Journal of Analytical Psychology, 2014, 59, 429–434

Roles of causation and meaning for

interpreting correlations

Harald Atmanspacher, Collegium Helveticum, University and ETH Zürich;

Institute for Frontier Areas of Psychology; Freiburg

Abstract: The essays by Tougas and Willeford address, among other things, a number
of ways to understand causation, which play crucial roles in the framework of thinking
proposed by Pauli and Jung. The intention of my following reply is to say a few words
about how these options are related to one another within our reconstruction of the
Pauli-Jung conjecture. In the tradition of the sciences, looking for causation has
become a virtually innate reflex to interpret empirically observed correlations. The
concept of synchronicity suggests looking for meaningful coincidences as an alternative,
complementary interpretation, particularly appropriate for psychophysical correlations.

Inspired by the preceding essays by Cecile Tougas (CT) and William Willeford
(WW), the following reply tries to explain and amplify some issues which I
think are essential in the framework of thinking developed by Jung together
with Pauli. This framework started off as a set of not very systematically
organized speculations in the 1950s. But since then it has been refined and
developed in several respects, so that today the term ‘Pauli-Jung conjecture’
may be appropriate – a conjecture understood as a proposition which seems
plausible but is still unproven. I had the pleasure to co-edit a book with this title
recently (Atmanspacher and Fuchs 2014), and will – along the way refer to
some brand new articles in it which the reader may not have seen yet.
A central theme in the essays (Tougas 2014, Willeford 2014) by CT and WW is
the notion of causation, or rather I varieties of notions of causation. I agree
completely that Aristotle, primarily his Physics, is a good place to enter this issue,
both historically and conceptually. Aristotle distinguishes four causes: material,
formal, efficient, final (see Falcon 2012 for an overview). I will relate them to
the argumentation in the paper by Atmanspacher and Fach (2013) and thereby
try to clarify and comment on a number of points raised by CT and WW.
Before I come to this, let me briefly point out that the sciences since Descartes
have narrowed their attention almost exclusively to Aristotle’s efficient
causation: the connection between an effect and its temporally antecedent cause.

0021-8774/2014/5903/429 © 2014, The Society of Analytical Psychology

Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4 2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA 02148, USA.
DOI: 10.1111/1468-5922.12086
430 Harald Atmanspacher

This presupposes a concept of directed time (with past and future) which is not
part of the time-reversal symmetric fundamental laws of physics but must be
generated by a breakdown of this symmetry. The other three kinds of causation
à la Aristotle are mostly neglected in present-day science (see, however, Casti 1989,
for an informed discussion of where they may be hidden).
Another important point is that observations in all empirical science often
exhibit correlations, which can be analyzed statistically, but they never exhibit
underlying causal relations. The inference to (efficient) causation is always based
on an interpretation of observed correlations. In science, interpretations are
usually based on models or theories – which entails that a causal mechanism
can be attributed to a correlation if and only if there is a model or theory
expressing causal relations which entail correlations of the observed kind. The
interpretation of correlations by causation is always relative to a theory.1
In classical physics, such causal relations typically are of one among two
types: either there is a direct causal impact that an event A has on an event B
(or vice versa), or there is an event C in the past of both A and B that has a direct
causal impact on A and B together. It is one of the revolutionary novelties of
quantum physics that there may be correlations for which both types of classical
efficient causation can be ruled out, even experimentally. So-called
entanglement correlations between events A and B, a key feature of quantum
physics, can neither be interpreted due to classical causal interactions
between A and B nor due to a classical common cause C (see Atmanspacher
and Filk 2012).
However, this does not mean that the correlations have no reason at all or are
just ‘causeless’ – a point CT insists on. But their cause is not of the efficient
variety – in Aristotle’s terminology, it comes closest to the notion of formal
causation. If a quantum system as a whole is decomposed into subsystems A
and B, its state cannot be factorized into separate, independent states of A
and B: The breakdown of the holistic symmetry of the system as a whole
manifests itself by correlations between the entangled subsystems A and B. By
contrast, classical systems are always factorizable, so that entanglement
correlations are impossible.
The Pauli-Jung conjecture adopts the radical holism of quantum theory and
carries it on to a worldview in which the relevance of the physical sciences is
explicitly restricted to the physical world, providing a place for the mental
which is not reducible to the physical – no reductive physicalism. On Pauli
and Jung’s account it would be questionable to regard the physical as the
Aristotelian material cause of the mental. Neither do psychophysical correlations

