Gerald R. Baron’s Religious “Crusade” Against Materialism

The Medium writer Gerald R. Baron is on a (to use his own word) “crusade” against what he describes as “physicalism” (i.e., philosophical materialism). From Baron’s own words, it’s very clear that his religious views are a prime motive behind his anti-materialism. Yet when critics mention the prior religious beliefs and motivations of such religious (or “spiritual”) anti-materialists, Baron doesn’t deem that to be a good thing. Indeed, he suggests that critics should stick to the arguments.

“My crusade then, if there is one, is to expose the false teaching that physicalism represents [].”

— Gerald R. Baron [See source here.]

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(i) Introduction

(ii) Gerald Baron’s Religious and Political Views

(iii) Gerald Baron on Being Called a “Science-Denier”

(iv) Are Baron’s Scientific Big Names Really Physicalists?

Gerald R. Baron has said that critical commentators shouldn’t talk about the motivations and prior religious convictions of those who criticise materialism (or physicalism), as well as the religious motivations of those people who go against what he deems to be “mainstream science”. In Baron’s own words:

“Murphy is critical of Goff’s views on panpsychism, and more recently, cosmopsychism. Again, he doesn’t argue against these ideas directly, but attributes them to his prior political and religious ideas or commitments.”

Later, Baron adds:

“What I miss in this process is the substantive analysis of the ideas.”

Those two statements are outrageously and obviously false.

Now Baron may not like what I’ve written on these subjects, but does he also need to make claims which are obviously false? Is this kind of thing allowed in his “crusade”?

Sure, I can give Baron the benefit of the doubt here and say that in the single essay which he tackled, I may not “argue against these ideas directly”. But I have done so, in great detail, elsewhere. (Baron has stated that he’s read at least some of my other stuff.) More particularly, I’ve done so in many essays that never mention “prior political and religious ideas or commitments” — not a single time. [See note 1 for a list of such essays.]

What’s more, I did actually argue against the ideas directly even in the essays Baron focused upon. [See note 2.]

The same is true when when I’ve written on Paul Davies, and even when I’ve written on Bernardo Kastrup. Yet it’s hard not to bring up religion, etc. when discussing Davies’s and Kastrup’s ideas because they often do so themselves.

All that said, I don’t deny for one moment that I have indeed mentioned the motivations and prior religious views of Bernardo Kastrup and Philip Goff. So I do both: I tackle their technical arguments, and then I place that within the (what I deem to be) important context of their prior religious and political views.

If that’s still a problem, then I need to know why.

Indeed, chronologically, I came to discuss these writers’ prior political and religious views precisely because I noted the (obvious) weaknesses of their arguments (or lack thereof). More relevantly, the weaknesses of their arguments are best explained (to me at least) by their religious and political views and motivations. [See note 3.] In other words, it can be strongly and easily argued that the philosophical arguments such writers put forward are purely and simply designed to advance their prior religious and political positions.

All this can be brought right up to date.

Baron has just published an article called ‘Decoding David Bohm’s Metaphysics’. (David Bohn is a favourite with New-Agers and “spiritual” people. See Graham Pemberton’s ‘Quantum Physics and Spirituality — part 7, David Bohm’ and here.) When you read this “first in a short series of posts”, you can clearly see exactly where it’s all heading — to religious/spiritual and (to use Baron’s own word) “transcendent” conclusions. Thus, David Bohm’s quoted words are simply a vehicle for these conclusions. Bohn’s physics isn’t t embraced (as it were) in itself. It’s embraced simply as a means to an end. Hence, Baron quotes Bohn extensively, but he never adds much (or even any!) critical — or otherwise — commentary.

So religion and politics wag the dog.

Of course, all this is up for debate.

However, if a writer did only one of these things (e.g., concentrate entirely on the motivations and prior religious views of Kastrup, Goff, Baron, Davies, etc.), then that may well be a problem. However, I’ve never personally done such a thing — not even in the essays in which I do, admittedly, mention such people’s motivations and prior religious views.

So was the following really the case?

It was Baron himself who focussed on my mentions of “motivations” and “prior religious views”, and he simply ignored all my arguments (i.e., those arguments which didn’t mention such things). Indeed, from what I’ve read, Baron never tackles the technical arguments of flesh-and-blood physicalists or materialists, or even paraphrases what they’ve written. [See note 4.]

To slightly change tack.

It’s odd that Baron doesn’t like critics bringing up his own and other people’s motivations and prior religious views — and that’s because Baron does so himself.

For example, in an interview with a self-described “humanist, a seeker and [] globalist” called Anders Bolling, Baron was very open and honest about all his religious and political motivations.

