The God of the Gaps argument is that if we don’t have a scientific argument or explanation for X, then X is a spiritual, magical, divine phenomenon. I could easily have missed someone making that argument but I don’t see most people using that argument at all or even sharing the goal of that argument. That would entail we think we have demonstrated there are ghosts, and are trying to do that, to Carleas using that poor argument - or any other for that matter.
If someone argues that he hasn’t proven there are no ghosts, it is the end of knowledge?? Wow!
Fair enough, so you don’t have anything to say about if there are no ghosts, since likelihood and probability are subjective (The odds of the same coin falling heads is not the same for people that suppose different information about that coin). So, if you don’t want to mean a personal choice, you have to steer away from probability, likelihood and your concept of ‘supported’, to your own accord.
I don’t get what you mean about the X and Y thing.
Yes, adding epicycles to a hypothesis makes your subjective view of the hypothesis different (check: “likelihood”), yet it doesn’t have to do with the hypothesis being true or not, which is what is at stake here.
You don’t seem to be aware that you are referring to personal choice.
I made some thread about what is probability and what is possibility a while ago
No, if someone argues that he can’t prove there are no ghosts, even though he can, that is.
That would be the end of all knowledge? If there is disagreement about whether he has proved it? I mean, I think I get what you are saying: if no one got to say X is now disproven or proven, then we would have a problem. Of course in science they have theories, not proofs? Anyway it seems like you sort summed up a lot of things into a category I don’t think the posts here fit in.
Well I wasn’t talking about you but about pseudoai and maybe prof X and Socrates.
It does start to feel that way. I’d noticed a motte-and-bailey fallacy at play: the argument against the existence of one concept of ‘ghost’ is rejected on the grounds that some other concept of ‘ghost’ is unfalsifiable. It had never occurred to me that the god-of-the-gaps often functions the same way.
That doesn’t follow. I agree that the odds are different if people suppose different facts, but 1) the odds are the same if people suppose the same facts, and 2) both people can in principle agree what the odds are based on each person’s suppositions.
So likelihood and probability are not subjective. Even where they take subjective assumptions, their application to the assumptions is objective.
For all statements X and Y, the probability of X is less than or equal to the probability of the conjunction (X and Y).
And where we are less than 100% certain about both X and Y, the probability of the conjunction (X and Y) is less than either X or Y (this also assumes that neither X nor Y logically entails the other).
“Adding epicycles” means adding additional suppositions to make a hypothesis work. It comes from the attempt to save geocentrism after observations of planetary motion made it untenable, by supposing that as planets orbited the earth, they also moved in smaller circles (epicycles). That got the predicted movements closer to observation, but there were still errors; those could be corrected by supposing that as a planet moved on its epicycle, it also moved in a yet-smaller circle.
Eventually you can make the epicycles-on-epicycles model fir observation, but it adds many suppositions along the way. Since each additional supposition is uncertain, the conjunction of them is objectively less likely to be correct than the original hypothesis.
But you can’t compare ghosts to unicorns. Do 50 million Americans seriously claim to have seen a unicorn? Because if they had, I would take the possible existence of unicorns pretty damn seriously.
Well, roughly 50 million Americans have seriously claimed to have seen a ghost.
Then again I think a more apt comparison might be God. Can you disprove God’s existence? Of course not. God might or might not exist, we have no idea. And part of the meaning of the idea of God is that we cannot necessarily verify or experience/encounter it’s existence. This is what the AI correctly called unfalsifiability.
You are free to claim as Bertrand Russell did for example that an unfalsifiable idea is stupid to believe in, and that’s just fine. Believe what your eyes and ears tell you, nothing more. Cool. But to claim you can falsify an unfalsifiable idea… yeah, no.
Empirical proof? How do you empirically (via direct experience) prove something doesn’t exist because you didn’t see it? You would first need to very clearly prove that the scope or range of your observing is the entire possible space of the thing’s appearing within. That way you can say, “I look everywhere it could possibly be and it wasn’t there, so I know it isn’t there.” Can you do that? Of course not.
If a dog escapes its leash and runs off, you might be able to rope off an area of the neighborhood and search it very thoroughly, then claim “the dog is not here”. Nothing wrong with that (although maybe you just didn’t search thoroughly enough, but anyway). That seems to be what you think you are doing, somehow you are ‘roping off the entire world’ and claiming you didn’t find any ghosts there, therefore they aren’t there.
I am sure you realize you can’t, and indeed have not even attempted to, search the entire world for a ghost, right?
And as for “practical certainty” well that sounds like lawyer speak to me. Proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Yeah, I don’t think anyone would claim that ghosts can be said to exist beyond a reasonable doubt, at least unless that person has really experienced it for themselves in a way that is entirely undeniable for their own self-experience. But you don’t get to reverse that and claim “well I never saw one, therefore with practical certainty they don’t exist.” Again, even with unicorns (your example) this doesn’t fly, let alone with something that has been reportedly experienced seriously by 20% of the entire population of America, let alone the world at large 
If you want to prove that ghosts do not exist, then yes you do.