1
This understanding of causation is essentially in line with the tradition of Humean thinking. Kant
refined it by his notion of synthetic judgments a priori. A judgment is a priori if it is based on reason
alone, without reference to experience. It is synthetic if its predicates are distinct from their subjects.
For Kant, causation belongs to the conditions for the possibility of experience, but is not itself an
object of experience.
Interpreting correlations by causation and meaning 431

between the mental and the physical imply any direct psychophysical causation,
as in interactive versions of mind-matter dualism. The brain does not ‘cause’
consciousness, neither by efficient nor by material causation.
Does this lead us back into Cartesian substance dualism? No – because Pauli
and Jung downgrade the Cartesian distinction of mind and matter as
ontological substances to an epistemic distinction of mental and physical
aspects of one underlying holistic reality (an unus mundus) that is neutral with
respect to this distinction.2 Making the distinction is a formal not a temporal
process, and thus should be characterized as a formal cause rather than an
efficient cause for the emergence of mental and material aspects.
Adopting the argument from quantum theory, breaking the holistic symmetry
of the psychophysically neutral reality creates observable correlations between
the mental and the material: psychophysical correlations. Because such
correlations are an inherently structural feature of the Pauli-Jung conjecture,
we refer to them as structural correlations, supposed to be generic and
ubiquitous. Correlations between neural and mental states, or neural correlates
of consciousness, are a pertinent example.
However, it is a crucial additional feature of Pauli and Jung’s proposal that
a second kind of correlation between the mental and the material can arise
indirectly via their underlying psychophysically neutral reality. They are not
generic but may occur due to interventions induced by particular situations
and contexts. For instance, mental interventions may be regarded as
influencing the archetypal activity of the unconscious, which reacts to this
influence with a changed ‘equilibrium’ state, as it were. This unconscious
adaptation induces an influence upon the material domain which is
correlated with the initial mental intervention. The step back from the
unconscious to its material manifestation should, as in structural correlations,
be understood by way of formal causation – efficient causes would require a
linear directed temporal structure foreign to unconscious activity. I will expand
on this theme in a bit more detail in a reply to another commentary by
Carvalho (2014).
Such induced correlations, owing to the indirect pathway through the
unconscious, are highly contextual, hardly reproducible, and observed as
deviations above or below the baseline of generic, structural correlations.
Synchronistic phenomena, understood as meaningful coincidences of mental
and material events, belong to this class of induced correlations, and for other

2
Such a scheme is today known as dual-aspect monism. It derives from Spinoza’s account of the
mind-matter problem and underwent a number of modifications since his time, including the
German idealists. It is interesting to note that both Pauli and Jung ignored the history of dual-aspect
monism from Spinoza onward and rather misattributed their ideas to Leibniz (see Cambray (2014)
for more details). Since WW emphasizes Hegel in his essay, let me refer to Wolfgang Giegerich’s
oeuvre (Collected English Papers, six volumes so far) concerning analytical psychology in the spirit
of Hegel. Giegerich’s approach is discussed controversially among Jungians.
432 Harald Atmanspacher

