Since the hauntings thread has been declared to be a hugbox where the only acceptable response to a claim is to nod in agreement and affirm belief in the supernatural this is the skepticism thread. Discuss how to handle supernatural claims and any evidence for them. And if anyone who believes in it wants to post here and discuss your beliefs with a more open-minded attitude than the other thread, we welcome you.
All the electronic paraphenalia of “ghost hunting” fascinates and delights me. I imagine this stuff had its original basis in some kind of good faith theories about electromagnetic fields but it has almost certainly evolved completely away from that to sheer chicanery. The so-called “spirit box” is a prime example. It blithely sweeps radio frequencies allowing the user to “detect” meaning in the same way a patient evaluates a Rorschach inkblot. Except an inkstanined sheet of paper doesn’t cost approx. one hundred dollars ...
Come to think of it, pretty much all of the ghost hunting electronica are vairations on Rorschach readings, although the therapist and the patient in “ghost hunting” appear to be the same person.
What science would be required for you to believe that hauntings are a real and actual occurrence that happens? Utilization of the scientific method with some calibrated devices that can effectively measure the readouts of paranormal energy?
Well, first off, you would have to offer a precise hypothetical description of what ghosts or spirits or demons or whatever actually are in materialist terms. We need a very clear definition before we can even decide what is necessary to prove that whatever the defined object is actually exists.
I'm very interested in the symbolic and psychological aspects of the supernatural. Obviously it's an important area of human belief and experience, or you wouldn't hear about it so often and so passionately. That being said, I can't think of many things that interest me less than another person's implicit assumptions that the supernatural is real in a literal sense. Either show me the evidence or try to find a meaningful way to explore it in terms of meaning and belief; operating under the premise that the supernatural exists in spite of the lack of proof or the fact that human experience is fallible is something I just can't bring myself to play along with.
When you say “show me evidence” you are making the same mistake you accuse others of making - starting with presumptions. Jjohnso11 is right to ask, what kind of evidence do you want? We aren’t even at the stage where anyone can start presenting “evidence” because first of all we need some kind of concrete hypothesis about the nature of the phenomenon to be investigated.
The human collective has shown interest in the supernatural throughout our history. Find me a culture that did not believe in Gods, spirits, or some other supernatural beings that "did not exist".
I think finding the materialistic would be absolutely the hardest and is probably the reason we don't have the proof that you are actually looking for. You can use readers that detect waves or energy, but you run the risk of picking up interference from energy that has nothing to do with your experiments.
Wifi/internet travels in waves of data/energy that make this whole debate possible, but I have no idea its there except for a blinking light and the ability to submit this conversation.
Manchu wrote: Well, first off, you would have to offer a precise hypothetical description of what ghosts or spirits or demons or whatever actually are in materialist terms. We need a very clear definition before we can even decide what is necessary to prove that whatever the defined object is actually exists.
Exactly. What defines "ghost" vs "detectable variation in ambient electrical fields"? Answer that before trying to buy ghost measuring devices.
(Or don't, for that price I'll gladly build and sell you a ghost meter.)
Peregrine wrote: (Or don't, for that price I'll gladly build and sell you a ghost meter.)
And there’s the second issue. On top of the unwillingness (or, more likely, inability) to offer the necessary testable hypothesis, there’s also the obvious pecuniary interest involved in selling “ghost hunting” equipment.
Magic is the explanation for natural phenomenon we don’t understand.
Magnetism was magic before “humanity” understood how it worked. Science is able to (often / usually) explain how something happens. How to predict the results of controlled experiments.
The question of “why” falls outside the purview of scientific explaination. Why does gravity attract matter? Why do like magnetic poles repel while dissimilar poles attract? We can observe that it does. We can determine relative forces and predict the outcomes of placing two magnetic objects near each other.
For some that’s enough, but for others they want to determine a purpose for it. An overarching structure to which all things “belong”.
I don’t, Huzzah for Nihilism! But I’m not everyone and everyone has a right to determine their beliefs about the unknown... or lack thereof. Huzzah for Agnosticism!
My father lost his sense of smell at a young age. He can be surrounded by scent particles but he’s unable to detect them. His perception of reality is unable to detect scent. I don’t detect the presence of a deity or deities. That doesn’t mean they don’t exist, one can’t logically prove a negative, but I’m unable to detect the presence.
I’m less doubtful of the existence of other supernatural phenomenon. Perhaps magnetism-like forces exist that “humanity” hasn’t recognized.
In a blatant use of pseudoscience, I’ve observed that living things are constantly reorganizing matter into “meaningful” structures, like blood, bone, muscle. When those things die, they stop reorganizing matter and begin disorganizing / decomposing. To me, that’s indicative of a force, though certainly not something I’ve studied scientifically. If it is a force, it can be comparable to magnetism. You can induce magnetic force in non-natural magnets, like a bar of steel. Though over time, such magnets will de-magnetize.
Perhaps that’s like our lives. We can induce a life charge in our offspring through procreation and over time that wears off. And like magnets that force can be refreshed through our biological processes like eating. And like induced magnets sudden shocks (traumatic injury) can disrupt that force.
And maybe that force carries on after we die? Energy can’t be destroyed, if I recall. Maybe the Bhudism based philosophies are correct and the life forces return to a pool and maybe not and that energy is recycled into new life forms. Maybe nothing like that happens at all and we simply cease to be.
Manchu wrote: When you say “show me evidence” you are making the same mistake you accuse others of making - starting with presumptions. Jjohnso11 is right to ask, what kind of evidence do you want? We aren’t even at the stage where anyone can start presenting “evidence” because first of all we need some kind of concrete hypothesis about the nature of the phenomenon to be investigated.
Not really. I can't prove a negative. If someone asserts that supernatural phenomena exist then the burden is on them to demonstrate that existence in a meaningful way, not on me to rationalize their subjective and fallible experience in a way that reinforces their beliefs. If I tell you that a dragon lives in the sun, it's not your intellectual duty to formulate a hypothesis for how that might be possible or testable, it's mine. I don't assume that unicorns don't exist, I just don't operate under the assumption that anything conceivable is true unless proven otherwise.
I love a good ghost story and being spooked out by them but I have never once considered that ghosts actually exist. It seems like one of those ancient traditions passed down through time that has lingered on in a modern society despite any lack of physical proof.
While physical proof is not necessarily needed for an argument to have merit (I believe there is alien life out there despite us not having anything to back that up), ghosts just seem like wishful thinking with no real science behind it to reinforce the theory.
I have a theory, that if a sound, or an image can be recorded onto a piece of acetate or vinyl, why couldn't it be recorded onto another material? If there was a strong enough occurrence to do so...
So, open question, what kind of supernatural entities / forces are we trying to prove?
For example, ghosts / spirits, lucky charms, psychokinesis, vampires, angels / daemons, telepathy... what are we trying to prove?
Given that a person can’t logically prove non-existence, merely that something can’t be detected by a given experiment, a requirement to prove non-existence is not required. However, without meaningfully defined criteria proof can’t be determined or assessed. So what are we trying to prove, and how can we determine meaningful proof?
From a scientific standpoint, I think all we can say is there is no reproduceable evidence of anything like a ghost.
There is also no theoretical framework existing in science into which a concept like a ghost can easily fit. There is plenty we do not understand about the brain and also about the fundamentals of physics, but nothing much suggests that these sorts of phenomena are likely. Our questions are more of the "how does quantum gravity work?" order than "can a remnant of a living thing exist after it's death?"
Which is not exactly the same thing as saying "There is no such thing as ghosts", but pretty much amounts to the same thing.
When we have no evidence and no real framework, we accept the simplest explanation that has some evidence - people imagined these things, experienced hallucinations, or are lying.
Jjohnso11 wrote: Unicorns exist in caves in North Korea right? I read that on the internet somewhere and now I believe it. (:
Can you prove that ghosts/supernatural entities do not exist?
You can't prove that something doesn't exist. I can't prove that unicorns or ghosts don't exist any more than I can prove that God doesn't exist. If you want to convince me of the existence of ghosts, you have got to provide me with some kind of way I or anyone else can verify their existence rather than simply taking your word for it. No one has ever provided me with evidence that leprechauns and fairies don't exist, but that doesn't mean I'm going to assume that they do.
Would it be fair to define a ghost as a sentient entity, that appears unaffected by our understood laws of physics? Something that can pass through material objects?
For my purposes, I would be excluding poltergeists that can influence material items.
I think the issue with such a ghost, would be if it ignores some / all physical laws, could we see it? If there’s no matter to reflect light, how could we see it? I can’t recall if electromagnetic fields can distort light? If they can, or other forces could, the possibility of visual conformation exists.
The notions of ghosts absorbing heat (sense of cold in their presence) could be detected, but would be difficult to ascribe to an entity that otherwise ignores physical laws. Thermal imaging could potentially be used to determine this, though great care would need to be excercised to exclude natural air currents.
To me, lacking physical properties makes me doubtful of the existence of ghosts as perceived. What would tie their “essence” to Earth? Why wouldn’t they become static in space as Earth carries on? Why wouldn’t they be flung off the globe as it turns? Is there some kind of anchoring force at a point of Death, that moves with the Earth yet has remained undetected? I doubt it, but that’s my nature. But since I can’t disprove it, I can’t assert that it is impossible, just unlikely in my experience.
In my opinion, you can just stop at that. As far as we know and can conceive the only thing that can grant a being sentience is a brain and the organs that feeds it sensory output (nose, eyes, hears, mouth, skin, nerves, etc.). We have yet to discover any other way for sentience to occur. In fact, we have observed that the only way to remove or alter sentience in a being doted of one is to affect its brain and/or sensory organs. The day we will damage someone brain and not affect is capacity to think and feel, then maybe the idea of a human mind surviving intact or mostly intact hte total destruction of the nervous system supporting it, then maybe ghosts will become a possibility.
It should be "ghosts, haunting etc are not a result of the spirits of the dead, what phenomena, known or unknown, do we think explains their existence?"
In my opinion, you can just stop at that. As far as we know and can conceive the only thing that can grant a being sentience is a brain and the organs that feeds it sensory output (nose, eyes, hears, mouth, skin, nerves, etc.). We have yet to discover any other way for sentience to occur. In fact, we have observed that the only way to remove or alter sentience in a being doted of one is to affect its brain and/or sensory organs. The day we will damage someone brain and not affect is capacity to think and feel, then maybe the idea of a human mind surviving intact or mostly intact hte total destruction of the nervous system supporting it, then maybe ghosts will become a possibility.
Sam Harris mentioned something similar to this. You damage a part of the brain and somebody cannot remember their own mother/daughter/son/wife/name, and in the process of death the entire Brain dies, yet we are able to rise off the body to meet and greet our loved ones. That was pretty much his argument, which I found a very convincing one.
The possibility of spirits or ghosts is of course entirely possible, but to suggest that there is evidence or reason other than the fact people have believed it for millenia is a strange way of thinking. It has been said that humans will believe in a god/afterlife for as long as there is a fear of death, which I think also applies to spirits and daemons and all the rest of it. It always seems to me that there is a hint of believing yourself to be somewhat special to believe in spirits, as it is not based on evidence, if it was then we would not be discussing it. It has to be based on the wants/wishes/fears of said individual.. surely? Perhaps I am belittling the idea of spirits and ghosts etc - this is not my intention. I think it is more that I have believed things in the past which I would now scoff at, and my reasoning for those beliefs was purely wishful.
This is all my opinion! It is open to change of course.
Consider as well that "supernatural" creatures like sea serpents and krakens stopped being supernatural and just became "natural" when more was discovered about the Oarfish which can reach lengths of 17 meters and tend to swim in a manner resembling the old artwork depicting sea serpents. Add that large red dorsal and it starts looking very much like sailors tales of sea serpents as well. That they rarely come anywhere near the surface would explain the scarcity of tales. The collosal squid also fits the whole "kraken" thing quite nicely seeing as that they are considerably larger than old scandinavian tales. These creatures are certainly toxic with the amount of ammonia in them to allow the crushing pressures, so again, rarely ever seen anywhere near the surface. something science cant prove now doesnt mean its something that cant eventually be scientifically proven.
thekingofkings wrote: Consider as well that "supernatural" creatures like sea serpents and krakens stopped being supernatural and just became "natural" when more was discovered about the Oarfish which can reach lengths of 17 meters and tend to swim in a manner resembling the old artwork depicting sea serpents. Add that large red dorsal and it starts looking very much like sailors tales of sea serpents as well. That they rarely come anywhere near the surface would explain the scarcity of tales. The collosal squid also fits the whole "kraken" thing quite nicely seeing as that they are considerably larger than old scandinavian tales. These creatures are certainly toxic with the amount of ammonia in them to allow the crushing pressures, so again, rarely ever seen anywhere near the surface. something science cant prove now doesnt mean its something that cant eventually be scientifically proven.
Which is how a feel in a nutshell. I think ghosts are a mystery awaiting an explanation, not something that should be dismissed because your personal world view doesn't allow for them.
Azreal13 wrote: Which is how a feel in a nutshell. I think ghosts are a mystery awaiting an explanation, not something that should be dismissed because your personal world view doesn't allow for them.
Ghosts, in the sense of the haunting spirit of a dead human, are dismissed because they are impossible. Your mind cannot survive heavy damage to your body let alone its destruction. That doesn't mean that the phenomenon of "haunting" haven't got plenty of explanation ranging from elaborate hoax, to delusion, hallucination, light tricks, old buildings with air currents, electrical disturbences, St Elmo's fire, methane burning and just the plain old problem of human being interpreting unclear sounds or images in various ways (or a combination of some or all these). Those weird occurences aren't dismissed without explanations. Only one of the explanation, that a dead person spirit is doing something to you and your environment, is dismissed.
It's entirely possible that, much like the classical poltergeist, the ghost is a manifestation of a person's belief and their innate power.
I know, I know... the skeptical will rush to classify this explanation as 'magic', or pseudo science, but the power of belief to alter humans is very well documented.
Science calls it the Placebo effect- when someone's symptoms can improve purely through their belief and sugar pills. It's intended to showcase the efficacy of understood scientific treatments, but it also shows that human belief is sometimes enough to heal or alter the course of an illness. In other words, pure, unalloyed belief has a tangible effect on the body.
Once you accept human belief has power, which is magic, it's a very small leap to that magic impacting the immediate area around a person- thus the person conjures their own ghosts.
Azreal13 wrote: I disagree with the basic premise of the thread.
It should be "ghosts, haunting etc are not a result of the spirits of the dead, what phenomena, known or unknown, do we think explains their existence?"
Indeed. Saying 'Ghosts are not real' is sort of like saying 'UFOs are not real'... UFOs may or may not be aliens, but as people have observed things in the sky that they were unable to identify, UFOs are most certainly 'real'.
Likewise ghosts, as an observed phenomena, are 'real'... it's just the actual nature of that phenomena (supernatural manifestation vs hallucination/perceptual glitch/weather balloon/all of the above/whatever) that is up for debate.
Da Boss wrote: From a scientific standpoint, I think all we can say is there is no reproduceable evidence of anything like a ghost.
There is also no theoretical framework existing in science into which a concept like a ghost can easily fit. There is plenty we do not understand about the brain and also about the fundamentals of physics, but nothing much suggests that these sorts of phenomena are likely. Our questions are more of the "how does quantum gravity work?" order than "can a remnant of a living thing exist after it's death?"
Which is not exactly the same thing as saying "There is no such thing as ghosts", but pretty much amounts to the same thing.
When we have no evidence and no real framework, we accept the simplest explanation that has some evidence - people imagined these things, experienced hallucinations, or are lying.
Maybe we have no proof, no evidence of their existence because, precisely, we haven't studied them ?
FYI, I don't believe in them, but I truly think that in our modern society, Scientists would gladly ignore / look away from things they don't want to see.
Like this story of when during an astonauts meeting a guy showed up in shock telling everyone that a flying saucer had landed nearby and not one of astonauts, who had dedicated their lives to the exploration of space, would even go outside to look what the hell was happening.
I don't believe in flying saucers probing cows neither.
In my opinion, you can just stop at that. As far as we know and can conceive the only thing that can grant a being sentience is a brain and the organs that feeds it sensory output (nose, eyes, hears, mouth, skin, nerves, etc.). We have yet to discover any other way for sentience to occur. In fact, we have observed that the only way to remove or alter sentience in a being doted of one is to affect its brain and/or sensory organs. The day we will damage someone brain and not affect is capacity to think and feel, then maybe the idea of a human mind surviving intact or mostly intact hte total destruction of the nervous system supporting it, then maybe ghosts will become a possibility.
Eeww, multi-quoting.
I can offer a proofless alternative. The mind exists separately to the body. In this case, the brain is the mechanism through which the mind interacts with the rest of reality. In this scenario, the Brain is a complex series of inputs and outputs. With damage, an input may be misinterpreted, and outputs may not create desired results. I have experienced both while under the influence. My mind was present, and I was aware that my mind was incorrectly interpreting inputs, and my vocal and physical outputs were not resulting in my desired actions.
It Is a fear of mine that my mind would survive my ability to meaningfully interact with reality. Alzheimer’s disease terrifies me not because it could destroy my mind, but because it is possible that it does not, and my mind would be trapped in a prison.
Peregrine wrote: Discuss how to handle supernatural claims and any evidence for them.
For the most part, I nod solemnly and I simply say something polite, such as "wow, that's an incredible experience."
I feel like I can rely on two truths:
1) there is no rigorous scientific evidence of anything supernatural
2) The number of people persuaded by point #1 is minuscule
Of course all or nearly all ghost sightings can be ascribed to natural causes, sensory defects, hallucinations, or just plain imagination. But obviously anybody that has experienced such a thing was moved enough by it to remember it and share it. Instead of arguing with them about it, I try to figure out why it's important to them.
So you could probably prove that ghosts don't exist if you were able to prove that the energy(life force, spirit, etc..) from humans went somewhere after their death.
Einsteiin's First Law of Thermodynamics: if energy cannot be created or destroyed but only change form, where does the energy go after death?
I guess that could be the material we would need to study would be our innate energy and how we could measure it? I guess a different debate would be on if we had a soul/life force. There is no debate on if we have energy or how else would we generate heat, breathe or move?
Automatically Appended Next Post: I don't believe in ghosts so I don't think they would be sentient.
Jjohnso11 wrote: So you could probably prove that ghosts don't exist if you were able to prove that the energy(life force, spirit, etc..) from humans went somewhere after their death.
What? First you'd have to have humans give off energy after death, which they provably do not. All forms of energy production (biochemical processes) stop.
What? First you'd have to have humans give off energy after death, which they provably do not. All forms of energy production (biochemical processes) stop.
What happens to the energy that was already produced?
Jjohnso11 wrote: Einsteiin's First Law of Thermodynamics: if energy cannot be created or destroyed but only change form, where does the energy go after death?
Indeed, while your death might spell the end of you as whole entity the atoms constituting your body will be recycled. Unfortunately, the electro-chemical signals that constitute your mind can only be maintained thanks to the absorbtion of food and the maintenance of the structure supporting it. That's also what happens to your knees. Your knees don't survive your death; they transform into dirt and their bending ability is lost forever. The same thing goes for your brain. It will turn into dust and its ability to produce your mind will be lost forever as dust doesn't have this characteristic.
The human consciousness is comprised of electro-chemical signals in the cortex or brainstem? Is there proof that energy reconstitutes somewhere else? Would the energy need to be maintained in the body or could it leave the body as the body broke down?
It absolutely is. Unlike opinions of poetry, which have no truth value, "ghosts exist" is a statement about the objective facts of the world. It is a claim that some entity is left behind after death, and that entity is capable of interacting with the world. It is a weak argument because it is poorly supported (and probably false), not because proving it is inherently impossible.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
Jjohnso11 wrote: The human consciousness is comprised of electro-chemical signals in the cortex or brainstem? Is there proof that energy reconstitutes somewhere else? Would the energy need to be maintained in the body or could it leave the body as the body broke down?
The energy remains, at least until the various chemical reactions run out. But the energy is not what matters, the organization is. Chemical energy existing until it is broken down by decay is not the same as ghosts, nor is the energy leaving in any organized or meaningful way.
It absolutely is. Unlike opinions of poetry, which have no truth value, "ghosts exist" is a statement about the objective facts of the world. It is a claim that some entity is left behind after death, and that entity is capable of interacting with the world. It is a weak argument because it is poorly supported (and probably false), not because proving it is inherently impossible.
That only holds true if you believe ghosts are the spirit of dead things living on in another form.
Saying "ghosts exist" but being open minded about what may cause them is no different to staying "sub atomic particles exist" and look how much time, effort and money to prove that theory was true.
To the contrary, “ghost” is a purely literary concept. Its only dimension is metaphorical. The mistake you, and many others, make is a trick of language, like a paradox; something that can exist only as a matter of syntax, and has no corresponding material reality. This quality is exactly what keeps “ghosts” relevant in the literalistic, materialist “modern” world, while so much else of the former, magical world has faded away.
Manchu wrote: To the contrary, “ghost” is a purely literary concept. Its only dimension is metaphorical. The mistake you, and many others, make is a trick of language, like a paradox; something that can exist only as a matter of syntax, and has no corresponding material reality. This quality is exactly what keeps “ghosts” relevant in the literalistic, materialist “modern” world, while so much else of the former, magical world has faded away.
Unless you simply accept that "ghosts" could be an actual, material occurrence without being a manifestation of a dead person.
Trying to argue that there's a thing that isn't a ghost because what we call ghosts are, and can only be, an idea that a spirit of a dead person can sometimes appear in this reality seems somewhat redundant as words only mean what we agree they mean in the first place.
The nature of what constitutes a ghost hasn't moved on simply because those who believe they've witnessed one don't have a credible real world concept they can point to and say "this is what I experienced, how odd that people used to think these were dead people."
Anyone can say they don't exist, but for someone who sincerely believes they've experienced something with no agenda, you're going to have to offer a credible alternative. Also, by credible alternative, I don't mean stacking unlikely event upon unlikely event on top of one another until the odds of it being an actual manifestation of a dead person seem the greater.
Sure, but I am talking about the subject as between those of us who don’t accept the existence of a complex phenomenon, and all the unspoken assumptions it entails, on the authority of vague eyewitness accounts.
What I think a “believer” owes us skeptics is a testable hypothesis. It’s no use us asking for evidence before there is even a definition capable of being supported by evidence. But I really doubt we will ever get such a hypothesis out of them because a “ghost” is not the sort of thing that can actually be measured, inherently. Ghosts are the personification of the ineffible, unexplaianable, and inscrutable corners of our experience of nature.
First off, there is no factual evidence that the mind is created by the physical brain. In much the same way that we can’t define a ghost, how do we define the mind? One party asserts that it is the sum total of biological processes. Another asserts that is an entity that exists separately to the material universe, and that the brain is instead a conduit between the mind and the physical universe. Damage to the conduit does not destroy the mind, merely the means by which the mind interacts with the universe. Perhaps reincarnation is the disembodied mind reconnecting with a functioning (yet empty) brain.
It all depends on the premise. The assumptions. The most pertinent of which is the assumption of omniscience. Of being able to know all elements to the truth of the universe. Seriously, we can’t know that our perceived reality is real and not a simulation, much less that we know all things about the universe to be able to say with all certainty that something is infallibly correct or not.
Which is part of the reason we can’t prove a negative. We can prove we can’t find something, but not that is isn’t there. The doubter does not need to disprove existence because they can’t, and a believer doesn’t need indisputable proof because they believe in the probability of existence.
And if someone has experienced what they believe is a supernatural experience, their own senses have confirmed existence and to doubt one’s senses, while rational, is seldom productive and can be quite maddening.
The question of “why” falls outside the purview of scientific explaination. Why does gravity attract matter? Why do like magnetic poles repel while dissimilar poles attract? We can observe that it does. We can determine relative forces and predict the outcomes of placing two magnetic objects near each other.
For some that’s enough, but for others they want to determine a purpose for it. An overarching structure to which all things “belong”.
The question as to ‘why’ magnetic field attract and ‘why’ masses attract is addressed by science, it’s not “outside the purview” of science, of course explanations exist beyond mere observation and prediction. I won’t pretend to fully understand, but you’re asking about fundamental forces in nature, for which explanations exist that are accounted for in other observations and testable phenomena, largely to do with the nature of the fabric of space and quantum mechanics.
If you’re asking ‘why’ hoping for some explanation that gives meaning suggestive of a ‘plan’ or ‘intelligence’ behind things, that makes huge assumptions and is fulfilling a personal need for things to not be the result of observable nature but some sort of controlling intelligence or intent.
But the answer of ‘why’ masses attract, observed as gravity, is addressed by science.
greatbigtree wrote: First off, there is no factual evidence that the mind is created by the physical brain.
Simply all of neurobiology. There is no mind without a brain. By altering the brain we alter the mind. The mind and an active brain are the same thing.
If ghosts exist, I'm jealous. Why won't they show themselves to me? What am I doing wrong? And why should I bother asking a person to prove ghosts' existence to me when the ghosts could do it much more convincingly themselves?
Though, hypothetically, if I did meet a ghost, I have no idea how I'd convince anyone else, especially online, of its existence. I wouldn't even know how to approach the topic with someone who, for example, thinks thermodynamics have anything to do with it.
Azreal13 wrote: I disagree with the basic premise of the thread.
It should be "ghosts, haunting etc are not a result of the spirits of the dead, what phenomena, known or unknown, do we think explains their existence?"
Indeed. Saying 'Ghosts are not real' is sort of like saying 'UFOs are not real'... UFOs may or may not be aliens, but as people have observed things in the sky that they were unable to identify, UFOs are most certainly 'real'.
Likewise ghosts, as an observed phenomena, are 'real'... it's just the actual nature of that phenomena (supernatural manifestation vs hallucination/perceptual glitch/weather balloon/all of the above/whatever) that is up for debate.
I'd disagree with that. Because calling the unidentified phenomenon a "ghost" immediately assigns a supernatural explanation to it. Calling an unidentified flying object an unidentified flying object does not. Unidentified phenomena are definitely real and there is proof for that. For ghosts not so much, despite plenty of attention and research. Therefore, as far as we can currently discern, ghosts aren't real.
Einsteiin's First Law of Thermodynamics: if energy cannot be created or destroyed but only change form, where does the energy go after death?
I guess that could be the material we would need to study would be our innate energy and how we could measure it? I guess a different debate would be on if we had a soul/life force. There is no debate on if we have energy or how else would we generate heat, breathe or move.
What is this ‘innate’ energy exactly?
You start off from a flawed premise, that somehow the moment you die, there in an unaccountable loss in total energy in the system. There’s no reason to think this.
Do you believe animals have souls? All other organisms? Do they have this supposed energy deficit when they die?
Simply, the bulk of energy in your body is chemical, converted to heat. In fact all energy ultimately turns to heat because it’s the form that is of the least use of doing work in the universe and most easy lost from systems to their surroundings where it is not useful, it is where entropy is highest. Eventually a time will come when all stores of energy in the entire universe have been converted to heat and spread evenly, entropy is maximum,, and at that point no useful energy is available to do ‘work’. Aka, heat death of the universe.
Your brain is operating by electrical impulses generated from the energy released by chemical processes. When you cease to breath and circulate blood, you cells cease to respire and the basic functions requiring energy covered from chemical forms slow and stop. The only energy ‘lost’ is the remaining heat energy from your body to surroundings, which you constantly radiate all the time anyway but now none is being generated. The remaining energy in your body will largely be chemical stores and that within the atoms. This can be converted by bacteria breaking you down, or released as heat if you are cremated or somesuch.
But there’s no reason to believe any energy is unaccounted for, that the total energy in your body a moment prior to death is different to that after, or that some energy forms active in your body at the moment of death is lost to the surroundings in a manner no accounted for by conventional science.
Azreal13 wrote: I disagree with the basic premise of the thread.
It should be "ghosts, haunting etc are not a result of the spirits of the dead, what phenomena, known or unknown, do we think explains their existence?"
Indeed. Saying 'Ghosts are not real' is sort of like saying 'UFOs are not real'... UFOs may or may not be aliens, but as people have observed things in the sky that they were unable to identify, UFOs are most certainly 'real'.
Likewise ghosts, as an observed phenomena, are 'real'... it's just the actual nature of that phenomena (supernatural manifestation vs hallucination/perceptual glitch/weather balloon/all of the above/whatever) that is up for debate.
I'd disagree with that. Because calling the unidentified phenomenon a "ghost" immediately assigns a supernatural explanation to it. Calling an unidentified flying object an unidentified flying object does not..
Rot. Say UFO to anyone and I'll bet big money that the overwhelming majority will connect it to aliens in some form or another.
Have you read it? Even as a pop science article, beyond the title it describes ways in which science attempts to address ‘why’ gravity actually exists. That an explanation for ‘why’ gravity exists is a something ‘outside the purview’ of science is total nonsense.
greatbigtree wrote: First off, there is no factual evidence that the mind is created by the physical brain.
Simply all of neurobiology. There is no mind without a brain. By altering the brain we alter the mind. The mind and an active brain are the same thing.
Neurobiology, if I’m not mistaken, studies the functions of the brain, not the creation of the mind. If you damage or remove part of the brain, we can observe that behaviours change. The results of the mind’s attempted outputs change. For example, if we damage the impulse control centre of the brain, people will act with less restraint. This is repeatable and observable.
But why? Is it because the mind (created by the biological construct) has changed, or is it because the filter on the input / output device is malfunctioning, and the mind (as a entity that exists regardless of biology) is either overwhelmed by the input or unrestrained in output? The former is a presumption as is the later. The *why* is unknown. The only entity capable of knowing the truth is incapable of expressing it meaningfully to external entities.
