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6,852 published records with substantive text · Page 98 of 143
What is the logical conclusion to be drawn from the data offerable in evidence of some supersensory form of thought-transference, and whence the disposition to believe in the existence of such a procedure?--these remain the central questions of the discussion
Read record →As to the natural tendency to believe in telepathy, it may be regarded as part of the anthropocentric and egocentric view of the universe and its happenings, and as an exemplification of the persistence of the mystical view of mundane events,--both of which ar
Read record →The simplest type of a deception occurs when an inference or an interpretation of this type, owing to an unusual disposition of external circumstances, leads to a conclusion which other and presumably superior testimony shows to be false
Read record →The limitations of our senses lead directly to the possibilities of their deception, which may in turn be realized inadvertently or utilized intentionally
Read record →It has even been suggested[3] that the mimicry and death-feigning instincts of animals, though essentially biological in type, are yet related to the psychological instincts of deception which make their first clear appearance in the higher animals and assume
Read record →As our present purpose is to investigate the nature of real deception, of the formation of false beliefs which may in turn lead to unwise action, it will be well to note that even such elementary forms of sense-deceptions as those just noted may fall under thi
Read record →Deception becomes real according to the skill with which the conditions of reality are imitated
Read record →The more closely the conditions that lead to correct inferences in ordinary experiences are imitated, the more successful will be the illusion; and a useful principle of conjuring illusions is to first actually do that which you afterward wish the audience to
Read record →As we turn from the objective to the subjective conditions of deception, we enter the true domain of psychology; for the most scientific deceiver is he who employs least external aids, and counts most upon his power of captivating the intellect
Read record →The naturalist sees what the stroller entirely overlooks; the sailor detects a ship in the distant horizon where the landsman sees nothing; and this is not because the naturalist and the sailor have keener vision, but because they know what to look for
Read record →Accordingly, the conjurer succeeds in his deception by creating an interest in some unimportant detail, while he is performing the real trick before our eyes without our noticing it
Read record →the best of these proceeds by collecting some eight or nine questions prepared by as many persons in the audience, then placing them in a hat, drawing out one at random, and finding the answer to the question thus selected written on the inside surfaces of a p
Read record →There is, however, one important factor lacking in the conjurer's performance to illustrate completely the psychology of deception; it is that the mental attitude of the observer is too definite
Read record →The first general principle to be borne in mind is that the medium performs to spectators in doubt as to the interpretation to be placed upon what they see, or more or less prepared or determined to see in everything the evidence of the supernatural
Read record →The chief interest in such performances is the historical one, for these have done perhaps more than anything else to convince believers of the truth of Spiritualism
Read record →Passing next to the most interesting of spiritualistic manifestations, those in which self-deception comes to the foreground, I need hardly dwell at length upon the tilting of tables, the production of raps by movements of which the sitters are unconscious; fo
Read record →Not only that he overlooks natural physical explanations, but he is led to create marvels by the very ardor of his sincerity
Read record →thought and action, enters a spiritualistic circle, where he is constantly surrounded by confident believers, all eager to have him share their sacred visions and profound revelations, where the atmosphere is replete with miracles, and every chair and table ma
Read record →In brief, we must add to the many factors which contribute to deception the recognized lowering of critical ability, of the power of accurate observation, indeed of rationality, which merely being one of a crowd induces
Read record →In this review of the types of deception I have made no mention of such devices as the gaining of one's confidence for selfish ends, preying upon ignorance or fear, acting the friend while at heart the enemy, planned connivance and skilful plotting, together w
Read record →But still another class, and that the most dangerous and insidious, are the deceptions in which self-deception plays the leading rôle
Read record →In brief, the movement became an epidemic; and that despite the fact that from the beginning and continuously satisfactory and rational explanations were offered of what really occurred, and that mediums were constantly detected in the grossest fraud
Read record →nsound mind at the time, and anxious for an experimental demonstration of an already accepted hypothesis (the fourth dimension of space); another, Fechner, was partly blind, and believed because of Zöllner's observations; a third, Scheibner, was also afflicted
Read record →They examined many of the most famous mediums and the manifestations that contributed most to their fame
Read record →"manifestations" and their typical milieu
Read record →The monotony of the narrative of somewhat vulgar deception is agreeably relieved by the entertaining account given by Dr
Read record →There is both entertainment and instruction in Dr
Read record →Yet the description of this wonder-worker's doings by a competent observer, Professor Carvill Lewis, renders the manifestations absolutely transparent
Read record →But all this accounts for only part of the problem
Read record →There is a very broadspread notion that anybody can go to a spiritualistic séance and give a reliable opinion as to whether what he or she may chance to see is explicable as conjuring or not
Read record →Hodgson and Davey, that the kind and amount of mal-observation and faulty description which an average observer will introduce into the account of a performance such as the medium gives, is amply sufficient to account for the divergence between his report of t
Read record →Davey (who, by the way, was at one time deceived almost into conversion by spiritualistic phenomena, and who, before he took up the matter seriously, recorded his conviction that "the idea of trickery or jugglery in slate-writing communications is quite out of
Read record →Davey's performances, as described by many of his sitters, like the descriptions of the performances of many a medium, are marvelous enough to demand the hypothesis of occult agency: "Writing between a conjurer's own slates in a way quite inexplicable to the c
Read record →It may be the difference between placing the slate in a given position and starting to do so when the hand of the medium naturally comes forward to receive it; it may depend upon whether the slates were examined just before or just after a certain detail in th
Read record →and although verbal accounts must always be weak and lack the realistic touch of the mise en scène, yet this account makes possible a kinetoscopic reproduction, as it were, of the original sitting; we may observe the point at which the several sitters committe
Read record →The conclusion thus experimentally arrived at by Messrs
Read record →If we desire a concrete instance of this omission of an important detail, we may turn once more to Dr
Read record →sts,--manifestations, be it clearly understood, which have actually brought hundreds and thousands of converts to its ranks, which have been persistently brought forward as indisputable evidence of supernatural agency--and to show that in reference to these, a
Read record →death, of communion with the dear departed; when the convert becomes a defendant of the faith, anxious to strengthen the proofs of his own conviction,--then we have no longer mere unintentional lapses of observation and memory to deal with, but actual mental b
Read record →ld for twenty years; the theories and explanations of reviewers and critics do not touch them, or in any way satisfy any sane man who has repeatedly witnessed them; they have been tested and examined by skeptics of every grade of incredulity, men in every way
Read record →Tylor fully concords with this view: "The received spiritualistic theory," he says, "belongs to the philosophy of savages
Read record →When it is realized that a system that aims to instruct men in regard to beliefs appealing most earnestly and deeply to the human heart appears in the light of exact investigation as a tottering framework, held together by gross fraud, covered over with innoce
Read record →[8] I desire not to seem to overlook the fact that there are manifestations presented by Spiritualism of a different character from those above considered
Read record →[9] There is a minor problem of psychological interest in regard to the fraud apparent in these manifestations, that is worthy of consideration: namely, the motives for such fraud
Read record →If we accept as the essential fact of modern hypnotism the demonstration of an altered nervous and mental state, in which suggestibility is increased to a quite abnormal degree; in which, accordingly, functions not ordinarily under the control of voluntary eff
Read record →also for the equal advantage of securing data for the interpretation of phenomena, which in the absence of present-day knowledge, and in the misleading accounts current at the time, naturally gave rise to extravagant forms of explanation
Read record →Joseph Glanvill, F.R.S., author of Sadducismus Triumphatus, Dr
Read record →This process of alternation of pain and its remission is continued, until at length the patient is dismissed as cured
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