On what it is to be a skeptical inquirer: Not enough evidence, or a mind not open enough?

Here is an argument from an essay in psychology on psychic phenomenon. 

We did not examine the data for psi, to the consternation of the parapsychologist who was one of the reviewers. Our reason was simple: The data are irrelevant. We used a classic, rhetorical device, adynaton, a form of hyperbole so extreme it is, in effect, impossible. Ours was “pigs cannot fly”— hence data that show they can are the result of flawed methodology, weak controls, inappropriate data analysis, or fraud. (Reber & Alcock, 2019b, p. 8)

Reber, A. S., & Alcock, J. E. (2019b). Why parapsychological claims cannot be true. Skeptical Inquirer, 43(4), 8–10. 

 I once wrote this in a paper on Hume on miracles. 

Bertrand Russell was reportedly once asked what he would say to God if he were to find himself confronted by the Almighty about why he had not believed in God's existence. He said that he would tell God "Not enough evidence, God, not enough evidence!"[1] But perhaps, if God failed to give Russell enough evidence, it was not God's fault. We are inclined to suppose that God could satisfy Russell by performing a spectacular miracle for Russell's benefit. But if the reasoning in David Hume's epistemological argument against belief in miracles [2] is correct, then no matter how hard God tries, God cannot give Russell an evidentially justified belief in Himself by performing miracles. According to Hume, no matter what miracles God performs, it is always more reasonable to believe that the event in question has a natural cause and is not miraculous. Hence, if Russell needs a miracle to believe reasonably in God, then Russell is out of luck. Russell cannot complain about God's failure to provide evidence, since none would be sufficient. But God cannot complain about Russell's failure to believe.

Some Problems for Skeptics About the Paranormal, including James Randi

Here.  By Triablogue's Jason Engwer.

Loftus misrepresents me again (surprise surprise)

John, why don't you learn to read more carefully. I was very explicit about NOT attributing this to God, or anything like God, so I have never said that the God of the Bible did it.  Nor do I have any certainty about what the explanation is.  I have always found the incident curious. While lots of people go down in spelling bees, the temper tantrum this boy threw is unique in all the spelling bees I have ever been part of. I distinctly remember the time my violin teacher gave for what happened seemed to be exactly the time at which this happened. My teacher spent almost no time talking about clairvoyance, it was never something he was "on about." This was an isolated occurrence.

My memory for these sorts of specifics is pretty good. I can, for example, remember my score in most of the chess tournaments I have ever played in. I can remember three of the four words I went out on in the four years I competed in spelling bees in grade school. I am somewhat

There are clearly three possibilities. One is that he was not aware of what happened at the bee, but that did some fancy guesswork to make it look like he did. The second is that he did have knowledge of what was going on a mile away, but that it has a naturalistic explanation. Or, it could have been something that does involve something over and above what we ordinarily can ascribe to the natural world.

Obviously, I'm in no position to lighten James Randi's wallet. But I still think that skeptical responses to these sort of things are to quick, too easy, and too dogmatic. I did say that this is evidence of the paranormal, but what I am coming to realize is that my concept of evidence may be different from yours. For me, X is evidence for hypothesis Y if experience X is more likely to occur if Y is true than if Y is not true. This is all pretty clearly understandable if there is clairvoyance than if there is no clairvoyance. In fact, I wonder how all of you would analyze the phrase "X is evidence for Y."

That said, I do NOT hold the belief that this is something that is naturalistically inexplicable. I am decidedly undecided on what the explanation is.

Reply to Parsons on the Spelling Bees, Theories, and Explanations

Keith Parsons responds to the Spelling Bee incident: 


Am I skeptical of Victor's report? No. Why should I be? People frequently think that they have had clairvoyant episodes, premonitory dreams, ESP, etc., so there is no reason whatsoever that I should doubt such a report. It is not at all outside of the "ordinary course of nature." On the contrary, people have such experiences all the time. How did he (the violin teacher) know what had happened? Well, of course, he did not know. People get hunches, feelings, and intuitions all the time. Some, by chance, are going to be close to something that actually happens. Confirmation bias then steps in to make sure that we remember those that seemed to correspond to what happened and forget all of those that did not. 


