When I became tangled up in the web that is ‘paranormal research’ at the age of Eighteen, I did so because I was looking for information and answers. In all the subsequent years I have found information, I have found answers and I have discovered more questions. The more I have learnt, the more I have discovered I do not know.
I am open minded and curious, more than most people involved in paranormal research can truthfully say. Most people have their minds made up one way or another, but I don’t. Some people involved in ‘the field’ have an agenda or are aiming to gain something from it, but I’ve never really aimed for that. Even though some people think I have. It’s concerning that so many people are content to say something is a ghost and be so sure of it when there is no rational way such an explanation is reasonably sound. The main problem with paranormal research is the amount of people who are so sure of their own ability (and not just ghost believers, either).
A lot of people involved in paranormal research need to just chill the eff out.
Since the age of Eighteen I have just been exploring the world we live in through curious eyes, and that has led me to be the skeptical individual I am today. I used to believe a lot of naive things and I learnt better. I still believe a lot of naive things, and over time I will learn better. Being critical of ourselves is the best way in which we can develop our understanding of the very nature of our existence.
I became involved in paranormal research to discover things I didn’t know about, and I continue to do that to this very day. Everything else has just been opportunities people have passed my way that I’ve taken them up on. All the talks, all the writing, all the interviews…
They’ve all been great fun, and they’ve enabled me to discuss my ever changing story with other people who’ve never held the curiosity in the paranormal that I have. It’s helped me make other people think about things, and it’s helped me meet like minded people and be challenged by the questions I’ve been asked.
Over the years I have come to believe that the answers to why people experience strange things lies within psychology and neurology. We (as the human race) are starting to deconstruct myths that have for a long time baffled many, and scientists and researchers are offering up explanations about things masses of people experience.
There is a lot still to be learnt, and a lot of what is being discovered is exciting and confusing, but progress is being made.
It’s why last year I decided to change the way in which I approach my exploration of the subject. I’ve started to study psychology with The Open University in the hope that when I’m much older I’ll be a bit more satisfied with how I understand the world.
The way in which people believe, perceive and think has always fascinated me, and I hope to be able to dig deeper and learn much more over the coming decade as a student.
This does mean I’m not going to have as much time to dedicate to as many projects as I did before, but I don’t see that being an overly negative thing.
I recently revamped the ‘Ghost Field Guide’ podcast and renamed it as ‘Talk About Strange’, I don’t think it will be a regular show but I will update it as and when I can with interesting pieces and interviews (of which I already have some to edit down). The Righteous Indignation Podcast was recently put on hold, but that doesn’t mean it has totally vanished. We’re not sure what will happen in the future with it, and sometimes it’s good for things to not have a long term plan. Life is a spontaneous thing, and I think it should be lived that way too. There are over 104 episodes of RI (if you could the Unlucky Dips) and I am really proud of the show and all it has achieved, and will continue to achieve. I will always be an indignate 
Project Barnum is my baby and there are some absolutely fun things coming up for it. On January 5th Project Barnum launched the Monthly Actions for people to participate in with ‘The Horoscope Challenge’ and I’ve seen some really interesting feedback already. I do believe that when I launched Project Barnum I didn’t do so in the most organised of manners, and I let other peoples ideas influence the direction it launched in too heavily. However, this year things should be interesting on the PB front.
There are some really decent people supporting it, and so many people have reported back to me that the site and the resources have genuinely helped them that I think I’ve done something right there (and I’m not just doing a Colin Fry and allegedly blowing my own trumpet…)
I will continue to blog as I always have. Both here and over on The Vigilantes Blog too. I don’t see there ever being a time where I wont share my thoughts with those who follow me on this site. Blogging has been the foundation of everything I have done since the age of Eighteen, and it will continue to be so for as long as I shall live.
I have so many books to catch up on, so many research reports to read, and so much ahead of me to learn. It’s going to be exciting. 2012 is going to be the year in which I step up the quest that the Eighteen year old me started. Things have only just begun.
