Psychic powers?

[xSilverPhinx]

2.  She might be a very anxious person who "predicts" people's death all the time and just happens to occasionally get it right.

Yes! That's the main point. Though due to confirmation bias she'll choose to believe only that the ones that she got right to be significant and that will form the basis for that belief system. 

3.  Her brother's soul "living in her" was probably just her manifestation and interpretation of some intense grief.

You might want to look up simulacrum. The evolutionary explanation for this is because we have evolved theory of mind.

This is an interesting topic, even though I find it somewhat agonising (I've known too many stupid people).

[Norfolk And Chance]

Great discussion so far.  I agree that we have yet to discover what our brains are truly capable of, and just because we don't understand it, we shouldn't call it supernatural (look where that's gotten us!).

I had this conversation with my husband and a couple of his points were:

1.  Everyone has a different reality based on their genetics and personal experiences.  We can't really know what this woman's reality is and why she came to the conclusions she did.  Her experiences are anecdotal, at best.  Exaggerations or fabrications, most likely.

2.  She might be a very anxious person who "predicts" people's death all the time and just happens to occasionally get it right. 

3.  Her brother's soul "living in her" was probably just her manifestation and interpretation of some intense grief.

I also just read an interesting piece about religious revelation and it argued that revelation is revelation to the person (such as Muhammad) who claims it ONLY.  To everyone else, it is simply hearsay and we have not obligation to accept it as revelation.

Anyway, thanks for all the thoughts.  Keep them coming!

She is more than likely mentally ill - a significant proportion of the worlds population is. Lots of highly deluded people can operate normally at face value - hence your reluctance to immediately dismiss her claims as delusional pap. Some people are very convincing. Lack of knowledge plus convincing preachers started religion.

As for psyhcic abilities, I'm not convinced such a thing would be necessarily god given. We have a lot to learn about our brains, our mental strenth is still evolving, who knows what we may be capable of in the future? You can't rule out psi ability totally, even though we so far have no concrete evidence of anybody possessing any that they can use at will.

[Sandra Craft]

Another question that I'm curious about:  Do you think that psychic abilities are necessarily supernatural?  Do you think a psychic connection or experience is possible within an atheistic worldview?

Please discuss!

Here's a story my mother's side of the family has been dining out on for nearly 70 years:  When my mother was 10, her mother had a dream that she went to the well to draw water for the family breakfast, but instead of a bucket full of water she brought up a bucket full of blood.  As soon as she woke up, grandma ran down the street to tell her cousin this dream (the cousin had a reputation for being able to interpret dreams).  The cousin said it meant that in 3 days someone in her family would die violently.  Three days later, her husband was killed in a mine cave in.

Grandma took every dream she had after that very seriously, tho this is the only instance I know of that she "dreamed true", as they say.  Myself, I have absolutely no theories about this -- I consider it one of the many, many things I know nothing about.  I do know I find the supernatural a hard concept to wrap my mind around no matter how many odd things happen or appear to happen.

[xSilverPhinx]

Another question that I'm curious about:  Do you think that psychic abilities are necessarily supernatural?  Do you think a psychic connection or experience is possible within an atheistic worldview?

Please discuss!

Here's a story my mother's side of the family has been dining out on for nearly 70 years:  When my mother was 10, her mother had a dream that she went to the well to draw water for the family breakfast, but instead of a bucket full of water she brought up a bucket full of blood.  As soon as she woke up, grandma ran down the street to tell her cousin this dream (the cousin had a reputation for being able to interpret dreams).  The cousin said it meant that in 3 days someone in her family would die violently.  Three days later, her husband was killed in a mine cave in.

Grandma took every dream she had after that very seriously, tho this is the only instance I know of that she "dreamed true", as they say.  Myself, I have absolutely no theories about this -- I consider it one of the many, many things I know nothing about.  I do know I find the supernatural a hard concept to wrap my mind around no matter how many odd things happen or appear to happen.

Whoa.

[Ecurb Noselrub]

Another question that I'm curious about:  Do you think that psychic abilities are necessarily supernatural?  Do you think a psychic connection or experience is possible within an atheistic worldview?

Please discuss!

