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As one of those "egghead science types", I'd like to point out to JammieDodger and anyone reading that, while a lack of evidence for the existence of ghosts means a reasonable scientist could not conclude that ghosts exist, he also could not conclude that ghosts do not exist. The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence (the last paragraph quoted above treads close to this logical fallacy).
Personal experience is personal. You can't peer review your personal experience, you can't properly share it with others.
What I'm saying, is if there is a lack of evidence then you shouldn't really believe something exists, which is also true. If given the question "do ghosts exist, yes/no" the logical answer would be no, that doesn't mean you're falling into the fallacy you mentioned, it just means you're going with the most likely answer. Which I am, because that's all you can do with any negative.
wait, so this happened to your mother, who was a japanese exchange student staying with an American family? Assuming this is all true, I think this qualifies as more than a "very odd experience." An odd experience is what I some times have with people at the mall or others in public.
Egghead scientists aren't supposed to be doing ontology -- leave that to the egghead philosophers!
Since I'm playing devil's advocate (or maybe ghost's advocate in this case), I'd like to know the proper scientific experiment to test for the existence of ghosts. Anyone?Personal experience (observation) is evidence. It must be weighed against any contradicting or undermining evidence.
There's no single correct attitude for things we have no evidence about. If someone claims, without any evidence, that there's a teapot in orbit around Mars, a teapot so small that none of our instruments could ever detect it, the right attitude seems to be skepticism. In the absence of evidence, I'm justified in believing there is no teapot floating around Mars.
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Absence of evidence can be evidence of absence. Provided you've made a thorough effort to look for evidence and consistently failed.
We can be wrong. But the mere fact that we're fallible isn't sufficient for us to suspend judgment forever. We're often justified in making a negative existential claim.
Another eerie story involves our Great Dane, Honey. For about 25 years my family employed an African-American woman named Sarah to do cleaning and laundry. The dog, generally a placid, docile beast, always reacted strongly to Sarah--whether this was the result of an instinctive aversion to people of color that some dogs display or the fact that Sarah had a sort of bustling, nervous manner to her, I can't say. Sarah lived just west of downtown Los Angeles on Bixel Street, about three miles east of our house. One night, Honey appeared at her door. She was very surprised that the dog could have found her way through three miles of urban L.A. to her door, but she let her in. The dog went into a corner a lay down and remained there until Sarah went to bed. When Sarah awoke in the morning, the dog was gone. When she arrived at our house that morning, she started to tell my mother this strange story and wondered if the dog could have found her way back home. My mother cut her short, saying, "Oh, Honey died last night at the veterinarian's."
I love jan's story of honey their dog. That was more touching than scary.
i don't see how anyone can say they don't believe in ghosts. if you haven't seen one, then you haven't seen one. you don't know if they exist or not. if you've seen one, you believe.
The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence (the last paragraph quoted above treads close to this logical fallacy).Originally Posted by thinman
Not to get into a whole discussion of religion or the metapysical, but what the hell do you think happens when someone dies? That they just vanish?
Death is a biological process, not some vaunted spiritual awakening.