Introduced by Guy Lown
Notes on the 24/9/02 meeting of HKPC's Kowloon Branch
Reported by Steve Palmquist (moderator)
Guy circulated a handout and read through most of it, supplementing those ideas with examples and other clarifying remarks from time to time. For example, he reminded us that statistics play a rather fuzzy role in science, since they can be interpreted in so many different ways. He also handed around a book with an interesting painting by Holbein, depicting coincidence as a tear in our “reality screen”. He concluded with a two-point summary: (1) we must think about our experiences of coincidence in order for them to be meaningful to us; and (2) the goal in such thinking is to find a pattern revealed in a particular event or set of events.
Early in the question time, someone asked why people feel the need to explain coincidences at all. Guy said he thinks it is related to the desire human beings have to control everything. While someone else was suggesting a relation to the Eastern view of overlapping futures, I was preparing to challenge Guy’s claim, on the grounds that an awareness of coincidence usually requires a person to give up the sense that we control everything. But Guy’s next comment made my question unnecessary: he clarified that experiencing the patterns we call coincidence requires us to distance ourselves from a linear view of time, where everything is determined by relations of cause and effect. So it seems that the issue of how (or why) we experience coincidences is quite separate from the issue of how (or why) we feel the need to explain such experiences, once they happen.
To a series of questions about why we need to think about our experiences in order for them to be coincidental, Guy responded that by “think about” he includes a variety of ways of forming images, including simply remembering past events. In short, an event has to be noticed in order to be recognized as a coincidence, and this noticing must involve thinking at some level.
Guy further pointed out that the two main ways to offer explanations of coincidence are mystical and mechanistic. I mentioned Jung’s view, that a “synchronicity” (his term for a meaningful coincidence) is an “acausal determining principles”, and asked whether this really explains anything. Guy replied that the explanation is, at least, not properly scientific, because science explains coincidences statistically. When asked whether such explanations dissolve the mystery, Guy replied negatively: such dissolving would not be possible, because coincidence is a vital part of the myth of certainty that drives science itself.
One attendee suggested viewing coincidence merely as a story we make up. And I pointed out that some scientists studying paranormal phenomena have noticed that the special powers certain people have when they begin participating in a carefully controlled experiment always seem to “taper off”, if not disappear completely, after the experiment has gone on for a while. Guy distinguished between two approaches to the scientific understanding of coincidence: (1) forcing such experiences into a linear, cause-effect mode, or (2) seeing them along the lines of modern sciences such as chaos theory, whereby the original nature of objects cannot be described using any method other than statistics.
I then suggested we discuss two main points in the small groups: first, is the myth of certainty really necessary? And second, Why do we tend to see meaning in experiences we regard as coincidences? Before we could discuss either of these questions in the small group I joined, two of the members who had not previously met each other were surprised to discover that they had actually had prior contact by email! After taking a few minutes to identify the circumstances under which this prior contact had occurred, the coincidence seemed a bit less surprising: one person has a mailing list that includes many, if not most, Hong Kong people who work in the field of the other person, so it was actually not at all unusual that the latter should have received messages from the former. Even thought this coincidence seemed to have been “explained away”, I found it quite an interesting coincidence that this little exchange should have taken place on the very day we were discussing coincidence. At the very least, it provided us with an excellent example to work with.
Here are a few of the interesting ideas that were raised in this small group: coincidence, or the likelihood of noticing coincidences, seems to be connected in some way with superstitious thinking; but it remains possible that superstitious behavior may actually have effects on the world that we cannot (yet?) observe with scientific tools; “zero-random theory” postulates that in a finite world a series of numbers will eventually repeat if extended far enough; controlled experiments might interfere with the powers of ESP-type “magic” because they reduce spontaneity, which seems to be a requirement for such non-causal connections to take place; in such situations, there may well be an underlying cause that we (and science) are simply not (yet?) able to detect; in order for an event to be regarded as a coincidence, it must be perceived to be something that happens only rarely. One question that remained unanswered was: Why do we need to explain why coincidences occur?
Back in the large group, the discussion opened with the claim that it is impossible to know whether or not there is any real cause for coincidences, because they are by definition unrepeatable. But does this lack of scientific proof mean that coincidences cannot be meaningful? To answer this question, Guy suggested a distinction between objective and subjective modes of perception: science (objective perception) may be just one among many “narratives” we use to explain the way we experience the world. I suggested that, if the science of coincidence is taken to relate to objective perception, then the proper focus of the philosophy of coincidence would be subjective perception. The important question, then, is not “is something really happening when we perceive a coincidence?” but rather “why do we attribute meaning to some events but not to others?” This is not merely a psychological question, but a question asking for philosophical justification to back up such attribution of meaning. The scientific criteria for a coincidence to be meaningful is for the event (or set of events) to have a low probability. But there may be alternative ways of providing philosophical justification. One person aptly suggested that such justification depends on a person’s perspective. For example, is the outcome of a lottery “coincidental”? In the most general sense, no, because there is always a winner. Yet to the individual who wins, it will probably feel like a meaningful (statistically improbable) coincidence.
One member who was clearly in favor of seeing as many coincidences as possible opined that coincidence are God’s way of masking miracles. He followed this with an interesting question: do we feel good because we experience a coincidence? Or do we experience coincidence because we feel good? I thought that was a potentially fruitful question. However, nobody followed up on it.
Instead, we concluded on a rather pessimistic note. One person reminded us that anecdotes do not make good philosophical arguments, since they can be used to prove almost anything. Another reminded us that some coincidences can be bad, making us feel worse about ourselves, not better. Yet another added that some people might even blame God for certain types of (unwanted) coincidences. Fortunately, Guy ended the meeting on a somewhat lighter note, by telling a story Jung relates, about a time when he was helping a client interpret a dream about a certain type of beetle, when just such a beetle flew in the window of his office and landed on his desk!
Interestingly, this was the first HKPC meeting I have ever chaired in which nobody had any suggestions for future topics. Could this have been a meaningful coincidence?