In detail.

All the following information (i.e., the bits of autobiography, the talk of motivations, etc.) come from an interview on YouTube called ‘Gerald Baron: To unite science and faith’. In that interview (or at least in the written introduction), Baron tells us that he’s a Christian. He also says that his Christian faith “validates much of what the Bible tells us”. Indeed, Baron believes that “[o]ne such example is the studies at the University of Virginia that show compelling evidence of reincarnation”.

Baron also almost perfectly expresses the position of Intelligent Design in the following passage:

“There is evolution, but it is not random. The digital code in our DNA is remarkably complex and carries meaning. In science we know of no process of creating meaningful code other than through an intelligent mind.”

Baron then ties neo-Darwinism to, yes, physicalism. [See Baron here.]

So perhaps critics can mention religious, etc. motivations because anti-materialists like Baron, Bernardo Kastrup, etc. do so themselves — frequently.

Finally, if it’s a bad thing to mention such motivations in a critical manner, then shouldn’t it be a bad thing to mention them (as Baron and Bolling did in their interview) in a positive manner too?

Gerald Baron’s Religious and Political Views

Gerald Baron’s case against physicalism is hardly motivated by metaphysical and logical argumentation. Indeed, Baron hardly ever (perhaps never) quotes physicalists (certainly not contemporary philosophers) arguing (in detail) for physicalism. (To be clear. I’ve never read Baron doing so in all the stuff I’ve read. It is of course possible that he’s done so elsewhere.)

Thus, this is Baron himself on the subject of physicalism:

“The above argument may suggest my primary concern is how that belief system [physicalism] determines our values, priorities and actions. But that is not my primary reason.”

He then continues by more or less saying that this is indeed his “primary reason”:

“If physicalism is true, then the destructive results of living without any possible meaning or purpose and choosing our own versions of right and wrong without accountability should and will play out as the laws of nature demand.”

In the following passage, Baron then sets out what can only be described as his political agenda:

“[P]hysicalism is not true, of that I am fully convinced. Yet, because that is the belief system that is widely promoted by scientists, philosophers, scientists speaking as philosophers, educators and journalists, choices made individually and corporate in our culture are based on false premises. If the physicalist belief system is harmful to individual people and societies as I believe it is, the harm is multiplied by the false basis.”

Baron then gets even more prophetic in the following:

"Major paradigm shifts will be represented in some significant changes in worldview. The foundation of science is crumbling, and most scientists understand that.”

Just like Kastrup, Baron also uses terms from psychological literature, as in the following:

“My crusade then, if there is one, is to expose the false teaching that physicalism represents and in doing so help resolve the dissonance. Resolving this may well mean not a return to traditional Christian beliefs, but perhaps something related but new, a syncretistic and more universal spirituality that is thoroughly transcendent. Perhaps Richard Rohr’s The Universal Christ points the way to the future of belief.”

So Baron is indeed on a crusade against physicalism which, it can be argued, has very little to do with metaphysics, logic and/or argumentation. Instead, Baron’s (to use his own words again) “primary reason” for his crusade in that he believes that physicalism corrupts “our culture” as a whole.

Gerald Baron on Being Called a “Science-Denier”

New versions of the idea of “false consciousness” occur all the time.

Gerald Baron blames “the media” for what he takes to be the embrace of physicalism.

He believes that the media “stands for Fear, Uncertainty, Doubt and Outrage”. More relevantly, Baron believes that the media is to blame for people not upholding his own (i.e., non-physicalist and religious) views. (This is much like the position which many political activists take toward the media when they too come across people with very different views to their own.)

Baron has written two books about the media: Now is Too Late: Survival in an Era of Instant News and Black Hats White Hats: Why Activists Almost Always Win and How to Defeat Them.

Thus, if you don’t like an individual’s or some group’s views, then blame the media. (Or “media brainwashing”, as teens often put it.)

Or if someone holds a view you find distasteful, then blame the media.

Of course, all the above are variations on the false consciousness theme.

In any case, politics isn’t going to be discussed here. However, Baron does tie the (Platonic) Media to, yes, “our culture’s embrace of physicalism”. [See also Kastrup’s ‘Materialism as a political weapon’.]

More specifically, Baron writes:

“[W]hat is most important to me is the fact we are continually told that if you do not accept the belief system of physicalism, [then] you are a science-denier.”

That passage is bizarre because I can honestly say that I’ve never once come across anyone stating that “if you do not accept the belief system of physicalism, [then] you are a science-denier”.

Never once.

Of course, Baron may believe that those precise words needn’t be used, just variations thereon.