In my anecdotal experience, even while intoxicated my mind continues. My perception of reality can change, which could cause me to act erratically to others despite my perception that I’m reacting reasonably to the inputs I receive. Also, my actions in reality do not necessarily fulfill the desires of my mind. When I sleep, my mind continues without the typical inputs that my brain receives while waking.
It absolutely is. Unlike opinions of poetry, which have no truth value, "ghosts exist" is a statement about the objective facts of the world. It is a claim that some entity is left behind after death, and that entity is capable of interacting with the world. It is a weak argument because it is poorly supported (and probably false), not because proving it is inherently impossible.
That only holds true if you believe ghosts are the spirit of dead things living on in another form.
Saying "ghosts exist" but being open minded about what may cause them is no different to staying "sub atomic particles exist" and look how much time, effort and money to prove that theory was true.
That is literally what ghosts are. If it is not the spirit (or the traces of a spirit) of a dead person or animal then it is not a ghost but something else. And the difference between believing in sub-atomic particles (before their existence was proven) and ghosts, is that the first belief was based on a scientifically sound and testable hypothesis while the second is not.
It absolutely is. Unlike opinions of poetry, which have no truth value, "ghosts exist" is a statement about the objective facts of the world. It is a claim that some entity is left behind after death, and that entity is capable of interacting with the world. It is a weak argument because it is poorly supported (and probably false), not because proving it is inherently impossible.
That only holds true if you believe ghosts are the spirit of dead things living on in another form.
Saying "ghosts exist" but being open minded about what may cause them is no different to staying "sub atomic particles exist" and look how much time, effort and money to prove that theory was true.
That is literally what ghosts are. If it is not the spirit (or the traces of a spirit) of a dead person or animal then it is not a ghost but something else. And the difference between believing in sub-atomic particles (before their existence was proven) and ghosts, is that the first belief was based on a scientifically sound and testable hypothesis while the second is not.
Azreal13 wrote: I disagree with the basic premise of the thread.
It should be "ghosts, haunting etc are not a result of the spirits of the dead, what phenomena, known or unknown, do we think explains their existence?"
Indeed. Saying 'Ghosts are not real' is sort of like saying 'UFOs are not real'... UFOs may or may not be aliens, but as people have observed things in the sky that they were unable to identify, UFOs are most certainly 'real'.
Likewise ghosts, as an observed phenomena, are 'real'... it's just the actual nature of that phenomena (supernatural manifestation vs hallucination/perceptual glitch/weather balloon/all of the above/whatever) that is up for debate.
I'd disagree with that. Because calling the unidentified phenomenon a "ghost" immediately assigns a supernatural explanation to it. Calling an unidentified flying object an unidentified flying object does not..
Rot. Say UFO to anyone and I'll bet big money that the overwhelming majority will connect it to aliens in some form or another.
Aye, but show people a picture of a whale and the overwhelming majority will think it is a fish. Just because people think UFO = Aliens doesn't make it true. UFO doesn't mean anything beyond something that flies and is unidentified, and it is commonly used in this way as well. On the other hand, if you call something a ghost, not only will the overwhelming majority of people think it is the spirits of the dead come back to haunt us, but they'd also be actually correct in their belief since that is what that term means.
You start off from a flawed premise, that somehow the moment you die, there in an unaccountable loss in total energy in the system. There’s no reason to think this.
Do you believe animals have souls? All other organisms? Do they have this supposed energy deficit when they die?
Simply, the bulk of energy in your body is chemical, converted to heat. In fact all energy ultimately turns to heat because it’s the form that is of the least use of doing work in the universe and most easy lost from systems to their surroundings where it is not useful, it is where entropy is highest. Eventually a time will come when all stores of energy in the entire universe have been converted to heat and spread evenly, entropy is maximum,, and at that point no useful energy is available to do ‘work’. Aka, heat death of the universe.
Your brain is operating by electrical impulses generated from the energy released by chemical processes. When you cease to breath and circulate blood, you cells cease to respire and the basic functions requiring energy covered from chemical forms slow and stop. The only energy ‘lost’ is the remaining heat energy from your body to surroundings, which you constantly radiate all the time anyway but now none is being generated. The remaining energy in your body will largely be chemical stores and that within the atoms. This can be converted by bacteria breaking you down, or released as heat if you are cremated or somesuch.
But there’s no reason to believe any energy is unaccounted for, that the total energy in your body a moment prior to death is different to that after, or that some energy forms active in your body at the moment of death is lost to the surroundings in a manner no accounted for by conventional science.
The innate energy exists in you at the cellular level(glucose is converted into energy via the process known as cellular respiration) which feeds you the energy required to move, breathe, etc... I would also venture that the energy you start with probably came from your mother/father when the sperm made contact with the egg(hopefully I don't have to explain this). You continue to burn energy through movement and generate energy by consuming sources of energy.
I do not make the claim that all energy is totally lost in the system. I'm sure that bugs/animals/worms/plants consume the majority of that energy, am I certain that all of it is consumed? Nope.
I believe that animals have energy in them as well. How can they move or do anything without energy? I'm not going to make the assertion that animals have souls, I definitely can't prove that. I'm not even making the assertion that humans have souls. I'm making the assertion that we have energy that is unaccounted for when we die. Does unexplained phenomena supposedly happen at locations where lots of people were killed or died? Why wouldn't large pools of energy effect our environment in those locations?
Has it been proven that all energy is broken down by bacteria? I agree that if you're cremated its definitely destroyed or converted in the fire at that event. Have you ever been shocked with a taser or accidentally? You don't believe that energy could leave your body after death and turn into something else? Not accounted for by conventional science that we are currently studying.
You can make the absolute claim that not a single bit of energy goes uncounted for when someone dies?
I am loving this argument by the way. Its a long stretch to get from where we started to here. Probably my fault and reaching for stuff that likely isn't actually true, but hasn't been proven.
Have you read it? Even as a pop science article, beyond the title it describes ways in which science attempts to address ‘why’ gravity actually exists. That an explanation for ‘why’ gravity exists is a something ‘outside the purview’ of science is total nonsense.
Not I depth no, because I just needed an article to underline the point I was making, which is that science often barely understands what many would understand as fundamental concepts and assume were fully known.
Azreal13 wrote: I disagree with the basic premise of the thread.
It should be "ghosts, haunting etc are not a result of the spirits of the dead, what phenomena, known or unknown, do we think explains their existence?"
Indeed. Saying 'Ghosts are not real' is sort of like saying 'UFOs are not real'... UFOs may or may not be aliens, but as people have observed things in the sky that they were unable to identify, UFOs are most certainly 'real'.
Likewise ghosts, as an observed phenomena, are 'real'... it's just the actual nature of that phenomena (supernatural manifestation vs hallucination/perceptual glitch/weather balloon/all of the above/whatever) that is up for debate.
I'd disagree with that. Because calling the unidentified phenomenon a "ghost" immediately assigns a supernatural explanation to it. Calling an unidentified flying object an unidentified flying object does not..
Rot. Say UFO to anyone and I'll bet big money that the overwhelming majority will connect it to aliens in some form or another.
Aye, but show people a picture of a whale and the overwhelming majority will think it is a fish. Just because people think UFO = Aliens doesn't make it true. UFO doesn't mean anything beyond something that flies and is unidentified, and it is commonly used in this way as well. On the other hand, if you call something a ghost, not only will the overwhelming majority of people think it is the spirits of the dead come back to haunt us, but they'd also be actually correct in their belief since that is what that term means.
Sorry, trying to argue "ghost" is paranormal but "UFO" is not to the layperson is just a non-starter whatever way you argue it, especially if you're going to make further unsubstantiated claims on what people do or don't know to support your point.
If you want to try and make the case that aliens existing is somehow less unlikely than the spirits of the dead, go for it, I doubt you'll find much resistance, but trying to somehow disassociate "UFO" with "aliens" while arguing "ghost" is inextricably linked with "dead people" simultaneously isn't very credible and consequently doesn't make much of a case for one being somehow less 'weird' than the other in colloquial use.
greatbigtree wrote: Neurobiology, if I’m not mistaken, studies the functions of the brain, not the creation of the mind.
The two are the same things. The mind is the brain, the brain is the mind. If you alter the brain, you alter the mind. There is no mind without brain. Neurobiology tells you what your mind is made off and how it works. Of course neurobiology is interested in the mind learning how it works, that's its reason for existence.
I assert you can not make that statement as a matter of fact, merely of belief.
You can not prove your assertion any more than I could prove the possibility that I have presented is factually accurate.
And that’s my point. We can’t prove what we can’t detect, we can’t understand what we don’t know. We can’t know everything. We can’t prove a negative. By extension, without knowledge of *everything* and the inability to prove a negative, there are always potentials and possibilities regardless of how remote that we can’t eliminate.
Logically speaking, we must accept uncertainty. In that exceptance, we understand our potential fallibility. In that exceptance, we must allow for the unexplained. While the realms of the unexplained may decrease, it is doubtful that without omniscience we can understand the universe *perfectly* and thus there will be unknowns and the possibilities they can lead to.
Accepting that we do not know everything does not mean we must accept that which has been proven to be untrue or that which cannot be proven to be true, ghosts cannot be proven to be true as they do not exist, that means anyone that says they do must prove that they are real and we are under no obligation to believe them until they have done so.
greatbigtree wrote: Neurobiology, if I’m not mistaken, studies the functions of the brain, not the creation of the mind.
The two are the same things. The mind is the brain, the brain is the mind. If you alter the brain, you alter the mind. There is no mind without brain. Neurobiology tells you what your mind is made off and how it works. Of course neurobiology is interested in the mind learning how it works, that's its reason for existence.
No, the mind and the brain are not the same thing. The relation between the mind and the brain is one of the major issues and problems in cognitive neuroscience. Most scholars in that field operate on the hypothesis that the mind is a creation of our brain, but this hypothesis so far has been very difficult to proof and may in fact be impossible to proof. This is because cognitive neuroscientists can for example correlate certain states of the mind with certain patterns of brain activity, but they can not proof that the brain activity was the cause of the state of mind. And one of the most important scientific principles is that correlation does not imply causation.
Iron_Captain wrote: Most scholars in that field operate on the hypothesis that the mind is a creation of our brain, but this hypothesis so far has been very difficult to proof and may in fact be impossible to proof.
If the mind isn't the produce of the brain, thus part of the brain itself, then there must be a mind without a brain else why even suggest that it's not the case. There are no minds without a brain. That's called evidence of abscence and it's the only way to prove a negative. The debate you are referring too is the relationship between the structure of the brain and its product the mind. Is it a unilateral (from brain structure to mind) or a bilateral relationship?
You can’t prove a negative. You can only prove inability to find.
I don’t care what someone else believes. I’ve never experienced a ghost and I doubt they exist. I live as though they do not.
But logically speaking, I can’t say they don’t exist. Only that I have no proof of their existence, so I doubt it.
I don’t know if a mind can exist without a brain. I can’t prove that it can’t, and neither can you. Our difference is that I accept this uncertainty and acknowledge the possibility, while you claim an unprovable certainly that it can’t. That is flawed logic.
Iron_Captain wrote: Most scholars in that field operate on the hypothesis that the mind is a creation of our brain, but this hypothesis so far has been very difficult to proof and may in fact be impossible to proof.
If the mind isn't the produce of the brain, thus part of the brain itself, then there must be a mind without a brain else why even suggest that it's not the case.
Not necessarily. The mind could be part of the brain without being a product of it, or the mind could not be a part of the brain but still be a product of it (although that seems unlikely). An intermediate position is also possible, where the mind is partially a product of the brain and partially of other (physical) factors. It also might actually be possible for there to be a mind without a brain. But the mind, being a nebulous and immaterial concept, can in no known way be measured, and as such that hypothesis is not testable and therefore unscientific (or it would be better to say that it is hard, if not impossible to form a proper hypothesis in the first place) . But that does not automatically mean that it is false, just that is unknowable and therefore not useful to science. It is however a favourite topic for discussion in philosophy. The mind being the product of the brain (monism) is the main paradigm that most (cognitive) neuroscientists operate under. But that hardly means it is the only possible explanation, and so far it has been found elusive to proof. And indeed you can find (a minority of) neuroscientists who hold dualist or externalist views. In fact, it has even been argued that most if not all neuroscientists actually operate under a lot of dualist assumptions, even though they will say they reject those. For example in this papers: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0301008206000785 or this book: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/e/9781136682407/chapters/10.4324%2F9780203579206-10
Basically, virtually everyone agrees that the mind has a basis (or is heavily influenced by) the mind. But there is a big gap between claiming that mind and brain are related and claiming that mind and brain are the same thing.
Jjohnso11 wrote: The innate energy exists in you at the cellular level(glucose is converted into energy via the process known as cellular respiration) which feeds you the energy required to move, breathe, etc... I would also venture that the energy you start with probably came from your mother/father when the sperm made contact with the egg(hopefully I don't have to explain this). You continue to burn energy through movement and generate energy by consuming sources of energy.
I do not make the claim that all energy is totally lost in the system. I'm sure that bugs/animals/worms/plants consume the majority of that energy, am I certain that all of it is consumed? Nope.
I believe that animals have energy in them as well. How can they move or do anything without energy? I'm not going to make the assertion that animals have souls, I definitely can't prove that. I'm not even making the assertion that humans have souls. I'm making the assertion that we have energy that is unaccounted for when we die. Does unexplained phenomena supposedly happen at locations where lots of people were killed or died? Why wouldn't large pools of energy effect our environment in those locations?
Has it been proven that all energy is broken down by bacteria? I agree that if you're cremated its definitely destroyed or converted in the fire at that event. Have you ever been shocked with a taser or accidentally? You don't believe that energy could leave your body after death and turn into something else? Not accounted for by conventional science that we are currently studying.
You can make the absolute claim that not a single bit of energy goes uncounted for when someone dies?
I am loving this argument by the way. Its a long stretch to get from where we started to here. Probably my fault and reaching for stuff that likely isn't actually true, but hasn't been proven.
I think you need to get a basic physics textbook and do some reading on what "energy" actually means, because you're blatantly misusing the term and producing word salad as a result.
Iron_Captain wrote: Most scholars in that field operate on the hypothesis that the mind is a creation of our brain, but this hypothesis so far has been very difficult to proof and may in fact be impossible to proof.
If the mind isn't the produce of the brain, thus part of the brain itself, then there must be a mind without a brain else why even suggest that it's not the case. There are no minds without a brain. That's called evidence of abscence and it's the only way to prove a negative. The debate you are referring too is the relationship between the structure of the brain and its product the mind. Is it a unilateral (from brain structure to mind) or a bilateral relationship?
Are there any brains without a mind? Is there any way to tell the difference between a brain with a mind and a brain without one? If we can't tell which brains have minds, could we tell whether rocks have minds? What about animals? Do bacteria have minds? Do our cells have minds? How much of a brain do you need? Do machines have minds?
Manchu wrote: What I think a “believer” owes us skeptics is a testable hypothesis. It’s no use us asking for evidence before there is even a definition capable of being supported by evidence. But I really doubt we will ever get such a hypothesis out of them because a “ghost” is not the sort of thing that can actually be measured, inherently. Ghosts are the personification of the ineffible, unexplaianable, and inscrutable corners of our experience of nature.
I disagree, and I have an entire thread of stories to prove it. There are all kinds of stories of testable events like "a ghost pushed me down the stairs". That's a straightforward factual claim about an event that supposedly happened, one that could be measured in a controlled experiment. There's nothing ineffable or unexplainable about it, measurable force was supposedly applied to an object. It just so happens to be the case that all we have is isolated anecdotes of one-time events and none of these supposed ghosts feel like, say, using their kinetic abilities to push on a laboratory scale and provide conclusive proof of their existence. That is an example of a claim failing to meet the burden of proof because it is weak and lacking in evidence, not a subject that is inherently impossible for science to engage with.
Given how long we have been looking for evidence of life after death and never found even one example of it, I’m happy to make the claim that there isn’t one.
But if something comes along in the future to prove otherwise great.
I do not make the claim that all energy is totally lost in the system. I'm sure that bugs/animals/worms/plants consume the majority of that energy, am I certain that all of it is consumed? Nope.
I'm not going to make the assertion that animals have souls, I definitely can't prove that. I'm not even making the assertion that humans have souls. I'm making the assertion that we have energy that is unaccounted for when we die.
The problem is that you have no reason whatsoever to make that assertion. We know the conventional forms energy can be in, electrical, chemical, heat, etc. You are asking that there is an additional form of energy that you don’t define and have no evidence for, and that some of this energy is produced after death in addition to other conventional forms. Is there any evidence that the total energy in your body cannot be accounted for after death? If you’re going to assert or propose something, you need to have an observation that is otherwise unaccounted for, and have a plausible argument. You have neither, there is no reason to believe that there is energy lost from a body currently unaccounted for, and you can’t even describe what they currently unknown form of energy is, or any evidence for it.
Have you ever been shocked with a taser or accidentally? You don't believe that energy could leave your body after death and turn into something else? Not accounted for by conventional science that we are currently studying.
No I don’t. I don’t know what a taser has to do with anything, an electrical current earths through you. It’s not evaporating into something mysterious. I don’t believe there is any reason to believe energy leaves your body after death in a form as yet undiscovered and I observed. You’re just making up a story.
I don’t want to patronise you but your grasp of the concept of ‘energy’ is rather weak and most of what you say makes little sense scientifically making it rather difficult to have a sensible discussion. There’s no point in having a science based discussion if you’re just going to make things up without evidence or indeed an observation lacking explanation. I may as well claim I believe magic is real but the wizards are good at hiding.
Peregrine wrote: Since the hauntings thread has been declared to be a hugbox where the only acceptable response to a claim is to nod in agreement and affirm belief in the supernatural this is the skepticism thread.
That sounds like a literal and unbiased recounting of what happened there, and the exact reason you were told to get out.
Reported encounters with external entities[edit]
Entities perceived during DMT inebriation have been represented in diverse forms of psychedelic art.[20] The term Machine Elf was coined by ethnobotanist Terence McKenna for the entities he encountered in DMT "hyperspace", also using terms like fractal elves, or self-transforming machine elves.[21][22] McKenna first encountered the "machine elves" after smoking DMT in Berkeley in 1965. His subsequent speculations regarding the hyperdimensional space in which they were encountered, has inspired a great many artists and musicians, and the meaning of DMT entities has been a subject of considerable debate among participants in a networked cultural underground, enthused by McKenna's effusive accounts of DMT hyperspace.[23] Cliff Pickover has also written about the "machine elf" experience, in the book Sex, Drugs, Einstein, & Elves,[7] while Rick Strassman notes many similarities between self-reports of his DMT study participants' encounters with these "entities", and mythological descriptions of figures such as Chayot Ha Kodesh in Ancient religions, including both angels and demons.[24] Strassman also argues for a similarity in his study participants' descriptions of mechanized wheels, gears and machinery in these encounters, with those described in visions of encounters with the Living Creatures and Ophanim of the Hebrew Bible, noting they may stem from a common neuropsychopharmacological experience.[24]
Strassman argues that the more positive of the "external entities" encountered in DMT experiences should be understood as analogous to certain forms of angels:
“
The medieval Jewish philosophers whom I rely upon for understanding the Hebrew Bible text and its concept of prophecy portray angels as God's intermediaries. That is, they perform a certain function for God. Within the context of my DMT research, I believe that the beings that volunteers see could be conceived of as angelic - that is, previously invisible, incorporeal spiritual forces that are engarbed or enclothed in a particular form - determined by the psychological and spiritual development of the volunteers - bringing a particular message or experience to that volunteer.[25]
”
However, Strassman's experimental participants also note that some other entities can subjectively resemble creatures more like insects and aliens.[26] As a result, Strassman writes these experiences among his experimental participants "also left me feeling confused and concerned about where the spirit molecule was leading us. It was at this point that I began to wonder if I was getting in over my head with this research."[27]
Hallucinations of strange creatures had been reported by Szara in the Journal of Mental Science (now the British Journal of Psychiatry) (1958) "Dimethyltryptamine Experiments with Psychotics", Stephen Szara described how one of his subjects under the influence of DMT had experienced "strange creatures, dwarves or something" at the beginning of a DMT trip.[28][29]
Other researchers of the entities seemingly encountered by DMT users, describe them as "entities" or "beings" in humanoid as well as animal form, with descriptions of "little people" being common (non-human gnomes, elves, imps, etc.).[30] Strassman and others have speculated that this form of hallucination may be the cause of alien abduction and extraterrestrial encounter experiences, which may occur through endogenously-occurring DMT.[31][32]
Likening them to descriptions of rattling and chattering auditory phenomenon described in encounters with the mythical Hayyoth in the Book of Ezekiel, Rick Strassman notes that participants in his studies, when reporting encounters with the alleged entities, have also described loud auditory hallucinations, such as one subject reporting typically "the elves laughing or talking at high volume, chattering, twittering".[24]
I think you need to get a basic physics textbook and do some reading on what "energy" actually means, because you're blatantly misusing the term and producing word salad as a result.
So you think we magically move about without using energy?
Don't worry I got you
energy. [ĕn′ər-jē] The capacity or power to do work, such as the capacity to move an object (of a given mass) by the application of force. Energy can exist in a variety of forms, such as electrical, mechanical, chemical, thermal, or nuclear, and can be transformed from one form to another.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Good ad hominem counter argument by the way.
A dead brain has no mind, besides that all brains have minds of various types and complexities
Is there any way to tell the difference between a brain with a mind and a brain without one?
You can tell the difference by seeing if the brain is alive or really just a corpse.
If we can't tell which brains have minds, could we tell whether rocks have minds?
Since you can tell which brains have a mind and which don't (the dead ones), you can tell that rocks don't have minds because they don't have brains.
What about animals?
If those animals have a living brain then yes they have a mind, albeit not a human mind since they obviously don't have a human mind.
Do bacteria have minds? Do our cells have minds?
Nope, they don't have a mind per say.
How much of a brain do you need?
That's actually the tough question. We usually place the minimum at displaying a functional central nervous system (an area where all stimulus are treated) doted of a memory that can learn, explore, interact, react and puzzle on its environment all the while retaining consciousness of its individuality (the knowledge and perception that it's a distinct part of the environment upon which it can act). How "much" brain exactly do you need to possess and display those characteristics we don't know exactly, but it's definitely characteristics possessed and displayed by a lot if not all animals.
Do machines have minds?
Not quite, but getting there. They won't be human minds, but they will need hardware to work. There is no hypothetical machine mind without hardware.
A ghost being the perpetuation (potentially eternal) of the mind of a human being after his or her death is in the realm of complete fabulation. We can imagine it and wish it was a thing, but a fact remain. There are no human without brain that has a mind.
It is far from universally agreed that animals have minds, although they have brains. In fact it isn't 100% agreed what constitutes the mind in humans.
Kilkrazy wrote: It is far from universally agreed that animals have minds, although they have brains. In fact it isn't 100% agreed what constitutes the mind in humans.
At that point, the debate devolves in sementic. If you declare that a mind can only be like a human mind (by giving it requirements uniquely observed amongst humans), then of course no animal can't have a mind. If you declare the mind as a functional central nervous system (an area where all stimulus are treated) doted of a memory that can learn, explore, interact, react and puzzle on its environment all the while retaining consciousness of its individuality (the knowledge and perception that it's a distinct part of the environment upon which it can act), then yes pretty much all animals can possess and display such characteristics. In the same fashion, if your definition of "mind" is sufficently vague, you can start to doubt what constitue the mind in a human or if we even have one. It all depends on your usage of the word "mind" what's it supposed to refer to exactly.
I think you need to get a basic physics textbook and do some reading on what "energy" actually means, because you're blatantly misusing the term and producing word salad as a result.
So you think we magically move about without using energy?
Don't worry I got you
energy. [ĕn′ər-jē] The capacity or power to do work, such as the capacity to move an object (of a given mass) by the application of force. Energy can exist in a variety of forms, such as electrical, mechanical, chemical, thermal, or nuclear, and can be transformed from one form to another.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Good ad hominem counter argument by the way.
Nobody thinks anything of the sort, nobody has even suggested that bodies don’t have energy in them. The issue is that you’re claiming there are additional unknown forms of energy that also get released from dying organisms. And there’s no reason to propose that, or evidence to support the explanation you’ve cooked up anyway.
You may be able to copy and paste a definition of energy, but that doesn’t mean you understand it.
Kilkrazy wrote: It is far from universally agreed that animals have minds, although they have brains. In fact it isn't 100% agreed what constitutes the mind in humans.
At that point, the debate devolves in sementic. If you declare that a mind can only be like a human mind (by giving it requirements uniquely observed amongst humans), then of course no animal can have a mind. If you declare the mind as a functional central nervous system (an area where all stimulus are treated) doted of a memory that can learn, explore, interact, react and puzzle on its environment all the while retaining consciousness of its individuality (the knowledge and perception that it's a distinct part of the environment upon which it can act), then yes pretty much all animals can possess and display such characteristics. In the same fashion, if your definition of "mind" is sufficently vague, you can start to doubt what constitue the mind in a human or if we even have one. It all depends on your usage of the word "mind" what's it supposed to refer to exactly.
It's not really semantics. The question "what is mind?" is probably the most important question for philosophers today. There are plenty of aspects that people use (self awareness, problem solving, language, etc), but no really coherent idea of what it means to have a mind.
For many definitions of mind (or consciousness), there are animals that also exhibit those traits. Primates, crows, dolphins, and elephants all exhibit various traits that you would generally only associate with human consciousness.
It's not really semantics. The question "what is mind?" is probably the most important question for philosophers today.
Yes, and great philosophical debates are almost all about semantic. Semantic doesn't mean unimportant, but it's boring, obscure and feels stupid to most people (and to pragmatic philosophers).
I mean its really hard to prove the existence of 'ghosts' because well they don't exist. Observations of the supernatural as some have said are just rare occurrences of natural events.
While we would like to ascribe and think there is magic in the world there isn't if it did exist it would be widely reported and not just be a myth.
While I have entertained the thought of ghosts when i was a kid, after i've grown up i've learned that most of those were just wierd happenstance, someone whispering to me in the bathroom was just a wierdo hiding in an airvent. My breathe getting cold or me feeling tingling turned out to be the air condition slowly turning on or just natural goosebumps (not the cold breathe).
The problem is that you have no reason whatsoever to make that assertion. We know the conventional forms energy can be in, electrical, chemical, heat, etc. You are asking that there is an additional form of energy that you don’t define and have no evidence for, and that some of this energy is produced after death in addition to other conventional forms. Is there any evidence that the total energy in your body cannot be accounted for after death? If you’re going to assert or propose something, you need to have an observation that is otherwise unaccounted for, and have a plausible argument. You have neither, there is no reason to believe that there is energy lost from a body currently unaccounted for, and you can’t even describe what they currently unknown form of energy is, or any evidence for it.
No I don’t. I don’t know what a taser has to do with anything, an electrical current earths through you. It’s not evaporating into something mysterious. I don’t believe there is any reason to believe energy leaves your body after death in a form as yet undiscovered and I observed. You’re just making up a story.
I don’t want to patronise you but your grasp of the concept of ‘energy’ is rather weak and most of what you say makes little sense scientifically making it rather difficult to have a sensible discussion. There’s no point in having a science based discussion if you’re just going to make things up without evidence or indeed an observation lacking explanation. I may as well claim I believe magic is real but the wizards are good at hiding.
Because science doesn't find new forms of energy? Are you saying that science has completely defined all forms of energy that we will ever find? Can you counter argue to discuss that someone has done the research to say that there is evidence pointing to collecting all of the energy after death? I'm not providing the answers because the science isn't there yet. I'm asking questions to support my theory on why we can't automatically assume that ghosts don't exist because we haven't seen them. To do that kind of credible research would require funding, a hypothesis on why its important, and the technology to do the research. I strongly doubt that will ever happen. I'm just asking questions and providing examples of why I won't rule out the possibility. You are counter arguing by telling me the questions I'm asking haven't been answered... which is exactly the point I'm trying to make. The unknown is what is feeding my argument that we can't rule out something is possible when we don't have all the answers. You can't counter by saying that because we don't have all the answers we can prove something.
It was an example of the human capability to transfer energy in the event that someone thought that all of your energy has to stay with you when you die and it can't possibly transfer out. Supporting the argument not making the argument if you don't understand a point or clarification that I'm making there is no point in calling it out.
Didn't doctors say that your humors govern your health and bleeding the disease out of you was the best course of action for being sick. Just because the science and technology aren't there doesn't mean that your absolute that ghosts don't exist is correct.
All it takes is a couple of variables shifts and us discovering and containing dark matter for all physics to be completely rewritten and our modern science to shift entirely.
Are you saying that science has completely defined all forms of energy that we will ever find?
Am I saying that? Go back and read what I’ve written again.
Can you counter argue to discuss that someone has done the research to say that there is evidence pointing to collecting all of the energy after death?
Don’t ask me to argue something I’ve not claimed because you can’t address what I have actually said. So no, I won’t counter argue that for you.
I will reiterate, there is nothing to suggest that energy is released from bodies in a form as yet not recognised. You are creating a pseudoscientific explanation for an obervation that has never been made.
It's not really semantics. The question "what is mind?" is probably the most important question for philosophers today.
Yes, and great philosophical debates are almost all about semantic. Semantic doesn't mean unimportant, but it's boring, obscure and feels stupid to most people (and to pragmatic philosophers).
I think the question of 'What is consciousness?' (Which I feel is essentially the same question) Is far from boring or obscure. Do you personally not care whether we answer the question? It would address some of Humanities longest and greatest thoughts. However, I would agree that the conversation can not be answered sufficiently currently, but this does not mean it is a stupid or boring question.
