Pentagon admits that ghosts exist.

[Seattle]

I’d agree we need different measurements and standards to determine if ghosts exist, as opposed to love. But love doesn’t cause everyone to feel one way over another, universally. What you’ve described could be how you experience and define love, but maybe someone else views love as co-dependency or becoming completely selfless for another. Love exists because we believe it does. You have to believe in ghosts for them to have a definition at all. Even the definition is a loose translation of others’ opinions of what they’ve experienced.

Have you ever known someone who every single person they date…they’re “in love?” Most likely, they’re infatuated but attach “love” to their relationship, way too soon. But that’s just my opinion. There’s no “universal standard” as to what causes a person to feel and experience love.

I think it’s easier to debunk the idea of ghosts existing in a physical sense more so than love. Love is accepted as a feeling that at some point in a person’s life, they may feel it.

But ghosts require the suspension of disbelief. Even if science can’t prove that ghosts exist, many people still choose to believe in them. Therein lies the dilemma…beliefs are part of our lives just as much as physical realities and if you believe strongly in something, no amount of “evidence” debunking it, will change that.

I agree that the feelings of love differ from individual to individual to a degree but if someone "claims" that love exists there has to be something testable about that claim and then you just test the claim.

People, in general, don't have to "believe" in love. That's the problem with ghosts, you have to "believe" in them because otherwise there is nothing there.

Sure, you aren't likely to change someone's mind who believes in ghosts or anything else if they are so invested into that belief that facts don't matter. However the scientific method will help anyone else who truly is just looking for facts.

Kids believe in Santa but when presented with facts they easily let go of that belief. For those who believe in ghosts it doesn't seem to work that way for them because they are, for some reason, so invested in there in fact being ghosts.

It can be ignorance of course, especially long ago when little was known about anything then anything seemed likely or probable. Human sacrifice seems to bring better weather the next year to some. It wasn't hard to change opinions about human sacrifice once we understood more about weather and growing crops.

Today it seems to be the least scientifically literate that "see" the most ghosts. With most people, I'm guessing, they saw their last ghost by the time they reached puberty.

Regarding tests for love, you just have to agree on some definition of love and what it is claimed that love can do.

They have tested prayer and found that it makes no statistical difference (in a double blind experiment). The key to that is first defining exactly what is being claimed that prayer does.

I would think you could pin down some aspect of love in a similar manner. My quick definition or example was just off the top of my head and not rigorous enough to test but there should be some common claims that could be tested.

It's not about proving that ghosts exist or proving that love exists. It's about making a claim that should follow from love (or ghosts) and then testing those. If no claims can be made then we really aren't talking about anything.

With ghosts, people generally haven't been specific enough in what they are claiming. It's usually too nebulous. It often something like...sometime they appear and sometimes they don't, they are from the spirit world but sometimes we can see them. You can't take pictures of them because they aren't "solid" but they can wear watches and clothes. You can't communicate with them but they make noises and walk though doors, sometimes. Not everyone can see them and you can't summon them. They are trying to scare you or tell you something or they come in love or...

 

[wegs]

I agree that the feelings of love differ from individual to individual to a degree but if someone "claims" that love exists there has to be something testable about that claim and then you just test the claim.

People, in general, don't have to "believe" in love. That's the problem with ghosts, you have to "believe" in them because otherwise there is nothing there.

Sure, you aren't likely to change someone's mind who believes in ghosts or anything else if they are so invested into that belief that facts don't matter. However the scientific method will help anyone else who truly is just looking for facts.

Kids believe in Santa but when presented with facts they easily let go of that belief. For those who believe in ghosts it doesn't seem to work that way for them because they are, for some reason, so invested in there in fact being ghosts.

It can be ignorance of course, especially long ago when little was known about anything then anything seemed likely or probable. Human sacrifice seems to bring better weather the next year to some. It wasn't hard to change opinions about human sacrifice once we understood more about weather and growing crops.

Today it seems to be the least scientifically literate that "see" the most ghosts. With most people, I'm guessing, they saw their last ghost by the time they reached puberty.

Regarding tests for love, you just have to agree on some definition of love and what it is claims that love can do.

They have tested prayers and found that it makes no statistical difference (in a double blind experiment). The key to that is first defining exactly what is being claimed that prayer does.

I would think you could pin down some aspect of love in a similar matter. My quick definition or example was just off the top of my head and not rigorous enough to test but there should be some common claims that could be tested.

It's not about proving that ghosts exist or proving that love exists. It's about making a claim that should follow from love (or ghosts) and then testing those. If no claims can be made then we really aren't talking about anything.

With ghosts, people generally haven't been specific enough in what they are claiming. It's usually too nebulous. It often something like...sometime they appear and sometimes they don't, they are from the spirt world but sometimes we can see them. You can't take pictures of them because they aren't "solid" but they can wear watches and clothes. You can't communicate with them but they make noises and walk though doors, sometimes. Not everyone can see them and you can't summon them. They are trying to scare you or tell you something or they come in love or...

Okay, I see what you’re saying, now. My point was not to split hairs over the definition of love, rather to use it as an example of something hard to “quantify.”

 

[Seattle]

Okay, I see what you’re saying, now. My point was not to split hairs over the definition of love, rather to use it as an example of something hard to “quantify.”

Yeah, look at it more as a claim. When people "believe" in anything they are really (usually) making some claim. Test that.

