Re: Forecasting vs foreseeing

[Gary Kern <gkern@alumni.Princeton.EDU>]

Thomas Friese wrote:
> 
GK:
 
> ... the Scotsman in #31 might have feared that his
> missing brother had gone a-wandering in the bogs; his unconscious mind
> presented him with a likely picture, complete with trout detail.  The
> mother in #32, though a little girl, may have seen that gate crumbling
> in the same week that she saw that little workman's boy coughing so
> hard.  Her unconscious mind might have worried, "How will he be buried
> if he can't go through that gate?"  We need to know more before we can
> credit the two with some kind of supernatural vision.
> 
> TKF:
> I would accept your suggestion that your and the Scotsman's experiences may
> not have been true visions, and develop it by suggesting they are instead
> informed guesses based on a little unconsciously assimilated "statistical"
> data and some luck. That is, "forecasting" as opposed to "foreseeing". A
> prediction based on some kind of internalized statistical analysis and
> imagination.  In line with your idea below, a blend of analytical and
> imaginative faculties may have formed a million hypotheses/fantasies, based
> on an unconscious analysis of data, but it only remembers the one which
> happened to come true.
> 
> The difference between the believer and the sceptic? The believer's mind
> creates myriad positive hypotheses (ie something unusual is true, a priori),
> one of which will fit reality. A sceptical mind creates all null
> hypotheses - nothing unusual is true until proven. To the sceptic, an
> unusual happening would not fit any previously created positive
> fantasy/hypothesis but would present itself and be judged true based on its
> contradiction, not support, of expectations. In this way, the illusionary
> effect we are proposing would not happen.
> 
> I do not agree with extending this idea to the cemetary gate example. This
> seems to be a truly inconceivable happening, quite out of line with previous
> history (unless you make up clues such as the coughing child and the
> crumbling gate!) Not forecastable - even the most imaginative of believers
> would have difficulty coming up with this one. There are simply no seed data
> to develop. If the reader before this point had the same doubts we have have
> just expressed, now Junger has shown that a true vision is inexplicable by
> scientific analysis.
**************************************
The problem is, we have no other data about the little girl but the
story of her vision.  We need to be told that she had not seen the
condition of the gate and did not know the boy was sick before she
foresaw his dead body being carried through the other gate.  Only then
might we consider her vision supernatural.  Without such stipulations,
her story remains vague and apocryphal.

The way EJ tells #32 is indicative:  Anna, a girl of 12, born in 1812,
experienced a vision (in 1824); she grew up and told her daughter,
Hermine (maybe in 1850-70).  Then Hermine grew up and told the story to
someone (maybe in 1870-90), who put her narration in quotation marks. 
Thus the story was nurtured for two lifetimes and became part of a
family chronicle, and only afterwards became public.  I'd say that
something remarkable must have happened, but was not recorded in a way
any different from folk legends, and so cannot compel modern belief.

Incidentally, I notice that I made a mistake in the English translation.
The line, "Aus ihrer Jugendzeit erzählte ihre Tochter Hermine folgendes"
should read:  "Her daughter Hermine told the following story from her
[Anna's] youth."  I was reading it "erzählte IHRER Tochter..."  I'm
surprised the natives didn't catch it.

The problem of foreseeing the future for me is that I cannot imagine
that the future is so predetermined in its details that anyone can see,
predict or anticipate it for a certainty.  That is why I can entertain
the validity of mysterious things that happen in the present more
readily than those foreseen in the future.  For example, a woman dreams
that her sailor son is aboard a sinking ship; she awakes and discovers
her house is on fire and saves herself.  At the same time her son (it is
later established) dreams that his mother is in a burning house, awakes
and saves the ship and crew from sinking.  This story was told
frequently somewhere back in the sixties or earlier.  I can believe it,
though it stretches the boundaries of the known--but not to the degree
that it makes the future a predetermined entity that can be perceived by
someone ahead of time.  It suggests instead a worldwide linkage of minds
and spirits in the present moment, or more narrowly a linkage between
close minds in a critical moment.

Frequently I think of someone and wonder what he or she is doing.  That
very day a letter from that person appears in my mailbox.  On occasion I
even think that the letter will be there, say it before I open the box,
and there it is.  I can skeptically reason that unconsciously I had
calculated that I had made the last contact, a certain period of time
had gone by and it was high time for a response, but it does not satisfy
the very high percentage of accuracy in this anticipation (I would say
about 90%).  I now think that possibly the person, having sent the
letter, is mindful of it, and somehow this alerts me.  I doubt that the
letter itself gives off signals, yet even the sender would not know how
long it took to arrive.  It's curious, and I would bet that others on
the list have had the same experience, but it is not predictive in the
sense of Anna, born 1812.

GK