Da Boss wrote: From a scientific standpoint, I think all we can say is there is no reproduceable evidence of anything like a ghost.
There is also no theoretical framework existing in science into which a concept like a ghost can easily fit. There is plenty we do not understand about the brain and also about the fundamentals of physics, but nothing much suggests that these sorts of phenomena are likely. Our questions are more of the "how does quantum gravity work?" order than "can a remnant of a living thing exist after it's death?"
Which is not exactly the same thing as saying "There is no such thing as ghosts", but pretty much amounts to the same thing.
When we have no evidence and no real framework, we accept the simplest explanation that has some evidence - people imagined these things, experienced hallucinations, or are lying.
Maybe we have no proof, no evidence of their existence because, precisely, we haven't studied them ? FYI, I don't believe in them, but I truly think that in our modern society, Scientists would gladly ignore / look away from things they don't want to see. Like this story of when during an astonauts meeting a guy showed up in shock telling everyone that a flying saucer had landed nearby and not one of astonauts, who had dedicated their lives to the exploration of space, would even go outside to look what the hell was happening. I don't believe in flying saucers probing cows neither.
Scientists are not a homogenous group, and they disagree with each other ALL the time. Any scientist who can prove something surprising or contra to the understood models would become famous and achieve the dream of many scientists. I just do not find your idea of a conspiracy of scientists willing to ignore obvious truths particularly credible. Someone will always come along and expose it, and at a faster rate now in our "modern society" than at any other time in history, when old dogmas could last a lot longer.
I saw a lot of people talking about energy in the thread. It is one of my pet peeves when people use words like energy incorrectly, so please, if you are going to use something like that to make an argument, at least make sure you have your terms properly defined.
Also, Einstein has nothing to do with the First Law of Thermodynamics, if anything his work upended this idea in some respects.
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Asherian Command wrote: All it takes is a couple of variables shifts and us discovering and containing dark matter for all physics to be completely rewritten and our modern science to shift entirely.
What do you think Dark Matter is, Asherian? It is the current explanation for the observed anomolies in galactic rotation curves, ie. that they are unexplainable without the presence of a large amount of extra matter, specifically in the outer "halo" of the galaxies. This matter is called "dark" because it does not seem to interact with light. The two most popular candidate particles are amusingly called MACHOs (MAssive Compact Halo Objects) and WIMPs (Weakly Interacting Massive Particles). Dark matter is definitely a mystery, and may imply that something is wrong with relativity (though relativity is a very robust theory which has had it's predictions confirmed by experiment many many times) or perhaps with our understanding of matter (one solution was an idea of "positive" gravity existing in the same way that positive and negative charge exists.) Dark Matter may prove to be the thread that pulls apart physics, but it seems somewhat unlikely that ALL of our current theories will be thrown out. We have some pretty damn robust theories for a lot of stuff that has nothing to do with the rotation of galaxies.
(Also, Dark Energy is not the same as Dark Matter and the two are not related except by the unimaginative naming schemes of physicists).
I had an odd experience that I initially thought had been a haunting but later turned out to be of a much more normal origin. At night I'd often hear voices at my work well after the place had been emptied out and locked up. I was the only person there so it was more than a bit creepy and I'd search the whole building each time only to come up empty. After experiencing this multiple times over the years I noticed it was happening most frequently while I was taking a mop bucket out of the utility closet. When I go to pull the bucket out I'd often have to reach in while bracing myself with one hand against the wall, other times I heard voices I was in the hallway and had likewise touched or leaned against the wall, or had been in contact with the light switches.
What I figured out later was that the building had steel studs and that they were picking up radio talk show transmissions from a local AM broadcasting tower that was about a mile away and when I was touching various areas close enough to one of the studs it would complete some sort of a circuit allowing me to hear the radio transmissions but it was always faint enough that I couldn't ever make out what was being said and it sounded distorted and distant. How I made that connection was that I was cleaning one day and touched one of the computer monitors that had a built in speaker system, even though it was powered off if I touched the metal screen the speakers would suddenly start playing the AM talk station. With the speakers construction built to amplify sound it was finally loud and clear enough I could tell it was a radio station and sure enough when I walked around to the different "haunted" spots in the building and placed my hand near a stud or a metal piece of shelving it'd pick up the same station without fail.
It had a fairly mundane explanation but until I figured out what was going on it scared the piss out of me more than once.
One theory that has been proposed about ghosts and haunting (especially with visible apparitions) is that they could be distortions in time and reflecting traces from the past or even future. The core of the theory is that while we perceive time as only being in the now it's actually happening all at once, but for us it's like moving through a coiled hose or the needle on a record player, normally we're only able to see the exact point we're at but under certain situations it might be possible that we are able to see beyond that into neighboring portions of timespace.
There are also people that claim to be psychic and can read the history of objects by touching them, it might be a situation where they are somehow able to use those objects to see other points in time because their senses are functioning at a slightly different wavelength. They might somehow be able to catch glimpses of 4th dimensional time flow that "normal" brains do not register. Not saying I place a lot of faith in that but it does have some interesting aspects to the theory.
It's not really semantics. The question "what is mind?" is probably the most important question for philosophers today.
Yes, and great philosophical debates are almost all about semantic. Semantic doesn't mean unimportant, but it's boring, obscure and feels stupid to most people (and to pragmatic philosophers).
I don't think we're on the same page in terms of our understanding of terms. Semantics is about what words mean, and yes, science is trying to actually define concepts like "mind" or "consciousness," but the reason a definition eludes us is that we don't really know.
The point is, we all agree on this thing called consciousness or mind, but we really don't know what it is, or even who has it. And it matters a great deal for questions as varied as animal rights, euthanasia, abortion, free will, etc.
To call the question of human consciousness boring and obscure I think does it a massive disservice.
Don’t forget about magic boxes that let you talk to someone nearly anywhere on the earth, that can also play you music and show moving pictures of cats being cute. Like that will ever happen!
Strg Alt wrote: Ghosts and demons are as real as elves and dragons. Anybody in this day and age who think otherwise need their head examined.
A little over a century ago you could have said the same of mountain gorillas.
There are a lot of differences between undiscovered animals and fantastical creatures. First, undiscovered animals usually have close analogues. Gorillas have been known and documented for years, it just took time to document the specific type in question. Second, undiscovered animals might have unique adaptations, but conform to our understanding of biology. In fact, discovering certain species can actually bolster mainstream scientific concepts. Third, and most importantly, rumored animals are pretty straightforward hypothesis to test. When somebody says "there are gorillas in those mountains," you can go and look for them, or signs they are there.
Polonius wrote: I don't think we're on the same page in terms of our understanding of terms. Semantics is about what words mean, and yes, science is trying to actually define concepts like "mind" or "consciousness," but the reason a definition eludes us is that we don't really know.
We really don't know because the usage of terms like mind and cousciousness can vary tremendously are are vague concept themselves. What we are, what are brain produces and does isn't vague. It's precise and, now, fairly well known. Consciousness might actually be very simple to understand, prove and detail provided you give it precise and consice definition. That's where semantic comes into play. When I say consciousness and when you say consciousness and when philosopher X and neurobiologist X use the word consciousness or mind, it might be referring the same vague concept, but each with its own subtle and unmentioned variations because that's how language can be limited. When your doctor tells your mom is conscious after an operation, he means she's awake. When a neurobiologist tells you this thing is conscious it,s because it can perceive, react and interact with its environment. When a procecutor ask you if you were conscious of your actions, he aks if you thought about what you were doing, if it was planned and reasoned. When a philosopher asks "what is consciousness" he might refer to any of those usage or even try to encompass them all hence the semantic nature of the debate.
The point is, we all agree on this thing called consciousness or mind, but we really don't know what it is, or even who has it.
Actually, we don't agree on how to define consciousness or mind. After all, the way I define mind and brain makes one a pointless distinction from the other, yet some people seem to disagree with that definition. We all use those terms and all our definitions share some basic principle in common like the fact its link to thoughts and sensations
And it matters a great deal for questions as varied as animal rights, euthanasia, abortion, free will, etc.
It does indeed to a certain point matter for those ethical questions, but not all that much.
To call the question of human consciousness boring and obscure I think does it a massive disservice.
Semantic is boring and obscur, but important nonetheless. Law is also boring and sometime obscur (have you ever read a civil code? To quote Yoda, a page turner they are not), but terribly important.
I saw a lot of people talking about energy in the thread. It is one of my pet peeves when people use words like energy incorrectly, so please, if you are going to use something like that to make an argument, at least make sure you have your terms properly defined.
Also, Einstein has nothing to do with the First Law of Thermodynamics, if anything his work upended this idea in some respects.
Which part of energy was I using wrong? That I was saying our bodies have energy in them? How do you define energy? Rigid definition of physics? Only the ability to do work? You might need to crack a basic biology book open or something.
I guess I need to spell out a couple of the sources. According to the above article "In all, nearly half of the energy that could in theory be derived from the oxidation of glucose or fatty acids to H2O and CO2 is captured and used to drive the energetically unfavorable reaction Pi + ADP → ATP. (By contrast, a typical combustion engine, such as a car engine, can convert no more than 20% of the available energy in its fuel into useful work.) The rest of the energy is released by the cell as heat, making our bodies warm."
Warm=heat
The First Law of Thermodynamics states that heat is a form of ENERGY, and thermodynamic processes are therefore subject to the principle of conservation of ENERGY. This means that heat ENERGY cannot be created or destroyed. It can, however, be transferred from one location to another and converted to and from other forms of ENERGY.
I am absolutely taking biology and mixing it with physics. It fits the narrative I want to drive for my argument. I could absolutely be wrong in my argument. But current technology hasn't proven I'm wrong. No one is even asking the questions.
My argument to the absolute argument that ghosts don't exist is that we do not know what happens to all of the human body's ENERGY after a person dies. Apparently its not very popular and everyone wants to say I'm not using ENERGY correctly. Which is an attempt to distract from the basis for my argument. The counter argument is stating an absolute. The inflexibility of an absolute means that I can poke holes in the argument by asking questions that can't be currently answered. Stating absolutes mean that you have everything required to back your argument with facts and there are no holes in your argument.
I don't want to get banned for posting too much in the OT, so I'm going to have to stop posting. I loved the argument and If you disagree with me or don't like my argument thats fine I take nothing personally.
There's a pretty big difference between a materially extant animal and what is presumed to be a non-material, spiritual entity existing after the death of a person.
Jjohnso11 wrote: My argument to the absolute argument that ghosts don't exist is that we do not know what happens to all of the human body's ENERGY after a person dies.
What energy would be missing? The one produced by the effect of your cells burning their fuel which they get buy your body transforming food in energy? Of course dead body don't produce this energy anymore. Dead bodies don't eat and can't convert food into energy for biological process one of which is what we call our mind. What happens to this energy once it doesn't have fuel anymore to sustain itself? Well like all chemical reaction, once it runs out of the element sustaining it, stops. All the energy our body gets from food is used to maintain various function in our body and the rest is tranformed into waste. What happens to fire when it runs our of fuel? The chemical reaction we call fire stops.
Luciferian wrote: There's a pretty big difference between a materially extant animal and what is presumed to be a non-material, spiritual entity existing after the death of a person.
Not so much if we're accepting that ghosts exist as a phenomena (but not necessarily as the spirits of the dead.)
Then it's simply a case of observing and recording, and relative levels of difficulty in doing so.
It's not really semantics. The question "what is mind?" is probably the most important question for philosophers today.
Yes, and great philosophical debates are almost all about semantic. Semantic doesn't mean unimportant, but it's boring, obscure and feels stupid to most people (and to pragmatic philosophers).
I think the question of 'What is consciousness?' (Which I feel is essentially the same question) Is far from boring or obscure. Do you personally not care whether we answer the question? It would address some of Humanities longest and greatest thoughts. However, I would agree that the conversation can not be answered sufficiently currently, but this does not mean it is a stupid or boring question.
It is also a question of psychology as well as philosophy.
I saw a lot of people talking about energy in the thread. It is one of my pet peeves when people use words like energy incorrectly, so please, if you are going to use something like that to make an argument, at least make sure you have your terms properly defined.
Also, Einstein has nothing to do with the First Law of Thermodynamics, if anything his work upended this idea in some respects.
Which part of energy was I using wrong? That I was saying our bodies have energy in them? How do you define energy? Rigid definition of physics? Only the ability to do work? You might need to crack a basic biology book open or something.
I guess I need to spell out a couple of the sources. According to the above article "In all, nearly half of the energy that could in theory be derived from the oxidation of glucose or fatty acids to H2O and CO2 is captured and used to drive the energetically unfavorable reaction Pi + ADP → ATP. (By contrast, a typical combustion engine, such as a car engine, can convert no more than 20% of the available energy in its fuel into useful work.) The rest of the energy is released by the cell as heat, making our bodies warm."
Warm=heat
The First Law of Thermodynamics states that heat is a form of ENERGY, and thermodynamic processes are therefore subject to the principle of conservation of ENERGY. This means that heat ENERGY cannot be created or destroyed. It can, however, be transferred from one location to another and converted to and from other forms of ENERGY.
I am absolutely taking biology and mixing it with physics. It fits the narrative I want to drive for my argument. I could absolutely be wrong in my argument. But current technology hasn't proven I'm wrong. No one is even asking the questions.
My argument to the absolute argument that ghosts don't exist is that we do not know what happens to all of the human body's ENERGY after a person dies. Apparently its not very popular and everyone wants to say I'm not using ENERGY correctly. Which is an attempt to distract from the basis for my argument. The counter argument is stating an absolute. The inflexibility of an absolute means that I can poke holes in the argument by asking questions that can't be currently answered. Stating absolutes mean that you have everything required to back your argument with facts and there are no holes in your argument.
I don't want to get banned for posting too much in the OT, so I'm going to have to stop posting. I loved the argument and If you disagree with me or don't like my argument thats fine I take nothing personally.
Hey, cool. I am not trying to piss on you or anything. I have a dual degree in Biology and Physics, and teach both to highschool kids. Kinda weird pairing, and I picked all the stuff I liked like Ecology and Thermodynamics rather than going for something that actually synergised like imaging.
Anyhow. Energy in biology is exactly the same concept as it is in physics, there is no difference. So what happens to the energy stored in cells when someone dies? Well, the heat dissapates into the environment until the corpse reaches equilibrium with it's surroundings. That solves where the heat goes. I am not sure that precise calorimetry experiments have been done to determine whether all the heat energy available in a corpse tranfers into the environment or not, but we have no reason to suspect it does not. Certainly we can observe that the corpse cools down to the same temperature of the surroundings, same as every other body. It would be pretty trivial to conduct an experiment to test this, and I wonder if anyone has. People do all sorts of weird experiments like that.
On the chemical energy, once the body stops respiring it pretty quickly starts to decompose. The micro-organisms in your gut and those crawling all over every surface of your body as well as a bunch of colonizers will begin to digest your tissues, releasing the energy inside as more heat and using it to carry out their own lives. If your body is preserved somehow, this energy will be stored in the tissues until it stops being preserved and begins to decay. As far as I am aware, there is no discrepency between the amount of energy stored in the bonds in a dead organism and the energy used by micro-organisms and other decomposers in breaking it down. Because this process is fairly chaotic and deteriming the EXACT amount of energy in a body is pretty difficult (maybe impossible right now), then I suppose it is possible that some of this energy is not used in the way I am describing.
So your thesis is that this unused energy somehow causes the phenomena people ascribe to hauntings. I mean, okay maybe there is some unused energy. That would be pretty weird and without any evidence to suggest that it is true I am disinclined to accept it. But even if there is, how exactly does it manifest in this way and how does it cause these things to happen? If this is how it works then it should be reproducable and to an extent predictable. This theory is relying on a fair few assumptions without any evidence, and that is why I tend to dismiss it and think that the explanation which is most likely and most easy to explain (people hallucinate, imagine things, or are lying) and does not require us to revise our understanding is the correct one. If someone does an experiment to prove this wrong and the experiment can be repeated by other people I am happy to accept that there is more going on, but I am not aware of any such experiments.
Regarding consciousness, in the most brief fashion I can: it is not a question of neither psychology (by definition, psychology deals with minds disregarding brains and assumes either perfect dualism or invoke complexity to defend it's position. People often conflate or even merge psychology with psychiatry, which is quite a different beast) nor philosophy (which disregards anything but logic and it's own toolkit and thus is not a field of science and has produced a whole libraries of useless mumble over the last century, rapidly made obsolete by advancing fields of actual science). Instead, it is a question of cognitive neuroscience and in the last 30 years (since the invention of fMRI) we have done a great progress on this subject. The main reason why this whole topic is treated as a "controversy" is that all findings undermine the very ideas of free will and agency and people just don't want to let those go, so they invent such "counterarguments" as qualia or p-zombies... The main axis in modern discussion about consciousness are as follows: is it dualistic in nature or is it emergent on the brain; if it is emergent on the brain is there any meaningfull difference between reductionistic description of neural processes and qualia; if it is non-dualistic is it compatible with libertarian free will; is consciousness a property of biological neural networks, or is it a property of all complex information processing constructs, or is it a property of any system and is a spectrum.
@epronovost: from your list of varied meanings of consciousness only philosophical one is exclusive to philosophy, while medical, neurobiological and prosecutive you mention are all just different scopes of the same consciousness phenomena studied by cognitive neurosciences (for the link into prosecutive I recommend watching few Sapolsky lectures on affective neuroscience).
No it isn't. The counterargument is your proposition about energy being somehow missing and magically forming ghosts is false and a baseless assumption with neither rhyme nor reason to suggest it, let alone actual science. It doesn't even have the commercial value of ghost chasers or cliche-ridden gothic literature. You might as well be stating 'ghosts aren't unprovable because turtles in tight trousers.'
I guess I need to spell out a couple of the sources. According to the above article "In all, nearly half of the energy that could in theory be derived from the oxidation of glucose or fatty acids to H2O and CO2 is captured and used to drive the energetically unfavorable reaction Pi + ADP → ATP. (By contrast, a typical combustion engine, such as a car engine, can convert no more than 20% of the available energy in its fuel into useful work.) The rest of the energy is released by the cell as heat, making our bodies warm."
Warm=heat
The First Law of Thermodynamics states that heat is a form of ENERGY, and thermodynamic processes are therefore subject to the principle of conservation of ENERGY. This means that heat ENERGY cannot be created or destroyed. It can, however, be transferred from one location to another and converted to and from other forms of ENERGY.
You don’t need to spell out anything, you’re talking to several people who have decent qualifications. One chap here has a biology/physics degree, I have biology degrees and teach chemistry to A-level.
Simply what you’ve said adds nothing. You’re right, energy can’t be destroyed and only converted, the heat generated in a body is transferred to the surroundings. You sort of declare “warm=heat” as if to go “ah ha! I’ve proven something”
But all you’re doing is spelling out basic science, there’s nothing in that that even starts to suggest that any of the energy in a living organism is converted into a form currently unaccounted for.
My argument to the absolute argument that ghosts don't exist is that we do not know what happens to all of the human body's ENERGY after a person dies. Apparently its not very popular and everyone wants to say I'm not using ENERGY correctly. Which is an attempt to distract from the basis for my argument.
Don’t try to play the victim card, like you’re being unfairly ignored or your argument is being distracted from. You refuse to address several basic points that have been made head on with your argument.
1. What evidence is there to suggest that there exists unaccounted for energy released from a dying organism?
2. If you can point to some observation that would lead to accept there is a deficit in energy stores released from the body, what reasoning do you have that it is more likely to be an as yet unknown form of energy, as opposed to a conventional form of energy that hasn’t been taken into account?
Saying “but science hasn’t utterly disproven that energy doesn’t have other forms” isn’t an acceptable answer. It’s very difficult to absolutely disprove everything possible. If you’re proposing something as radical as a new form of energy the onus is on you have to show that the theory is needed, meaning you have to show there’s 1. an energy deficit that needs to be addressed and 2. that your explanation has more merit than any other nonsense.
The counter argument is stating an absolute. The inflexibility of an absolute means that I can poke holes in the argument by asking questions that can't be currently answered. Stating absolutes mean that you have everything required to back your argument with facts and there are no holes in your argument.
Nice try. I’m sure you feel clever that you can ‘poke holes’ in our argument because we’re the dogmatic ones.
What questions can’t currently be answered? I feel you’ll move the goalposts because you’ll always say that the explanation given isn’t sufficient. You don’t think gravity can be explained, yet based on observations explanations are at least proposed.
You however are proposing something that has no basis in demonstrable reality, and attempts to make an explanation of something for which no observation has been made. The reason ‘holes can’t be poked’ in your argument is because it’s so woolly that there’s nothing to address, you haven’t based it on anything evidenced. Any argument you don’t like, you’ll move the goalposts and say that it’s just else beyond science. That’s what your “flexibility” amounts to, and it is not a postive attribute of your argument that it can’t be scientific tested.
You’re just making a typical Russell’s Teapot type argument that can go something like...
“There’s a teapot floating around the sun”
“We built a telescope and can’t see it”
“Ah, it’s a very small teapot”
“We’ve built a more powerful telescope and still can’t see it”
“It’s transparent”
“Sigh”
Everything. You're just not understanding how energy is stored and transferred. For example, if you're sitting on the top floor of your house you have potential energy, when you go down the stairs you lose that potential energy. If you go back up again your body converts chemical energy (obtained from food) into kinetic energy (movement), which is converted into potential energy again (your position higher up in the planetary gravity well). There is no mysterious "energy" that disappears when death occurs (and death isn't really a single point in time, it's a process), the body's energy state is effectively the same as it is immediately before death.
The First Law of Thermodynamics states that heat is a form of ENERGY, and thermodynamic processes are therefore subject to the principle of conservation of ENERGY. This means that heat ENERGY cannot be created or destroyed. It can, however, be transferred from one location to another and converted to and from other forms of ENERGY.
The first law of thermodynamics is not sufficient to understand the situation with heat energy, you also need to understand the concept of entropy. Your body contains energy in the form of heat (largely a product of chemical reactions), but that heat dissipates into the environment constantly and reaches a higher entropy state that effectively makes it useless (though still present). While you are alive you are constantly converting stored chemical energy from food into more heat, maintaining a stable body temperature. When your metabolism shuts down in death the supply of new heat stops, and the constant equalizing flow of heat brings your body to equilibrium temperature with the surrounding environment. There is no mystical "soul" or whatever involved, it's the exact same thing that happens if you put a cup of coffee on the table and wait for it to cool off.
Same thing with other forms of energy. The stored chemical energy in your body just sits there continuing to exist until the process of decomposition consumes those molecules and releases their energy. Gravitational potential energy goes on existing unchanged until your corpse is moved to a lower elevation. Etc. There is no missing energy to account for.
But current technology hasn't proven I'm wrong.
That's not how it works. You can't just post a bunch of word salad and yell PROVE ME WRONG OR I WIN, the burden of proof is on you to provide more than an absence of disproof in support of your theory. And you haven't.
Which is an attempt to distract from the basis for my argument.
No, it's a fundamental problem with your argument. If you aren't using the term "energy" correctly then you can't make an argument about what happens with energy.
My argument to the absolute argument that ghosts don't exist is that we do not know what happens to all of the human body's ENERGY after a person dies. Apparently its not very popular and everyone wants to say I'm not using ENERGY correctly. Which is an attempt to distract from the basis for my argument. The counter argument is stating an absolute. The inflexibility of an absolute means that I can poke holes in the argument by asking questions that can't be currently answered. Stating absolutes mean that you have everything required to back your argument with facts and there are no holes in your argument.
Im really lost here are you talking about Energy as a physical thing or is this more of a spiritual thing.
Physically after death and your cells stop producing heat energy from chemical energy, any residual heat energy is transferred into the surrounding area.
any remaining cells becomes chemical energy for all sorts of lifeforms from all over as your body decays over time.
This isnt an attempt to poke holes in an argument but the words need to be defined fully otherwise you cannot actually attempt to have a meaningful discussion. also i may have missed something as i dont quite understand where you are going with this. because from what i understand you can know of where all the energy from your body goes after death. it can be measured and im sure some scientists some where must of done it at one point.
if the hypothesis is some of the energy in a fresh corpse some how converts into non heat energy like some kinda lingering electromechanical energy then there has to be a mechanic to allow that to happen. maybe its quantum mechanics. but its something that should be completely testable. but would probably be "unethical" to test(?)
It's not really semantics. The question "what is mind?" is probably the most important question for philosophers today.
Yes, and great philosophical debates are almost all about semantic. Semantic doesn't mean unimportant, but it's boring, obscure and feels stupid to most people (and to pragmatic philosophers).
It may be boring, but it is fundamental to science. Without clarity on the semantics, you can't really do proper science. Every scientific field has a massive theoretical framework, and a lot of this theoretical work deals with issues of semantics and epistemology.
There are a lot of differences between undiscovered animals and fantastical creatures.
Not really, in a substantial number of cases they're synonymous.
It took almost 200 years to prove the existence of the colossal squid. Elves were proven right after one was named attorney general (though he prefers to be called jeff sessions)
Marco Polo found unicorns in his travels.
Surprise, they were Rhinoceroses all along.
Columbus thought manatees were mermaids (and the Earth was pear shaped, thanks to the outflow of the Amazon; he thought he was sailing 'uphill' near the stem. Which is where the Monty Python & the Holy Grail joke about he Earth being banana shaped comes from)
The Cyclops was probably based on someone misunderstanding a mammoth skull (mistaking the centrally located nasal cavity for an eye socket, and such skulls have been found on Crete and other areas in the region), and dinosaur bones probably inspired dragon stories.
Fantastical elements might be entertaining, but the reasons for the stories are mostly ignorance.
It's not really semantics. The question "what is mind?" is probably the most important question for philosophers today.
Yes, and great philosophical debates are almost all about semantic. Semantic doesn't mean unimportant, but it's boring, obscure and feels stupid to most people (and to pragmatic philosophers).
It may be boring, but it is fundamental to science. Without clarity on the semantics, you can't really do proper science. Every scientific field has a massive theoretical framework, and a lot of this theoretical work deals with issues of semantics and epistemology.
Reported encounters with external entities[edit]
Entities perceived during DMT inebriation have been represented in diverse forms of psychedelic art.[20] The term Machine Elf was coined by ethnobotanist Terence McKenna for the entities he encountered in DMT "hyperspace", also using terms like fractal elves, or self-transforming machine elves.[21][22] McKenna first encountered the "machine elves" after smoking DMT in Berkeley in 1965. His subsequent speculations regarding the hyperdimensional space in which they were encountered, has inspired a great many artists and musicians, and the meaning of DMT entities has been a subject of considerable debate among participants in a networked cultural underground, enthused by McKenna's effusive accounts of DMT hyperspace.[23] Cliff Pickover has also written about the "machine elf" experience, in the book Sex, Drugs, Einstein, & Elves,[7] while Rick Strassman notes many similarities between self-reports of his DMT study participants' encounters with these "entities", and mythological descriptions of figures such as Chayot Ha Kodesh in Ancient religions, including both angels and demons.[24] Strassman also argues for a similarity in his study participants' descriptions of mechanized wheels, gears and machinery in these encounters, with those described in visions of encounters with the Living Creatures and Ophanim of the Hebrew Bible, noting they may stem from a common neuropsychopharmacological experience.[24]
Strassman argues that the more positive of the "external entities" encountered in DMT experiences should be understood as analogous to certain forms of angels:
“
The medieval Jewish philosophers whom I rely upon for understanding the Hebrew Bible text and its concept of prophecy portray angels as God's intermediaries. That is, they perform a certain function for God. Within the context of my DMT research, I believe that the beings that volunteers see could be conceived of as angelic - that is, previously invisible, incorporeal spiritual forces that are engarbed or enclothed in a particular form - determined by the psychological and spiritual development of the volunteers - bringing a particular message or experience to that volunteer.[25]
”
However, Strassman's experimental participants also note that some other entities can subjectively resemble creatures more like insects and aliens.[26] As a result, Strassman writes these experiences among his experimental participants "also left me feeling confused and concerned about where the spirit molecule was leading us. It was at this point that I began to wonder if I was getting in over my head with this research."[27]
Hallucinations of strange creatures had been reported by Szara in the Journal of Mental Science (now the British Journal of Psychiatry) (1958) "Dimethyltryptamine Experiments with Psychotics", Stephen Szara described how one of his subjects under the influence of DMT had experienced "strange creatures, dwarves or something" at the beginning of a DMT trip.[28][29]
Other researchers of the entities seemingly encountered by DMT users, describe them as "entities" or "beings" in humanoid as well as animal form, with descriptions of "little people" being common (non-human gnomes, elves, imps, etc.).[30] Strassman and others have speculated that this form of hallucination may be the cause of alien abduction and extraterrestrial encounter experiences, which may occur through endogenously-occurring DMT.[31][32]
Likening them to descriptions of rattling and chattering auditory phenomenon described in encounters with the mythical Hayyoth in the Book of Ezekiel, Rick Strassman notes that participants in his studies, when reporting encounters with the alleged entities, have also described loud auditory hallucinations, such as one subject reporting typically "the elves laughing or talking at high volume, chattering, twittering".[24]
I always thought those were called Grimlins. Did old cartoons teach me wrong?
There are a lot of differences between undiscovered animals and fantastical creatures.
Not really, in a substantial number of cases they're synonymous.
Absolutely spot on! Remember when we hadn't discovered Mountain Gorillas? lol, we thought they could totally possess a human and consume their soul. BOY WERE WE WRONG!
Really? Perhaps you could explain why you think that, so I can make an informed counter, rather than attacking it in a manner that suggests you don't understand it?
