Isn’t that just a difference of degree, though? I’m taking for granted that ‘ghost’ is sufficiently well-defined such that
we would be able to recognize proof of existence if we ever find it; and
there are things (e.g. aliens) which we could discover using tools we don’t currently possess but which would not count as ‘ghosts’.
Are these true?
If so, then it seems like its a difference of degree, rather than kind. We can define ‘thylacine’ very precisely, and we can only define ‘ghost’ rather imprecisely, but we reason the same way about what the definition entails.
Alternatively, maybe ‘ghost’ is a bit like ‘magic’, specifically in the sense that “any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” As soon as we understand something that seems like ‘magic’, it stops being ‘magic’. Is ‘ghost’ that kind of concept? Is there anything that used to be included in the meaning of ‘ghost’ that has since become understood-therefore-not-ghost?
Part of what I’m suggesting is that ‘ghosts’ as a concept are actually of a different category of thing, that they aren’t just a purported entity in the way that e.g. aliens or cryptids are. The comparison to ‘faith’ (and now above to ‘magic’) is an attempt to tease that out.
But the claim isn’t that they had an experience, it’s a particular explanation for their experience, i.e. the purported entity ‘ghost’. And it’s the adherence to that explanation that seems to rhyme with faith.
Because if it’s a scientific question, then we can absolutely disprove it: hypothesis testing is how science proceeds. Here, it seems like the claim is that ‘ghosts’ are a special kind of hypothesis that we can never exclude. In that respect, it doesn’t look like a scientific claim.
Similarly, the focus on “what is really going on here”, on pluralism, on harm, on rudeness – those strike me as unusual responses to a scientific claim. But they are typical responses to claims about e.g. religious beliefs.
I won’t accuse you of trying to affirmatively demonstrate that ghosts exist, but rather that my confidence that they do not is unjustified. Something need not be a compelling evidence that a claim is true in order to be compelling evidence that the claim is uncertain.
I am also just curious what you’re referring to.
Relatedly, on review I see that I have somewhat misrepresented ProfessorX’s intent in the post I mentioned:
They offered ghost sightings as evidence against my claim that ghosts don’t exist, rather than as evidence in support of the claim that ghosts do exist.
One option would be to taboo your words: don’t use the word ‘ghost’, use some other word or collection of words that refers to the target concept. In theory, offering a definition up front should do the same thing, but in practice we keep falling back on a more nebulous colloquial understanding. If we stop using the word altogether, we’re forced to stick to a definition.
Not really. Say, for example, how can you disprove Earth is flat, for example? Keep in mind that the Earth can be flat and the light just not move in straigth lines. Once you convert from the coordinates in which Earth is more or less a sphere to the coordinates in which Earth is flat, and adhere to the same scientific laws in the new coordinates, you can’t distinguish one from the other.
That idea of science being able to disprove stuff is very naive.
I think ghosts existing is self evident because I am one.
In the end, it’s not a scientific question, it’s a question about reality and then it is obvious it is metaphysics
Well, I think that’s a difference in quality. One, Thylacine, we know what it is made of, what it generally eats, and so on. We know where and when to look. It sustains itself as observable, or we have no reason to believe it was an evanescent creature, something more along the lines of ball lightning. We assume that where you saw it in mud, there would be footprints. That it would maintain visibility in open turf. That it would poop and so on. With ghosts we don’t know what they are made of or have a good catalog of what physical effects we can expect to see and that are sustained, what measuring devices to send out, etc.
Then this idea we would recognize proof if we had it. What would a photo of a ghost show, for example? There are thousands perhaps millions of photos purported to be ghosts. Some can be eliminated due to discovered manipulation, evidence of hoax etc. But let’s suppose for a moment there are ghosts and humans have taken photos of them. The skeptics will say other explanations are what we are seeing. Those present will often say otherwise. To a skeptic there is no evidence in those photos, even if they are in fact photos of ghosts. What would the photo show or the video such that the skeptic would now say, ok, that is a ghost? That’s one kind of example. Paranormal researchers say they have found different kinds of effects. Perhaps they are right. Skeptics say these are better explained in other ways.
