Here come multiple responses in a single post...
My sympathy to you, hypermagda, I'm glad that you escaped a tragic fate. As you point out, it is a difficult to understand fact of existence that so many do not escape such a fate - which of course would be a key "data point" to discuss on any new forum.
I'm back here because as I said before I feel that after all there's nothing more worthwhile for me to do than trying to make sense of this weird (and occasionally truly horrific) existence I'm experiencing. And the contributions people post in this Forum, though I obviously do not agree with all of them, truly help me in my inquiry so thank you all once again.
It's a key attraction to me of this board: I am already sold (partly through personal experience, partly through science) on the existence of psi and of a whole "realm" beyond the materialistic, so the next logical point of inquiry is, "OK, so what does it all mean? Can we - on this board - take a similarly rigorous approach to the nature of reality as a whole as we have taken to the existence of psi?" And the answer seems to be, generally, "Yes", albeit that the strict Western scientific method can't always be applied to these bigger questions. So, for me, the powerful value of this board is as "a peer-reviewing collective of rational investigators into the big questions, having already accepted the answer to the 'smaller' question of whether we live in a spiritual universe". All I'm really suggesting is that we identify and make it easy to find where these "investigations and peer-reviews" are occurring on this board.
If people don't like the proposed forum name, that's fine. If they don't even like the idea of adding a new forum, that's fine too. So long as there is
some way of identifying and collecting these discussions, I'll be satisfied. Maybe even David's new "index" thread (could) serve(s) the purpose well enough.
I just saw this thread as I was trying to go back to the posts I had not replied to a few days ago, just before the terror attacks here in Brussels, and I wanted to say that what you propose (this new Forum, or thread) sounds very appealing to me.
Nice, I'm glad you're on board with the idea.
I also agree with what you wrote about 'reasoning" in your post which I quote above - I, too believe in reasoning, and to me too it's very important to ascertain the COMPATIBILITY (as you rightly pointed out), between the various theories people have come up with, including as a consequence of their experiences. Compatibility means logical compatibility of course.
Yes. And this is not to deny the need for creativity, insight and intuition in coming up with the theories in the first place, it is only to emphasise that
once we have a theory, we need to apply critical thinking towards it. I am, though, open to the possibility that I have gotten the emphasis wrong in the proposed name, and that the emphasis should be on genesis rather than analysis.
My proposal for the title of this new Forum/thread you suggest would be: "Existence: what is happening (to us / to it) and why?".
I like it. It seems a little long for the title itself, but maybe it could be a sub-title? And maybe we could replace "(to us / to it)" with "here and beyond"?
This is because we may not know exactly or agree on what "reality" is: I usually refer to "consensus reality"
Well, maybe having "reality" in the title and "existence" in the sub-title would give people the right sense of what is intended?
I have introduced a new thread in "Guidlines and Introductions" as an experiment. The idea is that the top post will contain sections with links to significant debates on this board (and there are a lot) and links to other 'must read' information. To keep it tidy I propose to incorporate suggestions from you all (post them in the new thread) in the main list, deleting your posts as I do this. Please confine your posts to a title, and a list of links.
If this works well, it will act as a contents list of SKEPTIKO, so that, for example, all the discussions about reasoning about the nature of reality will be visible.
If you don't like this idea, or (better!) want to make suggestions, here might be the best place to discuss it.
David
I very much like this idea. Enthusiastically endorsed! I'm not sure it obviates (the need for) the proposed new forum, but that's something we can discuss.
hypermagda: Oh yes, and maybe a wiki could also be an option, good idea!
David Bailey: I don't think wiki is a good place for any discussions of this sort. They will attract the militant materialists who will edit them to spoil them.
Well, firstly, I proposed (on the back of somebody else's historical proposal, I guess I misremembered that it was you, David? It might instead have been Ian) the wiki more for documenting scientific evidence of psi, but it *could* also be used to summarise discussions about reality. Secondly, it is possible to require login prior to editing on a wiki, so that we could vet potential contributors and avoid most of the spam. I have some experience with administering a MediaWiki (the software that runs Wikipedia) wiki, and have also written a skin for that software -
the Treeview skin - which adds hierarchical browsing to the sidebar (unfortunately, the skin has a few drawbacks, and I am no longer actively working on it). I know that MediaWiki supports custom login procedures, so that, potentially, the wiki could share login accounts with the forum - so that, potentially, we could limit wiki editing to forum members.
