Collective apparitions: evidence life after death?

[PixyMisa]

The relevant statistics are as follows:

Prior probability: Zero.
Evidence: Zero.

 

[Resume]

The relevant statistics are as follows:

Prior probability: Zero.
Evidence: Zero.

Yet this thread (and the other 2) will march on oblivous to this obvious fact.

 

[cj.23]

Yet this thread (and the other 2) will march on oblivous to this obvious fact.

I can't remember which thread I'm supposed to be responding to Andy on now, but putting on my "philosophy of science" hat I have to ask why you and Pixy claim this? Three questions --

1. What is impossible?
2. How do you know it is impossible?
3. How does a priori scepticism (as opposed to methodological scepticism) differ from denialism?

We can start a new thread if it's going to be a substantial derail? It seems important though to address these issues lest we end up just with a "it's all XXXXXXX - because i say it is XXXXXXX" argument, which does seem to permeate the thread. I'm genuinely interested in the above questions.

cj x

 

[Belz...]

One area of paranormal investigation that seems fairly persuasive is the phenomenon of apparitions of the dead.

You mean the unsupported claims of apparitions ? Why do you think that's persuasive ?

 

[Stray Cat]

3. How does a priori scepticism (as opposed to methodological scepticism) differ from denialism?

Denialism denies the evidence.
What's happening here is there has been no evidence presented.

 

[Resume]

I can't remember which thread I'm supposed to be responding to Andy on now, but putting on my "philosophy of science" hat I have to ask why you and Pixy claim this? Three questions --

1. What is impossible?
2. How do you know it is impossible?
3. How does a priori scepticism (as opposed to methodological scepticism) differ from denialism?

We can start a new thread if it's going to be a substantial derail? It seems important though to address these issues lest we end up just with a "it's all XXXXXXX - because i say it is XXXXXXX" argument, which does seem to permeate the thread. I'm genuinely interested in the above questions.

cj x

You should start a thread on philisophy of science then.

As for skepticism, I'll just say it involves not believing something without good evidence. I don't believe in apparitions because they lack good evidence.

 

[cj.23]

Denialism denies the evidence.
What's happening here is there has been no evidence presented.

I think there has been evidence presented. It is hard to see what else to call the vast collections of case studies that have been carefully analysed over the years. Given that the claim A) "People see things they call ghosts" is unproblematic, I can't see how analysing said experiences fails to be evidential except upon a priori grounds? For example, until Hufford's classic study (1981) Sleep Paralysis was largely ignored as anecdotal: only after his systematic analysis did the phenomena become understood as widespread and the subject of large amounts of investigation: ditto the pioneer SPR group identifiying hypnagogic/hypnopompic states along with French psychical researchers?

cj x

 

[cj.23]

You should start a thread on philisophy of science then.

As for skepticism, I'll just say it involves not believing something without good evidence. I don't believe in apparitions because they lack good evidence.

I won't second guess you, but surely you accept people have experiences of apparitions? I suspect, but do not know, that it is the underlying causes of such experiences where your scepticism cuts in? ie. you are sceptical they are "dead guys" or similar?

cj x

 

[Stray Cat]

I think there has been evidence presented. It is hard to see what else to call the vast collections of case studies that have been carefully analysed over the years. Given that the claim A) "People see things they call ghosts" is unproblematic, I can't see how analysing said experiences fails to be evidential except upon a priori grounds? For example, until Hufford's classic study (1981) Sleep Paralysis was largely ignored as anecdotal: only after his systematic analysis did the phenomena become understood as widespread and the subject of large amounts of investigation: ditto the pioneer SPR group identifiying hypnagogic/hypnopompic states along with French psychical researchers?

cj x

Evidence that people report ghost stories is not evidence that ghost exist.
Analysing stories is nothing more than an exercise in statistics.

At it's very best, it will tell us the break down of what people's stories contain and not address whether the content of those stories is accurate.

Sleep paralysis is still denied today by those who prefer to think they had a ghost forcibly affecting their movements, which kind of tells me where the differing veiwpoints are coming from when ghosts and actual physical states are concerned. One has been shown to exist, the other not.

 

[GeeMack]

I can't remember which thread I'm supposed to be responding to Andy on now, but putting on my "philosophy of science" hat I have to ask why you and Pixy claim this? Three questions --

1. What is impossible?
2. How do you know it is impossible?
3. How does a priori scepticism (as opposed to methodological scepticism) differ from denialism?

We can start a new thread if it's going to be a substantial derail? It seems important though to address these issues lest we end up just with a "it's all XXXXXXX - because i say it is XXXXXXX" argument, which does seem to permeate the thread. I'm genuinely interested in the above questions.

