Telepathy: Fact or Fiction?
Telepathy is the process of transferring thoughts from one brain to another. Many people argue that telepathy is not real.. Critical thinking is crucial in psychological science since it enables analysis, evaluation, explanation, and restructuring of thinking hence decreasing risks of adoption. This paper is going to take advantage of critical thinking and the scientific method to prove if telepathy is real. Both critical thinking and scientific method question, inform, test, assess and draw a reasonable conclusion.
The Role of Critical Thinking and Scientific Method
Critical thinking and the scientific method are common since they mostly involve asking questions, examination of evidence and information, and drawing conclusions, the following forms the basis needed in the scientific method and help in gaining the best foundation for concluding a theory. It is believed that critical thinking is traced back to the Socratic method of ancient Greece and was developed by the Socrates. Critical thinking has helped in reaching many conclusions like combating the idea that opposites attract each other, but in reality, those who have different traits don't usually get invited to each other (Swann 2018). Scientific theories generally account for behaviors by integrating and linking facts and observation into principles that are in sets, these principles summaries information and leads to a testable hypothesis. The hypothesis is usually testable predictions that guide research and provide a framework for the evaluation of a research result; results either not confirm or confirm a theory since forecasts can be biased (Krippner 2015).
The Relationship Between Critical Thinking and Scientific Method
Many people argue that critical thinking is more like the scientific method since it involves the application of logical principles, evidence retrieval, and reasoning to discuss and analyzes claims, issues, and belief. According to Krippner (2015), Critical thinking is crucial in psychological science since it enables analysis, evaluation, explanation, and restructuring of thinking hence decreasing risks of adoption. The framework of scientific skepticism and scientific method, the process takes steps to ensure critical thinking, therefore, involves getting information and evaluating the data to reach a justified answer or conclusion. Ellen, Day and Davies (2018) suggest that for one to develop their critical thinking capabilities, it is wise to acknowledge that there are several blind spots and one must learn how to suspend judgments. Improving ones intellectual humility and intellectual empathy them their critical thinking gets improved. Intellectual understanding requires experience in entering constructing points in views that one has negative opinions.
The Role of Intellectual Humility and Intellectual Empathy
Intellectual empathy allows for one to acknowledge one's opinion understanding that they may have theories to support their opinion. Intellectual humidity needs the ability to identify the extent of one's ignorance, and critical thinking enables people to draw conclusions, judgments or conclusions reflectively thus reducing chances of biasness (McPeck 2016). The scientific method has a series of steps and actions thus aids in thinking critically. Telepathy is described as a psychic phenomenon that allows communication to take place between minds or mind-to-mind connections that occur telepathically. Telepathy communications include ideas, feelings, thoughts, mental images, and sensations. Telepathy is globally found as descriptions in oral lore and writings example is in tribal societies like Australian Aborigines telepathy is described as a faculty other nations view it as a power or ability belonging to psychics and mystics (Ellen, Day & Davies 2018)).
The Controversy Surrounding Telepathy
It is safe to assume that telepathy is real even if it is not proven scientifically and several studies are trying to understand the phenomena in psychical researches. Ozaydin (2016) suggest that the word "telepathy" is gotten from two Greek terms "tele" meaning distant or distance and "pathe" meaning feelings or occurrence, therefore, the term means getting feelings despite being far. Many people don't believe in telepathy, and some researchers even argue that people tend to perform mind melding and at times they link with people telepathically and take advantage of observational techniques like nervous ticks, body language amongst other cues creating a profile of their subjects. I assume that telepathy is real, there are specific timers when you think of someone, and they suddenly call your phone when you have not called for several months, or when two people say the same word at the same time this is spontaneous instances of mind to mind communication. It is argued that telepathy occurs typically between close people (Krippner 2015).
Exploring Telepathy Through Critical Thinking
Critical thinking is crucial in understanding telepathy and usually involves steps like questioning, informing, testing, assessing and honesty. The first step in getting a reasonable conclusion concerning the topic is to examine. The scientific method relies on theories that are a nicely expressed explanation and the ideas expressed in a way that can provide support to a particular claim or may even empirically contradict an opinion. Theories mainly require pieces of evidence to support create or also discredit arguments. The hypothesis is different from the method since the hypothesis only predicts a specific event while theory deals with several events and gives a detailed explanation as to why the events occur. Telepathy is questionable since it involves the perception of information outside the five senses other such phenomena include the prediction of future events and clairvoyance (Krippner 2015).
Scientific Research on Telepathy
Since telepathy cannot be measured or seen it is often regarded as psychotic or unbelievable. Swann (2018) suggests that the scientific method relies on research; in 1885 ASPR (the American Society for Psychical Research) telepathy was the first scientifically studied phenomena and was simple and involved sending two numbers between two people in different rooms. Telepathy was found to occur independently of hypnotism by Charles Richet. According to Ozaydin (2015), telepathy is believed to occur mostly in incidents where a loved one is killed in an accident or injured, and one is capable of being aware of the danger to the other party who is far. Information is usually passed in various ways such as visions, dreams, mental images, words popping in one's head or hallucination and such information like cases of danger causes the receiver to change plans.
Research Studies Supporting Telepathy
Telepathy is believed to be related to an individual's emotional state for both the receiver and sender. Studies suggest that women are the most receivers and the explanation is that women rely mostly on intuition and are more emotional compared to men. There have been several types of research conducted in the past that attempt to prove that telepathy is real. A study conducted in 2014 by Carles Grau a psychiatrist and his colleagues showed that brain to brain communication using the internet is possible (McPeck 2016). A survey conducted in 2005 by Rupert and Smart recruited 50 people and four potential mailers the participants had to guess who sent the email and out of 550 trials, 45% of the guesses were right. The study demonstrated that some people are more telepathic than others. The scientific method has helped in proving that telepathy is real even though people may have different telepathic capabilities. Though there are arguments that telepathy is not real critically thinking demonstrates that it is real (Ellen, Dav & Davies 2018).
In Conclusion
Telepathy is the communication of brains despite the separation by distance. There has been researching conducted to prove telepathy, and it is safe to assume that it is real with the aid of the scientific method and critical thinking. Critical thinking helps to prevent biasness.
References
Swann, I. (2018). Penetration: The question of extraterrestrial and human telepathy. Swann-Ryder Productions, LLC.
Krippner, S. (2015). Telepathy
(Vol. 4). Cosimo, Inc..
Ozaydin, F. (2016). Quantum Pseudo-Telepathy in Spin Systems: Magic Square Game Under Magnetic Fields and Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya Interaction. arXiv preprint arXiv:1609.03881.
McPeck, J. E. (2016). Critical thinking and education. Routledge.
Ellen, D., Day, S., " Davies, C. (2018). Scientific examination of documents: methods and techniques. CRC Press.
