Originally Posted by roachboy

the thread came undone pretty early because none of the central terms were defined. for example, if the question is about "proving" something, the operative term is the verb, not the noun.

what does proof mean in this context?
turns out that it doesn't actually mean anything: some vague handwaving in the direction of Imaginary Boys in the Lab carrying out Important Investigations near flasks bubbling away over bunsen burners with cool tubes connecting them--you know, Science, that stuff carried out by the Boys in the Lab.

from there followed a series of more or less arbitrary professions of faith in the Magical Powers of the Scientific Method.

the relation between whatever that meme refers to and the question of proof never got posed, and then a streak of snippiness developed over "semantic" problems. in a philosophy thread, semantic questions are a problem? what the hell else is there but such problems? surely no-one in their right mind imagines that language is transparent enough so that you can brush aside such and move to directly manipulating the Things Themselves.

but no matter.

so we're in an environment that asks a question about proof without any coherent idea of what proof means.

ghosts: what they are is a function of the way the category works. ghost is a noun, so is made over as an object and so is made over into a phenomenon that has the basic characteristics of a noun---you know, a determinable x, a sequence of predicates---spread out in time, this would mean repeatability at the level of features or actions.

it may be that "proving" ghosts amounts to "proving" that a ghost is not an object at all.

but that supposes we know what "proving" means here.
and we don't.
and we never will, unless someone decides ok...this is what it is...