On the likelihood of "unconceived of" phenomena..

[Magical Realist]

What are the odds that a populous tribe of bipedal primates, who all evolved specifically to experience and interpret the world in terms of whatever best contributes to their comfort and well-being, would have reached a stage of knowing that all possible phenomena can be explained in terms of their evolved worldview? Very low I'd say.

What we know from history is the tendency of worldviews to confirm only their own assumptions over time to the point of not even acknowledging any other phenomena that conflicts with them. The Middle Ages for example is full of accounts of strange and anomalous phenomena that the authorities on the ruling Christian paradigm of the day simply dismissed or outright condemned as the work of the Devil. Levitating saints and French werewolves and witches and alchemists and vampires and fairy abductions and rains of blood and flesh and UFO dogfights in the sky! It's how paradigms maintain their power and control. Thru denial and demonization. Until they are replaced by another self-confirming model for reality.

Is this not true even in our time, where the paradigm of scientific physicalism, which is really a school of metaphysics and not science at all, enforces itself by encouraging similar kneejerk dismissal and condemnation to the point of soliciting sophomoric ridicule from most of its socially-revered spokesmen? Yet never has there been more credible accounts of strange and anomalous experiences happening to people all over the world. Again what are the odds that OUR dominant paradigm got it all right and has granted us final and complete knowledge of all reality? And again, very small to say the least! We don't even know what our own minds are or how they could even exist--a vast mysterious netherworld of paradoxes and surreal unknowns and epistemic hurdles we have yet to find any coherent theories for. Meanwhile the "unconceived of" keeps knocking on our door in a hundred different ways, like a long lost brother finally coming home. Dare we open it and find out who is there?

“…The more deeply we plumb the psyche, the deeper the well appears to go. Somewhere down in there, it would appear that there is a place where the line between the physical and nonphysical blurs, where imagination and reality somehow converge, and events unfold that are not yet understood at all. It is the realm of Jeff’s ‘imaginal’, where the electrons of thoughts somehow converge into the molecules of things. But how? The mind knows, but not, perhaps, in ways that it can articulate.."---Whitley Strieber

[Yazata]

What are the odds that a populous tribe of bipedal primates, who all evolved specifically to experience and interpret the world in terms of whatever best contributes to their comfort and well-being, would have reached a stage of knowing that all possible phenomena can be explained in terms of their evolved worldview? Very low I'd say.

I agree 100%.

There's the so-called "Pessimistic Induction", which observes that much/most of the philosophy and science of past centuries has proven, in retrospect, to be wrong. So the obvious question is asked why we should consider ourselves to be any different. Shouldn't we conclude, simply by induction, that today's most cherished beliefs will very likely prove to be wrong from the vantage point of a century or two in the future?

I got in some big arguments about this with the usual suspects back in the other place. And I agree with them that science is the best that we currently have for understanding the world around us. So I agree that it makes sense to accept today's scientific ideas provisionally, as working hypotheses so to speak.

But while that speaks to our expectations about the future, it doesn't seem to me to have any force in dictating what the boundaries of reality necessarily have to be. So I hold open the possibility, even the likelihood, that reality might surprise us by slapping us alongside the head with something totally unexpected.

[Magical Realist]

What are the odds that a populous tribe of bipedal primates, who all evolved specifically to experience and interpret the world in terms of whatever best contributes to their comfort and well-being, would have reached a stage of knowing that all possible phenomena can be explained in terms of their evolved worldview? Very low I'd say.

I agree 100%.

There's the so-called "Pessimistic Induction", which observes that much/most of the philosophy and science of past centuries has proven, in retrospect, to be wrong. So the obvious question is asked why we should consider ourselves to be any different. Shouldn't we conclude, simply by induction, that today's most cherished beliefs will very likely prove to be wrong from the vantage point of a century or two in the future?

I got in some big arguments about this with the usual suspects back in the other place. And I agree with them that science is the best that we currently have for understanding the world around us. So I agree that it makes sense to accept today's scientific ideas provisionally, as working hypotheses so to speak.

But while that speaks to our expectations about the future, it doesn't seem to me to have any force in dictating what the boundaries of reality necessarily have to be. So I hold open the possibility, even the likelihood, that reality might surprise us by slapping us alongside the head with something totally unexpected.

I venture to say that modern science's fanatical skeptical stance regarding phenomena and events that don't fit their physicalist/naturalist assumptions was largely shaped by the explosion of spiritualism in the late 1800's. So popular and exciting was this movement that the still young field of physics was put on the defensive, enlisted into the task of trying to debunk every account of paranormal phenomena. It was truly a clash of two worldviews, one in which everything is reducible to physical particles, and one in which spirits and the afterlife were actual and interactive parts of reality. Science came out the winner of that contest, at least in terms of widespread cultural appropriation, proving time and again since then a wholly material universe subject to rigorous laws and regularities that effectively slams the door on any hijinx from interloping otherworldlies. But the times they are a'chang'n, and the ethereal interlopers have returned in a new form, complete with magical spaceships, mystifying capabilities, and surreptitious motives.

“That position comes down to this. The world is not simply composed of physical causes strung together in strictly materialistic and mechanical fashion requiring, say, a physics for their complete explanation. The world is also a series of meaningful signs requiring a hermeneutics for their decipherment. Whatever they are, UFOs “vibrate in phase” with our forms of consciousness and culture. We thus cannot even conceive of them outside or independent from their observation. This most basic of facts puts into serious doubt the adequacy of any traditional scientific method. Such methods, after all, work from an ideal of complete objectivity, which in turn demands an effort to eliminate all interference with the observer. But what if the observer is the very mode of the apparition? What if the observer is an integral part of the experiment?”
― Jeffrey J. Kripal, Authors of the Impossible: The Paranormal and the Sacred