Nimos
Well-Known Member
I would say that unknown in the supernatural is meaningless, whereas in the natural world it makes perfect sense
I don't really see the difference.
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"Supernatural" and Naturalism
- Thread starter Meow Mix
- Start date
I don't really see the difference.
firedragon
Veteran Member
Thats exactly what I said you will say because you can't understand anything.
It has become a silly game, and you are of course looking for opportunities to now demean someone and feel good about yourself.
There are better and more meaningful ways of achieving that I am sure. Have a good one.
OP covers why this is problematic though: technically every future scientific discovery is "supernatural" if we go with this. But that clearly isn't what we mean when we say supernatural.
Why is 2058's Ultra Huge Mega Doomsday Hadron Collider's discovery that we know nothing about probably not considered supernatural if it breaks the Standard Model ("known natural law")?
Also I called it first, you heard it here first. 2058 is the year. Now if that happens is my foresight supernatural? (This is a joke, please for the love of god nobody answer this).
Thats exactly what I said you will say because you can't understand anything.
It has become a silly game, and you are of course looking for opportunities to now demean someone and feel good about yourself.
Have a good one.
Defining terms is not a silly game, it's a fundamental and necessary philosophical prerequisite for communication and cognizing.
Thats exactly what I said you will say because you can't understand anything.
It has become a silly game, and you are of course looking for opportunities to now demean someone and feel good about yourself.
Have a good one.
Also, nobody is asking anybody to define terms without reason. That would be a silly game, indeed. But that's not what's happening here, and pretending that's what's happening is disingenuous.
If a term is in question, sometimes that term's terms have to be defined. I granted "physical" without any complaint, if you recall.
firedragon
Veteran Member
Nice. Thanks.
firedragon
Veteran Member
Great. Thanks for everything. Cheers.
Nimos
Well-Known Member
I get what you are saying, but I think this is a flawed way to reason and is basically an argument for the opposite of scepticism and shifting the burden of proof.
"We have have to assume that everything exists in the supernatural, until we can prove that they don't. because they could turn out to be real."
That is pretty much exactly the opposite of saying, you make a claim you prove it, and if you can't then it's fair to be sceptical about it. The supernatural haven't been demonstrated, there are no methods to do it. Therefore the most rational position by default, must be to assume that ghosts and the supernatural doesn't exists.
If it turns out that they do exists, then they become part of the natural realm, and then we can start talking about "unknowns" depending on what data we collect about them, but until then "unknowns" for something that haven't been demonstrated to even exists, makes little sense to even talk about, I think.
We can do it for fun, like a writer describing what a fantasy monster can and can't do, and we can wonder if it could do this or that as well then.
Ya know...you could at least wait 30 minutes
before quoting a post I continually revise.
they're objective, reproducible, & observable by anyone.
(Let us set aside for the moment that mistakes happen.)
Ghosts, fairies, gods, & such are only experienced, & only
by some people. Analogy time....
I can show you how to heat treat 4140 steel on command.
But I can't summon dead Aunt Bertha, whose conversing
with us would violate the observation that sentience requires
physical circuitry (brain).
you knew....by deep insight into the natural world...or
access to some supernatural realm.
before quoting a post I continually revise.
Scientific discoveries differ (from the supernatural) in that
they're objective, reproducible, & observable by anyone.
(Let us set aside for the moment that mistakes happen.)
Ghosts, fairies, gods, & such are only experienced, & only
by some people. Analogy time....
I can show you how to heat treat 4140 steel on command.
But I can't summon dead Aunt Bertha, whose conversing
with us would violate the observation that sentience requires
physical circuitry (brain).
If your prediction comes to pass, we can discuss how
you knew....by deep insight into the natural world...or
access to some supernatural realm.
Secret Chief
Vetted Member
"beyond" does not mean "beyond for all time" as far as I understand it. It means currently. A computer in 1500, dark matter today. For me there is nothing supernatural. The natural encompasses all that is; a big lump of that we currently don't undertand or even know about. And possibly never will. But that ain't "supernatural."