If you would be so kind I’d like you to confirm an item of this particular post that I find minutely misleading. I’ve seen you write frequently that you do not believe in ghosts and other such oddities and therefore how are you able to truthfully say that you are open minded? Isn’t this counter-opinionated? I really enjoy your blog, Hayley, but I do notice on occasion a slight hint of hypocrisy from time to time.
Cheers.
Tim Allan-Hughs
I’m open minded because I’m willing to change my mind should evidence to the contrary be presented. Just because I don’t believe something to be true doesn’t mean I’m closed minded to the idea. I also wont remain ‘agnostic’ about the idea ghosts might exist because to be consistent with that I would also have to consider the possibility that unicorns exist too.
Again, if evidence was provided that proved unicorns existed then I’d be happy to accept that. That’s how being open minded works.
Here is a video that explains it better than I can:
As Hayley says and the video continues, open mindedness is not accepting all manner of beliefs. Someone who believes in unicorns and ghosts is not more open minded than someone who just beleives in unicorns and they are not more open minded than someone who believes in neither.
Open Mindedness is being willing to accept new evidence (Of course that evidence has to be good, which no ghost evidence ever seems to be). Open Mindedness is not a willingness to believe as many unproven/ illogical or irrational things as possible.
I would happily and joyously accept the existence of ghosts if they were proven. The same with psychic ability like Telekinesis or reading minds.
The fact that the evidence (the good evidence) that currently exists does not support the existence of these things is telling and I’d actually be rather close minded to ignore the good, thoroughly investigated evidence and go along with the poorer evidence people claim exists.
I’ve seen the video before, thank you, but that’s not the point i was making. To be truly open minded the approach of the agnostic is most likely the most suitable route. One has to take each and every account of the paranormal seriously otherwise we’re just picking and choosing the most unusual, the most interesting and the most plausible, correct? I find that sort of investigative stance rather unsavoury due to the very nature of the subject.
Let us use your example: if you had a case given to you regarding a sighting of a herd of instantly vanishing unicorns that would gallop majestically through a home owners garden would you take the case seriously, or dismiss it straight away due to it’s stupidity, and throw the case in the bin along with goblins, fairies, visions of God and because you simply believe them not to exist? I would rather think you’d approach it with the latter method by the derogative way you suggested the non-existence of unicorns.
I would asses the case on it’s ability to be investigated before I made any decision about it’s validty. Sometimes though a case cannot be investigated simply because the only thing involved is eye-witness testimony. I have been involved in many strange phenomena investigations. I know how it works
Thank you for being condescending, but in all honesty I don’t believe you would take the case seriously. How would you approach this particular case if the individual in question was frightened of the situation in her garden and it was causing her evident duress? Would you tell her it was nonsense? A figment of her imagination? Or would you explain to her that her sightings were possibly real and warrent further investigation despite it being only an eye-witness based case?
I wasn’t being condescending. However, I am amused that you are judging me based on nothing but presumptions. Particularly with your idea that I would dismiss a case outright without taking into account the ethical consequences. Anyone who bothered to read my blog would know I am very concerned with ethical investigations.
I am not stupid, I know how to logically and ethically investigate a reported case of apparently paranormal phenomena, and the consequences of doing so incorrectly.
Oh, i most assuredly recognize your ethical stance, Hayley. I’ve read your blog for a long time. However, you failed to answer my question. How would you approach the proposed scenario?
I already explained I would asses the case for whether or not it was investigatable or not. No two cases are the same. I’m not going to speculate about a case when each investigation has to be customised to the settings of each case. I would rule out possible explinations until I couldn’t do so any more.
Even then I would only offer my opinion as an opinion and not as fact.
In most cases you can apply a null hypothesis to many cases and realise it’s not possible to logically investigate something.
Secondly, there is a difference between finding something not able to be investigated rationally, and telling someone they’re wrong/stupid/didn’t witness something.
This thread of comments has nothing to do with the post you are commenting on.
