The concept of ghost is still remains as a hypothesis. Until when it can be proven, nobody knows. It is now parks under system of belief in belief.

In the realm of science, we have to proof something existence and not to disproof it.

Example, Mr. A says to Mr. B, there is one invisible purple elephant in the jungle.

Mr. B : "Show me the proof of it existence"

Mr. A : " You can not see it because it is invisible, now show me the proof that it does not exist"

In the context above, Mr. B is logical to ask for the proof and we would agree that Mr. A argument is weak and did not carry much weight at all.

If Mr. A argument forms the basis of our logic, we all can say that there was a "talking table" in our house when we were young, it was thrown away after it stopped talking. Now proof that it doesn't exist. Can simply just replace the "talking table" with a "flying cup", "tooth fairy"...etc


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From the title of this topic, it started with an assumption that ghost exist already and how to measure it scientifically.

Obviously believers would agree that it exists and provides some equipment example of how to measure it.

And non believers would argue that no way to measure it as it does not exist in the first place.

Personally I like what the scientist Paul Davies arguments on ghost existence.

"Are we really heading to the right direction of trying to find, measure spirit existence, or in fact the so called "spirit" is actually a bi-product OR a result of another outcome".

Example, a love story book is made out of "words". However a combination of words (become sentences, paragraph) giving a "greater" meaning to the individual word itself making it so touching, lively and want to make the reader cry.

The reader would says that this book is so touchy, have spirit and really touch our heart.

This is an example of the sum of individual parts (the whole) is greater then the individual parts when there are separated.

Another example is music notes (do, re, mi). Individually they does not really touchy, but once contructed into a melody and synergize using a ton of oschestra instrument, it becomes so emosionally touching.

A "melody" is "not just a group of collection of notes" only. When "combines together", it became "something else".

Again the sum of the whole is greater then the individual parts when there are alone.


Imagine a country flag made out of 5 thousand people hat in different colour. Individually there are just one person with a hat. However, when combine together, it became a country flag.

Again the sum of the whole is greater then the individual parts when there are alone.

What Paul try to illustrate is "A super set" can produce a behaviour that is not possible to be seen in individual part.

Now ask ourselves this question, is "amoeba" (single cell organism) has spirit? Is plant has spirit?

Amoeba exibit the same reaction as human, need to eat, avoid danger and can reproduce. Does it has spirit?

Human consists of legs, hands, brains, body etc, when all these organs intact together, the sum of the whole is greater then the individual parts when there are alone.

This "super set" produce coutiousness.

The so called "spirit" is a bi-product of this super set.

Something for us to think about.

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My apology of this long post here.

Cheers.

Interesting discussion here.

When somebody spells out the the word ghost, immediately we would be able to picture the "image" of it in the head. And this image would be different pending on the culture or the religion one belief in.

Could be a beast, long hair or even a person wearing Ching dynasty suit.

Which one to measure? How could it be, aren't it suppose to be "universal" if it originated and came out from the physical body?

Most part of the cultures that the world adopting has their values, else none of these will exist until today.

The concept like remembering and appreciate what the ancestors have done is positive value. However, the practices of it varies different from one culture/religion to another. And many culture and religion believes that they still can hear us in the form of spirit.

This is the part of the culture that lead people believes in spirit.

Another part that lead people to believe in spirit is usually assiociated with the childhood.

Example, a mother tell her 5 year old son, don't go out at night, as the bad guy might catch you. You would understand that there is no way for a 5 year old to understand what bad guy mean.

The mother instead telling her 5 year old, don't go out at night for there are many ghosts out there, they look scary, and come out from no where.

Which way is more effective?

Here come the discussion of intention vs result.

The intention of the mother was good, however the result is not too good as it makes the kid fobia of something that he has not seen before.

I am not saying every mother telling the same story above. The point is we are influence much by such story while we were kids.

Aren't for many childhood, watching tv series, movies and books on ghost story were part of they life?

As a kids, when they see family members have some event remembering the ancestors, this pratice indirectly implant the concept of spirit.



When athiest says there is no ghost, the believer will come out defending it.

It is not the ghost that the believer trying to defend, but the culture and belief that one holds that they are trying to protect.

If you believe in ghost, please ask the following questions:

1) Is spirit "universally" the same or depends on culture/religion?

2) Our fellow forumer pixelsheep posted an interesting question:

[[[Imagine a world where ghosts do exist. Photography would be a much more difficult task. Think you got that shot just right? Well think again, that ghost just got in the way again. "Put your arm on your waist. Yeah just like that. That's perfect. Looking good. Now let's just chec--Ah for f***s sake it's that goddamn ghost again."

