Intuition

What Are the “Clairs” (Clairvoyance, Clairsentience, and More)?

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The “clairs” are names for claimed psychic senses, each built on the French word clair, meaning “clear”: clairvoyance (clear seeing), clairaudience (clear hearing), clairsentience (clear feeling) and claircognizance (clear knowing). Readers use them to describe how they say impressions reach them. Scientific research has not supported the existence of these abilities.

What does each term describe?

According to the Wikipedia article on psychic readings, practitioners describe readings as drawing on natural extensions of the senses:

  • Clairvoyance: seeing images or scenes.
  • Clairaudience: hearing words or sounds.
  • Clairsentience: feeling sensations or emotions.
  • Claircognizance: simply knowing something, without a sensory impression.
  • Clairgustance: tasting.

The Wikipedia article on clairvoyance traces that word to the French clair (“clear”) and voyance (“vision”), and describes it as the claimed ability to acquire information that would be impossible to get through the senses science recognizes.

What does the research say?

The clairvoyance article states that claims for the existence of psychic abilities such as clairvoyance have not been supported by scientific evidence. It quotes a 1988 conclusion of the US National Research Council that its committee found no scientific justification, from research conducted over a period of 130 years, for the existence of parapsychological phenomena.

So what are people experiencing?

Real experiences, explained in ordinary terms. The same article lists explanations that researchers give for impressions of clairvoyance, including:

  • Confirmation bias: remembering the hits and forgetting the misses.
  • Expectancy bias: perceiving what you expect to perceive.
  • Subjective validation: finding personal meaning in general statements.
  • Underestimating chance: not appreciating how frequently coincidences happen by chance alone.

A sudden image of a friend just before they call, or a feeling about a place, is a real experience. The question is what produced it, and according to the article, researchers generally explain such impressions in these ordinary terms rather than as a sixth sense.

How can you check an impression?

Write it down before the event, with as much detail as you can, and the date. Keep a running list for a month, including the impressions that did not come true. Then count. Impressions recorded in advance, misses included, give a fair picture that memory alone does not.

This article is general information, not medical or psychological advice; talk with a licensed clinician about your own situation.

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