This could just as well be framed as a taxonomy of magic or magical creatures or comic superpowers; you may disagree with details but the whole structure holds conceptually. There may be no actual facts involved (or maybe there are!), but the concepts are consistent. Also, I take this as a subset of the taxonomy of magic because there's (currently!) no scientific evidence but in the back of our heads we kind of feel like maybe we've experienced it or really really hope that there is some small ability there
First, let's define ESP (extrasensory perception) starting from examples, often being lucky enough that there are single English words that already capture the essence, and abstracting. There's clairvoyance (seeing the future), there's telepathy (perceiving someone's thoughts), mind-control (changing someone's thoughts by your own), speaking with the dead, telekinesis (moving objects with your mind), predicting random cards.
I'm setting an arbitrary boundary so that things we informally think are magical are not included (ghosts, gremlins, witches), that are 'obviously' unscientific and magic tricks (card tricks, optical illusions), which are intentionally supposed to seem magical but have a deterministic scientific explanation (astrology (depends supposedly directly on the location of the sun and planets)). These choices of mine are somewhat arbitrary. They could easily be included but then where do we stop (wait what about tarot and palm reading and tea leaves? what about entertainment magic, sleight of hand and actual tricks (ha ha that's hard to say right))
With these examples in mind, we can start to take apart what it means to be ESP and categorize all the kinds. The first thing to notice is that, along with perception, I am including action. So extrasensory perception or action is perceiving or doing things beyond our known senses. So we are well aware of seeing with our eyes and pushing with our hands; ESP is the ability to do those without currently known physiological organs. Presumably the organ will end up being the brain (the seat of thought), but maybe if we find out that we are able to see through the backs of cards using higher frequency receptors in our eyes (a deterministic scientific explanation) then this action will become a nonExtra Sensory Perception (NESP).
This brings up the tangent of making well formed categories. It is usually considered bad practice to have a subcategory, a sibling category, that is 'everything else that is not included'. For example, the category Vehicles could include Cars, Bikes, Planes, and NOS (Not Otherwise Specified). The latter category might cause difficulty because a sailboat will have to change category if a new subcategory of Vehicles, namely Boats, is created. (Note the difference between a category (eg Boats) and instances (sailboat), which of course could be generalized to become a category on its own)
A taxonomy of concepts forms a tree which expects all subtrees to be non-overlapping. Most collections of concepts end up having some overlaps, and this will be pointed out, but non-overlapping is a simplifying assumption that will make things easier to diagram.
- sensing
- 'perceiving' events
- clairvoyance, premonition - seeing events in the future, past, or remotely
- guessing cards
- predicting events
- telepathy - knowing others' thoughts
- mentalism - cold reading
- channeling - communicating with spirits
- seances - speaking with the dead (formerly actual people), knowing the thoughts of someone who has died
- sensing auras - 'seeing' the personality of a person
- out-of-body experience - astral projection
- acting
- telekinesis - or psychokinesis, moving objects
- levitation - raising objects
- oneself - as in extreme yoga
- somebody else
- objects
- making objects disappear
- modifying objects
- bending spoons
- destroying and remaking things (watches, dollar bills)
- pyrokinesis - starting fires (inspired/invented by fiction, Stephen King)
- telepathy - transfer of thoughts, more than just sensing
- sending thoughts, communicating
- putting ideas in someone's head
- mind control
- body control
I've never defined magic or science, only working with them informally. The creation of the relations among these things helps us define our terms, putting things together that go together but avoiding conflicts and inconsistencies by separating differences.
This is an exercise in philosophy and taxonomy. That is, I'm just playing with words and our mental perception of them, mainly because science could be done on these things, and has, but it has just never panned out. So all I have to go on them is what we imagine. So this taxonomy is not (as currently known) about scientific things, but is itself scientific because people have ideas of what these individual concepts could mean and could disagree with the relations I have put among them. Note that I've really only put a subset relation (is-a) and extremely minimal comments.
The only practical argument against any of these abilities being real (or scientific) is that no one has used any of these things for anything other than those particular entertainments. That is, if ESP/magic were repeatable with other objects, we could use, for example, the spoon bending skill for other metals and substances in industrial manufacture. Or we could teach quadriplegics how to do small tasks requiring dexterity. Or communicate without telephones. Of course the counterargument which is not a counterargument is the ability of pickpockets to take personal objects without us knowing. Some 'magic' is possible, just not by the purported skills.
What's interesting about the above taxonomy is that most (serious) people don't really believe that any of these phenomena are real. This is counting angels on a pinhead, building castles in the sky. There is no there there. But we've drawn a perfectly coherent picture. And frankly, it could turn out that some of these are physically realizable, through some sort of deterministic, scientific process.
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