Ghosts

Though possibly nonexistent, ghosts play a role in the human experience of death. Ghost stories are popular in most cultures, giving a glimpse of what life after death might be like, if real. There are three major issues to consider with regard to ghosts: (1) There are no scientifically acceptable reasons for believing in the existence of ghosts. (2) There is a philosophical question concerning the possibility of ghosts, conceived as immaterial personal agents. (3) There are other humanistic and social-scientific perspectives on ghosts.

Scientific Status of Ghosts as Immaterial Agents

Ghosts are usually regarded as immaterial, incorporeal, spiritual beings—souls without bodies. They are spirits of people who have once lived, have died, and have come back to haunt those who survived them, especially people who were close to them when they were alive or who had a special place in their lives. Ghosts, for some reason, cannot find rest in their deaths. The ghost is an apparition of a deceased person, returning to places where that person lived and/or died. Typically, something must be done by the living—for example, revenge a murder or correct some other injustice—in order to get rid of the hauntings. A person whose restless soul appears as a ghost may have suffered a violent death or committed suicide. Ghosts are often claimed to haunt an old, creepy house, for instance, or other places where something terrible happened.

There is no reason, in today's scientific age, to believe that such beings as ghosts actually exist. Parapsychology (“psychical research”), the discipline investigating alleged paranormal phenomena, such as hauntings or poltergeist, has for more than a century sought scientific evidence for the reality of life after death, including the reality of ghosts, with little success. Psychical researchers' methods have failed to meet the rigorous standards of scientific experimentation. Hence, parapsychology hardly deserves the status of a serious academic discipline, although in the late 1800s and the early 1900s, leading psychologists and philosophers, not to talk about writers and other artists, were interested in it. Scientists and skeptics about the paranormal have vigorously challenged psychical researchers' claims to have discovered evidence for the reality of paranormal phenomena. Accordingly, while science cannot prove ghosts unreal, skepticism about them is the received view in the academic community. In addition, those who do believe in life after death for religious reasons (e.g., traditional Christians) also criticize parapsychological attempts to communicate with supposed ghosts and demons.

Philosophical Issue of the Possibility of Ghosts

Presumably, then, no rational thinker regards ghosts as really existing. The interesting philosophical issue is whether such (or any) incorporeal entities are so much as possible, that is, whether there even could be ghosts, and if so, in what sense. There seems to be no logical contradiction in the concept of a ghost (as in the concept of a round square). On the other hand, according to current science, ghosts are likely to be not just contingently nonexistent (like pink elephants) but physically (naturally) impossible, that is, their existence would contradict the laws of nature. Somewhat less clear is what philosophers may call the conceptual or metaphysical (im)possibility of ghosts. Also, one may ask whether ghosts can be persons and whether immaterial persons are possible.

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