However, Humphrey also shows why this explanation is insuffi-
cient. The source of all this fascination cannot be that there are effects
ofthoughtonmatterat all, because such effects are not in themselves
always supernatural or even surprising. When you are happy and you
smile, that's an effect of mind on matter. If you see a photograph of car
crash victims or surgical operations, your heartbeat will increase
slightly and your skin's electrical resistance will change. These too are
effects of mental states on physical events, but no one finds them terri-
bly fascinating. What makes psychokinesis so interesting to believers
is not that some intention results in some effect, but that it results in
preciselythe effect intended. When the supposed psychic wants the [77]
paperweight on the table to move from right to left, it does indeed
move from right to left. What is supposed to happen in such cases is a
transmission of detailed information coming from the mind, specify-
ing that it is the paperweight, not the glass, that should move and that
it should move from right to left, not the other way around. All that
information is received by the right target, decoded in the appropriate
way and it results in the right move.
Is that supernatural? In some sense, not at all. To have precise
information received by the right targets and result in the relevant
effect is something we are all familiar with, since we all control our
ownbodiesin this way. Our intention to move our hand toward the
coffee cup results in the right target (the hand) moving in the right
direction. So what is supernatural in the paperweight's motion is not
that thoughts direct physical events but that they direct them outside
our bodies. We do have a powerful intuitive expectation that our
thoughts only control our bodies. Indeed, that is the way we learn how
to interact with objects in the environment in the first months of
life—by reaching, pushing, touching, and so on. So the notion that my
intentions could control not just my hand but also the doorknob
before my hand touches it is a violation of intuitive expectations. This
is the counterintuitive element.
This violation is represented in a way that preserves the intuitive
expectation that the effects of thoughts on material objects (our bodies
in the standard situation) are the precise effects described by the intention.
For my friend, it was quite natural that the shaman's finger had resur-
faced in the precise village where its owner had decided to send it.
This expectation of control-by-description is so natural that believers
in psychokinesis rarely comment on it or even mention it. But it is
indispensable to the supernatural claim, as Nicholas Humphrey
WHATSUPERNATURALCONCEPTSARELIKE