You might say I believe in God but not in religion. OK, I wouldn't touch that directly but I would say (or think) what are you really claiming that God can do or is doing for you? If it's prayers being answered you look to statistics and probability and demonstrate that it can't be prayer because there is no statistical significance to that (prayers are sometimes answered and sometimes not so that's what would happen without prayer).

You might say that you just feel better believing in God. I wouldn't try to "attack" that but eventually most people will make some kind of specific claims whether they realize or not. Test that.

If no claim is made then it's nebulous enough that there is no need to test it. If God doesn't answer prayers, isn't active, just started the Universe and now leaves it alone then there is really no difference between there being a God and there not being a God.

The same would apply to ghosts or anything that is not physical. Feelings are physical in a chemical sense so if you feel that ghosts exist that feeling is in the physical world even if ghosts aren't. Feelings don't exist outside of your physical body.

So far no one has provided any evidence that anything exists outside the physical world. There is no evidence that a supernatural world exists in any realm. That's where I'd start. Show that there is anything outside the physical world before getting into specifics like ghosts or leprechauns.

 

[C C]

I have see a ghost when i was a child (my brother too, so we have see the same).
Yes. Ghosts exists.

Childhood was the only time I ever saw a "ghost". Their occurrence often seems to diminish with the onset of critical thinking -- or rather the interpretation of _X_ as a "specter" does.

Transapient beings in the future that were really stoned on a scientific realism perspective, or super-duper indirect realism, might contend that tables and chairs never existed. The latter were just perturbations in quantum fields (or whatever is in vogue for their era) that the brain processes of their intellectual ancestors conceived and represented as distinct objects and material phenomena.

IOW, an entry level rational tribe's "primitive" interpretation of common things or events is just practical BS to the next hierarchy of natural "deities". And so on ascendingly.

_

 

[sideshowbob]

If there is no standard measurement for love, yet we still think it exists, why couldn’t the ghost world be the same?

Love has physical manifestations in the physical world. If somebody loves you, they take care of you when you're sick. Even if they don't claim to love you, others can see that they do.

 

[C C]

Love has physical manifestations in the physical world. If somebody loves you, they take care of you when you're sick. Even if they don't claim to love you, others can see that they do.

Yah, it's a generalization or summary conception of various human acts slash behaviors (contingently underlain or accompanied by a social prescription to engage in them). A lot quicker just to subsume those under the abstract label of "love" than rattle out all the possible, specific ones in sequence.

But as with most words of the English language, that's only one definition it serves. It also denotes applicable "feelings", and thereby is yet another gear wheel in the machinery of confusion that each meaning not having its own particular, unique term causes.

_

 

[DaveC426913]

Who are “others?”

I'm kidding.

It's like "We all have our unique opinions." "I don't. Mine are the same as everyone else's."

Or as immortally captured by Monty Python:

 

[DaveC426913]

... an example of something hard to “quantify.”

Qualia:

Is my "red" the same as your "red"?
Do I feel pain the same way you do?

 

[Dicart]

So, it was night, but he could see that it was the same watch.

Yes.

The light in it only shows the face, not the casing or the band, so how did he conclude it was the same?

Because it looked exactly the same.

And the ghost got close enough, and it held still for long enough, that your brother could see it was broken.

He passed by, around 1 meter of him.

What was "broken"? The glass? The timing?

The glass, and the failure was exactly the one he had after that.

 

[DaveC426913]

Because it looked exactly the same.

I asked how he could tell it was exactly the same.

It was dark. The watch light only illuminates the watch face; the casing and band are not visible in the darkness. So how could be tell it was exactly the same?

How do you know he didn't dream it?

It is much more likely that he filled in the details after-the-fact, whether he meant to or not.

 

[wegs]

''True love is like ghosts, which everyone talks about and few have seen.'' - François de La Rochefoucauld

What a killjoy.

Back to the original topic...It actually doesn't seem like the Pentagon is stating any such thing, that it ''believes'' in ghosts; it's just analyzing claims (mainly about UAP's) that seem out of the ordinary. Highly doubt the Pentagon is suggesting that elves and ghosts might be real, but UAP's remain ''unexplained.''

 

[Dicart]

I asked how he could tell it was exactly the same.

It was dark. The watch light only illuminates the watch face; the casing and band are not visible in the darkness. So how could be tell it was exactly the same?

Because it was enougth to recognize the watch (and the light of the watch was on, for some reason)
There were not many electronic watches like this one at this time.
Surely the band could have been different, but he dident see it.

How do you know he didn't dream it?

Because he was awaken and me too.

It is much more likely that he filled in the details after-the-fact, whether he meant to or not.

I dont think, because he was very scared, screaming he has seen a ghost.
He alerted our parents and so on. He was serious.
And if i dident see the ghost, i heard his footsteps at the same time (he passes by around 3 meter of me).

 

[Michael 345]

There is no specific scientific definition

That is a good decision by scientists

Love exists because we believe it does

People have a warm fuzzy feeling (reaction) to certain other people. The warm fuzzy feeling IS a bunch of chemicals and electrical impulses operating in the body and we designate the FEELING love. But the feeling has no physical presence hence no existence

Ghosts need to be defined to some standards and then those standards have to be tested

Some definitions of ghost

• transparent version of a dead person
• human size smoke
• feel person's presence - nothing visible
• hollow sound reverberations

 

[Beaconator]

The Locke Ness monster still owes me three fiddy