Discussion of metaphysical claims and experiences in PPR

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I wanted to bring this up because it seems like it's one that needs its own sort of policy caveats (and anything else I might add that science is still in a position neither to confirm or deny that has significant political heat round it). On one hand it's understandable that members of particular opinions would regard any suggestion of these from the blunt standpoint of 'this is true' to be deceptive, on the other hand there's still a lot to be validly discussed around and to an extent into these topics and blunt prohibition of the related topics is problematic.

One of the problems I see is that there are no appropriate guidelines as to what's allowable before the conversation needs to be stopped and claims answered to by citation. On one side invectives can start before any sort of blanket claim about physical reality is being made, and on the other side the red meat (in this case claims begging evidence) can go too far without the desired qualification - hence little civility and rather immediate overpowering of the conversation by politics. Claims on such topics range a full gamut between the metaphysical assertion itself, the history and anthropology of the assertion, personal practice of the principles of that claim, psychological analogues, etc.. These deal primarily in subjective and cultural life and at their more controversial moments can extend (seemingly) into the physical albeit there's still plenty to be argued regarding personal sensory experience and whether it necessarily reads the environment accurately.

My issue with the current handling is that there really isn't a clear line of when a person crosses the 'extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence' marker. Similarly the 'woo' alarm can get pushed far too early and there's no agreed upon line for where that territory is crossed into. We seem to allow insult in this zone on the grounds of intellectual dishonesty but few agreement as to where any line gets crossed and no guidelines for polite disagreement (there are the general forum rules but they're too blunt an instrument to go by with this kind of topic - ie. by the time of of these is breached usually both parties have violated most of the other rules in their intent).

What I'm really asking for is this: there should be a policy guideline on what's allowable for discussion that doesn't need disclaimer, what needs disclaimer, etc.. For example - discussion of anthropology related to metaphysical claims should be open in most cases and perhaps alternative theories be noted as such. Discussions related to metaphysical philosophic ideas should also be allowed, at a minimum in the self-referential sense of explaining a particular belief system. Also, to some extent (and I'm sure this would need more clarification), things in the direction of depth psychology and brain hacking (ie. getting into one's own deeper subconscious levels) should be allowed although I'm sure there would perhaps rightly be a demand made that it be couched in the right kind of terminology or caveats to where people would need to clarify 'these are my own results' to signify the difference between that and something that's been peer-review verified in a published psychology journal.

Rather than saying that anyone's hard set I'd rather just say that it's an antagonistic and controversial topic, I understand that. Ideally I'd like to see if it's possible for some type of agreement to be hashed out between on one side materialists, atheists, antitheists on one side of the issue and idealists, Platonists, etc. on the other. It would be a much better thing for there to be a polite reminder of where a particular divide is being crossed and intellectual honesty is in danger of being breached (or where verbiage is likely to confuse most readers to that extent). There's just too much to discuss in this zone that's of quite real value, regardless of beliefs about the relevant range of consciousness, for stigmas and politics to keep stomping conversations cold before they have any hope of being productive and educational.

It's interesting that we don't really have a belief forum. If you post anything metaphysical or faith-based in PPR, you pretty much have to expect people to come at it from the other side. The Haven can work for personal experiences though, since it's not a debate forum. I mean, I'm not religious, and if someone posted about a deeply spiritual moment they had in The Haven, I would say I was happy for them. If they posted in PPR, depending on what their question was, or how they were leading the discussion, I might present alternative explanations in question form to see what the thread starter thought of them..

I'd have to differentiate between the person saying I've had this experience therefore it's true about the whole universe rather than I had the experience and I'm curious to follow up on this, see if I can generate more, and see if there's anything else to it (whether related to the unconscious or whatever else). The one is a rather bald assertion, the other is stating 'I experienced x', which is perfectly valid, just that some rules and caveats might have to be applied as I'm thinking about it for everyone to know 'these are my theories' not 'this is truth and I expect others to believe it'.

Also I'm not sure whether we should automatically call PPR a debate forum. Debate is fine in that context but you have plenty of threads that are just informative in one way or another. Would those perhaps need to be labeled as such to distinguish them from those threads that are intended to spur debate?

Also I might not have addressed this in my last post as well as I would have liked to.

My concern with this approach - ie. sharing a declaration of faith and beliefs in the Haven vs. starting a debate in PPR about the nature of reality, there's a lot of very valid and important ground that gets excluded in between. In the haven a person could emote something but any in-depth exploration of psychology and symbols would be out of place, and it seems like the current unwritten rules of PPR is that you're not allowed to talk about anything rigorously unless it's within the confines of the peer reviewed and objective and also is very clearly rooted in reductive materialism.

