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 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?

Why is there an entity now?

 Azreal13 wrote:
My analogy was perhaps imperfect

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.

 Azreal13 wrote:
Why is there an entity now?

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.

I think an auditory hallucination classifies as a mundane explanation, no? I think they can be brought about by fatigue even.

Absolutely so, Bran. Any acceptable explanation must of needs be ‘mundane.’

 Peregrine wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:
Why is there an entity now?

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.

 Azreal13 wrote:

 Peregrine wrote:

 Azreal13 wrote:
Why is there an entity now?

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.

 Azreal13 wrote:


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.

 Iron_Captain wrote:

 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.

That in itself depends on what one considers "good reason" I guess.

 Azreal13 wrote:

 Iron_Captain wrote:

 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.

 Luciferian wrote:

 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.