Because while you appear to be trying to be funny, attributing mythical abilities to little known or understood real animals is exactly where many mythical animals have their origins. Hence my point.
There are no supernatural anythings from gods to gremlins to karma to wishes to miracles to luck to ghosts. That would constitute a contradiction and the reality doesn't allow that.
This isn't skepticism either. It's an axiom of reality.
There are no supernatural anythings from gods to gremlins to karma to wishes to miracles to luck to ghosts. That would constitute a contradiction and the reality doesn't allow that.
This isn't skepticism either. It's an axiom of reality.
That is a nonsensical statement. We don't fully understand reality, so how could we claim such a grand thing as knowing what reality allows and what not? We know some things are real because we can prove them. We know other things are not real because we can disprove them. But many things we can neither proof nor disproof and are therefore unknowable. Many supernatural things fall within this category. And furthermore, we don't even have the slightest idea of all the things we have yet to discover. We are tiny, insignificant specks in a unmeasurably vast cosmos, it is utter hubris to claim we know it all.
When we find the answer to the question of life, the universe and everything, we will be able to draw conclusions as to what are axioms of reality and what not. But we aren't anywhere near close to finding the answer. The more answers we find, the more questions we get.
Azreal13 wrote: Really? Perhaps you could explain why you think that, so I can make an informed counter, rather than attacking it in a manner that suggests you don't understand it?
Because while you appear to be trying to be funny, attributing mythical abilities to little known or understood real animals is exactly where many mythical animals have their origins. Hence my point.
Do any past cryptids have crazy, mystical powers now that they have been found?
Do you really need me to spell it out for you or can you get it from this?
It appears if there's anything needs spelling out, it would be by me.
Unknown Things = Crazy Weird mystical things with powers.
Known Things = None of those things.
Ghosts are currently unknown things, hence are attributed with all sorts of weird things. My assertion is that once the science behind whatever causes these things is understood, ghosts will lose their mystery and paranormal tag in the same way.
I believe that ghosts exist, I just don't believe they're the spirits of dead people, but some hitherto unknown but perfectly rational aspect of the world that will ultimately lose all mystery.
My terminology may be incorrect, but this seems like Empiricism vs... other.
Empiricists want to be able to measure, experience, and observe reality. If they can’t, it doesn’t exist. Taken to an extreme, a *belief* develops that if it hasn’t been found it *cant* exist. Something I disagree with.
Theists believe in deity/deities, and don’t need Empirical proof. Atheists believe there are NOT deity/deities because there is no Emperical proof.
Agnostics do NOT believe in either direction. Lacking Emperical proof makes us doubt the existence of deities. But we also realize that a negative can not be proven, so it is possible proof exists but we haven’t found it. To us, reasonable doubt does not deny possibility.
Which, in my opinion, is the crux of this discussion. Either you don’t need proof, need proof, or are doubtful but open to the possibility.
(With the exception of people that feel they’ve experienced supernatural phenomenon directly. They could feel they have Empirical proof, though it would be difficult to share that proof with others.)
Belief is equally pointless. If something is real, belief isn't required. If it isn't real, belief is foolish and useless. The best you can hope for are fairy tales, which attempt to provide entertainment and instruction in social norms, and the fact that they're about non-existent entities doesn't matter. [Though the standard variations on 'Kids, don't go into the woods or you'll get lost and die' is a bit repetitive]
Practical Example:
Take a table: put a glass of water on it, and no matter how indifferent you are to the table, you don't get glass and water all over the floor.
Now imagine a table, believe in it as hard as you can. Put a glass of water on it, enjoy cleaning up wet shards of glass.
----
A corollary you left out of agnosticism: something you can't know because something isn't provable and has no demonstrable effect on the world, doesn't, by definition, matter to the world. If despite all absurdity, ghosts exist, but all they can do is hang about in attics making spooky noises, their existence is trivial, and they might as well not exist. It makes no difference either way.
If it can’t be shared, it can still be proof for the observer.
Regarding the table experiment, try this instead. Close your eyes, walk around at random. Believe as hard as you want that there is no ground in front of you, and you’re about to walk off a cliff. You’ll (probably) find that, despite your lack of ability to observe the ground, without proof of its existence, it is there nonetheless.
While agnosticism is not a belief, Nihilism is, and I believe in that. One tennet is that existence is absurd. There is no meaning (except what an individual decides for them self) so notions like Ghosts existing is by nature absurd. Human existence is absurd, why wouldn’t our ghosts be?
(PS: I strongly doubt ghosts exist, but it’s possible.)
Azreal13 wrote: Ghosts are currently unknown things, hence are attributed with all sorts of weird things.
Ghosts are currently non-existent. There is no reason to believe they are real.
Ok, cool story. We done here?
Only if you are going to admit there is no reason to suspect ghosts exist. It is all word of mouth or folktales. It would be like believing vampires are real or Santa is out there breaking in to houses.
greatbigtree wrote: If it can’t be shared, it can still be proof for the observer.
Great, but that doesn't help ghost proselytizers convince others. For that you need scam shows like 'ghost hunters' and the like, with wacky edits, background sound effects and bad logic about how a lack of anything definitive 'leaves the possibilities open'
Regarding the table experiment, try this instead. Close your eyes, walk around at random. Believe as hard as you want that there is no ground in front of you, and you’re about to walk off a cliff. You’ll (probably) find that, despite your lack of ability to observe the ground, without proof of its existence, it is there nonetheless.
You're standing on the ground. You have plenty of proof of its existence, and unless you have no sense of touch in your legs/feet, sufficient observation of it.
While that experiment demonstrates the futility of belief, you've got too many extraneous factors tainting it, including: objective existence of the ground, experience with walking on the ground, lack of cliffs in the general area, and everything you can see before you close your eyes. There is never a real question of whether the ground is there or not. With the table example, you could at least have people blindfold you and move furniture around (small end tables at the least), and set up even more testable variables.
I very much doubt that someone blind from birth doubts the existence of the ground, just because they can't see it. They're more worried about people leaving objects to trip over.
Azreal13 wrote: Ghosts are currently unknown things, hence are attributed with all sorts of weird things.
Ghosts are currently non-existent. There is no reason to believe they are real.
Ok, cool story. We done here?
Only if you are going to admit there is no reason to suspect ghosts exist. It is all word of mouth or folktales. It would be like believing vampires are real or Santa is out there breaking in to houses.
I'll happily admit that I believe ghosts to be as real as vampires.
Of course, vampires are an example of something real that was attributed mystical abilities until increased scientific understanding was able to demonstrate that a rare genetic condition, particularly prevalent in Eastern Europe, gave people many of the characteristics of vampirism, up to and including aversion to garlic and haemophagia.
So, something mundane that was believed to be supernatural by people until scientific understanding advanced sufficiently to explain it? Sounds exactly like the point I was making.
I'll give you the cryptid example to illustrate what I mean.
In the jungles of central and South America there is a 13 meters long snake whose scale are colored like a rainbow and have a shimmering effect except on its head which is a pitch black. It has sharp fangs for a snake, but isn't venemous. It kills its prey through suffocation like pythons. It can live close to a century. It mostly hunt in shallow water during the day, using light reflection on the water as cover (hence its strange and vivid color pattern). They are only a handful of specimen still alive.
That's a total invention, but such a creature has a very small chance of actually existing. I absolutly don't believe it does, but there is a little possibility it does. I know this because we haven't explored all the jungles of central and South America and we discover frequently new species in the region each year or so. While the longest and largest modern snake ever measured was around 11 meters, fossiles and simple calculus tells us that a snake of 13 meters long or more is possible and could find food reliably in such an ecosystem. Similar animals have existed and do exists on our planet. Snakes can display amazing color pattern or a wide diversity. It's extremely unlikely since we have explored the region and this is a very large animal. We never found any bodies of snake that could match such a description. Such a snake would be in direct competitition with the anaconda for prey and hunting grounds as both snake share the same kind of territory and prey. It's unlikely we would have discovered one without hte other or even that a stable ecological zone would harbor to predetator of that size and with the same style after millions of years of competition (it's probable that in such a case one specie would have supplanted the other). That makes my imaginary snake a possibility since, while implausible, it's within the realm of known possibility. Ghosts as they are commonly understood (AKA minds of dead humans still capable operating) are not. We have never even observed anything close to such a phenomenon anywhere at any time. Ghosts are a fabulation. We can imagine them, but before we actually encounter a phenomenon that's closely related for example another kind of undead for example or a bodyless creature capable of something comparable to human cognition and perception, they are just that, fabulations of our mind. They aren't possible. They are conceivable.
Manchu wrote: To the contrary, “ghost” is a purely literary concept. Its only dimension is metaphorical. The mistake you, and many others, make is a trick of language, like a paradox; something that can exist only as a matter of syntax, and has no corresponding material reality. This quality is exactly what keeps “ghosts” relevant in the literalistic, materialist “modern” world, while so much else of the former, magical world has faded away.
Unless you simply accept that "ghosts" could be an actual, material occurrence without being a manifestation of a dead person.
Trying to argue that there's a thing that isn't a ghost because what we call ghosts are, and can only be, an idea that a spirit of a dead person can sometimes appear in this reality seems somewhat redundant as words only mean what we agree they mean in the first place.
The nature of what constitutes a ghost hasn't moved on simply because those who believe they've witnessed one don't have a credible real world concept they can point to and say "this is what I experienced, how odd that people used to think these were dead people."
Anyone can say they don't exist, but for someone who sincerely believes they've experienced something with no agenda, you're going to have to offer a credible alternative. Also, by credible alternative, I don't mean stacking unlikely event upon unlikely event on top of one another until the odds of it being an actual manifestation of a dead person seem the greater.
Well, no, that's not accurate. There are plenty of credible, plausible concepts that explain "ghosts" in the sense of "someone had an experience, which they then conceptualize as an encounter with a spirit", they're just not ones people choose to entertain because nobody likes to believe that their "experience" was a fiction created by their own brain as a result of misfiring startle responses or mental illness or social pressure.
The fact they're unwilling to entertain them, however, doesn't invalidate them.
greatbigtree wrote: Neurobiology, if I’m not mistaken, studies the functions of the brain, not the creation of the mind.
The two are the same things. The mind is the brain, the brain is the mind. If you alter the brain, you alter the mind. There is no mind without brain. Neurobiology tells you what your mind is made off and how it works. Of course neurobiology is interested in the mind learning how it works, that's its reason for existence.
No, the mind and the brain are not the same thing. The relation between the mind and the brain is one of the major issues and problems in cognitive neuroscience. Most scholars in that field operate on the hypothesis that the mind is a creation of our brain, but this hypothesis so far has been very difficult to proof and may in fact be impossible to proof. This is because cognitive neuroscientists can for example correlate certain states of the mind with certain patterns of brain activity, but they can not proof that the brain activity was the cause of the state of mind. And one of the most important scientific principles is that correlation does not imply causation.
Another of the most important scientific principles is parsimony. Correlation does not imply causation, but the "the mind is an emergent process arising from the physical substrate of the brain" hypothesis is just that, a hypothesis, a reasoned explanation of the observed evidence that makes testable claims with as few assumptions as possible. The "the brain is just the receiver for the soul's remote control" claim is an entirely unnecessary additional layer of complexity that isn't supported by the evidence, isn't even implied by the evidence, and cannot be considered a valid hypothesis because its proponents cannot even put forward a basic concept of how their soul/separate mind exists and functions, let alone propose an experiment that could prove their claim.
I could write a long, verbose essay detailing my proposal that the brain is actually merely the three-dimensional shadow of our actual brains, which exist in a seventeen-dimensional space where everything is cheese, and it would have exactly as much validity as the "brain is just an RC receiver" concept.
Yes, there are plenty of plausible ideas that explain elements of ghosts, but as a phenomena they're a whole suite of experiences from noises to sightings to movement of objects to something as nebulous as 'feelings.'
Trouble is, those plausible ideas often only explain one thing, or a thing in a certain instance but not necessarily another. That's when you get into realms of the implausible stacking I was talking about. "It was a rat." "It was a rat carrying a magnet." "It was a drunk rat carrying a magnet and wearing clogs."
Then the so called "rational" explanation starts to sound even more unlikely than the paranormal one.
I'm certain the majority are mundane, but I'm equally sure that there's some elements which currently sit in a gap in our knowledge.
Azreal13 wrote: Yes, there are plenty of plausible ideas that explain elements of ghosts, but as a phenomena they're a whole suite of experiences from noises to sightings to movement of objects to something as nebulous as 'feelings.'
Trouble is, those plausible ideas often only explain one thing, or a thing in a certain instance but not necessarily another. That's when you get into realms of the implausible stacking I was talking about. "It was a rat." "It was a rat carrying a magnet." "It was a drunk rat carrying a magnet and wearing clogs."
Then the so called "rational" explanation starts to sound even more unlikely than the paranormal one.
I'm certain the majority are mundane, but I'm equally sure that there's some elements which currently sit in a gap in our knowledge.
Or, they are in fact all explained quite nicely by the basic three I listed and simple random occurrences. No need for magnets, or drunk rats dancing in clogs, just a basic mundane happening like a cold draft or a wobbly table, and a whole wadge of unconsciously-invented nonsense that someone's primitive ape-brain has convinced itself really totes actually happened at the same time, but in reality did not.
Azreal13 wrote: Yes, there are plenty of plausible ideas that explain elements of ghosts, but as a phenomena they're a whole suite of experiences from noises to sightings to movement of objects to something as nebulous as 'feelings.'
Trouble is, those plausible ideas often only explain one thing, or a thing in a certain instance but not necessarily another. That's when you get into realms of the implausible stacking I was talking about. "It was a rat." "It was a rat carrying a magnet." "It was a drunk rat carrying a magnet and wearing clogs."
Then the so called "rational" explanation starts to sound even more unlikely than the paranormal one.
I'm certain the majority are mundane, but I'm equally sure that there's some elements which currently sit in a gap in our knowledge.
But however absurd that plausible idea may be, there’s no reason a ‘ghost’ is more plausible. The problem with ghosts and suchlike is that there’s no corroborative evidence whatsoever. It’s literally a made up idea that supposedly addresses certain fairly mundane observations. It’s no more an explanation than anything else made up without any proof.
“There was a bump. We don’t know specifically what it was. It was a ghost/alien/invisible man”
The problem with this ghost explanation is that the person claiming it starts with a baseless conclusion and then attempts to get the facts to fit, and falsely claims their explanation makes more sense that some other fiction. No one ever looked at some unknown phenomena and concluded it was most likely a ghost in an unbiased manner, people who claim ghosts causing something are always desperate to make the facts fit their pet fantasy. They probably can’t accept that the world isn’t as interesting as they want it to be, or they have issues about needing the comfort of an afterlife. It’s like conspiracy theorists can’t deal with actual history, it always need to be ‘more interesting than the truth. And like some people claiming ghosts are real, they have this big headed delusion they are more clever and insightful than actual historians just because they don’t reject cuckoo theories without basis in historical fact. Back to ghost supporters, “It was a ghost” is never the most likely explanation. This is why no two alien encounters are the same, yet “aliens” are trotted out again and again to explain some unusual event involving some lights or unexplained object.
Ghosts, like aliens, are whatever you want them to be. Whatever the phenomena, the story will change to fit. They can’t be seen, except when they can’t, the can talk to people or sometimes can’t see them, they can move through walls, but push things around, they can’t be detected, other than when they can’t, etc. This is why skeptics can’t supposedly ‘poke holes’ in the ghost theory, it just gets changed all the time to fit the circumstances of a particular ‘sighting’.
If ghosts are real you’d expect some consistency in their properties, like all real world physical phenomena, yet accounts wildly differ.
For all that people insist that there is no corroborative evidence; how many of us here have actually bothered to attempt a rational investigation for ourselves? Even on the most basic level of looking into what research papers might be available?
I often wonder if perhaps those of us who disbelieve firmly automatically discount without investigating because it sounds ludicrous; whilst the ones who do bother usually have something to prove and therefore are completely unreliable. I've always liked Eric Dingwall's line:-
After sixty years' experience and personal acquaintance with most of the leading parapsychologists of that period I do not think I could name half a dozen whom I could call objective students who honestly wished to discover the truth. The great majority wanted to prove something or other: They wanted the phenomena into which they were inquiring to serve some purpose in supporting preconceived theories of their own.
If there is anything to the supernatural; the fact that mostly only the manipulative, mad, and the credulous spend time upon it would certainly serve to cloak any actual discoveries that might exist to be made.
I looked at some fairly odd things at Uni but don’t recall anything about ghosts. I was genuinely interested in cattle maulings as evidence for escaped large cats living in the UK but didn’t turn up a lot.
If I was at Uni again, given the several reported in the local paper, I’d have actually done my own research. Do some interviews and get some pictures. It would be like the Welsh X-Files.
I'm kinda spent with the whole circular ghosts thing, but I can happily move on to the subject of large cats in the U.K.
I live literally minutes away from the farm that was the main focus of Exmoor Beast kills in the 80s. The one that actually had the military out trying to catch it, in fact my father spent several nights out with them himself, the farmer being a personal friend meaning the desire to help and the curiosity was deemed worth skipping a nights sleep.
I've never seen an animal, but I have seen a sheep, that 12 hours previously had been wondering around doing sheepy things, lying in the middle of a field with most of the flesh down one side missing, including the skull which to all intents and purposes looked like it had been licked clean. Some 30+ years later that image is still with me.
There was also a friend of the family who lived in a cottage adjacent to the same farm who did see an animal. An ex army major who grew up in the country side, there's zero reason to doubt his motives or his ability to identify a fox or a badger.
But based solely on my own experience, there is simply no native predator that could do that to an adult ewe. It was simply a large unknown carnivore or human intervention. I can't see any other possibilities, and I do struggle with the idea of hoaxes when in order to carry them out they'd need to be sophisticated enough to evade a number of soldiers armed with night vision gear all looking for them.
@ Epronovost: The reason it is a possibility, is that it can't be eliminated. Finite mathematics (probabilities) requires that all possibilities be accounted for. Even if a person were able to actively disprove all accounts of paranormal phenomenon, it does not mean they're not there. Just that there is a non-zero chance of it existing, though it has not been found. For example, if one were to flip a small circular disk with a flat face on the circumference, onto a functionally flat surface, there is a remote possibility it will come to rest on it's edge, not on a face. Even if the odds of that happening are a billion to one, it could happen. So even if I flip a small circular disk a billion times and it never lands on the edge, that doesn't mean it can't happen, just that it hasn't yet. Even if a billion (or more!) accounts of paranormal activities were proven to be mundane, the next account could be real.
It is possible, although I think unlikely.
@ Voss: Should a person disregard their personal experience simply because they can't prove it to another? I enjoy living, but I can't prove it to you. Should I become miserable, because I can't prove my happiness?
@ Yodhrin: You propose an Empirical response. It can't be measured, it can't be tested, it doesn't exist. Yet you also know that you can't prove a negative. Someone's belief in the supernatural doesn't require Empirical proof. Frankly, why would a believer care that you don't believe? They may make seemingly irrational choices, but they are in charge of their own lives, and are free to do as they choose. It doesn't need to make sense. People invest significant time attempting to disprove that which can't be disproved by arguing on the internet with total randos. That is irrational behaviour. What benefit could it serve the arguer? The smug feeling of attempting the impossible? (Can't prove a negative. It is logically impossible.)
As I've previously mentioned, this is less an argument about a subject as it is about the approach to the unknown. Belief, Disbelief, and Reasonable Doubt. From a pure logic standpoint, believing in possibilities, regardless of how remote, is sensible. Living and making decisions based on an unlikely event occurring can be beneficial. I never plan on getting in a car accident, but I still put a seatbelt on when I get in a car. While I've never experienced a car accident directly, I surmise they're unpleasant experiences and wearing a seatbelt reduces the probability of critical injury, should such an unlikely event occur. It is in my best interest to believe in the possibility of an unlikely event occurring and acting accordingly... just in case it does!
No harm befalls someone, that I'm aware of, due to the belief in an existence of ghosts or other paranormal phenomenon. If I went to someone's house and they had cloves of garlic by the door... no harm to me. If someone paints a circle of protection around their home to keep nasty spirits away, good for them! Want to put up a dream catcher to keep away nightmares? Go for it! Have a lucky rabbit's foot? Didn't do the rabbit much good and he had four... but all the power to you. Gross. Don't touch me with that thing.
Yes, people may waste their money on "ghost hunting" equipment. People waste money at casinos every day, and ghost hunting at least gets people out of their houses. I waste my money on plastic soldiers. I have a friend that wastes his money on off-road vehicles. My youngest son has about 1000 toy cars. He could Scrooge McDuck in the damned things but he'd buy more if we let him. I'm not hurt for my hobbies, he's not hurt for his, and Ghost Hunters, assuming they aren't arrested for trespassing, aren't hurt for theirs.
greatbigtree wrote: @ Epronovost: The reason it is a possibility, is that it can't be eliminated. Finite mathematics (probabilities) requires that all possibilities be accounted for. Even if a person were able to actively disprove all accounts of paranormal phenomenon, it does not mean they're not there. Just that there is a non-zero chance of it existing, though it has not been found. For example, if one were to flip a small circular disk with a flat face on the circumference, onto a functionally flat surface, there is a remote possibility it will come to rest on it's edge, not on a face. Even if the odds of that happening are a billion to one, it could happen. So even if I flip a small circular disk a billion times and it never lands on the edge, that doesn't mean it can't happen, just that it hasn't yet. Even if a billion (or more!) accounts of paranormal activities were proven to be mundane, the next account could be real.
It is possible, although I think unlikely.
It's possible, albeit extraordinarly unlikely, for flat sided, perfectly balanced disk to land on its side instead than on one of its face thanks to basic understanding of movement mechanic on Earth. On what basis are you saying that ghosts could exist?
Hmmm... If something is *not* impossible, it is by definition possible.
It is impossible to prove a negative. Since we can not eliminate the possibility that they exist (it is *not* impossible) then the possibility (no matter how unlikely) that Ghosts exist continues.
I’m trying to imagine a scenario to explain, so here goes.
I go into space. I find a way to make an impenetrable empty box. Not empty, EMPTY. Completely devoid of anything inside. No light, subatomic particles, matter, anti-matter. Truly and utterly devoid of anything inside.
How could I prove it? If we open the box, things will get in. Light (photons) for example. It’s impenetrable, so we can’t x-ray it, and even if we could, that would mean x-rays would be in there and through attempting to prove the nothingness would destroy it. Nothingness can’t be proven. All we can prove is that we can’t find things in a given space. Even if I honestly believe there’s nothing in the box, I couldn’t prove it. Anything I’d use to check the nothing would be something!
But the nothing could exist, but only until examined. Schrodinger’s Nothing box. Ghosts could exist simply because we can’t prove they don’t.
And yes. Ad Absurdum gremlins could be the cause of mechanical failures. Unicorns might fart rainbows. The Hairy Potato novels might be autobiographical recountings of a real wizard given to a homeless lady as a ghost writer. Ghosts may exist. Reasonable doubt can be damnably unreasonable. Possibility is a crazy thing, and it can be kind of maddening.
greatbigtree wrote: Hmmm... If something is *not* impossible, it is by definition possible.
It is impossible to prove a negative. Since we can not eliminate the possibility that they exist (it is *not* impossible) then the possibility (no matter how unlikely) that Ghosts exist continues.
Since it's impossible to prove a negative (unless someone has evidence of abscence, which we do in that case), the burden of proof lies on the positive claim ghosts can exists (based on what do you say they could exist, not that they do, that they could). A thing isn't possible because you can fabulate it.
PS: for your box experiment, we could never know for sure if you had succeeded, but we could at least tell you if it's within the realm of possibility by analysing your methodology.
I really do feel like I’m not getting through to you.
There is no onus to prove *possibility*. Possibilities don’t exist because I imagine them. Possibilities exist that I can’t imagine. Possibilities are the potential *truths* of the universe as yet undiscovered.
I don’t know how to put it other ways. To me, the universe is. There are things I know, things I believe, things I think. There are sooooo many possibilities that I can’t eliminate. And since they can’t be eliminated as possibilities, they continue as possibilities.
What evidence of absence do you possess that I can’t dismiss by saying, “Maybe you’re not searching in the right way?” If I search for sound using my eyes, I won’t see it. If I try to taste using my fingers, it won’t work. Does that mean the sought items do not exist?
PS: The whole point is that I can’t prove the truth of the Nothingness. We can determine possibility (Hella remote. True nothingness may be the final uncertainty in the Universe) of the Nothingness, but it can’t be proven. It would simply be a possibility. Either it is nothing, or it is not. Either there’s a ghost in there, or there’s not. We could substitute any *idea* for the word ghost.
Me neither. I feel like actually genuinly believe that everything is possible even if that's not the case. We can't even say that everything is conceivable due to the limitations of our minds.
There is no onus to prove *possibility*
Of course there is an onus to prove something is possible since some things are impossible. A possibility is something that can happen given some circumstances or that could happen given some circumstances. Some cryptid for example are possible while others aren't. For example you can't say there is a height leg laser dog that lives exclusively in my basement since I don't have a basement. This creature is impossible since I don't have a basement. That's evidence of abscence. One of the condition for that cryptid creature is impossible, thus the whole creature is impossible. Ghosts are in the same boat. Several of the aspects defining them are impossible in the same way a creature with sole ecological niche being my basement is impossible.
Azreal13 wrote: Ghosts are currently unknown things, hence are attributed with all sorts of weird things.
Ghosts are currently non-existent. There is no reason to believe they are real.
Ok, cool story. We done here?
Only if you are going to admit there is no reason to suspect ghosts exist. It is all word of mouth or folktales. It would be like believing vampires are real or Santa is out there breaking in to houses.
I'll happily admit that I believe ghosts to be as real as vampires.
Of course, vampires are an example of something real that was attributed mystical abilities until increased scientific understanding was able to demonstrate that a rare genetic condition, particularly prevalent in Eastern Europe, gave people many of the characteristics of vampirism, up to and including aversion to garlic and haemophagia.
So, something mundane that was believed to be supernatural by people until scientific understanding advanced sufficiently to explain it? Sounds exactly like the point I was making.
Oh cool, you went with eastern european vampires and not any of the other vampires from other mythos! How did the soul eating vampires of Japan come to be? How about the flesh eaters of western Asia?
Also, that is 100% untrue about Vampires! It was rising from the grave(burying living people) that made the myth of Vampires so prevalent in Europe! Holy cow.
I went with European vampires because I'm happier commenting on things I have some prior knowledge on, unlike the Oriental stuff which I'm less up to speed on. Perhaps try it?
The "rising from the grave" bit probably merged with the collective tales about the very real disease into a cohesive mythological compilation of "European Vampires".
Even today, every now and then you have people mistakenly pronounced dead by a doctor, only to wake up in the morgue later. Prior to modern medicine, this probably happened a lot more often. And since they tended to bury the dead fairly soon, you'd end up with a fair number of people getting buried alive. Some of whom might be fortunate enough to be buried shallow enough to dig themselves out. This gives you fodder for people rising from the dead.
Its known that if someone was suspected to be a Vampire, they would have bricks stuffed in their mouth when they were buried. Its thought this arose from people digging up the corpse of a suspect Vampire and seeing blood/bile oozing from the desceased's mouth, and thinking they were rising at night to feed. Which led to stuffing bricks into the believed Vampire's mouth. This also dovetales with any stories of people rising from the dead thanks to being buried alive.
Combine this with Porphyria and you end up with the Vampire as we know it today.
Honestly? I believe that nothing is impossible. You could fire any manner of non-sense at me and I’d acknowledge that while incredibly unlikely, it is possible. My mind is blown wide open when it comes to the possibilities of the universe.
To take your leg-high laser dog example...
You’re a rando on the internet. It is *possible* that you’re lying about not having a basement. People are weird.
Maybe you have a dog, and maybe you taped a laser pointer to his head, because it would be cruel and funny.
Maybe you keep it in the basement you lied about not having. In which case it’s possible you have a leg-high laser dog that lives in your basement. Quite frankly, that’s way more likely than ghosts.
Please don’t take that as an ad-hominem attack. I have no reason to believe that’s *probable*. Possible? Humans are capable of much stranger things.
Again, this comes back to my opposition to Empiricism as a philosophy. The tendency to dismiss as impossible that which is incredibly unlikely. Our existence could be a fictional universe in which we’re Matrix-style plugged in for a weekend getaway vacation. Live a lifetime in 48 hours!
I could be in a coma and this is all imagined. You could be in a coma and I might be a figment of your imagination.
This existence could be analogous to Purgatory and we live and die and live again to “improve” our souls so we can climb the figurative or literal mountain. If so I’m screwed because I like it here and I’m going to be a while.
So given the potential of your example being possible even if this is “base reality”... yes. That is indeed possible. Existence is absurd and so is everything in it.
I went with European vampires because I'm happier commenting on things I have some prior knowledge on, unlike the Oriental stuff which I'm less up to speed on. Perhaps try it?
That is a myth. More to the point, a very very recent myth you have fallen for.
In 1985 biochemist David Dolphin proposed that the vampires of folklore may actually have been people suffering from porphyria, a group of rare, largely hereditary blood diseases. According to the Times account of his remarks:
(1) Porphyria victims are extraordinarily sensitive to sunlight. Even mild exposure can cause severe disfigurement. Facial skin may scar, the nose and fingers may fall off, and the lips and gums may become so taut that the teeth project like fangs.
(2) To avoid sunlight, people with serious cases of porphyria go out only at night, just like Dracula.
(3) Today porphyria can be treated with injections of blood products. Centuries ago, porphyria victims might have sought to treat themselves by drinking blood.