So which actual words does Baron believe have been used, and has he ever quoted them?

Whichever way this supposed categorical statement about physicalism and science-denial is expressed, can Baron cite any examples of scientists (or others) mentioning physicalism in this way, and then saying that if you don’t accept it, then you simply must be a “science-denier”?…

Unless this is physicalism by default.

In other words, if a scientist doesn’t accept religious, paranormal, spiritual, etc. explanations of any given x, then he simply must be a physicalist.

So now take an admittedly extreme example.

If a scientist or layperson doesn’t accept astrology (or the existence of ley lines), then does this also mean that he simply must also be committed to physicalism?

Alternatively, say that someone — anyone — doesn’t accept Baron’s championship (see here) of Carl Jung’s “objective reality” (i.e., the unconscious), is such a person automatically a physicalist?

Does all this mean that the word “physicalist” (or “materialist”) is simply a stand-in for the following position? —

All those people who don’t accept my own religious and non-physicalist views.

Bernardo Kastrup — spiritual idealist and Baron’s fellow crusader against materialism and “mainstream science”.

Bernardo Kastrup, for one, seems to go in for this kind of thing.

Kastrup regards almost everyone under the sun outside his own idealist “school” (from Guardian journalists, biologists, physicists, to people he gets into arguments with on YouTube) as “materialists”.

Thus, we end up with the following Manichean war: (supposed) materialists vs Kastrupian idealists and Jungians, Christian dual-aspect monists, etc.

Are Baron’s Scientific Big Names Really Physicalists?

Gerald Baron’s main point is that “the mainstream position of science today is physicalism”.

Is it?

Baron targets various scientific (as it were) big names. In his own words:

“Leading scientists such as the late Stephen Hawking, Brian Greene, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Sean Carroll, Brian Cox, Richard Dawkins and a great many others are assuming the mantle of philosophy and from that esteemed podium are the prophets, priests and evangelists of the quasi-religion of physicalism. Our education system tolerates no alternative view other than physicalism and the exclusive claims of evolution despite widespread and increasing scientific discomfort with the claims. [] Our science journalists and major media channels rarely allow any exposure to data, reports, discoveries or discussion that question the tenets of physicalist belief. If they do, ardent defenders of physicalism rally to call for the dismissal of the offending editors.”

That passage is very similar to the following one from Kastrup:

“But science-as-you-know-it implicitly adopts the materialist ontology. Perhaps not all scientists do this; perhaps even only a minority does. But this minority is vocal and influential. They clearly control where the research funding goes, for projects that do not assume the materialist metaphysics collectively get much less funding than projects that do. [] Moreover, this vocal minority also controls how science-as-you-know-it is presented in the media, in school curricula, and to the culture at large. Just think of people like Lawrence Krauss, Richard Dawkins, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Stephen Hawking, and others such specialized prodigies of rhetoric and intellectual puzzles, who cavalierly ignore rigorous logic, epistemology, and ontology.”

So Kastrup mentions Lawrence Krauss, Richard Dawkins, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Stephen Hawking. And, guess what, Baron also mentions Stephen Hawking, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and Richard Dawkins. Indeed, not only are the names the same, so are the general positions.

The scientists Kastrup and Baron mention are very different to each other. So readers can suppose they’re all connected together (i.e., by Kastrup and Baron) because of their supposed commitment to physicalism (or materialism). Yet this is a philosophical position which they rarely (if ever) actually discuss.

So Baron and Kastrup may believe that these scientific big names must have caught physicalism via some kind of “virus of the mind”.

In any case, Baron refers almost exclusively to the writers of popular-science books and those scientists in the public eye. Perhaps Baron has a good reason to do this because he believes that these scientific big names are corrupting what he calls “our culture”.

Again, I can only say that most — even all — the famous scientists Baron targets never even refer to “physicalism”. They certainly never class themselves as “physicalists”…

After all, these people are scientists.

“Physicalism” is a term of art, mainly used in analytic philosophy.

In detail.

The term “physicalism” dates back to the 1930s, and was first used by two logical positivists: Otto Neurath and Rudolf Carnap. [See here.] However, this term didn’t have a widespread use until the 1960s — or even later. Interesting enough, the long Wikipedia entry on ‘Physicalism’ only mentions “physics” (i.e., not “physicalism”) twice, and doesn’t refer to a single scientist. The same is broadly true of the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy’s own entry on ‘Physicalism’. (The bibliography doesn’t include a single work by a scientist.)

As for scientists. I’ve read most of the the scientists that Baron mentions, and I don’t recall a single time they’ve used the term “physicalism”, let alone discussed it in any (philosophical) detail. Sure, I’m willing to be corrected on this. Perhaps some of these big names have indeed used the term “physicalism”. However, even if they have, then it must have been extremely rarely.

