Do you feel that the use of psychic powers in a setting necessitates the existence of souls and the afterlife?

Do you feel that the use of psychic powers in a setting necessitates the existence of souls and the afterlife?

No, why would it?

how can said powers be explained in a naturalistic way?

Big brain move thing.

Advanced neural structures in the brain influence/generate electromagnetic and gravitational fields.

I don't see how those two things are related beyond both being supernatural concepts, so my answer is no.

>Do you feel that the use of psychic powers in a setting necessitates the existence of souls and the afterlife?

No.

You can use psychic powers because you've got a big brain, a third eye has developed from a twisted growth or your penal-gland has become fully crystallized and is now an energy-emitting receptor and transceiver allow you one to physically manipulate quantom doo-hickery and communicate through thoughts.

Psychic is brain power, not spiritual power, don't make the same mistake the japanese do.

This, but add the word "Quantum" a whole bunch.
>Advanced neuro-quantum structures in the brain influence nanoscale quantum effects, which can cause large-scale electromagnetic and gravitational phenomena
Boom, grade-A sciency-sounding explanation. If you really feel like going the extra mile, add in some space-magic material that builds up in the brains of the people who use psi, and have it also act as the basis for the other soft sci-fi tech.

>one of the spellcheck options for neuro-quantum is negro-quantum
We wuz space wizards an' shit.

Not at all. As some other anons have said, the means by which organisms conjure psychic abilities does not need to be attached in any way to the supernatural, souls, divinity etc.

I'm working on a modern-day setting where psychic abilities have existed in a percentage of the population since at least the 1960s. Scientists know how to produce it, can measure it, name its various forms of use, and design systems to take advantage of it, but to this day, nobody quite knows what it is. Physiological and cranial tests haven't come up with any conclusive answers, and developmental studies haven't shown any factors common to all subjects.

I'm playing around with the idea of it being centered around will itself - the will to improve, to change the world, to evolve. Essentially, a collective consciousness that can be exerted into physical form. Things happen because they believe they can happen. Obviously, there's a lot of work to be done with the concept, but it's a start. If this is considered 'supernatural', then I suppose it may as well be, but that's only because it's not quantifiable by researchers yet.

How does a thing's inability to be explained in a naturalistic manner immediately imply that souls and afterlives are things? You can have a setting with straight-up wizard magic and not have souls.

Look up Yakub. They already believe they were space wizards n' shit.

Manipulation of dark matter/aether/quintessence

I really like the way psychics are handled in Firestarter.

Magnets mugga, do you have 'em?

Just because there's something that can't be explained with our current science doesn't mean that thing MUST include an afterlife

King does all of his psychics pretty well, imo.

I feel that you're trying to win an argument somewhere else which you haven't described in this thread and which is only tangenially, if at all, related to the question you're asking.

Quite the contrary, for me "psychic" in sf pretty much means "kinda like magic but not". It actually used to bother me a lot in 40k that what they call psychic power is actually magic, and it DOES have a lot to do with afterlife. In any other setting - no relation at all.

I threw together a cyberpunk setting the other day. 'Psionics' are a phenomenon wherein some human pineal glands store and arrange iron into thousands nanoscopic electromagnetic aerials which are then physically manipulated allowing for interfacing with other brains and manipulation of ferrous objects when the signals are artificially enhanced through tech.

It's, uh, dark energy

Wait wait it's black holes

No, I got it, it's ambient energy manipulation

Hold up it's actually gaiasphere energy

Actually we're all computer programs and it's hacking

But really it's the collective power of all human thoughts and feelings

Literally any kind of handwavey crap you want.

Unless it's Newtypes or Jedi, probably not

No.

Psi is supposed to be science-ized magic.

Bringing souls in defeats the purpose.

Midiclorians.

>implying psychic powers aren't just a brain with unusual added bits interfacing with magnetic fields
Ghosts work the same way. Under the right conditions, the brain can decipher electromagnetic "echoes" left behind by another brain due to the intensity of the memory storage process which is why it's almost always ghosts associated with traumatic events

You can have supernatural shit without having an afterlife or souls.

I had a philosophy teacher who wrote some big paper on this concept of imprinting a traumatic event on a space and time. He was pretty chill

To be fair, 40k magic is very psionic in nature, in the literal sense.