Does Esp Exists?

Extrasensory perception, usually abbreviated ESP, describes a way of communicating or of being aware of something without using the known senses. An awareness of another person's thoughts without the use of sight, hearing, taste, touch, or smell would be an example of ESP. The study of extrasensory perception is part of the field of psychology called parapsychology. The evidence for the existence of ESP is highly debatable. Most scientists believe ESP is something whose existence is yet to be proven.

Wiseman, R. & Greening, E (1986). ESP is popularly understood to come in several forms. The two primarily examined forma are:

Reading another person’s mind, know as precognition

Rereading the future, known as precognition.

Parapsychology is the term used for the serious study of such claims. So far, parapsychology seems to be a science that cannot even demonstrate that its subject matter exists, let alone offer explanations for it.

The claims for ESP fall into four general categories:

Telepathy -- a person's awareness of another's thoughts, without any communication through normal sensory channels.

Clairvoyance -- knowledge acquired of an object or event without the use of the senses.

Precognition -- knowledge a person may have of another person's future thoughts, or of future events.

Psychokinesis -- a person's ability to influence a physical object or an event, by merely thinking about it.

(Some researchers consider Psychokinesis a part of psi, but not strictly extra-sensory "perception")

Braude. S.E, (1945). In spite of the lack of widely accepted evidence about ESP, many people believe that it is valid because of personal experiences that seem to be unexplainable otherwise. But most of these experiences can be explained by psychological processes that most people are not aware of. People often do not know how events around them set off their thoughts. Two people who know each other well may both experience a similar chain of thoughts when exposed to a common stimulus. For example, a husband and wife may be reading together and not paying much attention to music on a radio. Then certain music triggers in each of them the memory of a person they met several years ago but have not encountered since. Just as one of them is about to bring up the person's name, the other one mentions it. These similar thoughts may seem to be an instance of extrasensory perception. But neither person is likely to realize that both of their thoughts were actually set off by the music.

Braude also adds that many classic ESP experiments, developed and used mainly between 1930 and 1960, involved card guessing. A deck of 25 special ESP cards (also called Zener cards, after the American psychologist Karl E. Zener) was often used. Each ESP card has one of five different symbols on it, such as a circle or cross. Braude states in a simple test of telepathy, a person called the sender would look at or think of a given card and concentrate on its symbol. A second person, called the receiver, was usually in another room and would attempt to name the symbol that the sender was thinking of. In an experiment on clairvoyance, cards would be taken from the deck one at a time, and the receiver would try to name the symbols on the cards. In this case, the person taking the cards would not look at the symbol.

In these experiments, one would expect 5 correct answers out of 25 calls just by chance if the receiver were only guessing. Most parapsychologists would consider a person who consistently averaged 7, 8, or more correct calls after many tests to have some ESP ability.

Taylor, J (1980). The use of computers and electronic random-number devices has almost entirely replaced the use of cards in ESP experiments. Some such research has produced controversial claims that subjects are able to influence or predict the decay of radioactive substances. This kind of influence or prediction is impossible in terms of modern scientific understanding.

Wiseman, R. & Greening, E (1986). One of the most noted American ESP researchers was J. B. Rhine, who headed the Parapsychology Laboratory at Duke University for many years. Rhine conducted a number of card-guessing experiments to test clairvoyance, precognition, and telepathy. Some researchers claim that evidence based on the work of Rhine and other investigators has established beyond question the existence of ESP.

But other researchers believe (such as