(Split Thread) Synchronicity or Coincidence

[Darat]

First off, the events you are refering to go significantly beyond synchronicity, so that is a slightly different discussion. More importantly, you've already supplied the answer to your own objection: I can report synchronistic events to you but you have no way of verifying what they mean in the context of my own life and my own belief system.

Yet the events are objective evidence so they can be examined by others. For instance it could be that you just didn't do a correct search therefore that piece of evidecne does not actually exist. And since you state it is one of the pieces of evidence that you followed to the conclusion that something you call "synchronicty" exists.

So you see if you stand by your previous claims about your beliefs given the reasons you say you came to them they can be verified by others.

Now if you just want to say you have no evidence and it is just faith then that is of course a different matter and I'm not going to "hassle" you for your faith unless of course you wish to continue to claim that your faith is a result of evidence of the type you have previously described. And the only reason I would then "hassle" you is that your claim is intriguing and I would like to examine the evidecne you claim you have just like I do when people say they can communicate with a dead person or they can bend a spoon.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

You're making it up off the top of your head:

I think that two events can occur that are related by a nonempirical, undetectable causality, yet at the same time I think I can distinguish such a pair of events from mere coincidence.

Why do we need this nonempirical causality at all, and is there any logical room for it?

~~ Paul

I'm not saying "we" need it. *I* need it, because otherwise I can't explain what happened to me.

I think there is logical room for it, yes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronicity

Synchronicity is a word that Swiss psychologist Carl Jung used to describe the "temporally coincident occurrences of acausal events." Jung spoke of synchronicity as an "acausal connecting principle" (i.e. a pattern of connection that cannot be explained by direct causality). Cause-and-effect, in Jung's mind, seemed to have nothing to do with it. Jung introduced the concept in his 1952 paper Synchronicity — An Acausal Connecting Principle, though he had been considering the concept for almost thirty years.[1]

Put plainly, synchronicity is the experience of two or more occurrences (beyond coincidentally) in a manner that is logically meaningful- but inexplicable- to the person or persons experiencing them. Such events would also have to suggest an underlying pattern in order to satisfy the definition of synchronicity as developed by Jung.

It differs from mere coincidence in that synchronicity implies not just a happenstance, but an underlying pattern or dynamic that is being expressed through meaningful relationships or events.

It was a principle that Jung felt encompassed his concepts of archetypes and the collective unconscious [2], in that it was descriptive of a governing dynamic that underlay the whole of human experience and history — social, emotional, psychological, and spiritual.

Jung believed that many experiences perceived as coincidence were due not merely to chance, but instead, suggested the manifestation of parallel events or circumstances reflecting this governing dynamic. [3]

One of Jung's favourite quotes on Synchronicity was from Through the Looking-Glass by Lewis Carroll, in which the White Queen says to Alice: "It's a poor sort of memory that only works backwards". [4]

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Darat,

I stand by my previous answer. It it not possible for you to verify what those events meant from my perspective. In order for you to understand that, you would need to understand my own belief system from my own point of view, and you are nowhere close to that. What would actually happen if I tried to explain it to you would be that you tried to understand it via your own belief system, and this would just lead to you not understanding it at all.

Geoff

 

[UndercoverElephant]

I find it interesting that people are using Wittgenstein to attack dawkins... What an uneasy road he's opened up with this fairly simple book.

Who is using W to attack Dawkins?

I'm personally not surprised that somebody is doing it, but I must have missed it if it is in this thread. Wittgenstein would have hated Dawkins.

 

[Darat]

Darat,

I stand by my previous answer. It it not possible for you to verify what those events meant from my perspective. In order for you to understand that, you would need to understand my own belief system from my own point of view, and you are nowhere close to that. What would actually happen if I tried to explain it to you would be that you tried to understand it via your own belief system, and this would just lead to you not understanding it at all.

Geoff

So you have no evidence of the type you previously claimed you had? Also your response here does not seem to tie in with the wikipedia article you seem to be using in your post above to explain your belief.

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

Entangled particles in a quantum system is synchronized in the sense that when one particle disentangle because of measurement, the rest of the system disentangle in the same unit of time too!

Every use of the word synchronized is not automatically related to synchronicity.

~~ Paul

 

[Paul C. Anagnostopoulos]

I'm not saying "we" need it. *I* need it, because otherwise I can't explain what happened to me.

Sure you can. It was just coincidence.

I think there is logical room for it, yes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synchronicity

Gibberish.

~~ Paul

 

[chriswl]

I find it interesting that people are using Wittgenstein to attack dawkins...

I hadn't noticed. Who is doing that?

 

[Beth]

Sure you can. It was just coincidence.


Gibberish.

