Total Recall

 

It is the day of thanks here in the west. I suppose this means that tomorrow will be somehow blackened by sales. The term, Black Friday, may come from the congestion caused by shoppers, the way retailers go from “red” to “black” at last, or the way people call in sick, as they would have during the black plague. But nobody really knows why it is called Black Friday. It really just means that you can get good deals in most big stores, for one day only.

I suppose it is a very good idea to have a national day of thanks. This day may help to remind us that we have very much to be grateful for. Gratitude is very important.

I continue to study and I continue to see things more clearly. NDE’s and OBE’s are interesting to me. They are easy enough to study, but impossible to prove scientifically. Subjective experiences alone cannot be science. If that were the case, then any religion with a larger following would qualify as scientifically sound. Put more bluntly, it really does not matter what a million people believe if I do not also believe it. I cannot be persuaded by subjective experiences; even if everyone else in the world were to accept them.

This is not denial, but a very strong defense against gullibility. Furthermore, this is not some choice I have made as much as it is something I have no control over. I do not know how to be more of a believer of anything I do not believe.

Do I believe in Near Death Experiences? I do believe that many people believe they’ve had them. But never having experienced one, I cannot say what it is like to have one. I’m not sure what is happening when someone has one. So I cannot include it in my personal research.

Do I believe in an Out of Body Experience? My answer is the same. I have not had one personally; therefore, I find it easy to believe that some people believe they’ve had them, but their experiences have no effect on any of my own, onboard gauges.

It is the same with UFO’s, Bigfoot, Ghosts and paranormal experiences. To date, there have been millions of UFO sightings; many of them have been captured on film. However, I am not moved in the very least. This does not mean that I do not believe in the available data; it’s that I am not convinced that a more reasonable explanation does not also exist.

When I was a little boy, my mom would try to convince me to eat vegetables by telling me that everyone else liked them. I was never impressed.

I consider subjective experiences had by others to be worth a look, but I cannot possibly offer them my faith; even if I wanted to. I continue to balance any claim with any other possible explanation. Simply wishing it were true is just not enough for me to put my finger on that side of the scale.

Can the study of subjective experience offer any new areas for science? I think there is plenty to learn by including subjective claims of experience, but if it cannot be measured scientifically, it cannot be called science. The taste of chocolate, for example, is subjective, but a study of people tasting chocolate may result in a scientific explanation for what happens in a brain when people taste chocolate. Even if this can be explained, and even if scientists can find ways of making people believe that pineapple tastes like chocolate, it would not mean that science has figured out a way to make chocolate out of pineapples. It would only mean that subjective experiences can be incorrect; and we already know this.

If science completely understood the brain, and could find ways to trigger specific, subjective experiences, it is possible that a person could have a “Total Recall” experience, which in reality, never happened.