I am not saying that evidence can’t happen that skeptics or just neutral scientists would be convinced by or consider now some kind of evidence. That may well happen. But how to we know what the real category of the photos, videos, measurements by paranormal researchers are? We may well have hundreds or thousands of photos that actually were taken of ghosts, but they can’t function as proof, since there are other explanations, at this point.
Mary-Poppins and I agree that the evidence we have disproves the existence of ghosts of a type that can be captured on camera.
The discussion moves forward as if we know that all photos so far are not ghosts. That they are able to be explained as something else is being conflated with these not being of ghosts. Note: my point here is not - they are photos of ghosts. My point is I think implicit in your position is, if they were photos of ghosts, we’d know it. I would guess that to conclude that photos cannot be taken of them would include assumptions that might not be correct about ghosts. How do we know we haven’t taken pictures of ghosts already?
Let’s go to a more mundane example. A woman claims a man was in her room. She took a photo from the bed. Yes, the curtains seem to bulge outward there a bit. There is a dark area that could be a shoe. But it all might be shadows, a bit of breeze slipping through the crack in the window make a slight billow. Great. We do not have proof there was a man in the room in that photo. But we lack anything remotely like proof, because of our explanations, that it wasn’t what she said. And she may have had other sensory experiences that added to her sense, consciously or unconsciously.
Then the people who saw rogue waves and ball lightning, they also had faith? If so, ok. Were the early physicists who became convinced first in their interpretations that non-classical things were happening, was that faith until consensus took over? How about the first Native Americans to see white men or their large ships? Was that faith if they told their fellow villagers that they had seen white skinned rather sickly looking humans? If so, ok we can call that faith. But it seems to me it is, in the end, circular logic. You assume they are wrong, so their interpretation is faith. And certainly some people experiencing ghosts are interpreting incorrectly - that can be proven via pranks that are filmed. But in general, I don’t think so.
What’s the experiment that disproved ghosts in general and where was it published?
Further, many hypotheses failed, then were later supported: Continental drift, Prions, The heliocentric model, Gravitational Waves, are a few examples.
In those cases they managed to find other ways, later, and were able to support the hypothesis. Sometimes there have been large gaps between initial tests where the hypothesis failed and then later was supported. And these are phenomena that had mainstream science interest. Or eventually did. Also the phenomena had at least some clear categories of physical stuff involved.
Most important you’re not disproving. You’re getting a Null Result.
So, we don’t have an experiment that goes at the hypothesis ghosts exist, not from within mainstream science. If it comes from paranormal researchers - who generally are looking for anomolies (in other words early support that something new or other is going on, rather than trying with single experiments to prove ghosts exist) - then it is dismissed.
So, here you are without this experimental research, declaring that it has been disproven, when at least strict science methodology refers to this experiment that has not been carried out would have arrived at a Null Result.
Then we have the posited harm you are trying to prevent through pushing back. But has science demonstrated net harm due to the belief in ghosts? From a short bit of research, I don’t think the research supports this. And in fact, I think it would be incredibly unlikely that experiments could track all the effects of the belief in ghosts. So, it seems to me you are basing this push back on faith. Could this faith lead to harm?
Omg wow, so amazing like, so I just proved there are no ghosts. How did I do it? Well easy, I just claimed that anyone who ever said they saw a ghost was mistaken or crazy or a liar, and I appealed to authority that modern science (the ones I look at anyway) have never proven the existence of ghosts.
And BINGO! I just proved that ghosts do not exist. Wow, so amazing!
Honest average person: “Man, but honestly this really happened, I saw the image of my grandma standing by my bed, and I swear I was not asleep, and it happened right as she was dying in the hospital, and I have never had anything like that happen to me before or since. I can’t explain it.”
