Ah… so years of experience is acceptable empirical evidence, then?
Look, it’s a perfectly valid rhetorical device to put quotes in the mouths of your opponents.
“They will say ‘A’; I say ‘B’!” Ever seen that?
Czarcasm did not attribute those quotes to you, to anyone else on the board, or to anyone in real life, but they do reflect arguments I (and I assume he) have heard. You may ignore them or dissect them as you choose, but they are not a strawman argument.
Get over it, is my advice.
Well in the absence of anything definable producing the face eating threat, what can one assume? You have to assume something until you can prove or disprove it.
One can assume that a reasonable explanation may be forthcoming, if more facts come to light or more investigation is done.
Given that no “magic” (paranormal) has yet to be conclusively proven to exist, it would be unreasonable to presume that as the default explanation.
Just because I see a light in the sky that I don’t recognize doesn’t mean that Bigfoot has built an interplanetary spacecraft.
That doesn’t mean ghosts win by default. I figure by the time I’m assuming ghosts, it’s because I’ve stopped caring what the phenomenon’s actual explanation is (because it’s proven sufficiently elusive that I’ve run out of patience) and “ghosts” are as likely as “Martian ventriloquists” and “chameleon pixies.” In fact, unless someone can suggest why Martian ventriloquists and chameleon pixies are less likely than ghosts, they’re just as valid as hypotheses.
The problem is that the idea of consciousness having some form even after death is such a radical idea that it requires dozens of assumptions to make it work.
Suppose you went back in time 1000 years ago and had to prove that there was such a thing as a magnetic field. To them, magnetic fields might as well be ghosts. First you have to explain the concept of electric charge. Then talk about how charge is carried by tiny little balls called “electrons” that you can’t see but they’re really there, honest! Then you have to describe the concept of a current, and Faraday’s law, and ultimately Maxwell’s equations. Try all you want but you’re just going to be talking nonsense in their eyes.
It’s the same thing with “ghosts”. First you have to define what consciousness is. As far as we can tell, consciousness needs some kind of brain. Is that not necessarily true? By what mechanism can consciousness exist without a brain? Does it exist in some other form of baryonic matter, or some other exotic form of matter we haven’t detected yet? Better pony up evidence that this exotic matter even exists. So how does this exotic matter produce something resembling consciousness? By what mechanism does the death of an organism transfer the normal brain matter consciousness into this new form?
And so on…
After what could amount of 100s of years of research, only then can you hope to explain why this exotic new thing is opening and closing doors at random. Until then…it’s much easier to assume that it’s the wind. Because we know about wind.
I’m telling you to drop this now.
You could assume that you don’t have enough information to make a determination rather than jumping to magic/aliens/god/woo.
There are a great number of natural explanations you could start eliminating right off the bat, starting with the possibility that the reporter is lying or hallucinating, that there is a television turned on somewhere, that someone is fucking with him, etc. It’s the old “horses or zebras” thing.
Sorry for being away for a bit. I’m traveling and my access is limited.
To answer someone’s question about my stance on the paranormal:
Generally speaking, I think that even using that term is probably counterproductive as we have note ad nauseum in this thread, it simply allows goalpost shifting. However for lack of a better and less cumbersome term…
There is a lot of ground to cover if you are talking about paranormal studies, but since we seem be hyper focused on ghosts, I think that our current level of investigation and explanations are a good start, but neither comprehensive or thorough enough to put to bed such a strong, universal human phenomena. My default position is that we have no good evidence for the existence of life after death or ghosts; therefore it is reasonable to assume that it does not exist. However, we all know that lack of evidence is not the same as lack of existence. Because it is such a persistent phenomena, I think it is worthy of thorough, rigorous investigation by interested parties to add to the information known to cause this sort of experience. Hopefully, such a series of investigations will lead to a reliable, and more accurate catalog of causation that can be utilized to both identify and eliminate the “phenomena”. It may be possible, but extremely unlikely, that in the course of this pursuit we turn up some unknown natural processes, or some other more exotic phenomena that we didn’t know about before. Such an investigation can only be reliably conducted by serious scientists. That caliber of people will only be interested if the evidence produced by the first researchers is rigorous and sufficiently hoax-proof to be taken seriously. I’m not trying to prove ghosts, I’m trying to eliminate them to such a degree that ANY claim would have to be both truly bizzare and well documented *to even be looked into anymore. * Surely any serious person worth their salt in their respective field should be interested in a new or very poorly understood phenomea. If they are to be attracted though, you have to show you’ve already done everything possible to eliminate the known causes.