I feel I should say a little more about my viewpoint, though it may be off-topic here, nevertheless there is a risk of being misunderstood if I don't explain further.
My educational background was strongest in the sciences and particularly mathematics and physics. I've earned a living much of my life as a software developer. That's a whole lot of rational and logical thinking going on there. It's one of my strengths.
But real life, the living of it has all sorts of experiences which don't fit. At some point what happens is either our model of the world we live in, or the way we think about it, starts to creak and groan under the constraints of rational thought. When that happens, there is a gap into which new models of the world may be introduced, new ways of considering things. What I am deliberately doing is to avoid committing to any fixed idea. My choice is to not be constrained, the ideas I hold are fluid. This is very much a personal position, and I don't try to recommend it to anyone else.
We have similar strengths and educational backgrounds, Typoz, as well as an identical profession. :-)
What you say about old models cracking and new models being introduced is totally compatible with the aims of the proposed forum, and the forum doesn't either require that anybody commit to anything. The point of including "reasoning" is that once you've discarded your old model, you're going to want to critically appraise any potential new models, right? I mean, you're not going to just say, "Whatever comes to me, I accept it: that will be my new model", are you? You're going to want it to actually
make sense: to be internally consistent, to explain what we know about reality, etc?
But I think you're also concerned that there's too much focus on analysis and not enough on genesis in the proposed name? Maybe there's a terse forum name connoting the idea of "Creatively and insightfully generating new models of reality and then subjecting them to critical appraisal" - that would seem to satisfy your sentiments, or am I wrong?
I've just changed my vote, as I was simply satisfied with having such a topic to discuss. But reading Typoz posts and thinking about it, I think 'reasoning' is not really an appropriate word, while some may also not be happy with 'reality,' it is close enough to pointing to a vague topic to which probably no words would adequately fit.
Like Typoz and David, I think such thoughts on such topics should remain fluid, and attempts to nail them down might fit with some, but not with others.
No worries, Steve: which name would you suggest instead? Do you think it needs to incorporate ideas of "genesis", "insight", "creativity" and "direct knowing" too, and, as for the "reasoning" part, would you be happier with something along the lines of (though it is too long in practice) "critically appraising models of" rather than "reasoning about"?
If there is concern about subdividing the forum, another idea would be to post the relevant threads in a subforum like Other Stuff or Extended Conscious And Spirituality, but all using the same title for the beginning of the thread:
e.g. Reasoning about Reality 1: Does Evil Exist?, Reasoning about Reality 2: Does Life Have Meaning?, etc. etc.
Yes, that's a possibility, and whilst they might otherwise get lost amongst all the other posts, that scheme could probably work with David's "index" thread, so long as people made sure to update the "index" thread regularly (the lack of automation is a drawback).
Looking at the examples of threads proposed in Laird's opening post, it seems to me some of these DO have a natural home in the Extended Consciousness & Spirituality subforum (like Steve's I Think I've Got The Answer) - especially when they involve information gleaned from experiencers, whether OBErs, NDErs, channelers, etc, and talking and thinking about those. I personally see no reason to separate these out from the rest of the forum topics.
Perhaps, though, had this forum been available when Steve created the thread, he might have approached it differently? He might have said, "Here's what I think the answer is, now let's analyse it to see whether it holds up to careful scrutiny" - and then it might have had a better home in the new forum than the existing one.
If some people, however, want to make threads where the purpose is really speculation without special recourse to information transmitted by a paranormal source, and with more of a philosophical/free-to-speculate-in-any-way tone, as I said they could be posted in one of these subforums using the same title at the beginning, so that it would be easy to find these threads in that subforum.
"Speculating About Reality" sounds good to me, among other options (The Philosophers' Corner, say).
Speculation is fine, and it has its place, but it has to be matched with critical thought. There definitely could be speculative-brainstorming threads in the new forum where critical appraisal was temporarily suspended for the sake of creativity, but in the end, you have to subject your creations to the "sniff test", don't you?
Also, "philosophy" is so much broader than the aim of this forum, so I'm not sure it's such a good fit.