How to explain synchronicity?

[AshvinP]

...there is nothing we perceive in the world which is not directly connected to our 'inner' qualities of experience.

This is bolstered by the neuroscience reported by Rovelli himself in "Helgoland." He admits his shock in discovering research that shows visual information is processed in the brain in reverse of what we expect; the brain normally sends information to the visual processing center and not the other way around. The brain uses existing inner conceptions to map reality. Rovelli admits this means we essentially live in our inner worlds.

Brian,

This is a really valid point factually. But to try to use this to explain synchronicity actually demonstrates, I think, the opposite of your intent. We do live in our own inner worlds but we are constantly testing the predictions of our inner world against what we find through senses from the external world. What synchronicity represents is in essence a false positive. It appears to be something that confirms our predictions but is actually unrelated to our predictions. In some cases, a person will actually act on the false positive and this can cause the synchronicity to convert to a self-fulling expectation, which in turn can build faith in synchronicity and a search for new false correlations.

See apophenia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apophenia

Have you read JJ Gibson's Ecological Approach to Visual Perception? He showed quite clearly and with much detail that "what we find through senses from external world" is more meaning just like the meaning we find in our "inner world". That is what our senses are literally structured to perceive - meaning. I discuss this whole modern age rejection of what is otherwise patently obvious in latest essay installment on spirit-soul aesthetics:

Emerson further observes that if you "go out of the house to see the moon", you will find "’t is mere tinsel" and "it will not please as when its light shines upon your necessary journey." It is seldom considered in the modern era how every form in Nature we can perceive arises from imperceptible activity related to our practical aims in life; our missions and journeys. Those meaningful aims, in turn, also enrich the meaningful aesthetics of Nature. Much of what we call "objects" in the physical world are mere pixelated icons of this hidden depth of meaning residing in the World Soul. What we see in the world around us is nothing like what gives rise to what we see. In fact, every modern science has realized, in its own way, that the "boundaries" of these various "objects" in the world are completely arbitrary. They do not reflect any similar boundaries in the realm from which they travel to our sense organs.

For some, that underlying realm consists of inconceivable mindless fields of "energy", for lack of a better word, and for others that realm consists in psychic processes not unlike the inner processes we always experience. Everyone must admit, though, that everything flows - we are always dealing with ceaseless processes in Nature. Quantum mechanics, at the turn of the twentieth century, led to the dematerialization of physical matter, as atoms could no longer be construed as particle-like objects. This resulted in the demise of Newtonian physics, which had been one of the pillars of substance metaphysics since the scientific revolution. What had been considered "matter" then became "statistical patterns" of quantum activity. Similar metamorphoses in our conceptual space have since occurred in most other fields of 'hard' science, such as biology, and it would be very foolish to consider all of these changes occurring at the same time a mere coincidence.

Living beings are no longer thought of as isolated 'entities' but rather densely interconnected communities which, in theory, can provide all that is necessary for the existence of its "members". Science has been steadily progressing towards this processual, meaning-based outlook for many years now. A further step is taken towards the spiritual essence of Nature when we systematically investigate it and derive its "laws" - the underlying principles of natural processes which make sense of why they appear to us in the way specified ways that they do.
...
Just as the modern age of nominalism leads people to consider the physical ball more "real" than the overall process it is involved in, it also leads them to consider the specific manifestation of a principle more "real" than the principle itself. We, however, should remember that, even more real than the principle is the meta-principle which encompasses it and other related principles, or what is frequently referred to by scientists and artists as "archetypes". We must do a 180-degree reversal from the modern fragmenting habit of mind if we are to begin penetrating into the essence of art we seek. We cannot stubbornly resist the progression of philosophy, science, and art, but rather we must flow with it wherever it leads. Bergson intuited this progression as well when remarking, "the more the sciences of life develop, the more they will feel the necessity for reintegrating thought into the heart of nature."

Now, in artistic creation, for example, it seems that the materials we have to work with, words and images for the poet, forms and colors for the painter, rhythms and harmonies for the musician, range themselves spontaneously under the idea they are to express, drawn, as it were, by the charm of a superior ideality. Is it not a similar movement, is it not also a state of fascination we should attribute to material elements when they are organized into living beings?

But whence come the materials which have come under this spell? ... If the organization is, as it were, an awakening of matter, matter can only be a slumber of the mind. It is the last degree, it is the shadow of an existence which has diminished and, so to speak, emptied itself of all its contents. If matter is the “base of natural existence, a base on which, by this continuous progress that is the order of nature, from degree to degree, from kingdom to kingdom, everything comes back to the unity of mind,” then conversely we should imagine at the beginning a distention of mind, a diffusion into space and time, constituting materiality.

