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Ghosts and Hauntings
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In this episode, Megan and Frank investigate ghosts and hauntings. Are ghosts some kind of spirit, physical beings, or something in between? Is there a natural explanation for ghostly encounters? And what can ghosts teach us about the depths of human experience? Thinkers discussed include: Descartes, Philip Goff, and Beverley Clack.
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Hosts' Websites:
Email: [email protected]
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Bibliography:
Ghosts of Philosophy LaBossiere | A Philosopher's Blog
Victorian ectoplasm-producing mediums: freaks or fakes? | Children's books | The Guardian
Philip Goff, Ghosts and Sparse Properties
The wisdom of ghosts - Clack | Religious Studies | Cambridge Core
Braude, Immortal Remains: The Evidence for Life After Death
Podemore, et al. - Phantasms of the Living
The Best Ghost Story - by Alexander J. Zawacki
LEGION OF THE DAMNED - ghostwalkbrighton.co.uk
Time | Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Megan Fritts, Arresting Time's Arrow: Death, Loss, and the Preservation of Real Union
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Cover Artwork by Logan Fritts
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Music from #Uppbeat (free for Creators!):
https://uppbeat.io/t/simon-folwar/neon-signs
License code: KKPO6KMRESVX1ZQD
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Transcript
Introduction to Podcast and Theme
00:00:04
Speaker
Welcome to Philosophy on the Fringes, a podcast that explores the philosophical dimensions of the strange. We're your hosts, Megan Fritz and Frank Cabrera.
Exploration of Ghosts: Nature and Lessons
00:00:12
Speaker
Today we're talking about ghosts. Are ghosts spirits, physical beings, or something in between? Is there a natural explanation for these encounters? And what can ghosts teach us about the depths of human experience?
Halloween Connections and Personal Stories
00:00:38
Speaker
Good to have you all back. at Philosophy on the fringes. I'm super psyched about this episode. We're talking about ghosts and hauntings. Special Halloween themed episode, which is cool because Halloween is the best holiday in my opinion. I'm my kid. Well, we have two kids, but our older kid.
00:00:56
Speaker
is not like that into Halloween yet, which makes me ah um very sad. So I'm going to take out all of my Halloween obsession on this episode. Frank, I want to start out by asking you the question that everyone's wondering the second they tune into this episode. First of all, have you ever had a ghostly, gas ghastly encounter or any kind of haunted experience in your life? No, I haven't. My life is super boring.
00:01:26
Speaker
Not at all. Have you ever like actually been like a haunted house attraction? No, I haven't actually. I haven't either. We should go to one. Yeah. Not pro the kids are probably too young, but we should go to one. Not when it's too scary, though, because, you know, our daughter is very sensitive. Yeah, I don't know that we can take the kids, but um have you have I ever seen a ghost?
00:01:45
Speaker
I have not, but I want to qualify that because I have seen a ghost. I have not seen a ghost. I i certainly haven't seen a ghost. but So the house that we lived in before we moved to Arkansas, we lived in Minnesota, way up north in Minnesota in Duluth.
00:02:01
Speaker
um We only lived there for a year, but we lived in a old Victorian house that was a little bit over a hundred years old. And I didn't see a ghost, but there were many times, especially it was in it was all in one spot, like upstairs, kind of by, Frank knows what I'm talking about, kind of by like the bedroom door where there was the opening to the attic, yeah right there. it like I always felt like there was just like someone.
00:02:27
Speaker
What you described as was a presence. It was a presence. I felt I did feel something like a presence. It didn't feel like medicine or anything. Just sort of like there was maybe someone there with us. Do you think this was somehow conditioned by the fact that we saw old photographs of the original owners of this house?
00:02:44
Speaker
I definitely think that that could have been it. Right. So something that was found in this house in the attic was a whole bunch of stuff, like hundred year old um little storage, tin, sewing kits, newspapers. um There were other stuff. um There's a lot of really cool stuff, yeah like an old time magazine.
00:03:03
Speaker
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. A little stopwatch. And the people who owned the house right before us, they found all this during renovations and gathered it all into a box. And there were also negatives of the original owners and builders of the house, um which were really, really cool to look at. So yeah, I do. I do think probably that this sort of feeling of familiarity with the original residences of the house could have, especially being that that was all found in the attic and around the attic opening. So you felt like it was never really our house. It was always theirs.
00:03:33
Speaker
I did, and I think I even said that to you at one point, did I? Yeah, there was a few nights where you were pretty freaked out. Yeah. So never seen a ghost, but I- Maybe you felt a ghost. I don't want to call it a ghost, but I will say I certainly have never felt anything like that in this house.
Defining Ghosts and Their Interactions
00:03:49
Speaker
Yeah. Okay, so let's just start out with some conceptual stuff. We tend to like to start episodes out this way, so what is a ghost?
00:03:57
Speaker
Yeah, I think we're all pretty familiar with what a ghost is basically, but we should lay out some like, you know, necessary conditions. So the first thing we agreed on is that a ghost has to be undead, right? A ghost has to be the spirit or the soul of someone who was once alive. Someone who was a corporeal being who was walking this earth. So you agree, right? A ghost is undead.
00:04:17
Speaker
I agree that's part of our the the the common conception of ghosts, yes. And because of that, like the the spirit or the soul that that is around retains the personal identity of the person that they were when they were embodied, when they were walking around. Ghosts are conscious beings, or they're experiencers, they're minds. We might think that ghosts are immaterial, that is, they're not composed of physical matter, although we we'll question this a little bit soon when we talk about ah ectoplasm.
00:04:46
Speaker
And importantly, ghosts interact with the physical world. They haunt people, they maybe even speak to you. I think of the ghosts from, if I'm a Christmas carol, Ebenezer Scrooge, right? He's haunted by the ghosts on Jacob Marley, right? ah So each and he tells him stuff, he interacts with them. So ghosts interact with us.
00:05:03
Speaker
So we want to make sure we distinguish ghosts from like other spiritual or non-material or incorporeal beings like angels or demons or genies.