That recording of your band's newest song? Sorry, it's ruined. "That was a good you guys. Except for the talking, could you keep it down? What do you mean you weren't talki--Oh jesus it's that f***ing ghost again. Will you just get a f***ing job already."

All scientific experiments would have to include a "ghost f***ing around with our data" factor to account for deviations of measured data due to ghosts f***ing around with measurements]]]

In our shool or university time, in chemistry, biology, physics whatever measurement made, do we take in the "measurement values/results" directly or we need to ask if the ghost factor influencing the PH, voltage, the EM wave we measured?

3) Why the victims of murder case did not translate into ghost and interact to the physical would telling what is happening? This would definately help on justice.

Oh, they are forbid to do so you said, how come others can be wondering around?

Good to see that we have quite a number of thinkers among the forumer.

This topic is not a scientific question, it is actually touches the psychology (mental state) and philosophy (existence, believe).

When one believes, he acts according to what he believes.

Example, if one believes that it is gonna rain, he would bring an umbrella. It is obvious that the action would be different (not bringing) for another person that doesn't believe it is gonna rain.

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During middle ages (in the period so called dark ages) in Europe, people was living in confusion and chaos state and all people during the time believed in witches.

Case 1:
A town has 3 witches
The food harvest in that time was bad
2 of the witches were out of town

By using logic and so called scientific evidences, the remaining witch would be found guilty of casting the spell on the crops

Case 2 :
There was a town where the food harvest during the time was bad
A family have a black cat with injury on the left leg
The black cat when missing
A human dead body was found not too far from the area where the black cat was missing
The human body was wearing a black suit
The human body's left leg was with some injury

By using logic and so called scientific evidences, the black cat was a witch (transformed to a human later) whose cast the spell on the crops

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We know that now the bad harvest is due to some natural fenonmenon (lack of rain, locust attack etc). During the time, when people believed in witches, a system of logic and also scientific measurement and evidences were built around it.

What is the significant of these to this topic?

The core of this topic is the system of belief in belief, the scientific measurement is merely a consequences of what is being believed.

By not looking at the core, we can easily comes out with ton of topics:
- Can we proof UFO/Aliens existence
- Can we proof ghost existence and measure them (Like this topic)
- Can we proof an invisible purple elephant existence

so on....

P/S: We won't be surprise if some forumer here comes out and say that witches do exist.

Cheers.

Very nice indeed.

Wiki has plenty of definition on ghost/spirit, so not gonna repeat here.

Need to establish some form of understanding.

1) If a word has been defined in anyway (sciences, culture, wiki), it means an "object" has been labeled with certain characteristic for communication purposes. The key point here is it doesn't necessary means that such object exists.

E.g. A flying cup, a dragon ..or.. spirit

2) Belief in the existence of something doesn't automatically means it is true.

E.g. A believer in the flat earth theory does not know whether the earth is flat, however he believes it is.

Hope this will throw in more meaningful discussion.

Cheers.

No issue with that

Back to the topic again, my apology as it is going to be quite long.

Many of us familiar with the quote by philosopher Descartes "I think, therefore I am" where consciousness is the awareness and the executive control system of oneself.

He emphasis the dualism concept where there are two kind of substances, first the matter, concrete stuff (body, organ, brain), second the mind or soul (the non physical stuff).

This concept often dubbed as 'the ghost in the machine', in our context, it is easier to refer it to "the soul in the body".

He has this idea that soul attaches itself to brains and control them. This concept theoretically means that when the body dies, the disembodied soul can float away to somewhere else.

This idea remains as a hypothesis in the realm of sciences as it introduced questions/challenges rather then solving the misery of existence itself.

Q1
Human activity/behavior can not be explained in the matter of concrete stuff (organ, brain activities). We need to push it back one level up to explain "the driver" i.e. the soul, how it works, what laws it obeys, so on and so forth.

Q2
Where the soul comes from? Who supplies it?

Here comes the religions and cultures explanation.

Q3
How the soul glues itself to the body? Does it attaches itself to all of the brain atoms, or some small parts of it or just one part?

Q4
What is the size of the soul? And what shape?

Example, it a boy dies at the age of 10, does the soul also at the age of 10, same size, same age? What if he dies naturally at 80, the soul becomes an old man?

Q5
At what state the soul is injected (let assume) in a baby? Immediately, one week, 9 months, somewhere in the middle?

Medical research discovered that, when the important organs developed, babies start to have consciousness.

Q6
When somebody lost an arm, does the soul lost an arm too?

Q7
For an old man with memory problem, be it short term or long term. When he dies, does his soul also experience memory problem?

If this is true, the soul would not be able to remember what religion he believed in, if he has one.

Q8
Observation from animals suggest that they have consciousness too.