In addition, it can be guessed that some of the popular scientists Baron targets would argue — if only when pressed - that they have no need to use the term “physicalism”, or to commit themselves to this philosophical doctrine. Instead, their views on science generally, as well as on particular scientific theories, are simply a product of tests, experiments, observations, theorising, mathematics, logical reasoning, etc., not the product of an arcane and academic doctrine which is mainly found in analytic philosophy.

This may be “philosophically naive” when it comes to scientists ignoring philosophy. However, it’s not being argued here that scientists deny all philosophical elements to their scientific theories and positions. No, this is specifically about their supposed commitment to physicalism.

So as hinted at earlier, the best Baron can do is opt for Kastrup’s position of physicalism-as-false-consciousness (or physicalism-by-osmosis).

In other words, scientists — and just about everyone else who isn’t “spiritual”, religious, an idealist, etc. — must catch physicalism in the air without ever using that term, and certainly without thinking deeply (or philosophically) about it.

Again, physicalism is a technical philosophical position which actually requires much (philosophical) thought. And I’d suggest that most scientists — and other offenders — don’t give physicalism that much thought…

Indeed, perhaps that acknowledgement can be made to actually work in favour of Baron’s own position!

In other words, the (false) idea that scientists “blindly accept materialism” actually works in Baron’s favour. (Even though most scientists don’t blindly accept materialism, and for all the reasons just given… and more.)

Yet Baron did say that “the mainstream position of science today is physicalism”, and I’m saying that most scientists don’t philosophise about physicalism.

So can Baron and Kastrup have it both ways?

The best that can be argued is that physicalism (Kastrup both implies and states this in his writings) is caught in the air, or it influences scientists through osmosis (i.e., in today’s “materialist culture”)…

Yet Baron and Kastrup can’t argue that scientists are “committed to physicalism”, and, at the very same time, also admit that scientists don’t think (or philosophise) about physicalism.

Consequently, imbibing physicalism unconsciously, and being intellectually committed to physicalism, are two very different things.

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Notes:

(1) The following are examples of essays I’ve written on Philip Goff which never mention his religious and political views: ‘Intrinsic Nature: Philosopher Philip Goff on What Physics Leaves Out’, ‘Against Philip Goff’s (Panpsychist) Phenomenal Bonding’, ‘Philip Goff’s Panpsychism vs. Sam Coleman’s Russellian Monism?’, ‘Panpsychist Philip Goff’s Combination Problem: Little Conscious Subjects and Emergence’, ‘John Horgan and Philip Goff on Panpsychism & Geocentrism’, ‘Philip Goff on the Brute Identity Theory: Flogging a Dead Horse?’, ‘Philip Goff’s Panpsychist Conceivability-to-Possibility Argument’, etc.

(2) Where are the references to prior religious beliefs and motivations in the following passage?

“[N]ow take Carl Jung’s idea (as expressed by Gerald R. Baron) that ‘the unconscious is in the realm of objective reality while the conscious [mind] is not — it is subjective’. (It’s worth noting here that Pauli offered criticisms of Jung’s work, particularly of the notion of synchronicity.)

“In the light of Jung’s reference to ‘objective reality’, it can be said that Pauli rejected the opposition between *objective reality* itself (or ‘ultimate reality’), and what we can can know about reality (as did Niels Bohr). In other words, knowing ‘how Nature is’ amounts to no more than a metaphysician’s dream. All we actually have is ‘what we can say about Nature’. And, at the quantum-mechanical level at least, what we can say is what we can say with the mathematics — in conjunction with experiments, tests, observations, etc. Consequently, just about everything else is interpretational, analogical and/or imagistic in nature. Indeed, the analogical, imagistic and interpretational stuff can — and often does — mislead us. It also causes endless insoluble controversies.”

Needless to say, Baron didn’t respond to this passage, or any passages like it. Instead, he focussed (almost) entirely on my mentions of people’s prior religious beliefs and motivations.

Baron also (indirectly) refers to an essay I wrote on Philip Goff, in which the following passage can be found:

“When Goff first discussed panpsychism in his early papers (they date back to 2006), there was very little (if any) science to be found within them. There certainly wasn’t much — or even anything — about physical cosmology and scientific cosmology. This was the case up until around 2017, when Goff started to refer to ‘cosmopsychism’. Sure, Goff had previously referred to atoms, electrons, etc. in his early papers. However, he did so simply to argue that such things might (or do?) instantiate experience or consciousness.