Ghosts vs. Poltergeists
00:05:13
Speaker
I think that that undead element really captures the difference between ghosts and other spiritual beings. Angels and demons weren' weren weren't human and then died and then were floating around afterwards. um So that that I think seems to be like essential. A ghost is someone who was alive.
00:05:29
Speaker
Yeah, now I want to add a little bit of a caveat to something that you just said, um which is that there is in the literature a distinction between two things that we might otherwise run together, ghosts and poltergeist. So in a book that I consulted quite a bit for this episode called Immortal Remains by Stephen Broad, he gives a ah nice kind of way that these two sorts of spirit beings are commonly distinguished. um He says, and he does call this a kind of crude way of distinguishing, but he says, um when we think of poltergeist, the unpolterized cases are person-centered and ghosts are place-centered. He says, we can usually trace poltergeist phenomena to the psychic activity of a poltergeist agent. In fact, the phenomena sometimes follows that agent from one place to another, but then
00:06:23
Speaker
With ghosts, ghosts usually haunt, so you said ghosts haunt people, but actually, if we're distinguishing between ghosts and poltergeist, ghosts haunt places, and poltergeist attach to a person. So in A Christmas Carol, maybe he is he is beset by poltergeist, though, of course, they're called ghosts. If we want to make this distinction,
00:06:44
Speaker
It does seem like there's there's two distinct things that are experienced. Ones that attach to people and follow them from place to place, and ones that are very obviously attached to a particular area. Yeah, good. then That's an important distinction. let's not Let's not talk too much about terminology. right There's ghosts in the broad sense yeah and ghosts in like a more specific sense. Right. But those are at least two, even if we don't want use two different terms, those are two distinct ways of experiencing what we might call ghost activity. Yeah. So I mentioned just before that you might think like an essential condition of a ghost is that it's non-material or non-physical, but
00:07:16
Speaker
i you know there There are ways to complicate that kind of claim because yeah know often we think of ghosts as having some
Ghosts' Physical Manifestations
00:07:24
Speaker
kind of form. You can see them, for instance. They're extended in space. And you know if you like Descartes' definition of what's physical,
00:07:33
Speaker
ah Then you would you would have to say that ghosts are physical because they are extended in space. Descartes thought the mark of the physical, the mark of the material was being extended in space. You you have some form, you have some shape. um So maybe that's not the best way to define the physical. you know Modern physics reveals a bunch of weird stuff that doesn't really seem to fit with that kind of definition. Quantum waves of probability and electromagnetic fields. You might think that that doesn't really fit with descartes' definition not not sure right
00:08:04
Speaker
but um but yeah maybe maybe ghosts are material in some some broad sense especially given the ghost lore ghosts have some connection to this substance call ectoplasm. So what what does ectoplasm remind you of, Megan? I mean Ghostbusters. Yeah, Ghostbusters. yeah So Bill Murray famously is slimed by ectoplasm. One of the greatest movies. We should actually do a a Halloween re-watch of that soon.
00:08:29
Speaker
Yeah, and so that wasn't just made up by Ghostbusters. I mean, there's a long tradition of thinking that ghosts manifest in some way via this kind of weird substance called ectoplasm. So during the heyday of ah Victorian spiritualism, 19th century ah Britain, where everyone's doing these seances trying to manifest spirits. ah well One one Connolly belief thing was that ghosts manifest via some substance called ectoplasm. So I have a quote from Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, who wrote the Sherlock Holmes stories, also famous for really, really believing in fairies. ah So he said that ah but ectoplasm is a viscous gelatinous substance, which appeared to differ from every known form of matter in that it could solidify and be used for material purposes. So there's always like maybe a little puzzled about ghosts because it seems like we think of them as non-material. They're haunted. like It's the spirit or the soul of someone who was once alive. But then we have this long tradition of thinking that they are made up or composed or something like that in terms of ectoplasm. Well, do you know the Amityville horror, that the the Amityville house?
00:09:38
Speaker
I've heard it. I don't really remember the details. Okay, so i think I think it's in Massachusetts, Amityville. um Anyway, this is like probably the most famous haunted house in America, right? And that that's a big part of that story. the The idea that the, I mean, they didn't call it ectoplasm, but the the walls would like ooze a substance. And that that was that was that was part of the haunting. Yeah.
00:10:00
Speaker
Yeah, so I think maybe one thing that you can say here to maintain the view that ghosts are immaterial. I think this is part and parcel of of the view. Ghosts are are um immaterial, um at least most people's conception. Like the ectoplasm is like the way in which they manifest in the physical world. They sort of use this substance to interact with us um because otherwise they wouldn't be able to because they're they're immaterial, they're non-physical, we're physical. How does the physical interact with the non-physical? Maybe it's like a conductor jelly. So, you know, when they do like an ultrasound on you when you're pregnant, they put the machine on you, but they have to use the jelly because that's what does like the conducting. yeah Maybe it's like that. That's like a conduit. between Yeah. The spirit realm and the physical realm. I think maybe that's what they they once thought about it. Like, you know, the ghost hunters. ah But I think it does sort of raise questions about whether it is like fully material.
00:10:50
Speaker
Well, and that's not even I mean, there are theories of ghosts on which ghosts are weird energy waves or even like types of sound waves, things like that. Yeah. Yeah. Those are the most interesting theories to me where someone tries to say, no, no, no, ghosts are crazy. Modern physics is super weird. I'm going to tell you how ghosts are possible given modern physics.
00:11:10
Speaker
You actually have, Megan, to tease a little bit of what we're going to talk about near the end. You actually have a really interesting and novel theory about ghosts which relies on the modern physical understanding of time. right Yeah. we'll We'll talk about that later.