Nope, that is not enough. Because all of those 1-3 can be true AND it can also be true that ghosts exist.
This is basic logic. I am starting to wonder if you have ever taken a course or seriously studied basic logical thinking? But I am sure you have, as you claim to be a lawyer, and lawyers are both smart and logical thinkers generally speaking. Honestly, that is why I am so fucking confused by you here.
This was never about likelihood, it was about you claiming to PROVE they do not exist. Which you have not done.
Are you serious right now? This is why I think you are bullshitting.
We all know that ghosts are classed as some kind of hypothetical phenomenon that is both by its nature “undetectable” yet in certain situations or circumstances is also able to be seen by people. That is the undeniable definitive understanding of what “ghost” means. And I know that you know that. So.. wtf is going on here bro?
I guess you are free to construct your own pet definition of what “ghost” means, excluding the 99%+ of all reported and heard of or claimed cases where it is something quasi-ephemeral that possesses both the properties of undetectability and being able to be detected under certain places or times only. Most ghost reports I have ever heard involve the ghost appearing out of nowhere and/or disappearing in front of someone’s eyes. That means the DEFINITION of what a ghost is already includes both aspects, undetectability and detectability. And. Again. I am sure you know this.
Anyway this is my last post in this topic. I thought it was interesting to parse the specifics of the issue and truths involves, but honestly I just don’t care at this point, and I sense you don’t much care to have me responding here anymore, which is understandable. I wish you the best in your attempts to prove (if only to yourself) that there is no such thing at all in reality as what countless millions of millions of people have authentically seriously reported experiencing as what are commonly referred to and more or less universally understood as “ghosts”. Cheers.
I noticed you guys arguing. None of this has to do with ghosts. Lol.
They do exist. I, personally, have seen ghosts. I saw one walking the railroad tracks when I was younger. I knew it was a ghost because he was dressed like he was from the early 1900s.
And once, there was one I saw a couple years ago at the Mezzo where I lived. I’m fairly sure he was a ghost because he was also dressed in something strange like a church outfit or religious looking from a long time ago. He was jumping the fence and I was freaked out.
All I know is that ghosts need more up-to-date wardrobes. Ok???
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But throw a dart. Try.
Yeah “proving something” generally means to be confident beyond reasonable doubt that something is or isn’t the case. Say being over 97%-98% confident, or somewhere in that ballpark. This is what everyone does all the time even if they don’t realize it, not just in science. I thought people on a philosophy forum knew this.
You say: but Atla, that’s not how…
I say: woah woah woah stop right there. You addressed me, which means you were confident beyond reasonable doubt that there really is a human named Atla here, on this planet Earth, writing stuff on an internet philosophy forum. But that could be a hallucination or an illusion or a simulation or an infinite number of other things really, yet you went with this one anyway. You just automatically did what I said above.
Some will take issue that proof should only be used in mathemathics etc., but we often say “proof” outside mathemathics too, and ultimately we also can’t 100% prove that there aren’t infinitely many mathemathics-es, or that they don’t break down for whatever reason.
Though they avoid the word proof in science. Symbolic logic, sure. Math, sure.
Yeah it literally does. Has to do with ghosts. But thanks for playing I guess
Omg Ive never seen a ghost, Omg the scientific establishment says there are no ghosts, Omg there are some other possible explanations for why someone might think they have seen a ghost, OmMG I HAVE PWOVEN GHOSTS DO NOT EXIST
Honestly I feel like an alien on this planet. How in the shit is this world even like this. What are humans anyway?
Maybe ghosts exist but humans don’t
What your first sentence entails is the negation of the second sentence.
For example: What are the odds that some outcome will be a situation you didn’t think was possible? They’re not even zero. For the moment, since we can’t agree on there, we can negotiate and just use that probability CAN be subjective, and that’s enough for the topic at hand.
If it is possible that probability is subjective, it’s enough.
Probabilities don’t apply to statements, they apply to outcomes, to measurements. For example, there is no probability that ‘the world started with a donut shape’, since you can’t measure that - you can only measure things that would not contradict it. There is a probability that a coin will land heads. By the way, probabilities only apply to thought scenarios with ‘measurable’ outcomes (in that thought scenario) - be sure not to confuse probabilities with statistics.
Let’s suppose that is the case for the X and Y thing, what difference does it make? Since probability can be subjective, that’s enough. Choosing to trust one idea more than another is a personal choice. I know the epicycles thing, but it doesn’t entail more than that you trust something less, and that’s a personal choice. Since this is not a question about if someone personally trusts the existence (or lack thereof) ghosts less or more, that’s out of the question
That’s just semantics, “scientific proof” is part of everyday language. Scientific proof roughly means: an unfalsified theory, supported by enough evidence that confidence in it is extremely high.
Yeah, that’s not a proof. It’s like a hydraulic cat : it isn’t a cat.
“scientific proof” is a commonly used expression and everyone knows what it means, deal with it.
I guess some people who take issue with this, believe that logical, mathematical proofs are absolute, even though we have no way to PROVE that.
