Cholbi’s article on grief and how it impacts rationality help put my argument into perspective. People deal with grief in different ways and depending on the method of coping, can impact your rationality. Grief occurs when a person is grieving not just about themselves, but the ‘grief’s object.’ This ‘object’ can be anything, but in this case, it’s the dearly departed. Cholbi said, “no episode of grief can be rational unless the actions that constitute grieving accurately gauge the change in a person’s normative situation wrought by the loss of [their] relationship with the deceased” (257). (The normative situation refers to the grieving person’s state of mind). This quote means that people will suffer from irrationality unless they heal from the loss of their loved ones. This fact is important because who knows if the people that come to visit the Fox Sisters have recovered from their loss. People have likely gone to the Fox Sisters, in their state of grief and irrationality, to find closure with people whose career is built on lies.
Cholbi, Michael. “Grief’s Rationality, Backward and Forward.” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, vol. 94, no. 2, Wiley Subscription Services, Inc, 2017, pp. 255–72, doi:10.1111/phpr.12353.
Paranormal Spectacle 