(4) Porphyria is inherited, but the symptoms may not manifest themselves until brought on by stress. Suppose a sibling with an active case of the disease bites you to quench his thirst for blood. Très stressful, non? Suddenly your own latent porphyria goes critical and you start growing fangs too.
(5) Garlic contains a chemical that worsens porphyria symptoms, causing sufferers to avoid it. Just like vampires.
Great story, eh? The media, including me, went nuts, and today everybody “knows” that porphyria patients are vampires — to the distress of people who actually have these diseases.
Just one problem. People with porphyria aren’t vampires, and there’s no reason to think that the vampires of folklore had the disease (or existed at all). To respond point by point:
(1) Porphyria comprises seven separate disorders. Skin problems are a fairly common symptom, but only the rarest form — congenital erythropoietic porphyria — causes severe disfigurement. Just 200 cases of this disease have been diagnosed, surely too few to account for the widespread belief in vampires. In any case, alleged vampires exhumed in the 18th century typically weren’t disfigured but appeared as they had in life (except for being dead, of course).
(2) The idea that vampires abhor sunlight was an invention of fiction writers. In Europe during the 18th and 19th centuries, vampires were sometimes reported to have been sighted during the day. Bram Stoker’s Dracula was deathly pale, but folkloric vampires, in the Balkans anyway, were said to be ruddy-faced due to blood consumption.
(3) Porphyria victims don’t crave blood. Drinking blood will not alleviate their symptoms, nor has there ever been a general belief that it would. The blood chemicals porphyria victims need do not survive digestion.
(4) In light of the preceding, the scenario described in point #4 above is unlikely.
(5) No one has proved that garlic worsens porphyria.
Professor Dolphin never published a formal paper describing his theory. When I phoned, he didn’t wish to speak to me and would say only that “it was just speculation” and that “I haven’t worked in this area for many years.”
The practice of trying to match diseases with well-known figures in history or folklore has a long and not entirely reputable history. (Porphyria, for one, has also been blamed for werewolves.) Maybe next time we’ll know better.
Reported encounters with external entities[edit]
Entities perceived during DMT inebriation have been represented in diverse forms of psychedelic art.[20] The term Machine Elf was coined by ethnobotanist Terence McKenna for the entities he encountered in DMT "hyperspace", also using terms like fractal elves, or self-transforming machine elves.[21][22] McKenna first encountered the "machine elves" after smoking DMT in Berkeley in 1965. His subsequent speculations regarding the hyperdimensional space in which they were encountered, has inspired a great many artists and musicians, and the meaning of DMT entities has been a subject of considerable debate among participants in a networked cultural underground, enthused by McKenna's effusive accounts of DMT hyperspace.[23] Cliff Pickover has also written about the "machine elf" experience, in the book Sex, Drugs, Einstein, & Elves,[7] while Rick Strassman notes many similarities between self-reports of his DMT study participants' encounters with these "entities", and mythological descriptions of figures such as Chayot Ha Kodesh in Ancient religions, including both angels and demons.[24] Strassman also argues for a similarity in his study participants' descriptions of mechanized wheels, gears and machinery in these encounters, with those described in visions of encounters with the Living Creatures and Ophanim of the Hebrew Bible, noting they may stem from a common neuropsychopharmacological experience.[24]
Strassman argues that the more positive of the "external entities" encountered in DMT experiences should be understood as analogous to certain forms of angels:
“
The medieval Jewish philosophers whom I rely upon for understanding the Hebrew Bible text and its concept of prophecy portray angels as God's intermediaries. That is, they perform a certain function for God. Within the context of my DMT research, I believe that the beings that volunteers see could be conceived of as angelic - that is, previously invisible, incorporeal spiritual forces that are engarbed or enclothed in a particular form - determined by the psychological and spiritual development of the volunteers - bringing a particular message or experience to that volunteer.[25]
”
However, Strassman's experimental participants also note that some other entities can subjectively resemble creatures more like insects and aliens.[26] As a result, Strassman writes these experiences among his experimental participants "also left me feeling confused and concerned about where the spirit molecule was leading us. It was at this point that I began to wonder if I was getting in over my head with this research."[27]
Hallucinations of strange creatures had been reported by Szara in the Journal of Mental Science (now the British Journal of Psychiatry) (1958) "Dimethyltryptamine Experiments with Psychotics", Stephen Szara described how one of his subjects under the influence of DMT had experienced "strange creatures, dwarves or something" at the beginning of a DMT trip.[28][29]
Other researchers of the entities seemingly encountered by DMT users, describe them as "entities" or "beings" in humanoid as well as animal form, with descriptions of "little people" being common (non-human gnomes, elves, imps, etc.).[30] Strassman and others have speculated that this form of hallucination may be the cause of alien abduction and extraterrestrial encounter experiences, which may occur through endogenously-occurring DMT.[31][32]
Likening them to descriptions of rattling and chattering auditory phenomenon described in encounters with the mythical Hayyoth in the Book of Ezekiel, Rick Strassman notes that participants in his studies, when reporting encounters with the alleged entities, have also described loud auditory hallucinations, such as one subject reporting typically "the elves laughing or talking at high volume, chattering, twittering".[24]
I always thought those were called Grimlins. Did old cartoons teach me wrong?
There are a lot of differences between undiscovered animals and fantastical creatures.
Not really, in a substantial number of cases they're synonymous.
Absolutely spot on! Remember when we hadn't discovered Mountain Gorillas? lol, we thought they could totally possess a human and consume their soul. BOY WERE WE WRONG!
Your argument is hilariously bad.
Exalted! Trying to defend the possible existence of fairy creatures with... late discovered mountain gorillas is... ambitious to say the least. LMAO!
Reported encounters with external entities[edit]
Entities perceived during DMT inebriation have been represented in diverse forms of psychedelic art.[20] The term Machine Elf was coined by ethnobotanist Terence McKenna for the entities he encountered in DMT "hyperspace", also using terms like fractal elves, or self-transforming machine elves.[21][22] McKenna first encountered the "machine elves" after smoking DMT in Berkeley in 1965. His subsequent speculations regarding the hyperdimensional space in which they were encountered, has inspired a great many artists and musicians, and the meaning of DMT entities has been a subject of considerable debate among participants in a networked cultural underground, enthused by McKenna's effusive accounts of DMT hyperspace.[23] Cliff Pickover has also written about the "machine elf" experience, in the book Sex, Drugs, Einstein, & Elves,[7] while Rick Strassman notes many similarities between self-reports of his DMT study participants' encounters with these "entities", and mythological descriptions of figures such as Chayot Ha Kodesh in Ancient religions, including both angels and demons.[24] Strassman also argues for a similarity in his study participants' descriptions of mechanized wheels, gears and machinery in these encounters, with those described in visions of encounters with the Living Creatures and Ophanim of the Hebrew Bible, noting they may stem from a common neuropsychopharmacological experience.[24]
Strassman argues that the more positive of the "external entities" encountered in DMT experiences should be understood as analogous to certain forms of angels:
“
The medieval Jewish philosophers whom I rely upon for understanding the Hebrew Bible text and its concept of prophecy portray angels as God's intermediaries. That is, they perform a certain function for God. Within the context of my DMT research, I believe that the beings that volunteers see could be conceived of as angelic - that is, previously invisible, incorporeal spiritual forces that are engarbed or enclothed in a particular form - determined by the psychological and spiritual development of the volunteers - bringing a particular message or experience to that volunteer.[25]
”
However, Strassman's experimental participants also note that some other entities can subjectively resemble creatures more like insects and aliens.[26] As a result, Strassman writes these experiences among his experimental participants "also left me feeling confused and concerned about where the spirit molecule was leading us. It was at this point that I began to wonder if I was getting in over my head with this research."[27]
Hallucinations of strange creatures had been reported by Szara in the Journal of Mental Science (now the British Journal of Psychiatry) (1958) "Dimethyltryptamine Experiments with Psychotics", Stephen Szara described how one of his subjects under the influence of DMT had experienced "strange creatures, dwarves or something" at the beginning of a DMT trip.[28][29]
Other researchers of the entities seemingly encountered by DMT users, describe them as "entities" or "beings" in humanoid as well as animal form, with descriptions of "little people" being common (non-human gnomes, elves, imps, etc.).[30] Strassman and others have speculated that this form of hallucination may be the cause of alien abduction and extraterrestrial encounter experiences, which may occur through endogenously-occurring DMT.[31][32]
Likening them to descriptions of rattling and chattering auditory phenomenon described in encounters with the mythical Hayyoth in the Book of Ezekiel, Rick Strassman notes that participants in his studies, when reporting encounters with the alleged entities, have also described loud auditory hallucinations, such as one subject reporting typically "the elves laughing or talking at high volume, chattering, twittering".[24]
I always thought those were called Grimlins. Did old cartoons teach me wrong?
There are a lot of differences between undiscovered animals and fantastical creatures.
Not really, in a substantial number of cases they're synonymous.
Absolutely spot on! Remember when we hadn't discovered Mountain Gorillas? lol, we thought they could totally possess a human and consume their soul. BOY WERE WE WRONG!
Your argument is hilariously bad.
Exalted! Trying to defend the possible existence of fairy creatures with... late discovered mountain gorillas is... ambitious to say the least. LMAO!
We have already proven elves with jeff sessions and vampires with dick cheney, what more do you want??
Reported encounters with external entities[edit]
Entities perceived during DMT inebriation have been represented in diverse forms of psychedelic art.[20] The term Machine Elf was coined by ethnobotanist Terence McKenna for the entities he encountered in DMT "hyperspace", also using terms like fractal elves, or self-transforming machine elves.[21][22] McKenna first encountered the "machine elves" after smoking DMT in Berkeley in 1965. His subsequent speculations regarding the hyperdimensional space in which they were encountered, has inspired a great many artists and musicians, and the meaning of DMT entities has been a subject of considerable debate among participants in a networked cultural underground, enthused by McKenna's effusive accounts of DMT hyperspace.[23] Cliff Pickover has also written about the "machine elf" experience, in the book Sex, Drugs, Einstein, & Elves,[7] while Rick Strassman notes many similarities between self-reports of his DMT study participants' encounters with these "entities", and mythological descriptions of figures such as Chayot Ha Kodesh in Ancient religions, including both angels and demons.[24] Strassman also argues for a similarity in his study participants' descriptions of mechanized wheels, gears and machinery in these encounters, with those described in visions of encounters with the Living Creatures and Ophanim of the Hebrew Bible, noting they may stem from a common neuropsychopharmacological experience.[24]
Strassman argues that the more positive of the "external entities" encountered in DMT experiences should be understood as analogous to certain forms of angels:
“
The medieval Jewish philosophers whom I rely upon for understanding the Hebrew Bible text and its concept of prophecy portray angels as God's intermediaries. That is, they perform a certain function for God. Within the context of my DMT research, I believe that the beings that volunteers see could be conceived of as angelic - that is, previously invisible, incorporeal spiritual forces that are engarbed or enclothed in a particular form - determined by the psychological and spiritual development of the volunteers - bringing a particular message or experience to that volunteer.[25]
”
However, Strassman's experimental participants also note that some other entities can subjectively resemble creatures more like insects and aliens.[26] As a result, Strassman writes these experiences among his experimental participants "also left me feeling confused and concerned about where the spirit molecule was leading us. It was at this point that I began to wonder if I was getting in over my head with this research."[27]
Hallucinations of strange creatures had been reported by Szara in the Journal of Mental Science (now the British Journal of Psychiatry) (1958) "Dimethyltryptamine Experiments with Psychotics", Stephen Szara described how one of his subjects under the influence of DMT had experienced "strange creatures, dwarves or something" at the beginning of a DMT trip.[28][29]
Other researchers of the entities seemingly encountered by DMT users, describe them as "entities" or "beings" in humanoid as well as animal form, with descriptions of "little people" being common (non-human gnomes, elves, imps, etc.).[30] Strassman and others have speculated that this form of hallucination may be the cause of alien abduction and extraterrestrial encounter experiences, which may occur through endogenously-occurring DMT.[31][32]
Likening them to descriptions of rattling and chattering auditory phenomenon described in encounters with the mythical Hayyoth in the Book of Ezekiel, Rick Strassman notes that participants in his studies, when reporting encounters with the alleged entities, have also described loud auditory hallucinations, such as one subject reporting typically "the elves laughing or talking at high volume, chattering, twittering".[24]
I always thought those were called Grimlins. Did old cartoons teach me wrong?
There are a lot of differences between undiscovered animals and fantastical creatures.
Not really, in a substantial number of cases they're synonymous.
Absolutely spot on! Remember when we hadn't discovered Mountain Gorillas? lol, we thought they could totally possess a human and consume their soul. BOY WERE WE WRONG!
Your argument is hilariously bad.
Exalted! Trying to defend the possible existence of fairy creatures with... late discovered mountain gorillas is... ambitious to say the least. LMAO!
You're absolutely right, which is why that's not my argument.
Assuming it's not a capacity thing, and simply a misunderstanding thing, I'd be happy to try and simplify my position for you if you'd like, just ask!
I went with European vampires because I'm happier commenting on things I have some prior knowledge on, unlike the Oriental stuff which I'm less up to speed on. Perhaps try it?
That is a myth. More to the point, a very very recent myth you have fallen for.
In 1985 biochemist David Dolphin proposed that the vampires of folklore may actually have been people suffering from porphyria, a group of rare, largely hereditary blood diseases. According to the Times account of his remarks:
(1) Porphyria victims are extraordinarily sensitive to sunlight. Even mild exposure can cause severe disfigurement. Facial skin may scar, the nose and fingers may fall off, and the lips and gums may become so taut that the teeth project like fangs.
(2) To avoid sunlight, people with serious cases of porphyria go out only at night, just like Dracula.
(3) Today porphyria can be treated with injections of blood products. Centuries ago, porphyria victims might have sought to treat themselves by drinking blood.
(4) Porphyria is inherited, but the symptoms may not manifest themselves until brought on by stress. Suppose a sibling with an active case of the disease bites you to quench his thirst for blood. Très stressful, non? Suddenly your own latent porphyria goes critical and you start growing fangs too.
(5) Garlic contains a chemical that worsens porphyria symptoms, causing sufferers to avoid it. Just like vampires.
Great story, eh? The media, including me, went nuts, and today everybody “knows” that porphyria patients are vampires — to the distress of people who actually have these diseases.
Just one problem. People with porphyria aren’t vampires, and there’s no reason to think that the vampires of folklore had the disease (or existed at all). To respond point by point:
(1) Porphyria comprises seven separate disorders. Skin problems are a fairly common symptom, but only the rarest form — congenital erythropoietic porphyria — causes severe disfigurement. Just 200 cases of this disease have been diagnosed, surely too few to account for the widespread belief in vampires. In any case, alleged vampires exhumed in the 18th century typically weren’t disfigured but appeared as they had in life (except for being dead, of course).
(2) The idea that vampires abhor sunlight was an invention of fiction writers. In Europe during the 18th and 19th centuries, vampires were sometimes reported to have been sighted during the day. Bram Stoker’s Dracula was deathly pale, but folkloric vampires, in the Balkans anyway, were said to be ruddy-faced due to blood consumption.
(3) Porphyria victims don’t crave blood. Drinking blood will not alleviate their symptoms, nor has there ever been a general belief that it would. The blood chemicals porphyria victims need do not survive digestion.
(4) In light of the preceding, the scenario described in point #4 above is unlikely.
(5) No one has proved that garlic worsens porphyria.
Professor Dolphin never published a formal paper describing his theory. When I phoned, he didn’t wish to speak to me and would say only that “it was just speculation” and that “I haven’t worked in this area for many years.”
The practice of trying to match diseases with well-known figures in history or folklore has a long and not entirely reputable history. (Porphyria, for one, has also been blamed for werewolves.) Maybe next time we’ll know better.
Ok, so you've found somebody who has an opinion on somebody else's opinion. I've really no more gas in the tank to keep thrashing this out, there's elements of your source which slightly straw man what I had previously understood. But even taking your source as gospel and incontrovertible, all that means is I've (technically, you) used a bad example. My argument doesn't materially change, which is poorly understood science is often mistaken for the supernatural, and progress inevitably reveals these things to be explainable as our knowledge expands.
In human terms, 1985 is hardly "recent," and in fact, the very same Wiki page you got the links from cites the theory as originating in the 60s. I suppose it's "recent" in relation to when the events in question may have occurred, but in the terms of when humans were in a position to even consider it as a possibility, not really.
Dr Dophin has been known to lecture on the subject as recently as 2007, so he clearly still thinks the idea has merit.
The article you cite claims vampires walked in the day, but then, IIRC so did Stoker's Dracula. Most genetic diseases, in fact any disease in general, has a spectrum of effects, and it still remains possible that in Eastern Europe, a part of the world not necessarily known for its tropical climate, there could have been days, even weeks at a time, where there wasn't strong enough sunlight to pose a sufferer enough discomfort that they couldn't come out in the day if required.
Equally, my understanding wasn't that victims "craved" blood but simply consumed it, animal of course, in an attempt to relieve the anemia that accompanied their other symptoms. Something I find eminently understandable considering the lack of medical knowledge contemporary with the time period.
But, like I say, this doesn't materially alter my argument in the slightest and is at worst a poor example.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Not to mention that the folkloric vampire is likely a compound of many separate beliefs, and pointing to one idea as a perfect solution isn't likely to ever explain any seeds of real world truth in entirety.
Azreal13 wrote: In human terms, 1985 is hardly "recent," and in fact, the very same Wiki page you got the links from cites the theory as originating in the 60s. I suppose it's "recent" in relation to when the events in question may have occurred, but in the terms of when humans were in a position to even consider it as a possibility, not really.
Dr Dophin has been known to lecture on the subject as recently as 2007, so he clearly still thinks the idea has merit.
The article you cite claims vampires walked in the day, but then, IIRC so did Stoker's Dracula. Most genetic diseases, in fact any disease in general, has a spectrum of effects, and it still remains possible that in Eastern Europe, a part of the world not necessarily known for its tropical climate, there could have been days, even weeks at a time, where there wasn't strong enough sunlight to pose a sufferer enough discomfort that they couldn't come out in the day if required.
Equally, my understanding wasn't that victims "craved" blood but simply consumed it, animal of course, in an attempt to relieve the anemia that accompanied their other symptoms. Something I find eminently understandable considering the lack of medical knowledge contemporary with the time period.
But, like I say, this doesn't materially alter my argument in the slightest and is at worst a poor example.
Automatically Appended Next Post: Not to mention that the folkloric vampire is likely a compound of many separate beliefs, and pointing to one idea as a perfect solution isn't likely to ever explain any seeds of real world truth in entirety.
Consuming blood does not help with anemia and the people of the time would have never even considered that a possible solution, considering the lack of medical knowledge of the time. Further more, Stoker's Dracula is where the myth of vampires being allergic to sunlight came about. Which is also a very recent thing.
You said you had read up and were an expert on eastern European vampires but yet, you don't know anything about them. Like how the original folklore is absolutely NOTHING like the modernized myths and urban legends of today.
But yet, you keep using recent myths and legends from books to try to say that it is possible. When we absolutely know that that is where those things came from. It baffles my mind.
It would be like reading Harry Potter and thinking that witches were real.
You said you had read up and were an expert on eastern European vampires
No I didn't, I said I was more familiar with them than oriental ones. Largely because being in western culture that's normally what people consider. Everything else is just you projecting.
I've probably read a little more than your average person, but then if, as you seem to be asserting, that Drs in areas of study that should know far more than me are writing information that's incorrect, then it isn't really surprising if my information is also incorrect. After all, where else is the information coming from.
But then, all you're really doing is aggressively asserting stuff from the wiki, so I'm not so sure you're as well informed as you're trying to portray.
Either way, still doesn't change the material of my argument etc etc..
Dreadwinter wrote: Consuming blood does not help with anemia and the people of the time would have never even considered that a possible solution, considering the lack of medical knowledge of the time.
If we are talking about anemia (lack of iron in the blood that causes fatigue, weaknesses, palid skin and yellow teeth), it was described fairly accurately in term of symptomes in 1500 BC Egypt. During the Middle Ages, it was cured by the consumption of Iron Salts mixed with red wine as it was thought to fortified the blood. It's efficient but caused constipation and stomac pain if taken too often. Anemia and even porpheria weren't unkown and untreated (with varying level of success) diseases. Vampirism as more to do with cruelty and sociopathic/psychopathic behavior then disease. People in the Middle-Ages didn't know or could do much about illnesses for they had no Germ Theory of disease, microscope and systematic recording of medecine (herboristery was mostly a thing passed from oral tradition usually by women), but they weren't seeing magic, spells and goblins everywhere. Remember, in the Middle-Ages, the official position of the Chruch, intellectuals and the social elite was that believing in magic or supernatural creatures like ghosts, witches and others was false and pagan. It was criminal in most kingdoms. In Northern Italy, accusing a women of witchcraft would condamned you to death for bearing false accusation and heresy for belief in pagan gods. The only supernatural creature you could and really should believe in was God and his angels. The existence of demons was accepted, but they were powerless on Earth and couldn't leave hell. The idea of magic and magical monsters was considered a pagan thing, thus false and wrong. You would have to wait for the beginning of hte 16th century and the Reform to see the idea of satanism, demonic possession and witchcraft to emerge and be accepted.
You said you had read up and were an expert on eastern European vampires
No I didn't, I said I was more familiar with them than oriental ones. Largely because being in western culture that's normally what people consider. Everything else is just you projecting.
I've probably read a little more than your average person, but then if, as you seem to be asserting, that Drs in areas of study that should know far more than me are writing information that's incorrect, then it isn't really surprising if my information is also incorrect. After all, where else is the information coming from.
But then, all you're really doing is aggressively asserting stuff from the wiki, so I'm not so sure you're as well informed as you're trying to portray.
Either way, still doesn't change the material of my argument etc etc..
Oh wow, you are going to try to hand wave your way out of this. Nevermind, you keep on thinking there are vampires out there sparkling and stuff. I hear they aren't big fans with the werewolf gang and you should avoid the Malkavians!
On the topic of 'find me one culture in history that didn't believe in the supernatural', I can find you people who think they fight demons in McDonalds bathrooms, that yetis abducted their cattle and that their vision is actually a beam which shoots out from the eyes and returns to them.
People believing a thing does not make it real. In more practical terms we have generations of political, economic and social systems which prove this out. Someone can believe that there's a single perfect way for society to function, and they're proven wrong every single time. We've disregarded hundreds of gods to the trash heap that once had entire civilizations worshiping their name. Why is that a support for your argument?
If you want to make claims about something existing, there has to be a method of quantifying it's existence. If there isn't, we're relying purely on hearsay. And as someone who was well into all this and tried to take a more serious approach to it, oh holy crap is none of it really worth mentioning. 90% of what you read is heavily doctored from whatever the original report was, if there even was one, and that's even before social media and video editing software were half what they are now. I did a lot of digging into folk lore and modern accounts and frankly... there's nothing really there. The patterns people think they find in folk lore to link something from a series of stories into a phenomenon are heavy handed extrapolations rarely supported by their sources. From there those packaged pieces of nothing disseminate into a real credulous community which promptly starts reporting more of that exact thing happening, but there's this one cool thing that makes their encounter really special.
It's purely an economy of belief, you saw the thing I did, so I believe that thing you're talking about since you're clearly credible.
Yeah, no, discounting the clear copycats very little hold together under scrutiny. Though some of it's amazing fiction to read. The one about bigfoots invading their farm from the UFOs was stunning, be blind luck if I can ever find it again though. There's also an entire thing about if the plural of bigfoot is bigfeet or bigfoots, which was great.
You said you had read up and were an expert on eastern European vampires
No I didn't, I said I was more familiar with them than oriental ones. Largely because being in western culture that's normally what people consider. Everything else is just you projecting.
I've probably read a little more than your average person, but then if, as you seem to be asserting, that Drs in areas of study that should know far more than me are writing information that's incorrect, then it isn't really surprising if my information is also incorrect. After all, where else is the information coming from.
But then, all you're really doing is aggressively asserting stuff from the wiki, so I'm not so sure you're as well informed as you're trying to portray.
Either way, still doesn't change the material of my argument etc etc..
Oh wow, you are going to try to hand wave your way out of this. Nevermind, you keep on thinking there are vampires out there sparkling and stuff. I hear they aren't big fans with the werewolf gang and you should avoid the Malkavians!
When you're reducing somebody's argument to straw men it's probably best to just stop.
One last time, a critical approach does not use “certain” terms to dismiss possibilities.
The moment a statement is essentially, “Supernatural Phenomenon don’t exist.” The statement can be believed by the stated, but the statement is dogmatic. It can’t be proven.
A statement that is essentially, “Supernatural Phenomenon do exist.” Can be believed by the stater, but thus far proving the statement to a non-believer is unsupported by repeatable Empirical evidence. Thus, such claims are tennuous at best.
A statement that is essentially, “Supernatural Phenomenon probably don’t exist based on a lack of existing evidence, but it is possible that *convincing* evidence may be found in the future.” Is a critical, logical approach. It acknowledges that no *positive* evidence is present, but that *negative* evidence can’t be obtained so the possibility exists.
Any manner of experiment could be proposed to find “whatever” Supernatural Phenomenon that fails. Hypotheses are presented and found unprovable or incorrect all the time. For example, *Supernatural Force* may not be discovered as yet. I have no reason to believe it exists, but outside of people more learned than I asserting that atomic and much more sub-atomic particles exist, I have no direct *personal* experience with them to know that they do. That the science of chemistry and Physics seem to work (mostly?) I believe they probably do exist... but before they were discovered the idea would have seemed crazy. The measuring tools of the time couldn’t measure atoms, or electrons, or anything of that nature. The existence of atoms and molecules was at one time unprovable due to lack of accurate observation tools.
Good will to you all. I hope you approach life open to the infinite possibilities of the Universe!
You said you had read up and were an expert on eastern European vampires
No I didn't, I said I was more familiar with them than oriental ones. Largely because being in western culture that's normally what people consider. Everything else is just you projecting.
I've probably read a little more than your average person, but then if, as you seem to be asserting, that Drs in areas of study that should know far more than me are writing information that's incorrect, then it isn't really surprising if my information is also incorrect. After all, where else is the information coming from.
But then, all you're really doing is aggressively asserting stuff from the wiki, so I'm not so sure you're as well informed as you're trying to portray.
Either way, still doesn't change the material of my argument etc etc..
Oh wow, you are going to try to hand wave your way out of this. Nevermind, you keep on thinking there are vampires out there sparkling and stuff. I hear they aren't big fans with the werewolf gang and you should avoid the Malkavians!
When you're reducing somebody's argument to straw men it's probably best to just stop.
You mean when somebody disproves your theory as a modern hoax you fell for and you still believe it? Sure.
I'm really out of gas on this one. Just cannot argue any more about it. I'll see you for a response in 20 minutes!
Mind you, as the ancient Greeks believed vampires to be intolerant of sunlight (Ambrogio,) I'm not sure you know what "modern" means either.
You appear incapable of taking new information on board, despite my best attempts, unless it agrees with what you've already decided and so I doubt this will prompt any reasonable discussion, you'll just shout "but wrong" and somehow feel you've won what can only be speculation..
Mind you, as the ancient Greeks believed vampires to be intolerant of sunlight (Ambrogio,) I'm not sure you know what "modern" means either.
You appear incapable of taking new information on board, despite my best attempts, unless it agrees with what you've already decided and so I doubt this will prompt any reasonable discussion, you'll just shout "but wrong" and somehow feel you've won what can only be speculation..
Modern - 1. relating to the present or recent times as opposed to the remote past. (Because it is modern)
Hoax - 1. a humorous or malicious deception. (Because saying people with Porphyria is a malicious deception)
Greeks - Greeks did not believe in Undead Vampires. So I am not sure wtf you are talking about. Can you give me some information on that? Because everything I know says that they had some vampire like creatures in their mythology/lore, but nothing like what we consider them today.
Please make sure to keep the discussion civil and on topic, sniping at each other does not aid the conversation and will get the thread locked.
Thanks,
ingtaer
It is kind of silly to have two threads for the same subject anyways. I am still not entirely sure why they were split up. The same conversation is going on in both, but with different people.
greatbigtree wrote: A statement that is essentially, “Supernatural Phenomenon probably don’t exist based on a lack of existing evidence, but it is possible that *convincing* evidence may be found in the future.” Is a critical, logical approach. It acknowledges that no *positive* evidence is present, but that *negative* evidence can’t be obtained so the possibility exists.
This can varry depending on the supernatural phenomenon we are talking about. If I want to posit the existence of other planes of existence beyond our observable univers, this is indeed possible, but probably impossible to prove or disprove. If I want to posit that 300 meter long dragons exists, then it's perfectly possible to prove or disprove the existence of such a creature. It depends on the extent and the type of supernatural claim. If I claim psychic powers giving me the ability to read minds or move object without touching them, we could easily disprove such claim by submitting me to a battery of tests like it was done for several psychics and medium (all failed of course).
Dreadwinter wrote: It is kind of silly to have two threads for the same subject anyways. I am still not entirely sure why they were split up. The same conversation is going on in both, but with different people.
Because the stories thread was declared to be a hugbox where skepticism is not permitted. I'm not sure why the people ignoring the mod warning not to question the stories people are telling have not been dealt with.
Automatically Appended Next Post:
greatbigtree wrote: One last time, a critical approach does not use “certain” terms to dismiss possibilities.
The moment a statement is essentially, “Supernatural Phenomenon don’t exist.” The statement can be believed by the stated, but the statement is dogmatic. It can’t be proven.
