I am not sure that links to your views on my thread are particularly helpful, because' it goes beyond that, into the nature of what is considered to be 'belief'; and how beliefs are formulated.I am trying to open it as a wider philosophy question.

I am afraid that I don't know how to edit my post on my phone. At the moment, I have some of the writing showing up as red and struggling with this, but it may be of lesser significance

I definitely don't wish to misrepresent you in any way. But, I have been struggling with your thinking about my question of the expression ' I believe', which has lead me to query the nature of belief. I do welcome your clarification on this, because I was left struggling with what you were trying to say.

Dear God,
Please could you tell me to what extent YOUR own philosophy can be described by the language of religion or science?

Thank you,
Jack

Your questions do raise the question as to what extent are ideas related to autobiographical constructs? On this forum, it varies so much how much people disclose and it is probably more related to choice than anything else. But, it may also be connected to the expression of ideas as academic ones or in connection with experience. Some people write from a more detached point of view whereas others make more links with personal experience. One writer who has written philosophy more as an autobiographical expression is Bryan McGee. Jung himself wrote his autobiography, ' Memories, Dreams and Reflections', but this was towards the end of his life.

In connection with Jung and criticism of his work, his writings have been a source of inspiration for some but attacked fiercely by others. Of course, he was writing on psychoanalysis, but his writings explored so much more, especially in relation to esoteric philosophy, such as alchemy and Gnostic thinking, alongside reflections on his own clinical work.

From the standpoint of philosophy, he is a bit of a 'fringe' writer, and I think that this needs to be taken into account when thinking about his ideas about synchronicity. It would probably be hard for him to present his ideas in the cultural context of the twentieth first century, although a lot of people do write all kinds of ideas which appear in 'mind, body and spirit' sections of bookshops. Such ideas may be regarded as 'woo woo' by some, but there is academic philosophy, on the other hand, which can be seen as an intellectual pursuit. But, how real is the split in construction of thinking about experience and do the ones who write academic texts hide behind the cloak of theory, and how much is separate from the pursuit of philosophy as a way of making sense of life experiences? How much is the preference for the academic or other expression of written ideas bound up with an underlying personal philosophy position firstly?

It's not so much that I don't wish to respond to your posts but some of it seems more about me as a person, which goes beyond philosophy. I will look at your links and reflect on what you are saying. I am sure that I have many weaknesses and some may think that I am shallow in thinking, although I am not sure that this can be established on the basis of forum discussion. As it is, I try to keep a critical awareness, and do wish to think with as much clarity of thought and engage in philosophy discussion. I hope that I don't drive you to need whiskey on account of using the expression, 'I believe', and I will take the feedback on board in thinking about what I write. It is good to be aware of the personal aspects of belief, with a mixture of honesty and ability to think and evaluate ideas.

Okay, I won't force the issue. I only opened the thread with a view to discussion of Jung's idea of synchronicity, to know what people think about the idea. I understand that many on the forum do not find it useful at all.

But, do you think that everything can be proved or disproved through official 'experiments'. The main reason why I chose not to do a degree in psychology was because I did 'A' level psychology and felt that experimental psychology was so shallow. I am not dismissing experiments completely but just don't think that it is all about laboratory and statistics. I think that life itself is the greatest experiment.

I think that your topic raises the whole area of what is going on as the unseen. Some believe that there is no God and others in a deity. I think that it is a spectrum with no clear answers. It partly depends on how what one considers as being 'God'. Within the Judaeo-Christian tradition, many often believe in an anthropomorphic picture of God. This includes a representation of God in the person of Jesus, but usually goes beyond, with an emphasis on God 'the father'. This is a human image, and is based on the human attempt to understand.

Others argue that there is no God, because most of life can be based on traceable causes. However, I do not believe that theism or atheism are absolutes because the source of everything remains hard to explain. What is the spark of consciousness? I believe that scientific materialism is inadequate in some ways. I wonder about some underlying source, like in the concept of the Tao.

I think that the point about 'private conviction without corroborative issues'raises an interesting but slightly different discussion insofar as it is not about scientific backing but about shared aspects of experience. I come from the background of working in psychiatric care, which is concerned with what is regarded as valid or acceptable basis of belief, or what is regarded as delusion.

I think that people forming ideas on the basis of a hallucination is problematic, especially when people begin to pay more attention to such aspects of life. For example, an extreme would be if someone begins to pay attention to voices and this can even lead to people following them, with all kinds of potential disastrous consequences. However, the theory of synchronicity is not this at all. In particular, if a person had premonitions of someone' s death and went on to believe that they were responsible for the death that would be the translation of experience into delusion. The theory of synchronicity, is, on the other hand a theoretical framework from which to understand the experience rationally.

I have read your recent posts and I can see the problem of bias, in interpretation of synchronicity as one aspect of life, but I think that the issue goes deeper than that. I think that what it amounts to is the fact that it may not be possible to go beyond bias completely at all. I would argue that in relation to the issue of chance, on the topic of chance, which is an area of speculation mostly people who believe that in the idea of synchronicity and those who don't believe in are probably both coming from specific vantage points which are laden with personal interpretations. I think that it is probably related to our basic philosophy premises and experience of how we have experienced life. For someone who experiences synchronicity, the idea makes sense whereas I am sure that for many, especially those who come from a scientific materialist perspective, I am sure that the idea probably appears as rather absurd.

@180 Proof
I am all in favour of scientific explanations and theories and do not think we should just make up beliefs. However, I think that even scientific evidence is often swayed by the intention of the researcher and biases exist on so many levels. I think that this is being recognised within critical analysis of evidence based research and practice.

I agree that the relationship between science and metaphysics is complex. As a child I was so puzzled by so much, especially the nature of time and science brings knowledge and the idea of relativity makes the nature of time so much easier to understand. I think that the level of scientific knowledge informs metaphysical assumptions, which can be verified through empirical searching and researching. The findings may be a starting point for revision of initial metaphysical assumptions, which lie behind all models and theories.

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.