you
shuffle seventy-eight pieces of pasteboard and lay out a few at
random, and from this you are supposed to learn something you did not
otherwise already know? i think not.
okay,
wait, hold for just a second.
you
are a skeptic, yes? which means, what, you try to identify the
unacknowledged premises in an argument, unpack them, assume if at all
possible essentially nothing. but here, in objecting to the very
idea of "a skeptic's tarot," you have assumed several
premises.
one,
that the result of your shuffling a deck of cards is necessarily a
"random" ordering of the cards. two, that what you "learn"
from contemplating a tableau of cards is something you did not
"already know," in some sense. three, or two point one,
that you "already know" what you "already know."
four, probably something else i have not thought of.
so
let us unpack at least these two or three.
let
us accept that it might be possible to "randomize" a deck
of cards through repeated shuffling, and that the resulting "order"
might therefore be "meaningless." of course, even this
assumes there can be such a thing as "meaning."
but
might we not also, as skeptics, entertain the possibility, however
remote, that in the act of shuffling you are in fact somehow
unconsciously bringing certain cards forward? that some energy you
cannot [yet] measure is at work in some process you cannot [yet]
explain?
ah,
the skeptic requires proof for, how you say, the "extraordinary"
claim. double blind, statistical significance, etc. but let us
suppose that for the moment, at least, we simply do not know how to
go about measuring this, whatever it might be. because our existing,
materialist frame of reference precludes it.
i
will suggest to you that the "scientific" method is, yes, a
way of "knowing" about cause and effect in the material
world. but if the method begins by assuming an entirely material
world, with no immaterial "causes," it will be unable to
detect anything outside its range. you can only find what you are in
some sense expecting to find.
but
be all that as it may. just a thought experiment. i am not asking
you to accept anything, but only to acknowledge at least in theory
the limitations of a materialist dogma.
so
let us just go ahead and suppose that shuffling actually does produce
a more or less "random" ordering of the cards. what might
the cards then "say" about something you do or do not
"already know"?
of
course, under this assumption any "meaning" one might
attribute to an arrangement of cards would be a matter of projecting,
whether consciously or not quite.
so
you might say what i am proposing here is that you intentionally
engage in an exercise of projecting "meaning" onto an array
of cards you "know" to be "random." why would
anyone want to do that?
