Ghosts (Real or Bull)

[champbassist]

Exactly right.
BTW, the proper scientific approach is not for the disbeliever to prove something does not exist or is wrong, it is up to the person making a claim that something is real and true to prove that they are right.

+1

Existence of things such as ghosts, mythical creatures, etc. is not something that can assuredly be proved wrong. It is something that can only be proved right. Until it is proved right, common sense would suggest, that we regard it as wrong/unproven.

 

[Batmensch]

As the saying goes, "You can't prove a negative."

 

[Brad Barker]

you can't really prove anything with induction.

(besides the mathematical technique "proof by induction," which is logically equivalent to "the well-ordered principle"--so it's really a sneaky form of deduction. whether or not the structure of math, at its heart, depends on inductive observations is something i haven't been educated about.)

 

[champbassist]

you can't really prove anything with induction.

What made you think of induction in this case? Just curious.

 

[dave64o]

I didn't until I went to Corpus Christi, TX. It was my second venture there-and the first week we stayed in a condo, and the last two nights at the hotel next to the room where Selena was shot at. Those of you who don't know who Selena was, she was a beautiful Tejano singer, who was making it as a singer. She was shot on April 30th, 1995, by her fan club president and manager of her clothing boutique. The lady was scamming money from her. Selena went to the hotel room where the lady (Yolanda Saldivar) was staying at, to get some tax papers-after firing her. Selena was walking out the door when Yolanda pulled out a .38 and shot her in the back-spattering blood on the door, carpet and sidewalk.. Selena then ran to the lobby where she collapsed, but after saying the name of the person who shot her. She died enroute to the hospital.
They changed the room numbers to prevent fans from graffiti the door etc. but us fans all know which room it was.
The second day we were at the hotel, I took a picture of my daughter outside our room. It was later when I got home, I noticed the faces in the door. One looked like Selena, how she looked when she won her Grammy.

actually there is one BIG face in the door and two smaller ones. the one near the door handle looks like Selena. I darkened and made the picture bigger to see it better.

So please explain. BILLIONS of people have died over the millenia. Why is it that there aren't billions of such images all over the world? This place should be teeming with them, but it's not!

I won't argue that Selena wasn't a terrific performer but, c'mon. What makes HER so special that SHE gets to leave her mark like this, rather than any of the other billions who've died, including the millions and possibly billions who've died tragically and violently like she did.

Sorry, but being a fan of her doesn't automatically elevate her to a status beyond that of any other mortal who walked the earth, no matter how great a performer she was.

 

[Brad Barker]

What made you think of induction in this case? Just curious.

the "you can't prove a negative" canard, which i doubt is true. and we're talking about empirical claims, which rely on induction. you can't PROVE anything with direct observation--you can only make provisional claims supported by evidence (or lack thereof).

 

[i_got_a_mohawk]

Exactly right.
BTW, the proper scientific approach is not for the disbeliever to prove something does not exist or is wrong, it is up to the person making a claim that something is real and true to prove that they are right.

Hmm, don't know if I agree with that.


Disproving a theory/hypothisis is one of the most common ways of moving a science forward. Experimental results can match a theory, but that doesn't mean the theory is right.

Basically, you can disproove points to the stage where you are close to the truth, but scientifically you generally can't completelly proove a theory/hypothesis.

 

[i_got_a_mohawk]

the "you can't prove a negative" canard, which i doubt is true. and we're talking about empirical claims, which rely on induction. you can't PROVE anything with direct observation--you can only make provisional claims supported by evidence (or lack thereof).

+1

 

[Rocks]

I've had some really, really bizarre stuff happen that I've witnessed. I don't believe in ghosts or life on other planets - BUT I do believe both are possible. Thinking something is possible is not the same as believing in them.

EDIT: also ghost adventures is a crappy show with overacting juveniles running it. Ghost Hunters is far better IMHO

 

[Joe Gress]

I see ghosts every time I drink Red Bull with that one German fellow Jager...

 

[Johnny Crab]

Has any of you fellow TB"ers ever had any experiences regarding the paranormal,

Yes, probably.

Mid-1970's, New Orleans, Metairie area, home built in the late 1950's.
In my 1st son's bedroom, I had wired an extension speaker to a clock radio in that room and staple-gunned the wire to the wall. The clock radio was on his dresser and the speaker was on a nightstand by his crib so we could put music on for him to go to sleep by and it would auto-off. One night after putting him in bed we heard him screaming and wife & I ran to his room to see him standing up in his crib hysterical, crying, and pointing at the wall above the clock radio. The wire and some staples were pulled away from the wall, some staples completely pulled out, some with one side still stuck in the wall. He indicated to us that the wire had pulled away from the wall and was moving back and forth. His size, age, crib height off the floor, wire location, etc. all made it impossible for him to have "played a prank" on Mommy and Daddy. This is one of a couple of "events" in that home.

 

[Bongolation]

the "you can't prove a negative" canard, which i doubt is true.

I think how that works is that you haven't proved a negative, you've just failed to prove a positive.

If your test protocol failed to reliably produce ghosts, it didn't prove ghosts didn't exist, it only proved your particular methodology was not able to reveal them.

I think this is the logic behind the saying.