00:11:24
Speaker
Yeah, so this might be like, so so if if we're being like typical substance duelists about ghosts, you know, we might think, well, that runs into the same problem as substance dualism in any situation, which is this interaction problem between mind substance and matter. um How are these things supposed to interact if they are, if if there's no overlap in their being whatsoever? Like they're completely ontologically distinct, yet mind is supposed to be able to act upon matter, although matter not so much upon mind, at least on some theories. But this was a famous objection raised today cards picture by Princess Elizabeth of Bohemia back in the 17th century. And this is a problem that philosophers of mine still talk about today. Dualism is not
00:12:10
Speaker
That popular anymore, but insofar as it is. This is a problem that is considered not really solved yet Yeah, um but this kind of I'd maybe we think well, here's how they interact because they can both act on ectoplasm Right. So today card has this problem. How does the mind interact with the physical world? Here's the solution Descartes ectoplasm. He didn't think of that. Yeah, I Yeah, so maybe the ectoplasm thing is sort of a acknowledgement of of the interaction problem, the problem of ah the interaction between the physical and then and the non-physical. That's like the origin of it? Maybe. Maybe like the the spiritualists were aware of this this problem and they're like, we have we have a solution. Here's how you deal with it. You have this kind of thing that's a halfway house between the material and the spiritual, the substance, and that's how the ghosts interact with us in the physical world.
00:12:57
Speaker
That's that's absolutely fascinating. It's already making progress. you're like Ghosts are a great topic to talk about because now we have a solution to an old problem, the interaction problem, ectoplasm. Okay, so we've talked a lot about ghosts, spirits, poltergeist, hauntings, and the abstract. I want to talk about, we don't have time to talk about a ton of cases. um All of us have heard lots of different haunted house stories. You know, probably no matter what state you grew up in, your state has like a most haunted place. So I'm from Missouri, and the most haunted place in Missouri is an old abandoned penitentiary in Jefferson City.
00:13:34
Speaker
You're from Pennsylvania, like every other... Yeah, and everything's haunted in Pennsylvania. There's all these abandoned resorts in the Poconos where I'm from. Sure, they're all haunted. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So we all have like a bunch of stories, but I do want to talk about two of them, because these are two that I found really interesting. One of them is documented in the book I already mentioned, Immortal Remains by Stephen Broad. And then the other I got from a very helpful contributor on Twitter and was able to look into it, and it's super interesting. So let me talk about the first one.
00:14:03
Speaker
The first one was recorded by, this is really interesting, by this guy named Frank Podmore, ah who lived in London from 1856 to 1910. He was the founder of something called the Fabian Society, which was like a political society for socialists who basically were interested in like keeping people from starting revolutions or like rebellions. Like let's do political change without rebellion. Um, yeah, but anyway, so he was one of the, they weren't Twitter socialist. They were not right. So, uh, so he was one of the founding members of that, but he also had a really big interest in psychic phenomena, as did many people in England in that time period, reputable people too. A lot of scientists were into it too. Yeah, absolutely. So he did his own research and he did he did a ton of research on lots of different purported cases. He was actually initially interested in mediumship. So the idea that someone could be a medium between the dead and the living. And through his research, he became unconvinced.
00:15:07
Speaker
that mediumship was real. um he He was like, this is a trick. but he And he did not originally start out interested in ghosts, but in his research became eventually convinced of the reality of ghosts and hauntings. So he recorded a whole bunch of different cases and I read several of them, but one in particular um was really interesting to me.
00:15:29
Speaker
Oh, I should
Case Studies of Hauntings
00:15:30
Speaker
say some common features that a lot of these cases had that I read about, because again, I read about loads of cases for this episode. There are some common features of hauntings that stand out. So one of them is yeah it it if a ghost appears in a room that multiple people are in, they might all see the apparition or maybe only one or two. Also,
00:15:49
Speaker
Sometimes you have a case where multiple people experience the apparition, but in different ways. So some people will see them, some people will hear them. In one case, um the wife could see a ghost and the husband couldn't, but the husband felt someone breathing on his face. That was interesting. Do there are offer any explanations for these like differences in sensory modalities or is it just the ghosts are tricky beings?
00:16:14
Speaker
um but i But I do get the feeling that it's not a choice of the ghost, but something with the capacity of the experiencer. Not all the time, but often in a place that's haunted, there is some kind of traumatic death associated with that location. yeah I don't know if this is just if this just seems like a prominent feature because you know when there is a haunting in some place, we go looking into to see if there's some traumatic death, and then if we find it, then we remember that. I don't know, but the this seems to be a common feature of the ones that get reported. and If it's a haunted house in particular, then very often there's a string of many, many owners over just a few years, basically because surprisingly, they don't want to live in a haunted house, so they move out.
00:16:56
Speaker
ah so Case number one. This takes place in Brighton in the UK. This is recorded by Podmore and his research associates. So brought so then this is this is ah Stephen Broad discussing Podmore's work. So this case ah consisted mostly of noises, but there were some apparitions.
00:17:17
Speaker
And this particular house that they're going to be talking about um had four separate groups of witnesses to the phenomena, the second of which did not know anything about the first group's experience until like long after the fact when they're being interviewed.
00:17:35
Speaker
um like a decade after the fact or something. And there are multiple diary records of the phenomena in the first group of and second group of witnesses for this. So that is that is significant. So the first group of residents in this house in Brighton was a woman named Miss Morris, her aunt and her maid. They were told that a woman had hanged herself in the upstairs room. This was later verified as fact. And it seems like the apparition started with them. Previous owners had not noticed anything.
00:18:04
Speaker
So pretty standard stuff. Footsteps banging around on the stairs and downstairs at night were heard for a few weeks. um Here's Miss Morris writing in her diary. and She says, it was about five o'clock one afternoon on November 1st and so light that I had no need of the gas to enable me to read clearly some music I was practicing. I left the piano and went dancing gaily along singing as long as I went when suddenly there stood before me preventing me from getting the music.
00:18:32
Speaker
The figure of a woman heavily robed in deepest black from the head to her feet. Her face was intensely sad and deadly pale. There she stood gazing fixedly at me." So she's dancing around going to get some more sheet music.
00:18:50
Speaker
on this really nice kind of clear evening where it's to light out and she spins around, goes to reach for the music and right in her way is this woman looking extremely sad, possibly dead because very pale and clad head to toe in black. So in morning clothing, I'm guessing. Yeah.
00:19:09
Speaker
And basically she says right after that, she so she lingers for a few seconds and then she disappears. After that happened, the doorbell of the house would ring incessantly. So all hours of the night, even when disconnected, even though when the wires were disconnected from the bell, the doorbell would still ring. And this happened so much that neighbors started to complain.