A statement that is essentially, “Supernatural Phenomenon do exist.” Can be believed by the stater, but thus far proving the statement to a non-believer is unsupported by repeatable Empirical evidence. Thus, such claims are tennuous at best.
A statement that is essentially, “Supernatural Phenomenon probably don’t exist based on a lack of existing evidence, but it is possible that *convincing* evidence may be found in the future.” Is a critical, logical approach. It acknowledges that no *positive* evidence is present, but that *negative* evidence can’t be obtained so the possibility exists.
That's a pretty ridiculous standard of evidence, and one that you don't use anywhere else in life. You don't say "I think probably didn't have a waffle for breakfast today, based on a lack of existing evidence that I have any memory of eating it or even own a waffle maker, but it's possible that convincing evidence could be found in the future". You acknowledge that the chance of the position being wrong is so incredibly unlikely that there's no reason to take it seriously, and you approximate it as "I didn't have a waffle for breakfast today". We all know there's no point in getting bogged down in disclaimers about how every single belief we hold could theoretically be proved wrong at some unknown point in the future, and we only talk about uncertainty when there's a non-trivial level of doubt
Same thing with supernatural stuff. There isn't even the slightest bit of credible evidence for it, the claims seem to violate well understood laws of physics, and there's no reason to believe that there's any meaningful chance that this state of evidence is going to change in the foreseeable future. So we ignore the 0.000000000000000000000000000000000000000000001% chance that we might be wrong about saying no and simplify it to "no such thing exists".
Mind you, as the ancient Greeks believed vampires to be intolerant of sunlight (Ambrogio,) I'm not sure you know what "modern" means either.
You appear incapable of taking new information on board, despite my best attempts, unless it agrees with what you've already decided and so I doubt this will prompt any reasonable discussion, you'll just shout "but wrong" and somehow feel you've won what can only be speculation..
Modern - 1. relating to the present or recent times as opposed to the remote past. (Because it is modern)
Hoax - 1. a humorous or malicious deception. (Because saying people with Porphyria is a malicious deception)
Greeks - Greeks did not believe in Undead Vampires. So I am not sure wtf you are talking about. Can you give me some information on that? Because everything I know says that they had some vampire like creatures in their mythology/lore, but nothing like what we consider them today.
I patiently await your next hand wave motion.
Hmmm.... now I can't recall any malevolent Greek vampires, but they did believe very strongly in bloodthirsty ghosts. I'm thinking of Tiresias the Blind Prophet, who Odyssey attracted with sheep's blood. It seemed to work on all ghosts in the Underworld, although none of them were capable of hunting the living for it. I know what I'll be researching tomorrow! I love the little tangents that pop up in these threads.
Peregrine wrote: That's a pretty ridiculous standard of evidence, and one that you don't use anywhere else in life. You don't say "I think probably didn't have a waffle for breakfast today, based on a lack of existing evidence that I have any memory of eating it or even own a waffle maker, but it's possible that convincing evidence could be found in the future". You acknowledge that the chance of the position being wrong is so incredibly unlikely that there's no reason to take it seriously, and you approximate it as "I didn't have a waffle for breakfast today". We all know there's no point in getting bogged down in disclaimers about how every single belief we hold could theoretically be proved wrong at some unknown point in the future, and we only talk about uncertainty when there's a non-trivial level of doubt
The difference between the waffles and ghosts is that excluding any memory issues your experience alone is sufficient to say whether or not you had waffles. Barring personal experience ghosts, like most other things, requires some belief in an external source of information.
It's the difference between knowing Paris is a city in France because you've read about it, vs knowing Paris is a city in France because you've been there. Of course "Paris is a city in France" isn't a contentious statement even to those who haven't been there, because it's an easily testable hypothesis, so not really comparable to the supernatural.
Something more comparable might be saying "There's an undiscovered ancient city in the India". It might be true, it might not be true, it's not exactly an easy hypothesis to test. Even if you search high and low and don't find any evidence, it wouldn't be conclusive, maybe you just didn't look under the right rock.
Peregrine wrote: That's a pretty ridiculous standard of evidence, and one that you don't use anywhere else in life. You don't say "I think probably didn't have a waffle for breakfast today, based on a lack of existing evidence that I have any memory of eating it or even own a waffle maker, but it's possible that convincing evidence could be found in the future". You acknowledge that the chance of the position being wrong is so incredibly unlikely that there's no reason to take it seriously, and you approximate it as "I didn't have a waffle for breakfast today". We all know there's no point in getting bogged down in disclaimers about how every single belief we hold could theoretically be proved wrong at some unknown point in the future, and we only talk about uncertainty when there's a non-trivial level of doubt
The difference between the waffles and ghosts is that excluding any memory issues your experience alone is sufficient to say whether or not you had waffles. Barring personal experience ghosts, like most other things, requires some belief in an external source of information.
It's the difference between knowing Paris is a city in France because you've read about it, vs knowing Paris is a city in France because you've been there. Of course "Paris is a city in France" isn't a contentious statement even to those who haven't been there, because it's an easily testable hypothesis, so not really comparable to the supernatural.
Something more comparable might be saying "There's an undiscovered ancient city in the India". It might be true, it might not be true, it's not exactly an easy hypothesis to test. Even if you search high and low and don't find any evidence, it wouldn't be conclusive, maybe you just didn't look under the right rock.
Except that there is nothing in the claim "There's an undiscovered ancient city in India" that contradicts fundamental and well-evidenced aspects of physics. Something much more comparable would be me claiming there's an individual living in the wilds of India who can fly at supersonic speeds using the power of super-flatulence. You could go there and search high and low and not find any direct, personally-observed evidence to the contrary, but there's also no need to do any of that because it's not biologically possible for a human to fly by farting really hard.
Supernatural claims will deserve to be taken seriously the moment they can produce a reasoned, testable hypothesis that describes how the claim they're making actually functions within the context of existing observable facts about reality(or which explains how, exactly, they can violate said observed facts, or how those observed facts actually don't contradict their claims), and that hypothesis is demonstrated to be valid by experimentation according to the scientific method.
Until then, they are as credible(and as deserving of any serious intellectual inquiry) as Flatulent Indian Superman.
The line gets super blurry. Sure, you can say if you had waffles today. What about the day before? Before that?
Memory is all kinds of unreliable. We know this from decades of psychological testing, not to mention hundreds of wrongly convicted defendants!
I've given plenty of official statements, and I'm shocked by what I can't 100% recall. Names, dates. Did I have a conversation, or didn't I?
I don't openly question every story I hear, but very little is exactly as people report. Conciously or subconsciously, everything we say is tweaked, massaged, and changed.
One of the most common defenses about a lot of paranormal activity is that so many people have witnessed it, it seems hard to categorically refute. Of course, the more time you spend comparing people's own witness statements with any sort of objective reality, you realize that if not liars, people are certainly creative story tellers.
There’s also how the same phenomena have been reported in different ages.
Whilst neither is likely to be quite as reported, stories of UFO abductions, and Faerie abductions are remarkably similar, despite being separated by decades, if not centuries.
So it seems safe to say it wasn’t ET or Pictisies behind, there’s clearly some kind of psychological phenomena at play. What? I dunno. But there’s something behind it that is worth a scientific investigation, no?
Sleep paralysis accounts for a lot of the aspects in those stories where someone is ‘pinned to the bed by invisible means and unable to move while aliens come in their room’. Today it’s UFOs, years ago black magic, but as frightening as it is to experience when you’re in a state of semi awakeness and being very suggestible to lights outside he window and unusual sounds, it’s not that uncommon and the explanation mundane.
AllSeeingSkink wrote: The difference between the waffles and ghosts is that excluding any memory issues your experience alone is sufficient to say whether or not you had waffles.
Except it isn't sufficient at all. How do you know that you weren't a victim of the Big Pancake conspiracy's mind control devices, fooled into thinking that the waffle on your plate was actually a pancake so that you'd buy more pancakes instead of waffles? How do you know that there wasn't a tiny waffle hidden in your bowl of cereal? What does a "waffle" even mean, on a spiritual level? These questions may seem absurd, but that's the kind of stuff that you have to resort to in defending supernatural claims. The difference is that, in the case of your breakfast food, everyone discards those ridiculous theories but when it comes to supernatural stories* they want to believe in some people suddenly discover this extreme need to "consider all of the possibilities".
*Or in the case of religion, 9/11 conspiracies, etc. When it's someone's pet theory we're talking about the standards of evidence used in every other situation disappear.
Something more comparable might be saying "There's an undiscovered ancient city in the India". It might be true, it might not be true, it's not exactly an easy hypothesis to test. Even if you search high and low and don't find any evidence, it wouldn't be conclusive, maybe you just didn't look under the right rock.
That's a very relevant comparison, but it leads to the opposite conclusion from yours. An ancient city was a semi-plausible theory 1000 years ago when there was lots of unexplored territory and even drawing an accurate map of a large area was extremely difficult, it isn't very plausible in the age of mapping satellites covering every square inch of terrain. At some point you have to conclude that yes, we've searched everywhere that this hypothetical city could be and the only defenses of the theory start getting far into absurdity. Even though there's a 0.00000000000000000000000000001% chance we could somehow be wrong we don't hesitate to approximate the answer as "no such city exists".
Guess that's why we're not discovering new stuff in South America. Except of course we are. Whether it's entirely new, or evidence that stuff we know about was far more extensive that first thought.
As technology advances, so does our ability to find stuff. If memory serves, LIDAR was a major one, as it meant dense canopy coverage wasn't a problem.
And as I said in the other thread, I'm very much of a Fortean bent when it comes to this sort of thing. Take Cryptozoology. Some are ultimately proven real (though none of any note recently). Others are reasonably explained as misinterpreting evidence (Centaurs are thought to have been people seeing cavalry for the first time. That sort of thing). That the creature itself probably doesn't exist, I still find the investigation and findings thereof utterly fascinating.
Something more comparable might be saying "There's an undiscovered ancient city in the India". It might be true, it might not be true, it's not exactly an easy hypothesis to test. Even if you search high and low and don't find any evidence, it wouldn't be conclusive, maybe you just didn't look under the right rock.
That's a very relevant comparison, but it leads to the opposite conclusion from yours. An ancient city was a semi-plausible theory 1000 years ago when there was lots of unexplored territory and even drawing an accurate map of a large area was extremely difficult, it isn't very plausible in the age of mapping satellites covering every square inch of terrain. At some point you have to conclude that yes, we've searched everywhere that this hypothetical city could be and the only defenses of the theory start getting far into absurdity. Even though there's a 0.00000000000000000000000000001% chance we could somehow be wrong we don't hesitate to approximate the answer as "no such city exists".
We found Durrington Walls in 2004. That's a new settlement in Dorset, the most heavily archaeologically researched place in the UK and one of the top few on the planet. We've found several dozen new settlements, some of them very major ones, in Kurdistan in the last four or five years. We're finding new ones constantly in the wider Near East.
That doesn't mean very much in the search for unexplained, fantastical phenomena, mind. We know about cities and they don't defy physics. It's not a relevant comparison at all.
Mad Doc Grotsnik wrote:Take Cryptozoology. Some are ultimately proven real (though none of any note recently). Others are reasonably explained as misinterpreting evidence (Centaurs are thought to have been people seeing cavalry for the first time. That sort of thing).
Who hypothesises this? Sounds like very old-fashioned 'ancient people were really stupid and had to explain anything new by defaulting to magic' thinking.
Well, it all depends on when the legend of Centaurs first began. For a primitive society to suddenly see foes on Horseback, you've got the culture shock. And given how effective even rudimentary cavalry is, the origin could well be a shellshocked group of survivors, and stuff getting lost in translation.
Point I'm trying to make is that the rational, historical and scientific disproving of a given reported phenomenon is often just as interesting as the slim chance it might be for real.
Automatically Appended Next Post: It's also very interesting to see how legends and that develop overtime, and how widespread certain things can become.
Take Vampires, and Dragons. Both very common tropes across the world. None quite identical.
Now, within Europe that's likely down to known history and how the peoples moved around. Starts in one place, and as those peoples spread out, the legend travelled with them, and slowly changed (or even quickly changed. Look at how Christianity subsumed parts of other religions to better sell itself). Then there's European Dragons being very different to Oriental Dragons.
Take Cyclops. It's now thought to have originated from people seeing Mammoth skulls.
Bit wot the trunk plugged into being misconstrued as a single eye socket. Becomes a monstrous, one eyed creature.
Chimera? Well, and this is me speculating, could be the result of a cave filled with skeletal remains. All jumbled up, looking like a single beasty, rather than separate ones.
Something I'd be very interested in reading is a history of Vampire mythology. Not just tracing it back to it's origins, but tracing a sort of 'family tree' of local adaptations back to the source. Not because I think for one second Vampires are or ever were real, but because it fascinates me in terms of a history of human culture.
Yeah, this really is very out of date thinking. There's a lot of work on origins of myth and mythological creatures, and virtually no modern scholarship entertains much in the way of 'people saw this thing that looks a bit like X'. It's not unlike kling-klang etymology - it just doesn't really stand up to scrutiny.
Ancient people didn't have the same access to shared information as we do, but they weren't bumbling idiots that constantly jumped to look-a-like conclusions.
I entirely agree that the origins of ideas that don't bear scientific study are fascinating, though. I work on archaeological approaches to ancient perceptions of the divine!
nfe wrote: Yeah, this really is very out of date thinking. There's a lot of work on origins of myth and mythological creatures, and virtually no modern scholarship entertains much in the way of 'people saw this thing that looks a bit like X'. It's not unlike kling-klang etymology - it just doesn't really stand up to scrutiny.
Ancient people didn't have the same access to shared information as we do, but they weren't bumbling idiots that constantly jumped to look-a-like conclusions.
I entirely agree that the origins of ideas that don't bear scientific study are fascinating, though. I work on archaeological approaches to ancient perceptions of the divine!
Perhaps not from first hand sightings. But scattered survivors struggling to communicate? It's possible! And I'd still love to read any dissertation or paper supporting or scotching that theory It's all food for my brain-bin of useless information!
nfe wrote: Yeah, this really is very out of date thinking. There's a lot of work on origins of myth and mythological creatures, and virtually no modern scholarship entertains much in the way of 'people saw this thing that looks a bit like X'. It's not unlike kling-klang etymology - it just doesn't really stand up to scrutiny.
Ancient people didn't have the same access to shared information as we do, but they weren't bumbling idiots that constantly jumped to look-a-like conclusions.
I entirely agree that the origins of ideas that don't bear scientific study are fascinating, though. I work on archaeological approaches to ancient perceptions of the divine!
Perhaps not from first hand sightings. But scattered survivors struggling to communicate? It's possible! And I'd still love to read any dissertation or paper supporting or scotching that theory It's all food for my brain-bin of useless information!
Read any paper involving modern studies of mythologies then.
I certainly do believe in the existence of spirits of various types, and have had experiences of the supernatural via the charismatic church.
Do ghosts exist? Jesus mentions them, which is enough for me. Not met any though or know of anyone with credible sightings.
As for angels and demons, not met the former consciously, though I know more than one person who has, for the latter have had two experiences of the demonic. The first doesn't count as it was in a dream, but second certainly does. I saw the demon in church on the shoulder of someone in the congregation who had terminal leukemia. When it realised I could see it, it left the building extremely quickly.
Yes I do believe in spirits and have encountered them myself and know others who have. Its very common in ministry circles.
My contribution to this thread is unavoidably religious, but then so was the OP frankly. No disrepect to Peregrine here, he opened the discussion politely and from his paradigm. Scepticism is a fair contribution. However any discussion of the supernatural which only allows atheistic commentary is pointlessly one sided. Most supernatural encounters are religious in nature and one can use 'critical thinking' from either perspective. This thread is seven pages in and the mods have done nothing; so fair enough, if one religious perspective - the atheistic - is permitted, the non-atheist perspectives should be aired also at least to some extent.
If needs be we can leave it as a +1 vote for belief in the existence of the supernatural, specifically to answer the question: Do spirits wander the earth?, with the stated justification for the being "past religious experiences".
As for angels and demons, not met the former consciously, though I know more than one person who has, for the latter have had two experiences of the demonic. The first doesn't count as it was in a dream, but second certainly does. I saw the demon in church on the shoulder of someone in the congregation who had terminal leukemia. When it realised I could see it, it left the building extremely quickly.
Did anyone else see this "demon" sitting on the shoulder of somebody? Could you describe the demon to us or possibly provide a sketch? If the demon exists and so does the sky fairy, why does the sky fairy allow the demon to live despite his absolute power? Moreover, why does the sky fairy do nothing to help the poor woman with leukemia?
This thread is not going to become a discussion of religion. It is no more inescapably religious than a thread about the Loch Ness Monster. Anyone who cannot control themselves and avoid posting about religion here should be advised to voluntarily cease posting ITT else it will be become an involuntary matter.
Orlanth wrote: Yes I do believe in spirits and have encountered them myself and know others who have. Its very common in ministry circles.
I wouldn't have thought so. For the longest time, and it's still the case officially, the largest christian denominations (catholics, anglicans and orthodox) rejected the existence of ghosts. It also used to be heresy to believe in such spirits and try to communicate with them.
The problem with personnal witnessing of demons, angels and ghosts is that the sightings are pretty much always consistent with the cultural image of such creatures. Christians see typical representation of angels and demons and typical depiction of ghosts too. Hindu see hindu ghosts (which are more akin to our zombies for example) and hindu demons which are easy to recognise from christian ones. If the appearence of those creatures were consistent around the world from their earliest writtings and representations to today's ones, then maybe we could start to wonder if there is indeed such a creature, but it's not the case. It's also surprising that considering there is about twice more dead people than living ones that there is so little ghost sightings.
Remember mythology was spread by word of mouth (Joesph Campbell makes this point quite often in his books). Speakers would generally misconstrue things over time. Like the Nuckelavee skinless centaur creatures that chased down people and raided villages... Sort of like the I don't know the people who brought down the Roman Empire?
Creatures from our own world inspire myths about them and natural event that a human could not understand would be rationalized as something else entirely, someone tells someone about that event and then it changes over time degrading its meaning and what actually happened. A star in the sky birghtly glowing the sky maybe a comet or possibly a star exploding in space. We don't know.
Word of mouth and most myths are essentially a giant game of telephone.
As is any case 'of possessions' or daemonic events. Miscontruded events that could be easily explained as: A psychotic episode, someone breaking because of extraneous circumstances etc.
Trauma and PTSD also cause people to misremember things and create events for themselves which never really happened.
The Idea of 'ghosts' is one i've always found interesting because it would mean that humans would have some sort of leaving behind 'effect' in most these cases I think it is mostly projection. People project their emotions onto things, their expectations and their own mind creating those circumstances. (Which your brain does to adjust)
I've always quite liked the "geological tape recorder" theory. I.E the idea that a specific arrangement of rocks (or something else) creates a magnetic (or some other) field that can be imprinted in a similar way to ferrous tape.
It answers the questions of how apparitions disappear, the recording simply reaches the edge of the area that meets the specific requirements needed, and why they're apparently so rare - it may take a specific set of conditions to make an imprint and an equally specific, and perhaps different, set of conditions to prompt "playback."
There's a lot of slack in the concept, but it does neatly address the idea of apparitions in a scientifically plausible way, even if it's based in as yet little understood or unknown science.
Azreal13 wrote: I've always quite liked the "geological tape recorder" theory. I.E the idea that a specific arrangement of rocks (or something else) creates a magnetic (or some other) field that can be imprinted in a similar way to ferrous tape.
It answers the questions of how apparitions disappear, the recording simply reaches the edge of the area that meets the specific requirements needed, and why they're apparently so rare - it may take a specific set of conditions to make an imprint and an equally specific, and perhaps different, set of conditions to prompt "playback."
There's a lot of slack in the concept, but it does neatly address the idea of apparitions in a scientifically plausible way, even if it's based in as yet little understood or unknown science.
Azreal13 wrote: I've always quite liked the "geological tape recorder" theory. I.E the idea that a specific arrangement of rocks (or something else) creates a magnetic (or some other) field that can be imprinted in a similar way to ferrous tape.
It answers the questions of how apparitions disappear, the recording simply reaches the edge of the area that meets the specific requirements needed, and why they're apparently so rare - it may take a specific set of conditions to make an imprint and an equally specific, and perhaps different, set of conditions to prompt "playback."
There's a lot of slack in the concept, but it does neatly address the idea of apparitions in a scientifically plausible way, even if it's based in as yet little understood or unknown science.
If such was the case, apparitions would be stable, predictable and recordable in ''haunted place''. It seldom seem to be the case. Plus, in all the most famous ''haunted places'' that have been investigated, all were either found to be hoaxes or have failed to produce any sort of evidence that matches the description of its most famous apparitions (think of how many time people simply finds a weird shadow that promptly disapeer if it even was there and not a trick of the eye, or have the ''sensation of being observed'', all fairly mundane phenomenon easily explained by fatigue and low consciousness, vs the story of fully formed ghosts with visible features doing impressive things like flinging objects and screaming loudly). That explanation appears to me extremely weak.
Im sure if the specific conditions needed were understood then, were the theory correct, those conditions could be recreated and the apparitions would be predictable.
But to continue the analogy further, if I handed you a cassette tape, which was pre recorded so had stable and predictable music that could be played back at any time, but you had no concept of what a cassette tape was or how it worked, how would you listen to it?
Or would you simply declare that there wasn't music because you couldn't hear it?
Azreal13 wrote: But to continue the analogy further, if I handed you a cassette tape, which was pre recorded so had stable and predictable music that could be played back at any time, but you had no concept of what a cassette tape was or how it worked, how would you listen to it?
Is the cassette playing? If it's playing, I can say there is music. I could record it using another method (should there be one) and I could invite people to listen to the music all of them would hear the same thing in a consistent and predictable fashion. Ghost stories are varied, inconsistent and people have various visions and interpretation. They are also impossible to record
Or would you simply declare that there wasn't music because you couldn't hear it?
There is functionnaly no difference between music you can't hear and detect and silence. You have designed what Carl Sagan would have called a ''Garage Dragon'', a thing whose description makes it basically unexistent.
epronovost wrote: There is functionnaly no difference between music you can't hear and detect and silence.
That’s not true at all. There are plenty of phenomenon that at some point could not be detected because of the insufficient capacity of then-available instruments.
As for the tape casette metaphor, it seems to me that the real question is what gets recognized as music. What is getting identified by some as “ghosts” may literally be invisible to others, just as someone might hear “music” in white noise.
Re: silent music: remember that we're talking about things that can be observed. Many, if not most, of the claims of ghosts involve a person directly observing the supposed ghost. They see a human-like figure where there shouldn't be one, hear a voice, etc. We've even had plenty of claims to have photographed a ghost. The lack of evidence isn't because the experience is some kind of difficult concept that the skeptics are unable to grasp and don't have appropriate instruments to capture, it's because when people do set up the appropriate instruments based on the claims that are made nothing shows up.
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Manchu wrote: What is getting identified by some as “ghosts” may literally be invisible to others, just as someone might hear “music” in white noise.
This is not a theory that matches the claimed experiences. People aren't claiming to have seen an abstract pattern of light and shadows that they interpret as a ghost, they're claiming to have seen an obvious human figure. And, in some cases, to have photographed it! We can look at those photographs and see that there is something in it that we can all agree is the supposed ghost. When people express skepticism they aren't failing to agree on which pixels of the image are being discussed, they're seeing the object and doubting that it is a ghost (whether because they think it's photoshopped, it doesn't really look like a person, etc).
While I do think the main issue is that what people mean by “ghost” is inherently not suited to a materialist account of reality, what I mean regarding the musical metaphor is that whatever Witness X has experienced and interpreted as a “ghost” might simultaneously be experienced by Witness Y, as in the latter was standing right next to the former at the moment in question, and yet Witness Y neither saw nor heard nor smelled nor felt anything at all. There is an indispensible subjectivity through which each of us experiences the world. Beyond that, there is also the noospheric nature of our experience of the world. No one in the course of daily life “experiences” an atom other than as a matter of abstract understanding, yet no one doubts their existence. The world of words (which is to say, the world as processed through language) is the one we actually live in, as opposed to the world itself. We have to consider whether we arr disagreeing about a natural phenomenon or about the way in which we might understand a natural phenomenon (sound versus music).
Manchu wrote: There are plenty of phenomenon that at some point could not be detected because of the insufficient capacity of then-available instruments.
Those phenomenon that couldn't be detected couldn't be said to exist. They could be theorised or hypothetised, but they didn't ''exist'' until they were detected. Saying anything else then that would have been ridiculous.
Ghost aren't even in this category. Hauntings are people ''detecting'' something. The only question is detecting what? Is it an overactive imagination making them see something where there is nothing? Is it sleep paralysis? Is it the affect of lower brain activity due to fatigue or people about to fall asleep? Is it an optic illusion? Is it a false memory caused by bad schematic memory? Is it a rarely experienced natural phenomenon like will-o-wisps or St-Elmo fire? Is it people playing a prank on you? Were you drugged, drunk or feverish? Are you simply insane? Is it a combination of the above? etc. Nobody is saying ''You haven't experienced anything''. Some people say ''what you experienced is the spectral presence of the mind of a dead person'' and other would say that this explanation is nonesense.
Azreal13 wrote: But to continue the analogy further, if I handed you a cassette tape, which was pre recorded so had stable and predictable music that could be played back at any time, but you had no concept of what a cassette tape was or how it worked, how would you listen to it?
Is the cassette playing? If it's playing, I can say there is music.
No, it's not playing. My analogy was perhaps imperfect, but my point was that the presence of a recording is irrelevant if you don't understand how to access it. Once you understand how to access it, then you can play it whenever and wherever you like. What the analogy doesn't really address is the apparent ability for the cassette to play under certain circumstances, irrespective of any understanding how.
I could record it using another method (should there be one) and I could invite people to listen to the music all of them would hear the same thing in a consistent and predictable fashion.
There isn't another method that you can utilize. Your option is to try and understand how cassette recordings work. Once you've cracked it though, everyone can hear it whenever you play it.
Ghost stories are varied, inconsistent and people have various visions and interpretation. They are also impossible to record
Disagree on both points. Ghosts broadly drop into three categories, apparition, manipulation (objects moving) and noises. None of those things are impossible to record, and in fact many claim to have done so, simply not to the standard sufficient for people who don't already believe to change their minds, even when they've apparently defied explanation by conventional means. I'm not suggesting that geological impressions are a catch all, but they're a possibility for apparitions.
Or would you simply declare that there wasn't music because you couldn't hear it?
There is functionnaly no difference between music you can't hear and detect and silence. You have designed what Carl Sagan would have called a ''Garage Dragon'', a thing whose description makes it basically unexistent.
As has already been touched on, sound you cannot hear is not the same as absence of sound. While as an observer they may appear similar, they are not.
In fact, infra sound is a very solid theory for the concept that places "feel" spooky, another aspect of hauntings which I omitted earlier.
Except, again, that's not what is happening here. The skeptics aren't just saying "we agree that there is sound, but I disagree that it's music", they're setting up the sound recording instruments and getting nothing at all. Or, in the case of the supposed photo of a ghost that was posted recently, everyone who looks at that picture agrees on which pixels are the "ghost". The disagreement is that the "ghosts" only show up in pictures provided by people with no formal system of accountability or data preservation to keep them from photoshopping in a ghost, when you take away the opportunity to falsify data the "ghost" images also disappear.
I take your point, Peregrine. Certainly what you’re describing is one part of the debate. But it’s not the only part nor the more significant part. The vast majority of alleged ghost encounters do not entail photographic records much less all the crank tech we talked about on page one ITT. I daresay most people who think they have encountered a ghost don’t care whether there are any instruments capable of registering the material reality of their experience. So really the main issue is going to be perception rather than proof. But then again, as I have explained, I don’t see any basis for the notion of asking for proof of the existence of ghosts, a demand which assumes that ghosts (a concept inadmissable to materialism) are really the “thing in question” to begin with.
Peregrine wrote: ...when you take away the opportunity to falsify data the "ghost" images also disappear.
Yep, I'm of the "James Randi" school of thought when it comes to paranormal phenomena. If your results conveniently dry up whenever you're restricted to a scientific methodology which you can't stack in your favor, then you never had any results in the first place.
Azreal13 wrote: Disagree on both points. Ghosts broadly drop into three categories, apparition, manipulation (objects moving) and noises. None of those things are impossible to record, and in fact many claim to have done so, simply not to the standard sufficient for people who don't already believe to change their minds, even when they've apparently defied explanation by conventional means. I'm not suggesting that geological impressions are a catch all, but they're a possibility for apparitions.
Those categories are immensely broad. Many people report hearing the voice of persons, but at best we have managed to record some white noise and interference caused by the equipment itself that could sound like a voice or someone speeking if you really want it to sound like someone talking. People have reported clearly seeing full manifestation of ghost people, but all ''photographic evidence'' are either hoaxes or very minor blotch of light and shadow easily explained by optics, film defect, bug on the lenses, etc. Manipulation of object vary from stuff flying around for extensive period of time to just light object falling from precarious perch. When you think about it, we never recorded any of the more ''spectacular'' form of haunting those were fully formed and clearly visible ghost manifest themselves and objects start flying around, but we do have a mountain of little things that can be explained relatively easily by fairly mundane phenomenon associate with good old human tendencies to see patterns where there are none and for exageration.
Azreal13 wrote: Or they're setting up sound recording instruments when the music's being broadcast on the radio. Or transmitted using light.
Except, again, that's not what people are claiming. They're saying "I heard music with my ears", which means however the music is being transmitted it's eventually being converted into sound waves that hit their ears. And those sound waves can hit a microphone.
Sound waves do not necessarily have anything to do with a claim to “hear music.”