Despite your apparent desire to mis-characterize the skeptics' position here, nobody is saying, "It's all XXXXXXX - because I say it is XXXXXXX". Maybe you haven't been paying attention, but Andyman409 has been attempting to "make a case for apparitions using 'objective evidence'"...

You know, I was doing some reading, and I think I figured out how to make a case for apparitions using "objective evidence".

Other than a few insubstantial denials, he's made it pretty obvious that he believes poltergeists exist, or at the very least that there are paranormal causes for the alleged effects. All the skeptics here are trying to help him learn a bit about critical thinking and correcting his use of logical fallacies to support his position. We have, and will likely continue to remind him that there is no objective evidence to support the claim that poltergeists or ghosts exist. We have explained the null hypothesis, which is something along the lines of: All poltergeist phenomena are the result of mundane, natural causes. He has chosen to ignore that and a whole lot of reasonable, patient advice in favor of pursuing "evidence" to support his pre-existing belief.

PixyMisa said...

The relevant statistics are as follows:

Prior probability: Zero.
Evidence: Zero.

By "prior probability: zero" it seems he means, of all the phenomena that were ever considered to be caused by ghosts or poltergeists, how often has objective analysis determined that something paranormal or supernatural actually was the cause? By "evidence: zero" it appears he means, how much objective evidence is there to support the claim that ghosts or poltergeists exist? Notice how he has accurately answered those questions. By "relevant statistics" he means that all your other blather about percentages of this or numbers of that is just a bunch of nonsense you guys are throwing around to pretend there's some validity to an otherwise unsupportable claim. "Analyzing" paranormal claims using irrelevant data, logical fallacies, and willful ignorance of critical thinking might work on ghost believers' forums. You'll get called out on it here.

 

[cj.23]

I think some of the underlying assumptions of apparitional research may not be obvious. I'm talking about academic research here, so I'll quickly try to outline some of them...

1. People see "apparitions" - they have an experience they interpret in a culturally mediated framework (ie. "of ghosts") of seeing things or people not there.

2. The vast majority of such cases since 1894 have been agreed to be uninteresting except as in terms of hallucinations - everyone agrees they are mental constructs. Hallucinations in the sane are far more common than previously thought (outside of parapsychology where this has been the consensus for over a century).

3. Certain cases challenge the Hallucination model. We can split them in to two groups - the so called A) Veridical Cases, where information that could not have been acquired by normal channels was provided by seeing the apparition - sometimes includes "coincidence cases" where the apparition coincides with the sudden unexpected dearth of the subject of the apparition and B) Collective Cases, where the apparition was witnessed by multiple witnesses. You can add C) Haunts, where the same apparition is seen in a certain geographical location over a period of years or generations by witnesses who seem to have no prior knowledge of earlier sightings.

4. The SPR group in 1894 developed a theory that as almost all ghosts were hallucinations, the Veridical Cases were perhaps caused by telepathic information transfer from living agent to living agent, the resulting hallucination of the apparition being a way of the brain tricking the percipient in to receiving the information. Variants of this theory have dominated the parapsychological discourse since 1894, with notable papers written on the subject including those of GW Tyrell and Hornell Hart. I believe it is not supported well by the dataset.

Hope this clarifies a bit. http://jerome23.wordpress.com/2011/...think-we-know-about-ghosts-is-probably-wrong/ is my ASSAP talk on the subject (in written form) - I have not yet written up my Skeptics In the Pub presentation that follows on and looks at my conclusions and the supporting evidence in more detail, but I'll link it when I do.

cj x

 

[cj.23]

Despite your apparent desire to mis-characterize the skeptics' position here, nobody is saying, "It's all XXXXXXX - because I say it is XXXXXXX". Maybe you haven't been paying attention, but Andyman409 has been attempting to "make a case for apparitions using 'objective evidence'"...
Other than a few insubstantial denials, he's made it pretty obvious that he believes poltergeists exist, or at the very least that there are paranormal causes for the alleged effects.

Has he? Maybe. I have no idea what Andy believes on anything: my knowledge of the chap is limited to what I have seen here. he seems to want me to shut up ad stop getting involved, so perhaps I should. Given I regard the term "paranormal" as essentially meaningless, I can't really infer much from what that anyway. There are clearly causes for the poltergeist phenomenon - what they are is mysterious, but clearly naturalistic. Does it require a revision of some of our scientific understandings? Maybe! I can't tell. Have to go answer the door now unfortunately. I'll return to this in a moment.

 

[Stray Cat]

4. The SPR group in 1894 developed a theory that as almost all ghosts were hallucinations, the Veridical Cases were perhaps caused by telepathic information transfer from living agent to living agent, the resulting hallucination of the apparition being a way of the brain tricking the percipient in to receiving the information. Variants of this theory have dominated the parapsychological discourse since 1894, with notable papers written on the subject including those of GW Tyrell and Hornell Hart. I believe it is not supported well by the dataset.