00:19:29
Speaker
So that's the first group of witnesses. Then there was a second group of witnesses a couple years later, a Mrs. Gilby and her two young daughters. She also has a diary entry. these Diaries are really helpful. She says, We'd not been more than a fortnight at our new home when I was roused by a deep sob and moan. Oh, I thought, what has happened to the children?
00:19:51
Speaker
I rushed in their room being at the back of mine and found them sleeping soundly. So back to bed I went, when again another sob and such a thump of somebody or something very heavy. I sat up in bed, looked all around the room, then to my horror of voice and a very sweet one, said, Oh, do forgive me.
00:20:10
Speaker
three times. I could stand it no more. I always kept the gas burning, turned it up, and went to the maid's room. She was fast asleep, so I shook her well and asked her to come into my room. Then in five minutes the sobs and moans recommenced, and the heavy tramping of feet and such thumps like heavy boxes of plate being thrown about. She suggested I should ring the big bell I always keep in my room, but I did not want to alarm the neighbors.
00:20:34
Speaker
So, I read that because it's very spooky. Yeah. That's really creepy. So, this is just a diary entry that she, again, as she wrote kind of right after this happened. And once again, after this happened, they start having the exact same issues with the doorbell ringing at weird hours, ringing even after disconnected. And this, they reported totally unaware of the experiences of the previous residences. Now, I said that there were four groups of witnesses to this one. The other two Podmore didn't really care about. He didn't care about them because they were psychic research groups themselves. So Podmore is a skeptical person. He's like, look, these people are coming into the situation with their own biases. They want to find something here. So we're just going to leave that out of our research. But it's supposed to be it's supposed to be more credible that two ah independent witnesses did not talk to each other, who seem to not have any kind of confirmation bias, reported something similar. right We have a corroboration of independent witnesses is the idea. Right, corroborated in personal diaries and in later interviews without knowledge of one another. Exactly. and Okay, so that's case one. Any thoughts on that one? Not too much. I mean, we'll we'll get to soon what the skeptic will probably say about some kind of the stuff.
00:21:45
Speaker
But that that did that case did remind me of another feature that's pretty common among ah ghost stories and hauntings, that the ghost has some kind of thing they need to do that is like keeping them trapped in the earthly realm. So that the ghost is like, forgive me, forgive me. So I'm not sure what's going on there, but clearly she has something that she needs to do. Yeah, she's upset, she's crying, she's she's upset about something. Yeah, it's a really sad kind of, I mean, it's creepy, but it also is sad. So that I think is like a really traditional ghost story. And then the second one that I wanna talk about is super, super non-traditional and much more modern um because the main incident associated with this haunting is in 1953.
00:22:29
Speaker
So this takes place in York, also in the United Kingdom. Another thing I found in my research is that the United Kingdom is about a thousand times more haunted than like any other country on earth. Not a lot of sun, a lot of fog, a lot of rain. It makes sense. Yeah, yeah. So this is in 1953 in York and this takes place in the basement of the treasurer's house. So this is like a public place. It's not a house, actually. It's not actually a house. It's a public building.
00:22:55
Speaker
And it involves an 18-year-old named Harry Martindale who was a plumbing apprentice. So he's apprenticing to be a plumber. um He's in the basement of this ah this building working on the boiler. And he's in this corner where all around him except on one side is just flat like stone wall.
00:23:15
Speaker
And here, I'm just going to read his description of what happened because it's so interesting. So first, he hears what sounds like a trumpet, like a really loud trumpet. In fact, it was so loud that he thought the trumpeter was in the basement. He was like, what's going on? There's someone just in this basement blowing a trumpet. So he looks Down, he's on a ladder. He looks down to try to see where the sound came from. Just in time to see someone dressed in Roman soldier apparel walk through one of the stone walls. So here's how he describes it. I heard a sound. The only way I can describe it is the sound of a musical note. It was just like a trumpet blaring out no tune, just a blare. At the same time, a figure came out of the wall and the head of the figure was in line with my waist with a shining helmet.
00:24:01
Speaker
So, this first Roman soldier walks through the wall, according to Martindale's account, but he's quickly followed by another, and then another sitting on top of a horse, and then an entire column of soldiers. He reports between 12 and 20. Not an exact number because I imagine he wasn't really focused on counting them.
00:24:22
Speaker
And he said that they were all pretty short, ah none much taller than five feet. They were kind of shabby in appearance, unshaven. They wore green tunics, which notably is not a color that most would associate with Roman soldiers, because usually when you think of Roman soldiers, you think of? Red. Yeah, red.
00:24:41
Speaker
and And they had round shields. Again, this was another detail of his account that was kind of derided by historians at the time. Roman soldiers don't carry. they They never carried round shields. And here's the weirdest part. All of these ghosts or soldiers were cut off at the knee. So, like, it seemed like they rose up out of the floor, kind of.
00:25:00
Speaker
but the the floor hit them right at their knee. Alright, so this is interesting because after Martindale's encounter, which it to this day, or I guess he recently died, but before he did, he he he said, I don't know if I believe in ghosts. I didn't before. I just, I believe in what I saw. So he's not like a kind of like paranormal interested kind of person, right?
00:25:22
Speaker
But interestingly, after Martindale reported this encounter, an ancient Roman road was found about 18 inches below the floor of the treasurer's house. Additionally, the one detail that that I just said was derided about his account that the soldiers had round shields. It was discovered through, I guess, artifacts that there was a special fleet of Roman soldiers in this part of York that actually did have round shields and actually did wear green.
00:25:50
Speaker
because they were I guess part of some kind of like special peacekeeping kind of truth. So this is a significant, I think that this story is really fascinating for a number of reasons. um I should also say that the the Roman soldier ghosts were were seen by people before Martindale and after, although Martindale knew about neither.
00:26:08
Speaker
so these So these ghosts don't really fit with our definition of beginning, which is that they they interact. Sometimes these kinds of ghosts are called memory ghosts, as opposed to, I think, experienced ghosts, something like that. They're memory ghosts. Is that sort of what's supposed to be going on here?