We’ll have to agree to disagree, i’m out of time, but thank you very much for your answers.
“To be truly open minded the approach of the agnostic is most likely the most suitable route.”
Define agnostic and how it applies. I don’t think being agnostic on the possibility of an invisible pink pirate ninja zombie standing behind me is the most rational position.
————————————-
“One has to take each and every account of the paranormal seriously”
No you don’t. To do so would be a waste of time, energy and intellect. If I claimed there was a invisible pink pirate ninja zombie standing behind me would you genuinely take that seriously? Really?
The best way to investigate the paranormal, at least as far as I’m concerned is looking at what naturalistic explanations could exist first, if a naturalistic explanation is found then it is acceptable to rule out paranormal. If none is found then all that does is relegate the occurrence to the “Unexplained” category and that tells us nothing. Hayley looks at some of the claims made and attempts to offer naturalistic explanations.
The absolute best you can ever get to if you are looking at the individual occurrence is either- it’s naturalistic or it’s unexplained. This goes nowhere to lending any credibility to it being paranormal. If you’re opening something up to the realm of the paranormal then your claim it’s a ghost is just as valid as my claim it’s an invisible pink pirate ninja zombie.
Before you can say “This is evidence of a ghost” you have to go through several other areas. First- you need to show that ghosts CAN be captured on film. Then you need to show that ghosts exist in that area. Before that you need to show ghosts actually exist but before ALL of that you need a hypothesis- you need to put forward a part of the human body or consciousness that could continue after physical death and that has not been shown. Until you show that something can continue after physical death all of your other “evidence” is worthless.
By investigating claims made of allegedly supernatural occurrences what people like Hayley are able to do is show how an occurrence can be naturalistic. And that’s very important. But, no, you shouldn’t take all claims of the paranormal seriously, or at least that’s what my invisible pink pirate ninja zombie standing behind me says.
———————————————–
“Let us use your example: if you had a case given to you regarding a sighting of a herd of instantly vanishing unicorns (clipped for space) suggested the non-existence of unicorns.”
As far as I’m concerned before I could take this seriously you’d need to prove to me unicorns exist. As the late Chris Hitchens said- what can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.
Ash, firstly i’d like you to define that thin line between taking a case seriously and then not where by you dismiss the claim out of hand for simply sounding ridiculous. For me, believing in the Hindu Goddess Kali with her 24 extra arms and legs, in my eyes, is just as questionable as believing in a pink zombie pirate. But millions of people take the belief in Kali extremely seriously. So where do we draw the line on just how serious we take certain claims of the paranormal and or spirituality? I think leaving this as an ambiguous area of definition is dangerous, and leaving people to believe they’re seeing something that seems at first ridiculous could in the end be very dangerous for the witness.
We are investigators, and therefore we should absolutely put in the time and the energy and intellect and lastly our experiences into claims of the unbelievable because that is what we do if only to put the witness at ease however stupid the claim sounds. Otherwise you might as well not even attempt at investigating because you would draw the line at the very definition of why we investigate in the first place. That’s like saying: ’I’m only going to investigate the plausible’. Doesn’t that go against the very convention of this study?
“As far as I’m concerned before I could take this seriously you’d need to prove to me unicorns exist. As the late Chris Hitchens said- what can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.”
What? This is a completely backwards statement. This is the sort of statement that’s gets us absolutely nowhere. By this I take it that you mean you would only investigate a paranormal case where the witness has experienced suspected poltergeist activity if only proof of poltergeists existed already. If we all followed this unscientific method we would never prove they existed in the first place, would we because we’d all be sat around waiting for someone else to prove it for us. This statement is a ridiculous use of circular reasoning and only aids us in going backwards in the investigation field.
Sod it. Lets call of the hunt for the cure of cancer because it doesn’t exist already.
This is going to be a LOOOONG one. Sorry!
“Ash, firstly i’d like you to define that thin line between taking a case seriously and then not where by you dismiss the claim out of hand for simply sounding ridiculous.”
