Ok, I know I am just a flakey ghost hunter dude, but there is one issue that seems to be coming out of this thread - the idea ghosts represent a single phenomenon. If there is one thing as a ghosthunter i doubt, it is that "ghosts" are any more than description of a symptom, if you like -- that is that an experience labelled a "ghost" by a witness is unlikely tohave the same cause as any other experience labelled as such.
So maybe some small percentage of "ghost" experiences are caused by dead guys - ok. However an awful lot are undoubtedly caused by misperception, smoke, imaginations, etc,etc. Ghosthunters (and those who decry them) often seem more willing to lump all experiences as down to the same cause than I am: and this get s to me to the heart of the issue, does the term paranormal actually make any sense at all?
I will end this post by posting a piece I wrote for the Dawkins forum - which in turn cites an earlier piece of mine. However another issue raises its head - several posters have suggested we should try to "exclude natural explanations" to prove "parnaormality." This seems bizarre, and a confusion of paranormal with supernatural - if ghosts exist surely by definition theya re part of nature and function in accordance with natural law, such as the laws of physics? If not the whole ghosthunting business is pointless, as we are studying an arbitary phenomena using naturalistic scientific methods - and i cn see no reason to assume that ghosts should be anything other than naturalistic phenomena?
"OK, I'm not going to sleep. We still have a few days before
The Enemies of Reason Richard Dawkin's new Channel 4 documentary, and I still have several days to whitter about these topics in my Jerome way before the show. Easier to get in first - does not sound as much like carping! So far I have playfully written a defense of Astrology and The New Witch Trials, so tonight I will right something that sounds far more like Richard (But isn't!) - "My Problem with the Paranormal".
Now many of you know that I am twice damned as far as the Prof is concerned, for not only am I a dodgy Christian, I'm also by profession a dodgy ghosthunter/parapsychologist. Yep, if you did not know, you read that right... It's an odd mix I suppose. Most Christians don't seem overly keen on running ESP tests, or researching poltergeist cases or whatever, but I'm really quite comfortable with it. Long term readers of this forum are painfully aware of how passionately I defend proper academic parapsychology against its critics, while remaining a skeptic and supporter of Randi and the JREF. Anyway, I can't see Prof Dawkins taking kindly to my chosen path. I guess this series of essays may be nothing more than an attempt on my part to justify my own position: I don't like the idea of being dubbed an enemy of reason much!
OK, so tonight I'm going to talk about my problem with the paranormal. And here we have a problem straight away - what is the Paranormal? The term is used so loosely as to be almost meaningless. I tend to make a distinction between the supernatural - things above or beyond the universe and nature, and so presumably if they exist outside the scope of the naturalistic inquiry of science, or at least unfalsifiable - and the paranormal, which I would argue is simply a term used for those phenomena lacking any currently agreed hypothesis or theory as to their cause but which may one day be included in the scope of science, because they are part of currently undiscovered natural laws, or we understand the principles which govern them, but so far have failed to apply them correctly. So those laws may well include misperception, wishful thinking, or all kinds of naturalistic explanations. I think thsi is roughly what Professor Dawkins means when he refers to perinormal phenomena.
http://richard-dawkins.blogspot.com/2007/04/perinormal-introduced-by-richard.html
http://www.videosift.com/video/James-Randi-and-Richard-Dawkins-Interview
This is where Prof Dawkins and I are in some agreement. I personally think many "paranormal/perinormal" phenomena will eventually become part of our knowledge as science advances. Why?