Retarded “scientist” and skeptitard: “Naw, hey you know what , you are wrong. I mean maybe you saw something but you were alseep, or you imagined it, or you were on drugs. Ha there, I showed you! I mean can you even prove you saw anything?!?”
Honest average person: “Well I can’t prove it, I didn’t have a camera or anything but I swear it happened and I know for 100% certainty it was real, and what are the odds I didn’t even know my grandma was dying in another state in a hospital at the time!”
Retarded “scientist” and skeptitard: “Ha! See? You cannot PROVE it! Therefore I have proven that ghosts do not exist!”
@Carleas ^ this is actually you, you do realize that right?
If you take a certain set of facts as true, then you can disprove a hypothesis by showing that it entails something at odds with those facts. Empirically, we don’t have facts we can take as givens, the best we can do is parsimony, probability, and predictive power. But that’s what scientific disproof is.
It’s true we can always make a more complicated model that both fits observations and saves some arbitrary hypothesis. But eliminating that possibility isn’t necessary for rejecting a scientific hypothesis.
But before we had widely accepted proof of the existence of ball lightning, we had a definition specific enough that we were able to recognize proof of existence, right? The people who were claiming that ball lightning doesn’t exist were saying things like “if ball lightning exists we would observe XYZ”, and the ultimate proof of the phenomenon looked like credible photographs and videos showing XYZ.
That is to say, the term ‘ball lightning’ was meaningful before its existence was proven. It referred to something with sufficient specificity that we could tell when we’d found it and when we hadn’t.
That meaning may have been less specific than the meaning of ‘thylacine’, but that lack of specificity is a difference in degree, not in kind.
The possibility that ‘ghost’ doesn’t have that kind of meaning – not merely a less-specific meaning, but a meaning of a different sort altogether – is what makes me reach for concepts like ‘magic’ or ‘gods’ by analogy.
I agree that at this point in time, it would be difficult for any one photo or video to establish the existence of ghosts, just because by now we have so many examples of hoaxes and misinterpretations that the prior odds on it being something else are quite high.
Even so, a high-quality photo or video proffered by a sufficiently reliable source would constitute reasonably strong evidence. Something like the video of ball lightning unintentionally captured in the context of an unrelated scientific investigation seems like it would obviously qualify, but that isn’t the minimum.
What does the concept of ‘ghost’ suggest the measurements should be? Start with what we mean when we talk about ‘ghosts’, and work backward to figure out what set of observations could support the existence of that thing.
Point of clarification here: my argument relies more heavily on the trend in pictures. i.e., If ghosts were ever captured on camera, then we would expect a dramatic increase in the number and quality of cameras to affect the number and quality of pictures of ghosts, proffered by reliable witnesses to establish provenance. That’s not what we see.
As I said to @pseudoai, it’s possible to come up with a model that explains this in a world where ghosts exist and have been captured on camera. But our credence in such a model should be low, because adding epicycles post hoc to salvage a hypothesis that failed to predict our observations is a deeply suspect way to model the world.
An important difference in this example is that the photo is being offered as evidence that a man was in her room, not as evidence of the existence of men. Where we have very strong evidence of the existence of men, a photo with a bulging curtain and a shoe-like shadow could be compelling evidence that a man was in the room. But if we didn’t already have good evidence that men exist, we should be more open to other explanations.
The hypothesis’ falsity is neither necessary nor sufficient to make holding it rhyme with ‘faith’. Things that do, some of which I’d mentioned previously:
“the claim is that ‘ghosts’ are a special kind of hypothesis that we can never exclude”
“the focus on “what is really going on here”, on pluralism, on harm, on rudeness”
the seeming reluctance to offer a definition of what we’re talking about sufficient to make further predictions of what we should expect to observe
the seeming reluctance to consider alternative hypotheses, and/or finding it inappropriate to suggest them
I don’t know enough about the disputes around the other examples you mention to say whether the beliefs were faith-like. I imagine they were for some.