I won’t take something that violates the way in which we know reality to work “seriously”. Simple as that. But I don’t really like the use of “take seriously” I would rather say I would not consider it being paranormal a credible explanation as it, as I say, violates how we know reality to work. Now that doesn’t mean the phenomena shouldn’t be investigated, it should, to find out what might be causing it. But again, we end up at best with “Unexplained” or “Naturalistic”.
Before you bring up something in the past that we once didn’t believe (such as the earth going round the sun) I would point out in those circumstances the evidence presented forced a change in thinking. You need to provide a functioning hypothesis that can be tested. Until then making claims that X is a supernatural occurrence is bogus because we don’t *know* what the supernatural is. I think claims should be investigated certainly to shed light on them, but as I say to consider them evidence of the paranormal makes too many leaps.
Go in thinking “this *might* be paranormal” have that at the back of your mind but don’t go in there thinking it’s a 50/50 chance.
———————————-
“ But millions of people take the belief in Kali extremely seriously”
So? Billions of people think Christ is the risen Messiah. Doesn’t make it true.
—————————————————————
.”So where do we draw the line on just how serious we take certain claims of the paranormal and or spirituality?”
We draw the line at the point when the claim violates how we know reality to work. If something must break laws of nature in order to exist I would say that is the point at which we can say we aren’t giving this claim credibility- HOWEVER we will investigate the claim and try and find out what’s causing it. If we can’t find it out it becomes “Unexplained” and that is as far as you can go. To go from Unexplained to It’s a ghost is fallacious.
————————————————-
“Otherwise you might as well not even attempt at investigating because you would draw the line at the very definition of why we investigate in the first place.”
I would say we investigate to find a logical rational demonstrably provable cause of the phenomenon. You will NEVER prove the paranormal by investigating a haunted house. To think you could is naïve. You could however set the owners mind at ease by explaining fully the realistic and naturalistic cause. Or simply that it’s unexplained. You want to prove ghosts, start off in a lab.
——————————————-
“That’s like saying: ’I’m only going to investigate the plausible’. Doesn’t that go against the very convention of this study? “
Why would I seriously investigated something that is implausible? We’re back to the invisible pink pirate ninja zombie again.
—————————
“What? This is a completely backwards statement.”
Not at all. You claim magically disappearing unicorns, fine. But first prove unicorns. Without the proof of unicorns there is no way you could have seen a herd of them vanish. You’re thinking too big again. Start with the smallest part that is absolutely essential first- namely, the existence of unicorns.
————————————————
“ By this I take it that you mean you would only investigate a paranormal case where the witness has experienced suspected poltergeist activity if only proof of poltergeists existed already”
Well yes, I would only investigate a POLTERGEIST case if they already existed. However I could still investigate an occurrence of anomalistic phenomenon. There’s a difference, and an important one you seem to be missing. You don’t investigate the “poltergeist” you investigate the occurrence. If you can find a naturalistic explanation then that is a good answer and response, however if you can’t, it just becomes unexplained.
—————————————————–
“If we all followed this unscientific method we would never prove they existed in the first place, would we because we’d all be sat around waiting for someone else to prove it for us”
Well unless you can prove that it is possible for us to continue after death and I mean properly- peer reviewed journals, repeatable testable studies, then going into people’s homes and old locations to try and prove ghosts is a pointless endeavour. I would assume many sceptical investigators will take the position that they are going to a place to investigate the phenomena, they will look for answers. The way much scientific experimentation works is to try and disprove your hypothesis, if you can disprove it it’s pointless no matter how much “proof positive” you think you have.
————————————————–
“This statement is a ridiculous use of circular reasoning and only aids us in going backwards in the investigation field.”
You clearly do not know what circular reasoning is. The Bible is true because the Bible says so is circular reasoning. Asking for evidence of your unicorns before I consider your claim of a vanishing herd is not circular. It’s the correct and rational starting point.
