The collision of events, a capacity for nonsense, and the thirst for any account of things that might pass as knowledge. Synchronicity is a theoretic template, bespoke for a particular kind and selection of perceived events.

But knowledge itself must be made of sterner stuff. If it's knowledge of, let it describe how it works. If it cannot, then it's not knowledge but a notion from a continuum from wishful thinking to mere theory. And with no feet on the ground, a waste of time except as idle entertainment.

And QM has as a practical matter zero to do with the macro-world.

What appears to be coincidence - what ever that actually means - is just an exercise in statistics and arbitrarily assigned meanings and significances of incidentally juxtaposed perceived events.

Yep. It's a doctrine built on the confirmation bias.

Nothing to see here.

It's a doctrine built on the confirmation bias.

Nothing to see here. — Banno

:smirk:

In particular, what is the role of consciousness, subconscious processes and intention in the manifestation of experience? — Jack Cummins

"Experience" is the interpretive content of (spotlighted by) "consciousness" which is the output of "subconscious processes" interacting with the (CNS-brain's) environment. Our species cognitive defect: we impose patterns on noise (e.g. "seeing" faces in clouds or Jesus on toast, "noticing" palindromes everywhere, etc) as a result of the advantageous adaptive trait of false positives (i.e. "perceiving patterns" where there aren't any – coincidences, accidents) like the OP.

Just as any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic, (Arthur C Clark)
Sufficiently advanced order/patten/law is indistinguishable from disorder (chaos, randomness, anarchy, wildness)

"Chaos" is the materialist's Woo of the gaps.

"Chaos" is the materialist's Woo of the gaps. — Yohan

I quite like that.

Sufficiently advanced order/patten/law is indistinguishable from disorder (chaos, randomness, anarchy, wildness) — Yohan

I don't understand this. Can you explain what you mean ?

"Chaos" is the materialist's Woo of the gaps.
— Yohan
I quite like that. — Banno

Why do you like it ?
What is meant by 'Chaos' ?

Chaos (Ancient Greek: χάος, romanized: kháos) is the mythological void state preceding the creation of the universe (the cosmos) in Greek creation myths. In Christian theology, the same term is used to refer to the gap created by the separation of heaven and earth.[1][2] — Wiki: Chaos

And what does this have to do with 'Synchronicity, Chance and Intention' ?

In some spiritual systems, there is the notion of karma, which is the law of cause and effect, or 'as you reap, you will sow'. This involves our own experiences in the process of causal chain. The way I think that this could work is that our own subconscious processes experiences in such a way that our guilt and other emotions come into play in drawing experiences towards us. — Jack Cummins

Karma means and is to be understood as "action". There is the common misconception that karma works like a bank account, I do good and the universe magically deals good back to me at some later date. This is wrong. The good I get through karma is the direct result of my action. If I treat someone well, they'll think better of me and treat me well in return. If I treat someone bad, they'll breed animosity and treat me bad in return. Cause and effect indeed. But there's nothing in particular that "draws experiences" towards us in any mystical way.

So, I wonder about the role of our own consciousness in what becomes manifest in life. Intention affects our behaviour, but I do think that it may go beyond this and intentionality and thought may have more dramatic effects, involving layers of the subconscious. — Jack Cummins

This is what Hermetics and followers of various occult beliefs call "alchemy" or "magic". Will leads to action, action leads to manifestation. Inbetween is transmutation, the process of using the laws of nature to change one thing into another. The idea here is that with enough will, awareness and knowledge about the law anything can be achieved.

A trivial example of what this really means:
My will is to buy a car.
I transmute the resources I have (time and energy) into labour.
Labour transmutes into money.
Money transmutes into car.
This is how intention becomes manifest.

A synchronicty, last I checked, is a meaningful coincidence. Imagine the following scenarios.

1. You're walking down a street, thinking of nothing in particular. You look to your left and on the wall is a Coca cola advertisement. You then bump into someone. You turn to apologize and you realize that the person in front of you is the CEO of Coca Cola. Coincidence, meaningful.

2. You and your friend are in a deli. As you chow down on the burgers you ordered, you discuss Will Smith (the actor) and his movie I am legend. Just as one of you say "Will Smith", Will Smith walks by on the sidewalk outside the deli. Coincidence, meaningful.

3. You're in your room, quite bored. You lie down on the bed and a random thought - a police car chase you saw on the idiot box. Just then, two squad vehicles zoom past your room, sirens blaring. Coincidence, meaningful.

The reason why synchronicity gives you that sense of meaning is the probability of it occurring - near zero. Too, why some interpret it as causation is because, again, of its likelihood - near zero.

One crucial possibility that has to be ruled out in causal attribution is chance and the extremely low/zero probability of the conjunction of putative causes and effects. You can see where this is going.

Synchronicity, by definition, as per Carl Gustav Jung himself, is acausal, a clear sign that Jung knew he was dealing with coincidences and not causation. If he had said there was a causal angle to it, he wouldn't have used "coincidence" in his very thought-provoking idea.

