I think that there are various kinds of synchronicities, some more important than others. On a basic level, it is just simple patterns. I can give a very basic one. I was on the bus recently and I happened to be reading a book which was giving a description of a tattoo and as I glanced up, I saw a woman standing beside me covered in a tattoo. It was a mirroring of my own thinking in relation to a book, but it was extremely mundane and I would not call it a real synchronicity because the description of a tattoo or the woman walking past me seemed of little connection and it was a mere mirror of what I was reading.

It would be possible to see all synchronicities in this way and it is the understanding of the significance for the personal experiences which makes them what they are. What Jung argued was that they are more likely to be manifest in archetypal aspects of life. I think that is why they are noticed more in relation to aspects of life such as death, and I think that premonitions of death are most commonly reported. It may be a tuning in to the archetypal dimensions of existence.

I definitely think that the foreshadowing of premonitions is connected to the nature of time and its direction of flow or arrow. When I first spent time reading about premonitions, I began reading a book by JB Priestley called, Man and Time' which suggests that time can be seen as dimension in which the details of time are placed and the nature of premonitions shows the way of stepping out into timelessness, at which everything can be seen as arising in the sequence of causal reality.

More recently, I have read Stephen Hawking's,
'A Brief History of Time', which speaks of the arrow of time and of imaginary time. He said,
'Imaginary time is indistinguishable from directions in space. If one can go north, one can turn around and head south; equally, if one can go forward in imaginary time, one ought to be turn round and go backward. This means that there can be no important difference between the forward and backwards of imaginary time. On the other hand, when one looks at "real" time, there's a very big distinction between the forward and backwards directions as we know it'. Perhaps, the nature of premonitions and experience of synchronicity involves stepping outside of what is experienced as causal reality into the dimension of imaginary time.

It is interesting that it is not easy to use premonitions for advantage, such as knowing lottery numbers. In most cases, they appear as almost useless fragments. However, I am aware of a couple of people who have said that they have experienced intuitive flashes that someone they knew was in need of some medical attention, such as a friend who I knew who had an intuition to go to see someone and found him in a diabetic coma and she was able to facilitate the necessary medical support needed.

I think that sanity and madness are culturally constructed. I have read some of the writings of Foucault and even some RD Laing and antipsychiatry. I think that the ideas of antipsychiatry have gone out of fashion now because that school of thought may have missed out on the reality of mental illness and the suffering of those who experience it. However, some of the ideas about labels applied to people and how these can have a negative impact are probably still applicable, because diagnostics are connected to value systems.

I agree with you about the problematic nature of methodological naturalism. I think that some of the issues about chance and determinism and our perception of it do go back to our metaphysical assumptions. I believe that many people are going in the direction of science for explanations, but all the underlying theories begin with metaphysics at some level.

I have been reading your ideas on chaos. I think that it is especially relevant to the idea of chance. As far as I am aware chaos theory is about a background of chaos, but with some emergence of order amidst this. I am not sure how correct chaos theory is, but it does seem to me that there is some underlying interplay within life between chaos, uncertainty and some emergent order. We may ask why does one thing happen rather than something else?

It is a kind of foreshadowing of meeting the person I know in a premonitionary way. The premonitions I had as a teenager were scary though, such as the death of the headmaster at school, the deaths of two people in church and of the father of someone I barely knew, and several others. I had a few strange ones as an adult. For example, I kept having fears that one of my friends was going to kill himself even though he had not mentioned this to me at all and, then, he really did.

Also, when I have spoken to some people I know about my experience of premonitions, some have admitted to having some themselves. I wonder if more people have these but simply don't talk about them because it is a bit out of the norm to speak of such matters.

I am not sure how Will Smith has become the focus in the thread. I see synchronicity as being more an aspect of the psycho-spiritual experience. My own premonitions weren't pleasant but it did give me awareness of interconnectedness and patterns within nature and life. More recently, I do have some synchronicities and they are usually more pleasant. Often, what happens is that I am out and think I see someone and get close up and realise it is not them. A short while later, I really meet the person who I had mistaken a stranger for. It is not as if I am always mistaking strangers for people who I know so I do find it unusual.

