FREE EVENT!
Middle Circle's monthly philosophy night creates a place for friends or strangers to dig into the topics that mean the most in our lives.
This Month's Topic: Woo-Woo: Discussing Science, Spirituality & the Unexplained
Conversation Leader(s): Bear Paw & Anders
Host: Rebecca is hosting in Oakland by Lake Merritt for the locals. Online: If you are joining online, you can do that via Zoom. A link will be sent to you after registration and before the event.
Schedule:
In Person: Folks are welcome to arrive after 6:30 pm. A shared conversation will start at 7pm. Food and drinks will be provided.
Online: Bring your own food and drinks to our discussion that starts at 7 pm PT online.
Introduction to Topic & Suggested Preparation for Discussion (Folks are always welcome to join the conversation no matter how much prework has been completed):
Crystals. Manifestation. Energy. Tarot. Ancestors. Spirits. Guides...
Ancient wisdom? Psychology? Placebo? Pseudoscience? Spiritual realities we can’t measure? Or complete nonsensef?
This month, we’re putting the Woo-Woo under the philosophical microscope—not to prove or debunk it, but to ask a much more interesting questions:
How do we decide what’s real?
Crystals: Do they actually do something—or does believing they do something change us?
Manifestation: Can intention change reality? Or does intention change our behavior, which changes what happens next?
Energy: When you walk into a room and immediately feel something is “off,” what exactly did you perceive?
Spirits, Ancestors & Guides: What do we do with experiences that are profoundly real to the person who had them but impossible to independently verify?
Tarot: Divination, psychology, pattern recognition, synchronicity—or perhaps some combination?
Underneath all five:
What counts as evidence? Is personal experience evidence? When does skepticism protect us from folly—and when might skepticism become its own kind of intellectual or cultural arrogance? And what evidence would actually change your mind?
⸻
WANT TO GO DOWN THE RABBIT HOLE BEFORE WE MEET?
None of this is required reading. These are jumping-off points if you’d like to arrive with your brain already arguing with itself.
- The placebo effect is real—which makes things more complicated, not less.
The NIH’s National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health gives a short, accessible overview of what scientists actually mean by the placebo effect. Expectations can produce genuine changes in experience, and some placebo effects have been observed even when people know they’re receiving a placebo.
Question to carry with you: If believing that something will affect us contributes to a real effect, does saying “it’s placebo” actually settle the question?
Link: NIH/NCCIH — Placebo Effect
- Scientists actually studied manifestation—and the results are fascinating.
Researchers studied more than 1,000 people and developed a scale measuring belief in manifestation, including both personal power and “cosmic collaboration.” Stronger manifestation beliefs were associated with greater perceived success and optimism about future success—but not greater objective success in measures such as income or education. Stronger believers were also more likely to report risky financial behavior.
That doesn’t answer every possible claim about manifestation. But it gives us something empirical to argue with.
Question to carry with you: Where is the boundary between useful optimism, intention-setting and magical thinking?
Link: “The Secret” to Success? The Psychology of Belief in Manifestation
- What happens in the brain when we sense a presence?
“Sensed presence”—the feeling that another being is nearby without ordinary sensory evidence—is a phenomenon researchers can study. It occurs in contexts ranging from spiritual practice and extreme endurance experiences to sleep and certain neurological conditions. Scientists have even experimentally induced aspects of the experience.
That establishes that the experience is real. The much harder philosophical question is what that tells us about its cause.
Question to carry with you: If scientists identify what the brain is doing while someone experiences a spirit, have they explained the spirit away—or merely described how a human brain experiences one?
Link: Linking Agent Detection of Invisible Presences to the Self
- Tarot as psychology rather than prediction
Researcher Inna Semetsky has examined Tarot through the idea of psychological projection, comparing aspects of a reading to projective techniques in which ambiguous material helps bring otherwise unspoken thoughts, perceptions or conflicts to the surface.
It’s a fascinating possibility because it creates a third option beyond “Tarot predicts the future” and “Tarot is nonsense.”
Question to carry with you: If randomly selected cards help you discover something true about yourself, where did the information come from?
Link: Tarot as a Projective Technique — Wiley
- And finally: who gets to define what counts as science?
This recent Oxford Handbook chapter examines the history of colonial denial of Indigenous knowledge as science and the work of Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholars toward knowledge decolonization.
This doesn’t mean that every traditional or spiritual claim automatically becomes scientifically true. Instead, it gives us another question to wrestle with: whose standards of knowledge have historically been treated as authoritative, and whose have been labeled superstition?
Link: Colonial Denials of Indigenous Knowledge as Science — Oxford Academic
⸻
What is Philosophy Night?: Middle Circle's monthly philosophy night creates a place for friends or strangers to dig into the topics that mean the most in our lives. Each gathering is hosted and facilitated by Middle Circle community members and centers on an age-old philosophical question. There is always food, beer & wine, and non-alcoholic beverages available.
Cost: Please plan to contribute $10-20 to Middle Circle to support hosting the gathering. You can donate at the event, right now through Venmo (@middlecircle), through PayPal's Charitable Giving Portal, through your works giving program, or while signing-up below. Donations are tax deductible. Donating is important to Middle Circle's vitality however no one will be turned away for lack of funds.
What If I Haven't Studied Philosophy?: You don't need to be well versed in philosophy to participate. Philosophy literally means love of wisdom. All that's needed is an interest in having a great conversation about a meaningful topic with good company.
