CAN GHOSTS EXIST?
Have you
ever had the feeling of being watched, but when you looked nothing was there?
That could have been a ghost. First thing to think about what is a ghost? On
page 1 of Greg Janzen’s abstract it states that a ghost is simply defined as “a
mind without a body.” Ghosts by this definition encompass many stories and
hauntings. But many people claim to have
seen a ghost. How can that be possible if it has no body? Well people may also
claim that it’s the presence of the ghost that is haunting them. That seems
more logical by this definition. Ghosts have never really been proven by
science. Sure there are many television shows that claim to find real ghosts,
but it wouldn’t be the first time someone’s lied to people through the TV.
Ghosts can be more easily disproven than proven. Science can show that ghosts
couldn’t possibly exist and that is maybe just a figment of people’s
imagination.
Firstly,
imagining oneself as a ghost is near to impossible. If you try to imagine
oneself as a “bodily surrogate” (Smart p. 133) which is an invisible being that appears to people as
a puff of smoke. But to imagine oneself as a bodily surrogate is not to imagine
a ghost. To imagine a ghost is impossible
according to Janzen’s abstract. “…in fact, it’s impossible. Imagining oneself
as a ghost involves imagining oneself as a pure subject or experience, a being
with only fundamental property: a specific mode of consciousness.” (Janzen pg
95). So according to this a ghost is a certain “mode of consciousness,” this
means that one would have to imagine looking at something and see it from no
perspective. Since ghosts are said to be an creature without an body, there for
it would not be embodied. So by Janzen’s argument, he states that a
“first-personal view from nowhere – that much seems all but tautological – and
a view from somewhere is an embodied view:” (Janzen p. 95).
Secondly, to
go along with ghosts not being embodied and therefore cannot be conscious. What
if people argue for the disembodied ghost? That brings up the issue of space. Really this is a case of distinction. If two
disembodied ghosts occupy the same space how can one tell the difference? If
there are multiple ghosts in the same area how can one tell the difference?
That is just it, something that is disembodied cannot take up space, and
therefore something that is disembodied cannot have a consciousness. This means
that there could never be a disembodied ghost because it wouldn’t be able to
think. (Janzen 96)
Thirdly, one
must argue the relevance of society. If ghosts do not exist then why do so many
people believe in them? Well, this could
be that stories have been passed down in ancient cultures of dead coming back
in the form of ghosts or spirits. In Gary Schlesinger’ paper on the history of
ghosts he gives many cultures that have used ghosts through many
generations. These include the
Egyptians, Hindus, Buddhists, and Native Americans. He views ghosts as a kind
of metaphor. “These ghosts are consummate representations of powerful
unrealized and unfulfillible desires…” (Schlesinger p. 130) He also goes onto
say that a ghost is a metaphor for how someone’s past can influence his or her
future. This is what ghosts could have been to past cultures. If they are just
metaphors than did people just buy into it and forced their mind is playing tricks
on them? In the “Ghostbusting” part of his paper, Schlesinger that “ Ghosts can
be invoked to represent archaic aspects of the mind, or real traumatic
experiences overwhelmed the self’s capacity to digest them” (Schlesinger p.
133). This means that minds are playing tricks on the body. So this could account for all the ghost
sightings in areas that something bad ahs happened (i.e. murder or suicide).
This is due to our brains inability to fathom the aspect of it. Thus our brain plays games with our body to
get rid of the pain. So just our brain not wanting to think about something can
bring on ghosts.
Lastly,
people may argue, but what of the point of the pictures of ghosts and the
images we see on TV. Well, it wouldn’t be the first time the TV has lied to us.
But as for the images, well there is the argument for a editing software. Lets
just take that out of the equation completely.
In Shapiro and Boyd’s paper they discuss how sometimes the images of
ghosts are sometimes not completely accurate (Boyd, Shapiro p. 991). So this
means that even some of the hard evidence for the imaging of ghosts is
sometimes not even accurate. So what of the video of things moving and voices
saying GET OUT? Could this also be a trick? If one goes to a place that many
people think are haunted, could there possibly be someone there trying to scare
them? Or as stated in the last paragraph it could be the mind playing a trick
on them and they think they hear a voice.
In
conclusion, ghosts seem to be a mind trick and appear to have no way to ever
possibly existed in the realm of science. Many people still believe in the
notion that they are or were once haunted by a ghost. But, many people also do
not believe in ghosts. It is an argument that will be going on for ages and
ages to come. Yet now a days many people still believe that there are ghosts
somewhere out in the world waiting to be found, seen, or haunted by. Should
people be frightened by ghosts? It is something that will remain to be seen for
each and every individual. So in many ways a ghost is a metaphor for people to
use to get their point across or to strike fear into an. So do you still feel
like you are being watched?
Works Cited
Janzen, Greg. "Physicalists Have Nothing
To Fear From Ghosts." International Journal Of Philosophical
Studies 20.1 (2012): 91-104. Academic Search Complete.
Web. 10 Nov. 2013.
Schlesinger, Gary. "A Brief History Of
Ghosts: Commentary On Paper By Laurel Moldawsky Silber." Psychoanalytic
Dialogues 22.1 (2012): 129-138. Academic Search Complete.
Web. 10 Nov. 2013.
Shapiro, Jeffrey, and Robert Boyd. "The
Physics Of Ghost Imaging." Quantum Information Processing 11.4 (2012):
949-993. Academic Search Complete. Web. 10 Nov. 2013.
Smart, B. (1971) ‘Can Disembodied Persons be
Spatially Located?’, Analysis 31:
133–8.
