Talk:Other ways of knowing

Wouldn't just walking outside and looking around count as "non-scientific", since if I look at the neighbour's tree it's entirely subjective and not subject to any sort of scientific methodology. --Kels 06:27, 27 July 2007 (CDT)

Observation is the first step in forming a hypothesis. If you looked at the tree and decided it was evidence that chlorophyll-loving aliens first settled the Earth because you could "feel it", that would be bunk. But observing nature, then forming testable hypotheses is wonderful.User:PalMD

There was a young man who said "God

Must find it exceedingly odd

When he finds that the tree

Continues to be

When there's no one about in the Quad.

"Dear Sir, your astonishment's odd -

I am always about in the Quad.

And that's why the tree

Shall continue to be

Since observed by,

yours faithfully,

God."

Totnesmartin 07:52, 27 July 2007 (CDT)

beat you to it, Martin son of Totnes. see my earlier post

Must be a Ukers thing. Keep^{off the grass} 08:14, 27 July 2007 (CDT)

It IS a UKers thing, the quad is in the grounds of Oxford's Balliol College! Totnesmartin 08:55, 27 July 2007 (CDT)

"interrupting animal entrails" - I like this one. Not sure if it's a deliberate error or not. Wẽãšẽĩõĩď^{Methinks it is a Weasel} 17:39, 10 May 2010 (UTC)

Scientific Verification

If I am not mistaken, these methods could all be tested scientifically if they give specific prediction. For example, if someone claims to be able to read voltages by interpreting tea leaves, it is quite trivial to set up a double blind experiment to see if the practitioner can in fact read the voltages through tea leaves. Perhaps the issue is the lack of specific predictions associated with these methods, as opposed to the methods themselves. Imarcuson (talk) 08:27, 11 April 2011 (UTC)

If one uses 'these and other methods' as a form of creative doodling (eg 'dreaming the benzine ring')/starting off lines of research/'I want one of those objects - how do I create it?' etc they can have validity - and some topics are driven by owok - religion etc.

Otherwise 'tosh in, tosh out' 212.85.6.26 (talk) 14:17, 20 July 2012 (UTC)

Flaws

There is one gaping flaw in the logic set forth by your general tone in these articles which nobody (even outside of this website) has been able to answer for me: science (and the reliance solely on science) has an inherent bias built into it. That bias is that science is limited only to the human experience. Yes, we can build machines to measure things like high-frequency sound waves. But the senses of us humans are otherwise very limited. For example: if I smell a rose, its smell is dulled compared to what a dog would smell. If I look at that rose, it's likely red. If a honey bee looks at that rose, it will see something super-violet. Therefore, I would argue that the general dismissal of theism based on the fact that we, in the human experience, cannot see this God or taste it or smell it, has an inherent flaw. The Rational Theist (talk) 10:14, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

If you cannot know it, then you cannot know it, and this cannot count as an other way of knowing - David Gerard (talk) 10:32, 26 February 2013 (UTC)

And you know that a bee sees the rose in ultra-violet not because you can experience that, but because of scientific research on matters beyond direct human perception. Weorthe (talk) 05:54, 18 March 2013 (UTC)

Does...

...knowing carnally a.k.a. shagging also count?--Arisboch (talk) 15:54, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

eh. I'm not aware of any sincere assertions to that end. ikanreed ^{You probably didn't deserve that} 16:03, 1 June 2015 (UTC)

Psychedelics

I have removed "taking psychedelic drugs" from this list because there is plenty of hard scientific evidence, including fMRI scans, rat and mammalian studies, and pharmaceutical research indicating they actually improve brain functioning in the long term. Please see my recent additions to the articles for LSD and psilocybin. I have included multiple links to studies from respectable journals supporting my claims, including MAPS, a Harvard University funded research team.

This is not to say that LSD or psilocybin don't create delusions or manifestations of psychotic, conspiratorial ideation--they do, and that is a fact. But that refers to uncontrolled, recreational use. In clinical therapy, when guided by a rational anchor (such as a licensed therapist), the opposite is true.

The fact remains that LSD and psilocybin improve neuroplasticity, and improve intelligence scores on various tests in the long term (such as linguistic memory). LSD can also treat Parkinson's disease according to many pharmaceutical patents, and psilocybin in rat studies has shown to be a potential treatment for vegetative syndrome.

I don't think it would be fair to put "taking prozac" on this list as a "delusional form of thinking". Adderal is known to induce amphetamine psychosis in a way nearly identical to that of meth, but "taking adderall" isn't on this list because it obviously has therapeutic applications which are approved of my the medical community. Same with pristiq, loxapine, or tianeptine. Taking certain drugs inarguably have both benefits and side effects. That's a fact of life. Focusing only on the side effects and making a caricature out of them is an expedient, and very childish strawman argument.^{— Unsigned, by: 174.2.80.239 / talk / contribs}

For the record, I generally agree with this philosophy on drugs and drug use in general. Compounds are not inherently "good" or "evil" but rather have their own set of biologically mediated effects- desirable and undesirable depending on the context in which they're taken. That said, I don't think I would count psychedelic states as a way of knowing anything outside of one's personal truths, and is therefore indistinct from what people can know about themselves in an "unaltered" state (whatever that is).