“Then Goff moved on to include spacetime itself within his panpsychism. (Goff wrote: ‘Spacetime on its own is a simple and ubiquitous experience[].’) And now, in 2023, Goff states that the ‘quantum vacuum’ may be conscious.”

Again, there’s not much about religion or motivations here either.

(3) Some of the positions and arguments in Philip Goff’s book Galileo’s Error are strikingly poor. However, this is only the case when Goff broadens out his discussion to refer to such things as the politics of trees. (See my ‘Professor Philip Goff’s (Panpsychist) Philosophy of Trees’.)

(4) Even in an article called ‘Panpsychism trapped by physicalism’, all Baron does is quote the critics of physicalism.

Baron’s argument is that Galen Strawson, who is a panpsychist, is also a physicalist. (Strawson does class himself as a “real physicalist”.) Yet Strawson actually argues against physicalism in the video ‘Galen Strawson: Panpsychism vs. Physicalism?’. However, because Strawson doesn’t also embrace religion, Jung, synchronicity, etc., then his critical words about physicalists simply aren’t enough for Baron. Instead, Baron believes that Strawson should also be thoroughly committed to what he calls “the transcendent”.

As ever, Baron doesn’t quote or even paraphrase any of Strawson’s actual arguments. (He repeatedly quotes the often-used “mystical” and/or “spiritual” passages from Arthur Eddington, David Bohm, Erwin Schrödinger, etc.) However, he does quote Strawson saying the following:

“[Galen Strawson] states at the outset his firm commitment to physicalism. He even admits that this is a personal preference, something he ‘wants’.”

Isn’t this Baron talking about people’s motivations and prior beliefs?

Carl Jung’s Wild Analogies: Synchronicity and Quantum Physics

Carl Jung’s “mystical” psychological theories [see note 1] are often purely analogical in nature — at least when it came to the way in which he connected them to theories and ideas in quantum physics. Indeed, even in the case of the most positive accounts of Jung’s theories, everything still seems to be purely analogical. What’s more, Jung and his (positive) biographers never really denied (or played down) the analogical nature of his claims about synchronicity’s relation to theories and ideas within quantum physics.

(i) Introduction: Analogy

(ii) Science and Analogy in Carl Jung’s Work

(iii) Carl Jung on Synchronicity

(iv) Carl Jung on Acausality

(v) Synchronicity in a Wider Context

(vi) …And, Finally, Entanglement

So let’s start off with a simple definition:

“Analogy is a comparison or correspondence between two things (or two groups of things) because of a third element that they are considered to share.”

Despite the title of this essay, it can be freely acknowledged that analogy plays an important role in explanation, conceptualisation, communication, problem solving, perception, argumentation, generalisation, memory, etc.

Indeed, Douglas Hofstadter has said that analogy is “the core of cognition”.

More relevantly, it can also be acknowledged that analogy can be of great help and importance when it comes to scientific theorising. (This is particularly the case in theoretical science and cosmology.) Specifically, analogies can be used in both the applied and the theoretical sciences, and they often take the form of simulations and/or models.

Thus, analogies aren’t always (or particularly) a bad thing. Indeed, even if they were a bad thing in science and philosophy, human beings — including scientists — wouldn’t easily be able to give them up.

In terms of Carl Jung’s work, we can even see the word “analogy” in the following passage:

“This [double-aspect theory] stands in close analogy to quantum physics, where complementary properties cannot be determined jointly with accuracy.”

So when it comes to Carl Jung and Wolfgang Pauli using — and referring to — quantum theory, perhaps we can specifically refer to structure-mapping theory.

In this theory, analogy depends on the “mapping” of the elements of one thing, to another thing. What’s more, that mapping doesn’t only occur between different objects: it also occurs between the relations of these different objects.

However, using the technical term “structure-mapping theory” is perhaps giving Pauli’s and Jung’s analogies too much weight and meat (as we shall see). More importantly, it’s not even always clear if their analogies were meant to be (purely or merely) analogies in the first place.

Perhaps more relevantly to the case of Jung, we’ve had many analogies and metaphors in the philosophy of mind. For example, the mind and/or brain as seen as an aviary, blank slate, factory, telephone exchange, Watt Governor, and (dare I say) a computer.

But herein lies a warning.

Some of these philosophical analogies and metaphors led to long-running mistakes and confusions about the nature of mind. Indeed, many philosophers forgot that they were actually dealing with analogies and metaphors in the first place.

Science and Analogy in Carl Jung’s Work

Thus, science has to also be taken within the wider context of Carl Jung’s very own mystical worldview? It’s not even clear what “tak[ing] science as an end in itself” means. Many of Jungians take Jung’s worldview as some kind of end in itself.

