are always the same. Ever think of changing tactics?

Nice ad hom. If it pisses you off that you can't debunk my evidence other than saying it could be faked, that really isn't my fault now is it? Back up your claim. If there's evidence of fraud let's see it. But don't just say it could be a fraud and expect that to pass muster. As for my posting weird events in the weird forum, that's something I've been doin long before you arrived. I enjoy discussing such things. CC and Yazata have long humored my belief in these things with constructive speculations and hypotheticals. If you don't like these topics, stay away from this forum. I certainly have no intention of stopping for your sake.

(Nov 24, 2016 04:21 AM)Zinjanthropos Wrote:

(Nov 24, 2016 03:36 AM)Syne Wrote: Nah, he just has a persecution complex. The goal is not to communicate or convince, but to illicit justification to feel persecuted.

Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.
—Ralph Waldo Emerson

It would be one of the stranger cases. Not like there's hundreds of members to be persecuted by here. For some reason I don't feel privileged. I'd feel a little uncomfortable knowing you were right. 

Actually, it's much easier to feel persecuted by either a few specific people or by some nebulous group. Too many specific individuals doesn't give the persecuted the chance to feel any righteous vindication. A few people can be individually felt to be refuted, and a faceless group requires no refute at all.

Quote:I got concerned for MR when I read the irrefutable/unreliable explanations. Maybe he didn't express it well enough to make his point so I'm willing to give him another shot. There was a response from him yesterday in which he declared that you could now see .....

Quote:the absurdity of dismissing all the evidence for ufos and the paranormal as conspiratorial fabrications just to deceive people for the hell of it.

I'm still trying to figure that one out.

Projection of the sort of conspiracy he sees as being the primary obstacle to wide-spread acceptance of this stuff.

He doesn't seem to think any evidence is unreliable...unless it disagrees with him.

Every post is a story and every post is evidence. Content, styles, language, grammar, behavior etc. are all examples of evidence for a poster's mental state, ask any psychologist or psychiatrist. By MR's logic  this claim is not totally irrefutable or unreliable. However, it can be interpreted. I have no proof other than the story I am posting at the moment and knowing that people are afflicted with neuroses and psychoses. As a result any conclusion reached concerning a poster, based on the written post, is allowed by MR's standards. 

You can call it an ad hom but then again, that is a conclusion reached by a poster based on someone else's post.  According to MR this is perfectly fine. To the best of his knowledge any claim made is based on available evidence. Does it need to be verified? NO, according to his logic. 

So where do we go from here? I could stop responding as he requests. I feel that is an unreasonable request as I do not ask to have MR stop posting. That plus it is an open discussion forum and as far as I know there can be no discussion without a topic. So anything advocating a posting ceasefire is not in line with the forum's mission.

Absolutely. The only thing that keeps a forum going is participation. Good, bad, or ugly.

Sometimes I just wish he'd make arguments that don't feel like I'm shooting fish in a barrel.

(Nov 24, 2016 07:33 PM)Syne Wrote: Absolutely. The only thing that keeps a forum going is participation. Good, bad, or ugly.

Sometimes I just wish he'd make arguments that don't feel like I'm shooting fish in a barrel.

A little science .... very little science  

Survival as a fish in a barrel is due to natural selection and a little luck. Living on the edge(off to one side), living at the bottom of the barrel protected by a canopy of fellow fish, or taking cover underneath what's left of an unfortunate, and just being a small fry is advantageous. Are they genetic or learned traits enabling survival? Doesn't matter because the one thing the fish would need more than anything else is this: a steady influx of fresh fish into its barrel. One other factor, if you have a choice then don't decide to live in a barrel that's located in the middle of a fish in a barrel shooting club. The surviving fish needs numbers, the more fish in his barrel then the less chance of being hit and if you have to choose between a barrel and the deep blue sea than perhaps a barrel is not the preferred choice.

https://unbound.com/books/seance-spiritualist

"Spiritualism, the American-born religion, attempts to demonstrate through the intercession of a medium that death is not the end, but a transition. I first became aware of Spiritualism as a teenager, after my cousin received a reading from a medium who revealed a secret about my grandfather’s death that proved to be true. Since then, I have been deeply curious about how a total stranger could have learned something my family had kept confidential.

In 2001, I began photographing at the place where my grandfather’s message was received: Lily Dale, New York, the town which is home to the world’s largest Spiritualist community. I quickly immersed myself in Lily Dale’s world, receiving readings, experiencing healings, joining in séances, attending a psychic college and sitting in a medium’s cabinet, always with my camera. I expected to spend one summer figuring out the tricks of the Spiritualist trade. Instead, Spiritualism’s mysterious processes, earnest practitioners, surprising cultural history and bizarre photographic past became a resource and an inspiration for my own work. I began a sixteen-year quest to document contemporary Spiritualism and to find and photograph ‘ectoplasm’ – the elusive substance that is said to be both spiritual and material.

Photographing Spiritualism presents a unique challenge: how do you photograph the invisible? Sitting in the charged atmospheres of the séance rooms I encountered, I wondered how to approach the exchange between a veiled presence and a visible body? Technical mistakes led me to explore the inherent imperfections within the photographic process. Unpredictable elements (blur, abstraction, motion, flare) seemed to insinuate, or refer to, the unseen. I began to use conventions that are considered wrong, messy, or ‘tricky’. I crossed the boundary of what is commonly considered unprofessional in the practice of photography: I invited anomaly. In playing with the process, the invisible was automated. My camera rendered some striking synchronicities. The resulting images consider the conjuring power of photography itself. I include these pictures that use photography’s own mechanisms to question spiritual realities: photographs that contain both mechanical and spiritual explanations and require an interpretation.

My book on Spiritualism will merge ethnographic study, journalism and art. I will contextualize Spiritualism’s history and highlight its surprising connections to nineteenth-century social reform, scientific inquiry, artistic practice and popular culture. Ultimately, this work seeks to amplify the reflexive relationship between Spiritualism and photography and to explore the ideological, material, geographical, historical and metaphysical correspondences between the two. Erik Davis, author of media studies cult classic TechGnosis and expert on the intersection between technology and the religious imagination, will contribute the foreword."

(Mar 7, 2017 08:23 PM)Magical Realist Wrote: [...] I will contextualize Spiritualism’s history and highlight its surprising connections to nineteenth-century social reform, scientific inquiry, artistic practice and popular culture.

Yes, that's something not fully appreciated much: That we and our artificial world are the result of the bad / destructive and the imaginary (whether dreams, speculative goals, prescriptive academic concepts, fictional works, mythos, or bogus practices or whatever). Not just the "good" / constructive, the real or factual, and productive skills that are usually celebrated as forging contemporary times, while the rest is disparaged in some fashion. They all (if significant) had influences and causal effects -- take this or that away from history (especially controversy, opposition, and rivalry between beliefs) and many of us either wouldn't be here or would be replaced by some other version of ourselves in a different realm ranging from either trivially so to radically altered.