>===== Original Message From moq_discuss@moq.org =====
Hi Glenn,
It is hard to tell if your 'go right ahead' is sarcastic with "internet
communication" but I guess I will have to wait to read Wilber to see your
argument against the validity of the word acausal (no time this week). Unless
you would do a quick summary for me. I looked for a brief explanation on the
internet for acausal relationships. I can assure you it was not "made up". If
this doesn't help I can pick out another site--didn't look too long to find a
good one.
Erin
In fact, Jung saw the concept of synchronicity as in line with ideas from the
philosophy of the German philosopher Immanuel Kant, and also as consistent
with the results of modern physics. As Jung reads him, Kant held that
causality is not a feature of the world as it is in itself, but is rather a
category that the human mind imposes on the world in the process of
constructing knowledge. .
As Kant saw it, it is a presupposition of knowledge that things in the world
are governed by strict causal laws, operating in the framework of space and
time. Without space and time descriptions, and without law-like relations
among events, we would be unable to describe things in a way that amounted to
knowledge at all. Whether reality itself is this way, however, is another
matter. And here an analogy might help. We describe things in a language that
has a subject/predicate structure. That means that we talk in terms of things
that have properties, but are not the same as their properties. But while this
might be how we are constrained to describe things, it not need be how things
are in themselves. And in fact, the idea that we much think of the world in
this way is challenged by bundle-theorists such as Hume. Jung believed that
modern physics rejects the idea of strict causal laws; fundamental physics
seems to be statistical at bottom. And although Jung does not discuss it in
any clear fashion, we will see that modern physics gives at least some basis
for rejecting the idea that connections among events are a matter of energy
propogating through space-time. But to all this, Jung added his own idea of
the collective unconscious, which operates n terms of "archetypes" that are
shared by all of us and which determine the structure of our unconscious. As
Jung saw it, archetypes are more likely to bring ideas into consciousness at
times of emotional tension. And in a way that is very hard to understand, he
seems to have associated synchronicity with the erupting of archetypal
material into consciousness.
According to Jung, there lie in our unconscious minds certain basic ways of
thought or inherited propensities, ones which are common to the whole human
race. These are the archetypes. They never become conscious, but may be
represented in our consciousness by archetypal images -- the great mother, the
wise old man, the shadow, the mask, and so forth, each symbolizing our
instinctual attitudes to recurrent human situations. These unconscious levels
of the personality can somehow transcend space and time, which Jung seems to
regard in a somewhat Kantian manner as psychic constructs, and gain or harbor
knowledge of spatially or temporally distant events of which the conscious
mind could have no inkling. This knowledge is likely to be in some way rooted
in or closely linked to the archetypes, and to be about archetypal themes.
Synchronistic events occur when there emerges from the unconscious an image
which either directly represents or else symbolizes an event whose distant
occurrence or whose impending occurrence is already known to the unconscious
mind.
The reason that this is supposed to be outside the causal framework is that
the unconscious, being independent of space and time, cannot participate in
causal relationships, which are essentially spatio-temporal. Consequently,
there cannot be any causal relationship between the impending event and the
image of it.
If you are not sure you understand this, you are not alone. However, it may
make every bit as much sense as Plato's theory of Ideal Forms or Kant's
philosophy, and I am not about to claim by a long shot that those views make
no sense. In any case, it makes clear why Jung sees synchronicity as a
non-causal connection among events: there is another realm apart from
(beneath?) the space-time realm, structured by the archetypes. Synchronicity
is a reflection of that realm; it is a kind of unmediated knowledge.
This is a rather lovely idea as an image; whether there is anything to it in
fact is, of course, quite another matter. But we can ask what, if anything, it
would help us explain if it were true.
However incomprehensible it may appear, we are finally compelled to assume
that there is in the unconscious something like an a priori knowledge or
immediate presence of events which lacks any causal basis."
Gould sees this is a sort of "anomalous knowledge" that perhaps scarcely
deserves the name knowledge at all, if knowledge is justified true belief. The
reason is simple: there is no process of justification or checking; one simply
finds oneself with the belief. Toward the end of his article Gould offers the
term "synchronistic a priori knowledge," which certainly has a ring to it.
In fact, it is very hard to know what to make of the idea of synchronicity,
and of knowledge associated therewith. To those -- like me -- who have a taste
for goofy ideas, this one has a definite charm. But what would be required to
make it truly credible is quite another matter. However, we will go on to
explore one aspect of synchronicity: the analogies it may or may not have with
quantum theory.
>Erin,
>Sorry I didn't respond to this sooner, but I was too embarrassed to admit
>that I didn't know what 'acausal' meant. I couldn't even think of a
>sensible meaning. Today, I consulted two dictionaries and came up empty.
>I've concluded that 'acausal' is a word you or Jung made up, and it didn't
>make the cut into the English language because it wasn't useful. You might
>complain that 'acausal' was a victim of the cultural immune system. Go
>right ahead. For other words coined by adding the 'a-' prefix that didn't
>make the cut, read the first and second chapters of Ken Wilbur's first
>book, The Spectrum of Consciousness.
>Glenn
>
>enoonan <enoonan@kent.edu> wrote:
>
>>>===== Original Message From moq_discuss@moq.org =====
>>Glen wrote:
>> As far as I'm concerned, Pirsig's own causal bias is that social patterns
>>mediates scientific descriptions of nature.
>>
>>Erin: mediate implies indirect relationships which is acausal not causal
>
>--
>
>
>
>
>__________________________________________________________________
>Your favorite stores, helpful shopping tools and great gift ideas. Experience
the convenience of buying online with Shop@Netscape!
http://shopnow.netscape.com/
>
>Get your own FREE, personal Netscape Mail account today at
http://webmail.netscape.com/
>
>
>
>MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
>Mail Archive - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
>MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net
>
>To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
>http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archive - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net
To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sat Aug 17 2002 - 16:01:54 BST