To most science-savvy outsiders, Carl Jung’s ideas don’t seem to be in the least bit scientific.

However, there are often confusions (or conflations) on this subject which are brought about for two main reasons:

(1) Jung saw what he was doing as being (at least partly?) scientific. (“[Jung’s] preference was to be seen as a man of science.”)
(2) Jung often explicitly refers to science (specifically, in this case, to quantum mechanics).

Of course, Deepak Chopra is always referring to quantum physics too. And some Intelligent Designers often refers to physics, quantum physics, cosmology, and they also use lots of mathematics. You also have “quantum healers”, “quantum soccer players”, “quantum money-makers”, etc. who often refer to (artfully-selected parts of) science.

Added to that, Jung expressed himself in (as it were) scientese.

However, let’s firstly read Harald Atmanspacher expressing Jung’s and Wolfgang Pauli’s ideas in a (seemingly) scientific language. Thus:

“[Jung and Pauli] offered the radical and brilliant idea that the currency of these correlations is not (quantitative) statistics, as in quantum physics, but (qualitative) meaning.”

Is this really a “brilliant idea”? Alternatively, is it simply a brilliant analogy?

What’s more, the analogical nature of this passage just seems obvious.

Now take the words of Jung himself (as found in his The Structure and Dynamics of the Psyche):

“The application of statistical laws to processes of atomic dimensions in physics has a remarkable correspondence in psychology insofar as it pursues the foundations of consciousness to the point where they dim out into the inconceivable [].”

Jung uses the words “correspondence” in the passage above.

Now that’s a problematic word because it’s vague, and it can be interpreted in many different ways.

For a start, anything can be taken to correspond with anything else if mystics, theorists, popular authors, etc. indulge in enough mental gymnastics.

The obvious point to make here is that the “statistical laws [and] atomic dimensions in physics” aren’t said to be one and the same thing as anything in “the foundations of consciousness”.

So what about Carl Jung and his own words on synchronicities?

Carl Jung on Synchronicity

Definitions of “synchronicity” include the following, which are all taken to be faithful to Jung’s own views. (The last definition is from Jung himself.) Thus:

(1) “[A] hypothetical factor equal in rank to causality as a principle of explanation.” 
(2) “[A]n acausal connecting principle.” 
(3) “acausal parallelism”
(4) “ [A] meaningful coincidence of two or more events where something other than the probability of chance is involved.”

Definition (1) doesn’t say what Jungian synchronicity is. It simply tells us that it has a role in terms of explanation.

Definition (2) is unhelpful. It only tells us that synchronicity is acausal. (Events in the past, numbers, etc. are also deemed to be acausal.)

In terms of (3) (“acausal parallelism” ) — that too is unhelpful. All sorts of things are parallel without needing to be deemed to be either causal or acausal.

For example, if John Smith was born in 1632 in Wigan, and died in 1701 in Barnsley, and Wang Zhang was born in 1632 in Beijing, and also died in 1701 in Shanghai, then is that a case of acausal parallelism?

Similarly, and to slightly change an example from David Hume (see here).

If every morning when a cock crows in Somerset, a man in Wilshire then has sex with his wife, then is that also a case of acausal parallelism?

Finally,

“meaningful coincidence of two or more events where something other than the probability of chance is involved”.

The word “meaningful” (kinda) gives the game away here.

In other words, this has nothing to do with physics, consciousness, “objective reality”, acausality, etc. Yet this isn’t to deny the importance of meaningfulness. After all, psychologically, such “meaningful coincidences” may be very important for the individual human subjects who note them. However, what have they to do with physics, acausality, mysticism, the paranormal, etc?

Carl Jung on Acausality

So many (mainly trivial) things are “acausal”, it’s no wonder that acausality is deemed to be “ineluctable”.

The term “acausal” doesn’t seem to do much work either — apart from it (as it were) casting suspicions on the primacy of causal relations, and hinting at the possibility that there is much else besides.

So all this hinges on what commentators mean by “acausality”.

Carl Jung’s notion of synchronicity states that there are “some unknown noncausal connections”.

This bald explanation, in itself, clearly shows why Jung fixed upon entanglement (see later). Yet what we don’t have in physics — not even in quantum physics! — is any talk about “meaningful connections” which are “acausal”.

Sure, there is some talk of acausality in physics, but not of meaningful connections. [See ‘Acausal’. There is ‘retrocausality’ in quantum mechanics too.]

Of course, not many physicists would ever claim that there aren’t any meaningful connections. However, most of them would simply say that such connections aren’t part of physics — or, perhaps, even part of science as a whole. In addition, they may also want to know what the words “meaningful connections” actually mean.