Supernatural just means some ******** that someone might believe or espouse.
firedragon
Veteran Member
I think you should not respond to someone else's tangent. you see what I say?
Anyway, yes it was a nice topic. Good.
Have a good day, or a good nights sleep rather.
Peace.
Maybe an alternative approach is to classify some of the things that are considered to be 'not natural' and figure out some common properties.
For example, deities, ghosts, etc are disembodied consciousnesses.
Leprechauns are typically considered to be 'non-natural' because they can disappear and have some other 'magical' properties. In other words, they violate the conservation of mass.
Magic. Well, imagine a Harry Potter world where magic is a subject taught and used. There are rules for its use and if you violate those rules, you get a mess. That, to me, sounds like a science and the technology developed from it. So, in a Harry Potter world, magic is a branch of science and technology. It would be *natural*.
Now, one of the aspects of magic is that the personality of the technician is relevant for whether the technology works or not. A powerful wizard is able to do things that a weak one is not. This is different than what happens in our technology, where the personality of the technician does not have as much of a bearing (as long as the steps are executed correctly).
Any other contributions?
For example, deities, ghosts, etc are disembodied consciousnesses.
Leprechauns are typically considered to be 'non-natural' because they can disappear and have some other 'magical' properties. In other words, they violate the conservation of mass.
Magic. Well, imagine a Harry Potter world where magic is a subject taught and used. There are rules for its use and if you violate those rules, you get a mess. That, to me, sounds like a science and the technology developed from it. So, in a Harry Potter world, magic is a branch of science and technology. It would be *natural*.
Now, one of the aspects of magic is that the personality of the technician is relevant for whether the technology works or not. A powerful wizard is able to do things that a weak one is not. This is different than what happens in our technology, where the personality of the technician does not have as much of a bearing (as long as the steps are executed correctly).
Any other contributions?
leroy
Well-Known Member
A supernatural event is just an event that can´t happen according to natural laws.
.
Some laws are well established and well understood, any event that brakes such law would be likely a supernatural event.
Other laws are more controversial and are not well understood, so an event that contradicts this laws would fall in the category of “I don’t know”
Or you can just make a probability argument.
For example if you are in your house and the drawers start to open and close and you hear a voice that says “Boooo”
You can evaluate all possible explanations
1 it is a ghost (supernatural)
2 you are hallucinating
3 it’s a joke
4 the wind did it
Etc.
And determine the best explanation using common criteria like explanatory power , explanatory scope, parsimony, plausibility, consistency with previous knowledge etc.
This could be fun; I need to sleep so I only have this for now: the personality contributing to spells thing doesn’t seem all that different from things that require willpower though. Some people are better at mental diffey q and maybe casting a spell is like doing that. So I’m not sure how “non-natural” that aspect is.
Ok I had to come back to say one more thing.
This doesn’t work.
Either any of these could be sufficiently advanced technology (disembodied consciousness -> mind upload and holographics for instance), or just back to supernatural meaning unknown.
For any property you list here, a sufficiently advanced tech could probably do it.
if you say “there is an unknown mechanism, so the tech can’t do it,” then again… back to supernatural simply meaning unknown again.
Nope, I still employ skepticism.I get what you are saying, but I think this is a flawed way to reason and is basically an argument for the opposite of scepticism and shifting the burden of proof.
As I said....
"all categorizations are wrong, but some are
useful."
I refer to the George Box quote, altering it to be about how
we might be mistaken in our current understanding of things,
but that we can improve it.
We don't have to assume that at all.
We could be agnostic while recognizing differences
between the "natural" & the "supernatural".
My assumption is that ghosts aren't demonstrable to exist in
the natural world, thus placing them in the supernatural...
according to the applicable definitions.
As I said, if ghosts can be objectively observed, this
would change their status from supernatural to natural.
I get the impression that if someone can hypothesize a
scenario wherein we've mistakenly called something
supernatural, & it turns out to be natural, then the
terms "supernatural" & "natural" are meaningless.
I don't buy that.
It's still useful to use concepts & terms to describe
& understand our environment, mistakes notwithstanding.
