After philosophy class tonight, I am wondering what is coincidence? How is it different than fate? And how do I understand cause and effect in order to fairly argue determinism or free will?
I guess cause and effect is learned, assigned to multiple events that happened. It’s the way we understand things, but in reality, there is no cause and effect…or is there?
If a situation arises by chance, and wasn’t meant to be but just coincidence, does it support free will? Is it nuetral, or what is it?
Coincidence literally just means two events ‘fall together.’ Thus coincidence is completely relative to the position and velocity of the observer: two events which occur simultaneously to one observer might occur one after another to another observer. So, one person sees a coincidence where the other does not: this doesn’t mean reality is broken. In fact, it’s strong evidence for the fact that reality coheres despite the fact that there is no (absolute) time.
So, just because two events fall near one another doesn’t imply causality. It’s Hume’s point that there can never be physical self-evidence of causality; it’s always and only inferred. Causal explanations are a sort of critical sophistry, operating on the basis of non-contradiction. Strangely enough, careful application of the ‘causal’ rules of physics and mathematics lead us to unexpected and surprising conclusions about the nature of reality.
One of the most interesting examples is the quantum mechanical notion that no event can ever be ‘properly’ localized. We can demonstrate that the same event can indeed occur at two different places, at the same time. In fact, from certain perspectives (such as an observer riding a photon,) we can even demonstrate that all events are simultaneous.
Of course there aren’t: you can’t go out in the world and find something that ‘is’ a cause and nothing else. All causes are effects and all effects are causes. The bifurcation is a double-articulation of the same event.
This is the exact same ‘mystical union’ which allows us to say the subject of the sentence and the subject of enunciation are identical (e.g., ‘I’ think, therefore ‘I’ am-- as though this could be a causal relation, even if we grant the two subjects could be the same!)
First, let’s agree that no situation is ‘neutral,’ and this just because no observer can be neutral relative to an event. Either we’re ignorant (and know only the system) or we’re aware of the event, which is on the edge of the situation and the void. By relating to the event, we can connect with what is beyond the situation.
Free will would be a sort of transcendence, a disconnection from the causal chain of production and consumption. The interruption of freedom is an event. So when the ‘situation’ is the Universe, we connect with an event which is partially beyond being. This is, according to Plato, the ‘good’ – and represents a sort of coincidence across ontological planes, a transvaluation. To have a good will seems already to presume a free will.
A moral question for you: can you have a ‘good will’ even if you’re not completely free to choose?
‘I tell you: one must have chaos in one, to give birth to a dancing star.’ - Zarathustra’s Prologue