Gerald R. Baron puts the position for acausality (at least as it applies to mystical views) in the following:

“Physicalists reject non-causal events entirely and explain them as coincidences []. To both Jung and Pauli this kind of reductionism could not account for the great accumulation of human experiences, especially what are considered ‘extreme experiences’ including the paranormal.”

[See note 1 on what Baron includes within the square brackets.]

This almost entirely depends on what is meant by “events”. After all, x may be (to use a vague word) connected to y, without that connection also being seen as an event — not even an acausal one — of any kind. Thus, neither causality nor acausality need be brought up here.

To make use of an often-used statement: correlation does not imply either causation or (well) acausation. [See ‘Correlation does not imply causation’.]

So a cock crowing in a farmyard in Totnes, and then a man making love to his wife in Bath, is some kind of connection in that one follows the other. (We can even accept the possibility that it always occurs!) Thus, event x is followed by y. However, x and y don’t make up the very same event. Indeed, x and y may even be “meaningfully connected” by a person (or even collectively connected by many persons), and still not constitute the same event.

However, we should take an example from Carl Jung himself here.

In his book Synchronicity: An Acausal Connecting Principle, Jung cited the example of a patient who dreamt about a scarab beetle, and who then found such a beetle on his desk the very next day.

“Physicalists” (whom Baron refers to) wouldn’t claim that this is either a causal or an acausal connection (or event)…

Except, that is, in the sense that the dream occurred within a physical and causal brain (which Baron may dispute), and the event of a beetle scurrying on the desk is both physical and causal. And, then, a connection was made between the dream and the beetle on the desk. This itself can be explained in terms of a connection between various Jungian ideas about beetles in dreams, and the physical sighting of a beetle scurrying along a desk.

However, let’s go into the specific notion of “meaningful coincidence”.

I can also “meaningfully relate” the death of a mouse to the Big Bang. I can also meaningfully relate being poor (or being rich) with being born on January the 22nd. However, these two meaningful relations don’t have anything to do with contradicting (or going against) causal connections, acausality, entanglement, physics, or even mysticism.

Such “meaningful coincidences” are just things which occur in my mind, your mind, and, perhaps, in more than one mind at once. However, even a “collective” connection between a dead mouse and the Big Bang doesn’t tell us much about either. Neither is the “coincidence” (or connection) mystical, paranormal or acausal.

So there’s no physical or acausal connection between the Big Bang and the mouse’s death. However, there is a physical connection between the ideas, images and concepts of that mouse dying, and the ideas, images and concepts of the Big Bang. Thus, the coincidence isn’t between the actual mouse and the actual Big Bang: it’s between the images, ideas and concepts of the mouse, and the images, ideas and concepts of the Big Bang. Thus, there’s nothing mystical or acausal here at all.

So in terms of accepting this as a “meaningful acausal connection”, readers would need to buy into the entire package (or mystical worldview) of Carl Jung’s psychology. (This isn’t to ignore the fact that psychologists — even Jungians — have taken Jung in new directions.) The story about a dream about a beetle being connected to a beetle on a desk wouldn’t make any sense at all outside a Jungian context.

That alone makes it all very unscientific.

In other words, in order to accept this supposedly acausal connection, one would also have to accept and endorse large parts of a single theorist’s (i.e., Jung’s) overall worldview. In other words, one would need to be a Jungian who accepts Jung’s “analytical psychology”.

Synchronicity in a Wider Context

One could spot innumerable patterns and connections before each breakfast.

Yet, despite all the above, some readers who’re unfamiliar with Carl Jung’s notion of synchronicity may believe that the notion is hardly controversial — as least when taken without its (extra?) mystical and acausal baggage.

But let’s not beat about the bush here. As one often-quoted statement has it:

“[Carl] Jung used the concept of synchronicity in arguing for the existence of the paranormal.”

That just quoted, it can now be said the following description of synchronicity is not in the least bit controversial, mystical or paranormal:

“In contemporary research, synchronicity experiences refer to one’s subjective experience that coincidences between events in one’s mind and the outside world may be causally unrelated to each other yet have some other unknown connection. Jung held that this was a healthy, even necessary, function of the human mind that can become harmful within psychosis.”

In a sense, we can compare this contemporary research to Daniel Dennett’s notion of heterophenomenology.

In heterophenomenology, the “verbal reports” of human subjects about their own “subjective experiences” are taken seriously. However, what such subjects say (or claim) about their subjective experiences isn’t (automatically) taken to be true, or to refer to anything actual (or factual) in the world outside their minds. Similarly, “contemporary researchers” analyse and account for selected subjects’ reports of their own subjective experiences. More relevantly, this includes their own reports of what they may call “coincidences between events”, and which they also believe to have “some [acausal] unknown connection”.