It reminds me of the the faithful's criticism that science
is so often wrong...always changing it's theories. It's
an imperfect method. It's sometimes mistaken.
But it's still useful.
Or it means you left something out.
For example, in the early study of beta decay, it was found that conservation of energy was violated. The energy before the decay was always more than the energy after the decay. And, since conservation of energy was well understood and well established, this would make beta decay a supernatural event. Right?
Well, until Fermi came along and proposed a new particle, the neutrino. That neutrino was proposed to be a particle that carried the extra energy away.
Decades later, neutrinos were actually detected. Conservation of energy was saved and beta decays were (once again?) natural.
Or, take the orbit of Mercury as observed in the late 19th century. The planet was simply not obeying the well established and well understood law of gravity. Was something supernatural going on with Mercury?
One option tried was to postulate a new planet. It was even given a name: Vulcan.
But, it was later determined that the well understood law of gravity was slightly wrong. With Einstein's general relativity, the new law was consistent with the observations.
So was the motion of Mercury supernatural or not?
And, of course,
5. I don't have enough evidence to say.
Even Ardra's supernatural appearance to the
Ventaxians was discovered to be merely natural.
(Nerds know of whom I speak.)
Their categorizations of supernatural & natural were
useful to them. The fact that they needed updating
based upon a later better understanding doesn't
defeat the usefulness of the terms.
We humans must become accustomed to the fact
that we don't understand things perfectly. We make
mistakes. We learn. We improve our understanding.
Using terms like those under discussion is imperfect
but useful in our progress.
Last edited:
Allow me to repost what I've posted elsewhere:
The term “naturalism” has no very precise meaning in contemporary philosophy. Its current usage derives from debates in America in the first half of the last century. The self-proclaimed “naturalists” from that period included John Dewey, Ernest Nagel, Sidney Hook and Roy Wood Sellars. These philosophers aimed to ally philosophy more closely with science. They urged that reality is exhausted by nature, containing nothing “supernatural”, and that the scientific method should be used to investigate all areas of reality, including the “human spirit” (Krikorian 1944, Kim 2003).
So understood, “naturalism” is not a particularly informative term as applied to contemporary philosophers. The great majority of contemporary philosophers would happily accept naturalism as just characterized—that is, they would both reject “supernatural” entities, and allow that science is a possible route (if not necessarily the only one) to important truths about the “human spirit”.
Even so, this entry will not aim to pin down any more informative definition of “naturalism”. It would be fruitless to try to adjudicate some official way of understanding the term. Different contemporary philosophers interpret “naturalism” differently. This disagreement about usage is no accident. For better or worse, “naturalism” is widely viewed as a positive term in philosophical circles—only a minority of philosophers nowadays are happy to announce themselves as “non-naturalists”. This inevitably leads to a divergence in understanding the requirements of “naturalism”. Those philosophers with relatively weak naturalist commitments are inclined to understand “naturalism” in a unrestrictive way, in order not to disqualify themselves as “naturalists”, while those who uphold stronger naturalist doctrines are happy to set the bar for “naturalism” higher. [ source ]
So understood, “naturalism” is not a particularly informative term as applied to contemporary philosophers. The great majority of contemporary philosophers would happily accept naturalism as just characterized—that is, they would both reject “supernatural” entities, and allow that science is a possible route (if not necessarily the only one) to important truths about the “human spirit”.
Even so, this entry will not aim to pin down any more informative definition of “naturalism”. It would be fruitless to try to adjudicate some official way of understanding the term. Different contemporary philosophers interpret “naturalism” differently. This disagreement about usage is no accident. For better or worse, “naturalism” is widely viewed as a positive term in philosophical circles—only a minority of philosophers nowadays are happy to announce themselves as “non-naturalists”. This inevitably leads to a divergence in understanding the requirements of “naturalism”. Those philosophers with relatively weak naturalist commitments are inclined to understand “naturalism” in a unrestrictive way, in order not to disqualify themselves as “naturalists”, while those who uphold stronger naturalist doctrines are happy to set the bar for “naturalism” higher. [ source ]