Well when I was a kid, Arthur C Clarke had a TV show called
Arthur C Clarke's Mysterious Worlds. It was actually probably rather good, and had a slightly sceptical edge, but I was never a fan as such things did not interest me - I thought what I know know to be Forteana, Cryptozoology, Parapsychology etc etc were utter bilge. Still I recall the episode when Giant Squid were discussed, and we were told there was some evidence in terms of sucker marks on whales. Yet Giant Squid back then were thoroughly "paranormal". That was what, thirty years ago? Nowadays Giant Squid are perfectly respectable, though i still would not take one home to meet mummy and daddy, well not unless you really don't like mummy and daddy! And the same with high altitude blue streaks, ball lightning, and a few other phenomena which in teh 70's were considered paranormal, but now have made the jump over to scientific acceptance, if not yet full explanation. Others, like the legendary Sasquatch and Nessie are not looking so good after thirty years of research, and may well end up finally be accepted as myths. UFOs, well after Cartman got his anal probe and the bizarre excitement of the 90's Abduction craze, nuts and bolts ufology is well in decline, and Wicca and the Occult has suffered from over exposure and the harsh light of day - never a happy fate for a mystery religion. It end up less "The Devil Rides Out" and more Sabrina the Teenage Goth Wannabe Witch.
Still my point is simple - some "paranormal" phenomena make it as science includes them, usually without any radical new breakthroughs or changes in our understanding of the laws of nature, others just fade away as they are explained as mistakes or fail to stand up to scrutiny at all, and swim away like Nessie seems to have (Well I expect Tim Dinsdale is still looking! good luck man, hope ya find her!) The thing is to keep an open mind without your brains falling out.
Anyway, so far hopefully so good. The problem I have with the paranormal is not people being interested in it -- even
Most Haunted had the advantage of creating a generation of new skeptics and hard core researchers, so I'm not entirely unhappy with it (and won't decry my short association with the show - they paid me well, and I enjoyed the work) -- but the fact that I don't really know if the Paranormal works at all.
Let's starts with a list of "paranormal" claims --
ESP, Ghosts, UFOs, Zombies, Ball Lightning, Nessie, surviving Thylacines, Mediumship, Spoon Bending, Dowsing, Crystal Power, Atlantis, Witchcraft, Astrology, Poltergeists, Curses, Synchronicity, Astral Projection, Vampires, Werewolves, Psychic Pets, Auras, The Bermuda Triangle, Anglicani- er anyway you get the idea!
Now that's a pretty outrageous list, and i would not necessarily advocate the reality of any of those. However, what if say Poltergeists were real? The very fact they have been placed in this category makes them immediately suspect, and makes any decent scientist worth his salt (so not me) ignore them utterly. Guilt by association. And you know what? You try and do some research in to a poltergeist case, and suddenly people all link you with Auras, Bigfoot and the Bermuda Triangle - you are a nut. Why - because you study the paranormal! Yet my question -- what do any of these things actually have in common? What does Spoonbending tell us about Atlantis? How are Psychic Pets linked with Werewolves? (Er, don't answer that actually - I don't want to know!) This whole paranormal category si just a vast dumping ground for subjects we think lack credibility - and in many of the above examples, probably quite justifiably! However paranormal is just a term of abuse - it tells us nothing about the phenomena except they are not respectable. There are plenty of unexplained phenomena and anomalies out there which are taken seriously - its research on these anomalies, on the niggling problems with our best scientific models which leads to revisions and to the models improving, and hence scientific progress after all. Yet "paranormal"? It's meaningless. I'm even wary about "parapsychology". It's too close for comfort to the despised term.
I've just realized I'm in danger of rehashing an article I write in 1996, when Prof Dawkins last publicly spoke on these things, decrying the X Files as it happens. (Amusingly he admitted in a Times interview earlier this week he never actually watched the show!!?) Still back then I wrote this little piece, and while i have posted it before, I think it says much I still hold to be true, so I will post it again - if you have that paranormal feeling of deja vu, and have read it before, please skip it. You have suffered enough reading this far -- but for those who have not seen it, here is my Response to Prof Dawkins, from 1996
I have remarked on other essays on this site about the current boom of media interest in the paranormal. Was it the X-Files that opened the flood gates, or is it just the approaching millennium? Either way, I am unsure about the benefits of the whole renaissance, or should I perhaps like eminent critic Richard Dawkins, say 'Dark Age', of popular interest in the subject.
