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What is Parapsychology?

#1
Magical Realist Offline
https://curiosityshots.com/parapsychology-questionings/

"Parapsychology? Ask The Ghost…

Psychology is a field that studies the human condition encompassing the mind, body, and soul. While professionals and the public alike view psychology studies as scientific advancements, there is one division that continues to raise eyebrows within the field…

Parapsychology encompasses psychic phenomena (not unlike visionaries), the reading of others’ minds, and apparitions. Although parapsychology conjures up images of the Ghostbusters or those paranormal cable shows, the truth is, the relative scholarly research continues to explore individual experiences to find answers to unconventional thoughts and events.

The Beginnings of Parapsychology

Undergraduate students may first associate parapsychology with C.G. Jung. Throughout his life, Jung was fascinated with things that defied explanation, often stemming from his own experiences. His Grandmother, Augusta, was called clairvoyant. While Jung hits the mainstream psychology textbooks, another man too is credited with the birth of the field…

Joseph Banks Rhine is considered to be the father of modern parapsychology, studying and completing his work at Duke University, North Carolina. Many of his first studies involved the United States Military. Rhine and his team explored concepts such as clairvoyance and telepathy adopting scientific methods and statistics to add legitimacy to topics other psychological researchers wouldn’t investigate. Leading his research team in 27 experiments, he saw repetitively statistically significant results before 1940. Rhine presented the world the term ‘Extrasensory Perception’ (ESP) to describe individuals who were able to forgo using their five senses to obtain knowledge. Today, the Rhine Research Center is still a flourishing place for parapsychology, as well as the Journal of Parapsychology and the Parapsychological Association, both started by Rhine.

Basic Types of Parapsychology Phenomena

• Telekinesis or psychokinesis: This is the ability to use one’s mind to manipulate objects

• Telepathy: Individuals who can communicate with another’s mind without using any other five senses are said to be telepathic.

• Precognition: Those who can provide information about the future, often through their dreams or a vision.

• Apparitions: These are ghosts or other unexplained physical events like hauntings attributed to deceased individuals.

• Out-of-body experiences: This occurs when individuals feel their bodies have left their physical presence, often felt from above.

Not Just for the Movies

Margaret Mead, cultural anthropologist, lead the Parapsychological Association in affiliation with the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the field elevated beyond mere hokum. In this new alliance, parapsychology shifted into high gear in the 1970s and 1980s. Many organizations branched out, and in universities throughout the world, including big names of Stanford and Princeton, parapsychological research flourished. The surge in popularity leaked into mainstream media like books, movies, and television shows tapped into the unexplained, increasing the public’s thirst for all things paranormal.

The Committee for Skeptical Inquiry was created in 1976 by staunch critics of parapsychology with the aim of examining such experiments with the proverbial fine-tooth comb. The desire to explore the unknown, however, outweighed denial.

Current Work Today

Of all the parapsychology topics, precognition is the most widely explored. Researchers have completed over 300 volumes of scientific work regarding precognition, with experiments still being conducted today. With the advancement of technology, parapsychologists can interview participants even more intensively. Professionals can utilize diagnostic imagery to see areas of the brain that highlight when participants speak of their experiences or record brain waves while people dream.

Admittedly, there is a large part of the profession that discredits any work completed in parapsychology, mainly due to the inability to recreate experiments. Despite this, there are still parapsychologists exploring the unknown, hoping to reconnect this society, one mind to another today."
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#2
Leigha Offline
Do you think that if parapsychology was taken seriously by “real” scientists, they’d find evidence for some of the paranormal claims? I ask that because it seems anyway, that parapsychology is a specific “field of study” that revolves around believing in things without evidence. It doesn’t seem like there has been much done in the way of meaningful inquiries by the science community.
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#3
Magical Realist Offline
(Sep 11, 2021 08:35 PM)Leigha Wrote: Do you think that if parapsychology was taken seriously by “real” scientists, they’d find evidence for some of the paranormal claims? I ask that because it seems anyway, that parapsychology is a specific “field of study” that revolves around believing in things without evidence. It doesn’t seem like there has been much done in the way of meaningful inquiries by the science community.

There is nothing imo distinguishing parapsychology from any other science aiming to research an unknown phenomena. Astrophysicists study "unproven" phenomena all the time like dark energy, dark matter, and quantum gravity. It's just that there is a huge bias nowadays against anything paranormal, which correlates to the rise of vocal skeptic celebrities, societies and websites.

