this post was submitted on 29 Jul 2023
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Funny thing, fear is a heavily biological phenomenon, to keep your body safe from harm. It's very chemical-based. If you have a soul of some sort, it would lack a lot of the mechanisms like adrenaline and cortisol that we normally associate with the sensation of fear.
It would have no real reason to be afraid of anything. What are you going to hurt, its feelings?
It does state that bright lights can change you, though I suppose that isn't the same as harm.
Yeah you need glands for that
But all emotions are chemical processes in our brain, and vision is a product of our eyes, and hearing is from our ears, etc. So if a make believe ghost can experience those other things, why not fear as well?
Most of those are far more undiscernable than fear. Fear is very simplistic, and people are very familiar with its component pieces if they consider it at any length.
Most other emotions are more indescribable, and harder to explain mechanistically. People are familiar with what adrenaline, and sometimes cortisol feel like though, specifically. So it's easier to pin those down into bodily processes and leave the rest to a belief in a soul, if one wishes.
Basically, until a specific mechanism for something is pinned down, and communicated in a way that people can understand, it can be filled in with various forms of magic if one wishes. This is just personal preference and freedom of religion. Fear is easy, it's a simple, fairly barebones emotion. Is love easy though?
I feel like we could get deep into the weeds about emotions, but I do enjoy your version of "ghosts can't feel some emotions because they lack a body". I think it could have some annoying side effect extrapolations like "ghosts don't have eyes or ears or anything, so I guess they're trapped in a sensationless nothingness" but since ghosts are made up, you could just say "they can see because of magic" and clear it up. Anyways, ghosts are a fun idea, and I'm glad people keep imagining up interesting versions of them.
Well, from a strictly scientific standpoint, there is no sound evidence for ghosts. This is religion, not science. With a little bit of science thrown in for fun, like seasoning some food with salt. But make no mistake, religion, not science.
If you try to only stick to scientifically confirmed ideas, the entire thing falls apart. But you were aware that a very large percentage, perhaps a sound majority of the planet even, prefers faith-based systems to evidence-based systems, yes? Science is a tool that other people employ for their benefit, but to them, the world is a matter of faith.
This is why it amuses me to hybridize the two in ways that people can understand experientially.
But why apply it specifically to emotions and not senses? Or something else, for that matter?
As I already expressed, the accessibility of the idea is important to the hypothetical landing in the first place. We do not fully understand how image processing in the brain happens. This is inaccessible information currently. We do know how adrenaline functions, this is accessible to people, even those without academic training, due to it entering common language as an "adrenaline rush".
I feel like this is kind of just arbitrarily picking and choosing again. We do not fully understand how emotional processing happens either, and the mechanics behind it are arguably more complex to the layperson than vision is. There are different types of adrenaline rushes (excitement, fear, athletic focus, etc.) and most people don't know how noradrenaline and other chemicals influence your emotional state, whereas I'd argue that far more people understand the basic mechanics of sight (rods and cones) and when getting blinded by light there is only one potential sensation.
If you want to have fun with the idea of what fictional/fantastical ghosts do or do not experience, that is completely okay, but you don't need to try and make some justification or explanation as to why it is that particular way and not any other way or why that way makes more sense than any others.
In my head, I can also kind of see how it could make sense that if ghosts existed then there'd likely be certain emotional stimuli that they'd be missing, But that's just in my head with my reasoning, doesn't mean that it has to objectively make more sense than anything else or that that's how it would be if they actually existed.
Well of course its arbitrary. I just picked it because it was used in the meme that we are talking about. I could've also used physical pain or sexual desire or hunger. It just has to be something that people have experiential experience with. Sight possibly could've worked, but I don't think so. Maybe for you?
Also, I'm not sure there actually are different kinds of adrenaline rushes. Regarding my explanation, I was asked, so I provided it. Just because you do not like it does not make it bad. My point stands. People "get" fear pretty easily, if they want. People cannot "get" sight, without the aid of science training. It's a key difference between the two, which makes picking one over the other pretty easy.
I didn't say that I don't like it or that it's bad, just that it's not better or worse, or makes objectively more sense, than anything else.
No, it definitely does not make objectively more sense, that is 100% true. Subjectively, and maybe, only. Subjectively is what's important though. Only a fairly smallish percentage of humans care about trying to be objective most of the time. Most just don't bother. So unless you are a student (where we have to keep your options open) or adult working in some sort of technical field, you can actually dispense with it.
This is one of the big reasons why our world is so fucked up, as a side note.