00:26:23
Speaker
ah so Yeah, so Martindale does a report that any of them seem to notice him. As he saw him, they walked through one stone wall and out the other. He said they looked as real as any other human standing in front of him. like they would be so He was actually afraid of getting trampled by the horse, but but not that much because he's sunk the you know the horse has sunk 18 feet under the floor. Yeah, but it seems i mean what what it seems like is that the soldiers were just simply walking on the road that they had been walking on, maybe like almost two millennia ago. yeah so Yeah, but right, no interaction between the ghosts and Martindale and no history of any traumatic event happening in the basement of this building. Obviously, we can't know what happened to soldiers 2000 years ago or whatever, but um but a very a very strange and interesting case there, I think. Yeah, if I had a ghost experience, it'd probably be something like that. you know I like ancient Rome too.
00:27:17
Speaker
I was actually thinking you would have loved that probably. Okay, so Frank, I've just spent a lot of time going over a couple cases, but I think it's important that we have like a couple in mind when we're talking about ghosts, and especially when we're talking about how we might explain this in like maybe a naturalistic way.
Skepticism and Challenges in Ghost Stories
00:27:33
Speaker
Yeah, so so the the person who's skeptical of these sorts of stories that you just mentioned, which I imagine is some of our listeners, <unk> they're probably going to rely on a number of different kinds of arguments. So they might rely, for instance, just on like a general view about the nature of the mind, but maybe they're physicalists. So these ghost stories are just not convincing because I already have independent reason to believe that the mind is physical or the mind and crucially depends on the brain. Minds don't float free from brains.
00:28:01
Speaker
So that since a ghost is supposed to be a kind of conscious ah experiencer that doesn't have a body, physicalism just rules it out. You might be worried about ah invest investigating them scientifically, right? Like if ghosts are non-physical, then there's like nothing they can't do. And so how can we really investigate them? There's nothing that we could do to kind of ah test them, to rule them out because they can always just do whatever they want. Maybe you just think that the ghosts are implausible because they would violate the laws of physics. You know, if ghosts are interacting with the world, then that means they're exerting energy into the world. Well, where's that energy come from? It seems to violate the law of the total conservation of energy. But putting aside those like really, really general sort of methodological or metaphysical claims, maybe there's reasons to be skeptical of physicalism or something like that.
00:28:50
Speaker
uh you might just say if you're an open-minded person look maybe ghosts are possible but the evidence is just like not convincing these photos are so grainy the testimony is unreliable i mean the testimony is inconsistent you often get inconsistent reports Sure, you can find one sort of story among many that seems very convincing, but what are all those other stories that are just so unconvincing, that have all these problems where the testimony is unreliable, the evidence is dubious? You know, look at some of those pictures that we were we were talking about from the 19th century, the seances. the ghost The manifestations of the ghosts look ridiculous. They're clearly hoaxes. It's paper mache and a coat hanger. We need to find some way of linking that picture of the one. It's so goofy. but but i think maybe the most the most ah you So even someone who is open minded might just say, look, there's just so many other possible explanations for all of these things.
00:29:47
Speaker
that it's just not reasonable to believe it's ghosts. at At the very least, you ought to be agnostic because there's all these possible explanations you have not ruled out. And maybe you might apply Occam's razor. You might say the simplest explanation is just that I don't know, like the the guy hallucinated or something. I don't know.
00:30:02
Speaker
Yeah, right. I mean, it seems so hard to believe, though, that he would hallucinate these things that were so like historically accurate without having any access to their accuracy because they hadn't been discovered yet. um It's just a coincidence. Yeah, right. I think that is what you have to say, and that's not a crazy thing to say. I mean, a lot of a lot of events happen. Certainly, some of them you know are going to seem like significant coincidences that maybe aren't.
00:30:28
Speaker
We talked about this in some of our our published work together, right? and That randomness, when you get a lot of data, randomness can generate patterns that look meaningful. Yeah, right. So I have to say, the Martindale story, I think is probably the most like, like of all the ghost stories I've heard, that one's the one where I'm like, oh, that's super interesting. interesting Do you think just because the the testifier seems so like so reliable, has no dubious motives,
00:30:53
Speaker
Well, that and also I think just like the details that were confirmed later, the shape of the sword, the color of the tunic, the presence of the Roman road, all of these things, ah yeah the the fact that there had been prior witnesses, but he didn't know about them, those kinds of things, especially I think the historical details are ones that I'm like,
00:31:11
Speaker
you know Sure, it's it's possible that's a coincidence, but that's that's a lot of them. um so Anyway, i will link I'll link a blog post to more about that story as well because I think it's it's really fascinating. He maintained all the details until he died. i mean he seems He seems like he was just like a really normal dude. He became like a cop. he's martin What was his name again? um Harry Martindale. Harry Martindale, the plumber. yeah well Harry the plumber. He didn't even become a plumber. He became like a policeman or something.
00:31:40
Speaker
I'm done plumbing basements. yeah I don't want any more. I think that's our demand. Okay, so let's say maybe we we want to be like, you know, good philosophers and skeptic ah skeptics of ghosts, etc. But maybe we do think also that like, physicalism isn't the best way to be skeptical of ghosts, because maybe physicalism has its own problems.
00:32:00
Speaker
Yeah, I think i think the like the least controversial, most ah the the one that requires the fewest assumptions if you're going to be skeptical of ghosts is just the challenge, the the particular evidence directly. right Challenges based on really broad theses like physicalism or methodological naturalism or something like that.
00:32:17
Speaker
ah those those i think i think I feel like the the ghost believer is going to feel like cheated if that's your only argument. like I think they're going to want you to ah actually engage with the evidence directly. But I think even doing that in a lot of cases is going to at least raise the the the doubt that there's alternative explanations.
00:32:32
Speaker
right yeah and I mean, evidence itself is, I think, just the nature of the phenomena. The evidence has to be, I don't want to say shaky, but it's it's almost going to entirely be testimony. That's a recurring theme on some of the things we were talking about in the podcast. Think about the near-death experiences, Bigfoot from back in the day, ah similar sorts of themes. right So in the philosophical literature, ah this is philosophy on the fringes. So obviously we try to choose topics that aren't really discussed much in philosophy. And ghosts certainly is one of those topics that hardly ever gets written about, you know, because you want to get, you want to get published. You won't be able to take you seriously. But a few brave souls have written on ghosts. One of them actually, Philip Goff is, is having kind of a moment right now. Philip Goff, the most disagreed with person on Twitter. Absolutely, yeah. um But no, but we love him. His work is great. And he wrote a paper 14 years ago on ghosts, kind of.