There’s an asymmetry in what evidence we need to prove and disprove a claim. One particularly good photo or video could function as effective proof an existence claim, but the lack of such a photo is only weak evidence for a non-existence claim. A pattern of evidence, like the pattern in the quality and frequency of purported ghost photos over time, is much stronger.
A null result supports the null hypothesis. And a pattern of null results make the null hypothesis compelling.
Consistent null results for a hypothesis, together with consistent positive results for competing hypotheses, is a pattern of evidence that strongly supports the null hypothesis: there are no ghosts.
Well, actually it was almost random luck. Though I am not exactly sure what you mean. Ball lightening seems to be a simpler phenomenon.
Well, the researchers who got that video had spectrograph readings also. It was an accident. They were there to look at ordinary lightning. Other videos had been dismissed, not because those taking them were not credible, but amazingly enough had no spectrograph equipment with them and were not scientists.
Well, that’s intuitive. It may be a more varied phenomenon. It does seem to be.
No, that’s not what I mean. What I mean is that a photo that could very well be a decent photo of a ghost, might still be explainable as other things. Photos capture only parts of a phenomenon, likewise videos. We don’t know how varied the phenomenon is.
Well, that’s happened.
The Tulip Staircase Ghost was captured in 1966 by Rev. Ralph Hardy at the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich and remains one of the most respected paranormal images. It depicts a shrouded figure ascending a spiral staircase with hands visibly gripping the railing, despite Hardy and his wife insisting the area was empty. The photo’s credibility is bolstered by a Kodak laboratory analysis which confirmed the negative had not been tampered with or double-exposed, leaving the physical detail of the figure’s “hands” a baffling mystery.
The Brown Lady of Raynham Hall , photographed in 1936, is perhaps the most iconic ghost image ever published. Taken by professional photographers from Country Life magazine, it shows a translucent, veiled figure descending a grand staircase. While investigator Harry Price found no evidence of fraud and declared the negative legitimate, skeptics argue it could be a double exposure or a reflection. Regardless, the photographers defended the image’s authenticity for the rest of their lives.
The Freddy Jackson
photograph from 1919 serves as a compelling “odd” group portrait of a Royal Air Force squadron. In the image, a face clearly appears behind one of the airmen in the top row—a face the squadron identified as
Freddy Jackson
, an air mechanic who had died in a propeller accident two days prior. The fact that the photo was taken on the same day as Jackson’s funeral led his colleagues to believe he had returned to join the group for one final shot.
The Robert A. Ferguson photo, taken in 1968 during a Spiritualist convention in Los Angeles, is notable for its use of Polaroid technology. It shows a distinct, glowing figure standing next to Ferguson, which he identified as his brother who had passed away during WWII. Because it was a Polaroid, the image was developed instantly, making the sophisticated darkroom manipulation required to fake such a clear figure almost impossible to achieve on the spot.
There are many more recent photos that are clear, but they are after the technologies to manipulate photos became more accessible.
I could go and look at what paranormal researchers have gone and measured. But honestly, I don’t know what these would be.
Some glitches are being eliminated, but a huge factor is that less are considered credible because there is more room for technology manipulate.
I’m not arguing that. In fact I am very focused on us being at a certain point in technology and a certain point in the history of science (paradigms).
You were focusing on harm. You were pushing back. You labelled people’s actions as demonstrating ghosts were real, but I didn’t find that when I went to links.
The fact that I think what you are doing is rude, has nothing to do with whether the sightings are empirical or faith based. Nor does it affect whether the interpretations are correct or not. I’m now not quite sure what this list is about.
Paranormal researchers manage to go with descriptions and investigate and find anomalies. Not proof, but anomalies. You say there is a reluctance to offer a definition. I think there are definitions - some part of a once living person, now in a different form - but not descriptions that would make research easier. I’m not hiding my clear description of what a ghost is such that scientists would know what devices to grab.
