Good enough for me right now. My mind could change. But to ignore other peoples' experiences is disrespectful to these people.
You said yourself that senses are limited. Just because people think they've seen a ghost, doesn't mean that they really did.
Really? And how much is enough? People like yourself keep demanding "more research" regardless of how many times that research comes up with nothing. You'll never be satisfied until science proves that ghosts, or bigfoot, or flying saucers, etc. are real - but they're not. No matter how many times "more research" is demanded, you'll never get the result you want.
Actually your wrong. Actually what research has been by whom; objectively. Thats the thing. Mainstream scientists won't touch it. It will ruin these peoples careers. You would know this had you looked into these topics properly.
So you have never investigated any of these phenomena? On your own, by yourself, just you and you alone. Lambs' depend on the shepherd for guidance and warm from the whole.
Yes. Have you? What am I saying, of course you haven't. Otherwise you'd know that it's nothing but unfounded pseudoscience and woo-woo.
Spectre comes from the Latin spectrum means apparition, image, vision. While light is required to observe any such spectre, just as it is required to observe anything with the eyes, and everything that exists seems to be some form of energy (I'm using matter/energy equivalence), I'm not sure it's quite correct to say that "the spectre is a light form" - as it suggests more than is actually in the word "spectre". You are quite entitled to believe that a spectre is made up entirely of photons, however, but this is not necessarily the mainstream view of what the term means. The word "spectrum" - from which the spectrograph is derived - was introduced by Newton in scientific terms to refer to the range of colours when white light is dispersed by a prism, and from there to cover other electromagnetic waves. But in this context spectrum means "range of..." And is this thread really going to go down the "ghosts are real... prove it... no, you prove they're not..."? All the senses are open to being fooled, into making us think one thing when reality is different. Just look at any optical illusion as to how easy our eyes are fooled. Our ears can be fooled (see an earlier post). Our tastebuds are fooled all the time by our sense of smell (if you doubt, then close your nose off with a peg and try eating an onion - tastes nothing like it normally would!). Our sense of smell can merely discern the chemicals in an aroma - and if blindfolded we would not be able to tell what it was that was giving off the aroma: we might think we're smelling an apple when in fact it is apple-scented shampoo etc. Our sense of touch is easily fooled as well: Here As for non-classical senses: our sense of balance is easily fooled, especially when reliant on optical clues... if we stand still and the room is made to appear to rotate around us then we might get dizzy. So the question is (to get it back on topic): why are the senses so easy to trick? I think it's simply a confusion of signals and/or our brain's desire to seek patterns, and its tendency to fill in the gaps where information is insufficient for a conclusion within the brain (i'm not talking about a reasoned conclusion - but the subconscious workings of the brain).
Wasn't that precisely the context of this thread? For some reason, people must not believe in ghosts. (Apparently belief in Christianity's Holy Ghost is tolerable, but belief in regular mundane secular ghosts isn't.) But since a huge body of observational evidence supports belief in the existence of mundane secular ghosts, some feel that the answer is to discredit observational evidence in general. Of course all of empirical science is based on sensory observation of the natural world, so the 'good guys' become victims of friendly fire with this very nihilistic line of argument. True. But people shouldn't push on the ancient 'argument from illusion' so hard that they start drawing overly skeptical (in the strong philosophical sense) conclusions, denying the epistemic value of the senses entirely. After all, skeptics about sensory experience still need to justify why they believe that "reality is different" than what people think they perceive. If sensory experience has already been thoroughly discredited, then how could anyone possibly have any knowledge of that hypothetical reality? People are stuck either arguing for some form of extrasensory perception or else their whole argument implodes into incoherence. If people argue instead for the more modest and plausible proposition that although the senses can sometimes be subject to illusion, they are nevertheless generally reliable, opponents of belief in ghosts will still need to provide some convincing justification for concluding that observational evidence for the existence of ghosts all falls into the category of illusion. (Those arguments usually depend on the prior assumption that ghosts don't exist.) People shouldn't just flatly announce that observational evidence for ghosts can all be disregarded because it is sensory in nature, and the "senses are flawed". That's just lazy and it's much too strong. Bad arguments don't magically become good when they are used to defend ideas that we are already committed to believing in.