- Henri Bergson, The Creative Mind: An Introduction to Metaphysics (1946)

Our eyes represent the phenomenal world around us in very specific ways - mathematically precise ways - so we can navigate that same world without information overload. With our eyes we behold what is directly relevant to our existence, which is a good many processes, but still a very restricted set from the entire range of natural processes occurring around us at any given moment. As J.J. Gibson put it in his seminal paper on the Ecological Approach to Visual Perception, "to perceive is to be aware of the surfaces of the environment and of oneself in it... the full awareness of surfaces includes within perception a part of memory, expectation, knowledge, and meaning - some part but not all of those mental processes in each case".

[Jim Cross]

Haven't read Ecological Approach to Visual Perception? It does look interesting, but yikes not cheap on Amazon. Published in 1979. I might try to track down a copy anyway.

He showed quite clearly and with much detail that "what we find through senses from external world" is more meaning just like the meaning we find in our "inner world". That is what our senses are literally structured to perceive - meaning.

Notice, however, there is still an external world. It isn't all inner experience. I don't think this conflicts with latest research or my view.

[AshvinP]

Haven't read Ecological Approach to Visual Perception? It does look interesting, but yikes not cheap on Amazon. Published in 1979. I might try to track down a copy anyway.

He showed quite clearly and with much detail that "what we find through senses from external world" is more meaning just like the meaning we find in our "inner world". That is what our senses are literally structured to perceive - meaning.

Notice, however, there is still an external world. It isn't all inner experience. I don't think this conflicts with latest research or my view.

If you have scribd account, then you can access it there (I think they do 30 day free trial as well).

It depends on what you mean by "external world". If you are a metaphysical dualist, then that is incorrect - there is no essential difference between "outer" experience and "inner" experience. The reason for that conclusion becomes more and more obvious as we expand out from singular manifestations of "external objects" (nominalism) and towards the principles and meta-principles (archetypes) which explain why they appear the way they do (realism). We are going from the arbitrary physical contours and quantitative properties of "objects", which pretty much all 'hard sciences' now reject (although not all the scientists are yet aware that their own field of study rejects them), towards their meanings as embedded within specific natural processes.

These things can also be approached from traditional metaphysical angle of noticing the "hard problem" and other inconsistencies with physicalist assumptions and then we derive from reason that all appearances must be symbols of mental processes and therefore subject-object and mind-matter dualisms collapse. I prefer the phenomenological approach, however, because it does not dwell in the realm of abstractions but gets right into concrete experiences of the world. Our inner thinking activity is where we can truly see that meaning is fundamental - that is the common element of all experiences, inner and outer. The title of the book could be reversed, "we see it when we know it". That is essentially JJ Gibson's conclusion, when we understand "knowing" in its fullness and richness, which goes well beyond mere intellect and ratiocination.

[Soul_of_Shu]

Perhaps if I offer a specific example of the numerous occasions of meaningful happenstance that seem to regularly pop up in this dreamtime I call my 'real' life, it can serve as a spring board for a meaningful discussion about how idealism can account for it, beyond just writing it off as due to random chance ...

This one occurred a few years ago when I was visiting some relatives, while reading a spy novel I had brought along, well into a chapter wherein the locale of the novel had shifted from Russia to Cuba, and wherein I began to daydream about a wonderful trip to Cuba we had taken to visit a family our son had stayed with during a Canada World Youth exchange, my brother-in-law who had just picked up his mail upon returning home, came into the room where I was reading, and this being our first encounter in months, not knowing anything at all about the book I was reading, remarked 'Here's some more reading material for you', then tossed the latest edition of National Geographic onto the coffee table, the main cover story being an article and photo shoot about, you guessed it, Cuba.

Now, while the gut intuition when these events occur is that there's more to this than just random happenstance, I must confess that I'm at a loss for a more nuanced explanation for how one's intense focus upon some specific incidence of
personal ideation draws into its purview similar idea constructions, other than as if by some like-attracts-like morphic resonance. Elaborations welcome.

[Jim Cross]

Perhaps if I offer a specific example of the numerous occasions of meaningful happenstance that seem to regularly pop up in this dreamtime I call my 'real' life, it can serve as a spring board for a meaningful discussion about how idealism can account for it, beyond just writing it off as due to random chance ...

