rationalskepticism.org

Nora_Leonard wrote:

GrahamH wrote:

Nora_Leonard wrote:I have to confess that I haven't read this entire thread. But surely there is actually a phenomenon—a type of feeling experience—where people 'feel' they are being watched, just as the phenomenon of shivers or hairs standing on the back of your neck that people react to by saying "someone just walked over my grave". Which is not to say that it's a psychic phenomenon...i.e. quite likely no-one is actually staring at them.

What I'm trying to say is that whereas there is no evidence that people can sense other people staring at them, you can't actually say people don't have that feeling?

Do you have that feeling?

I think I may have in the past.

I have seen a ghost... Which is to say that I've had the experience of seeing a ghost. Not that I believe in ghosts. So I know that there are lots of strange feelings and experiences people have.

All I'm saying is that I don't think it helps to discount the experience as a fabrication, say. As regards the feeling of being watched, I think it would be fruitful to ask the person why—or who—they think is watching them.

There are lots of experiences that can probably be explained in terms of dissociative phenomena, i.e. actual psychological phenomena. Kind of like the deja vu experience. We don't tend to say that experience doesn't happen, rather there's probably a psychological--i.e. brain---mechanism responsible for it.