Spirits and other incorporial things

And in the time you were there, did you taske any photographs, video, audio recordings, anything?

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I don't quite agree with this but I do see your point. I would say that eyewitness testimony would always be considered as better evidence than someones unfounded theory to explain away what happened, particularly when the events were witnessed by multiple people who will all swear to the same story.

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Unfortunately we have reason to believe that eyewitness testimony can also be unreliable. One experiment I read about claimed that as little as 15 minutes after a fictional bank robbery, a sizable chunk of the eye witnesses confused a red shirt for green and a number of other colours were introduced.

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The fact that it is possible to reproduce "Alien abductions" in a controlled laboratory experiment does not prove that no real alien abductions have taken place. It just shows another possible explanation.

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True enough, in isolation. But consider - we have NO evidence of the existance of aliens. The two explanations for the experience as recounted by the "abductee" do not share the same degree of plausibility; there are multiple arguments against the space alien theory that reduce its credibility.

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All I really know for sure is I grew up in one heck of a weird house. Something was totally not right about the place. I think it would be pushing it a little too far to assume that every one of my thousands of distinct memories is completely false. Some may be. Some may be exagerated. A few might be dreams even, but too much stuff happened over too long a period to dismiss it out of hand.

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Maybe so. But again, I find it difficult to accept that this was so disturbing, and went on for such a long time, and yet nobo=dy thought to capture a single image or make any effort to record these events.So let me provide an alternate - and admittedly provocative - hypothesis for these memories, a scenario in which these are false memories. If this was your childhood house, as I believe is the case, it is possible that in fact you were being sexually abused by your guardians and have constructed the "disturbing haunting" memory to suppress your actual memories. There have been such cases.Now I hasten to say I HAVE NO REASON TO THINK THIS IS ACTUALLY THE CASE. But it is neverthless a more plausible explanation, requiring fewer assumptions, than the existance of discorporeal spirits.This message has been edited by contracycle, 11-19-2004 05:08 AM

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Are you suggesting that the belief in other people's experience of the same phenomena is also a false memory or that there was collusion to reinforce the false memories once they were recounted?
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People looking for repressed memories of child abuse seem to be at least as good at generating false memories as at uncovering them.

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As to the reinforcement, I have no idea - I know nothing about this persons actual life experience or circumstances. The point was not that this is necessarily what happened - the point is that it is more plausible than immaterial spirits.And yes, I could easily imagine an abusive adult reinforcing such a perception on the part of an impresisonable child.I fully agree that false memory of child abuse can also occur, without doubt. I make no claims whatsoever that this actually happened.

qualia are an asnwer to a question that has not been asked. They are much more a semantic construction thatn a real one.

Well, if you saw an image, then presumably light fell on your retina, so it should be captured by film. If you heard a noise, then presumably so would a tape.If there was an effect, energy should have been rerwuired to have been introduced. You should be able to confirm that energy by orthodox detection systems.

The recording would be reproducible; it is on that basis that remote knowledge of things out of our immediate experience can be gained.Ifen, if the photon:retina reaction is not valid - and I allow it may not be - then this still does not rule out reproducibility. If a house is said to be haunted and everyone who gays in sees the ssame ghost, thens its also reproducible. At the very least we would end up with biometric and video recordings of someone undergoing the experience, even if no discernable cause for those feelings in the subject could be seen.Then at least we would know SOMETHING is happening. And that would be a vigorous step in the right direction.