Skeptics Belief In Extrasensory Perception

This New York Times article by Adam Higginbotham revolves around the well-known skeptic, James Randi, who previously held a million-dollar reward for those who could successfully prove existence of the paranormal. Higginbotham explores the life of Randi and the origins of the prize, including brief accounts of contenders for the million dollars. Throughout his life, Randi has worked to ensure that paranormal belief is not a product of misinformation and as such, he considers himself to be a scientific investigator rather than a debunker. This presents the argument that he hopes that the contenders for his prize will provide genuine evidence, but this is combated by the fact that everyone who has applied for it has failed the test. This could

“I’m dead serious. They’re into UFOs, metaphysical journeys, astral entities, the afterlife, strange occurrences, Area 51, conspiracy theories, the Knights Templar, you know, a lot of weird stuff. People call the show and tell the host they left their body; or they lived in a previous century; or aliens took them aboard their space ships. You could call them and tell them your own experiences, too. The radio show has four-point-five million listeners every night—they might just believe your story.” Agent Winston Powell opined.

Very little is known about the nature of the human mind. The mental and social life of humans is based on the mind, yet not much is known about it and the extent to which it can go. In all cultures there is a belief about the mind, the heart, and the soul, with a variety of notions about these parts of the human being. Psyche in its ancient sense is extended to limits that go beyond the human body in many of the existing cultures. Surveys that have been done in most countries of the West, Britain, and the U.S have consistently shown that a significant portion of the populations in these regions believe in the occurrence of psychic phenomenon and more than fifty percent believe that they have at one point or another personally experienced it (Sheldrake 102). Considering these beliefs and experiences, it is senseless to claim that the mind is only restricted to the brain. This makes the advocates of mechanistic orthodoxy make an assertion that since paranormal phenomena lacks a scientific explanation, it is non-existent. According to scientific education, this is regarded as superstition but there still calls for need of more study and research into this widespread phenomenon.

Humans are naturally curious creatures. One’s inquisitive mindset might lead to all sorts of discoveries or answers to cosmic questions. However, the world and the life one lives inside the world are not always as they seem to be at first glance. What one does know about the world is based solely on their perception of reality and one person’s perspective will differ from the next. How does one know when they look at the blue sky or the green grass that the other people around them are witnessing the same scene they are experiencing? Should the stranger on the street fear another stranger simply because they are unable to know for absolute certainty that other is not a deranged, cannibalistic murderer?

According to Academic Skepticism theres a flaw in our very basic sense of understanding and observing the univere.They said that our senses of vision ,touch cannot be trusted completely .For eg if we are hearing to a voice (familiar)are we sure that its of friend ,it is possible that he

The availability error not only leads us to ignore the relevant evidence, it also leads us to ignore relevant hypotheses. For any set of data, it is, in principle, possible to construct any number of different hypotheses to account for the data. In practice, however, it is often difficult to come up with many different hypotheses. As a result, we often end up choosing among only those hypotheses that come to mind, that are available. In the case of unusual phenomena, the only

Change blindness is a phenomenon in attention where drastic changes to a scene can go unnoticed. This is important to the field of Human Sensation and Perception because it helps illustrate how a visual scene is processed. Specifically it shows how even if there is direct attention to a scene, there are times when drastic changes can occur without perception of the change occurring. With extensive research already conducted illustrating this effect, new research has recently been conducted studying different types of scene changes in the hopes of understanding which changes are easier or harder to notice. The results of these studies were quantified by the measurement of change detection time (usually reported in seconds). This subset of change blindness research has far-reaching practical applications, especially in the field of security and law enforcement. By applying the knowledge of which type of stimuli lead to longer change detection times training programs could be developed that allow this population to improve their observation skills.