I have trouble seeing why people are so sure that he didn't know, even if they are naturalists. Does he really know that this is naturalistically impossible? It might be less likely given naturalism than given supernaturalism, and thus the evidence might probabilistically support supernaturalism via Bayes' theorem. (OK, OK, people accuse me of abusing Bayesian probability theory on a daily basis, so I'm already bracing myself). But the most we can say, I think, if my teacher knew that my rival had gone down and been upset, this might be difficult to explain naturalistically based on what we know about nature at this point. Why do we have to assume it was a guess that turned into an appearance of knowledge because of confirmation bias. 


A few more details about the incident are relevant here. First, he said he had this "perception" just at the time when the rival went down. Second, my violin teacher never reported anything like this in the three years when he was my teacher. It's not as if he brought up a bunch of them, and this one just happened to fit.  He did mention other clairvoyant incidents, but didn't claim to have a whole lot of them. Third, although spellers, like all competitors, experience the agony of defeat, nobody ever was quite as demonstrative as this guy. So I'm just not sure you can chalk it all up to guesswork and confirmation bias. In fact, in the absence of some good reasons to believe that he couldn't have known something that was going on a couple of miles away in that school auditorium, I think the reasonable thing to say would be that he did know. 


Of course, Victor raises these queries because of their seeming relevance to miracle reports. Didn't Hume say that we should be skeptical of reports of events outside of the "ordinary course of nature?" Well, it depends on what we mean by the "ordinary course of nature." The largest largemouth bass ever caught was a lunker of 23 pounds landed by a Georgia angler circa 1924. Now this is pretty astonishing since a largemouth bass of ten pounds is a whopper. My Dad was a lifelong bass fisherman and he never caught one over eight pounds. Suppose, though that in tomorrow's paper I read that a largemouth bass weighing 24 pounds had been caught. Would I be skeptical? Maybe slightly, but I would probably tentatively accept the story. What if the report said that a largemouth bass of 50 pounds had been caught? I would most definitely be skeptical and would strongly suspect a hoax. What if the report said that an enormous, glowing bass had levitated out of the water and pronounced maledictions on all fisherman? Obviously, no newspaper--with the exception of the (now sadly defunct) Weekly World News would every publish such a story. 


But, of course, we have to consider the not only the probability of the event given naturalism, but we must also consider the laws of supernature. How probable is the event given supernatural involvement. Is it the sort of thing God is likely to do, or not, if we suspect God? Of course, Keith and I disagree as to whether it is possible to consider the laws of supernature, but people who have beliefs about supernature have probabilistic expectations concerning what to expect from supernature. If you say that's not enough for a law, well guess what. In quantum mechanics all you get are probabilities also. Are we worried that God isn't observable? Well, science commits to unobservables all the time. 


In considering miracles claims like the Resurrection, we can formulate a theory about what kinds of miracles God is likely to perform, and why he would perform them. Given this theory, we can ask whether the historical evidence is more likely to be the sort thing we should expect if the theistic theory is true, or whether it is more like the sort of thing we should expect if the theistic theory is false. There is a very large trail of historical evidence to look at. 


Of course, you can end up deciding that yes, the historical evidence confirms the theistic story, but the atheistic account is more probable based on the total evidence, or relative to your priors. 


Have the laws of nature been established by a firm and unalterable experience, as Hume suggests? I don't think so. My experience is far from establishing the laws of nature on a firm and unalterable basis. What about yours? 

Stupid Skeptic Tricks

Thanks to Russell for this one, which he brings up in the context of the discussion of the paranormal. I think I've seen these before in the context of, well, other things.

Of course, some people may want to argue about whether these are really stupid.

Spelling Bees, Violin Teachers, and ESP

When I was in the seventh grade, I won the District Spelling Bee. The defending champion, somewhat to my surprise, went out when there were six people left, stomped off the stage, and went crying to his mother. After winning the Bee (and qualifying for the state finals), I was asked to provide a picture for the newspaper. As it happened, my violin teacher had a Polaroid camera, and my parents and I knew this, so we visited him. He told me that he had been thinking about my spelling bee, and at one point had an awareness that my rival had gone down, and that he was very upset about it. He had this awareness at about the time when my rival went down. He said that he had sometimes had episodes of clairvoyance.


It wasn't something that he said came from God. It's not something that supports my religious beliefs, especially. But I have often thought back to this incident. How did he know? Should you be skeptical of my report now, since this doesn't seem to be something that happens in the ordinary course of nature?