———————————————-
“Sod it. Lets call of the hunt for the cure of cancer because it doesn’t exist already. ”
I assume the smiley face is there because you realise how ridiculous your analogy is. A cure for cancer is not something that would exist outside of how we know reality to work. It would not violate any laws of physics or biology. A cure for many cancers exists already, my granddads form of cancer is so simple to treat he only takes a few pills when it rears up. And none of those cures violated any physical laws.
If you want to prove ghosts exist. Do it in a lab. Not in someone’s house. Go into their house to investigate an anomalous experience, not to investigate ghosts.
Hayley may disagree with me on some of these points, and that’s all good because the point is not to one up each other but to investigate claims in the best and most ethical way. For me, this stance works. You need to prove that we can continue after death, until then all other evidence as being “supernatural” is worthless. if we prove you can continue, then we have to prove ghosts can exist in our reality, which won’t be done with grainy photos.
Some of your points i agree with, many i do not. I would like to point out that you are clearly under the wrongful presumption that i’m a person who’s stand point is based in belief of such things, and frankly you’re not telling me anything i don’t already know. Thanks for the lesson, though.
______________________________
“ But millions of people take the belief in Kali extremely seriously”
So? Billions of people think Christ is the risen Messiah. Doesn’t make it true.
Sorry, i don’t see your point. I’ll reiterate mine: there can not be a division between your pink pirate, or unicorns or Kali because the people that believe they’ve experienced such things genuinely take them seriously and so should the investigator if these anomalous experiences are effecting the eyewitness. It’s our job to find a rational explanation not leave them to be freighted by them simply because we the investigator may find them ridiculous.
________________________________
“Otherwise you might as well not even attempt at investigating because you would draw the line at the very definition of why we investigate in the first place.”
I would say we investigate to find a logical rational demonstrably provable cause of the phenomenon. You will NEVER prove the paranormal by investigating a haunted house. To think you could is naïve. You could however set the owners mind at ease by explaining fully the realistic and naturalistic cause. Or simply that it’s unexplained. You want to prove ghosts, start off in a lab.
As i’ve made clear above: i believe we should start off in a lab to prove ghosts, however as we’re not scientists here, at least i don’t think you are, sir, i do not believe we are capable of that. But we are capable of putting the eyewitness at ease and clearly stating the rational reasons for such a situation after a in depth, logical look at their situation over many weeks/moths and even years.
Yet again i think you’re pulling presumptions out of nothing.
________________________________
.”So where do we draw the line on just how serious we take certain claims of the paranormal and or spirituality?”
We draw the line at the point when the claim violates how we know reality to work. If something must break laws of nature in order to exist I would say that is the point at which we can say we aren’t giving this claim credibility- HOWEVER we will investigate the claim and try and find out what’s causing it. If we can’t find it out it becomes “Unexplained” and that is as far as you can go. To go from Unexplained to It’s a ghost is fallacious.
I never said at all in my last post that we should jump from calling it anomalous to calling it a ghost. I’m not sure where you plucked that idea from. I think you are pulling presumptions from mid air to solidify your argument. The whole point of my post was in saying we should find logical, rational reasons for all cases, from the ridiculous to the plausible. Perhaps i wasn’t clear.
______________________________________
“This statement is a ridiculous use of circular reasoning and only aids us in going backwards in the investigation field.”
You clearly do not know what circular reasoning is. The Bible is true because the Bible says so is circular reasoning. Asking for evidence of your unicorns before I consider your claim of a vanishing herd is not circular. It’s the correct and rational starting point.
My friend, your statement was: “As far as I’m concerned before I could take this seriously you’d need to prove to me unicorns exist.” How can this work if we first don’t know what that unicorn is? Or a ghost, or Loch Ness, or a stick. This is circular reasoning at it’s finest. Our greatest scientific minds genuinely proved many things based on a HUNCH. The theory of relativity for example WAS A HUNCH, and still is and yet the scientific community rely upon it. Lets look at the recent neutrino discovery, for example. Therefore it is always worthy to investigate any anomalous phenomena. If we don’t investigate items of phenomena (gravity for instance) how can we prove for or against? It well be within the laws of physics or reality.
