HPrice wrote:Will S wrote:What's happened is that, when I've pressed you slightly, you've put up a very wide and comprehensive definition of the word 'ghost', so wide and comprehensive as to make it undeniable that ghosts exist.
As discussed at length, it is a sound definition, used by paranormal researchers, based on the only consistently reliable distinguishing features of ghosts. If you consider this wrong then what SHOULD such a definition include?
But then, on the other hand, you appear to be complaining that some, unreasonable people try to 'rubbish' (your word) the idea that ghosts exist. I've pointed out that this amounts to nothing more interesting than a muddle about the meanings of words. And there the matter rests.
Words are important. When their definitions change, so do people's attitudes and ideas. If we move away from a flawed folklore-based definition of a ghost to one that demonstrably reflects the real world, it can improve general understanding about the subject.
Yes, words are important. But why do you say that the folklore-based definition of ghost is flawed? What's wrong with it? As far as I can see, there's nothing much wrong with it at all.
Of course, it's almost certainly an empty concept. There's no reason at all to suppose that ghosts, thus defined, exist. But that doesn't make it sensible for you to redefine the word - and especially in such a way as to make it certain that ghosts
do exist!
(It's now my turn to lecture you on how scientists think and behave.
I do have a BSc, by the way.)
When biologists abandoned their belief in orthogenesis, or physicists abandoned their belief in the luminiferous aether, or astronomers abandoned their belief in the primum mobile, the one thing which they did
NOT do was to redefine those words so as to enable them to go on asserting that (despite the sceptics!) orthogenesis
really happens, or that the luminiferous aether, or the primum mobile
really exists!
Why didn't they? I think the reason is obvious: to do so would have risked causing the utmost confusion.
So why do people like Jerome and yourself want to redefine the word ghost? And to redefine it in such an outlandish way as to make it literally meaningless to say,
'At first I thought I'd seen a ghost, but then I realised that is was only a trick of the light.'I don't know the answer to that question, and I can only speculate. Perhaps you have some kind of residual emotional attachment to the word ghost, and you don't want to let go of it. (Religious people often behave in a similar way. They want to hang on to the word 'God', and they don't like the idea of saying, flatly, 'There is no God'. So they redefine God in a broader and vaguer way, so as to make it undeniable that God exists.)
But, be that as it may, can't you see the scope for confusion if you insist on making your definition of 'ghost' so totally subjective, and so far from what is normally meant by the word?
Just a final thought: have you a therapeutic motive? Could it be that you have a kindly, honorable (but still, in my opinion, misplaced) desire to deliver consolation to people who think they're had an experience of the supernatural? Is it that you want to be able to reassure them that, despite all the debunking which you're done, that they really and truly did (in some sense!) see a 'ghost'?
by 
I don't know. That was how the Coventry folks exited their house when the poltergeist allegedly held the door closed against them 
Actually, the car park we used, once served a mental hospital, so, obviously, in the past, there had been lots of mentally disturbed people around ...