philosophy of science
i have a mid-term test in reading a research proposal that is attach in the attachment about 3 pages, and the forth page that is in the attachment has all the requirement for writing these 3 to 4 pages. so, if you read the whole 3 pages in the attachment, and you read the fourth page that has the requirement, and you feel, you can do me best quality work, let me know because it’s a mid-term and worth half of the course grade.
RESEARCH PROPOSAL: A Videotaped Experiment on Telephone Telepathy
1. Background Most people have had experiences with telephone calls that appear to be telepathic. Either they think of someone for no apparent reason, then that person calls; or they know who is calling whln the phone is ringing before picking it up; or they call someone who says, “l was just thinking about you!” l1or. previous studies, we have developed a simple experimental procedure for testing whether people can tell who is calling (see the attached article). In their own homes, parlicipants received a call at a prearranged time from one of four potential callers. The participants knew who the potential “ull.r, weie but did not know which one was calling in a given trial. When the telephonl rang, the participant guessed who was calling. The guess was either right or wrong. By chance, participants would be right about 1 time in 4, or, in other words, have a 25o/o success rate’ If people can t;11 who is calling through telephone telepathy, then the proportion of correct gr.rr., would be above the chance level of 25oh. We have conducted more than 570 such trials, i-nvolving 63 parlicipants. The average success rate was 4Oo/o.Inthese trials the callers and participants *.r. -i1., apart,and in some cases thousands of miles. The results implied that the participants’ success rate was a result of telepathy from the callers. In our previous experiments we were relying on the honesty of the pafiicipants and their callers. Because of the difficulty of obtaining repeatable results, these data may seem too good to be true. Can they be explained by cheating?
2. Experimental design To rule out the possibility that the subjects are giving us false information about their guesses, or receiving telephone or e-mail messages from potential callers, we propose a new itrdy in r,vhich participanls will be videotaped continuously. Before the callers are selected at random, the participants will be already on camera, and any incoming telephone calls or e-mails i,vill be detected on the film. Their guesses will be recorded on the videotape before they pick up the phone. If the previous positive results were caused by cheating, in these videotaped trials the scores should slump to chance levels. The method- of recruitment will be the same as the one adopted in our previous studies. We will recruit 500 participants through advertisements in the Part-Time Work section of newspapers. Our advertisements read: “Do you know rvho is ringing before you pick up the
phone? Good pay for fun and simple experiments as part of psychic research project.” We will offer a payment of $20 for a one-trial session. We will send details of the test procedure to the people who reply to these advertisements and ask them to nominate people to whose calls they think they may respond. As in previous studies, we will ask each participant to nominate four callers, who are familiar people to whom slhe think s/he may react telepathically.
? Toct n*nnorlrtvo J. I Lur y’ vtvv.., v For each trial, there are four potential callers. The participants know which callers will be involved and also know that one of them will be selected at random by the throw of a die. Videotaping will be conducted in the homes of the participants. The video camera is set up in a fixed position so that the telephone is in fuIl view. The participants themselves will switch on the video camera at the beginning of the session and switch it off after the trial had been completed. When a cassette is full, they mail it to the experimenter, In all cases, when a trial is taking place and the phone starl ringing, the participant says his or her guess to the camera before picking up the phone. Immediately upon picking up the phone, the participant again states his or her guess by saying that person’s name before the caller says anything. The caller then reveals his or her identity, so the participant receives immediate feedback. There are two trials per session. The two callers are selected at random by two throws of the die (ignoring 5 and 6). The times of the trials are also selected at random. Test sessions are usually an hour long, at times agreed in advance with the participants and their callers. The experimenter telephones the randomly selected callers in advance, usually an hour or two beforehand, and asks them to call the participant at the randomly selected times and to think about her for about a minute beforehand. A few minutes after the tests, the experimenter rings the participant to ask what his or her guess had been, and in some cases also asks the callers, to make sure that the participant has correctly reported the guess. The experimenter records the result, noting down the date and times of each trial, the caller and the guess, and whether the guess is right or wrong.
4. SigniJicance The results of the proposed experiment can support a research paradigm that assumes the existence of an entity called morphic field. The word morphic comes from the Greek morphe, meaning form. Nlorphic fields organrze the form, structure and pattemed interactions of systems under their influence including those of animals, plants, cells, proteins, crystals, brains and minds. They are physical in the sense that they are part of nature, but they are not material existences and thus not mentioned in physics books. Morphic fields are located within and around the systems they organize. They restrict, or impose order upon, the systems under their influence. For example, of the many direction in which a fish could swim or a bird fly, the morphic trelds of the school or flock restrict the behavior of the individuals within them so they move in coordination “vith each other rather than at random
The moryhic fields of social groups connect together members of the group even when they are many miles apart, and provide channels of communication through which organisms can stay in touch at a distance. Communication through interactions between morphic fields is call morphic resonance. Morphic resonance involves exchanges of information, but no transfers of energy or materials. The easiest way to test for morphic fields directly is to work with societies of organisms. Individual animals, for example, can be separated in such a way that they cannot communicate r.vith each other by normal sensory means. If information still travels between them, this would imply the existence of interconnections of the kind provided by morphic fields. Evidence for morphic resonance also comes from unexplained powers of animals, such as the ability of dogs and cats to know r,vhen their owners are coming home. Their ability to anticipate this arrival seems to depend on a kind of telepathic bond, and cannot be explained in terms of routine times, familiar sounds, or clues given by people at home. We explain this effect in terms of a morphic field connecting pet to owner, through which the owner’s intentions to come home are transmitted to the pet. The phenomenon of telephone telepathy is another piece of direct evidence for morphic fields and morphic resonance. Only can the morphic field paradigm explain why people can tell who is calling. Telephone telepathy is possible because the morphic fields of mental activities are not confined to the insides of our heads. In other words, people can stay in touch at a distance through morphic resonance – the morphic field of a telephone caller can reach out to touch the morphic field of the recipient.
5. Budget (It requests $20,000 from the National Science Foundation. The detail is omitted.)