It may be the context, but is there any need for the thread to deteriorate into just another "prove it... you prove it's not..." debacle? It's a genuinely interesting question - one that I was surprised to see in this sub-forum rather than, say, the Biology forum. One is generally an unanswerable question outside the remit of science, the other is claimed to be scientifically tested. Therein most likely lies the difference. I don't think one can discredit the evidence in such a manner - it is what it is. But in noting that our senses can be fooled it is thus argued that it becomes more likely (under Occam's razor) that this explains the sighting rather than it being something that has not been ratified before. Not really. Science generally requires repeatability and independent verification through peer review. This is how it minimises the chance of it being a fooling of the senses. It's not foolproof, but it does a reasonable job. I quite agree - but I don't think that happens here - or if it does then you are welcome, as far as I'm concerned, to argue with the overly-strong skeptic just how it is they think they can know anything, how they can trust anything they see etc. It would possibly be an enjoyable discussion to witness. True, but only if they wish to claim proof that ghosts don't exist. Most are merely comfortable with the "you haven't proven them to exist, so I'll assume at a practical level that they don't" approach. In my entire time on this forum I have never come across someone claim proof that ghosts don't exist. What most skeptics merely do is argue that it is more rational to conclude that the observation was not of a ghost but something more mundane. Okay, some arguments may be wrapped in a weighty veneer of attempting to ridicule, but that speaks to their style and perhaps their lack of confidence in their own argument rather than anything else. Sure, but most don't flatly announce that in isolation, and certainly not on the "senses are flawed" ticket: it is coupled with the lack of any verification from reputable science to support the notion of the existence of ghosts, and generally is a case of the argument being that there is a more rational explanation.
A logically reasonable scientific assumption to make I suggest. Otherwise reported ghost sightings would be more plentiful... Ghosts/paranormal/Supernatural do not exist and are non scientific for many reasons......as I said, there would be more "reputable" sightings...why do only humans become ghosts...Occam's razor.....why are they always clothed...why not appear in the bollicky. People do not just announce flatly that ghosts do not exist, it is a fact though that some people do suffer from illusions or are easily fooled into believing what they do not understand. There are many good scientific arguments as to why ghosts, Bigfoot, do not exist. Conversely, there are no good scientific arguments as to why they do exist.
What turns many of the threads on Sciforums about ghosts, ufos and similar things into "debacles" is the quickness of so many people on this board (including some of its moderators) to hurl personal insults against people promoting ideas they don't like, instead of thoughtfully and dispassionately exploring the issues those ideas raise. If you are referring to the subject-line, "Why the senses are flawed", I don't think that the assertion seemingly implicit there even makes a whole lot of sense as it stands. Are the senses really "flawed"? What should we interpret the word 'flawed' to mean? Flawed compared to what (perhaps overly idealized) standard of perfection? If the senses really are flawed, then how could we possibly come to know about those flaws? How would science, and the rest of human life along with it, even be possible if the premise of this thread were true? It seems to me that the thesis "The senses are flawed" can be given either a strong or a weak interpretation. The strong interpretation is that sensory experience is bullshit, that it can generally be dismissed as false and misleading. I think that it should be obvious that this strong interpretation is profoundly nihilistic, deeply corrosive to human knowledge which is typically empirical and sensory in nature. But if people want to rhetorically dismiss huge bodies of eye-witness evidence of unwelcome things, based only on the assertion that eye-witness testimony is "flawed", then they would seem to be implicitly opting for this strong interpretation. The weak interpretation is that while sensory observation may occasionally be subject to illusion, it is nevertheless generally reliable. The "flaw" in this case would consist in the fact that sensory observation doesn't provide us with necessary truths. It's still possible to be mistaken, even about judgements based on sensory experience. This weak interpretation is by far more realistic option in my opinion. But if we accept that sensory experience is generally reliable, then we can't just rhetorically dismiss large bodies of unwelcome eyewitness testimony based only on the assertion that the senses are "flawed". Additional argument is necessary to make plausible the proposition that all of the unwelcome observations fall within the category of illusion and not within the category of veridicial perception
And as I said in a previous thread [which was cunningly ignored] some of our friends who so vehemently push the paranormal, Supernatural, Bigfoots, and Alien origin UFOs conducting unmentionable medical experiments, do seem to purposely go out to inflame those that participate in a science forum. A good example of that was the thread started for primarily expounding the view that science has done nothing for mankind. Which raises the question as to what reasons do you believe that anyone could post such obvious nonsense on a science forum no less. Would it be to provoke? or to flame? Or just to troll? What do you really think? Or do you and other like minded kindred souls, believe that people should be able to post what they like, in the correct sections, and be immune from scientific scrutiny, the scientific method and peer review? If so perhaps the Administrators need to consider to changing the name of this forum to "Paraforums" as distinct from "Sciforums" whose prime job is to push the supernatural, paranormal, Bigfoots etc, with a fringe section for science. Then maybe we will know truly where we stand.
