You will be visited by three spirits...

I like to think I’m a rational person, but nevertheless I love a good ghost story. However I have noticed a tendency for some people to seize on rationalism as Something To Believe In which seems to miss the entire point of the mindset.

Photo of ghost like figure Photo by Pedro Figueras: https://www.pexels.com/.../person-behind-white-cover-626164/

I think of this viewpoint as Born Again Scepticism because it most often afflicts people who were really into Weird Shit when they were younger but became disillusioned by Weird Shit’s constant failure to deliver. Born Again Scepticism espouses a kind of knee jerk “because it doesn’t exist!” holier than thou attitude to anything that isn’t scientific canon and is evangelical about deploying it.

Born Again Sceptics are usually not actual scientists. As I've mentioned before on this blog, Carl Sagan – who most definitely was a scientist – said:

“No matter how unorthodox the reasoning process or how unpalatable the conclusions, there is no excuse for any attempt to suppress new ideas, least of all by scientists committed to the free exchange of ideas.”

To illustrate this point, he went on to refer to a very silly idea indeed, Velikovsky's Worlds In Collision theory which postulates that part of the history of the solar system played out very much like a trick shot in snooker with Venus as the cue ball. The point was that no matter how absurd the idea, dismissing it by default wasn't on. Examining it with evidence and reasoned argument before disregarding it was the way to go.

I like to think I’m not a credulous person. However ghost stories have existed as long as human beings have, and dismissing them out of hand with a glib “because it doesn’t exist!” strikes me as replacing one rigid viewpoint with another. I’m not saying that ghosts are the spirits of the dead returning, but the longevity of the phenomenon’s reported existence in human culture means that clearly they’re the manifestation of SOME kind of process; whether it’s a psychological one, a side effect of brain function and perception under certain circumstances or even something to do with the hard problem of consciousness (an issue that neither psychology, biology nor philosophy has been able to solve so far).

“Because it doesn’t exist!” doesn't quite cut it. It’s almost a conspiracy theory for those who consider themselves above conspiracy theories.

"The spirits have done it all in one night!"

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