Psychology Dictionary of Arguments

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Coincidence: coincidence is not the absence of a causal explanation, but the coinciding of several events, which were caused by independent causal chains. The determination of a coincidence belongs to the description level and may express the deviation from an expectation. The property of being accidental is not inherent to events. See also determinism, indeterminism, contingency, necessity, probability.
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Annotation: The above characterizations of concepts are neither definitions nor exhausting presentations of problems related to them. Instead, they are intended to give a short introduction to the contributions below. – Lexicon of Arguments.

 
Author Concept Summary/Quotes Sources

Ian Hacking on Coincidence - Dictionary of Arguments

I 335
Def Argument of Cosmic Coincidence/Hacking: it would be a coincidence if a theory were wrong, and yet the forecasted phenomena would be correct.
>Predictions
, >Natural laws.
Then we draw the "conclusion to the best explanation", according to which the theory was true. The postulated entities must be the common cause in all cases.
>Theories, >Theoretical entities, >Causation, >Causality, >Best Explanation, >Explanations.
HackingVs: our argumentation is much more specific.
I 336
1) Instead of blood platelets, we speak of "dense bodies". These are also dense without coloring!
2) We are not dealing with explanations here. We see the same constellation of points, regardless of whether we use an optical or an electron microscope.
It is not an explanation to say that something you have not yet identified is responsible for a phenomenon.
3) We do not have a comprehensive theory for the whole domain.
Coincidence/Hacking: my own coincidence argument merely states that it would be a coincidence if two completely different types of physical systems (microscopes) showed exactly the same constellations of dots.
>Observation, >Observation/Duhem, >Method/Duhem, >Observability, >Theories, >Method, > Science.

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Explanation of symbols: Roman numerals indicate the source, arabic numerals indicate the page number. The corresponding books are indicated on the right hand side. ((s)…): Comment by the sender of the contribution. Translations: Dictionary of Arguments
The note [Concept/Author], [Author1]Vs[Author2] or [Author]Vs[term] resp. "problem:"/"solution:", "old:"/"new:" and "thesis:" is an addition from the Dictionary of Arguments. If a German edition is specified, the page numbers refer to this edition.

Hacking I
I. Hacking
Representing and Intervening. Introductory Topics in the Philosophy of Natural Science, Cambridge/New York/Oakleigh 1983
German Edition:
Einführung in die Philosophie der Naturwissenschaften Stuttgart 1996


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