_______________________________________
Well unless you can prove that it is possible for us to continue after death and I mean properly- peer reviewed journals, repeatable testable studies, then going into people’s homes and old locations to try and prove ghosts is a pointless endeavour. I would assume many sceptical investigators will take the position that they are going to a place to investigate the phenomena, they will look for answers. The way much scientific experimentation works is to try and disprove your hypothesis, if you can disprove it it’s pointless no matter how much “proof positive” you think you have.
When did i say that ghosts were connected with the afterlife? You aren’t very good at holding back presumptions, are you? I’ve always been one to look for the phenomena, not the ghost and peer review, and repeatable tests (i come back to the neutrinos that they’ve tested over 26 thousand times) is a valuable thing when it comes to any investigation.
___________________________________
“Sod it. Lets call of the hunt for the cure of cancer because it doesn’t exist already. ”
I assume the smiley face is there because you realise how ridiculous your analogy is. A cure for cancer is not something that would exist outside of how we know reality to work. It would not violate any laws of physics or biology. A cure for many cancers exists already, my granddads form of cancer is so simple to treat he only takes a few pills when it rears up. And none of those cures violated any physical laws.
No, the smiley face was to emboss my intended irony, i apologise if you were to slow to witness it. My point was that 100 years ago the cure for cancer was way beyond our understanding in terms of scientific discovery. 100 years ago we were flying in paper aeroplanes, unaware that there were nearly 700 other exoplanets and smoking 50 cigarettes a day. But scientific discovery updated these points significantly.
The difference with my cancer analogy is that billions of dollars has been put into the discovery of the cures of these types of cancers, and hell knows how many people are working on the problem. What does the anomalous phenomena community have? Ipad apps, a few gormless gadgets, misleading television shows and a horse shit sandwich. I’ve never seen a paranormal community begging for “just £3 a month to prove the existence of these phenomena” and without proper funding and unity it will never happe, but that doesn’t mean we should stop simply because it’s not been proven to exist.
I disagree with pretty much everything you said there, in fact considering you called Hayley out for being condescening (in your opinion, I didn’t see it) I found some of your comments rather rude and condescending themselves.
I’m not intersted in a go nowhere debate and this will simply turn into an argument with noone coming off the better and we’re starting to repeat ourselves, so I’m taking the mature position and bowing out.
Don’t take this as a sign I can’t respond to your comments or defend my own, simply that I see no point in continuing to do so.
Mr. Pryce just to make it clear: i didn’t ask you to join in with your opinions, or your knowledge of skepticism, you made your own call to participate just as you have the right to do. I have my opinions just as you have yours and my opinions are just as valuable as yours in the subjective contexts we are speaking within. Moreover I found some of your own comments rather needless, and I’m afraid that you began the condescending remarks by saying: “I assume the smiley face is there because you realise how ridiculous your analogy is.”; A comment worthless in the grand scheme of things.
Hayley; Ash, thank you for an interesting debate.
Tim.
Mr.Pryce, just for clarification, i did not suggest she should believe them; far from it in fact. I simply suggested that her open mindedness should not extend to not believing them in the first place. To investigate anything we should be able to accept the possibility of the thing we are investigating exists. To not believe it at all closes avenues off that we dearly need in any investigation.
Not believing in ghosts does not equate not accepting the possibility of them. You are putting words into my mouth.
“To investigate anything we should be able to accept the possibility of the thing we are investigating exists.”
Accepting the possibility of something existing is all well and good. I *Accept* the *Possibility* that ghosts exist, but I consider that possibilty so low that the default posiiton should be “I do not believe in ghosts, but show me the evidence”. Anything other allows the posibility of flawed informaiton coming in.
———————
“To not believe it at all closes avenues off that we dearly need in any investigation.”