This one occurred a few years ago when I was visiting some relatives, while reading a spy novel I had brought along, well into a chapter wherein the locale of the novel had shifted from Russia to Cuba, and wherein I began to daydream about a wonderful trip to Cuba we had taken to visit a family our son had stayed with during a Canada World Youth exchange, when my brother-in-law who had just picked up his mail upon returning home, came into the room where I was reading, and this being our first encounter in months, not knowing anything at all about the book I was reading, remarked 'Here's some more reading material for you', then tossed the latest edition of National Geographic onto the coffee table, the main cover story being an article and photo shoot about, you guessed it, Cuba.

Now, while the gut intuition when these events occur is that there's more to this than just random happenstance, I must confess that I'm at a loss for a more nuanced explanation for how one's intense focus upon some specific incidence of
personal ideation draws into its purview similar idea constructions, other than as if by some like-attracts-like morphic resonance. Elaborations welcome.

I just recently was watching something on TV about Cuba and people were singing Quantanamera that is based on verses by José Martí. Shortly thereafter I watched Godfather 2 and guess what - they were singing the same song. Then I started working on a crossword puzzle that had a clue about José Martí. Now you have brought up Cuba as an example Wow. Mind blown!

[AshvinP]

Perhaps if I offer a specific example of the numerous occasions of meaningful happenstance that seem to regularly pop up in this dreamtime I call my 'real' life, it can serve as a spring board for a meaningful discussion about how idealism can account for it, beyond just writing it off as due to random chance ...

This one occurred a few years ago when I was visiting some relatives, while reading a spy novel I had brought along, well into a chapter wherein the locale of the novel had shifted from Russia to Cuba, and wherein I began to daydream about a wonderful trip to Cuba we had taken to visit a family our son had stayed with during a Canada World Youth exchange, my brother-in-law who had just picked up his mail upon returning home, came into the room where I was reading, and this being our first encounter in months, not knowing anything at all about the book I was reading, remarked 'Here's some more reading material for you', then tossed the latest edition of National Geographic onto the coffee table, the main cover story being an article and photo shoot about, you guessed it, Cuba.

Now, while the gut intuition when these events occur is that there's more to this than just random happenstance, I must confess that I'm at a loss for a more nuanced explanation for how one's intense focus upon some specific incidence of
personal ideation draws into its purview similar idea constructions, other than as if by some like-attracts-like morphic resonance. Elaborations welcome.

Here is where the metaphysician falls into the same trap, regardless of materialism, dualism, or idealism. It is a confusion of specific manifestations of a principle for the principle itself, or, put another way, an attempt to "prove" the principle by pointing out a specific manifestation. Such things will never be persuasive in the era of post-modern science, because (and I agree with Jim here) there are infinite interpretations of the facts you relate re: Cuba incident. Modern science has already the dispelled the notion that any occurrence is isolated from the entire network of other occurrences, so it is increasingly unhelpful to explain the essence of these things with examination of those isolated data points. We can dream up many different scenarios in which that correspondence is explained away as chance occurrence of one sort or another. The essay quotes I shared here should elaborate on that some more, but I think you get the general drift of what I am speaking of.

The key to understanding this whole principle or meta-principle of "synchronicity" is literally in the two bolded words you wrote (or the literal idea they are pointing to) - ideation of intuition. We must first abandon the underlined phrase as unwarranted assumption - there is nothing personal about ideation. That is especially evident when we speak of intuitive knowing, which cannot be anything other than knowing from within the interior perspective of the entire Cosmos (World Soul). So that sort of knowing cannot be anything other than transpersonal, shared by all (that is true of all knowing but most clearly evident with intuition). That is what Jung realized through his phenomenology of dream analysis, comparative mythology-philosophy-history, and his own visionary experiences. I have a sense that he employs the term, especially in Pauli dialogue, to lend it scientific credibility, which is just fine. But it may also obscure the fact that Jung knew it was true via his phenomenological intuitions and he did not think of any natural process being outside the scope of "synchronicity". The meaning of "natural processes" is that which reflects back to us what truly lives within our shared inner life.

[Soul_of_Shu]

I just recently was watching something on TV about Cuba and people were singing Quantanamera that is based on verses by José Martí. Shortly thereafter I watched Godfather 2 and guess what - they were singing the same song. Then I started working on a crossword puzzle that had a clue about José Martí. Now you have brought up Cuba as an example Wow. Mind blown!

I've often thought of Cuba as one of those curious places that somehow invokes magic realism

[Soul_of_Shu]

Here is where the metaphysician falls into the same trap, regardless of materialism, dualism, or idealism. It is a confusion of specific manifestations of a principle for the principle itself, or, put another way, an attempt to "prove" the principle by pointing out a specific manifestation. Such things will never be persuasive in the era of post-modern science, because (and I agree with Jim here) there are infinite interpretations of the facts you relate re: Cuba incident. Modern science has already the dispelled the notion that any occurrence is isolated from the entire network of other occurrences, so it is increasingly unhelpful to explain the essence of these things with examination of those isolated data points. We can dream up many different scenarios in which that correspondence is explained away as chance occurrence of one sort or another. The essay quotes I shared here should elaborate on that some more, but I think you get the general drift of what I am speaking of.