Explaining away the unknown by attributing the cause to another unknown is about as unscientific as one can get.

Using stories to base a theory on is ditto.

 

[cj.23]

Explaining away the unknown by attributing the cause to another unknown is about as unscientific as one can get.

Well at the time telepathy was considered scientific...

 

[Stray Cat]

Well at the time telepathy was considered scientific...

At the time?
I strongly doubt that telepathy has ever been considered scientific by scientists... there being no evidence for its existence.

Variants of this theory have dominated the parapsychological discourse since 1894, with notable papers written on the subject including those of GW Tyrell and Hornell Hart

And this was then a misrepresentation?

 

[steenkh]

I think there has been evidence presented. It is hard to see what else to call the vast collections of case studies that have been carefully analysed over the years. Given that the claim A) "People see things they call ghosts" is unproblematic, I can't see how analysing said experiences fails to be evidential except upon a priori grounds?

The null hypothesis that conventional physics can explain these phenomena could be regarded as a priori grounds. What we lack is evidence that the null hypothesis is false.

For example, until Hufford's classic study (1981) Sleep Paralysis was largely ignored as anecdotal: only after his systematic analysis did the phenomena become understood as widespread and the subject of large amounts of investigation: ditto the pioneer SPR group identifiying hypnagogic/hypnopompic states along with French psychical researchers?

But even before these causes were understood, there was every reason to think that there would be a conventional physical cause to the observed phenomena.

 

[Resume]

I won't second guess you, but surely you accept people have experiences of apparitions? I suspect, but do not know, that it is the underlying causes of such experiences where your scepticism cuts in? ie. you are sceptical they are "dead guys" or similar?

cj x

I'm accepting of natural phenomenon that cause people to believe they've seen ghosts.

I accept dead guys 'cause I've seen dead guys.

I don't accept dead guys causing physical effects because there's no reliable evidence to such an effect.

 

[PixyMisa]

I can't remember which thread I'm supposed to be responding to Andy on now, but putting on my "philosophy of science" hat I have to ask why you and Pixy claim this? Three questions --

1. What is impossible?

Many things. Pick one.

2. How do you know it is impossible?

Science.

3. How does a priori scepticism (as opposed to methodological scepticism) differ from denialism?

Completely.

HTH. HAND.

 

[PixyMisa]

By "prior probability: zero" it seems he means, of all the phenomena that were ever considered to be caused by ghosts or poltergeists, how often has objective analysis determined that something paranormal or supernatural actually was the cause? By "evidence: zero" it appears he means, how much objective evidence is there to support the claim that ghosts or poltergeists exist?

Not quite. Let me explain:

What I'm saying with prior probability is this: Assume that we have our existing body of scientific theory and data, and have never had a single paranormal claim. Now, someone comes to us and says that a translucent entity spoke to him with the voice, manner, and memories of his late Aunt Mabel.

Before we investigate, what is the likelihood that this could have happened as described (and not be a hoax or prank of some sort)?

Zero.

We know how humans work. When you're dead, worms eat you. There's nothing left. You don't come back as a ghost because everything that made you you is gone.

Now, if we had evidence that this sort of thing really happened, that would shake up our data and hence our theories.

So, we take the reports, and we look for evidence that something contrary to our existing theories happened. And how much evidence have we discovered?

Zero.

That's it. All of the paranormal: Zero-zero.

 

[fuelair]

Sorry if I sounded like a believer. I throught my hesitance would signal that I'm not.

Not very many posts are given the tag "collective apparition". I checked the search bar for them, but found only a few threads, many being unrelated (ex: "are paranormal believers dense?". I'll have to check again.

I think its important to note that I'm only interested in collective cases. I'm more than aware of works such as Elizebeth Loftus' on memory, so I seriously doubt we could know, for example, whether an apparition had information previously unknown to the recepient. Collective apparitions, however, seem harder to refute. We'd need to know the circumstances to the experiences, what each participant thought they saw, etc. Maybe they are all instances of illusions? I cant really judge the explaination "they were lies" unless I actually look at the data.

A google search gave me a few parapsychological papers, but none described what the critereon for a collective apparition exactly was, so I learned nothing from it. There are books on the topic, but many are, well, popular writings. McGreerys "apparitions" is the only one I have heard of that seems, well, kinda scientific- but alas, I have had great difficulty finding it.

http://www.amazon.com/Apparitions-C...UTF8&qid=1350315593&sr=1-40&keywords=mccreery should do it for you.

Amazon about 2 minutes.................