Here's a story my mother's side of the family has been dining out on for nearly 70 years:  When my mother was 10, her mother had a dream that she went to the well to draw water for the family breakfast, but instead of a bucket full of water she brought up a bucket full of blood.  As soon as she woke up, grandma ran down the street to tell her cousin this dream (the cousin had a reputation for being able to interpret dreams).  The cousin said it meant that in 3 days someone in her family would die violently.  Three days later, her husband was killed in a mine cave in.

Grandma took every dream she had after that very seriously, tho this is the only instance I know of that she "dreamed true", as they say.  Myself, I have absolutely no theories about this -- I consider it one of the many, many things I know nothing about.  I do know I find the supernatural a hard concept to wrap my mind around no matter how many odd things happen or appear to happen.

Events of this nature (I'm assuming that the story you have heard is true - no reason to think otherwise at this point) could be explained by an a priori consciousness theory along the lines suggested by philosopher David Chalmers.  If consciousness as a whole is fundamental to the universe, then individuals might pick up on bits and pieces of it from time to time, since we have complex brains that are themselves self-aware.  You wouldn't have to call it "supernatural," as consciousness would just be seen as a part of the fabric of the universe, like space-time.

[The Magic Pudding]

If I ever get a yacht I think I'll call it Confirmation Bias.
I'll probably never own a yacht, I suppose I could give my kayak a name.

[Tank]

If I ever get a yacht I think I'll call it Confirmation Bias.
I'll probably never own a yacht, I suppose I could give my kayak a name.

Slippery Fish?

[Asmodean]

...he knew the precise moment when his father died unexpectedly...

Was he ill? I ask because I'm curious to know whether it was indeed very unexpected.

According to him, his father wasn't ill - totally unexpected. The atheist's forum name is "duckphup."  He's shown up on several fora.  He doesn't like me, so if you find him and mention me, he'll say something nasty. But you can get the story from him, if you can find him.

Well, this is questionable at best.

For instance, did he tell someone he knew his father was dead before being informed of it? Or did he connect a sudden pang of depression, possibly caused, and possibly caused without his realising it, by seeing a merry-go-round which reminded him of the first schoolyard beating he recieved or something like that? Or was he perhaps kinda' down, decided to call daddy and was informed of his death? Beause then it just boils down to finding patterns in all the wrong places.

[DeterminedJuliet]

I'm open to the idea of a naturalized kind of "psychic powers", based on two personal experiences that I've been trying to figure out. Feel free to pick apart my examples, because I'm open to any kind of explanation for these things.

1)My husband and I have lived in an apartment building for years. There are always people coming and going in our apartment building, but one of our cats, Rocky, always seems to know when one of us is coming home. Almost always, about 30 seconds or so before one of us gets to our floor, he'll jump up from wherever he is and go sit by the door. He'll do this long before the elevator has reached our floor (our apartment is the closest one to the elevator). It's eerie and I've been trying to figure out how he does it - one of our babysitters has even commented on it without either of us mentioning it to her. He'll do it, even if the person who is home doesn't know when the person who is out is coming home (so that we're not giving off unconscious signals that we're expecting someone to come in through the door).

I really wonder how he does it, but I can't come up with anything.

2) I swear, no matter what time my son wakes up, I wake up 15 minutes before he does. If he wakes up at 2:30 am, I'll wake up at around 2:15am. if he wakes up at 4:45 am, I'll wake up at 4:30am. A lot of the time he'll wake up the same time every day (around 6:30am, or so), so it makes sense to me as to why I'd wake up at a consistent time on those days, but I do the same thing when he's sleeping very sporadically or wakes up unexpectedly. The only thing I can think of to explain it is that he actually wakes at the same time that I do, and that he wakes me up somehow without me realizing it and is then completely silent for 15 minutes, but that seems kind of unlikely for a hungry/wet baby. The other thing I've thought is maybe I just wake up a whole LOT during the night and I don't remember the times that I eventually go back to sleep, but I think I'd be pretty tired if I spent most of the night in frequent 15 minute intervals of awake time. I've also asked my husband if he's noticed me awake at night more often since our son has been born, and he's said that I haven't, besides the times that I get up with him.

So I can't really figure that one out either.

Possible explanations?

[Sandra Craft]

Possible explanations?

I don't know about the waking up one (unless he starts making little noises in his sleep before waking that you pick up on in your sleep) but Temple Grandin wrote about cats and dogs appearing to know exactly when someone is near home in her book Animals in Translation.  She credits the superior hearing of cats and dogs which lets them pick up on signals at a distance human beings can't even imagine.