What I found was that it comes down to what is considered to be the 'true' self which may emerge when one loses oneself, or the false self. How much is about authenticity? I don't believe that it is clear because there is the aspect of searching, but we don't live in isolation and how we reconstruct the 'lost self' is within the context of variable social structures, which may be helpful or detrimental psychologically. For some people, the whole process of being lost and finding oneself may be a complex journey, with many ups and downs.

I remember being told as a teenager that we need to lose ourselves to find ourselves, which seemed like empty rhetoric. I felt that the person who told me this, who was a pastoral counselor, was really saying that we need to get lost and eventually conform. I am open to philosophies of meditation but do query the idea of losing oneself because ego strength, as opposed to fragility, may be necessary in the upside down world in which we live.

I am not entirely convinced by materialism but I thought that your answer was very good. Understanding and explaining human experiences is very complex, as there are so many aspects and variables involved.

Do you think that the perspective of materialism, or naturalism, is completely adequate for the explanation of the many varying aspects of human experiences?

I am not sure about your interpretation of the idea of karma. It is an extremely complex topic and I feel that you are interpreting it is in the context of secular materialism. I am not opposed to the ideas within the secular aspects of philosophy because these predominate. However, I am also interested in esoteric thought, which includes ideas of hidden realities. However, these can be romanticized and mystified. So, I think that it is a mixture of looking towards various traditions, ranging from the ideas in various traditions of philosophy and the ideas within science, for trying to formulate the best possible understanding of 'reality' and the manifestation in experience.

I have thought about the post which you wrote on the importance of attention and I believe that it is important but it is not just attention to the outer aspects of experience. In seeing the meaningful connections it is about the parallels within the outer world and the experience of thoughts. It may be that many people do not make links and some may not even remember their thoughts clearly enough.

I come from the perspective of noticing and remembering my thoughts. I had many experiences during adolescence, which were clear premonitions. I won't go into detail because some of them were extremely unpleasant as they were premonitions of people dying, and the individuals died shortly afterwards. At the time, I even started to worry that it was my fault that the people were dying. Fortunately, I discovered Jung's writings and it made a lot of sense.

I think that it is hard to know how far to go with Jung's theory, but it does seem to show that we can perceive patterns and it does seem to me to go beyond the physical world. I think that attention is important but it is a way of going beyond ordinary daily experience.

Thanks for your reply and links. I think that the connection between synchronicity and serependity is interesting, because it is about our own role in perception of meaning. In a way, we could say that self fulfilling prophecy is the opposite of serependity because it involves negative states affecting the pathways we navigate in creating our own destiny.I do believe that synchronicity is mostly about intuition and perceiving patterns, but it may be important in volition.

I know that we have discussed synchronicity on a number of occasions and, having started this thread I can see that people clearly view the matter differently from me. Definitely, Jung's idea is about acausal connections and it was a theory which he developed in relation to his own experiences of premonitions. I discovered his idea in the context of having many premonitions in adolescence.

I think that the theory is speculative and it may be that some people are more able to perceive patterns and psychic phenomena is about that. I am not entirely sure. However, I do believe that mind may have a greater significance in the scheme of manifestation than many recognise, especially in physicality accounts.One most basic aspects of the importance of the role of observer consciousness recognised within scientific experiments. I am not sure how far to go in my own view that consciousness has a determining role, but I believe that causality and chance may be far more complex than recognized within mainstream scientific thinking.

I have been listening to the new album by The Manic Street Preachers 'Ultra Vivid Lament' and I think that it is the best album which I have heard for 2021 so far. I know that there is so much that is great from previous eras, but I do like to keep up to date and find the good stuff from now too...

I am not sure how useful St Anslem's arguments are for us because we live with such different perspectives of the world. I think that part of the problem which I see is that the idea of God is so complex because it can be seen from various angles ranging from the Christian and anthropomorphic pictures of a deity to much softer ones like the idea of the Tao. I am not saying that I don't think the question of God's existence, or lack of existence is important. However, it does depend on how we try to approach the idea of God, because the concept has so many varying connotations and associations.

It is interesting to see you putting the question of God's existence down to logical equations because recently I have been thinking it is a matter of semantics. My own recent thought has been that it comes down to how we name the underlying force behind existence, with some calling it 'God' and others preferring scientific frames of description. So, the underlying question may be how much the matter is about logic, language and causal explanations, and the complex mixture of these in our own descriptions and grasp for understanding and meaning.

