SUGGESTED ANSWER TO QUESTION 1-1(f)

Dee's father had died about two months ago and she was still grieving his death. One night when she was feeling particularly upset, Dee found herself thinking about the host of a popular children's television show that she had enjoyed watching when she was young. She thought to herself, "he must be pretty old by now and, so, he probably will die soon." She was amazed when she awoke the next morning and, while watching the television news, found out that this person had indeed died during the night.

In the following, two possible explanations are mentioned. You may have thought of other possibilities.

It is possible that Dee had a psychic premonition that this person was going to die. Such an ability is referred to as "precognition" (Carroll, 2002) and is defined as the ability to know something before it actually occurs--an ability that cannot be explained by any normal sensory means. On the other hand, it may be that the recent death of her father caused Dee to think about other "father figures" in her life, such as the gentle and kindly host of the television show that she used to watch as a child. Her realization that he was older, as was her father, may have caused her to fear that he, too, would die soon. The fact that he actually did die the night that she thought about him may have been merely a coincidence.

In a later critical-thinking lesson, we will discuss the common occurrence of coincidences in our lives.