Concept
Clairvoyance
Overview
Clairvoyance (; from French clair 'clear' and voyance 'vision') is the claimed ability to acquire information that would be considered impossible to get through scientifically proven sensations, thus classified as extrasensory perception, or "sixth sense". Any person who is claimed to have such ability is said to be a clairvoyant () ('one who sees clearly').
Claims for the existence of paranormal and psychic abilities such as clairvoyance have not been supported by scientific evidence. Parapsychology explores this possibility, but the existence of the paranormal is not accepted by the scientific community. The scientific community widely considers parapsychology, including the study of clairvoyance, a pseudoscience.
Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).
Possible passages
Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.
Any day, of course, may bring in fresh experiments in successful picture-guessing. But meanwhile, and lacking that, we can only point out that the present data are strengthened in the flank, so to speak, by all observations that tend to corroborate the possibility of other kindred phenomena, such as telepathic impression, clairvoyance, or what is called 'test-mediumship.' The wider genus will naturally cover the…
William James, The Will to Believe, and Other Essays in Popular Philosophy
States what Clairvoyance is; names Clairvoyance.
Certain it is, however, that as the Mesmerists administer medicines which are suggested to the imagination of patients during the state of clairvoyance, the Asclepiadæ prescribed drugs as indicated in dreams. These, indeed, were generally of a very inert description; but sometimes medicines of a more dangerous nature, such as hemlock and gypsum, were used in this way,[11] and regular reports of the effects which…
Hippocrates, The genuine works of Hippocrates, Vol. 1
Opens on Clairvoyance; names Clairvoyance.
On such a view of the control, the medium's _will to personate_ runs the whole show; and if spirits be involved in it at all, they are passive beings, stray bits of whose memory she is able to seize and use for her purposes, without the spirit being any more aware of it than the sitter is aware of it when his own mind is similarly tapped. This is one possible way of interpreting a certain type of psychical…
William James, Memories and Studies
States what Clairvoyance is.
Related ideas
- Jesus
- Gospel
- Antony Flew
- Jainism
- Eastern Orthodoxy
- Massimo Pigliucci
- Psychiatry
- The Guardian
- East Asia
- Spiritualism (movement)
- Mario Bunge
- Scientific skepticism
- Oracle
- Pseudoscience
- Princeton University
- Rudolf Steiner
- Taoism
- Paul Kurtz
- Buddhism
- Scientific community
- Occam's razor
- Nature (journal)
- Hallucination
- Sarvārthasiddhi
Place in the tradition
Part of Spiritualism (beliefs).