 | | | Subject: ... but there are ghosts!
Posted Mar 10, 2009 by taliesin
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5
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As I was going up the stair
I saw a man who wasn’t there
He wasn’t there again today
Oh, how I wish he’d go away...
When I came home last night at three
The man was waiting there for me
But when I looked around the hall
I couldn’t see him there at all!
Go away, go away, don’t you come back any more!
Go away, go away, and please don’t slam the door... (slam!)
Last night I saw upon the stair
A little man who wasn’t there
He wasn’t there again today
Oh, how I wish he’d go away
Antigonish, (1899) by Hughes Mearns
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| | | Subject: ... but there are ghosts!
Posted Mar 10, 2009 by taliesin
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7
| | >>And why is the human brain so wired to hyperactively detect agencies?<<
If you'd ever observed a horse shy violently because it clearly mistook a small branch on the ground, moved by the breeze, for a snake, you'd know.  
Humans possess a similar survival perception: We instinctively assume agency to aspects of the environment, and react accordingly, long before we become consciously aware of the stimuli invoking the reaction: The hair stands up on the back of the neck, the heart rate increases, adrenalin starts flowing, etc., and *then* we may begin speculating about that movement in the bushes...
Adding to the equation, our more complex neural system, and correspondingly advanced sentience/intelligence, causes us to assign agency to that for which we have not gathered sufficient explanatory facts.
Our minds project on to those unseen/unexplained events agents having similar faculties to those that our minds possess, (planning, intent, etc.), which necessarily require minds.
Wishful thinking about the dead not really being dead, and a perfectly understandably reluctance to accept the fact of our mortality fill in the rest.
iirc, Dennett has some fascinating things to say about the theory
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| | | Subject: ... but there are ghosts!
Posted Mar 10, 2009 by Tumsup
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9
| | Also, look up Pareidolia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareidolia
Remember that your brain perceives reality by having already created a version of it in your head. When you look at something your brain percieves it by matching it against what is already on file. This allows you to see something more quickly than if you had to think about it every time. Unfortunately this also means that whatever you're looking at will be matched against file even if your eyes are not getting enough information. It's why ghosts seem to appear only in dim light or why leprechans appear out of the corner of your eye.
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