If a ghost was originally (hundreds of years ago, if not from the beginning of human time) a figment of the imagination, then when photography was invented, people either used the technique to illustrate it, or ascribed exposure mistakes to what they already believed.
When Photoshop became available, people used that to create the simulations instead of double exposures.
Before photos, ghosts were either illustrated by paintings or merely described in words, which would make for a wide variety of personal characterizations. Now that everyone can see a photo, their expectations are probably more similar.
Contrast the succubus/incubus, demons & devils “experienced” in the middle ages to UFO abductions and alien probes now. Has one phenomena stopped and another taken its place, or are people interpreting their fantasies in a different frame of reference? I opt for the latter.
*Wishful thinking
*Ignorance
*Media which entertains rather than informs
*The need some people have to believe the irrational
Mostly wishful thinking and bad photography.>>>
Actually, this illustrates a very important point. There are large groups of people who have a great stake in upholding these claims, mostly having to do with turning over a profit.
TV shows like Sightings (with Tim White) rely on the viewers willingness to believe in order to generate lots of money. Allowing detailed scrutiny from panels of skeptics (or even a variety of scientists, representing many different points of view from the scientific community) is not in these people’s interests. Hence you tend to find these shows packed with scientists who are already “believers”, and very seldomly will they allow hardened skeptics (who represent the opposing point of view) to examine the “evidence”. Add to that that any skeptic they do present, they tend to edit his/her words so as to minimise the damage they do to present a “balanced” picture. More often than not, they only include these
skeptics so as to make it seem as though they have presented a “balanced” picture. But they always end on the same conclusion: isn’t it more likely these “occurences” were the result of ghosts or paranormal behaviour?
Bottom line: People in the media who have a vested interest in perpetuating a lot of these “cases” (nearly always for a wad of cash) tend to create these TV shows and continue to make a buck from the trusting nature of the human viewer, and they distort the exact facts and evidence presented on the shows as such.
The fact that there is a ready base of viewers who are (relatively) easily persuaded by these types of shows is demonstrated through Live Better Electrically’s link (2003 Harris poll).
I would like to point out however, these types of people are not to be confused with those that legitamately study paranormal behaviour using scientific methodology, e.g. parapsychologists.
<<<Originally posted bySnakespirit:
I have nothing but distain for someone who ridicules a belief or claims that it is nonexistant simply because they have not seen proof.>>>
I agree that someone else’s beliefs should not be ridiculed. However I think it is a far more agreeable position to claim that something does not exist until sufficient proof has been given, rather than claim that something does exist despite the fact that sufficient proof has NOT been given.
–Note that “sufficient proof” is a term that must be agreed with both parties beforehand, it is by nature a subjective term, with different people placing different emphasis/merit on different aspects of the case being studied–
No matter how many times I tell you that there are fairies living in my room who can turn lead into gold, it is a perfectly tenable position for you to claim that they DO NOT exist if I have not provided sufficient proof. You can go on thinking, “oh well, it’s possible” till the cows come home… however if you go down this road, you might as well accept the fact that I may have (as I am claiming right now) two sexy witches in my cellar, I control the worlds orbit through an AppleMac computer I have sitting on my 300 foot-long desk, and at this very moment am attempting to resurrect the dead armed forces of the battle of heides. Now I know none of these are true - but what’s the point, hell… they could be, right?
Pro-ghost:
No, they are all assumptions, since we really don’t know what they are! They may be spirits, maybe not. They may be departed humans, or imposters. They may be something we can’t even categorize yet.
Removing assumptions and going with reported first-hand experiences I’d say we have sometimes consciousnesses (are they beings? entities? we don’t know.), or appearances (manifestations) which are not what we consider normal human beings, but which occasionally interact with humans, either visually or through mental communication, or other means. Some of these seem to exhibit consciousness in their interactions, others seem to just repeat the same actions over and over like a recording, and may not be conscious, but may be some kind of recording in the energy field of a place.
Not all “ghosts” may be the same thing! But thanks, Musicat.
I know there was a term I learned in Logic and Agumentation many years ago that covered this ridiculous type of comparison as an argument, but I forget what it was.
Basically you are taking a premise you know to be untrue to try to disprove a premise under investigation.
This is not logic, it is buffoonery. We have not had thousands of people throughout history claim that they have “fairies living in my room who can turn lead into gold.” If we had as many of those as we had encounters with what we describe as “ghosts,” we might investigate it. But we don’t.
If there is a phenomenon that is experienced by a large number of people the first thing an investigator does is to accept that the *experience * is real, then to try to determine the reason for the experience. And lo and behold, it may be something in the Universe that we haven’t categorized scientifically as of yet (though some skeptics may be sceptical about that). Or it may be something we can explain, or will learn to.
We don’t know everything there is to know yet. Get used to it.