illustrative examples I suggest to consulting the paper by Atmanspacher and

Fach (2013).3 Synchronicities are observed as correlations between events for
which, and this is part of Jung’s own definition, a direct causal relationship
(in the sense of efficient causation) is inconceivable. The standard response to
such situations in modern science would be that they are due to chance – which,
by the way, Aristotle did not accept as a fifth type of cause. The Pauli-Jung
conjecture proposes that such correlations ought to be interpreted in terms of
the meaning that they have for the experiencing subject.
In current analytical philosophy of mind, meaning is typically understood as
a two-place relation between a representation and what it represents, and it is
regarded as ascribed, construed, or attributed by the experiencing subject. From
a Jungian point of view, this stance is incomplete as far as synchronistic
experiences are concerned. Since the formal cause of a coincidental correlation
that is constitutive for synchronicity is some constellated archetypal activity in a
collective, impersonal unconscious, there is an additional, objective component
to the meaning that finally becomes subjectively attributed and experienced.
Main (2014) discusses this Janus-faced, both objective and subjective,
characteristic of meaning in more detail. And he outlines some critical
ramifications of Pauli and Jung’s proposal to regard synchronicity as a fourth
basic principle next to Kant’s categories of time, space, and causation.
The objective side of meaningful coincidences goes clearly beyond ‘personal’
or ‘tacit’ knowledge, as Polanyi (1958) called it (and which WW alludes to).
Pauli, in a letter to Markus Fierz of 3 June 1952 (von Meyenn 1996, p. 634),
expressed his appetite for an objective aspect of meaning by speculating about
‘natural laws consisting of a correction of chance fluctuations by meaningful
or purposeful coincidences of non-causally connected events.’4 Remarkably,
Bohm and Hiley developed the concept of ‘active information’ in an ‘implicate
order’ (cf. Pylkkänen 2007) which resembles the implicit, yet-to-be-explicated
meaning in the psychophysically neutral reality of Pauli and Jung. And perhaps
it is not too far-fetched to interpret the psychophysically neutral concept of
information in Chalmers’ (1996) ‘natural dualism’ along similar lines.

3
A recent empirical study of the phenomenology of induced correlations was conducted by the
Psychiatric University Clinic Zurich (formerly “Burghölzli”) together with the Institute for Frontier
Areas of Psychology and Mental Health Freiburg (Fach et al. 2013). It indicates that the Pauli-Jung
conjecture offers a viable starting point toward their systematic classification. This is of particular
interest in view of the more or less heuristic classification schemes in the DSM or ICD. Moreover,
Fach (2014) shows that Pauli’s and Jung’s thoughts even shed light on the psychodynamic dimen-
sion of induced psychophysical correlations.
4
This is somewhat reminiscent of Charles S. Peirce’s evolutionary cosmology without any lawful
behaviour to begin with, but absolute chance as the only primordial ingredient of the universe. Laws
arise due to chance fluctuations which by ‘habit’ develop into less stochastic and ultimately lawlike
behavior (cf. Kronz and McLaughlin 2002). Note also that Peirce established the system of semiotics,
a ‘theory of signs’, in which meaning is a three-place (rather than a two-place) relation between a sign,
what it signifies, and the context under which it does so.
Interpreting correlations by causation and meaning 433

When Pauli refers to meaningful or purposeful coincidences of events, he

clearly addresses the least respected kind of Aristotelian causation in present
science: final causation. In this context, Pauli (1954) went as far as characterizing
the theory of biological evolution as ‘an attempt to theoretically cling, according
to the ideas of the second half of the 19th century, to the total elimination of
any finality. As a consequence, this has in some way to be replaced by the intro-
duction of chance.’ Given the hegemony of neo-Darwinism in evolutionary biol-
ogy until today, this is a truly provocative statement. For his expositions in the
same direction, Nagel (2012) was recently taunted and ridiculed to an extent bor-
dering on religious persecution in the middle ages.
Evidently we have no formal theory of synchronicity at present. However, the
Pauli-Jung conjecture provides a conceptual framework which may serve as a
nucleus for its more rigorous understanding. But already today, the aspect of
meaning in psychophysical correlations, in particular of meaningful
coincidences, presents a viable alternative to causal interpretations. For a future
scientific worldview comprising the physical, the mental, and their mutual
relations, it is both a challenging and a thrilling idea to consider causation
and meaning as complementary ways of interpreting correlations.

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