How to Think about Weird Things

Preface 1. Introduction: Close Encounters with the Strange The Importance of Why / Beyond Weird to The Absurd / A Weirdness Sampler 2. The Possibility of the Impossible Paradigms and the Paranormal / Logical Possibility versus Physical Impossibility / The Appeal to Ignorance / The Possibility of Esp / Theories and Things / On Knowing the Future 3. Looking for Truth in Personal Experience Seeming and Being / Perceiving: True or False? / Perceptual Constancies / The Role of Expectation / Looking for Clarity in Vagueness / The Blondlot Case / "Constructing" UFOs / Remembering: Do We Revise the Past? / Judging: The Habit of Unwarranted Assumptions / Against All Odds / Selective Attention / The Limits of Personal Experience 4. Relativism, Truth, and Reality We Each Create Our Own Reality / Reality is Socially Constructed / Reality is Consituted by Conceptual Schemes / Facing Reality 5. Knowledge, Belief, and Evidence Babylonian Knowledge-Acquisition Techniques / Propositional Knowledge / Reasons and Evidence / Expert Opinion / Coherence and Justification / Sources of Knowledge / The Appeal to Faith / The Appeal to Intuition / The Appeal to Mystical Experience / Astrology Revisited 6. Evidence and Inference Denying the Evidence / Confirmation Bias / The Availability Error / The Representativeness Heuristic / A Little Logic 7. Science and Its Pretenders Science and Dogma / Science and Scientism / Scientific Methodology / Confirming and Confuting Hypotheses / Criteria of Adequacy / Testability / Fruitfulness / Scope / Simplicity / Conservatism / Creationism, Evolution, and Criteria of Adequacy / Parapsychology 8. How to Assess a 'Miracle Cure' Personal Experience / The Variable Nature of Illness / The Placebo Effect / Overlooked Causes / The Doctor's Evidence / The Appeal to Tradition / The Reasons of Science / Medical Research / Types of Studies 9. Case Studies in the Extraordinary The Search Formula / Step 1: State the Claim / Step 2: Examine the Evidence for the Claim / Step 3: Consider Alternative Hypotheses / Step 4: Rate, According to the Criteria of Adequacy, Each Hypothesis Dowsing / UFO Abductions / Communicating with the Dead / Near-Death Experiences Appendix: Informal Fallacies / Unacceptable Premises / Begging the Question / False Dilemma / Irrelevant Premises / Equivocation / Composition / Division / Appeal to the Person / Genetic Fallacy / Appeal to Authority / Appeal to the Masses / Appeal to Tradition / Appeal to Ignorance / Appeal to Fear / Insufficient Premises / Hasty Generalization / Faulty Analogy / False Cause In each chapter: Study Questions Suggested Readings Notes