I know that you are definitely not trying to make a case for Christianity or Catholicism, but I come from the perspective of having been socialised within these traditions. The secular and institutionalized aspects have such implications stemming from the masses and the hierarchy of the Church. It is extremely authoritarian and this applies to other mainstream religions, especially the Islamic religion.

I think that this leads to people often exploring alternatives ranging from people simply rejecting all forms of religion or spirituality, to looking for alternatives within other cultures. Of course, it is possible to end up seeing them in an idealistic way which may be so different from the experiences of the people living in the midst of such systems of ideas. But, one aspect which I believe that it is important in all free spirited approaches is the emphasis on personal experience of the numinous.

This can occur within the context of any cultural context but it often follows a more shamanic conception of experience, which is about the experiences of the lower and upper realms of consciousness, with a view to the enhanced individual experiences and insights for culture. I believe that idea systems within the Native American, Celtic and other systems adopt more of a shamanic model, with more of an emphasis on transforming this life as opposed to the way in which mainstream religions often present rigid dogmas and doctrines concerning salvation and ideas of a reward in a life after this one.

You speak of romanticising and I wonder how much any system of belief involves this because we may fall in love with ideas and become attached to them. Also, the area between history and mythology is blurry. It is hard to know how much is which in thinking about ancient systems of belief. Is Atlantis a romantic mythology, based on the writings of Plato, or based on any reality?

I don't wish to shift from the topic of the free spirit potentiality of traditions such as the North Americans, but it is easier to get accurate knowledge because we can find these systems in the world today and in the study of anthropology. I think that it is worth looking at other cultures as much as it is important to look at the past, in order to open up the imagination to the widest scope of possible options for understanding life and the symbolic dimensions.

I find that reading the accounts of the Celtic, North Americans to be so helpful as another way of 'seeing' in contrast to the ones which I was taught stemming from Christianity. The pictures of the force of life and the cosmos is definitely more of understanding our place and role within the larger picture of life, including nature, and it is often embraced a more ecological approach and it is less about relating to an outside force, who may punish us. Even though I read many worldviews, including those within Eastern philosophy, I find the perspectives which you speak of to be a source of inspiration.

I think that your question is interesting and it involves the personal aspect of the mind and body problem . We are embodied beings, but personal identity is so much more. My own view is that the body is a starting point from which we begin, but the scope of imagination may be the starting point for so much more, which includes the sensory aspects of existence and experience, but the scope may go beyond into the outer regions beyond the limits of the physical aspects which arise in brain as the physical hardware of consciousness.

I definitely believe that intuition has an important role in our construction of knowledge, as well as the widest scope of imagination for being able to explore the basis for what is central for human exploration, including the values central to our whole framework of empirical investigations and interpretation of the findings. I have read some writing by Pierce, which shows that the pragmatic basis of understanding is central in the way we understand and develop specific aspects, and I found his thoughts on religious aspects of knowledge particularly interesting. I think that there are so many possibilities...

I think that your reply about talking to others is interesting because it raises the question of how much is about self knowledge, and how much is about negotiating meanings of shared knowledge. We could ask how do we work out the basis for working out the most objective and ultimately 'true' basis of knowledge within the subjective and cultural contexts., This is probably is a complex mixture of hermeneutics and epistemology, and lies at the crux of developing accurate and meaningful philosophy perspectives. I do believe that it does involve imagination, rather than simply the understanding of causes within theoretical ways of seeing knowledge.

Thanks for your reply and I do believe that you may be right that mind destroys information. There are so many complex questions which involve aspects of metaphysics. Personally, my own experience is one which ranges from thinking about in all different fields, ranging from anthropology to parapsychology. I believe that we know so much, but there is so much which we do not know fully.

I was a bit startled when a guest speaker on this site who was a transhumanist, David Pearce, spoke of people having head replacements. Also, we have a struggle for resources as it is and if people just lived and lived there would just be too many people on the planet. So, I don't support transhumanism, and if new heads are possible while I am still alive I won't be queuing up for one.

Good to hear you sing one of your poems.

I find that whether working or doing creative activities some days just flow so much better than others, with or without hemlock. It can be like being on different metaphysical or energy frequencies I find.