So what I was asking in this thread, as I have been all along since the OP is: What guidelines would you like to established and followed to feel comfortable that supposed “paranormal” evidence is not hoaxed? That was it. I don’t understand why that is a particularly difficult question for some of you.
We are already at this stage.
It’s only “difficult” in that one cannot set out ironclad ground rules and criteria in advance when the phenomenon to be investigated is not defined and the environment in which the investigation is to take place is unknown. Some reasonable general suggestions have already been made. As you’ve undoubtedly noticed, the field of “paranormal research” is already so heavily tainted by credulousness, hoaxes and poor quality methodology that it would take some truly startling revelation to get “serious” folk interested. And the in-your-face apparitions never seem to occur.
It’s like religion. If the Chosen One(s) were to actually return and begin performing miracles, it’d become obvious within a short time. Similarly, if the Undead are real, why are they so reticent about definitively showing themselves? All it’d take is one determined ghost to make some grand appearances, do the talk show rounds etc. and the controversy would be settled.
I am content to stick with the default logic (the paranormal is bullshit) until it is demontrated otherwise. You shouldn’t need high-tech devices to prove this stuff if it really exists.
And we’re aware that lack of evidence means you’ve got nothing (“you” meaning whoever is chanting “absence of evidence is not evidence of absence”).
This will never, ever work.
Why?
Because ghosts never come out when there are debunkers around. It’s sort of like when you tell everyone that your pooch can do a new trick and then he just sits there and looks at you and everyone thinks you’re lying.
How do I know this is accurate?
My mother’s best friend’s sister told me.
What does the British Society for Paranormal Reseach say?(Or whatever they call it)-it has ben around since 1890 or so-if THEY haven’t found any evidence, I’d say forget it.
Kinda proves the point, doesn’t it?
I agree with your reasoning here, but then your conclusion went the opposite way to what I expected.
I agree that “disembodied soul” should come last in the list after thousands of more reasonable explanations.
But observation can come before theory. I can quite easily conceive of data that would suggest that there is some (new) phenomenon that 1. Exists independently of one person’s mind 2. Has detectable physical effects and 3. Appears to have some kind of intelligence. Before any plausible Theory of Ghosts has been defined.
Of course, some define ghosts to be supernatural and hence some upthread have said we can never demonstrate ghosts’ existence for that reason. But what does supernatural even mean? And why must we assume a phenomenon has that property?
btw I don’t believe in ghosts, or any other woo, I’m just playing along
Interesting discussion.
One thing that always bothers me – I have never heard of a naked ghost.
Am I then to believe in ‘astral’ clothes as well?
A properly calibrated PKE meter and fully charged Proton Pack are what I find most effective…
Who you gonna’ call?
You are using the wrong tools for the job. There is really nothing scientific you can come up with to “put to bed such a strong, universal human phenomena” because it is based in religion and superstition, so all those that say that science cannot investigate the supernatural will continue to propagate this silly belief. It is like trying to measure the weight of a building using a stethoscope, then saying that the previous failures were only because we weren’t using the right stethoscope.
Also, I really wish you would quit insinuating that our current level of investigation is only “a good start”. This woo has been investigated thoroughly for many years by many good people trained in scientific investigation-nothing has been found so far, not because they were incompetent, but because there is absolutely nothing to be found.