The key to understanding this whole principle or meta-principle of "synchronicity" is literally in the two bolded words you wrote (or the literal idea they are pointing to) - ideation of intuition. We must first abandon the underlined phrase as unwarranted assumption - there is nothing personal about ideation. That is especially evident when we speak of intuitive knowing, which cannot be anything other than knowing from within the interior perspective of the entire Cosmos (World Soul). So that sort of knowing cannot be anything other than transpersonal, shared by all (that is true of all knowing but most clearly evident with intuition). That is what Jung realized through his phenomenology of dream analysis, comparative mythology-philosophy-history, and his own visionary experiences. I have a sense that he employs the term, especially in Pauli dialogue, to lend it scientific credibility, which is just fine. But it may also obscure the fact that Jung knew it was true via his phenomenological intuitions and he did not think of any natural process being outside the scope of "synchronicity". The meaning of "natural processes" is that which reflects back to us what truly lives within our shared inner life.

Thanks Ashvin for this helpful elaboration ... much to unpack therein, before I may have follow-up comments or questions.

[AshvinP]

Here is where the metaphysician falls into the same trap, regardless of materialism, dualism, or idealism. It is a confusion of specific manifestations of a principle for the principle itself, or, put another way, an attempt to "prove" the principle by pointing out a specific manifestation. Such things will never be persuasive in the era of post-modern science, because (and I agree with Jim here) there are infinite interpretations of the facts you relate re: Cuba incident. Modern science has already the dispelled the notion that any occurrence is isolated from the entire network of other occurrences, so it is increasingly unhelpful to explain the essence of these things with examination of those isolated data points. We can dream up many different scenarios in which that correspondence is explained away as chance occurrence of one sort or another. The essay quotes I shared here should elaborate on that some more, but I think you get the general drift of what I am speaking of.

The key to understanding this whole principle or meta-principle of "synchronicity" is literally in the two bolded words you wrote (or the literal idea they are pointing to) - ideation of intuition. We must first abandon the underlined phrase as unwarranted assumption - there is nothing personal about ideation. That is especially evident when we speak of intuitive knowing, which cannot be anything other than knowing from within the interior perspective of the entire Cosmos (World Soul). So that sort of knowing cannot be anything other than transpersonal, shared by all (that is true of all knowing but most clearly evident with intuition). That is what Jung realized through his phenomenology of dream analysis, comparative mythology-philosophy-history, and his own visionary experiences. I have a sense that he employs the term, especially in Pauli dialogue, to lend it scientific credibility, which is just fine. But it may also obscure the fact that Jung knew it was true via his phenomenological intuitions and he did not think of any natural process being outside the scope of "synchronicity". The meaning of "natural processes" is that which reflects back to us what truly lives within our shared inner life.

Thanks Ashvin for this helpful elaboration ... much to unpack therein, before I may have follow-up comments or questions.

No problem, and while you do, let me try to elaborate a little more by relating to your example. When you think of Cuba and then your bro-in-law comes up with magazine about Cuba, you are simply taking notice of something that is always happening, and I mean literally always. That is the shared human existence within intuitive perspective (I would further say within the orbit of idea-beings responsible for 'sending' us our intuitions). That is being brought to your attention in normal waking consciousness, but in higher modes of cognition we would see it is also happening all the time, and get higher resolution on how it is happening. So it doesn't really matter how it is being brought to our attention on any given day at any given time, because what we are really interested in knowing is that this process is actually real and woven into the fabric of our entire Cosmic existence. Keep in mind the above is not an argument for the conclusion of shared intuitive knowing and Cosmic interior perspective - the argument is actually the phenomenological approaches mentioned before. I am just stating the conclusion in various different ways.

[Jim Cross]

Take a look at small world networks.

http://www.scholarpedia.org/article/Small-world_network

Closely related to six degrees of separation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Six_degrees_of_separation

Closely related to how the brain is organized.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/a ... %2C%201998).

Maybe related to how the world is organized. The world as a neural network

https://arxiv.org/abs/2008.01540

To add some clarification. With synchronicity, we are talking about connections. Connections in sufficient numbers, acting in a coordinated way, would be networks (within networks). It might be how the world is organized at macro and micro levels.

The model would work with physicalism as well as idealism.