Yes, I understand that the witness isn’t using the phrase euphemistically, or rather doesn’t understand herself to be using the phrase euphemistically. Even so, the witness may be speaking literally about an experience that doesn’t match the literal meaning of the words she is using to describe it
Manchu wrote: I take your point, Peregrine. Certainly what you’re describing is one part of the debate. But it’s not the only part nor the more significant part. The vast majority of alleged ghost encounters do not entail photographic records much less all the crank tech we talked about on page one ITT. I daresay most people who think they have encountered a ghost don’t care whether there are any instruments capable of registering the material reality of their experience. So really the main issue is going to be perception rather than proof. But then again, as I have explained, I don’t see any basis for the notion of asking for proof of the existence of ghosts, a demand which assumes that ghosts (a concept inadmissable to materialism) are really the “thing in question” to begin with.
They don't involve photographic records, but they still involve people claiming to experience something with their usual senses. Even if they didn't have a camera available to take a picture they're still claiming that they saw a human figure that could have been photographed, not some abstract pattern of light and shadow that they choose to interpret as a metaphor for a dead family member. Even if they don't have a force measuring setup attached to their body they're still claiming that something moved their physical body and pushed them down the stairs, not that they had a spiritual experience involving the "body" of their sense of self being pushed down philosophical stairs representing the challenges of life. The claims regularly involve the sort of objects and events in the physical world that could be recorded, it just happens to be the case that when you have skeptics with good scientific procedures and protections against falsifying data the "ghosts" never appear.
Manchu wrote: Sound waves do not necessarily have anything to do with a claim to “hear music.”
Yes, I understand that the witness isn’t using the phrase euphemistically, or rather doesn’t understand herself to be using the phrase euphemistically. Even so, the witness may be speaking literally about an experience that doesn’t match the literal meaning of the words she is using to describe it
Quite. I've repeatedly said that I don't consider "ghost" to be synonymous with "dead person" but use it as a shorthand for a collection of phenomena that aren't necessarily well understood by science (alongside those that are misidentified or hoaxes.) But people still seem to think that "ghost" must mean that's what you're talking about.
Manchu wrote: Sound waves do not necessarily have anything to do with a claim to “hear music.”
Then how else do you hear something? Now, in addition to claiming the existence of the ghost itself, you have to argue for a means of non-sound interactions with your body being received and converted into nerve impulses in a way that exactly mimics the experience of sound waves hitting your ears. It's so far off into speculation without evidence or even a clear definition of what is happening that I don't really see any productive way to discuss it.
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Azreal13 wrote: Quite. I've repeatedly said that I don't consider "ghost" to be synonymous with "dead person" but use it as a shorthand for a collection of phenomena that aren't necessarily well understood by science (alongside those that are misidentified or hoaxes.) But people still seem to think that "ghost" must mean that's what you're talking about.
Even if you don't make the "dead person" assumption there still has to be some kind of interaction with your body, whatever its source may be. Set aside the question of where the music is coming from and you still have sound waves hitting an ear, sound waves that could be picked up by a microphone.
Auditory hallucination. Simple as that. I have experienced it myself. I was alon in my house and unambiguously “heard” “someone” call my name. I was so convinced I had actually heard this that I searched the house and looked around outside.
Manchu wrote: Auditory hallucination. Simple as that. I have experienced it myself. I was alon in my house and unambiguously “heard” “someone” call my name. I was so convinced I had actually heard this that I searched the house and looked around outside.
But how is an external entity manipulating your brain in a way that causes the hallucination?
It is, but mostly because you're just playing fast and loose with claims like a magician employs slight of hand to make a rabbit appear from his hat.
"This cassette contains a recording" can to a point be taken for granted because we all know cassettes are used to record things.
"This rock contains a recording" sounds like one of Shaun Spencer's antics from an episode of Psych... which would make me Timothy Omundson. Eh. Could be worse.
Acknowledging that there are things we cannot know does not require us to acknowledge that any claim of an unknown has weight or value, especially not when it posits unknowns in direct conflict with knowns. If I hand you a rock and tell you there's a recording on it, I'm basically asking you on faith to believe me. There might be a recording, but that's a matter of rhetorical truth, not a matter of practical outcomes. If I hand you a cassette, say it has a recording, and it contains a recording of an empty room, a recording of an empty room is still a recording.
None of those things are impossible to record, and in fact many claim to have done so, simply not to the standard sufficient for people who don't already believe to change their minds, even when they've apparently defied explanation by conventional means.
"We can't know it's not a ghost, therefore it might be." Trussel some hair and get a cheap suit and you're all set from an ongoing series on the History Channel. Part of the problem is that there is conventional explanation for such recordings; they're fake. Much like how we all know how a cassette works, we're also capable of knowing about the vast history of fakes, from rambunctious girls pinning cut outs to backyard plants to scam artists using video editing. Overcoming this well known body of knowledge requires more than a spurious claims that cannot be confirmed.
As has already been touched on, sound you cannot hear is not the same as absence of sound. While as an observer they may appear similar, they are not.
Building off Manchu, sound is nothing more than the human perception of a specific wave form. However, noting that humans interact and describe their world almost completely trough abstract concepts funneled through imprecise communication, is a completely different kettle of fish from the claim that environmental forces in a backyard can record and playback events with audio and visual phenomena or produce kinetic force ex nihilo to move objects. In fact there's so many spurious steps from start to finish with that claim that it's absurdist.
Hallucinations undoubtedly have material causes, at least in part. Those causes could certainly be external to the system registering the hallucination. Azrael13 just mentioned infrasound, for example.
Because the whole point of ghost claims is that there is something out in the world, not just a purely internal hallucination. Whether it's a spirit of a dead person, recording in a rock, whatever, there's something besides the drugs you just took causing the experience.
Because the whole point of ghost claims is that there is something out in the world, not just a purely internal hallucination. Whether it's a spirit of a dead person, recording in a rock, whatever, there's something besides the drugs you just took causing the experience.
No, the whole point of ghost claims is that there is something unknown. What we do is then examine those claims and decide what might have caused them.
In the minority cases, those claims seem to defy logical explanation.
IMO you can take two views, that either there are things we either don't understand or aren't even yet aware of that one day will explain those things. Or, which to me is inexplicably arrogant and closed minded, that we know everything there is to know about science and the universe and anything we can't explain must be fake.
I'm of the former persuasion. I don't believe ghosts are dead people, but I do believe that there are things people experience or observe that can't be explained by current understanding.
Because the whole point of ghost claims is that there is something out in the world, not just a purely internal hallucination. Whether it's a spirit of a dead person, recording in a rock, whatever, there's something besides the drugs you just took causing the experience.
No, the whole point of ghost claims is that there is something unknown. What we do is then examine those claims and decide what might have caused them.
In the minority cases, those claims seem to defy logical explanation.
IMO you can take two views, that either there are things we either don't understand or aren't even yet aware of that one day will explain those things. Or, which to me is inexplicably arrogant and closed minded, that we know everything there is to know about science and the universe and anything we can't explain must be fake.
I'm of the former persuasion. I don't believe ghosts are dead people, but I do believe that there are things people experience or observe that can't be explained by current understanding.
But if they are not dead people, then they are not ghosts, but merely unexplained natural or psychical phenomena. Nobody is disputing the fact that there are unexplained phenomena. We don't fully understand the universe, and neither do we fully understand our own mind, and it is going to take ages before we will (if ever). So naturally there will be things that we can't explain. Nobody is disputing that. what people are disputing is that some of those things are ghosts.
Which feeds back into Manchu's point that words and reality have a sometimes tenuous relationship. A ghost is the name of a construct that we've developed as a species to explain something we don't understand. I can call dogs pomegranates if I like, they'll still bark and lick their own privates.
No, the whole point of ghost claims is that there is something unknown. What we do is then examine those claims and decide what might have caused them.
In the minority cases, those claims seem to defy logical explanation.
IMO you can take two views, that either there are things we either don't understand or aren't even yet aware of that one day will explain those things. Or, which to me is inexplicably arrogant and closed minded, that we know everything there is to know about science and the universe and anything we can't explain must be fake.
I'm of the former persuasion. I don't believe ghosts are dead people, but I do believe that there are things people experience or observe that can't be explained by current understanding.
To my knowledge, there are no well-documented events which defy a material explanation based on a current understanding of scientific knowledge. If you take witness accounts to be literal, material truth, then there are certainly things people claim to have experienced that would defy understanding, but no real evidence that such a thing actually occurred as it is claimed.
Of course, I agree that there are things we are unaware of or have yet to discover, but I am not willing to take undocumented claims of apparitions, telekinetic activity or supernatural voices as solid evidence that such things exist in the first place.
Azreal13 wrote: Which feeds back into Manchu's point that words and reality have a sometimes tenuous relationship. A ghost is the name of a construct that we've developed as a species to explain something we don't understand. I can call dogs pomegranates if I like, they'll still bark and lick their own privates.
You can call dogs pomegranates, but don't expect to be understood. Words are signifiers, they have no meaning of themselves. Words have meaning only because we agree that they have meaning. Which means that if you use a word differently from the agreed-upon ways, people will not understand what you are trying to signify.
Even within the well accepted boundaries of “the agreed upon” meaning of words and phrases, there is a lot of room for ambiguity. But more importantly, there is no necessary connection bewteen phenomena and the labels we affix to them. The word “ghost,” the notion of a ghost, these things do not imply that ghosts actually exist outside of language. When we demand proof for the existence of ghosts, we’re skipping a necessary step: figuring out what out there in the material world could possibly line up with this literary construct >ghost< ... and I think the more closely we scrutinize that matter, the more we will have to accept that there is nothing, there can be nothing in the material world which fits this word.
So all that is left for us to really consider is what observations underlie a witness’s conclusion that she has encountered a ghost. Yes, we’re gping to set aside her own conclusion as a preliminary matter — not out of disrespect to her but because we cannot start with conclusions. We have to start with observations and impressions and then consider the circumstances of their perception.
Azreal13 wrote: Which feeds back into Manchu's point that words and reality have a sometimes tenuous relationship. A ghost is the name of a construct that we've developed as a species to explain something we don't understand. I can call dogs pomegranates if I like, they'll still bark and lick their own privates.
You can call dogs pomegranates, but don't expect to be understood. Words are signifiers, they have no meaning of themselves. Words have meaning only because we agree that they have meaning. Which means that if you use a word differently from the agreed-upon ways, people will not understand what you are trying to signify.
When the whole crux of the discussion is "I don't believe ghosts are dead people, but I think there's something unknown about the idea" it should be pretty self evident from that point that "ghost" is a shorthand and not explicitly referencing the unquiet spirits of the dead. Unless you're not reading and just jumping in. Much like if I started a discussion with the statement "I'm going to call dogs pomegranates." Perhaps it might not make sense out of context, but if you'd been following the discussion it should be abundantly clear.
Azreal13 wrote: When the whole crux of the discussion is "I don't believe ghosts are dead people, but I think there's something unknown about the idea" it should be pretty self evident from that point that "ghost" is a shorthand and not explicitly referencing the unquiet spirits of the dead. Unless you're not reading and just jumping in.
I think what we're saying is that you're making the assumption that the inexplicable phenomena that fall under the linguistic umbrella of "ghost" even exist in the first place. If you assume that apparitions or objects being moved without any apparent external forces are things that actually happen, then yes, those things would fail to be properly described by our current scientific understanding. However, there is no good reason to assume that they do indeed happen at all.
Azreal13 wrote: Which feeds back into Manchu's point that words and reality have a sometimes tenuous relationship. A ghost is the name of a construct that we've developed as a species to explain something we don't understand. I can call dogs pomegranates if I like, they'll still bark and lick their own privates.
You can call dogs pomegranates, but don't expect to be understood. Words are signifiers, they have no meaning of themselves. Words have meaning only because we agree that they have meaning. Which means that if you use a word differently from the agreed-upon ways, people will not understand what you are trying to signify.
When the whole crux of the discussion is "I don't believe ghosts are dead people, but I think there's something unknown about the idea" it should be pretty self evident from that point that "ghost" is a shorthand and not explicitly referencing the unquiet spirits of the dead. Unless you're not reading and just jumping in. Much like if I started a discussion with the statement "I'm going to call dogs pomegranates." Perhaps it might not make sense out of context, but if you'd been following the discussion it should be abundantly clear.
I have been following this thread from the beginning and understand you perfectly well. But my point is that you are obfuscating yourself. In the interest of clarity, it would be prudent to abandon the term "ghost" unless you are referring to the ideas that are normally understood to be signified by that term.
In other words, since you are talking about unexplained phenomena and not just about ghosts, why insist on calling it ghosts?
Because it's a shorthand. I'm not typing "things that people believe are ghosts but aren't actually ghosts but might be representative of hitherto poorly understood or completely unknown scientific phenomena" every time.
Azreal13 wrote: That in itself depends on what one considers "good reason" I guess.
I'd be willing to consider pretty much anything over the threshold of "this person said this happened to them, therefore there are unexplained phenomena." Like, any type of serious documentary evidence that can't be more easily explained as an act of trickery or misunderstanding. It's the same request that skeptics have made of believers since at least the Enlightenment, yet not one person has been able to produce the goods in all of that time despite the staggering amount of people who claim to have had supernatural experiences.
Where we must begin, or else not begin at all, is by assuming a witness is recounting an experience in good faith and to the best of her ability. If for whatever reason that assumption cannot be made then let’s just move on. We needn’t conclude that ghosts exist because someone perceived that something uncanny happened to her. But we can at least begin by accepting that, from her perspective, it seemed like something uncanny happened to her.
While this whole argument has been fun, it can pretty much all be chalked up to auditory hallucinations. A lot of people have them without realising it. I get them when I am very tired. You can get them from anxiety, fear, paranoia, and just adrenaline.
Do you know how many times I have heard my name being called or somebody saying "Hey" to me or the haunting ring of a call light? I have even heard music before. Never once thought Brittney Spears was haunting me. Sleep deprivation does crazy things to people and often times they do not realize it.
Manchu wrote: Where we must begin, or else not begin at all, is by assuming a witness is recounting an experience in good faith and to the best of her ability. If for whatever reason that assumption cannot be made then let’s just move on. We needn’t conclude that ghosts exist because someone perceived something uncanny happened to her. But we can at least begin by accepting that, from her perspective, it seemed like something uncanny happened to her.
I am absolutely willing to start from that position, but the next question is whether or not her perception of what happened is an accurate depiction of what really happened. To me, the question is not how real it is to them, it's how real it is.
Azreal13 wrote: That in itself depends on what one considers "good reason" I guess.
I'd be willing to consider pretty much anything over the threshold of "this person said this happened to them, therefore there are unexplained phenomena." Like, any type of serious documentary evidence that can't be more easily explained as an act of trickery or misunderstanding. It's the same request that skeptics have made of believers since at least the Enlightenment, yet not one person has been able to produce the goods in all of that time despite the staggering amount of people who claim to have had supernatural experiences.
I've not invested any real time into this topic for over 20 years, but thanks to this thread I've spent a little time reviewing what out there. I honestly think I'd be hugely more skeptical if I were younger, since the advent of the internet and ready access to photo editing and VFX software there's so much more poor quality crap purporting to be "evidence" that it's quite disheartening.
Nevertheless, there are still photos that have been around for 50 years to almost a century at this point that have stood up to analysis and that are supported by credible testimony. The problem is that there's almost nothing that can't be created from scratch these days, but there are still images that I find compelling. The issue is that I can show you an image, you can claim it was a double exposure, I can say that it's been expert reviewed and it isn't, you then claim that the expert's method was faulty etc etc.. we'll never reach a consensus because we don't have the means or (I assume) knowledge to do it for ourselves.
Nevertheless, there are still photos that have been around for 50 years to almost a century at this point that have stood up to analysis and that are supported by credible testimony. The problem is that there's almost nothing that can't be created from scratch these days, but there are still images that I find compelling. The issue is that I can show you an image, you can claim it was a double exposure, I can say that it's been expert reviewed and it isn't, you then claim that the expert's method was faulty etc etc.. we'll never reach a consensus because we don't have the means or (I assume) knowledge to do it for ourselves.
Out of curiosity, to which photos do you refer? I'd be interested in checking them out.
For me, the biggest problem with this subject is that evidence of the supernatural (or something which is considered to be supernatural but is merely beyond our current scientific understanding, as you say) simply can not be (or has not been) reproduced under controlled conditions. As such, no evidence produced thus far precludes a more materialistic explanation. That is what I need to see; not something that appears to be inexplicable or compelling, but something that precludes conventional explanation. That way, you and I can both agree that what we have is, in fact, genuine evidence that "non-material" forces are at work in a way that defies scientific understanding.
Captain Kirk once said something along the lines of, There is no such thing as the unknown, only that which is temporarily not understood. This sentiment pretty well characterizes a breathlessly optimistic approach to rational skepticism regarding the purportedly supernatural. But I’m not sure that optimism is very well grounded. We have to accept the possibility that there may be phenomena that must remain unknown to us as a matter of our own limited capacity to know. In which case, we should also recognize the distinction between what it is impossible for us to know, especially in the relatively narrow sense of materialism, and what is impossible to exist.
Manchu wrote: Captain Kirk once said something along the lines of, There is no such thing as the unknown, only that which is temporarily not understood. This sentiment pretty well characterizes a breathlessly optimistic approach to rational skepticism regarding the purportedly supernatural. But I’m not sure that optimism is very well grounded. We have to accept the possibility that there may be phenomena that must remain unknown to us as a matter of our own limited capacity to know. In which case, we should also recognize the distinction between what it is impossible for us to know, especially in the relatively narrow sense of materialism, and what is impossible to exist.
I actually have a tattoo on my arm which reads, "remember you are blind," in Latin. Although I have slowly become more of a positivist, it represents the idea that human perception is by its nature finite and non-comprehensive, as you say.
Nevertheless, there are still photos that have been around for 50 years to almost a century at this point that have stood up to analysis and that are supported by credible testimony. The problem is that there's almost nothing that can't be created from scratch these days, but there are still images that I find compelling. The issue is that I can show you an image, you can claim it was a double exposure, I can say that it's been expert reviewed and it isn't, you then claim that the expert's method was faulty etc etc.. we'll never reach a consensus because we don't have the means or (I assume) knowledge to do it for ourselves.
Out of curiosity, to which photos do you refer? I'd be interested in checking them out.
For me, the biggest problem with this subject is that evidence of the supernatural (or something which is considered to be supernatural but is merely beyond our current scientific understanding, as you say) simply can not be (or has not been) reproduced under controlled conditions. As such, no evidence produced thus far precludes a more materialistic explanation. That is what I need to see; not something that appears to be inexplicable or compelling, but something that precludes conventional explanation. That way, you and I can both agree that what we have is, in fact, genuine evidence that "non-material" forces are at work in a way that defies scientific understanding.
Lol. Would you believe my tablet has crashed twice while trying to reply to this?
I've lost a bunch of written stuff, so here's just a picture..
This image was taken by a vicar nearly 50 years ago. The negative has been examined and is tamper free, and it has thus far defied all attempts at recreation. It's generally known as the Tulip Staircase Ghost. (Worth noting that the Tulip Staircase is of architectural interest as the first helical unsupported stair, which is why the pic was taken in the first instance.)
I can see the picture. It is certainly an interesting and creepy image, and I've just read the backstory. While I can't say for certain that the image does not contain a ghost, I also can't say that it does. Even if the negative was unaltered, there could have been people on the stairs that the photographer didn't remember or any number of things. Definitely a cool picture, and one of the most compelling ones that I've seen, though still not concrete evidence of the "supernatural".
Luciferian wrote: I can see the picture. It is certainly an interesting and creepy image, and I've just read the backstory. While I can't say for certain that the image does not contain a ghost, I also can't say that it does. Even if the negative was unaltered, there could have been people on the stairs that the photographer didn't remember or any number of things. Definitely a cool picture, and one of the most compelling ones that I've seen, though still not concrete evidence of the "supernatural".
My beef with this image is that there is no mention of where the original and the negative are kept. No expert are named and there are no link to their research, methodology and results. The site were it was photographed is a tourist attraction that heavily markets itself for people who like folklore and ghost stories. To me that's all very fishy. If this image is real, almost unique, spectacular and unexplained, it's a very valuable artefact. Why is there so little detail on it. It doesn't even have an entry on wikipedia (unlike other similar pictures). Come to think of it, I couldn't find this picture anywhere except on paranormal website with largely a copy past of the story and its various claims. I didn't find any sort of mention of the photograph outside of those stories either (no interview on any paranormal show, or regular talk-show, no articles, no research, no biography, etc.).
My beef with this image is that there is no mention of where the original and the negative are kept. No expert are named and there are no link to their research, methodology and results. The site were it was photographed is a tourist attraction that heavily markets itself for people who like folklore and ghost stories. To me that's all very fishy. If this image is real, almost unique, spectacular and unexplained, it's a very valuable artefact. Why is there so little detail on it. It doesn't even have an entry on wikipedia (unlike other similar pictures).
I was trying to remain in the spirit of taking claims in good faith, but you're correct. Without a verified chain of custody and documentation from the Kodak technicians who examined the film, it's totally unreliable as evidence.
I think it's worth pointing out that the Tulip Staircase Ghost's only real claim to fame is the claim that the negative was deemed untampered with by Kodak. To my knowledge this statement is just something this is continually repeated. No one has ever verified that anyone ever examined the negative, and the claim originates from England's Ghost Club, a group that is now defunct by decades and kept no records. EDIT: Arguably you can't even call it a group, since it's a name used by numerous bunches of enthusiasts in different places over the last 200 years.
The image is otherwise visually alike to numerous other photos of the era that used double and long exposure tricks like the Brown Lady or the Monk of Newby Church.
We can, at least, use this thread as evidence of prescience.
The issue is that I can show you an image, you can claim it was a double exposure, I can say that it's been expert reviewed and it isn't, you then claim that the expert's method was faulty etc etc..
Azreal13 wrote: We can, at least, use this thread as evidence of prescience.
The issue is that I can show you an image, you can claim it was a double exposure, I can say that it's been expert reviewed and it isn't, you then claim that the expert's method was faulty etc etc..
To be fair, I said as much myself. The evidence must preclude a materialistic explanation in order to meet my standards. Without being able to verify anything about the picture, I can't rule out a multitude of mundane explanations which do not rely on supernatural forces, or forces which are beyond our current scientific understanding. That's why I said that the evidence must come from a controlled environment; that would eliminate all of those considerations and leave me with no other option but to conclude that something beyond scientific understanding had taken place.
Assuming that the story behind the Tulip Stair Ghost picture is 100% factual, I still can not conclude that it is a picture of a ghost. That is a leap of logic.
Unfortunately, it's tough to even begin with the assumption that the story is factual, given the complete lack of documentation regarding the photograph. There are so many questions which must be satisfied before I can logically conclude that a supernatural event has taken place. If I want to know the truth of the matter, I must not simply accept that the photograph is what it is claimed to be.
The thing I never got with the ghost photo thing is that a photograph works by imprinting light on a photosensitive material producing a photograph, so if something shows up on a photo (like a ghost) how did the person standing there taking the photo not see it (which is always the claim)? It seems pretty elementary but perhaps I am missing something.
I'm a historian. I'm very well versed in a number of "it's been repeated so much it must be true" statements that are absolute bullocks.
At least when it comes to the ghost you can say you have a picture purporting to be it.
When it comes to the examination I'm unaware of anyone having anything to suggest it actually took place. People just say it did, because some guy said it did 50 years ago. Maybe it did, and the paperwork is buried in a desk somewhere, but anyone can claim "experts examined it."
The only ghost image I think that has ever been fully verified authentic is the Freddy Jackson photo. The picture is totally real. It's just that it was taken before Freddy Jackson died, not after, something that was confirmed by Royal Navy records. Whether the guy who first offered the photo in the 70s was lying or simply so old he got some dates and pictures mixed up is anyone's guess.
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ingtaer wrote: The thing I never got with the ghost photo thing is that a photograph works by imprinting light on a photosensitive material producing a photograph, so if something shows up on a photo (like a ghost) how did the person standing there taking the photo not see it (which is always the claim)? It seems pretty elementary but perhaps I am missing something.
There are a number of things that are naked to the human eye but can appear on photos. Somethings appear on photos explicitly because of how cameras work. Back scatter or red eye for example are caused by flash.
LordofHats wrote: "This cassette contains a recording" can to a point be taken for granted because we all know cassettes are used to record things.
In the 1960s if I'd handed you a DVD and told you it was a movie, you'd have laughed. Or perhaps more to the point, handing that cassette to one of the few remaining tribes that has no contact with the modern world and telling them it was music.
Just because one does not understand the medium that the recording was made with does not negate the fact the recording exists.
Or, considering the subject, MAY exist.
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Iron_Captain wrote: In other words, since you are talking about unexplained phenomena and not just about ghosts, why insist on calling it ghosts?
Because the people who claim to experience them call them ghosts instead of unexplained phenomena. Sorta like how people seeing something they can't identify in the sky call them flying saucers, when they should be called unidentified flying objects.
Vulcan wrote: In the 1960s if I'd handed you a DVD and told you it was a movie, you'd have laughed. Or perhaps more to the point, handing that cassette to one of the few remaining tribes that has no contact with the modern world and telling them it was music.
Just because one does not understand the medium that the recording was made with does not negate the fact the recording exists.
Or, considering the subject, MAY exist.
Read the rest of that post.
Comparing a cassette, which we know records information, as a time travel in a bottle rhetorical argument to justify the stone tape hypothesis as anything but a long serious of unsupportable claims is like playing slight of hand with words. That there are things we do not know is not a basis by which to grant every claim weight or value. It's just a roundabout way of arguing from ignorance.
Read through that Tulip Staircase thing and it is interesting to note that its reliability is supposedly underpinned by the fact that Kodiak engineers said that it had not been tampered with. That's pretty weak for evidence. If I was to take a photo of my cat right now and swore up and down that there was no cat there when the photo was taken, if my camera and the photo were examined by experts they would find no evidence of tampering because I was lying...
ingtaer wrote: The thing I never got with the ghost photo thing is that a photograph works by imprinting light on a photosensitive material producing a photograph, so if something shows up on a photo (like a ghost) how did the person standing there taking the photo not see it (which is always the claim)? It seems pretty elementary but perhaps I am missing something.
There are a number of things that are naked to the human eye but can appear on photos. Somethings appear on photos explicitly because of how cameras work. Back scatter or red eye for example are caused by flash.
Quite, but everything that a photo shows relies upon light, it just stretches my credulity that something would appear in a photo that was not visible to the eye like that. Of course you can play with a camera to get different effects (like prolonged exposure) but I struggle to see how it could work in such detail for something not visible without playing with it.
And yet if you do not evaluate every claim, even if the evaluation winds up being 'they were drunk at the time', you're being superstitious and not scientific.
After all, "I don't believe in phenomenon that have not been explained by science" is nothing more than a statement of belief itself.
Vulcan wrote: And yet if you do not evaluate every claim, even if the evaluation winds up being 'they were drunk at the time', you're being superstitious and not scientific.
Go start your own research lab. Give me the address. I'll send 500 claims to you every day. Better investigate all of them! Who knows. There really might be an alien from Alpha Centauri in this photograph on safari taking in the local wildlife.
That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence. That which is asserted with weak evidence can be effectively disregarded until stronger evidence arises. There's no onus on the rest of us to give credence to the fringe belief that the illuminati created a magic bullet used to assassinate JFK. That it could potentially be true is not a reason to care and devote our time and energy to the task of proving or disproving it especially not when more mundane explanations exist.
After all, "I don't believe in phenomenon that have not been explained by science" is nothing more than a statement of belief itself.
I'm not even going to touch that because there's no where to go with it that isn't stupid.
Vulcan wrote: And yet if you do not evaluate every claim, even if the evaluation winds up being 'they were drunk at the time', you're being superstitious and not scientific.
After all, "I don't believe in phenomenon that have not been explained by science" is nothing more than a statement of belief itself.
Indeed, but there also has to be a point where one has to say that the evidence (or lack thereof) points to the absence of something.
I guess it depends upon where ones own skepticism will define limits, personally I believe that extra terrestrial life exists. There is as little evidence (and remarkably similar evidence at that) for that as there is for ghosts/hauntings but I find it hard to believe that our little ball of rock was the only place to evolve life. I do not however think they visit this planet to abduct people, mutilate cattle, makes some pretty patterns in crops and basically go for a joy ride.
Ghosts/hauntings I just fail to see how or why that could occur be it residual energy/life force/chi what have you and have never come accross either a piece of evidence or testamony that changed my mind. We all get creeped out now and again and it often happens in old buildings but from there to ghosts just doesnt likely.
ingtaer wrote: Indeed, but there also has to be a point where one has to say that the evidence (or lack thereof) points to the absence of something.
Honestly I generally avoid touching that post because like the "nonbelief is still belief" it's a line of discussion that almost no one is capable of actually intelligently participating in and generally grinds discussions to a halt.
That said,
I guess it depends upon where ones own skepticism will define limits, personally I believe that extra terrestrial life exists. There is as little evidence (and remarkably similar evidence at that) for that as there is for ghosts/hauntings but I find it hard to believe that our little ball of rock was the only place to evolve life.
This is a good example of how nebulous the issue is.
Most people worth their salt I think would never discredit that aliens probably exist. The scale of the universe and time? Earth-like conditions statistically should exist somewhere other than here, and would presumably produce life. Of course, we don't have to take this a a mass hypothetic relying on probability entirely. There's circumstantial evidence of microscopic life once existed on Mars, and potential conditions for organic life on Europa providing future routes for poking at life beyond Earth. Not sure we can really ever know if there's life out there that is intelligent like us. I find a lot of sense in the position that there's no reason to assume, given the age of the universe, that any alien life would be anymore or less sophisticated than we are if we presume that our evolution and development is within the vastness of the stars a repeatable series of happenstances arising from chaos. It makes sense on paper. Whether it bears any truth in reality I'll probably never live to see.