If we had to go the route of discussing a new folder, maybe an in-depth philosophy and metaphysics folder where it's a given that the claims are not necessarily meant to be scientific? Even there I'm still not sure if that's needed so much as just a formal clarification of rules on more controversial topics. Sadly I get the impression that a lot of people like things just fine the way they are, even if its messed up, and I really want to come up with something that people actually have the will for which is another reason why I'm squeamish about suggesting new forum folders or web development overhauls for something like this.

I find that I am actually able to discuss these things, even in the face of reductionist-materialism, but on the other hand, I am also far better-equipped to be able to back up my claims or at least be able to provide alternate-explanations or describe it in technological-vocabulary than what you might find from the Spiritualists-Crowds. I most-certainly can discuss these topics in-depth, even getting into the psychology of it all, but I often find that the materialist-camp simply stops responding after I either ask certain questions, describe things a certain way, explain various other possible alternatives, and I can even go back and pull up and link several of those threads for where you see that any last posts in those threads, related to discussions of existence or so-called para-normal phenomena, were always mine and the very last response ever posted.

The "Extraordinary Claims" boundary is crossed whenever someone claims that (1) immaterial concepts are as valid as material things, (2) mere belief is sufficient proof, and (3) if something can exist, then it must exist.A "Fantasy & Opinion" forum would be appropriate ...... while a "Pure Philosophy & Metaphysics" forum would be even more appropriate.It's easy to stop responding to distorted data, fallacious reasoning, and unprovable assumptions - there's just no point in carrying the conversation any further.

As long as the forum is specifically stated to be about metaphysical beliefs and speculative opinions, a materialist should have no problem avoiding it completely.

That's still fuzzier than it might look on first read.

There's a lot I'd like to try and extrapolate out of that but I'd almost have to figure out what 'immaterial concepts' mean in this case. If you mean images in the mind for example, I'm not sure how well you could tell a professional athlete who psychs themselves up for better performance that their mental imagery is an immaterial concept with no material relevance if it can add those record-breaking few tenths of a second in a sprint.

If you mean immaterial in the sense of not presently testable by science or not having an inroad that material tools can effectively measure it would be fair to say that, at least for now, such items are relegated to the subjective domain of life. At the same time I'm not sure how a person would spell out the difference between saying 'this is how the universe works for everyone' and discussing an unusual experience that many people have had and various people discussing the congruity of those experiences and what they consider these experiences to mean at this point in their own personal inquiry.


Philosophy, Metaphysics, and Mysticism might not be a bad coverall. Mysticism in particular might help convey the idea that discussion of practice is also welcome.

Okay, how's this? I've been putting some thought into it ...

Esoteric Forum

> Philosophy, Metaphysics & Mysticism Subforum - For those discussions that venture beyond the boundaries of the Material World, and that are not part of any established doctrinal belief system.

> Politics Subforum - For those discussions that focus on governments, the people who run them, and the processes by which governments are founded and formed. Discuss your favorite candidates here.

> Religion Subforum - For those discussions that center on established doctrinal belief systems, the people who run them, their foundational principles, and their Holy books.

Sex Forum

> Women's Subforum - For those discussions involving life's experiences in a cis-female body.

> Men's Subforum - For those discussions involving life's experiences in a cis-male body.

Gender Forum

> Lesbian Subforum - For discussions related solely to issues of life as a homosexual female.

> Gay Subforum - For discussions related solely to issues of life as a homosexual male.

> Bi/Pan Subforum - For discussions related solely to issues of life as a bisexual/pan sexual person.

> Trans-Female Subforum - Discussions of issues related solely to transitioning from male to female (including pre-op, post-op, and everything in between).

> Trans-Male Subforum - Discussions of issues related solely to transitioning from female to male (including pre-op, post-op, and everything in between).

> Queer/Curious Subforum - Discussions of gender-based topics that don't quite fit into othe gender categories. May include naive questions from "outsiders".

Social Forum

> Love Subforum - How does it feel? What's it all about?

> Dating Subforum - Single and confused? Discuss.

> Marriage Subforum - Married and confused? Discuss.

> Friends & Friendliness Subforum - What's the difference? Why does it matter?

I can't comment on the other splits with confidence. The only thing you might tweak:

Maybe 'and that are not considered mainstream religious doctrine'.

I consider that distinction somewhat important because a lot of the subject matter will have thousands of years of history, particularly if it's a discussion of in-depth Hindu or Buddhist systems, Platonist or Hermetic systems, Sufism apparently came out of Islam within a couple hundred years of its inception, evidence for the roots of Kabbalah go back as far as Sefir Yetzirah and perhaps farther (just the earliest clear-cut reference I'm aware of), and the various Gnostic sects were not only in direct competition with Christianity as we know it today at it's cultural inception but had further skirmishes in everything from the Albigensian crusades to the episodes dealing with the Knight's Templar.