Psychedelics have major potential as a therapeutic tool, one among many, and have definitely been ignored on the basis of engrained social attitudes rather than scientific merit. And yes, the scarcity of quality evidence can be and should be blamed on draconian drug policy that prohibits even studying certain chemical compounds. They get the same treatment as potential bioweapons and this alone should make anyone who sees value in basic scientific research furious.

At the same time, they're almost certainly not a secret cure-all or super nootropic (in the case of microdosing) and should be approached like any other compound we think might have medical benefits. High-quality studies continued over time and general caution about hasty conclusions. Unfortunately, the small, low-quality studies whose results I like are no different than the small, low-quality studies that back up alternative therapies that almost certainly don't work. Rigorous standards cut both ways. fMRI studies should always put you on high alert.

I think what gets people about psychedelics is the phenomenal experience of taking them is extremely novel, and really is unlike any state we're likely to experience otherwise. For example, the delirium of a fever-dream is *much* closer to what happens when you take 20 times the recommended dose of Benadryl than it is to that induced psilocybin. Yet people make these kinds of comparisons all the time (not all hallucinations are created equal, by any means).

So this combination of how ignorant the Common Sense™ notions surrounding drug use are and the intensity of the felt-experience brought on by psychedelics leads to highly polarized positions about their significance and potential power-- understandably so. But like poster above mentioned, pharmacologically active compounds have purpose-determined effects and side effects. LSD, psilocybin, DMT, and a host of other psychedelics are still in this category, and despite the inarguably profound way that their effects are delivered, their relationship to reality is still tenuous. There are just as many genuinely delusional conclusions to be drawn about the world as there are insights to be gained during post-trip integration. There is a potential for pretty bad personal determinations, or interpretations of personal truths alongside the potential for really productive realizations about the self.

This is my point of disagreement. Psychedelics are psychotomimetic, but this isn't inherently bad. It's part of the draw. However, they cognitive alterations they produce, on average, *lean* towards the mental states/modes of thinking responsible for a lot of false beliefs about the world (excessive pattern-recognition, magical thinking, etc.). I think it's pretty difficult to doubt that people in and following that state are more suggestible as far as buying into woo goes. You're usually not totally out of control though (DMT not withstanding), and someone using in a responsible way can avoid really falling into this tendency. I really want to get across that these aren't absolutes, that everyone has (sometimes significant) differences in how they react to/experience different drugs.

Anyways, I dig psychedelics. I want to see them finally get their due consideration as potential medicines. I think it's really cool in general that the way we experience the world can be changed with the help of even tiny tissue concentrations of small molecules. And this is all regarding their relationship with healthcare. As for the legality of personal use, I have zero qualms about abolishing the majority of drug laws, especially the scheduling of serotonergic psychedelics like LSD, psilocybin, MDMA, DMT, and any drug Alexander Shulgin wrote a favorable review of. Rationality about drug use and embracing harm reduction is sorely lacking in most of the world.

But I see a lot of people on my side seeming to expect a panacea, both in formal clinical settings and as a personal treatment. Further, it's often packaged with other woo. It really fucking sucks that the doctors I hear interviewed about psychedelic therapy run some kind of "Integrative Health Center". I think this can turn potential supporters off. I'm not concern-trolling-- I'm serious. This matters a lot to me. Which is why I took the time to respond to an ancient comment on a talk page nobody is likely to run into, lol. Cheers, 2601:1C2:100:5959:2850:E77F:2723:AAAC (talk) 20:10, 19 April 2020 (UTC)

Some 'other ways of knowing'

... are valid: the person who has studied a field enough may #know# an item is valid/"wrong"/something else entirely without initially consciously knowing why; and people can to varying extents learn to pick up subtle clues as to something; or there may be degrees of deliberate mystification (radar and eating carrots in WWII). 86.145.120.164 (talk) 23:08, 29 October 2016 (UTC)

... Should Common Sense be added to this list?

Tu Youyou

@Neo Stalinist I don't think that Tu Youyou counts as an "other way of knowing" because the research that she performed was systematic and did rely on scientific testing of compounds. What she did was basically bioprospecting. Bongolian (talk) 18:10, 2 December 2019 (UTC)

Tagging

'This page contains too many unsourced statements and needs to be improved' is a very good summary of the topic. Anna Livia (talk) 13:56, 22 July 2020 (UTC)