Do You Believe in Magic
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- Category: Politics: Philosophy
- Date Submitted: 09/29/2012 02:12 AM
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Do You Believe in Magic?
John Davis
PHI 200
Professor Pederson
July 25, 2011
Do You Believe in Magic?
This is a quest for proof, irrefutable, cold hard facts that point to the reality of extrasensory perception. Can it with any certainty be proven or like god is it all a matter of faith, of belief in things that do not utilize our senses to give them confirmation? Is this a relatively new phenomenon, or does it have much deeper roots than most are aware of? Before any of this can be debated or argued over it is important to note that by giving it an all inclusive title of extrasensory perception we have combined several distinct branches. The problem is that although one of the groups may fail to provide adequate proof, another may not, making it difficult to judge them all as one unit.
So just what is extrasensory perception and how long has it been around to baffle us? The term extrasensory perception, or ESP, refers broadly to several different disciplines under an umbrella definition; clairvoyance, telepathy, precognition are within this group. Many in the general public also include such things as ghosts, tarot reading and gazing into a crystal ball for answers; however for the sake of this paper I will skip séances, spooks and things that go bump in the night.
Clairvoyance, telepathy and precognition are very closely related to each other. Clairvoyance is the ability to see an object or event that can’t be seen using your other senses; precognition is the ability to know about something in advance of it happening and telepathy is viewed as mind to mind communication. These are at the very least difficult things to prove. How do you designate the parameters of a system to test something of this type that will give definitive answers or are we looking at something that is beyond scientific proof?
Scientists and governments have strived for years to prove the existence of extrasensory perception in most...
John Davis
PHI 200
Professor Pederson
July 25, 2011
Do You Believe in Magic?
This is a quest for proof, irrefutable, cold hard facts that point to the reality of extrasensory perception. Can it with any certainty be proven or like god is it all a matter of faith, of belief in things that do not utilize our senses to give them confirmation? Is this a relatively new phenomenon, or does it have much deeper roots than most are aware of? Before any of this can be debated or argued over it is important to note that by giving it an all inclusive title of extrasensory perception we have combined several distinct branches. The problem is that although one of the groups may fail to provide adequate proof, another may not, making it difficult to judge them all as one unit.
So just what is extrasensory perception and how long has it been around to baffle us? The term extrasensory perception, or ESP, refers broadly to several different disciplines under an umbrella definition; clairvoyance, telepathy, precognition are within this group. Many in the general public also include such things as ghosts, tarot reading and gazing into a crystal ball for answers; however for the sake of this paper I will skip séances, spooks and things that go bump in the night.
Clairvoyance, telepathy and precognition are very closely related to each other. Clairvoyance is the ability to see an object or event that can’t be seen using your other senses; precognition is the ability to know about something in advance of it happening and telepathy is viewed as mind to mind communication. These are at the very least difficult things to prove. How do you designate the parameters of a system to test something of this type that will give definitive answers or are we looking at something that is beyond scientific proof?
Scientists and governments have strived for years to prove the existence of extrasensory perception in most...