~~ Paul

Coincidence is both an unsatisfying and unfalsifiable answer. Much like "goddidit", it doesn't explain anything and once people have accepted that explanation, they cease any further investigation.

UCE - I really liked your post on this thread summarizing the problems that many people have with Dawkins book.

 

[Jekyll]

Never mind Paul made a similar post earlier.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Sure you can. It was just coincidence.
~~ Paul

That explanation works for you. You cannot demand that it works for me, because you don't actually know what it is supposed to be an explanation for.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

So you have no evidence of the type you previously claimed you had?

No evidence I have can be of any serious use to you. It is open to interpretation, and your interpretation is going to be different to mine.

 

[Jekyll]

That explanation works for you. You cannot demand that it works for me, because you don't actually know what it is supposed to be an explanation for.

Shouldn't syncronity mean that the net number of hits is over and above those predicted by chance?

 

[UndercoverElephant]

etc etc etc

Did you read "The God Delusion"? I have trouble believing you did after reading your post. Either that, or you've completely misunderstood a fair amount of his book. Or maybe you're posting the reasons why people say they attack Dawkins, based on spurious reasoning.

No, I haven't read the book. However, I am very familiar with Dawkins views since he was a childhood hero of mine. I am also very familiar with the views of his followers, since I'm an administrator on his bulletin board. I realise that not everything I put in that post directly relates to Dawkins himself, but I think it is a reasonable summary of the worldview that many of his own followers hold. The post was what it claimed to be: a summary of what many people perceive to be the weaknesses in Dawkins approach.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

My memory is terrible, but even I remember Dawkins talking about raising consciousness by using words like "brights". There isn't even the merest suggestion that atheism should become a "religion".

Shermer gave the example of Ayn Rand and the almost cultic following she developed that was in contrast with the rational thinking they espoused, so it is possible to pervert any system into something like a religion -- all it takes is for the followers never to question the system they are in.

I think atheism is quite safe from turning into something like that, as long as atheists keep thinking; and Dawkins is certainly not trying to suppress thinking!

So, your first point is a falsity and you should refrain from ever uttering it again.

A lot of people on Dawkins board make posts which appear to be trying to turn science into a religion. They talking about "rebranding atheism", atheist substitute churches, etc.... They are advocating a change of approach whereby science/atheism tries to compete with religions.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

Shouldn't syncronity mean that the net number of hits is over and above those predicted by chance?

It refers to an event, or series of events, which seem to be connected together and for which it is increasingly difficult to put down to mere chance, but also apparently impossible to explain why it is not mere chance.

 

[Jekyll]

It refers to an event, or series of events, which seem to be connected together and for which it is increasingly difficult to put down to mere chance, but also apparently impossible to explain why it is not mere chance.

I know. What I was asking is;

If you consider a large set of events which are slightly predisposed to synchronicity shouldn't you expect to see more of these events than chance predicts?

If the answer is yes than it's falsifiable by science, if no it sounds like you're counting the hits and ignoring the misses. We're certainly talking about something hard to falsify, but it shouldn't, in principle, be unfalsifiable.

 

[Belz...]

I've explained this to you many times before: it means that it has a cause, but that the link between cause and effect is non-empirical - it is hidden from us. For synchronicity to be real there has to be some sort of causality at work in the Universe which is outside the scope of empirical science.

Ah! Therefore it does not exist. Got it.

I was wondering about that.

 

[Belz...]

Darat,

I stand by my previous answer. It it not possible for you to verify what those events meant from my perspective. In order for you to understand that, you would need to understand my own belief system from my own point of view, and you are nowhere close to that. What would actually happen if I tried to explain it to you would be that you tried to understand it via your own belief system, and this would just lead to you not understanding it at all.

Geoff

Uh-huh. That's why we have science and evidence. Otherwise everything would be a matter of interpretation and we'd still be struggling with the wheel.

No evidence I have can be of any serious use to you.

Then it isn't evidence at all.

 

[UndercoverElephant]

I know. What I was asking is;

If you consider a large set of events which are slightly predisposed to synchronicity shouldn't you expect to see more of these events than chance predicts?

If the answer is yes than it's falsifiable by science, if no it sounds like you're counting the hits and ignoring the misses. We're certainly talking about something hard to falsify, but it shouldn't, in principle, be unfalsifiable.

I'm not sure that it is events which are disposed to synchronicity. I think it is some people. Also, since the significance of these events to those people cannot be objectively assessed, it can't be objectively evaluated by science.

As far as counting the hits and ignoring the misses goes, that would be a standard skeptical response. I have no way of demonstrating to you that this is not the case. The only way you could ever be convinced of the existence of synchronicity was to experience something yourself which you yourself could not put down to mere co-incidence. I have no way of knowing what it would take in your case, but where-ever you draw the line it is possible the Universe could throw something at you which crossed it.

Geoff