The so-called "interaction problem" of spiritual/physical

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fhansen said:
The “problem” is that, like it or not, the experiences can be totally ineffable, beyond anything that we can normally relate to, beyond anything that our normal senses are involved in perceiving even, those senses being by-passed as it were…
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Then we can say that there is no meaningful and evidentiary interaction with physical reality. There’s no problem to be solved.
 
Dan_Defender said:
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Abrosz:
Make it more than just an anecdotal “evidence”.
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Miracles are rare occurrences. G. K. Chesterton said the most incredible thing about miracles is that they do happen. However, to some people, no evidence is enough. Even if the dead came back to life, they would not believe.
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I think if my father came back to life and I was the only person who could see him, then I’d be worried about my mental health. If everyone else could see him then either my mental health had degenerated to a point where everything was a hallucination or he was really there. Either way, in both of those circumstances, I would accept it.
 
From a mathematical point of view the human retina is only capable of perceiving our multi dimensional existence through lenses made to only see in 2 dimensions. We only sense the 3rd dimension because of the developed understanding of our reality, the truth is, without motion we are only capable of seeing 2 dimensions.

In a sense we are 3d beings living life through 2d lenses, I guess the question remains as to the form of being that might exist with 3d lenses, could they be considered as 4d beings?
 
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Gorgias said:
And yet, the failure to provide empirical evidence doesn’t proceed from the non-existence of the phenomenon.
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I think it’s just a failure to see, or accept, any evidence. And I don’t see why evidence of spirituality couldn’t be called “empirical evidence”.
Gorgias said:
Rather, it proceeds from the impossibility of predicting the occurrence.
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Calling the work of God “the occurrence” is rather constraining isn’t it? Sort of like a lightning strike on a clear day is an “occurrence”, a bit of a caricature.

If you’re going to talk about the spiritual effecting the physical wouldn’t it be better to use more open ended language. Instead of saying “predicting the occurrence” you could say “quantifying the outcome” for materialists, and “discerning the fruit” for Christians.
Gorgias said:
Want to propose a different framework for the discussion?
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Yes, I think so. It seems like your original post was focused on miracles as a means of spiritual interaction. I don’t think that’s a good approach.
Gorgias said:
However, this argument seems short-sighted on two counts:
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Yes, short-sightedness. I think that’s how to reframe the discussion. As in, having an expectation of hard proof for something that is not a hard science is short-sighted.

As I said, discerning the fruit of anything, or quantifying the outcome of an occurrence takes time in somewhat the same way that drug studies take time to quantify whether it’s results are good, bad, or who knows because we sure don’t.

I would add that there is evidence of the spiritual working in people’s lives. I’m sure it’s even been studied and is available to look at.
 
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Freddy said:
But there must be some interface with the physical world that we can recognise and agree on. Else we’re back to dragons in the basement.
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Well… I still say that “spiritual realm” and “dragons in the basement” are distinct cases; but I get what you mean.

However, the analogy does have insights it could offer us, I think:
  • we expect to be able to find physical evidence of your dragon (since he’s purported to be a physical creature living in the physical universe), but a spiritual being has neither of these characteristics. Therefore, if we wish to proceed rationally, our expectations must be different!
  • If there is an interaction between the physical universe and spiritual entities, we would (by necessity, it seems) need to develop a model for what we expect that interaction would be:
    • would the interaction itself be empirically measurable?
    • would there be any artifacts which would be distinguishable from “non-interfaced” physical objects?
    • how could we look at such an “interfaced” physical object and identify it as such?
  • it would seem that it would be incumbent on us to set a standard (agreeable to all) that would allow us to identify an “interface event”. In the absence of such an objective standard, we’d see waffling of the type that @Abrosz has exhibited in this thread (“it’s not really a miracle”; “it never really was an illness to begin with”; etc, etc).
1Lord1Faith said:
And I don’t see why evidence of spirituality couldn’t be called “empirical evidence”.
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Because spiritual beings aren’t physical, and therefore, cannot be measured empirically. Part of the discussion in this thread, then, has turned to the question of measuring their physical impact in the world.
1Lord1Faith said:
It seems like your original post was focused on miracles as a means of spiritual interaction.
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No; that’s just the turn that these discussions typically take. Materialists tend to wish to see material results, and that tends to bring the question of miracles to the fore.
 
