If archetypes are patterns, the obvious question is: patterns of what?
January 16, 2021
Hunting archetypes
16January
January 9, 2021
Chorismos troubles
09January
Several of my difficulties in understanding the supposed “psychological relativity” of time and space had to do with the weird nature of the collective unconsciousness, as Jung conceives of it. Let’s catch up with some of that.
January 2, 2021
Is psychological time relative? (And if so, then to what?)
02January
In the synchronicities essay Jung refers us to his earlier article on "Der Geist der Psychologie." He states that there he has “presented synchronicity as a psychically conditioned relativity of space and time”. What does that even mean?
December 12, 2020
The misclassification of experience
12December
What is the difference between mysticism and empiricism?
November 7, 2020
One famous and dangerous blur
07November
What is the difference between mysticism and a belief in magic?
October 31, 2020
On the acts of the golfing gods
31October
In the final round of the 2010 Masters golf tournament, two commentators were surprised, for a brief moment, about a mysteriously unsuccessful putting stroke. And then the replay revealed what really had happened.
September 26, 2020
Synchronistic climates
26September
Part of the job, when researching an interesting phenomenon, is to build up a phenomenological pool: collect typical examples, interesting special cases, and fringe phenomena that may or may not be relevant in conjunction with our focus of interest. With synchronicities, there is an additional category in that pool to which we might pay some attention.
September 19, 2020
Meaningfulness, accident, and absurdity
19September
It is a bitter truth that a single sentence, spoken rashly and without really meaning it, can destroy the whole of your life as you have envisaged to live it.
September 5, 2020
Causal agents, their stand-ins, and the impression of meaningfulness
05September
In the literature on synchronicities, that phenomenon is usually defined as a coincidence of two or more events which invokes a “sense of meaningfulness”, and where the events in question — crucially for the point I want to focus on — are not causally linked. In one respect, that last clause is a sensible requirement. For if there were a causal link between those events, that would suffice as...
August 15, 2020
Sense of meaning and surrender of choice
15August
There is an often overlooked connection between the impression of something as meaningful — a “sense of meaning” — and a willingness to give up one’s own freedom of action and choice. Is that an ingredient in synchronicities, too? (After all, the feeling of meaningfulness is a necessary ingredient in the phenomenon as such.) 1. In his analysis of the history of advertising, Tim Wu explains the...