In The Invisible Gorilla, authors Christopher Chabris and Daniel Simons demonstrate how our intuition can falsely lead us to fallacy. The ability to understand surroundings immediately without conscious reasoning permits misinterpretations, false judgements, and unclearness without us even realizing. Through experiments done in psychology, Chabris and Simons reveal much more about how we actually see our world compared to how we think we see it. As so many of us believe against, it is exceptionally true that we do not know how our minds work and why we behave the way we do. Our minds actually fool us and get us to believe misconceptions as being the truth. The Invisible Gorilla focuses on the six everyday “illusions” people undergo that affect

The paper discussed “placebo effects”, where healers believe they have powers to heal others, but state it is an instance of self-deception. They admitted that some psychics can see colors of auras and/or feel the pain others are experiencing because of synesthesia. The article goes on to state that all healers aren’t synesthetes.

A common human being can assume that these psychic abilities are fake, but they are a working progress among skeptic individuals. Only lab research can prove that these abilities are

Singer and Benassi (1981) described a positive correlation between environmental uncertainty in western countries and occult beliefs. Although it could be argued that they may be overreaching with this generalization which is not supported with data, there is truth to this correlation. Humans try to be rational, and logical, and think critically, but in uncertain situations, we look to our environment, the physical and social environment, to provide us with information. Therefore, superstitions and supernatural phenomenon seem possible if no logical explanation can be given, and if the feedback from the environment reinforces what could be occult beliefs. French, Haque, Bunton-Stasyshyn, & Davis (2009) conducted an experiment attempting to investigate whether they could try to create a “haunted” room, and if participants would experience more abnormal sensations. Participants were informed they may feel some abnormal sensations prior to entering the room. Majority of participants reported having three or more abnormal sensations in the 50-minute period they were in the room. These sensations can be a result of susceptibility, but the uncertainty of that environment, and the lack of information may create these sensations and can validate occult

Over many years, people have been inquisitive about abnormal behaviours within their societies and beyond. A typical question pertaining to these behaviours is, “why is he behaving this way.” According to DSM-IV-TR, abnormal behaviour is defined as a person who experiences behavioural, cognitive or emotional dysfunction, associated with distress and atypical in his cultural context (Barlow, Durand, 2009). However, the quest for answers and remedies has drifted people from scientific models to traditional ones. One of such models is supernatural.

How many times have you said, “No way, I do not believe it!” It is our natural tendency not to believe in something that we have not seen with our own eyes or experienced it personally. There is a saying, “seeing is believing” which has led us to a world full of skeptics. We want proof so we are not gullible fools. Skepticism, or scepticism, as it was spelled back in the ancient times, was pondered by philosophers who tried unsuccessfully to figure out the thought process and how we gain knowledge. Philosophers gave deep thought to determine how we arrive at such true beliefs and knowledge of the external world. Three such philosophers were Rene Descartes, David Hume and Christopher Grau. Rene Descartes was a French philosopher in the early 1600’s; David Hume was a Scottish Philosopher in the 1700’s, and Grau an American philosopher Professor born in 1970. The timeline s important because philosophical views have evolved over time. All three men were from different eras, but they each explored, argued, and addressed the topic of skepticism from their philosophical view. This proves that they take the subject of skepticism seriously, just as we should too. There is good reason to believe that a human’s knowledge of the external world results from both a posteriori knowledge acquired through sensory experience and a priori knowledge which is innate. Descartes, Hume, and Grau through their personal views and skeptical

the ranks of the 'ghost hunters' are growing. This is most likely due to the fact that American

Lying in bed in the middle of the night while sleep eludes me, a noise breaks through the silence. Oh my God! What was that!? Maybe it was just my imagination, or maybe it was just the house settling. There it is again! I must be hearing things. I get cold and my body starts to shiver uncontrollably. I peek to where the sound comes from and I could swear I see something through the dark room; it appears even darker than the surrounding area. Oh my! I think it just moved. My breathing becomes labored and I pull the covers over my head, trying to calm myself down while making my brain work through what just happened. Was I dreaming? Or did I just see a ghost?