And, yes, you used the word seeming, but the implication is we could share more, but tactically we are avoiding sharing it, because maybe then someone could disprove it. That’s rude.
I see a defensive pattern. You are pushing back. People are demonstrating in links that ghosts exist. When I look, no, they don’t seem to be. I see presumption of harm, but I see not a shred of empirical evidence that there is net harm from the belief in ghosts.
The null hypothesis is considered methodologically agnostic because it represents a neutral starting point that avoids making any positive claims until sufficient evidence is presented. While
is a specific mathematical assumption, it functions as an “agnostic” position in the sense that it noncommittally waits for data to force a move away from the status quo
They were plenty of hoaxed photos of ball lightening. Real thing get experiences when not present. Real things are also hallucinated - though how they determined that an observer hallucinated, rather than was fooled by shadows, I don’t know, unless they found LSD in their blood or something.
As far as lab induced experiences that feel like ghostly presence. Take a moment to consider the problem with this. Really take a moment before reading.
OK. We can induce in the lab experiences of all sorts of real things that are not present. Ultrasound making it feel like a cat is rubbing your arm, but actually cats nevertheless exist.
You keep brining up Thylacine which scientists say is extinct, but as pointed out scientists have not declared ghosts non-existant. This was pointed out and, you bring it up again.
I’d like to see the evidence that believing in ghosts leads to net harm. I did some research and that is generally not supported and even contradicted (there seem to be benefits for some) by the large reputable studies. I’d like to see evidence that you are pushing back - I’ve now followed two links that were supposed to lead to people trying to demonstrate that ghosts existed, but found that was not what was happening. I could easily find a thread where people believing in ghosts were insulted heartily.
When I say “scientific disproof”, I mean to distinguish that type of disproof from a logical disproof.
A logical disprove takes certain premises as indisputably true, applies rules that are also taken as indisputably true, and reaches a conclusion that is indisputably true given those premises and rules. Given the standard rules of formal logic and the premises
A \rightarrow B
\neg B
there’s no uncertainty that \neg A.
A scientific disproof can’t work that way: observation defeats any premise or set of rules, so every conclusion is always subject to uncertainty.
The distinction matters because pointing out that we could be wrong about a logical disproof is quite significant, while pointing out that we could be wrong about a scientific disproof tells us exactly nothing about the claim or the world.
I don’t think most flat earthers arrived at their beliefs through sound scientific methods. But sure, in principle, the globe hypothesis could be wrong.
I don’t mean to imply that there is a definition being kept secret. I don’t think there is a scientifically meaningful definition. I don’t think it’s primarily tactical, rather that defining it feels somehow profane, making the sacred mundane (this is an overstatement, I mean it by analogy; it rhymes).
Correct me if I’m wrong, but the closest anyone criticizing my position has come to offering a definition of what we’re talking about is what you say in this most recent post: “some part of a once living person, now in a different form”, which I appreciate.
You say that this is not a “description that would make research easier”, but it absolutely is. It constrains what a ghost could be, e.g. it’s not a life-form from another planet or dimension. It ties each ghost to a specific human being, and also separates it from the flesh of a human being. It connects it to other domains where empirical advances could have implications here, like personhood and mind.
You also offer several purported ghost pictures (I’ll say more about those below), though I do not take you to be committed to the idea that ghosts can be photographed. That said, the “once living person, now in a different form” definition plus the “capable of being photographed” attribute seems pretty close to the definition I offered in the OP (substituting e.g. “non-corporeal” for “different form”). And again, taking the prominence of the images you provide as evidence, I think a lot of people who say they believe in ghosts have something like that in mind.
If not “capable of being photographed”, then “capable of creating XYZ anomalies measured by paranormal researchers”. I’m wary of that attribute, because it gives the measurement too many degrees of freedom – with a large number of measurements, the likelihood of at least one measurement far outside the norm trend toward one.
