1a. The hypothesis being addressed is the validity of ESP; the possibility of people having psychic powers. Is it really possible? Dr. Peter Venkman wanted to prove his belief, that certain psychics have clairvoyant powers and that ESP is not just pseudoscience. There are many cases that prove Dr. Venkman’s argument; but there are also many cases that completely destroy his theory. 1b. There are a few well-documented cases of extraordinary coincidences that cannot be explained by anything other than ESP. A very cool and interesting example of one of these rare cases is t the story of Morgan Robertson and the release of his book Futility in 1898. In this story Robertson’s talks about a large ship called the Titan, which was destroyed by an iceberg …show more content…
ESP goes against everything we know about nature from the perspective of human physiology. Animals have similar sensory systems to us humans; we know this through science and observation. There are no cases of ESP being observed in other animals: making a claim stating that humans have ESP and animals don’t would be a stretch; if we have it then they should too if you think about it. You could also make the case that any demonstration of clairvoyance could just be someone showing his or her high levels of intuition. The example of the book written provides evidence for ESP; at the same time it provides evidence against it. The author of Futility, worked on a ship for years, his knowledge about ships and the way they worked had to be indeed very vast. The fictional tale he wrote could’ve been no more than a coincidence rather than an episode of …show more content…
In this experiment, I would run a simple T test. I would collect the data for both groups. I would record the data for each group and then calculate the mean for each group. After calculating the mean, I would calculate the variance within each group. Then I would calculate the variance of the difference between both groups, which would yield square root. I would get a T value by comparing the means of both groups. 3b. I would calculate variation within groups by using standard deviation. In the end of my calculations, I would have two numbers because there are two groups. Standard deviation starts with the calculation of the average between the two groups. Next, I would find the deviation from the mean and square it. Then, I take all the squared sums and divide them by 60, the number of participants in each group. Lastly, by taking the square root of that final number, I would have my standard variation. 3c. Statistical significance is the probability a specific outcome was not due to chance, rather due to an effect. For the difference between groups to be statistically significant, the difference between groups has to be 1.96 times as large as the variation within group. If the difference between groups is less than 1.96, it is possible that the specific outcome was due to
applies the "Dream Argument, " (32) where he states that based on senses alone, there is
A sample of children ranging from 4 to 13 years old are going to be asked to watch a Rainbow Brite video. The children will be randomly picked from a childcare center. To ensure that the children are going to be randomly assigned, the children will range in different age groups. The first group will consist of 4, 6, and 8 year olds. The second group will consist of 10,12, and 14 year olds. It would have to be a field experiment because you have to go out and collect the data.
Perception of future events (precognition), communication through thoughts (telepathy), material manipulation without physical contact (telekinesis), sight of an object or place millions of miles away with enough accuracy to draw it (remote viewing) – these are a few cases of what is referred to as "psi phenomena," also known as parapsychological or psychic phenomena. "Psi" refers to "anomalous processes of energy or information transfer... that are currently unexplained in terms of known physical or biological mechanisms."(1) Long dismissed by scientists and other skeptics all over the world, these occurrences are often attributed to trickery, hallucination, lying, chance, and even spiritual influence. Claims of psychic ability come from many varied sources. From the friend who has premonitory dreams and the dog who knows when the master has decided to come home, to the glamorous astrologer with a 900-number and the clairvoyant with a TV show, stories of paranormal abilities range from personal and thought-provoking to distant and Hollywood-esque. Are these things really possible? What does the scientific community actually know about these phenomena? Ultimately, one must ask the question, what can the scientific community know about these phenomena?
Multiple philosophers have spoken to the fact that our senses are not to be trusted for knowledge. These strongly held beliefs led to the creation of groups of philosophers known as skeptics. Paley’s presupposition that the reader will agree that “anyone in their senses” is a suitable enough response to defend the argument of chance detracts from his overall argument. Paley’s response would probably be to stress the notion of intricate design coming out of nothing and the perceived impossibility of this notion. Nonetheless, Paley’s response fails to sway me in favor of his fourth argument and instead leads to me questioning the integrity of a few
Paranormal activity is manifestation that lies outside of the normal experience which can’t be proven to be real. Most people have become interested in the haunted houses and stones due to the lack of support that they are getting from the community of science. The lack of support from the community will be hard to get because most people do not believe in this. According to the unknown, “paranormal activities and sightings usually fall into categories: spirituals entities, crytids, which are organisms whose existence is told by legends and myths.” Most people think that paranormal deal with just ghost and their hauntings but it is much more than that. Paranormal phenomena are not accepted by the scientists because they feel the evidence should be required. According to Psychic Readings, "ESP stands for extra sensory perception. While clairvoyance, or seeing clearly is primarily an optional phenomenon." A clairvoyant psychic is someone who shares a vision of unseen in telling about their health or future. "Clairvoyants are people who specialize in supernatural skills," states Psychics Reading. People like this have a magical ability to see into the past, present, and future. ESP is normally addresses as the sixth sense. "The term 'ESP' was used often in 1870 by Sir Richard Burton." Psychical research does not support that everyone is born with this capability. It is said there are people who have experienced at least one ESP in their lifetime. However to Schmeidler, another theory claims that ESP is a super sense which evolves in the nervous system. From David’s perspective, “hundreds of years ago to possess the gift of clairvoyance, one was considered a witch - as unknown knowledge was 'feared' (the emotion which keeps us trappe...