There might be a few 19th or 20th century whole-cloth inventions but more often than not most of what get's talked about today is still some slicing, dicing, or distillation of ideological commerce along the Silk Road between the areas of China and the Middle East in the second or first millennium BCE. A few of them were quite popular at a time, perhaps several have always been to some extent niche, but most of them do have at least some established formal tenets and cosmological maps.

Then you would have to define "mainstream". Is Methodism mainstream? Is Shinto? Buddhism? Scientology? Pastafarianism? Fnordism?

Religion and Metaphysics have a large overlap with Philosophy. Trying to separate them is difficult. Throw Mysticism and Spirituality into the mix, and it really get complicated.

Maybe it's all a spectrum, with "hard" religion at one end and "soft" philosophy at the other. But that's worth an entire PP&R thread all its own.

Yes, you and I certainly went back a long way, from what inspired my forum-signature (original meeting of the minds hyper-linked ;o)! I suppose we may just be different in that sense of conversation for, when I see something as potentially fallacious, erroneous in data, assumptions being made, I may go about being a typical atypical Aspie who might erroneously think it to be helpful to point out when such erroneous fallacies or incorrect data may be present, why I think it might be the case (frequently backed up with some form of reference to evidence to the contrary if/when possible), for purposes of possible understanding why another individual may see/view something a certain way, especially if I see something that I might interpret as being potentially dogmatic.

Sure, I may come across as a flip-flopping techno-agnostic-pantheist that way, but as long as I'm not advocating the causing of harm to others, I will continue to choose to exercise the freedom of exploring the realms of possibilities, theories, and theoretical-possibilities. For as long as I approach things that way, I do not feel that materialists would have any good reason to mind my presence (possibly because I lean more towards agnostic than belief-system), and for the most part, I feel like I get along with most of the materialists on these forums, even if we may not necessarily agree on the same explanations for certain types of phenomenon, and I also likewise do not really have any issue with the existence of materialists, just as long as they focus discussions on the subject-matter and refrain from ad-hominem fallacies (and avoid any ironic hypocrisy of course).

I am sure the same can be said of just about any group though (like in this hyper-linked locked thread).

All that above having been said, I think that, depending on the amount of activity a particular section or sub-section gets, should be one of the factors taken into consideration as to whether a particular section should be split into further sub-sections or a new section created altogether. I respect a lot of Fnord's ideas and he's had plenty of forum-experience compared to other members of W-P so depending on his skills in categorisation, organising, forum-design, etc., perhaps some of what he has suggested here can be put to use in terms of creating all of those Mini-Planets or Moon-Orbits or whatever around this Wrong-Planet (assuming of course that you don't believe that Wrong-Planet is actually Flat or anything of that Nature... ;o).

Then maybe agree on dictionary-definitions for Meta-Physics, Mysticism, Philosophy, Religion, and Spirituality. Then assign sub-forums according to the similarities and differences of the definitions, with the same sub-forums assigned to two or more concepts, where one is essentially a sub-topic of another.

I don't know ... there just has to be a better way than dumping everything into PP&R.

A good starting point for that would be religion that have public stage. The big five definitely qualify, I'm sure Shinto would qualify as well because it has notable history and presence in Japanese culture.

I agree that it would be very difficult to set a hard boundary and for anyone who's of or examining a religion that's somewhat on the border, like Bahai for example, they'd probably choose between the two subfolders based on what kind of conversation they'd want to have. The religion folder would likely just treat other people's beliefs as their beliefs, share information about beliefs, of course some degree of politics related to the institutions, and possibly debate textual details and interpretations within that faith. The philosophy, metaphysics, and mysticism folder would have much more synchretic and while you'd have conversations about the definitions of certain philosophies and their origins you'd have more comparison and more of the question 'What works?' which would typically be disrespectful in the organized religious context. Similarly if someone wanted to talk about the church, mosque, synagogue, ashram, or other temple they go to and the services they'd be talking more about the sociological aspect which would fit more under religion. If they wanted to give it a more abstract glance or try to construct what they think is at the heart of the ideology - that would be more PMM-geared.

Another side of this might be thinking of it in terms of topic accessibility. Politics most people are, whether they want to or not, immersed in it to some extent just by turning on the TV or seeing what Yahoo News is trending. Religion is something quite a few people have in their lives through their parents or relatives if not having it themselves; it has a lot of cultural and political impact and most people are pretty well aware of the social issues related to it. Philosophy, metaphysics, and mysticism on the other hand are kind of up in nose-bleed territory. Accordingly you'd have similar types of people wanting to have similar depth of discussion.

Isn't this essentially why we have Random Discussion?

If anything, we need fewer forums, not more.

I did take a look at the list Fnord gave and wondered just how much the LGBT community were at eachother's throats in here.

PPR is a huge rage of topics and being it seems like the threads are 80% politics everything else seems to get washed out. Also it seems like that has a bit of a carry-over effect on anything else, ie. philosophy threads, religion threads, etc. etc. seem to get handled as politics.