Are Ghosts Real? (a poll)

[Umbran]

I've been to both places, and I didn't see a single person there.

You were in a place, perhaps. But "there"? How can you really be sure? Because some sign said so? Anyone can put up a sign...

They want you to think you're in Wyoming.

But the key to knowing it is fake is very simple....
... have you ever seen anyone... wyome?
How can there be Wyoming if nobody ever wyomes?

 

[Clint_L]

Lots of other things are in this condition, too. If you’ve been in love more than once, the experiences probably had some very distinct differences in feeling, but is not feasible (at this point, at least) to render them into anything testable and confirmable. Qualia are really annoying that way. I don’t think that’s at all strong a priori argument against. Also, if they exist, it seems to me most likely that there are lots of different kinds of ghosts - “ghost” could be as broad a category as “chordates” or “mammals”. So claims that don’t all line up don’t suggest falsity to me, either.

Ghosts are not alleged to be qualia, ghosts are alleged to some sort of distinct entity arising from a dead person. Equating the objective claim of "ghosts are real" to the subjective experience of "I am in love" is a massive category error. One is a shared knowledge claim that needs to be confirmable, the other is a personal knowledge claim that does not.

And while the individual experience of love is subjective, the phenomenon of love is not. There is a tremendous body of research exploring it.

I’m in the possibly odd position of being far more doubtful about souls than against things we call ghosts. I’m really skeptical about EVP for that reason, plus the inference from claimed messages that we get really boring and stupid after we die.

Souls and ghosts seem to be related ideas that are equally nonsensical, though I think a lot of people use the word "soul" as a synonym for "mind." Minds are testable (with difficulty!) and well studied phenomena, but they don't exist outside of the body and they don't keep going once you're dead.

 

[ART!]

I generally believe in believing in things (and people), so sure - why not ghosts?

That sounds flippant, but I just like to allow room for things.

 

[Clint_L]

I generally believe in believing in things (and people), so sure - why not ghosts?

That sounds flippant, but I just like to allow room for things.

Why not ghosts?

Because they aren't even coherently definable. Like, a Sasquatch claim we can do something with. There's zero evidence, but at least there's a testable claim: a hitherto undiscovered family (in the biological sense) of large primates are dwelling in the forests near where I live. Presumably we could find one. I've yet to see a quantifiable definition of ghosts, so where would we even begin to look (graveyards?), and what would we be looking for (spooky stuff?)?

Let's look at the definition provided by the OP, as it looks pretty standard: "ghost (n)., a disembodied soul; especially the soul of a dead person believed to be an inhabitant of the unseen world or to appear to the living in bodily likeness."

Okay, so a ghost is a "disembodied soul." Which is a...what, exactly? The definition is already completely circular, and thus an absurd claim on its face (literally reductio ad absurdum). And that's without even bothering with mumbo jumbo like "the unseen world" and various weasel words like "appear to be" and "believed to be."

 

[Ryujin]

I've been to both places, and I didn't see a single person there. Sure there were roads and houses and stuff, but no actual people.

It was spooky.

Spooky can include people. I was once riding through rural Pennsylvania and stumbled on a general store, in the middle of nowhere. No cars around. Two people in chairs on either side of the door who pretty much looked identical with the exception that one was Black and the other was White. I could practically hear the banjos so I went inside, bough a drink and some jerky, and got the hell out of there.

 

[Ryujin]

Why not ghosts?

Because they aren't even coherently definable. Like, a Sasquatch claim we can do something with. There's zero evidence, but at least there's a testable claim: a hitherto undiscovered family (in the biological sense) of large primates are dwelling in the forests near where I live. Presumably we could find one. I've yet to see a quanitifiable definition of ghosts, so where would we even begin to look (graveyards?), and what would we be looking for (spooky stuff?)?

Let's look at the definition provided by the OP, as it looks pretty standard: "ghost (n)., a disembodied soul; especially the soul of a dead person believed to be an inhabitant of the unseen world or to appear to the living in bodily likeness."

Okay, so a ghost is a "disembodied soul." Which is a...what, exactly? The definition is already completely circular, and thus an absurd claim on its face (literally reductio ad absurdum). And that's without even bothering with mumbo jumbo like "the unseen world" and various weasel words like "appear to be" and "believed to be."

I was on a Cub Scout retreat, in an old farmhouse, with 20 other Scouts. One day the pack leader who was in charge of us burst into the room and said, "Andy is missing. We need to go find him!" So we all rolled out of bed and headed outside, in the middle of winter. There we found a set of massive footprints that led off into the woods. "Oh no, Bigfoot has Andy! We need to save him!!"

Me: "Why does Bigfoot have two left feet?"

I had to stay with the pack leader and keep my mouth shut, for the rest of the day.

 

[MoonSong]

I was on a Cub Scout retreat, in an old farmhouse, with 20 other Scouts. One day the pack leader who was in charge of us burst into the room and said, "Andy is missing. We need to go find him!" So we all rolled out of bed and headed outside, in the middle of winter. There we found a set of massive footprints that led off into the woods. "Oh no, Bigfoot has Andy! We need to save him!!"

Me: "Why does Bigfoot have two left feet?"

I had to stay with the pack leader and keep my mouth shut, for the rest of the day.

There's being terminally and dangerously naive abd there's being a killjoy...

Take it from me who somehow manages to be both... At the same time...

 

[Umbran]

There we found a set of massive footprints that led off into the woods. "Oh no, Bigfoot has Andy! We need to save him!!"

At camporees, we had leaders who would regularly send the new boys out to borrow skyhooks, dehydrated water, and left-handed smokebenders...

...one wiseacre leader in another troop took a bit of curved stovepipe, welded some legs on it so it could be set over a fire....

And so one poor young boy came back to our camp, exhausted because he'd been sent from camp to camp, all around the site, but proud because he had the apocryphal left-handed smokebender....

Until one of the leaders loooked at it for a moment, stroking his chin, with an occasional "Hmmm," and a skeptical expression. After a moment, he picked it up, rotated it 180 degrees, and said, "I'm sorry Jimmy, but you'll have to go take this all the way back to Scoutmaster Jeffords. He gave you a right-handed smokebender by mistake..."

 

[Ruin Explorer]

At camporees, we had leaders who would regularly send the new boys out to borrow skyhooks, dehydrated water, and left-handed smokebenders...

You'd have to be pretty damn enterprising/criminal to find a skyhook but it's not totally impossible:

Fulton surface-to-air recovery system - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

(I only know this exists because of Metal Gear Solid V of course.)

 

[MGibster]

You'd have to be pretty damn enterprising/criminal to find a skyhook but it's not totally impossible:

Is there a merit badge for sneaking onto a United States Air Force base to steal something off one of their planes?