While human perception is flawed and easily fooled, the scientific method advocates the following methods of getting over this limitation:
- The utilization of machines and instruments in which to record data recieved from the experiment
- The method in which to duplicate the experiments and get the same results must be consistent.
Our technological enhancements and the data they record are still interpreted by our own senses. These instruments do not prove true or false, rather they suggest probability.
Certainly human logic is fallable, however there are certain parts of it which are not. You can analyze something happening a thousand times and assume that it will always happen. The probability that it will happen again under the same conditions may not be 100%, but it is often higher than 99%.
Probabilities I have no problem with. Absolutes, I do have a problem with. Even the experiences of the deepest mystics are interpreted by the mystic with the mystic's own senses.
In the example you mention, a spectrometer or similar instrument would be employed in order to convey and differentiate colors to the blind person. It may not have much inherent meaning to him but can still affect him (ie: how he is percieved, the fact that darker colors absorb more light and emit more heat), just as a radio wave that we cannot see has no inherent meaning to us, yet it still exists, and while we take it on faith that radio waves DO in fact exist, we can always experiment to prove what we believe.
But the colour-blind individual would still have to make a 'leap of faith' in order to accept that 'red' actually existed as an interpretation of the human visual sensory receptors, because 'red' has no meaning for this individual.
Anyways I'd say when something is beyond human perception and measurement then it's pretty much irrelevant untill we are able to measure it. Otherwise we are just making guesses, and that doesn't seem fair in a world full of rational beings.
Rather than guesses, I would rather term it as probabilities. The probability that a supranatural being, or a mystical experience exists still remains whether there is a method of measurement or experimentation or not. The degree of probability of a given 'truth' or 'fact' becomes greater or lesser with experience of it.
You are trying to logically denounce logic. Logic has nothing to do with believing something. Maths:It doesnt matter what you believe. And they are not influenced by human sensory data.
I am not trying to denounce Logic, rather I am attempting to express that human logic and reasoning are not the sole arbitrators of 'truth', and to state so makes a false assumption.
Before Copernicus, logic dictated by the observation of celestial bodies that all things revolved around the Earth. We know now that this was false, but at the time, logic and reasoning dictated otherwise. Then, logic and reasoning dictated that all celestial bodies revolved in perfect circles. Again, we know this to be false. Logic and reasoning demonstrate probabilities, not truths.
Perhaps. What then do you proppose as a justification to dismiss something that cannot be(or rather, has not yet been) measured if you also consider logic to be inadequate?
I propose to dismiss nothing, no matter how radical or absurd, rather consider its probability. Probability assumes no 'right or wrong', only the likelyhood of its occurance.
I do not consider logic and reasoning inadequate,
per se, rather I would that those who promote logic and reasoning to be the
only measure to consider its current short-comings, to consider that human logic and reasoning may not be the only logic and reasoning, and to not dismiss or discount something which does not fit into the limited parameters of human logic and reasoning. Probability is a more just manner of measure.
As example, you can be certain that the colour 'red' is the result of the physical properties of the human visual receptors, and there would be little refutation of that assumption yet, if a human is born colour-blind, how do you explain the 'truth' of the colour red?
What you are propposing here is 18th(edited) century Hume's empiricism. "If I am not aware of something, it doesnt exist".
No, I was illustrating the point that there are those events and experiences which cannot be expressed or explained to those who have no means to or cannot experience them.
I have not seen, nor is the probability high that I will see, the Earth from space. Do I discount the experiences of the astronauts who have? They cannot bring back tangible evidence of their experience, nor can they adequately relate the experience to others.
I have seen them launch into space and to return, but their experience is their own. What words do they use to describe seeing the Earth from space? Marvelous? Extraordinary? Unexplainable?
These would be the same terms used by mystics.
I can see the mystic in deep meditation or in the rapture of ecstasy, and I can see this mystic return. Do I discount the experience of the mystic because she cannot adequately explain to me her experience in terms I can understand or bring me tangible proof of that experience?
We would do much better as a species if we refrained from judging 'right or wrong' or 'true or false' and instead, considered the probabilities of events and experiences.
This is all I am getting at.