Fine. Then go searching for my invisible pink pirate ninja zombie. Not believeing in soemthing does not mean not acceptign the possibility or looking at evidence presented. We do that, we look at the evidence and see where it leads.
The trouble is the evidence has been of a consistantly low quality for so long (we’re talking hundreds if not thousands of years of evidence being presented) that the default position to be anything other than “Based on the evidence ghosts do not exist but I am open should new evidence come in” is truly closed minded.
I truly, truly am open and hope that ghosts are one day shown to exist. It would be earth shattering and cause us to reconsider pretty much everything we know about the natural world. How truly mind bogglingly amazing would that be? We aren’t non believers because we like being nay sayers, we are non believers for the same reason you don’t believe in the invisible pink pirate ninja zombie- lack of convincing evidence.
Regarding ‘open-minded’
Oxford University Press gives the following
http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/open-minded
“Open-minded
Willing to consider new ideas; unprejudiced”:
In this very blog post Hayley says:
“Over the years I have come to believe that the answers to why people experience strange things lies within psychology and neurology”
This makes her prejudiced and biased in what she does, as she already believes that events such as the so-called ‘paranormal’ are psychological or neurological in nature. This prejudice implies that she is NOT open-minded, as she precludes any explanation outside of her own world view.
Regarding the other part of the definition “Willing to consider new ideas”, again Oxford University Press gives
http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/idea?q=idea
idea
a thought or suggestion as to a possible course of action
a mental impression
an opinion or belief:
There is no need of empirical evidence or peer reviewed research for an idea to be considered. It is just an idea, yet Hayley has said that she is ‘open-minded’ because she is willing to change her view if evidence proves her current viewpoint wrong. How is this ‘open-minded’ under the true definition? Open-mindedness does not need evidence of any kind; it is just being willing to consider an idea without being influenced by your own personal bias.
Simplistically, as I see it, with respect to the paranormal, people can be put into groups something like the following:
1) Views that the paranormal does not exist and will not change viewpoint no matter what the evidence says.
2) Views that the paranormal does not exist but may change viewpoint if evidence suggests this view is wrong.
3) Has no view either way as to whether or not the paranormal exists; may have a view based upon evidence.
4) Views that the paranormal does exist; may change viewpoint if evidence suggests this view is wrong.
5) Views that the paranormal does exist; will not change viewpoint no matter what the evidence says.
To me, only option 3) is truly open-minded in the context of the Oxford University Press definition of open-minded.
I would suggest that WRT the paranormal most sceptics, like Hayley, are a 2) and are NOT open-minded in the honest sense of the term.
My perception is that many, perhaps most, ‘believers’ are a 5) with a few in the 4) group.
Bit of a long post but ultimately in Hayley’s own words she is biased towards a psychological or neurological root to anomalistic phenomena. Ergo, like many sceptics claiming to be open-minded, she is not open-minded in the true sense of the term.
Hope this is informative!!
Hi Allan,
Thanks for the long winded definition but it’s ok as I already know what open minded means.
I did indeed say I believe the answers to many strange experiences lie within psychology and neurology, but I’m willing to change my mind if it turns out I am incorrect. You can put more emphasis on the words I type if you want to try and claim that I’m closed minded. I don’t really mind or care.
I know you’re wrong and I really don’t have to prove myself to anyone.
Never bring a dictionary to a ghost fight.
To support myself, while working towards my science degree, I worked as a security officer at a small college. There were times, during the course of an investigation, where students would whip out the dictionary and attempt to weasel their way out of trouble. They would pick and choose the definitions that suited their justification for bad behavior.
Agnosticism comes in many leanings. I lean towards the idea that there probably aren’t any god(s), but I could change my mind if presented with evidence. The same is true (for me) for the paranormal. You start with the null hypothesis.
In science, you don’t start with a conclusion and then try to find evidence to support the conclusion. In science you start with a hypothesis and then develop experiments to disprove that hypothesis.