00:33:30
Speaker
Yeah, so let like let's get into that. But I also think of um Gilbert Ryle's metaphor of the ghost in the machine, right? So that's his head that that's his way of describing Descartes substance dualism. you that You have a mind and a body and the mind rules the body. So the the mind is like this ghost in the machine of the body, kind of pejoratively. So that's one way, one place where ghosts come up in canonical philosophical literature.
00:33:55
Speaker
But they also have come up in Goff's paper where he tries to argue, based on a kind of stipulative definition of what a ghost is, that ah that is a problem for
Philosophical Implications of Ghosts
00:34:06
Speaker
physicalism. The fact that we you can conceive of ghosts, the fact that they're just possible is a problem for physicalism. ah So remember, physicalism is the view that the mind is ultimately physical in some sense. Maybe the mind is identical to physical things or the mind depends like essentially on physical things. The physical thing is fundamental and any mental kind of properties are supervenient on the physical that is they depend on the physical. um So Gough defines ghosts a little bit differently than we have been defining them. So remember, one of our key elements of a ghost is that it's an undead spirit.
00:34:39
Speaker
That's not he to for how he defines a ghost. It's a much more minimal definition of a ghost. um So here's what he says. a Ghosts, right? Let's define it as a subject a pure subject of experience, a creature whose being is exhausted by its being conscious. ah So he's not defining a ghost as a non-physical thing. So it's just it's just a being of pure experience, whatever that happens to be.
00:35:02
Speaker
So he thinks we can conceive of these things. Certainly we can. And his his method of showing we can conceive of a being who is totally characterized by pure experience is via the familiar Cartesian doubting scenario. So remember, to Descartes is trying to find the unshakable firm foundations of knowledge. So he begins in this process of radical doubt. He doubts everything. He doubts physics. He doubts that he has a body. At the end of the the doubting process, he thinks to himself, well, I can't doubt that I have a mind. I can't doubt that I exist. He even doubts things as fundamental as like the laws of logic. Yeah, laws of logic, 2 plus 2 equals 4. He says, I can't doubt that i I exist, that I have a mind. So Gough says, hey, this shows you that you can conceive of this thing, the idea of just pure experience. Do the Cartesian doubting scenario.
00:35:50
Speaker
So he thinks ghosts are conceivable, and if they're conceivable, he wants to argue, they're possible. And if they're possible, then physicalism, the view that the mind, say, is identical to something physical, has to be false. Why does that have to be false if ghosts are possible? Well, if you say the mind is identical to the body or mental properties are identical to physical properties, that means that in every possible scenario, you can't have the physical stuff without the mental stuff.
00:36:19
Speaker
But here, right we have a possible scenario. right Ghosts, they are conceivable, they are possible. So something like physicalism is false. um So this is very similar to other arguments you see in philosophy of mind, like the philosophical zombie argument. Can't you conceive of a purely physical being that's just like you, a counterpart of you, but has no conscious experience? If you can, then that shows that whatever it is that makes you conscious can't be identical to or depend essentially on the physical stuff. That has to be something else. Yeah, so that challenge is called the challenge of philosophical zombies. In this paper, Goff said, at least I didn't read this paper, Frank, so I'm asking you this question. It seems like from the title, he argues that zombies are less of a challenge to physicalism than ghosts.
00:37:05
Speaker
Yeah, this is what I found most interesting of the paper. So, yeah you know, we'll talk about conceivability arguments soon. I'm sure you have all to say about that. Yeah, I don't like them. But like I think maybe the main contribution of the the paper for even people that are skeptical of conceivability arguments is that this this does seem to be like a less problematic conceivability argument than the zombie argument. And here's what here's what Goff says. He thinks this, he says, there are a couple of ways in which the ghostly argument ah is more effective than the zombie argument against a priori physicalism, the idea that you can just know that physicalism is true by pure reason. If someone claims that they can't conceive of a zombie, it is difficult to persuade them that they can. But if someone tells me they can't conceive of a ghost, I have an argument to make to them again. Can't you go through the process of Cartesian doubting? Philosophers and philosophically and inclined scientists are often agnostic on the zombie argument, reserving judgment until you have completed neuroscience. There is no such worry about the conceivability of ghosts.
00:37:59
Speaker
I see. So you can arrive at his stipulative definition of ghosts through the Cartesian doubting process, and you cannot arrive at philosophical zombies through that process. Yeah. It's yeah it's always open to you to say, well, I don't know if zombies are conceivable. I don't know enough about neuroscience. ah So I can't tell you if they're conceivable, but he thinks you can't really make that move with the ghostly argument. A ghost is just a being of pure experience. You can conceive of that. And if you can see that it's possible, and there's a lot more in between here, but if it's possible, then physicalism is false. So the fact that you can conceive of anything but you can doubt everything else but the fact that you're conceiving means just just by the fact that you've done that, that you have conceived of his stipulative definition of ghost. Yes.
00:38:43
Speaker
Okay. I don't like conceivability arguments, but I do like the argument that that's a better conceivability argument than the zombies argument. I have to agree with him on that one. it's It's a little bit off topic, but you know that's never stopped us before. Why don't you like conceivability arguments, Megan?
00:38:58
Speaker
I don't like conceivability arguments because I think that we have poor access into what we can conceive of. I think a lot of philosophers, you know myself included, can convince ourselves that we can conceive of something, even if in fact we're not conceiving of it. I think we have bad access into into what we can conceive of, maybe except for the very, very most minimal thing.
00:39:19
Speaker
Right. So you want to say conceivably is not a good guide to possibility because the things we're talking about are not clear to us. These concepts, the physical, the mental, these are not clear, you want to say. Yeah. So I don't, I think that we, yeah, we sometimes we can trick ourselves into thinking we can conceive of something we can't. And on the flip side, I think there's tons of things that are true, not just possible, but true that we cannot conceive of maybe before experiencing them or whatever. And so to that extent, I think they're unreliable and also just maybe like unhelpful.
