Psychokinesis (literally “mind-movement”) or PK, also known as telekinesis (literally “distant movement”), is the ability to influence the behaviour of matter by mental intention or activity, whether consciously or unconsciously. The term remote influencing came into more widespread use in 2004. This is often confused with remote viewing, which means “the trained ability to access information from a remote geographic location using something other than the known five senses.”
Psychokinesis, like other aspects of parapsychology, “seems to stand out in some way among subjects that are commonly dismissed as ‘pseudoscientific,'” writes Patrick Grim in Philosophy of Science and the Occult. “Many who scoff at Atlantis, Bigfoot, or the Bermuda Triangle nevertheless take parapsychological research … quite seriously…. Parapsychology is represented by numerous tomes of research material.” While saying that it is not possible to “settle the status of parapsychology as science or pseudoscience” it represents a “troublesome case for attempts at demarcation.”