Some friends were dropping me off. We saw lights in the sky. One friend immediately assumed it was an extraterrestrial craft. Knowing that I live in the flight paths of two airports, I assumed it was a small cargo plane. As it came closer, I was proven right.
One of the same friends e-mailed a picture of a hairless mouse with a human ear growing from its back. She thought it was real. I thought it was a fraud. When the story broke, I was proven wrong. The ear was genuine.
Since many experiences of ghosts are best explained by things like hoaxes, and hallucinations, those are the explanations I support.
Allow me to remove one more assumption from your above statement.
We have first-hand reports of experiences to which the witness assigned a measure of consciousness or conscious will to a phenomenon which the witness believes could not be ascribed to a human being. (The assumption in your statement was that because the witness said it was the spirit of a departed ancestor or a poltergeist, we automatically assume that the witness was capable of making that scientific evaluation on his own.) There is, on some occasion, what the witness describes as interaction.
I put it this way because hey, you get interaction with an echo. And when the roof leaks right down your back, it’s hard not to think “why does it have to drip on ME?” We falsely attribute this to interaction instead of Something Which Happens.
There was a time for about four seconds one night where I swore I’d seen a ghost, drenched in blood, standing behind my right rear quarter of my car, hands in his pockets. I saw him only briefly as I turned to back out of the driveway of a house where a young man had been killed in a violent explosion. The young man was my girlfriend’s brother.
It was about four seconds. Then I realized that I was looking at the red brake lights shining on the column of smoke from my car’s exhaust and nothing more.
But during that time I could have sworn it was real. The lesson I took away from that is that when one is over-excited and quickly processing information, we don’t always process correctly and our minds err on the side of safety. After all, it wouldn’t be much of an evolutionary advantage if we only ran away from creatures we could positively identify.
We laugh when birds fly away from a handful of popcorn tossed their way. Ha ha, we say, you’re afraid of your food. Perhaps the birds think that the popcorn was really a bunch of ghosts.
Took me awhile to understand what you were trying to say.
I removed assumptions from definitions about what ghosts are.
What you are describing was an illusion, not a ghost.
As an investigator, you acknowledged your experience, then sought an explanation, and found one. No ghost.
Perhaps you didn’t understand what I was trying to say. I was removing assumptions from definitions of ghosts.
We can’t assume it is a spirit, dead person, has consciousness, is visiting, etc.
We can assume it was an illusion, especially with evidence of the sort you presented.
I’m with DocCathode in that
and in investigation this should be our first assumption, so that if such exists we will be able to see it. Occam’s razor - seek first the simplest explanation. If you find evidence to the contrary (i.e., that it’s not a hoax, hallucination, illusion, etc) then you consider other explanations.
It’s when we run out of or can discount the other explanations that we can call something a “ghost.” But what is a “ghost?” I disagreed with the Googled definitions because they assumed too much.
Your statement:
is incorrect. At least it is not what I intended.
We cannot make that assumption. We can accept the experience as real, but the *interpretation * of the experience is a matter for investigation.
Let’s say a person says his departed ancestor came to him and gave him information he otherwise would not know.
We check out the information, could he have received it through other means?
Could it have been a dream?
Could he be receiving radio waves through his tooth fillings?
etc., etc.
Did I get your comments right?
And do you understand what I was trying to say?
Perhaps a false analogy, and in a sense it was. But I believe Silocke is also hinting at the notion of burden of proof. All things considered, I feel the burden is indeed on those who assert that ghosts and the like are real.
Well, there is a valid method of proof - proof by contradiction - which does something similar. If your ideas about ghosts lead to contradictions with known truths, then something about your idea is incorrect… or at least doesn’t jibe with reality.
Many properties of the paranormal are like this, at least in the sense that they predict or rely on things like energy fields which, unfortunately, we can’t seem to measure. This is a disjunction with reality which leaves two conclusions: the scientific model of the universe is incomplete, or the assertion of the paranormal thing is false; to a skeptic, the assertion must then survive a brush with Occam’s razor - and it never does.
No investigator worth anything would accept an assertion due simply to the large number of people asserting it.
Since I disagreed with Musicats referenced definitions for ghosts because they assumed too much, perhaps I should try to flesh one out.
Ghost:
A phenomenon that *can be interpreted * as the actions of [ul]
[li]a spirit[/li][li]a conscious energy[/li][li]repetitive visions or sounds of unknown origin[/li][li]objects being moved by an undetermined energy[/li][li]or some other phenomenon seemingly occurring outside the perview of what we consider as ‘normal’[/li][/ul] that cannot be shown to be illusions, hallucinations, hoaxes or other phenomenon able to be explained by current scientific knowledge.
I’m probably missing a few things here that can be added in, I’m kinda doing this on the spur of the moment.
Ok, but anything “… that cannot be shown to be […] phenomenon able to be explained by current scientific knowledge.” is impossible to argue against from a scientific standpoint; the counter to your argument must work in the realm of current scientific knowledge, and this leaves your argument with an easy out along the lines of “it hasn’t been discovered yet, so I’m not wrong.”