I am wondering how it varies from culture to culture as well as in different times. I was rather surprised by how mundane some of the discussion on the site is. I find this thread discussion more interesting than most. What I do wonder about is whether certain emphasis on certain philosophy topics is because many of the people engaging are from American culture. I think that there does appear to more openness to the unusual in some circles in England, and this may be true in some parts of America too. But, I definitely believe that there are plenty of creative bohemians, who probably write, even if they are often regarded as outsiders. Maybe they find more acceptance in the creative arts communities.

In a way, the metaphysical poets were trying to juxtapose 'the sublime and the mundane', but it was in a rather different way from contemporary modes of thinking. Just imagine if they wrote on this forum, even converting their ideas to prose. I think that they would be seen as ridiculous and would come under fierce attack. I think philosophy has got to the point where the mundane is preferred to the magnificent.

Thanks for your contributions to my thread and I will continue reading and thinking as deeply as I can.

Sometimes facts are arbitrary, with so many aspects of subjective testimony. Are there any 'true' facts which can stand above our own grasp and wishes to develop arguments? So much involves bias and, our own attempts to tell our own individual perspectives.

I have just looked at your link and it is to my own thread. I am sure that the thread which I have created has great weaknesses, and I started it with a view to looking at the best scope of knowledge. I am aware that we have a history of thinking about knowledge going back to writers from Plato, Hume and Russell. Obviously, the scientific methods have brought us into a different perspective, with physics and many other aspects of discovery. I am certainly not opposed to science, or the thread on facts on this site, but thinking more of looking at knowledge on a panoramic scale, and how we can integrate it in the best possible way.

I will try not to avoid your questions, and I will have a look at your link, but, I really don't believe that philosophy can ever be entirely theoretical, because it is so tied up with the real questions of knowledge which impinge on our own sense of meaning directly.

I am sorry if I have lost you, and, sometimes, I think that I lose myself, trying to make sense of so much information and translating it into knowledge. I am aware that there is a thread on what is fact, which is probably considered to be far better than my own thread.

However, I come from the perspective of thinking about building systems of knowledge, but, perhaps, such a way of thinking is not relevant in philosophy any longer, or only on a personal level. Perhaps, philosophy of the future will only be concerned with outer reality and, the inner aspects of experience will just be seen as aspects of psychology and, outside the scope of philosophy entirely.

I try not to get depressed by all that we could strive to know. We live in the context of some appearing as 'experts'. Even within philosophy there are hierarchies, ranging from popular views and those who are ranked as being important. It seems to me to be a complex mixture of what we need to know to live meaningfully and, also, about the best and most accurate knowledge required to forward the human race in the complex circumstances of our times.

I think that you make an important point about blindspots. One model which I am aware of is Johari' s model , which involves various aspects of which we may be conscious of certain aspects about ourselves, and how feedback can increase our own knowledge about ourselves . I think self knowledge and awareness are an important aspect as a starting point for further and deeper knowledge of everything else. Indeed, our own blindspots, and understanding of them, may be an essential part of finding greater depth of knowledge.

I think that the use of intuition alongside rationality is complex in the mapping of the widest perspective of our knowledge. In building of our models, I am inclined to believe that what is most important is incorporating the widest possible perspective rather focusing on specific facts, in order to build up a picture which is intricate and not based on the specific focus in a way which involves a narrowing of vision, or tunnel perspective. It may involve zooming in and out of specific ways of thinking and being able to juxtapose various ways of framing questions and answers.

I think that Russell did a great job and we should follow his example. I think that it is a delicate balance between focusing on the specifics of specialised knowledge and seeing the larger perspective. It is about seeing from more than one angle, the details and from a much wider perspective. It is a task in itself, but, of course, it involves our own subjective experiences and reading and thinking with a view to more objective frames of reference.

I am definitely not opposed to theories and we need to develop them as working knowledge; but I it is all about different competing descriptions, ranging from the scientific accounts to metaphorical ways of viewing. I have downloaded a book by Popper, so I will try to read it.

But, one aspect of the development of knowledge is fitting all the different ideas together. Many of the well known philosophers sought to do this within the development of their own unique systematic perspectives. I also wonder about systems views because it may be that we are in the position of needing to juggle all the various specialist disciplines, ranging from quantum physics, neuroscience and the social sciences. I believe that we are in the position of needing to juggle all the different, multidisciplinary aspects of knowledge together in a synthetic way, with the logic and analytical scope offered through philosophical methods and ways of thinking critically.