Saving the Paranormal from the Laws of Science
Skeptics Conference 2008, Waikato Diocesan College, 660 River Rd, Hamilton, Saturday the 27th of September
It is generally recognised that theoretical reasoning allows us to generate a lot of beliefs about the world, but some people take what can be called the ‘strong’ version of the argument from theoretical reasoning that argues that our theories of the world, as espoused by the Natural Sciences, allow us to come up with a complete, veridical account of the way the world works. Such accounts tend to deny the existence of entities and processes called ‘Paranormal.’ In this session, based upon a recent paper of mine published in ‘The Skeptic’ (‘The Curious Case of Freeman Dyson and the Paranormal, Vol. 14, No. 2) I will argue that it is not clear that we should be reductionists in respect to the paranormal because neither methodological nor epistemic reductionism rules out of court theories that contain paranormal entities or processes.