 

[6jase5]

The day a ghost of someone I knew walks up to me and introduces him or herself, I'll believe it. I have as much faith in that ever happening as (pick your diety) doing the same. I guess that puts me in the 'bull' category.

 

[capnsandwich]

EDIT: also ghost adventures is a crappy show with overacting juveniles running it. Ghost Hunters is far better IMHO

Agree 100%!!!

Oh, and I'm in love with Kris Williams.

 

[Bongolation]

Do haints exist?

Neither "Science" nor I know. Maybe someday.

One thing that's probably worth noting is that belief and "evidence" (however dubious) in revenant beings seems to arrive in distinct episodes, which is not consistent with a real and ongoing phenomenon, but is consistent with a popular delusion.

Does that mean that ghosts don't exist? No, but it's strong evidence that much belief in them is delusional. If the Spiritualism fad of some hundred years ago wasn't largely delusion-based, we should expect to see "evidence" as thickly around us now as everyone seems to have then.

As one witticism put it, the prevalent belief in ghosts went out with the prevalent arrival of electric lighting.

If haints exist, they don't seem to be very common these days, or powerful enough to make themselves perceived through modern distractions (a situation shared with parents of modern teens).

Do spooky and unsatisfactorily-explained things occasionally happen? You bet. I've encountered some doozies in my day. Were they haints? Dunno, can't say.

 

[Brad Barker]

I think how that works is that you haven't proved a negative, you've just failed to prove a positive.

If your test protocol failed to reliably produce ghosts, it didn't prove ghosts didn't exist, it only proved your particular methodology was not able to reveal them.

I think this is the logic behind the saying.

right. as far as the epistemology of science goes, we abandon the notion of "proof." experiments place bounds, all told. for instance, the current bound on photon mass is about 10^(-27) eV. it is highly suspected that it's actually zero, but the possibility remains that it is not. however, until direct evidence for nonzero mass is observed, the convergence of evidence (based on other observations) allows us to provisionally conclude that it is zero. (in contrast, neutrinos, originally thought to be identically massless are now believed to have nonvanishing mass.)

anyway, the provisional conclusion is that ghosts don't exist. there's some good discussion of the notion of "provisional methodological naturalism" versus "intrinsic methodological naturalism" out there in the blogosphere if you want to read what smart people have to say about whether or not it's even possible to show that ghosts exist.

 

[Bongolation]

we abandon the notion of "proof." experiments place bounds, all told.

Yes, this has always seemed to me to be the case, even when "proof" is claimed. I always see flaws in either the protocol or the expressed conclusion which seems to run beyond the real boundaries of the protocol.

anyway, the provisional conclusion is that ghosts don't exist.

That's my provisional conclusion as well, but

1: I could be looking in the wrong place or in the wrong way.

2: The "ghost" explanation may be but a primitive label for a genuine but rare and currently unexamined and unimagined natural phenomenon (or batch of them), which will eventually be understood.

I've lived long enough to see a number of "scientific impossibilities" [sic] rendered commonplace realities. Regular people fail to realize that "science" as they perceive it is at best in its early stages, typically inept and at worst an arena of procrustean whorishness serving profit, politics, careers or squalid personal vanity. I think this was Dick Feynman's primary popular message, and it's a vital one.

Most "science" is bad (or "junk") science, in other words -- suggestive rather than conclusive at its most honest and generally nothing but a racket (typical examples off the top of my head being the "scientific" evidence that psychiatric drugs are and bacteriophages are not therapeutically safe and effective in humans).

So, if someone with a lab coat says ghosts do or don't exist, my first question is who paid the publicists who brought him into my field of media consciousness.

there's some good discussion of the notion of "provisional methodological naturalism" versus "intrinsic methodological naturalism" out there in the blogosphere if you want to read what smart people have to say about whether or not it's even possible to show that ghosts exist.

Smart or not, as a mere Art major I doubt I share the requisite terminologies needed to follow it.

It seems to me that most conceptions of "ghosts" depend on issues explicitly outside Science or Logic, namely the existence (or not) of the soul.

That said, they're perfect for suggesting more plausible mundane explanations of "paranormal" events or exposing fraud.

 

[warwick.hoy]

Most of the ghostly images you see can be attributed to natural phenomenon,...and photographic anomalies. I don't know how many out of focus, overexpose bugs in the foreground, obscuring the subject photographs, almost always shot at night, outside, I've seen that are mistakenly identified as "ghosts". (sorry for the long run on sentence).

I don't know how many people I've seen take a nighttime/fill flashed picture while smoking a cigarette and think the smoke that creeped into the image was a ghost.

That said I think reality is far beyond what we perceive as humans and in that respect I think there are some phenomenons that we experience that can't and will never be explained.

 

[champbassist]

The fact is that there is no substantial evidence of ghosts (provisional conclusion, as Brad says). This would, in part be because of the lack, IMO, of a rigorous definition of 'ghosts', which almost renders the whole discussion null and void.

 

[Brad Barker]

The fact is is no substantial evidence of ghosts (provisional conclusion, as Brad says). This would, in part be because of the lack, IMO, of a rigorous definition of 'ghosts', which almost renders the whole discussion null and void.

or they simply don't exist.

carl sagan's dragon is highly relevant. Invalid Link Removed