However, not all psychologists are heterophenomenologists. More accurately, few counsellors and psychoanalysts are heterophenomenologists. Thus, the passage above continued in this manner:

“One study has shown that both counsellors and psychoanalysts were less likely than psychologists to agree that chance coincidence was an adequate explanation for synchronicity, while more likely than psychologists to agree that a need for unconscious material to be expressed could be an explanation for synchronicity experiences in the clinical setting.”

In other words, some (perhaps most) Jungian psychanalysts take such verbal reports at face value. They also believe that “chance coincidence” (at least in these cases) needs to be explained in terms of “unconscious material”. However, even here, only unconscious material is taken to be (as Jungians put it) “objective reality”…

Objective reality?

Both Jung and Pauli believed that synchronicities (sometimes?) reveal objective reality’s actual workings.

Let Gerald R. Baron be more specific about this objective reality. He writes:

“Jung saw that the ‘inconceivable’ and largely unknowable world of the unconscious mind was a part of objective reality, while our conscious experience deriving in part from our unconscious was subjective.”

So something that is both “inconceivable” and “unknowable” can also be “part of objective reality”. This is an extremely odd use of the term “objective reality”, and it clashes will almost all other uses. (Many philosophers and physicists have a problem with all references to “objective reality”, let alone this Jungian one.) At first sight, it seems like a surreal position, or even a deliberate provocation.

In any case and to repeat: although some of the descriptions (or defences) of synchronicity don’t (on the surface at least) seem to be problematic, it’s still the case that these descriptions (such as the ones just quoted) don’t have anything at all to do with physics, monism, acausality, or even mysticism… except, again, at the level of analogy.

However, what about analogy when it comes to entanglement?

…And, Finally, Entanglement

No one need deny entanglement. Indeed, not many physicists do. However, it’s tying entanglement to “mystical” beliefs, theories and interpretations that’s the issue here. [See note 4.]

When you read the purely physics-based accounts of entanglement (or nonlocality generally), it’s hard to see how any of it can be tied to mystical matters…

But, of course, it has been.

Thomas Filk has argued that quantum entanglement (“a particular type of acausal quantum correlations”) was taken by Wolfgang Pauli to be “a model for the relationship between mind and matter in the framework [which] he proposed together with Jung”. More simply, quantum entanglement was deemed to be a physical phenomenon which “most closely represents the concept of synchronicity”…

Here readers should note the words “model” and “represents”.

Thus, quantum entanglement was taken to be a model “for the relationship between mind and matter” in Jung’s theory. Put another way (as Thomas Filk himself does), quantum entanglement was deemed to “most closely” represent synchronicity.

This means that quantum entanglement has nothing to do with the relationship between mind and matter — except as a model of that relationship. Similarly, quantum entanglement has been used to represent Jungian synchronicity. However, quantum entanglement is not itself Jungian synchronicity. Inversely, Jungian synchronicity doesn’t involve quantum entanglement.

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Notes

(1) The words “mystical” and “mystic” have been used throughout the essay above. So it’s worth noting that Carl Jung’s fans and followers have also classed him as a “mystic”. Yet, predictably, other fans and followers have argued that Jung wasn’t a mystic. [See the categorical ‘Carl Jung Was Not a Mystic’.] Indeed, Freud characterised Jung as a “mystic and a snob”.

(2) The square brackets occur around these words:

“[M]ere chance events made possible by a very large number of possible opportunities even if it means multiple universes are needed for a sufficient number of chances.”

I’m not sure how to make sense of that clause, or even if it is relevant to Gerald R. Baron’s overall context. Baron’s words are usually applicable to explaining “fine tuning”, and are about the values of the constants, the nature of the laws of the universe, etc.

(3) Interestingly enough, in the ‘Criticism’ section of the Wikipedia entry ‘Analytic psychology’, all the criticisms of Carl Jung’s views and theories come from fellow psychoanalysts, not from scientists or from philosophers. This hints at the possibility that Jungian psychology is largely ignored by nearly all scientists and philosophers.

(4) In the piece ‘What is the consensus among physicists on whether quantum mechanics has non-locality?’, some commentators argue that there is a “consensus” on nonlocality, and others argue that there isn’t a consensus on nonlocality.

(*) In future essays, I will tackle the role of analogy when it comes to Wolfgang Pauli’s and Carl Jung’s references to quantum nonlocality (already partially discussed), complementarity, and the observer effect.