Abrosz said:
Your suggested miracles are not rejected on principle, rather because there is no sufficient evidence for them.
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There is no sufficient scientific evidence. But it doesn’t follow that if somebody has a stigmata that it is therefore reasonable to think that a miracle has not occurred. People are reasonable for thinking that a stigmata is a sign from God because the context in which it has occurred justifies it.

The lack of scientific evidence is not the same thing as lacking evidence. The value of a particular kind of evidence is dependent on the context of an occurrence, and not all forms of evidence require the epistemological validation of the scientific method in order to be evidence. To demand scientific evidence of a miracle is to place an artificial limitation on a subject in-order to please a bias.
 
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Gorgias said:
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Freddy:
But there must be some interface with the physical world that we can recognise and agree on. Else we’re back to dragons in the basement.
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Well… I still say that “spiritual realm” and “dragons in the basement” are distinct cases; but I get what you mean.

However, the analogy does have insights it could offer us, I think:
  • we expect to be able to find physical evidence of your dragon (since he’s purported to be a physical creature living in the physical universe), but a spiritual being has neither of these characteristics. Therefore, if we wish to proceed rationally, our expectations must be different!
  • If there is an interaction between the physical universe and spiritual entities, we would (by necessity, it seems) need to develop a model for what we expect that interaction would be:
    • would the interaction itself be empirically measurable?
    • would there be any artifacts which would be distinguishable from “non-interfaced” physical objects?
    • how could we look at such an “interfaced” physical object and identify it as such?
  • it would seem that it would be incumbent on us to set a standard (agreeable to all) that would allow us to identify an “interface event”.
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Then as you are the one suggesting that the spiritual realm actually exists and interacts with the physical realm, I think that it’s incumbent on you to tell us how we can discover this.
 
IWantGod said:
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Abrosz:
Your suggested miracles are not rejected on principle, rather because there is no sufficient evidence for them.
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There is no sufficient scientific evidence. But it doesn’t follow that if somebody has a stigmata that it is therefore reasonable to think that a miracle has not occurred. People are reasonable for thinking that a stigmata is a sign from God because the context in which it has occurred justifies it.
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That’s a very weak argument, IWG. ‘There’s no evidence for someone spontaneously bleeding from the palms but it must be a miracle because Jesus was cucified’
 
Freddy said:
‘There’s no evidence for someone spontaneously bleeding from the palms but it must be a miracle because Jesus was cucified’
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Context…

…and it happens on both the hands and the feet.
 
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1Lord1Faith said:
Yes, I think so. It seems like your original post was focused on miracles as a means of spiritual interaction. I don’t think that’s a good approach.
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All the miracle talk was my fault. I presented miracles as one "fingerprint of spiritual interaction,’ and it sort of overwhelmed the thread for a while.
 
Freddy said:
‘There’s no evidence for someone spontaneously bleeding from the palms but it must be a miracle because Jesus was cucified’
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That’s not how I understood the statement. It seemed to me that it was more along the lines of “If someone is spontaneously bleeding from the palms, it is reasonable to believe that it is a miracle”. Not the same as “It must be”. Of course it is also reasonable to investigate whether the bleeding is actually spontaneous and whether it has a discernable physical cause or not.
 
IWantGod said:
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Freddy:
A lot harder to fake on the feet.
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They were faked? Is that the best your mind can come up with?

Why don’t you look into Saint Pardre Pios case.
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Been there, checked that out. Discarded as a fake. As did two popes likewise. Please let’s not go there though…
 
whatistrue said:
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Freddy:
‘There’s no evidence for someone spontaneously bleeding from the palms but it must be a miracle because Jesus was cucified’
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That’s not how I understood the statement. It seemed to me that it was more along the lines of “If someone is spontaneously bleeding from the palms, it is reasonable to believe that it is a miracle”. Not the same as “It must be”. Of course it is also reasonable to investigate whether the bleeding is actually spontaneous and whether it has a discernable physical cause or not.
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If there is a wound, how it it possible to say that it wasn’t caused by a physical object?

I’m actually sitting here holding a tissue to the back of my hand as I had a slight burn getting something out of the oven a week ago. Now I just scratched the scab it and it’s bleeding. Looks quite a lot like a puncture wound…
 
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