Posted by pseudoname on April 6, 2006, at 17:28:30
In reply to Re: Absence of evidence/evidence of absence, posted by special_k on April 6, 2006, at 11:33:56
Hey, _k.
(Rhymes) ;)
> can you find a case of a repressed belief before the 1800's (the time of freud?)
FREUD found cases of repression before his own time. He found them wherever he looked. He found them in Hamlet, who in addition to being pre-1800 probably didn't even exist. http://arts.ucsc.edu/faculty/bierman/Elsinore/Freud/freudRepression.html
> can you find cases of H2O being reported on prior to the 1800's?
> how 'bout quantum indeterminacies?
The McLean contest seeks reports of something bygone people could certainly see and describe perfectly well, even if they lacked a Freudian explanation for it. Ancient people talked about both remembering and forgetting; there are dozens of such references in the Bible, for example. An instance of such an unusual and provocative pattern of forgetting and remembering as the McLean researchers seek would be well within the capacity of ancient, medieval, renaissance, and enlightment writers to observe, distinguish as unusual, and report.
The absence of such reports would be noteworthy in this situation and could be *part* of a persuasive argument against recovered memory's metaphysical claims. Why don't I believe in UFOs? Absence of evidence for them where evidence can reasonably be expected is certainly part of my thinking.
I think Racer's suggestion about possible limitations in creating these reports back then is really interesting. But even if they were a minority, there were still plenty of people who had as much emotional free time as we do, and they were about the only folks *ever* written up in the literature back then: rich & powerful princes (like Hamlet and Oedipus), leaders, courtesans, and their families. I don't know how any balladeer or poet or historian or lyricist or storyteller could resist the saucy material and plot twists that an instance of recovered memory could provide, if they had ever heard of one.
poster:pseudoname
thread:629255
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/psycho/20060406/msgs/629773.html