[xSilverPhinx]

Possible explanations?

I don't know about the waking up one (unless he starts making little noises in his sleep before waking that you pick up on in your sleep) but Temple Grandin wrote about cats and dogs appearing to know exactly when someone is near home in her book Animals in Translation.  She credits the superior hearing of cats and dogs which lets them pick up on signals at a distance human beings can't even imagine.

I watched a documentary once about a dog who always seemed to know when his owner was coming home, even if she borrowed a friend's car the dog had never heard before or arrived at a different and unexpected time.  Makes me wonder what it is that the dog could possibly be hearing. ???

[DeterminedJuliet]

Possible explanations?

I don't know about the waking up one (unless he starts making little noises in his sleep before waking that you pick up on in your sleep) but Temple Grandin wrote about cats and dogs appearing to know exactly when someone is near home in her book Animals in Translation.  She credits the superior hearing of cats and dogs which lets them pick up on signals at a distance human beings can't even imagine.

I watched a documentary once about a dog who always seemed to know when his owner was coming home, even if she borrowed a friend's car the dog had never heard before or arrived at a different and unexpected time.  Makes me wonder what it is that the dog could possibly be hearing. ???

I agree that it could be that, but Rocky would have to be able to hear us from within the elevator several floors down most of the time (it takes about 10 seconds for the elevator doors to open and for us to reach our apartment door). Apart from him being able to distinguish our footsteps from every other person that walks by. Pretty incredible either way.

[Siz]

Yeah, maybe the way you turn the key, or open the door, or close the door or walk to the elevator. All subtle queues but personal signatures nonetheless.

And as for baby, have you noted down times, or are these patterns extracted from a whole string of wake/sleep cycles? Is your analysis of these times objective and scientific? Human sleep cycles are around 90 minutes long. This means that statistically around 1/6 of the times you arrive at lighter sleep stages you will be within 15 minutes of your babies' random wakefulness. And as we normally have around four of these cycles per night, it starts looking less freakish.

If I was to suggest that the number 34 is a magical number, you'd see it start popping up everywhere and marvel everytime it did... and completely ignore when a number 33 bus came past or you got 35c in change. I think personal superstitions feed from the same inputs as religion - it's about extracting patterns from random events.

http://www.csicop.org/si/show/hidden_messages_and_the_bible_code
http://www.nmsr.org/biblecod.htm

Sweet dreams...

[DeterminedJuliet]

Well, my observations about waking up before my baby obviously aren't scientific or objectively quantifiable, I didn't really claim that they were.

The information about sleep patterns are interesting. Though, I am literally wide awake and staring at the ceiling for a good solid 10-15 minutes most nights/mornings before my son wakes up. I think that's a bit different than usual sleep fluctuations. Beyond that, I'm not a very superstitious person, and I don't think I really went looking for this pattern, I just came to notice it after a year or so of it happening. I don't talk about it to people in my life, or actively claim that we have some kind of "psychic link" or anything like that. There are no other aspects in our relationship where anything remotely like this happens, as far as I can tell.

The most likely scenario is that he's doing something to wake me up 10-15 minutes before I can consciously hear him, but I wish I could figure out what it is. Maybe, like clockwork, he kicks his wall or something 10 minutes before he wakes up. I just wish I knew because it's a weird thing and I'm curious. I need to get a camera in his room, the little dickens 

[Good and Godless]

I had a cat that had an eery way of anticipating our movements and laying down wherever we were going to go.. in front of the bathroom, near the kitchen, etc.  It often seemed he knew are thoughts better than we did!  I guess when you are a pet and all you do is eat, sleep, play and watch your owners, you might develop some "sixth-sense" type behaviors. 

BooksCatsEtc- I loved Animals in Translation.  I have seen Temple Grandin speak a couple of times, and she is really fascinating.

Determined Juliet- I also have a young baby (almost 6 months) as well as a 2 year old.  My husband (who has weird working hours) sometimes jokes that he will come into bed and literally move me around with no response, but that one of my girls will fart in her sleep and I'll dart up like an alarm went off.  I imagine you are right and that we are responding to some almost imperceptible sound or movement, but I also think I have developed something akin to a mother's intuition since becoming one.  It's probably just hyper-sensitivity, but who really knows what are brains are capable of...?