Richard Dawkins is a biologist based at Oxford University, and regarded as one of the champions of orthodox science in the U.K. He does not suffer fools gladly, and a recent television programme highlighting his fears of the pernicious influence of the (purportedly) paranormal made compelling viewing. For example, we saw psychic surgeons performing what I desperately hope were elaborate conjuring tricks, for they were using unsterilised instruments!
I am aware that many readers of this site have little patience for the sceptical position, and indeed many contributors to the paranormal newsgroups seem to go as far as an active hate of CSICOP, an organisation which, with a few reservations over accusations of fraud, which I am not in a position to judge, I thoroughly admire. (CSICOP, for those who have not heard, is the Committee for Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal, and for many years was associated with Martin Gardner and James Randi, two famous sceptics). These people actively debunk some of the more nonsensical claims which are promulgated as fact.
This can hardly be a bad thing; if the paranormal exists we all benefit if the frauds and charlatans are exposed, and the misperceptions and fantasies are swept away. If it turned out that astrology was piffle, astral projection codswallop and meditation led to migraines I would not be one jot the sorrier, and we would perhaps be able to make some progress by spending more time and energy on other phenomena which may be worthwhile, or by devoting ourselves to orthodox science, the arts or humanities. Every reduction of the field is a breakthrough; every reduction is a step forward.
And if the paranormal does not exist, and we are all poor deluded fools, then we will be better off financially and spiritually for that knowledge! Think of all the time wasted all over the world by people carrying out divinations, seances, psi-healings, etc, etc. Final proof against the paranormal would not be the end of parapsychology; it's focus would shift to the vital question of why people believe these things, and would shift from the analysis of the implication of the experience (always inferred) to the analysis of the experience, and it's effects on the percipients psyche and behaviour.
Philosophically I believe such final proof is as impossible as final proof of the existence of God. We enter here into the arena of faith. No matter how batty my theory that the shadow I saw last night was an astrally projecting Giant Alien Hedgehog, who happened to be an Ascended Master from Sirius, some one out there will buy it, believe it, and quite possibly preach it, and that is their right. No matter how smug I may be about believing I know such things are impossible, my position is equally one of faith; unless I travel to Sirius, or in some way prove that Giant Hedgehogs can't astrally project!
I like Sceptics. I believe a lot more money should be spent on Science, Medicine and Welfare by governments, that Dawkins, Beloff and Roy should be given CBE's for the encouragement of the others, that spiders have eight legs, and that the moon isn't made of green cheese. But that's (me) speaking, not the SPS, which holds no corporate opinions.
I dislike a priori scepticism; that is the belief that the paranormal is impossible, full stop, the end. My problem with this belief is simple; if paranormal = impossible then what if I decide that hypnotism is paranormal, or dentistry for that matter. Anything to which I apply the label paranormal is hence impossible. This is clearly ridiculous. The range of topics lumped under that label is so vast that some are going to turn out to be in some sense real, and perfectly normal. (Just misunderstood at the moment.)
This is a very real problem for parapsychology as a science. As far as I can see it determines it's subject area in negative terms; investigating those faculties of man not currently explained by any generally accepted scientific hypothesis. It is a frontier science; if it succeeds it loses some of it's territory which is claimed by the psychiatrists, biologists, or whoevers field it more properly falls into. An example from the fringe of parapsychology is the ghost/UFO studies which have recently suggested that certain mysterious lights are a natural rare geological manifestation, a theory now being studied by some distinguished geologists. It may turn out to be worthless; but it may mean certain phenomena are finally explained and leave the Kingdom of Parapsychology to enter the Fair Gardens of Geology. So parapsychology is like a harassed secretary, with an overflowing in-tray, desperately trying to sort the work and forward it to the correct department. Unfortunately as secretaries parapsychologists seem rather inefficient, and a lot of work ends up in the garbage bin as having been junk mail all along. On this analogy, the sceptic is a second secretary who helps by sorting out the junk mail, even if the sceptic is at times a little over zealous!