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.

...having started this thread I can see that people clearly view the matter differently from me....

I believe that causality and chance may be far more complex than recognized within mainstream scientific thinking. — Jack Cummins

Perhaps you need to research further afield. Here's only one article I found quickly. There will be more.

On Serendipity in Science

‘Serendipity’ is a category used to describe discoveries in science that occur at the intersection of chance and wisdom. In this paper, I argue for understanding serendipity in science as an emergent property of scientific discovery, describing an oblique relationship between the outcome of a discovery process and the intentions that drove it forward. The recognition of serendipity is correlated with an acknowledgment of the limits of expectations about potential sources of knowledge. — On Serendipity: discovery at the intersection of chance and wisdom

Edit - another quickie:
https://undsci.berkeley.edu/article/0_0_0/serendipity

Stories of scientific discovery abound with lucky coincidences. It's true that serendipity and good fortune are often cited as key factors in making scientific innovations. But look closer. Even when scientists feel that they just got lucky — like Newton being hit on the head with his proverbial apple — the steps leading to a new finding or idea often tell a different story. It takes more than being in the right place, at the right time, to make a serendipitous discovery. Here are a few important attributes of scientists who turned a lucky break into a breakthrough: — Berkeley article: The Story of Serendipity

***

Serendipity: Towards a taxonomy and a theory
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0048733317301774

The purpose of this paper is to show that serendipity can come in different forms and come about in a variety of ways. The archives of Robert K Merton, who introduced the term to the social sciences, were used as a starting point for gathering literature and examples. I identify four types of serendipity (Walpolian, Mertonian, Bushian, Stephanian) together with four mechanisms of serendipity (Theory-led, Observer-led, Error-borne, Network-emergent). I also discuss implications of the different types and mechanisms for theory and policy. — Science Direct: Serendipity: Towards a taxonomy and a theory

causality and chance — Jack Cummins

I don't know how else to get my point across except in that a one-off event that fits the description of synchronicity is exactly that - acausal. However, there should be some kinda limit to the number of synchronicities experienced, beyond which we might have to make an effort to seek a causal explanation. Have you encountered anyone who's a synchronicity magnet? Are there documented cases of multiple synchronicities? I don't think so. I'm not sure though.

By the way, I used to be big fan of Jung's synchronicity theory - it feeds my inclination for mystery. Now, I've come to the realization that it's just an ordinary person's way of yearning for just that thing to make life extraordinary. Unfortunately, a lot has to be sacrificed - reason being the first casualty - to that end.

Chaos theory is also a scientific framework , descriptive of an observable fact. The smaller the scale of nature we try to quantify, the bigger the "noise" in our observations and measurements. So I find that specific "quote" really nonsensical and scientifically ignorant and of course it has nothing to do with the indefensible worldview of materialism.

"Chaos" is the materialist's Woo of the gaps. — Yohan

A clever bit of woo that makes no sense. Materialist, of course, or otherwise.

...the indefensible worldview of materialism — Nickolasgaspar

And yet "materialism" (I prefer naturalism) works much better than any of the other perhaps less "indefensible" "worldviews".

-"'meaningful coincidences.'"
-Well that is observer depended term. We as observers "connect" connect different events in a narrative and as thinking agents we project purpose and intention on blind physical processes.
Teleology needs to be demonstrated, not assumed. This assumption is a pseudo philosophical approach on explaining natural events.

So "synchronicity" as an abstract concept has value as a narrative and what it means for our existence. ITs an observer relative term not an intrinsic feature of the phenomenon it describes.

Now the experiences that you are referring to (thinking a person and receiving a phone from him) are known weaknesses in our reasoning. Pattern recognition in animals (and humans) is a very strong urge and bias. We tend to identify the hits and completely ignore the misses. The numerous times we have thought of people and the phone didn't ring just don't register. When a coincidence occurs we tent do see "agency" and purpose behind it.
Richard Feynman used to go up to people all the time and he'd say "You won't believe what happened to me today... you won't believe what happened to me" and people would say "What?" and he'd say "Absolutely nothing". How is it possible in such a huge universe where weird and inexplicable coincidences happen every second, to happen nothing to me?

I will agree with Jung's statement that the connections we make are the result of our practice to project our meanings, I will ignore Chopra's intellectual artifacts since his philosophy isn't based on Naturalistic principles,its are unfalsifiable and indistinguishable for blind synchronization(unparsimonious) and I will address the introduction of a quantum phenomenon in the classical scale (uncertainty principle of Heisenberg).

-"Within physics there is the notion of the uncertainty principle of Heisenberg, which makes causality more complex than we realise. "
-That is a factually wrong statements. First of all this principle doesn't apply to "Physics", but a specific sub-field of quantum physics.
This, again is not an intrinsic feature of causality in nature but as the original German word suggests we are unable to take sharp values from our measurments. Its more like "We are uncertain of the definition our measurements provide" than "we are sure the nature of the quantum world is uncertain".
After all QM is the only framework that can offer predictions up to 99,99(up to 14decimal places) accurate!
So causality is not under threat in the quantum scale and we should point out that Classical and quantum world don't have that much similarities. Energetically and structurally they differ in a huge degree. So its not right to generalize our findings to both scales

Now conceptual artifacts like the notion of karma or any other spiritual construction have their roots on our inability to register all the miss/ lose events during large periods.