00:39:49
Speaker
Yeah, I guess this is where you and and Gough would part ways because he thinks that we have, quote, a transparent conception of phenomenal properties, right? Which which entails the falsity of any identity between a physical and phenomenal states. Yeah, I i doubt that very much. I don't want to say that I'm like certain of my position on that, but I'm really skeptical that that's true. So there's always this like this this sort of claim, like, okay, yeah, the the physical and the mental aren't conceptually identical, right? But we might discover through scientific means that they are actually identical, just in the same way that we discovered that H2O is identical to water. and you can't You can't prove a priori that H2O is identical with water. You got to go discover it.
00:40:30
Speaker
But he wants to say that this kind of argument and these sorts of conceivability arguments, they rule that out as well. and We can't even discover that the physical is identical to the mental because our conception of it is so transparent. Like we have access to like the essence of the mental. And so you don't want to say that.
00:40:46
Speaker
Yeah, I don't. I mean, this is a topic for another day, but I think, and we talked about this you know here and there, but I just think that that that pain as a phenomena really is the thing that most cast out on that for me, just in how we perceive a pain of the same sort of like sense data, the phenomenology of it for us can change would be altered by so many things. So yeah, i am i'm I'm skeptical of that, but I will say that I agree with Gough that that goes to at least a better conceivability argument for his end than philosophical zombies. I do think that's right.
00:41:17
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's what he ultimately wanted to show on the paper. There's some extra dialectical force that the ghost argument has, that the zombie argument doesn't, so yeah that's cool. Yeah, really interesting. Okay, and then there's one other actual like philosophy paper. um There's a few books, but we were kind of looking at like more recent literature. There's one other paper that you found on, or at least ostensibly on, ghosts.
00:41:40
Speaker
Yes, so this was a paper in 2024 in religious studies. Megan just published something in religious studies. so yeah Check out her paper on Simone Weil. Oh, wow, thanks. ah It's called The Wisdom of Ghosts. I remember this from Twitter because I remember people like making fun of it, like, oh, look at this philosophy journal publishing stuff about ghosts. But it wasn't like a paper like defending the reality of ghosts in the way we've talked about it. It was more just sort of like, hey, we can learn a lot about the human condition, ah yeah our existential predicament from considering ghost stories or considering the ghost tradition. And the main sort of point of this paper, there was a lot that was going on in the paper. And this is from Beverly Clack.
00:42:15
Speaker
Yes, I like the paper quite a lot. There's a lot going on in the paper, but I think the maybe the most interesting thing to me was that ghosts are important existentially because they're a kind of memento mori. That is a reminder of death. So here's, I think this is from the abstract. The study of ghosts holds out the possibility of engaging with the wonder and terror of the human condition. The figure of something that is dead yet alive is a creative representation of the fact that we who are alive are also mortal, destined to die.
00:42:44
Speaker
The resulting confrontation with death arouses anxiety, but also has the potential to enrich life. The wisdom of the ghost thus enables the possibility of returning philosophy of religion to the great themes of human existence, birth, suffering, loss, and death, which provide rich resources for understanding religion and its relation to the experience of being human.
00:43:02
Speaker
So yeah you do philosophy of religion, Megan. I mean, what do what do you think about this claim that like thinking about ghosts, maybe not questioning or looking at arguments that they exist or don't exist, just sort of like the very idea of a ghost, the concept, the ghost story, ah that can be important for kind of energizing philosophy of religion, which some people but would regard as kind of sterile. You just look at arguments that move the Bayesian probability of the God hypothesis one way or the other.
00:43:26
Speaker
ah Maybe a little boring doesn't speak to our needs as human beings, but the ghost, the ghost story, that involves a lot of important existential themes, right? The encounter with death, the thinking about suffering life and all of that. ah Thoughts about this? Thoughts about this claim? Do you think this is true? Yeah, I actually really do. I have to say, so one one thing I was thinking about when I was thinking about this paper was this common theme that we already talked about of of hauntings where where it seems like there was either a traumatic death or someone had died in the house or had experienced a loss in the house or building or whatever, that that was extremely traumatic for them um in some way. right We see in the first case, the the woman, theition
00:44:07
Speaker
was weeping, like sobbing uncontrollably. They said that she looked extremely sad. The the the emphasis was on just how like grieved she appeared to be um and sounded. and and This is super common in a lot of different apparition stories. and I think like something that I was thinking about when when we were talking about this paper is that this is kind of a reminder that grief is a long lasting thing. that it ah you know The love that that results in this grief is something that like can you know outlive the person, maybe outlive them by generations and generations.
00:44:48
Speaker
So I mean, yeah, I found this to be like a really poignant point. I do think that that's right, that it forces us to look at suffering as something that, you know, more than just like, quality of pain or sadness or whatever, but as something that isn't going away.
00:45:04
Speaker
yeah that That did come up in the paper actually at one point that the ghost is kind of a metaphor or gets us to think about the grieving process, the struggle to integrate the departed into our our lives. and we go They're gone, but we go on. um We have to kind of integrate them in our life in some way and the ghost story kind of reflects or derives from that process. And this is actually something that I've written about personally is the the need to integrate the departed into our lives isn't just like an emotional need, but like a literally an existential need. Yeah, I thought of your paper when i when I read that point in the paper. Yeah, so to the extent that like our personal identity does depend on relationships to particular loved ones, our personal identity is at risk when they're when they're out of our lives. Yeah, so i think this is a i I think that that's totally right. It also reminded me
00:45:49
Speaker
of another paper we've talked about in a different episode, which was John Martin Fisher's take on near-death experiences, or was that a book? both A book and a paper. Okay. Yeah. John Martin Fisher's take on near-death experiences is kind of similar, ah at least in broad strokes, to Clack's picture of ghosts, that they're like a helpful like existential tool for grappling with things that we need to grapple with as humans. yeah Oh yeah, one little tidbit that I learned from this paper is that the the classic image of the ghost is like a sheet. That comes from the burial shroud. I didn' i never put that together. yeah yeah They used to wrap um in some places around the world, they still do, they wrap them in like a sheet. That kind of makes this image, that's kind of comical, like a lot like a lot more morbid. Yeah, yeah. I guess I just thought like they were depicted in a sheet because they were kind of like wispy, yeah white and like see-through and a sheet's the best we can do or something. But yeah, burial shroud, okay, interesting.
