Miracles, Experience, Hume etc.

[liamconnor]

Is the following argument strong:

The majority of experiences known to me say that men cannot levitate by sheer will power; 500 persons claim that x levitated without any external assistance; majority experience overrides minority. Either the 500 are lying or deceived (or something else).


Does majority experience philosophically override minority experiences?

[Willum]

Mass hysteria, for whatever reason... is a real thing.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mass_hysteria

Not much to debate, I'm afraid.

[liamconnor]

Anyone else?

I mean, ANYONE else..........

[Tcg]

Does majority experience philosophically override minority experiences?

You are not asking a philosophical question, but rather a logical one. There is a very clear answer:

'In argumentation theory, an argumentum ad populum (Latin for "argument to the people") is a fallacious argument that concludes that a proposition is true because many or most people believe it: "If many believe so, it is so."'

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argumentum_ad_populum

[William]

[Replying to post 1 by liamconnor]

Apart from the replies already given, 500 people experiencing the objective visual of one person seeming to levitate is quite common, and usually associated with magicians.

In that, I would say the majority of the 500 realize there will be some trick to it which - if they knew - would take away that illusion that someone actually levitated.

It is the illusion they applaud, rather than any fact that x actually did levitate. They do not actually believe x levitated without the use of trickery.

If the claim is as you say, x levitated without any [apparent] external assistance, and the 500 witnesses saw this and couldn't work out how it could be done using trickery, this in itself does not mean that trickery was not involved.

Has this ever been done? Is there an example in real life which you have taken your OP criteria from?

Without scientific observation and testing the claim repeatedly, it can be assumed that x is using trickery. 500 witnesses who have not had that opportunity, are not relevant as to the authenticity of the actions of x.

If x isn't using trickery then scientific method can establish the authenticity of this and provide x with a thumbs up whilst x provides scientists with a whole new aspect to reality they were not aware of. Win-win.

[ttruscott]

Is the following argument strong:

The majority of experiences known to me say that men cannot levitate by sheer will power; 500 persons claim that x levitated without any external assistance; majority experience overrides minority. Either the 500 are lying or deceived (or something else).


Does majority experience philosophically override minority experiences?

Only stupid sailors ever claimed to have seen Iceland. How do we now they are stupid? They claim to have seen Iceland.

The majority are often wrong creating such fallacies as the Black Swan fallacy.

[Bust Nak]

[Replying to post 6 by ttruscott]

I'll take being wrong over being irrational any time of the day. Being correct isn't such an achievement if one did not arrive that that correctness rationally. Wrongness can be corrected easily, showing me blacks swans would do it; irrationality on the other hand, not so easy to correct.

[2ndRateMind]

[Replying to post 6 by ttruscott]

...Wrongness can be corrected easily, showing me blacks swans would do it; irrationality on the other hand, not so easy to correct.

It seems that in Australia, there are plenty of black swans.

I understand their discovery caused some consternation among European logicians at the time, since they had tended to posit the black swan as a non-existent entity. These days, they play safe, and use unicorns as their example.

Best wishes, 2RM

[ttruscott]

[Replying to post 6 by ttruscott]

I'll take being wrong over being irrational any time of the day. Being correct isn't such an achievement if one did not arrive that that correctness rationally. Wrongness can be corrected easily, showing me blacks swans would do it; irrationality on the other hand, not so easy to correct.

It is not the lack of knowledge nor the scepticism that is noteworthy but the animus injected into the rhetoric that pals, a crime of which you do your best to avoid.