Barring that, the phenomenon of ghosts is also defined in relation to individual experiences and feelings. And a possible explanation of a phenomenon supported by experiences and feelings is that it is endogenous to the minds experiencing or feeling it. After all, “some part of a once living person, now in a different form” also describes visual, auditory, and somatic memories of that person, and the mental models others have of them.
By coincidence, I attended a memorial this weekend at which someone expressed a need to believe the deceased was still present, and I could not help thinking of the ways in which the person saying so reminded me of him.
I agree these are about as good as ghost photographs get, and I find that damning for the contention that ghosts can be photographed.
They’re probably created innocently, cameras from the times when these were taken were less reliable and had slower shutter speed. Where they are supported by invented stories, those stories are more likely the product of several decades of telephone rather than deliberate misdescriptions.
That said, any of them could have been deliberately faked. You mention in a couple of places how modern photographs are subject to manipulation, but techniques for making hoaxes of ghosts predate photography, and spirit photography using photography-specific techniques is attested from shortly after cameras became available.
Even if we assume that ghosts exists, we should have a higher credence that these are camera artifacts and/or hoaxes than that they are pictures of ghosts, because known multiple-exposures and hoaxes exist and are more common (even in the past) than credible claims to have photographed a ghost.
The most credible to me is the Tulip Staircase image, which is the sharpest image and most credible story. Still, the mundane explanation – that a flesh-and-blood person was moving through the frame while the shutter was open, creating a streaked image of that person across the photo – seems much, much more likely. In a dark stairwell, a long-exposure would be appropriate, and a person moving across the scene would look like this.
The countervailing evidence is that the photographers say there was no one there when they took the picture. But they wouldn’t have seen the picture until later, so we have to consider how likely it is that they just don’t accurately recall the circumstances under which they took what (for all they knew at the time it was taken) was an unremarkable photograph of a staircase – or alternatively, that the story was attached to the picture later.
The most likely to be a deliberate hoax is the Brown Lady of Raynham Hall. Photographers paid by a magazine to take a picture of a ghost take a picture of a ghost. Moreover, from what I could find, the first person to investigate the photo noted that it was cropped to remove evidence of double exposure visible in the negative. Even if the picture itself was innocently created (which isn’t clear), the published version may have been deliberately misleading.
The Freddy Jackson image seems to be a multiple-exposure or motion blur. To my eye, the ‘ghost’ resembles the individual he’s hiding behind, but the photo is too grainy to say for sure. In any case, the story of the air mechanic seems unreliable. This article is skeptic-slanted, but links to more neutral sources. In trying to track down the story, it claims the photo was published in a 1975 book, and couldn’t find a record of an air mechanic matching the facts described.
The Robert Ferguson photo looks like motion blur to me. That seems supported by the ‘ghost’ explanation being that it is the subject’s ‘brother’, i.e. someone who looks like the subject – and happens to be wearing the same clothes and standing in the same posture as the subject.
I don’t follow you here. Are you saying that something might be both a ghost and a trick of the light?
My point is that the existence of a photo is itself a phenomenon, and there are multiple possible explanations: maybe it looks like a ghost because it’s a ghost, maybe it looks like a ghost because someone double exposed a person in a sheet into it, maybe it looks like a ghost because a grease stain on the lens is interacting with pareidolia.
When I mentioned “a high-quality photo or video proffered by a sufficiently reliable source”, I had something in mind like the ball lightning example of scientists studying some unrelated phenomenon accidentally capturing it in high speed together with a spectral analysis. I know that’s a high standard, but on its own I don’t think a photograph is particularly strong evidence of anything.
Question for you: are you more sure that motion blur, multiple-exposure, camera artifacts, and deliberately hoaxed ghost pictures exist than you are that ghost exist? It seems a lot of how these pictures are interpreted depends on our priors, how big a lift it is to nudge us from one explanation to another.
I don’t understand why you’re so mad about this conversation, and I don’t think it helps your case.
