1

Suppose I enter a room. Someone tells me there is an invisible ghost on the chair. I think in my head “well, there’s no evidence there is.” I feel, intuitively, extremely confident there is no ghost. After all, there is no evidence.

Suppose I now enter another room. Over here, someone comes up to me and tells me to think of a number between 1 and 1000. I think of one. He then guesses it correctly. I feel a bit suspicious, doubtful. I ask him to do it again. And he guesses it correctly. He then, inconveniently, leaves the room. I stand there puzzled. Intuitively, I start harboring the suspicion that he may be a witch or a psychic.

But when I come back to my senses, from a philosophical standpoint, there still seems to be no evidence here. There doesn’t even seem to be any “more” evidence than the first scenario. Surely, the chances of him guessing it correctly were very minute. But one would have to show the alternative (i.e. psychism or some other physical way of doing this) is possible. And logically, the predictions themselves don’t prove anything.

Yet, my intuition remains. The degree of confidence I feel is not enough for me to fully believe he had special powers. However, it is certainly higher than the ghost scenario. And yet, I can’t find any reason to suggest or show why this should be the case.

What to do then, in a case like this, where my intuition conflicts with my reason? Which is supposed to be more accurate? Or am I doomed in not knowing the answer to this?

  • A stage magician such as Derren Brown can implant a suggestion. You then choose what he wants you to. It defies intuition. Does he have special powers? Yes, because like all stage magicians, he trained himself to perform extraordinary feats. – Weather Vane Aug 22 '23 at 18:36
  • 1
    No, intuitions are there to supplement your "philosophy". There is always something that rational analysis misses and they are a mechanism that evolved to sound the alarms that alert you to that. They may, and often do, sound over nothing and even lead you astray, but the upside is that they force you to reflect more and double check your assumptions and reasoning. This is especially important in matters of ethics, where we are particularly prone to tunnel vision and self-serving sophistry. – Conifold Aug 22 '23 at 20:03
  • 1
    I don't want to be unkind, but the way you're trying to do rationality appears to be missing fundamental tools. I think you need an introductory statistics class, lots of sample problems, and some reading about experimentation. Your intuition at least figured out that there was something weird going on and made some hypotheses. Your attempt at rationality insisted that the data weren't data. – g s Aug 23 '23 at 03:45
  • 1
    Common sense is nothing more than a deposit of prejudices laid down in the mind before you reach eighteen. - Albert Einstein. Common sense is also an intuition. Just an intuition that has popular support. –  Aug 23 '23 at 16:35

0 Answers0