The epistemological question, all along; the debate over the ages, is whether holding any X- complement component (imaginary component) in our theory of the ghost will give us a better understanding of the X component (real part) of the ghost.
If a particular ontological commitment gives us a better understanding of something than it is no longer in the X-complement. We are officially observing/ interacting with it. Neptune for example, before it was observed by telescope, was merely a theoretical entity needed for explaining perturbations in the orbit of Uranus. There was a mysterious feature of the solar system and we explained it by positing an astronomical entity. There was nothing unscientific about this.
there is no proof that X is not dependent upon or manipulated in (scientifically) unfathomable ways by a larger X-prime, and it is conceivable that interactions occur between X and X-complement in ways that cannot be understood within X.
See, if there are interactions between X and X-Complement then there are interactions between us and X-Complement. X and X-Complement, by definition cannot be causally related. The question then is if physical entities and physical causes are sufficient for accounting for all our experiences. If they weren’t we would have a reason to favor a Spiritual or X-Skeptical view. But, in fact, we’ve been really good about explaining and predicting experiences using just physical and scientific-theoretical entities.
To conclude: I see three distinctions where you see two. There is the Scientific- physicalism of Less Wrong, the Spiritual view which holds that there are things that are not physical and that we can (only or chiefly) observe and interact with those things through means other than science, and finally, the Extreme Skeptic view which considers all our experiences as being structured by our brain or mind then as the effects of entities that are not part of our mind/brain. Moreover, the possibility you see, of our inability to make sense of physical universe we have access to because of interactions between that universe and one we do not have access to, does not exist. This is because the boundaries of what we have access to are the universe’s boundaries of interaction. Anything that influences the reality we have access to we can include in our model of reality. And it turns out that a scientific-physicalist view is more or less successful and explaining and predicting experiences.
Now (finally) to the comparison.
If a particular ontological commitment gives us a better understanding of something than it is no longer in the X-complement. We are officially observing/ interacting with it. Neptune for example, before it was observed by telescope, was merely a theoretical entity needed for explaining perturbations in the orbit of Uranus. There was a mysterious feature of the solar system and we explained it by positing an astronomical entity. There was nothing unscientific about this.
See, if there are interactions between X and X-Complement then there are interactions between us and X-Complement. X and X-Complement, by definition cannot be causally related. The question then is if physical entities and physical causes are sufficient for accounting for all our experiences. If they weren’t we would have a reason to favor a Spiritual or X-Skeptical view. But, in fact, we’ve been really good about explaining and predicting experiences using just physical and scientific-theoretical entities.
To conclude: I see three distinctions where you see two. There is the Scientific- physicalism of Less Wrong, the Spiritual view which holds that there are things that are not physical and that we can (only or chiefly) observe and interact with those things through means other than science, and finally, the Extreme Skeptic view which considers all our experiences as being structured by our brain or mind then as the effects of entities that are not part of our mind/brain. Moreover, the possibility you see, of our inability to make sense of physical universe we have access to because of interactions between that universe and one we do not have access to, does not exist. This is because the boundaries of what we have access to are the universe’s boundaries of interaction. Anything that influences the reality we have access to we can include in our model of reality. And it turns out that a scientific-physicalist view is more or less successful and explaining and predicting experiences.