Today, (Wednesday 13th November 1996) the Daily Telegraph has published a report by Roger Highfield, Science Editor (and a good one at that!) on Richard Dawkins' latest attack on paranormal TV. Interestingly, Dawkins cites the X-Files as evidence of an 'appetite for wonder' which can be fed by real science. Unfortunately I think for most people it will remain an excuse to ogle Scully & Mulder and merely serve to further interest people in the more ridiculous conspiracy theories and outlandish claims of fringe writers. X-philes are rarely discriminating; I personally loathe the show but I think I am alone in the SPS on that score. We need more funding, desperately, for decent science education at school, university and adult education levels, not the X-Files, and I doubt that Dawkins would disagree with me. But as entertainment it is excellent; and I wish all X-philes the very best. The thing which miffs me is the claim that the shows are based loosely on real events; so is Noddy in Toyland by that criteria. Noddy has a car, and cars exist. If I wrote a history of World War 2 in which Churchill was a Prussian Milkmaid embittered ex-lover of Adolf Hitler, I could claim that was based loosely on real events; World War 2, Churchill, Hitler and Prussian Milkmaids all existed, after all. The difference is (almost) no-one would believe me!
Furthermore, Dawkins detects a further unhealthy trend in the X-Files. To quote the Telegraph article "Each week the X-Files poses a mystery and offers rational and paranormal theories as rival explanations. And week after week, the rational explanation loses. Imagine a crime series in which, every week, there is a white suspect and a black suspect. And every week, lo and behold, the black suspect turns out to have done it. Unpardonable."
Dawkins is correct, though I am a little dubious in his choice of racism as an allegory. But then Dawkins is serious about how unhealthy this is - it is propaganda, and could lead many minds away from rationality into the dark seas of the supernatural - and some people aren't good sailors.
"Let's not go back to a dark age of superstition and unreason, a world in which every time you lose your keys you suspect poltergeists, demons or alien abduction." Yes! This is a message that needs repeating. I remeber the great Christain writer C.S. Lewis writing of the tendency for new Christians to see Demons behind every rosebush; if demons exist let us hope they occasionally hide up the Sycamores as well! One can become obsessed with the paranormal to a ridiculously unhealthy degree, (one of the reasons my partners always seem to be hardcore sceptics?), and start to interpret every event as paranormal in origin. Indeed one excellent US researcher into the Ritual Magick and Wiccan communities of London found that the process of becoming a magician was learning the vocabulary, the belief system and how to interpret events in the light of those beliefs. To be fair to witches & their ilk, they very sensibly tend to insist you have a real job and a reasonably together lifestyle before they will initiate you! I am sure that at least 95% of what the media spews out as paranormal TV is complete hogwash; I can't and won't watch much of it. I prefer to do something more entertaining, like gargle emetics....
So far, so good with Dawkins. Now he says something, however, which many people may find offensive. Referring to the popular British TV programme 'Strange But True', in which reenactments of cases of purportedly paranormal phenomena are shown, he describes this and similar programmes as occasions when "disturbed people recount their fantasies of ghosts and poltergeists. Instead of sending them to a kindly psychiatrist, television producers eagerly hire actors to re-create their delusions."
Now Mr Dawkins, I have a great deal of respect for you, but you are going too far. These programmes are light entertainment, and maybe should not be taken as seriously as some do. Yes they can be permicious - I detest 'Strange But True' for it's lack of sceptical comment, but those witnesses do not need psychiatrists. Lots of perfectly sane and normal people see, hear, or otherwise experience that which we classify as paranormal phenomena. They are not crazy; they are normal, healthy people. It is you who is now returning us to the dark ages - should we burn them as heretics against scientific orthodoxy? I have seen two apparitions. They may have been in some sense real or veridical, they may have been internally generated fantasies, they could have been anything. But I had the experience, and that didn't prove I needed the attentions of a kind psychiatrist. At worst I was just a little over imaginative.
