Logic Essay

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Philosophy

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Oct 30, 2023

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Essay: Logic, Science, and the Supernatural Read the “Logic, Science, and the Supernatural” handout in a Canvas Module. Use critical reasoning skills and the information there to answer the questions below. CHOOSE ANY THREE OF THE FOUR CASES BELOW TO RESPOND TO CLEARLY AND COMPLETELY. For the three cases you’ve chosen, answer all three prompts which follow each case. You are thus writing 9 paragraphs or more total, in response to prompts a, b, and c (or more if you need it) from the three cases you picked. Submit your essay/writing in Canvas, in the Assignments Modules. Apply any relevant ideas or principles from the logic handout—in your own words—and use your own critical reasoning skills in each case. Do not just name principles from the handout but explain why they do or do not apply. Do not use any information or ideas from the internet or any outside sources but only the information provided in the handout and here in the essay prompts, as I have presented it. (If I misrepresented any reported supernatural cases, it is unintentional.) If I cannot open or read your essay, the late penalty applies, until you submit a copy I can read. This is not a research essay, though each case has been reported as having occurred. The question is: Would a logician believe the interpretations offered to account for the supernatural events, as given? Use the information from the “Logic, Science and Supernatural” handout in a Canvas Module to “debunk” each case. You will do that by answering each of the three questions for each case. You are not disproving the supernatural, because that is not possible. But you are explaining how the alleged supernatural event can be explained naturally, using logic and science, therefore, we can believe in logic and science and the supernatural has not proven itself (yet) to be real or true. CASE 1 Philosophy professors Barry Singer and Victor Benassi performed experiments on community college students in the late 1970s and early 1980s at Long Beach City College. The two told their own critical thinking and logic students that a magician was hired to perform psychic feats for them in class. Professors Singer and Benassi hired a man listed in the newspaper as a professional conjurer and told the classes he was hired to perform for them. He repeated a single performance in front of 10 different philosophy classes. He wore a purple robe and gold medallions. He introduced himself as “Craig” and he chanted before each supernatural feat he performed. 70% of all students who witnessed his act said afterward that Craig the “magician” was real: he could break the laws of nature. They watched him with their own eyes make paper money appear and disappear, both before and after holding it up for all to inspect. He smoked a cigarette, then asked a student to open her hand, and she was shocked to find ash there when there was no ash there when the performance began; a metal bar was passed around in class and no one could bend— 1

every single student tried—and then Craig, after a chant of words not in English or any other known language, Craig bent the bar easily, without effort. He asked a random student to choose a number between 1 and 100 and then he guessed that number correctly the first time, to the student’s utter amazement. 70% of the college students who witnessed Craig’s feats said he was the real deal: A practitioner of the paranormal capable of suspending the laws of nature. They said he (Craig) was actually tricking the philosophy professors Singer and Benassi into thinking he was just a regular human, a mere paid “magician” when in fact in reality he is a supernatural warlock. The college students claimed they did not know how powerful Craig was, but that he revealed enough for them to know he had real powers. (Several college students wrote exorcisms on their paper to ward off the Devil, and others prayed to God for their personal safety.) PROMPTS : (a) Is it logical to believe what the majority of college students believed? Is it rational? Or is it logical and/or rational to believe Craig is a regular human being who is a professional performer, unable to break any laws of nature and perform any supernatural feats? Explain. (b) How could Craig be tested outside the classroom, by experts? Explain. Suppose Craig refused to perform under test conditions: For instance, when given a metal bar chosen by scientists, he will not bend it; when asked by scientists he refuses to tell them what number they are secretly thinking of between 1 and 100; and Craig will not make ash appear in any of the scientists’ hands, or make a dollar bill appear or disappear. Could Craig still be supernatural, given his refusal? What would logic and science say? Explain. (c) What if a public internet search turned up the following: Craig had purchased the following books in the past five years after leaving his job at Big O Tires: 101 Magic Tricks by Bryan Miles, Modern Magic Effects and How to Perform Them , by Geo DeLawrence, and Jim Stott’s Ultimate Street Magic Kit . Would this prove logically that he is just a human conjurer? Or would it only give you strong evidence he was merely a human conjurer? What if Craig said in response he has real supernatural abilities but he wanted to appear to be a regular human magician, in order not to be persecuted by those who found out his true powers? Is it logical and is or it rational to believe this is why Craig made the purchases of those books (to masquerade as a human and not be discovered to be a real wizard)? Analyze this defense in detail. CASE 2 The psychologist Terence Hines wondered if psychics are real. They claim to be able to see the future before it happens. (You pay for a reading.) Hines then argued that gambling casinos provide a real-world test for the existence of psychic phenomena. Every spin of a roulette wheel is an opportunity to test precognition (seeing the future before it occurs). If psychics really possessed the supernatural ability of precognition (seeing he future before it occurs), Hines argues, then the earnings of casinos would be negatively affected. Any 2

psychic would go any time and take cash, beating the odds and threatening any casino with bankruptcy. But audits of all Las Vegas and Indian casinos show they make in profit what probability calculations predict they should make (not one has ever been bankrupted by legal gambling activities). Fact: By foreseeing just 9 straight spins in roulette on an initial $20 bet (the odds are 35-1 on any correct call of a single number), a psychic would have amassed over $1.2 trillion in cash by simply letting the winnings from each correct call ride on the next spin, and then stopping after the 9 th spin. No casino in the world could pay that (not even Jeff Bezos, the world’s richest man, could). But in fact, in the history of roulette, no one has ever predicted three straight spins. More facts: On June 15, 1997 the horse race play called Triple Trio was won at Happy Valley Racecourse, under the auspices of the Hong Kong Jockey Club. Thousands of tickets were purchased: The winner, if there was one, would have taken home $25.9 million if he/she only staked $1.39: The person had to successfully pick the first, second, and third horses, in order, in the second, third, and fifth races. Over one hundred thousand tickets were purchased, and not a single winning ticket emerged. (However, on July 28, 1974, at a horse racing event in Wilmington, Delaware, Charles Lamb, a writer for the Baltimore News American, picked all 10 winners of each of the 10 races. This has never been done before or since. (He said he was lucky and not a psychic.) Some psychics have replied to Hines’ claims that casinos never losing money proves psychics are not real: (a) “We can see the future whenever we wish to. Casino results do not prove we are frauds because our psychic powers cannot be used to make money.” Analyze this. How could you test it? (b) “Casino results do not prove we are fake. We can foresee the future, but we just can’t foresee any future numbers, only future events.” Is this logical? How could you test it? (c) To prove we are real, we foresaw the future and gave the last 3 Super Lotto winners the winning numbers. We told each of them if they ever revealed who gave them the winning numbers, we would have them killed. (We also foresaw they never would tell anyone who gave them the numbers, after we warned them not to.) PROMPTS : Respond to (a), (b), and (c) using logic and critical reasoning. CASE 3 “Biofield therapeutics” is known commonly as touch therapy. The practitioner moves his hands over the body of the patient an inch or two away, smoothing and balancing the patient’s “energy field” or aura. Practitioners claim this field extends outward from the body for several inches. A trained touch therapist says he/she can sense by touch your energy field and then fix it if it’s not aligned. The practice was adopted in the U.S. from ancient Chinese practitioners of qi gong by Delores Krieger, a professor of nursing at New 3

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