That sort of ideological dogmaticism, that it's all woo or bunk, is really against the true scientific spirit of openness and discovery. It's almost as if mainstream science is afraid paranormal phenomena will be proven real though unpredictable, which is why they won't entertain the loads of evidence for it so far. Science reduces down to a peer supported ingroup that mocks and ostracizes any one of their members for even suggesting research into such fringe areas.
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#4
Syne Offline
(Sep 11, 2021 08:45 PM)Magical Realist Wrote: That sort of ideological dogmaticism, that it's all woo or bunk, is really against the true scientific spirit of openness and discovery.

You've repeatedly proven that you have no clue what constitutes science. This is just the defensive projection of a crackpot.
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#5
Zinjanthropos Offline
Quote:Basic Types of Parapsychology Phenomena

• Telekinesis or psychokinesis: This is the ability to use one’s mind to manipulate objects

• Telepathy: Individuals who can communicate with another’s mind without using any other five senses are said to be telepathic.

• Precognition: Those who can provide information about the future, often through their dreams or a vision.

• Apparitions: These are ghosts or other unexplained physical events like hauntings attributed to deceased individuals.

• Out-of-body experiences: This occurs when individuals feel their bodies have left their physical presence, often felt from above


Since He has been recorded as having such talents or can perform above unexplained deeds, this pretty much describes God, who then must be paranormal. That besides the fact we don’t really have an explanation for God nor can He be proven real. God is the paranormal poster boy, except that should everything have a rational explanation then there is no paranormal.
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#6
Leigha Offline
(Sep 11, 2021 08:45 PM)Magical Realist Wrote:
(Sep 11, 2021 08:35 PM)Leigha Wrote: Do you think that if parapsychology was taken seriously by “real” scientists, they’d find evidence for some of the paranormal claims? I ask that because it seems anyway, that parapsychology is a specific “field of study” that revolves around believing in things without evidence. It doesn’t seem like there has been much done in the way of meaningful inquiries by the science community.

There is nothing imo distinguishing parapsychology from any other science aiming to research an unknown phenomena. Astrophysicists study "unproven" phenomena all the time like dark energy, dark matter, and quantum gravity. It's just that there is a huge bias nowadays against anything paranormal, which correlates to the rise of vocal skeptic celebrities, societies and websites.

That sort of ideological dogmaticism, that it's all woo or bunk, is really against the true scientific spirit of openness and discovery. It's almost as if mainstream science is afraid paranormal phenomena will be proven real though unpredictable, which is why they won't entertain the loads of evidence for it so far. Science reduces down to a peer supported ingroup that mocks and ostracizes any one of their members for even suggesting research into such fringe areas.

I think lucid dreaming used to be in the parapsychology bucket, then scientists starting doing more research, and learned that when someone has lucid dreams, they're in a ''hybrid'' state of consciousness. This opened up more studies and so on. And just like that, lucid dreaming is now something taken seriously in the field of psychology.

Proving ghosts and if people have special psychic ''gifts,'' is more challenging, because unlike lucid dreaming, where you can create a control group of alleged lucid dreamers and study them while they sleep, ghosts and such are unpredictable (should they exist), so it's hard to ''recreate'' an environment where you could properly study the phenomenon. Science says that the ''burden of proof'' always falls on the person making the claim, so...yea.

But, stay open minded, MR. Never know what the future holds.
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#7
Magical Realist Offline
(Sep 12, 2021 02:31 AM)Zinjanthropos Wrote:
Quote:Basic Types of Parapsychology Phenomena

• Telekinesis or psychokinesis: This is the ability to use one’s mind to manipulate objects

• Telepathy: Individuals who can communicate with another’s mind without using any other five senses are said to be telepathic.

• Precognition: Those who can provide information about the future, often through their dreams or a vision.

• Apparitions: These are ghosts or other unexplained physical events like hauntings attributed to deceased individuals.

• Out-of-body experiences: This occurs when individuals feel their bodies have left their physical presence, often felt from above


Since He has been recorded as having such talents or can perform above unexplained deeds, this pretty much describes God, who then must be paranormal. That besides the fact we don’t really have an explanation for God nor can He be proven real. God is the paranormal poster boy, except that should everything have a rational explanation then there is no paranormal.

And so it goes with all storybook characters---wicked witches, genies, wizards, demons, angels, superheroes, etc. I'm pretty sure parapsychology doesn't concern itself with proving any of these beings exist.
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#8
Magical Realist Offline
Quote:But, stay open minded, MR. Never know what the future holds.

I try to be open minded up to and excluding the point of letting everything I know fall out of it. If someone had told me years ago that the mere act of observing could cause light to change from a particle to wave, or that 70% of the matter of the universe is totally invisible, or that spacetime is curved, I probably wouldn't have believed it. So much for relying on my own sense of the credible as a criteria for determining what is true or real. So I remain open to the possibilities and to the experiences of myself and others. It's pretty much how I live my life. There's so much we don't know about reality. And science has only scratched the surface of it.
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