Or: your definition cannot be argued scientifically because it designed to avoid definite scientific attributes.
At one time we couldn’t measure lots of energy fields because we didn’t have the equipment - magnetism, radiation…
Once atoms were described as “particles,” then our equipment improved and we learned how to measure their energy fields and now we know that they are energy fields. (Please excuse me if this is out of date, I’ve been out of physics classes since 1967. Maybe they aren’t even energy fields any more… )
Point being that we don’t learn new things by ignoring experiences, occurances or phenomenon. Closed minds learn nothing new.
As for ‘ghosts,’ I postulate their real existance because of my experience; i.e., I believe there is something happening we cannot yet explain. I know full well that many occurrances will turn out to be something “normal” misinterpreted. Maybe most, and maybe even all.
Well, we already know that the scientific model of the universe is incomplete. Hawking, I hear, is re-revising his theories on black holes, and there’s that “dark matter” question that’s yet unresolved. Can anyone “see” a black hole or dark matter? can we touch it? can it survive a brush with Occam’s razor?
I don’t believe in the ‘paranormal,’ however. If ghosts are real then they are part of the ‘normal,’ but just a part of the universe we don’t understand yet. Occam’s razor has a long blade:
it’s an illusion, no;
a hallucination, no;
a hoax, no;
then it’s something else. We take the simplist explanation to be the most likely, but not the only, explanation.
Of course not.
And to parphrase you: No investigator worth anything would ignore an assertion due simply to the fact that he can’t explain it.
But I do understand that some become frustrated with failure after failure to explain things, and frustrated that so many assertions prove false that they must move on to other things where their efforts will be more worthwhile. And I don’t blame them.
Others don’t give up. Some of them die in ignominy. Others become Edison, Einstein, Pascal.
Occam notwithstanding, the easiest path is not always the *right * path.
Cite? I’ve heard nothing about this case being solved conclusively.
I’m not going to get into the big debate, so I’ll make my points quick and concise. Not only is there more than ample evidence that ghosts exist (personal testimony, EVP, photographs, movies, instrument readings), but the reports all over the world are similar and the theory used to explain the phenomena both makes sense and has explanatory power (as a good theory should).
I have experienced the phenomena myself. People I know and now have devices that take clear spirit photographs on a regular basis (not ghosts per se, which are lost spirits, but spirit visitors).
The skeptics on SMDB are actually arguing that ghosts are a priori impossible. Put simply, they’re wrong, and, in this case, they are stonewallers against the truth and nothing more. On other topics, such as politics, I love 'em to death.
Yeah, ghosts are real. And I’m done with this debate.
I’m not implying you’d take the out. What I’m getting at is that the definition lends itself to a neverending argument.
I’m doing more of a “meta-debate” type thing here. IMO, the argument, as it stands now, cannot end. Until someone pieces together everything and presents an idea that fits together with current science - regardless of which side of the argument the person is on - it won’t end.
Personally I’m not against the idea of ghosts, but I’m skeptic enough to neither fund nor research the idea. I leave the dirty work to people like yourself.
Firstly, it just begs some enormous questions. What is a spirit? What is a conscious energy? What actions are they capable of? Unless you know this, how do you know whether or not a particular phenomena is or is not something that could be the actions of one of these things? I’ve heard “spirit” used by woo woos in such broad ways that any action could be attributable to them. Heck, religious people talk of the whole world being a manifestation of their god’s spirit. Does that mean that anything that ever happens is a ghost?
Then we get on to the unexplained sound, light, movement and other abnormality thing. Are you saying that any time something inexplicably moves, or emits a sound or light repetitively, we have experienced a ghost? What if a scientist is studying sub-atomic particles and notes that they have a slight wobble that he can’t explain in terms of current scientific knowledge? Has he seen a ghost?
When it comes down to it, aren’t you just saying “ghosts” aren’t really a thing at all, they are just a category, a basket into which we put things we can’t explain?
I have a whole load of evidence I’m not going to produce but just trust me.
Followed by the usual straw man attempting to make it look like the problem is sceptic close mindedness rather than lack of evidence.
Followed by confusion of the separate but related concepts of being done with an argument, and having nothing to do with an argument lest it upset precious a priori beliefs.
The burden of proof is on those suggesting that a given observed phenomenon cannot have a natural explanation. If the phenomenon can have a natural phenomenon, ignoring it in favour of a supernatural explanation imperils you to the risk of being mauled by Ockham’s Razor.
This English Ghost footage, for example. Why can’t it be a guy in a costume? Must we find the guy and torture him until he confesses before we dismiss the supernatural explanation?
No, we don’t. There is a perfectly feasible natural explanation which we don’t have to ignore.
So, let us examine these observed phenomena and ask ourselves whether there is a natural explanation for them.
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