Example, in the jungle, a group of wolfs will form a wolfs pack attack to a target deer. They are aware of their own existence, the other wolfs existence and the deer existence. They statregies and plan the attack in an army way, left, right, centre which will usually yields a better success rate.

Does wolfs have soul too?

Since we are not able to find the answers to this as yet, one of the scientist sum it up in the following paragraph:

You know, it’s a very curious thing about the self, that it is a paradoxical mixture of something which is unchanged with time and something that changes with time. If you ask, ‘Are you the same person you were at the age of ten?’ well, in one sense you are; there’s a continuity of memory, certain personality traits remain unchanged, and so on. On the other hand, you are clearly not exactly the same person. Not only has your body changed but your mind has changed as well. So there is something that we like to call the ‘self’ which is preserved intact through time, and yet something in there is changing, too. So I don’t think we are ever going to understand what we mean by the self without understanding the psychology of temporality and the puzzle of the sensation of the flux of time.

Thx, just like to throw in more ideas for further discussion

Believe both of us were referring to the same thing. Yes, I mentioned a lot about soul, however, if you read between the lines, those questions were indeed challenge the concept of soul rather than supporting it.

The dualism concept (body and soul separation) introduced more questions/challenges rather then solving the misery of existence itself.

What I tried to illustrate is, should the concept of soul fall, something new to think about and another direction may be needed to the idea of ghost existence.



Back to the topic again.

There is one logical thinking on reasoning, the Occam's razor. It sounds like this:

"when you have two competing theories that make exactly the same predictions, the simpler one is the better."

Or, the simpler explanation is always the better explanation to a problem.

In the quest of looking for why consciousness exist, there are a few theories:

A) Soul/Spirit drives the consciousness
- Like what mentioned in the previous post, to agree with the dualism concept (body and soul separation), one needs to believe that spirit/soul/ghost exists despite there are no hard evidences
- One needs to believe and rely in religion to answer the question (Where the soul comes from? Who supplies it? And also which religions?)
- There are a lot of questions remain unanswered to the idea of spirit (I posted some earlier), one needs to have faith to continue to believe that those questions were bounded by human limitation on comprehension of the real world, and religion is the only way to be taken as the highest priority

B) The sum of individual parts (the whole) is greater then the individual parts when there are separated
- Imagine a country flag made out of 5 thousand people hat in different colour. Individually there are just one person with a hat. However, when combine together, it became a country flag
- Music note when separated is merely a single note, when constructed into a melody and synergize using a ton of orchestra instrument, it becomes so emosionally touching
- A book is not just about a collection of words. With single word alone, it is not much impact. However, when group together became a book, it is so powerful and emotionally attached to the reader. A typical example is the holy book itself.

The list continues..

Examples above show that when a few components integrated together, it exhibits a new behavior/attribute that is unseen when the components are separated. When "combines together", it became "something else".

Using a baby as a more relevant example, as mentioned in previous post, when important part of the organs in the baby are developed in the mother, babies start to have consciousness.

Do we need the injection of soul/spirit to explain this consciousness behavior?

This is like an objective questions in primary school, choose between A or B above?

Another example that everyone here can relate to is the computer virus.

Although it is not an organic compound (cannot pee, pass motion, eat, no hydrogen atom and so on) it exhibits the following behaviors:
- Reproduction, trying to spread the species as wide as possible (aren't this look like living orgism?)
- Can wait and attack when env and time are suitable (looks like a real bacteria to me)
- Taking resources from the host, trying to take control to the host (like parasite)

One day, probably happened already, I don't know, a computer virus is telling the rest of it kinds:

Wow, our existence is unbelievable, we have so nice environment to live with. There must be a "virus soul" in each of us that drive our consciousness. Let's start up a post called "Can virus soul" be scientifically measured?" and asked our fellow forumer

Good day.

By the way, the sum is greater concept is not mine, I borrowed it from the professor Paul Davies, a scientist on physics and cosmology.

You do have a point. The misery of existence itself/spirit may remains unanswered in our lifetime.

We are currently stuck in a wild goose chase, or an inter-deadlock between science and religion in the quest of answering the question on existence itself.

Instead of continue in banging the wall in the similar pattern, perhaps a "Leap Of Faith" is all we need, where a new paradigm shift on how we explain our world, rather that the current narrow tunnel vision view using our culture, supertition, religion and science.

Extract from a scientist:
"Are we heading into the right direction in trying to detect and measure the spirit existence? Where the so called spirit could be a bi-product and result from another outcome?"

The choices of the words, Everyone and Proven were rather strong.

Please allow me to quote this again:

"A believer in the flat earth theory does not know whether the earth is flat, however he believes it is."