Skepticism: An Argumentative Analysis

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Modern skeptics of the paranormal often appeal to a quote made by the late Carl Sagan that “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence". However, I believe that originally to be a sceptic (I'll spell with a "c" for the original sense and a "k" for the modern sense), was to not simply accept the prevailing beliefs of one's culture, but to question them to see if these beliefs stand up to scrutiny. Crucially, no particular stance was taken. The prevailing beliefs may or may not be true, but the sceptic avoided simply assuming that they are true, and indeed avoided simply assuming they are false. What they attempted to do was apply reason and evidence and reach tentative provisional conclusions in that way.

In contrast, skepticism in the sense in which it tends to now be currently used, at least as regards the "paranormal", has …show more content…
But secondly, and much more importantly, there is a stubborn misconception regarding what science actually does. It tends to be conflated with a particular metaphysical interpretation of reality, an interpretation which itself cannot be justified. More importantly, unless we presuppose materialism -- a metaphysical position which seems to me to be simply untenable -- science leaves out the existence of consciousness in its description of reality. This includes our normal perceptions from our 5 main senses. Yes we can describe the neural correlates of a conscious experience. But, even in principle, we cannot derive the experience itself from a thorough scientific understanding of the brain. So, if normal perceptions are in principle inexplicable, how on earth can we claim that extrasensory perceptions are ruled out by science? I suggest only by assuming philosophical materialism. And materialism, apart from its unintelligibility, is not derived from science, but is a certain metaphysical

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