00:46:42
Speaker
All right, so we're nearing the end. So now it's time for Megan to give her novel, interesting theory of ghosts.
Ghosts and the B Theory of Time
00:46:51
Speaker
Megan, the floor is yours.
00:46:54
Speaker
Okay, so if you're still listening to the episode up till this point, first, God bless you for that. And second, I need you to tell me if I should try to write this into a paper or if it sounds dumb. um So here's my theory of ghosts, okay? At least I don't want to say this is something you necessarily believe, but here's a hypothesis that I think is like pretty convincing.
00:47:15
Speaker
So if we take everyone of their word, we take all these um experiences people have as veridical or at least some of them, how can we explain what's going on? And I actually don't think that it's crazy that people have these experiences given the picture of or the theory of time that's currently most favored by physicists that seems to fall best in line with our our best physics at the moment, at least, um which is referred to in physics and philosophy as the B theory of time.
00:47:44
Speaker
So the B theory of time posits that what we call the past, present, and future are all equally real, all exist equally, and that this idea that what we call the present, this kind of spotlight that's on it and virtue of us being conscious of only a particular moment, that is just like maybe an illusion or like a a feature of human consciousness that doesn't really have any bearing on the reality of the existence of all events as equally real. um This is in contrast to the A theory, which is the opposite of that, the idea that the present is privileged in reality over the past and the future.
00:48:25
Speaker
Okay, so let's say that the B theory of time is right. Most physicists think it is. They think the A theory of time is probably not right. B theory probably is because it fits better with most of our our physics. So let's say it is. So whatever causes this spotlight phenomenon, which whatever it is that makes it the case that it seems to me like only the presence real, because that's how I'm experiencing it,
00:48:46
Speaker
I don't know what that is. Nobody knows what that is yet. Maybe it's a feature of human consciousness, but maybe this feature of human consciousness could, in certain places, with certain people, fade or thin, become less of a restriction on what we're able to perceive. If that were the case,
00:49:06
Speaker
Maybe that might allow someone to perceive others who are in the same location, but in the quote unquote past. So in a different temporally ordered event slice, right? I don't know what it might be that could cause that feature of human consciousness to go away or to thin or to turn off, you know, whatever momentarily. And you'll have to excuse my use of temporal language when talking about this, even though I'm assuming a B theory, it's hard to get out of one's language.
00:49:33
Speaker
But anyway, so yeah, so maybe here's what's happening when we see ghosts. We're just seeing people who are there, but just on a different temporally ordered time slice and we're able to interact with them or them with us for whatever reason. I don't, maybe there's something about like emotional trauma that makes that feature of human consciousness thin a little bit. I know that sounds a little bit weird, but Let me see if I understand you, right? So we have the the most popular theory of time, something called the B theory, something called a turtle is on the past, present and future equally real. There's good good arguments for this view, some from vel philosophy, some from physics. ah So your idea is, well, the past, present and future are all equally real, what we call the past, present and future all times are equally real.
00:50:18
Speaker
then our experience in the present is a kind of illusion right seems special that it's the present it seems like this is the only real moment and the past is gone the future is yet to be but that's just a feature of human consciousness that's just a kind of perspective on the world so if that's true then maybe there's in some way you can sometimes like experience past things somehow, right? you youre you court Yeah, past ordered time slices. Your your consciousness is is normally going along the the the timeline, but it skips, it goes backwards for a second or something like that. And that's how you can experience ghosts.
00:50:55
Speaker
so I guess it folds back onto itself. I've heard some people describe it that way, but yeah. Yeah. So I guess that like kind of makes sense of the the Roman soldier's case at the beginning, right? like So it's like yeah his consciousness was was on an old time slice in the in the block of the universe, temporarily or something like that.
00:51:15
Speaker
ah Yeah, I mean, I don't know what to say about that. Time's weird and the experience of time is weird. And so I don't know. It makes sense of a lot of hauntings since they involve people who were in the same house. yeah um The shared location thing I think is what really like can like, it's what made me like come up with this theory. Yeah. um I will say this. so I think it's not like crazy. I think someone who accepts eternalism should at least be open to something like this. If you think the experience of time is an illusion that all times are equally real,
00:51:45
Speaker
then why not? like why can't Why can't you experience the past for some weird reason? it it It's all just an illusion. It's like a projection of consciousness or something like that. yeah I don't know. yeah it's it's it's it's It's weird to think about the perception of time given this view of time, this eternalist view, this B theory view. ah Yeah. It doesn't really explain Poltergeist. Maybe in that case, you just caught a demon or something. I don't know. but But yeah, for at least for hauntings, I don't know. This is something that I at least, because I am really sympathetic to this theory of time for other reasons anyway, I don't know. When we were thinking about ghosts, I was just kind of like, why not ghosts? Yeah. Yeah. So you want to you want to write a paper about this?
00:52:24
Speaker
I'm interested in it, but I want to hear if other people think it's interesting or or pursuit worthy or not. I want to know what people who have have the view that you describe as hurlism, what they think about the perception of time, because it seems like you can't just say, oh, it's an illusion. like that's not That's not acceptable enough. right You need to give some explanation for how it is that it it really it seems like there is a flow, there is a passage of time. It it is yeah it does seem like the present special.
00:52:49
Speaker
I mean, I don't know that I want to say an illusion, but maybe like a structural feature of human consciousness. I mean, that's just how some people talk. like Einstein said that. Yeah. Yeah. So no, I also would love if you are a philosopher or physicist who works on time, please reach out because I just want to talk to you. Yeah.
00:53:05
Speaker
All right, that's all the time we have to haunt your earphones today. um We hope that you guys have a happy Halloween or had, depending on when you're listening to this. Please join us for our next episode where we are going to be talking about astrology.