Consciousness is the quality of a specific brain state that enable us to be aware of events and the world. Consciousness alone as a mind property is useless if your Central Lateral Thalamus can connected the other brain areas responsible for symbolic language, pattern recognition, reasoning, memory etc and introduce content (thoughts) in our conscious states.
So all those patterns we identify in nature is based on what we are aware, how we reason, what we remember and what we ignore.
The role of consciousness stops with our ability to be conscious of an even, how we reasoning it and what is the produced thought...consciousness is an "observer."

never mind

So, I wonder about the role of our own consciousness in what becomes manifest in life. Intention affects our behaviour, but I do think that it may go beyond this and intentionality and thought may have more dramatic effects, involving layers of the subconscious. Perhaps, there are no coincidences at all. So, I am asking about explaining apparent coincidence, the nature of chance, randomness and causation. In particular, what is the role of consciousness, subconscious processes and intention in the manifestation of experience? I am interested to know what other people think about this. — Jack Cummins

I think meaningful coincidence often has more to do with attention than intention. We prefer to attribute power internally, especially when the alternative is to accept randomness and uncertainty.

2. You and your friend are in a deli. As you chow down on the burgers you ordered, you discuss Will Smith (the actor) and his movie I am legend. Just as one of you say "Will Smith", Will Smith walks by on the sidewalk outside the deli. Coincidence, meaningful. — TheMadFool

Talking about Will Smith brings to the periphery of your attention the qualitative patterns in his facial features, build and mannerisms, making you more likely to recognise him walking past, even out of the corner of your eye, than you would at any other time (when he could be walking past). While the likelihood of him walking past just as you’re talking about him is the same as any other moment, the likelihood of you recognising him on the street is increased by the attention you’ve just been giving to the conceptual structures you have with regard to Will Smith. You didn’t will him to appear, you merely brought the remote possibility of his appearance to your attention.

"Chaos" is the materialist's Woo of the gaps. — Yohan

With what I've seen, it doesn't seem to lead anywhere. And I don't understand what the "theory" is supposed to be.

Would like to know. And suspect you are right.

With what I've seen, it doesn't seem to lead anywhere. And I don't understand what the "theory" is supposed to be.

Would like to know. And suspect you are right. — Manuel

I'm not sure what you are referring to. Which theory and what doesn't seem to lead anywhere? Synchronicity?

"Chaos" is the materialist's Woo of the gaps. — YohanA clever bit of woo that makes no sense. Materialist, of course, or otherwise. — 180 Proof

I believe at root, consciously or unconsciously, the naturalists believe order comes from chaos. Maybe that is wrong. I know that is what I think when I try to think from a naturalist point of view. Opposite for divine origin theory. Reason creates the appearance of chaos for the sake of amusing itself, being bored of a perfectly reasonable (thus predictable) reality.

Chaos Theory.

"Chaos" is the materialist's Woo of the gaps. — Yohan

That scared 'em...

, , .

What is meant by 'Chaos' ? — Amity

Just what has defied explanation, perhaps as a result of lack of order, perhaps as a result of insufficient knowledge.

Naive materialists will assume that what is missing will be made good in due time - that the explanation is there, but not yet known. That is of course an unjustified claim. It's just a consequence of assuming determinacy, which in the end is not essential to materialism.

I thought the whole chaos theory business began with someone trying to predict weather patterns, which a priori, looks easy enough, but turned out to be rather tricky.

But if "chaos" is what has defied explanation so far, then that's fine, though it suffers from the unjustified claim you mention.

I don't understand why it's called a theory though.

Chaos theory brings what was previously unexplained within the comfort of mathematics. So, yes.

Chaos theory brings what was previously unexplained within the comfort of mathematics. So, yes. — Banno

Can you give a mathematical example?

The Lorenz system.

Not sure what level you want. See. https://science.howstuffworks.com/math-concepts/chaos-theory3.htm

Not sure what level you want. — Banno

The highest level. The contemporary state of the art. The Lorenz system is for beginners. I know this is a philosophy forum but ancient philosophers were all strangely attracted to math.

If that is your level of competence then I'm sure you will be able to manage the associated Google search.

While the likelihood of him walking past just as you’re talking about him is the same as any other moment — Possibility

Explain yourself. I spend, maybe, 5 minutes talking about him and the rest of the day, 1435 minutes, not even thinking about him.

Can you give a mathematical example? — ArisTootelEs

This is going into my quotes collection! Something about it is profoundly meaningful.

Order doesn't "come from chaos". Order is a contingent, repeating pattern within chaos (e.g. whirlpool in a tempest ... 'law of large numbers' effect, etc)