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Within this scenario, the prompt challenges the debate of the existence of
extrasensory perception or ESP. Extrasensory perception is defined as the
controversial claim that perception can occur apart from sensory input (said to
include telepathy, clairvoyance, and precognition).
Parapsychologists study these claims. Parapsychology is the study of
paranormal
phenomena. Typical claims of ESP include astrological predictions, psychic hearing,
and communication with dead and out-of-body experiences. Of all the claims about
extrasensory perception, the three most testable is telepathy, clairvoyance, and
precognition. Telepathy or mind-to-mind communication is the idea that one
person can send thoughts to another and can perceive another’s thoughts.
Clairvoyance is the ability to perceive future events. Precognition is the idea that
one can perceive future events. However, research shows that analysts of psychic
visions are no more than accurate guesses made by people.
In one research study concerning kidnap and murder; Charles’s Lindbergh’s
baby son was kidnapped and murdered but before the body was found, researchers
invited the public to report their dreams about the child. Of the 1300 dream reports
submitted, only about five percent were accurate. Also, Only 4 people out of the
1300 were able to accurately locate the buried body.
Throughout the day, each person imagines many events. Occasionally, an
unlikely imagining is bound to occur and astonish one when it does. With enough
time, the improbable becomes the inevitable.
Relating this back to the prompt, it is important to let the mother know that
after thousands of experiments, a reproducible ESP phenomenon has never been
discovered, nor has anyone produced any individual who can convincingly
demonstrate psychic ability.
The scientific attitude of finding something testable before agreeing with an
idea lead both skeptics and scientist to agree that what parapsychology needs to
give is credibility and a reproducible phenomenon and a theory to explain it.
Another factor that effects this idea of parapsychology is that an experiment is
different from a staged demonstration. A staged demonstration gives the so called
psychic and ability to control w hat the audience sees and hears thus the “effect”
they five is typically mind blowing. Knowing how easily we can be deceived, social
psychologist Daryl Bem and parapsychologist Charles Honorton used the ganzfeld
procedure to test psychic abilities. The gansfeld procedure paces one in a reclining
chair and plays hissing white noises through headphones and shines diffused red
light through halved ping pong balls strapped the ones head. Ostensibly, this
reduces the external distraction that would put you in an ideal state to receive
thoughts from someone else. However, over 11 studies, the receivers beat chance.
Parapsychologists say that gansfeld tests of ESP offer clear answers to psychology
based inquiry questions but questioned about procedural details may result in
experimental ias.
To explain why so many people are predisposed to believe that ESP, which
should be testable by science, to be real is that such beliefs stem from
understandable misperceptions, misinterpretations, and selective recall. Also, it is in
human nature to have a natural desire for wonderment and to search for faith in
life. However, to feel awe and gain a deep reverence in life, it isn’t necessary to look
any further than our natural capacity. So regarding the mother and her seemingly
extrasensory perception, it is mere chance and death is simply a part of life.