I do not however think they visit this planet to abduct people, mutilate cattle, makes some pretty patterns in crops and basically go for a joy ride.
Well now you're just being superstitious
Ghosts/hauntings I just fail to see how or why that could occur be it residual energy/life force/chi what have you and have never come accross either a piece of evidence or testamony that changed my mind. We all get creeped out now and again and it often happens in old buildings but from there to ghosts just doesnt likely.
I generally find studies into the psychological aspects fascinating.
There was a study for example that purported that the "sense of a presence" is caused by irregular signals in the part of the brain that governs self-awareness and spatial recognition. They posited that these irregularities could be induced within specific environmental conditions, and could be induced by manipulating the brains sense of self-position. It's pretty cool. EDIT: Effectively, they argue that the sense of a presence is caused by the same series of sensory signals that can cause phantom limb syndrome. The brain is looking for sensory data, and not interpreting what data it is getting correctly.
EDIT EDIT: Wow this one took me forever to find. I really should have just started on Wikipedia. They link right to the study. There's also an engineering professor at Coventry University who has experimented with infrasound frequencies and how they can induce a sense of "creepiness" in people, including hallucinations. He's even visited a haunted location in Coventry where he worked and found the appropriate sound waves present in the location.
Before reading this, please remember that I'm absolutely a skeptic and I'm not trying to relate a 'spooky' tale to try to convince people of paranormal activity, this just relates to film exposure etc:
I have personal experience of the 'stuff showing up on photos that weren't there at the time' phenomenon. In my 2nd year at university I and 3 others moved into a house. We were taking pictures when we moved in (as young people do). This was before widespread digital cameras/phones so it was on a standard camera with film.
When the pictures came back, one in particular stood out. It was of the two girls in the house on our sofa, and there was a faint grey curved line on the exposure that ran down the middle, directly between them.
The friend of one of the girls, who was into all that new age spirituality etc (worked part time at a hippy shop) started freaking out, blaming negative energy in the room, saying that there were things working against the two female housemates (funnily enough over the course of our lease they did have a massive falling out, as commonly happens with people living together).
I took that original photo and there was definitely nothing physical in the room that would account for that line down the photo. I'm not well-versed in film exposure techniques to know the most likely cause (I'm certainly not suggesting paranormal activity or relating the tale to be 'spooky').
Manchu wrote: Captain Kirk once said something along the lines of, There is no such thing as the unknown, only that which is temporarily not understood. This sentiment pretty well characterizes a breathlessly optimistic approach to rational skepticism regarding the purportedly supernatural. But I’m not sure that optimism is very well grounded. We have to accept the possibility that there may be phenomena that must remain unknown to us as a matter of our own limited capacity to know. In which case, we should also recognize the distinction between what it is impossible for us to know, especially in the relatively narrow sense of materialism, and what is impossible to exist.
This may be one of the most profound posts I have ever read on Dakka. In my view, every animal has limits to its intellectual capacity. We Humans are greatly exalted above any other animal in this regard, yet our brain has its limits just as well. Just like a Chimpanzee will never be able to understand or even become aware of quantum mechanics, there might be a great many things about the universe that we simply will never be able to understand or even become aware of, simply because our brains are too limited to comprehend them. Or in the words of the astrophysicist Martin Rees: “There is no reason to believe that our brains are matched to understanding every level of reality.”
ingtaer wrote: Read through that Tulip Staircase thing and it is interesting to note that its reliability is supposedly underpinned by the fact that Kodiak engineers said that it had not been tampered with. That's pretty weak for evidence. If I was to take a photo of my cat right now and swore up and down that there was no cat there when the photo was taken, if my camera and the photo were examined by experts they would find no evidence of tampering because I was lying...
ingtaer wrote: The thing I never got with the ghost photo thing is that a photograph works by imprinting light on a photosensitive material producing a photograph, so if something shows up on a photo (like a ghost) how did the person standing there taking the photo not see it (which is always the claim)? It seems pretty elementary but perhaps I am missing something.
There are a number of things that are naked to the human eye but can appear on photos. Somethings appear on photos explicitly because of how cameras work. Back scatter or red eye for example are caused by flash.
Quite, but everything that a photo shows relies upon light, it just stretches my credulity that something would appear in a photo that was not visible to the eye like that. Of course you can play with a camera to get different effects (like prolonged exposure) but I struggle to see how it could work in such detail for something not visible without playing with it.
One thing that came to my mind right off the bat was radiation. You see a lot of light and flashes in old films from Chernobyl where there are flashes of light etc that the people filming aren't seeing with the eye but the camera picks up.
Not saying that "ghosts" are emitting high doses of radiation, but if the whole theory that ghosts are a form of energy manifesting then it wouldn't be a huge leap to think that perhaps this could be what is caught in the picture?
I mean, I’m not a scientist by anyone’s stretch of the imagination. But that is exactly the sort of thing I enjoy.
Could it be X? Could it be Y? As long as you’re willing to listen to Those Thaf Actually Rpovably Know Better, the Answer is just as fascinating as the Question.
Hence why I dislike ‘lol, science, NooB’ answers. Because they’re simply not answers. Just a conflicting opinion.
I mean, I’m not a scientist by anyone’s stretch of the imagination. But that is exactly the sort of thing I enjoy.
Could it be X? Could it be Y? As long as you’re willing to listen to Those Thaf Actually Rpovably Know Better, the Answer is just as fascinating as the Question.
Hence why I dislike ‘lol, science, NooB’ answers. Because they’re simply not answers. Just a conflicting opinion.
Agreed, and that's the point I've been trying to make.
Vulcan wrote: And yet if you do not evaluate every claim, even if the evaluation winds up being 'they were drunk at the time', you're being superstitious and not scientific.
After all, "I don't believe in phenomenon that have not been explained by science" is nothing more than a statement of belief itself.
Indeed, but there also has to be a point where one has to say that the evidence (or lack thereof) points to the absence of something.
I guess it depends upon where ones own skepticism will define limits, personally I believe that extra terrestrial life exists. There is as little evidence (and remarkably similar evidence at that) for that as there is for ghosts/hauntings but I find it hard to believe that our little ball of rock was the only place to evolve life. I do not however think they visit this planet to abduct people, mutilate cattle, makes some pretty patterns in crops and basically go for a joy ride.
Ghosts/hauntings I just fail to see how or why that could occur be it residual energy/life force/chi what have you and have never come accross either a piece of evidence or testamony that changed my mind. We all get creeped out now and again and it often happens in old buildings but from there to ghosts just doesnt likely.
Edit to add quote.
I think the key distinction with your extraterrestial life example is that we know life has formed at least once within the universe already, as demonstrated by our daily existence.
The rest comes down to a statistical analysis of our understandings of the conditions of the observed universe as to whether life may have formed elsewhere within the universe. Of course, there are two angles to this- the only existing life we know of requires the conditions found on Earth to exist. This requires a very specific set of cosmic conditions as a prerequisite, and makes Earth-like life rather unlikely. I think the current thinking is that statistically there is unlikely to be another planet with sufficiently similar conditions to Earth within our entire galaxy, although of course the Universe is far more vast.
However, life may be able to evolve and exist under different conditions to that found upon Earth. This is far more unknown and hypothetical, but does raise the probability of extraterrestial life somewhat.
Of course, as our current sample size is definitely one (as definite as anything is in our reality), we can play a statistics game with extraterrestial life in a way we currently cannot for a supernatural interpretation of the causes of the phenomena described as "ghosts".
Therefore, I do not consider the two concepts to be equivalent in likelihood.
My mother has always sworn blind that she took a photo of a ghost as a young girl. She was in an old house with her friend, in her friend's bedroom; and the two were mucking around with a Kodak instant camera (the kind which prints the photo instantly). She took a shot of her friend on the bed, and was more than a little freaked out to see an lady in Edwardian dress in the background.
My mother isn't a spiritualist of any kind. No religious affiliation. No incentive to lie, in other words. I asked her what had happened to the shot, and she said she gave it to a friend who was obsessed with the supernatural. Now I don't personally subscribe to 'ghosts' as manifestation of the undead. Makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. And neither does my mother. But she remains convinced she photographed an Edwardian woman.
So what's the explanation?
The obvious answer is some form of spatial anomaly. Time and space are still quite nebulous concepts, but we're all quite aware that humans are only usually capable of perceiving time flowing in one direction. If there was some sort of naturally occuring phenomenon (I wouldn't care to speculate on the cause) that was capable of opening up a rip between two time periods for a short period of time, couldn't it explain matters?
It would offer an explanation for a lot of supernatural incidents. Sudden smells or noises. People that appear in photos (which captures a specific moment) but aren't there to the naked eye. Or alternatively, ghosts that appear and then vanish again. It would also explain why so often, links can be drawn between ghosts and the spots that they frequent. See for example, the case of Admiral Tryon spotted briefly in his home the day after Victoria went down.
If instead of seeing ghosts, we're just seeing the people themselves through some temporal glitch/spatial anomaly, it all makes perfect sense without any recourse to spirituality required.
Ketara wrote: My mother has always sworn blind that she took a photo of a ghost as a young girl. She was in an old house with her friend, in her friend's bedroom; and the two were mucking around with a Kodak instant camera (the kind which prints the photo instantly). She took a shot of her friend on the bed, and was more than a little freaked out to see an lady in Edwardian dress in the background.
My mother isn't a spiritualist of any kind. No religious affiliation. No incentive to lie, in other words. I asked her what had happened to the shot, and she said she gave it to a friend who was obsessed with the supernatural. Now I don't personally subscribe to 'ghosts' as manifestation of the undead. Makes absolutely no sense whatsoever. And neither does my mother. But she remains convinced she photographed an Edwardian woman.
So what's the explanation?
The obvious answer is some form of spatial anomaly. Time and space are still quite nebulous concepts, but we're all quite aware that humans are only usually capable of perceiving time flowing in one direction. If there was some sort of naturally occuring phenomenon (I wouldn't care to speculate on the cause) that was capable of opening up a rip between two time periods for a short period of time, couldn't it explain matters?
It would offer an explanation for a lot of supernatural incidents. Sudden smells or noises. People that appear in photos (which captures a specific moment) but aren't there to the naked eye. Or alternatively, ghosts that appear and then vanish again. It would also explain why so often, links can be drawn between ghosts and the spots that they frequent. See for example, the case of Admiral Tryon spotted briefly in his home the day after Victoria went down.
If instead of seeing ghosts, we're just seeing the people themselves through some temporal glitch/spatial anomaly, it all makes perfect sense without any recourse to spirituality required.
Obvious answer? "Temporal glitches" only exist in fiction like Star Trek.
Real answer? Your mother had a bad dream.
Obvious answer? "Temporal glitches" only exist in fiction like Star Trek.
Real answer? Your mother had a bad dream.
I'm not entirely sure I'd trust the word of someone claiming my mother 'dreamt' taking a photograph in broad daylight with her best friend (who cross corroborates the story).
Regardless, I'm not asserting that 'temporal anomalies' ARE the cause of this sort of thing. Merely that if there is any basis in reality to 'ghost stories', that's the sort of thing I would expect to be behind it. Time and space are very strange things. Half of what we see in the night sky no longer exists, but you can look at and photograph it nonetheless. Current science certainly has a very rudimentary understanding of the field, and it's the logical place for further discoveries to be made.
I think many spiritualists would be severely disappointed however, if ghosts turned out to be something as mundane as the briefest glimpse of the past. It would excite a lot of historians, but put an end to many divine miracles, psychic mediums, and so on.
The impulse to explain things before even verifying that they ever happened is strange to me. It's skipping a step. I know that most don't want to believe that people can be bad actors, but even if you assume they are not, you can't just take second hand testimony as evidence that something exists. Jumping to find possible explanations for things like apparitions, phantom voices or photographs of impossible things is a false start when it hasn't been established for certain that any of those things have ever happened.
Luciferian wrote: The impulse to explain things before even verifying that they ever happened is strange to me. It's skipping a step. I know that most don't want to believe that people can be bad actors, but even if you assume they are not, you can't just take second hand testimony as evidence that something exists. Jumping to find possible explanations for things like apparitions, phantom voices or photographs of impossible things is a false start when it hasn't been established for certain that any of those things have ever happened.
There's an interesting thing I noticed about the study I linked last page (the one about sensing the presence of a person who isn't there).
There are apparently a lot of studies into that topic, particularly where it concerns hikers and woodsman. They cite quite a few of them.
I think the issue isn't that a step is being skipped, but that people are working backwards from a conclusion when science is supposed to work forward a guess. In the case of actual studies on the topic, no one seems to have started with why do people experience ghostly phenomena. They start with what can cause people to hear things that don't appear to be there. Why is someone sure that there's another person near them when there isn't.
It's actually kind of silly when you think about it. Tackling the whole concept of ghost sightings and hauntings as a singular phenomena to be examined is an impossible task. How do you test for it? It's far simpler to break it down. Look at the pieces before the whole picture. Don't assume a house of cards. Build a model and test it every step of the way.
That's science.
There are a lot of studies on the psychological side that I think compellingly point to hauntings and ghost sightings by witnesses, when not hoaxes, are generally in the mind. The brain interpreting information wrongly, or environmental forces that normally mean nothing to use effecting our perceptions under the right conditions.
Which is probably why no one talks about it, because it's easily the most mundane of mundane explanations.
Luciferian wrote: The impulse to explain things before even verifying that they ever happened is strange to me. It's skipping a step. I know that most don't want to believe that people can be bad actors, but even if you assume they are not, you can't just take second hand testimony as evidence that something exists. Jumping to find possible explanations for things like apparitions, phantom voices or photographs of impossible things is a false start when it hasn't been established for certain that any of those things have ever happened.
Dear Lord.
Yes. There is likely no such thing as ghosts. People's testimony is unreliable. Everything is subjective. Empiricism is inherently flawed; and we only know two things:- viz; that we and one other mind exist in the world (in a given moment), and both minds occupy a universe with some commonality of existence. Nihilism triumphs.
Moving on from that, it can be fun to engage in speculative thought exercises around what could be potential (and at least nominally plausible) explanations for unexplained phenomena beyond 'They dun imagined it'. Otherwise the thread kind of just has the above statements posted, ends there, and doesn't constitute much of a discussion.
Obvious answer? "Temporal glitches" only exist in fiction like Star Trek.
Real answer? Your mother had a bad dream.
I'm not entirely sure I'd trust the word of someone claiming my mother 'dreamt' taking a photograph in broad daylight with her best friend (who cross corroborates the story).
Regardless, I'm not asserting that 'temporal anomalies' ARE the cause of this sort of thing. Merely that if there is any basis in reality to 'ghost stories', that's the sort of thing I would expect to be behind it. Time and space are very strange things. Half of what we see in the night sky no longer exists, but you can look at and photograph it nonetheless. Current science certainly has a very rudimentary understanding of the field, and it's the logical place for further discoveries to be made.
I think many spiritualists would be severely disappointed however, if ghosts turned out to be something as mundane as the briefest glimpse of the past. It would excite a lot of historians, but put an end to many divine miracles, psychic mediums, and so on.
I think ghosts are more mundane that random temporal anomalies.
What happened to the photo?
I wonder whether any of these ghost photos could be explained by film manufacturers pre-exposing film to things to mess with people. The grey line mentioned earlier could just be a defect.
There are a lot of studies on the psychological side that I think compellingly point to hauntings and ghost sightings by witnesses, when not hoaxes, are generally in the mind. The brain interpreting information wrongly, or environmental forces that normally mean nothing to use effecting our perceptions under the right conditions.
Which is probably why no one talks about it, because it's easily the most mundane of mundane explanations.
I'll be honest, it's probably the most talked about theory behind this sort of thing. You can't get three feet on the internet around a ghost story without somebody dropping in to say things along those lines. As the two threads in OT prove quite nicely.
Heck, I was one of them if you look back in the other thread.
I think ghosts are more mundane that random temporal anomalies.
If there's one thing scientific paradigms prove; it's that something is always impossible until somebody does it/records it/sticks together a regular hypothesis about it. And often, it takes place in that order. At which point, it becomes ordinary, mundane, and commonplace.
Time and space are weird things. Certainly, I can't think of anything else that could plausibly explain 'ghosts' being real in some way without breaking every current law of physics known to man.
What happened to the photo?
She gave it to a friend who was big on paranormal stuff. He said he was going to get it published and change the world or something, and she never saw it again. Never took much of an interest either. My mother's a rather down to earth woman. As far as she's concerned, if that stuff exists, sure, if not, whatever. Meanwhile, she'll be off doing her own thing.
There are a lot of studies on the psychological side that I think compellingly point to hauntings and ghost sightings by witnesses, when not hoaxes, are generally in the mind. The brain interpreting information wrongly, or environmental forces that normally mean nothing to use effecting our perceptions under the right conditions.
Which is probably why no one talks about it, because it's easily the most mundane of mundane explanations.
I'll be honest, it's probably the most talked about theory behind this sort of thing. You can't get three feet on the internet around a ghost story without somebody dropping in to say things along those lines. As the two threads in OT prove quite nicely.
Heck, I was one of them if you look back in the other thread.
I guess what I mean is that no one really seems to want an extended convo about it. You know. Except for psychologists and the like who live and breath that stuff. In both threads where it's come up it's not gotten nearly as much attention as the more exotic ideas.
I mean let's face it. Ghosts being visions to the past caused by space-time anomalies sounds so much cooler than the brain crossing some neurons for a few minutes. The guy who studied infrasound explanations did it because a fan in the building he worked happened to produce the right sound wave. Who want's a horror story that ends with "and it was the fan all along!"
I guess what I mean is that no one really seems to want an extended convo about it. You know. Except for psychologists and the like who live and breath that stuff. In both threads where it's come up it's not gotten nearly as much attention as the more exotic ideas.
Probably because there's not much you can say about it beyond the schpiel I just caveated about empirical experience. You do one post of that (or read someone else doing it), and that's sort of it. Unless you're a working psychologist with a research budget to burn, there's not a lot else to say or do on the topic. I mean:-
'He imagined it'.
'Yep, totally imagined it'.
'I reckon it was that thing where you see faces in things'.
'Yep, probably'.
'....wanna get lunch?'
Not the most stimulating conversation to have.
In all seriousness, if it turned out to be a space/time thing, it wouldn't really be that cool or interesting either once it was figured out. It would be like how you look up at dead stars at night. Mildly fun to think about for two minutes (ten if you're stoned), then onto other stuff.
Whoa whoa whoa. I am not saying that empiricism is worthless or everything is subjective. Quite the opposite. That which can be established through empirical data is the only type of information that can be said to have value when trying to find the "truth" of objective reality outside the confines of the subjective human mind. That human experience is subjective and fallible is precisely why science only seeks to deal with what is measurable and can be verified and repeated. It's why forensic evidence carries a greater weight than testimony in court.
It may be "fun" to engage in speculative thought, but it is not an effective way of finding what is true. LordofHats has presented a scientifically grounded explanation for why people experience these things, which may not be a "fun" explanation, but is more likely to be a "true" explanation compared to speculative exercises involving spacial anomalies or hitherto unknown properties of minerals.
Nihilism is the opposite of what I'm advocating. It's saying that empiricism has no value, and everyone's subjective experience is equally valid, so we may as well not engage with truth or any efforts to maintain objectivity, because those things don't exist. It's saying that someone who "dun imagined" something may as well have literally experienced it in a phenomenological sense. It's building an epistemology based on feelings and impressions rather than any kind of objective criteria.
Luciferian, that is not what nihilism is. It's a belief that life is meaningless and limited to our time on this planet.
I don't imagine Nihilist would be remotely bothered by ghosts, beyond thinking, eh that was weird... but so is life. And then moving on to something else.
I think you might be looking for subjectivism, or its even more radical counterpart solipsism- which says the Matrix has you, and nothing that happens can be proven wrong, because everything we experience is filtered through our senses. As you said, it's really quite pointless.
Empirical evidence is the only way to add information to the natural world- because that is what science deals in. Right now, ghosts are not. If empirical evidence can prove or reveal their existence, then they will become a scientific fact.
Humans, however, are not creatures of fact. Many believe all sorts of things that have no basis in logic or science, and so ghosts and ghosts stories will always exist.
There are numerous phenomena studied by scientists that do not meet scientific requirements to call their existence 'fact' (astrophysics crawls with this) because confirmation by a second telescope was impossible, etc.
One of the biggest issues is there is very little field work done with ghosts due to the stigma attached to research in this field.
Which i always felt was a bit short sighted, as while there are many explanations as to what has been happening for centuries, there's very little work done to prove these hypothesis.
BaronIveagh wrote: One of the biggest issues is there is very little field work done with ghosts due to the stigma attached to research in this field.
Which i always felt was a bit short sighted, as while there are many explanations as to what has been happening for centuries, there's very little work done to prove these hypothesis.
That's actually not totally correct. As LordofHats pointed out. There is a lot of study on fields related to ''haunting'' in psychology. They have found numerous explanation for many phenomenon linked to haunting a bit in the same way, the same science (plus psychiatry and medecine) explored the phenomenon of ''possession''.
That's actually not totally correct. As LordofHats pointed out. There is a lot of study on fields related to ''haunting'' in psychology. They have found numerous explanation for many phenomenon linked to haunting a bit in the same way, the same science (plus psychiatry and medecine) explored the phenomenon of ''possession''.
Yes, but rather than go do actual field work, most of these are done in the lab. While they are interesting, they don't actually prove or disprove anything. It runs on the simple conceit that, again, there's no such thing as ghosts, so it must be in their heads.
It's like in archeology, it doesn't matter what you do in the lab if you never go on site.
BaronIveagh wrote: Yes, but rather than go do actual field work, most of these are done in the lab. While they are interesting, they don't actually prove or disprove anything. It runs on the simple conceit that, again, there's no such thing as ghosts, so it must be in their heads.
I'd propose you're simply presenting a reverse of that conceit, that there is something at the location and no study can be valid if it doesn't happen on location.
Arguably, the results speak for themselves.
For over 100 years ghostly phenomena have completely defied the idea that just going to a location can produce anything. Nearly all video and photo evidence is a one off that fails to be reproduced (except when someone reproduces the image to reveal it as a fraud). Most verbal accounts are difficult to approach from a testable perspective. Arguably, the locations themselves hold no value. Just look at the other thread. People experience this stuff literally everywhere. That haunted locations exist seems to have more to do with marketing. I actually see little relation to this and archeology. Archeology is explicitly dependent on field work and is a field that grew and started with amateur academics and tourists going to locations, finding things, and working out the methods to handle that professionally. The same is true of ghost hunting, except that looking for ghosts out there has woefully failed to produce results. Studies and tests in controlled environments have not.
I think it's hard to judge research negatively for following results.
The only common denominator in purported hauntings is that the witnesses are people. It would seem to have something to do with us — how our brains work, how our culture works, how our language works — rather than a certain place, time period, etc.
Manchu wrote: The only common denominator in purported hauntings is that the witnesses are people. It would seem to have something to do with us — how our brains work, how our culture works, how our language works — rather than a certain place, time period, etc.
I want to know how any of that picked up a 65 pound cast iron fireplace insert and dragged it 10 feet in front of five witnesses.
I've seen all sorts of gak, and much of it can be explained by the theories you suggest. But that insert has baffled me to this day. Nothing else metal in the room moved, and we tore the walls, ceiling, and floor up looking for anything that could have been used to move it. No electro-magnets, no nothing.
Manchu wrote: Did you already post that story ITT or in the other thread? I’d like to read the whole thing.
I think I have told it before here someplace, but God knows.
This was a farm near Mercer PA about 1995. The farmer was having trouble getting the Amish to work for him because the place had developed a bad reputation after several amishmen had been hospitalized by 'something' assailing them with pots pans, throwing them off roofs, the usual poltergeist BS.
So we go out, he says that all the activity is out in his barn. So we did some research, nothing really horrific had happened there we could find, so we looked over the site, and someone had broken up a signature stone for the foundation of the barn but that was about it. So we put up some trail cameras, with regular film cameras, and stood around a while, since they said you could hear kids playing in the barn at night. (There were no kids for five miles, we checked) So we go in, and we're all sitting around the living room, talking, big, ornate Victorian fireplace, with the summer insert leaning up against the wall. Now, I dunno if you've ever seen one of these things, but it's a massive chunk of Victorian ironmongery. All of the sudden, this thing up and is drug, not lifted, but sits upright, and is dragged across the floor to the middle of the room, and then falls over.
Everyone could see everyone else. If you'd have done it with string or something similar, the way it had moved you'd have had to have pulleys on the ceiling. Two of us sat there and got his permission to tear the walls out (since he was going to do that anyway, hence his need for amishmen) while everyone else went and got prybars. If there was a technological or human agency, we'd have found it.
Honestly, we went out figuring nothing was there. And, we never did get anything in the barn. It was creepy, don't get me wrong, and some of us did hear some things in it, but nothing that was what might be termed proof.
Manchu wrote: Thanks for re-posting. So I take it you were a member of a paranormal research group?
Out of YSU's anthropology department. I was basically filling in for my mother who had a broken shoulder, so I would not call myself a 'member' but more like 'the gofer'.
BaronIveagh wrote:
It's like in archeology, it doesn't matter what you do in the lab if you never go on site.
Just dropping by to say that, as a working archaeologist, I think the people currently doing the most interesting work (or at least doing the stuff with the most potential for future research) never have any need to be on site. Some of them do anyway, because your university generally expects you to have an active excavation or ground survey, but they don't need to. So not a great analogy, I don't think.
Thinking about fieldwork in psychology and the paranormal - I'm not sure what more fieldwork you can actually do. People already carry out work in specific locations associated with transcendental/paranormal/religious/etc experience. Most of these things, however, are experienced in unpredictable locations so I'm not sure how you would go and do that. I totally stumped as to how you'd write a funding proposal for it!
Thinking about fieldwork in psychology and the paranormal - I'm not sure what more fieldwork you can actually do. People already carry out work in specific locations associated with transcendental/paranormal/religious/etc experience. Most of these things, however, are experienced in unpredictable locations so I'm not sure how you would go and do that. I totally stumped as to how you'd write a funding proposal for it!
More to the point, even if you could figure out how, it would never get approved. Ties into what I posted a few posts back about how 'everyone dismisses, but none of us have actually bothered to go and check ourselves'.
So here's an interesting tangent. What sorts of experiments could we design to begin investigating for evidence of any form of 'ghost' activity?
I suppose cameras at 'most haunted spots' with neutral postdocs checking the footage frame by frame over a period of weeks would be the most obvious place to start. It would be so bloody labour intensive though, that you'd need some serious funding.
So here's an interesting tangent. What sorts of experiments could we design to begin investigating for evidence of any form of 'ghost' activity?
I suppose cameras at 'most haunted spots' with neutral postdocs checking the footage frame by frame over a period of weeks would be the most obvious place to start. It would be so bloody labour intensive though, that you'd need some serious funding.
An experiment I always dreamed was to seal the Rhodes Farm at GBerg and let cameras run for a month.
Manchu wrote: So the fire place insert incident occurred in front of a group of state university researchers? Surely there was some follow up?
If there was I wasn't involved. I went off to Doctor White's coke furnace dig next. Man could drink a gallon of beer in a sitting, so was interesting, but not exciting. Beat dealing with Dr Fry.
I don't really think that "ghosts" as we know the phenomenon are real, any more than spiritual possession is real.
However, I find it an interesting mental exercise pondering that there might indeed be some sort of supernatural facet to life that is currently beyond our ability to accurately describe or quantify. It's entirely possible that such "supernatural" qualities could be explained by science that we do not possess.
I mean, there's a helluva lot of strange occurrences out there that are impossible to explain. For example, how is it possible that certain types of mental trauma can give people attributes that are not explainable through normal means. English-speaking person is in a car wreck and goes into a coma. Upon rising from coma, either speaks in a completely different accent (sometimes even described as perfect by native speakers of that accent) or even in a different language which they have no prior level of learning in. Apart from the fact that accents can be imitated, having a working knowledge of another language? That's just.....weird.
I mean, here we have something really anamolous witnessed by several credible bystanders in the course of university funded research — and nothing came of it? Your mother never mentioned anything more about it? Did you ever inquire?
I mean, here we have something really anamolous witnessed by several credible bystanders in the course of university funded research — and nothing came of it? Your mother never mentioned anything more about it? Did you ever inquire?
I don't think it went anywhere. I stopped there once and asked, and was told that in 2004 they had talked about a follow up, but then Gary Fry was enmeshed in scandal and given the choice of resign or be fired by the board, following his convictions, and John White retired, then died shortly thereafter.
You mentioned this was out of the anthropology department. What was the specific nature of the field research into this site? Were either of those professors actually looking for ghosts?
Manchu wrote: You mentioned this was out of the anthropology department. What was the specific nature of the field research into this site? Were either of those professors actually looking for ghosts?
The farm sat on a site that had been producing artifacts ranging from Clovis to the War of 1812.. So, potentially we're talking 11,000 years of continual habitation. Aerial photographs suggested there may have been a village site in one of the western fields. The Farmhouse itself sat on the foundations of a war of 1812 era tavern, where Perry's men had camped directly opposite the farmhouse on their way to Erie. I suspect that it was a case of 'Sure we can look into it if you just give us permission to dig'. I was told that Penn State had also been inquiring after the site but couldn't get permission.
