Identical twins have reported the ability to communicate telepathically.

The argument

Proponents who hold that telepathy is real point to the experiences of identical twins as some of the most compelling evidence. Throughout the world and across generations, identical twins have reported an uncanny ability to sense one another's thoughts and feelings: knowing without being told when the other is in distress, finishing each other's sentences, independently making the same choices, or feeling a sudden conviction that something has happened to their twin even when separated by great distances. Such accounts are numerous, persistent and strikingly consistent, and proponents argue that so widespread a phenomenon should not be dismissed out of hand. The argument holds that the special biological closeness of identical twins makes them the most likely candidates for telepathic connection. Sharing the same genetic makeup and, often, an extraordinarily intimate bond from the womb onward, identical twins are, on this view, uniquely positioned to be linked in a way ordinary people are not. The frequency with which twins themselves describe this connection — testimony from the people best placed to know their own experience — is treated as evidence that something real is occurring, a form of communication that bypasses speech and ordinary signals. Proponents contend that the sheer volume of consistent first-hand reports cannot reasonably be explained away entirely as coincidence, heightened familiarity or selective memory, and that the burden should fall on sceptics to account for so persistent a pattern. If the people who experience this bond most directly testify to a wordless communication between them, that testimony deserves to be taken seriously. Because identical twins have so widely reported the ability to communicate telepathically, this argument holds, people can communicate through telepathy.

Premises

Counter-arguments

The mainstream reply is that anecdotal twin testimony, however abundant, is not evidence of a signal-carrying channel, and that controlled tests of alleged twin telepathy have not demonstrated transmission beyond chance. Ordinary explanations account for the reports: identical twins share genes, upbringing, habits and detailed knowledge of one another, so they often reach the same thoughts or predict each other's behaviour with no information transfer at all, while dramatic 'hits' are remembered and the far more numerous misses forgotten. Volume of testimony, on this view, reflects strong shared context and selective recall rather than a physical mechanism, no candidate for which has ever been identified.

Rejecting the premises

[Rejecting P1] Consistent reports of 'sensing' a twin are explained by shared genetics, upbringing and knowledge plus selective memory for hits, none of which requires a telepathic channel. [Rejecting P3] Volume of anecdote is not immunity from coincidence; controlled tests of twin telepathy have not shown above-chance transmission, and no physical mechanism has been identified.