I wasn’t really offering them as evidence or it’s a grey area. It’s more like there is a problem with evidence. I think sometimes the idea is that we know there is no evidence, no physical effects, nothing has ever been measured or captured. This is based on ‘we have other explanations we prefer or argue are more likely.’ I think this makes it more binary than it is. There may in fact be photographs of ghosts or the effects of ghosts. Paranormal researchers may well have correctly measured changes that either were connected to sightings or anomalies in places that have regular visitations or whatever you want to call them.
Well, you take that into account when evaluating the evidence. Perhaps there are trends on certain changes that become or have already been focused on.
IOW you’re reacting a bit like my suggesting is that any change is strong evidence.
For those where the ghosts are ‘from’ people the experiencers knew, yes, this is of course a possibility.
Well, I asked for examples from an AI where manipulation was generally ruled out by experts.
You can’t know this. 1) this assumes everyone thinking they photographed a ghost went public and found a way to reach the public. 2) how did you determine this, what research?
Something I am sure experts at the time were aware was possible. But now this discussion is getting to close for my interest to I come with evidence and you dismiss it from your perspective and world view. I don’t think at this time there is enough evidence to demonstrate there are ghosts, Which I said earlier. I have not done more than a tiny bit of research into what the paranormal researchers are doing and I’m not about to dive in and try to show that something is being dismissed that shouldn’t be. Might be true, might not be. I doubt it comes to the level of very strong evidence that if taken seriously would change mainstream science. Not because I think that is impossible, but because I think that would have reached me, given my connections.
No, this goes back to the issue of ‘there are no photos of ghosts because we have better explanations and since there are none then we sure know they don’t emit light’ or some such. I am not sure if you’ve made such and argument but it at least felt like it was in the air.
Sure, I get all that. I really do.
Which no one suggested. I just went with your criteria which have now become more rigorous. That’s fine. But any place you start treating me as presenting a case, I will find irritating, since I have already said I don’t think a solid case can be made - that’s intuitive, I don’t know the paranormal research - and certainly not by me.
My belief in ghosts has nothing to do with photos. Further, I don’t have to choose between two real phenomena. In addition, your conflating our minds. I have radically different experiences from you. I’m going to use a charged example here. A kid’s parents accuse a priest of molesting their kid in the 60s on the word of their child and their sense of the child’s state of mind and emotions and past behavior. The Monseigneur asks ‘Are you more sure that children makes up stories or that priests rape children?’ So, my response is ‘Ask me again in the 90’s?’ The point of my posts is that you are overreaching epistemically. More sure has nothing to do with disproven. I feel like the posts keep sliding towards me demonstrating and you trying to convince me. I’m not interested in being corrected or correcting you on your beliefs about what is real. Were people who experience rogue waves more sure that people make mistaken estimates of size or that huge waves existed? Were the people who experienced ball lightning, more sure that people make mistakes or lie than they are that it was what they thought they saw? Do you think it is more likely that people think they see things in the sky that are not alien or unknown types of aircraft or are making phots as a hoax or you are really seeing___________? What year is it? 1960, oh, ok I guess the first. 2026, I don’t know let’s talk to the people in the NASA study.
This has nothing to do with having proved ghosts don’t exist. It’s possible steps in an argument, even a very good argument for the con side. It doesn’t help in the slightest with the goal of the thread. And saying these kinds of things to an experiencer is silly. It’s not a one factor conclusion. If you are trying to say YOUR skepticism is reasonable, I agree.
I understand his anger, I’ve felt it too.
