First, I already explained that what the OP meant by “psychic” is trivially obvious. In fact, it is obvious to the point that I suspect you are just being intentionally obtuse by pretending not to recognize what we are talking about. I already told you that ordinary emotions are not what people are referring to when they use the word “psychic”. And claims of psychic ability do not ONLY occur in movies, as you repeatedly claim. There are many in the real world who claim to have supernatural psychic ability (the kind WE are talking about, not your spurious “emotion” definition). Surely you have heard of these people.
Second, Czarcasm has already provided a definition:
We already have a word for feelings. They are called “feelings”. What we are doing here is discussing people’s belief in the supernatural, and whether it is justified. If you can’t get on board, go away and highjack another thread.
Doesn’t seem to change anything. Have a good life. Get your heart checked often as I assume someone who seems as angry as you will likely have many heart related problems.
No, actually, you didn’t. In fact if anything you proved my point.
You learned how to read radar during your Naval training, right? You didn’t just walk onto the bridge of a ship and look at the radar and know what it was showing. Likewise you didn’t just look at the screen once, and from then on assume you knew exactly what it was displaying. You had to be trained. Otherwise, the captain wouldn’t have trusted you, and in fact you wouldn’t have been there.
So, how did you learn how to read a radar? From other people and probably manuals that described how it worked, and what the display meant, right?
So, how was radar invented? Somebody observed a characteristic of radio waves and investigated what it meant, and eventually ways it could be used. Experiments were performed and over a period of time Radar was developed. Further tests were done which ultimately allowed you to be able to state with confidence that there was a hurricane ahead and the captain could prepare the ship.
Do you understand? Your experience was valuable, certainly, and all experience is. But, without the research that was based on earlier experiences; without the experimentation, trial and error that went into the development of radar, you wouldn’t have been doing what you were doing.
Personal experience is very valuable, but in terms of understanding how things work in the world, and moving forward from that understanding, it’s only part of the equation.
I’m not sure if any criteria, (from a believer), has been posted here. Lekatt posted “it takes one to know one” and advised me to try a psychic reading with my analytical faculties turned off. Neither of these constitute a set of criteria. Lekatt,
Maybe if you could explain how a non-psychic can tell that know Miss Cleo, (or any other psychic), is a fake and JE or JVP are real Dorkus used a definition of psychic that means “related to the psyche” and chose to ignore the other definition despite my explicit use of the word paranormal. Dorkus falls into the category of non-believer. So the criteria he provided of “if you think you had one you did” is not from a believer, nor does it pertain to the phenomena under discussion.
There has been debate here of whether or not paranormal psychic phenomena exist/ happen. This also isn’t germane to the discussion at hand. Czar,
To answer your question about the definition provided: Yes we can.
Well, we’re now back to the point I had hoped that the thread would have when I saw the title, and two or three of the most common problems have been dealt with.
A plea to my fellow skeptics: let’s just stay out of this one. Sit and watch. Let’s make it a “safe space”, let the believers tell us how they know which of the believed is to be believed, and actually gather some data rather than making debating points. It’s not like we’re going to make any converts, is it? I don’t think taking a day or two off from the good fight in this thread is going to result in the destruction of the scientific method.
How can we collect data on the criteria used to determine whether or not someone believes in psychic ability if the definitions of “psychic ability” brought forth by some posters are so vague as to be meaningless? Emotions? Intuition? What we have here is a deliberate misunderstanding of the original question.
Which SimonX addressed in the last line of his last post. There’s got to be somebody out there who’s been desperately wanting to spread the word about how they just know that JvP is a real medium and JE is a fraud.