But lots of people believe lots of clearly false things, right? Lots of people claim they can feel EMF radiation from cell towers. A surprisingly large number of people believe that a witch has stolen their penis.
If 50 million Americans claimed they had seen a unicorn and the best picture we had of a unicorn was a grainy black and white from 100 years ago, I would reach the same conclusion: those people are mistaken about their explanation for the experience they had.
50 million people claiming they’ve seen ghosts demands an explanation, but the existence of ghosts is not the only or best explanation for those claims. Furthermore, it’s at odds with the other evidence we have (that whatever they’re claiming to ‘see’ cannot be photographed).
We can disprove plenty of specific concepts of ‘god’. We can disprove the god that brings the sun across the sky in his magic chariot, because we can see that that’s not how the sun gets across the sky. If one of god’s attributes is ‘typically answering prayers to heal the sick’, we can disprove that by seeing whether praying for someone makes any difference in how they heal.
‘God’ is a lot of different things, and many of them are unfalsifiable by design. It doesn’t follow from that that anything anyone has ever called ‘god’ is unfalsifiable.
To say it again: ‘ghost’ is many ideas. Some are unfalsifiable, some are not. I am claiming that the specific falsifiable idea of ‘ghost’ that I describe in the OP has been falsified.
But that isn’t true. I don’t need to check behind the sofa before I say “there are no extant thylacines”.
My point here is not that a ghost is like a thylacine in every relevant respect, it’s that we can exclude the possibility of a thing’s existence without directly observing every space the thing could fit.
The prevalence of cameras approximates a global search for ghosts that emit or reflect light.
Today, approximately everywhere that a human claims to see a ghost, there is a camera within arms reach. In many locations where humans have historically claimed to see ghosts (e.g. Starfire’s railroad tracks), there are now cameras recording all the time, in reasonably high resolution, often redundantly from multiple angles. Pictures and video can be easily shared by individuals.
The omnipresence of cameras is literally used by law enforcement to search for suspects and fugitives.
Every empirical finding published today is reported with a P-value, indicating how likely it would be to make the reported observations assuming that the hypothesis being tested is false.
Because empirical facts are always uncertain, and ‘proof to a practical certainty’ is the best we can do.
Strawman. I’ve never made this argument or any argument like it.
Logically, yes. But the odds are very, very, very low.
We ‘know’ it as well as we can know many of the mundane facts that we regularly accept.
Ghosts aren’t logically impossible, they are empirically inconsistent with the evidence.
What do you mean by “undetectable”? I would count seeing something with ones eyes as ‘detecting’ that thing. A thing that emits or reflects light can be ‘detected’ by measuring that light. A thing that changes the temperature of a volume of air can be ‘detected’ by measuring that change in temperature.
If people are ‘seeing’ ghosts, like literally using their eyeballs to process incoming light emitted or reflected by a ghost, they are detectable.
Lots of people believe that there are pictures of ghosts! Ergo, they believe ghosts can be photographed, ergo there are times and places where ghosts can be ‘detected’ by cameras. If we increase the incidence of there being a camera present in those times and places, we would expect more and better pictures of those supposedly detectable-by-cameras things.
This isn’t true (10 seconds of Google Scholar search turned up “Has the Amyloid Cascade Hypothesis for Alzheimer’s Disease been Proved?”).
But it also isn’t the basis for the objection to my claim. It’s not that I claim to know something, it’s that I claim to know this specific thing. Multiple people in this thread (including you) have trotted out plenty of other scientific claims (luminiferous ether, animal communication, ball lighting, phrenology, miasma), and no one has objected to them.
This is word games.
I still wouldn’t put it this way – priors are subjective, but probability is just math.
But this touches on a tangential point I think I mentioned earlier but can’t find at the moment: If knowledge is a matter of certainty, then it’s possible that two people with very different priors could justifiably claim to ‘know’ incompatible claims. At least one of them would have to be mistaken about her knowledge, but they wouldn’t necessarily be unreasonable to claim to know it.
Anyway, I don’t think that’s the case here. I don’t think our priors are so different that we should be interpreting the evidence in radically different ways. Everyone in this conversation should be able to agree with high confidence with claims like, “Ghosts cannot be captured on camera”.
OK, say ‘confidence’ or ‘certainty’. Does this distinction make a difference?
This is why it matters that probability is no subjective, even if priors are. No matter the subjective difference in our confidence/certainty in statements X and Y, the conjunction (X and Y) must be less likely.
It’s a mathematical truth; it isn’t subjective at all.
Yes! People agree with themselves, and that’s how it is dealt with : there are no scientific proofs. That’s not a proof. You can prove something exists, and it doesn’t even rely on maths. As Carleas wrote, “lot of people believe lots of clearly false things”.
No, the math about probability is math. What probability is is subjective. As long as this is not a thread about what probability is, you can work with ‘it can be subjective’, so that we don’t veer over there.
The difference between subjective and objective is at stake here. For example, I’m a ghost that interacts with a body. For sure, you cannot distinguish this situation from this body not being controlled by a ghost.
You insist on probability being subjective. If you want to talk about that, a thread about it would be better.