Now with hindsight I might have conferred with my doctor, just to check there was no organic cause for my hallucination, such as temporal lobe epilepsy. But thousands of people have had these experiences, and for the vast majority there were no health implications whatsoever. Mr Dawkins, people have the experience of seeing ghosts, and that does not mean they are mad. You may well have alarmed and upset some innocent readers, who are even now wondering if they really need to see a psychiatrist. Furthermore, some people who might have listened approvingly to your message will be too annoyed to listen further; to them scientific orthodoxy is once again revealed as the voice of narrow minded bigotry.
In summary of my position:-
* People experience ghosts, aliens, etc.
* The experience is a real experience, and should be studied.
* But that doesn't mean we understand what causes the experience, which may well be delusional in some cases, and is likely to arise from a multiplicity of causation.
* So the inferred (paranormal) explanation may be inadaquate.
The problem with these programmes is not that they give people a chance to tell the world about their experiences, but the fact that they also favour a paranormal explanation for those experiences without due consideration of both sides of the case. But that does not allow any critic the right to dismiss the case as fantasy, delusion or madness without at least some degree of supporting evidence. That is not science, it is opinion, and completely irrational.
Richard Dawkins apparently does not believe it important that we try to locate the sources of these experiences and explain them. I do; that is what I have in common with CSICOP. CSICOP & the Parapsychologists are working together to solve the riddle of these anomalous experiences; we are two denominations, Sadducees and Pharisees if you like, engaging in a scientific endeavour together, and only separated by their beliefs as to the likely outcome of the project. In the pursuit of this goal, the discourse leads to anger, tears, recriminations and accusations, but it also leads to vitality, rigorous research and hopefully progress. The interpretation is not the experience; maybe you are right Mr Dawkins (can I call you Richard?) and the true province for such experiences is within the field of psychiatry, or at least cognitive psychology, but it's early days yet and we can not be sure....
The Telegraph article continues to discuss the apparently annual TV extravaganza of super- psychism that I bitterly criticised in an early SPS new bulletin. My feelings and Mr Dawkins' are apparently completely on this matter, and I will not waste space discussing it. Suffice to say it was largely utter bilge.
Finally we encounter Mr Dawkins' objection to the paranormal; and a perfectly sound one it seems to be - economy of explanation, or something akin to Occam's Razor. "It is possible that your car engine is driven by psychokinetic energy, but if it looks, smells and performs exactly like a petrol engine, the sensible working hypothesis is that it is a petrol engine."
This paragraph leaves me shuddering. Be very, very careful, Mr Dawkins! Some might say that if they visit a medium and are told facts no-one but their deceased relatives knew, the most economical explanation is not elaborate fraud or even Super-ESP, but that the medium is genuine! Some might argue the most economical explanation for thousands of people claiming they are being abducted by aliens is that they are being abducted by aliens! The SPR Journal contains at least two articles on the dangers of the use of Occam's Razor in parapsychology, the second being my own 'The Poverty of Theory; notes on the investigation of spontaneous cases' which can be found in the July '96 journal. Occam's Razor and Economy of Explanation are useful pragmatic tools, but they are not scientific, or indeed strictly rational ways of determining the veracity of an proposition! The syllogism was considered a useful tool of logic once; it's absurdities are obvious. Occam's Razor's aren't - but it is often downright wrong. I am sure you have better, more rational reasons for opposing the paranormal, but be careful of your own tools lest they betray you.
In conclusion; Mr Dawkins makes some very important and valid points, yet is on dangerous ground. I hope this eminent and eminently sensible scientist writes once more on this subject - I am gladdened to note and reassure readers of this site he is not an a priori sceptic - "There is certainly nothing impossible about abduction by aliens. One day it may happen. But on grounds of probability it should be kept as explanation of last resort."
I have not changed my position much in the last eleven years -- I wonder if Professor Dawkins has. We will find out on Monday night!"
Well, I think this might be a bit long, and i have some housework to do, but I always sincerely enjoy discussing these issues.
cj x