You have framed the issue as pushing back. I’m sorry I really don’t see that happening here or in general. I’ve never had anyone try to foist a belief in ghosts on anyone I know or myself. I certainly have heard people assert it. You presented two people as making a case there were ghosts and neither one, it seemed to me did that. I think one of them was professor X. You have said that believing in ghosts causes harm. But produced no evidence of this (I looked into to and it seems the larger, respectable studies do not support net harm (there are positive aspects to the belief). In the course of the thread you insulted the intelligence of people who believe in ghosts ( and yes, took it back). You have been presented with, I think, pretty strong evidence that scientists in terms of research conclusions have not come out with a conclusion that ghosts do not exist, while at the same time wanting scientific methodology to be the criterion for reaching good conclusions. I think you were, not intentionally, pretty slippery with the Wikipedia thylacine scientists say it is extinct, but when pointed out that they do not do that with ghosts this doesn’t really mean anything. I don’t think your argument about the need to correct people on this issue is supported. I think people have several times made good cases that actually science really isn’t in the business of announcing conclusions like this - certainly many scientists would say it for themselves.
And even in your post to me here, you changed the goalposts. I was not arguing that those must be photographs of ghosts. I read your criteria and found examples that fit. Now you shift it to something like the thing that broke the ball lightning case, with scientists in the right field with the lucky device that turned out to strengthen the claims. And that’s a fine, respectable standard for a start towards a scientific demonstration. But it’s not really what you said before. And this is a feeling I have throughout the thread, for what it’s worth. That my responses fit what was said, and then are taken as not being X. Well, I wasn’t trying to present X. This happens in a lot of discussions and I certainly do that myself, but it has gone on for a while and on some level while you concede specific points, it seems completely off the table for you that there might be epistemic overreach here. That we have a respectable position, even if you ultimately disagree.
So, honestly. I think your emotions are affecting how you approach the issue. And it leads to frustrating experiences. I don’t draw some nasty conclusion about you based on that but frankly your response to Professor X ends up being rather condescending in this context. Further, his anger should not affect his case. And I think he presented some pretty reasonable objections earlier in the thread.
The wider context here at ILP. A while ago: One really quite vicious thread insulting people who believed in ghosts. A survey type thread asking what people believe.
Has someone actually tried to get you to believe in ghosts. Not just asserted it. But tried to get you to believe? To correct you by demonstrating you are wrong. Is there a pattern of this happening? to people you know?
Anyway. I think I’ll bow out here.
EDIt: UFOs are actually a good example to bring up. There have always been decent photos that did not seem manipulated. Though sure people with a similar position to Carleas could point out better interpretations. And really the situations has changed more to do with openness and less secrecy about how the government has always reacted. They took that stuff seriously. But it could kill your career outside of what was kept out of the news for a scientist. Now NASA and Harvard I think it was are investigating and it’s ok. A bit like how animals were machines and it was irrational to think otherwise until it wasn’t. Not because science suddenly overcame the problem of other minds, but because paradigms and bias shifted. We haven’t proved that aliens are behind the UFOs but at least they are no longer disproven and we know what’s really going on has less of a hold.
Saying we have a disproof of ghosts is basically epistemic overreach because you can’t actually disprove something that hasn’t even been clearly defined yet. We don’t even know what the “ontology” of a ghost would be. If they aren’t made of standard matter or if they don’t interact with the electromagnetic spectrum in the way we expect, then our current sensors are basically useless. It’s like trying to catch a radio wave with a butterfly net; if you don’t catch anything, it doesn’t mean the waves aren’t there, it just means you’re using the wrong tool for the job. We may also have the right tools, but, see below, not be using them for a wide range of reasons.
Plus, there’s a massive bias in how this stuff gets looked at. Science doesn’t happen in a vacuum—it requires funding, interest, and a willingness to risk your reputation. Because the current paradigm treats the subject as “woo-woo” or pseudoscience, no one is getting a multi-million dollar grant to develop specialized tech to hunt for them. Most of what we call “disproof” is just people debunking specific, shaky instances or pointing out that we don’t have a verified theory yet. But an absence of evidence isn’t the same thing as a proof of non-existence, especially when the search is underfunded and potentially using the wrong gear.
But further you need a clearly falsifiable hypothesis. We don’t have that. We have other explanations and good arguments, but not disproof. Proofs are more the realm of symbolic logic and math.