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540 et seq.)--i.e., if it is restricted to cases where there is a vague memory of some actual dream or other…

Date of account
Published 1894
Source
Apparitions and thought-transference: an examination of the evidence for telepathy
Reference
Apparitions and thought-transference: an examination of the evidence for telepathy · selected passage 108
Rights
public_domain
Language
English
Record updated
2026-08-24

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Record summary

540 et seq.)--i.e., if it is restricted to cases where there is a vague memory of some actual dream or other impression, bearing a more or less remote resemblance to the event; in other words, if we assume an illusion rather than a hallucination of memory

Published source text

Read the available text below. Archive transcriptions may contain OCR errors; later context is labelled separately. A recorded claim is not a finding that it happened.

Source passage

Source text · mention only

Hodgson (_Proc. American S.P.R._, pp. 540 _et seq._)--_i.e._, if it is restricted to cases where there is a vague memory of some actual dream or other impression, bearing a more or less remote resemblance to the event; in other words, if we assume an illusion rather than a hallucination of memory. But it need hardly be said that no serious investigator would treat the uncorroborated accounts of dreams and vague feelings of this kind as evidence for anything whatever. To extend the hypothesis, as Professor Royce suggests, to cases where there is evidence that the percipient's experience was mentioned beforehand, is to suppose not one kind of pseudo-memory, but two,--a pseudo-memory on the part of the percipient that he has had a certain subjective experience, and a pseudo-memory on the part of some other person that this experience was mentioned to him before the news of the event to which it related. In recent cases, at any rate, the assumption of a double mistake of this kind seems unwarranted.[78] And to apply this explanation to cases of actual sense-hallucination involves even more violent improbabilities.

Historical context

Contextual commentary · mention only

This comes from historical psychical research. Methods, witness handling and standards of evidence differ from present-day research and should be assessed from the cited passage and edition.

Modern context

Contextual commentary · mention only

The passage can support a history of claims and recurring descriptions. It does not establish a paranormal mechanism, and competing psychological, social and physical explanations remain relevant.

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