I’m not demanding a hypothesis from you here and now, just trying to highlight where the actual blockers in this field exist. My point is that scientific principles aren’t being correctly applied to these “supernatural” concepts. You can’t imagine an experiment to prove (or disprove) ghosts because you don’t have a clear definition of what ghosts are. It’s like asking someone to add two numbers together without telling them what the numbers are.
If we could define a formal hypothesis for ghosts (or at least one particular interpretation of the phenomena), it’d wouldn’t necessarily be any harder (or easier) to test than anything else. The difficulty remains getting the proponents of these ideas to commit to a definitive formal hypothesis in the first place. They start with the assertion that it can’t be tested so they can refuse to even try (I suspect because they know that a proper scientific investigation would be inconclusive at best and could well produce evidence directly contradicting their beliefs).
This is where we're very nearly in agreement.
This is why there is the myth that the “supernatural” is difficult or even impossible to study via scientific method.
This appears to be our sticking point for the most part.
I propose that the very ambiguity of anything broadly considered supernatural is
one of the reasons that these things are exceedingly difficult, if not impossible to study via the scientific method. We agree that the meaning of ghost (for example) means different things to different people. That flexibility of the concept is something I consider to be the first obstacle a scientist would have to overcome if they were to attempt to answer the question,"Do ghosts exist?"
We seem to agree on this issue. The difference, as I understand it, is that I consider this fact to be one reason why scientific investigation into the field is exceedingly difficult and perhaps impossible. You appear to believe that this represents a failure on the part of various believers. Either way, I personally feel that this particular obstacle makes the quote above suspect. To demonstrate my thinking: If the difficulty in studying the supernatural is a myth, then the disagreement on what exactly is being examined would not be an obstacle in the first place.
Now I feel that, though this obstacle is certainly a big one, it's not the only thing that makes this subject largely (and
perhaps entirely) incompatible with the scientific method. I pointed to the difficulty not only in determining what to measure but also of how to draw conclusions from it. To go back to an earlier example, you could measure the temperature in a haunted house in an attempt to have at least
something to measure, but I don't see how that could be taken to prove anything one way or another. You could even attempt to take photographs or video recordings in an attempt to provide some kind of evidence. We both know how unreliable that is. Even ignoring the clear hoaxes, we know that the human brain has a knack for picturing faces where none exist. I'm sure you yourself could provide any number of other reasons as to why photo/video evidence has flaws.
Those are a few issues I have with the second hurdle (the first being the difficulty in defining ghost, spirit, etc). There are probably other ways and means you could go about trying to acquire evidence. I personally don't think
any of them would be without major issues. Do you disagree?
Throughout this discussion, I can't help but feel that we actually agree with each other on the vast majority of points. The bits we don't see eye to eye on could be partly due to the nature of talking on the internet (i.e. that we're both talking about subtly different things.) What do you think?
