On the nature of coincidental events

Melas, A;SALIS, PIETRO MARIA

2015-01-01

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Abstract

It is a common opinion that chance events could not be understood in causal terms. Conversely, according to a causal view of chance, intersections between independent causal chains originate accidental events, called coincidences”. Despite its importance, this notion of chance is quite neglected in contemporary literature and it seems to eschew a precise definition. The present study takes into proper consideration this causal conception of chance and tries to shed new light on it. More precisely, this work investigates the role of the epistemic aspects in our understanding what coincidences are. In fact, although the independence between the causal lines involved plays an important part in order to understand coincidental events, that condition does not seem sufficient to give a complete definition of a coincidence. The main target of the present work is to prove that the epistemic aspects of coincidences, such as the epistemic access, expectations, relevance and so on, are, together with the independence between the intersecting causal chains, a constitutive part of coincidental phenomena. Many examples will be discussed throughout this work to highlight the role of epistemic aspects in our understanding the nature of coincidental events.