between living organisms and their external environment that seem that seemed to transcend the known physical laws of nature (The Rhine, 2013). According to (Nichols, 2011) parapsychology was studied over 100 years and in that time amassed thousands of cases studies and formal experiments in order to better understand these non-ordinary realms. In the study of paranormal activity, they have been studying them in lavatories. When studying parapsychology, people try to get an understanding and hope to get their questions answered about the phenomena aspects of these subjects. Scientist who study paranormal activities are trying to discover why these events occur. Parapsychology came about in the 1930s. When in a paranormal situation it is weird and scary and sometimes unbelievable.
Paranormal activity better known as parapsychology is a non-fictional idea. Parapsychology is the scientific study of interactions between living organisms and their external environment that seem to transcend the known physical laws of nature. (Teresi, 2000) The Society of Psychical Research was established in London in 1882 (Teresi, 2000). Major parapsychological studies had not begun appearing in mainstream scientific journals until the sixties and early seventies (Teresi, 2000).“Furthermore, groups such as the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP) which publishes the Skeptical Inquirer and the James Randi Educational Foundation (JREF) have been formed to disseminate credible information on the paranormal. Credibility should be less of a problem in the future” (Teresi, 2000).
Collected data were subjected to analysis of variance using the SAS (9.1, SAS institute, 2004) statistical software package. Statistical assessments of differences between mean values were performed by the LSD test at P = 0.05.
In Stephen Jay Gould’s essay, “Some close encounters of a mental kind,” Gould discussed about how certainty can be both blessing and dangerous. According to Gould, certainty can be blessing because it can provide warmth, comfort and secure. However, it can also be a danger because it can trick our mind with false information of what we see and remember in our mind. Gould also talked about the three levels of possible error in direct visual observation: misperception, retention and retrieval. According to Gould, our human mind is the greatest miracle of nature and the wicked of all frauds and tricksters mixed. To support his argument and statements, he used an example of an experiment that Elizabeth Loftus, a professor from University of California Irvine, did to her students and a personal experience of his childhood trip to the Devils Tower. I agree with Gould that sight and memory do not provide certainty because what we remember is not always true, our mind can be tricky and trick us into believing what we see/hear is real due to the three potential error of visual observation. Certainty is unreliable and tricky.
...stimuli and non ESP stimuli, and their findings were that the brain responded both in the images that they had taken (News Staff, 2008) This would also be evidence to support the opposing view point that ESP does not exist. I plan to go further in finding evidence on both sides and from there develop my opinion on the subject and then articulate that opinion.
...t al. "Paranormal Encounters as Eyewitness Phenomena: Psychological Determinants of Atypical Perceptual Interpretations." Current Psychology 29.4 (2010): 320-327. Academic Search Premier. Web. 5 Dec. 2013.
Claude Messier a 24 year old student in Canadian, a professor at the school of psychology at the University of Ottawa, said after he finished a class on “Out of body experiences” one of his students admitted she could do that at will. “She came after the class and literally said ‘ I thought everybody could do that. She thought i...
This investigation into the paranormal eventually evolved into the field of parapsychology. Current research in parapsychology has three focuses: psychokinesis (PK), extrasensory perception (ESP), and survival-after-bodily-death experiences. Psychokenisis is direct mental interaction with objects animate or inanimate. Extrasensory perception is a general term for obtaining information about events beyond the reach of the normal senses ("Parapsychology FAQ"). Survival-after-bodily-death is the investigation into events and phenomena dealing with life after death.
The term psi refers to any abnormal energy or information transfer that cannot be explained through biological or physical mechanisms. Examples of psi include psychokinesis, telepathy, and extra sensory perception or precognition (Bem & Honorton, Does Psi Exist? Replicable Evidence for an Anomalous Process of Information Transfer, 1994). Parapsychologists such as Joseph Rhine of Duke University conducted early experiments on extra sensory perception. Rhine began by asking participants to guess the identities of cards from a standard shuffled deck. After confronting issues with sample size and participant bias with a standard set of cards, Karl Zener, a colleague of Joseph Rhine, developed the Zener Cards, a deck of 25 cards with five different and unambiguous designs or symbols. Participants who correctly guessed more cards than could be explained by chance would provide evidence that some other force was at work (Editors of Time Life Books, 1988). Overall, Rhine and Zener’s work paved the way for future studies of extra sensory perception, especially in the development of computer generated random events and recall tasks.
In this case study, we can use the data provided to analyse the number of cups of coffee consumed in a week for the males and females, by using SPSS. It is clear that it can be used the independent-samples t-test for this question. For this case, we can use the independent-samples t-test to compare the mean scores on some continuous variable for two different groups. In other words, we need one independent variable (e.g. males and females) and dependent variable (e.g. the number of cups of coffee consumed a week) to test significant difference in the mean scores for the two groups. From the coffee drinking habits research, we could obtain this statistic of how males and females differ significantly in terms of their coffee consumption during