What is nature
In the introduction to God and the New Atheism, the theologian John Haught says [p x]
The belief system that Dennett and the other new atheists subscribe to is known as “scientific naturalism.” Its central dogma is that only nature, including humans and our creations, is real; that God does not exist; and that science alone can give us complete and reliable knowledge of reality.
That’s not how I would put it. I think naturalism means that all there is is all there is. There is what there is. The theists’ claim of God seems to include the idea that it has to be mysterian.
Why not just think of it as part of what there is, and then ask how to figure it out – how to find it or argue for it or show how it is explanatory or necessary (having first carefully defined it)? Why not give it a less tendentious and more descriptive name?
The idea that there is nature, and then there is something else, or more, or outside nature, or supernature, or metaphysic, is a religious idea. Without it, one just thinks there is whatever there is, and we certainly don’t know all there is to know about it.
To us it doesn’t make sense to say there is what there is, and then there is something above or “beyond” that. How could there be? There is what there is. Maybe it includes some cosmic intelligence or design-force – but if it does, it is part of what there is.
We don’t think of nature as some closed boundaried thing with special attributes that distinguish it from some other thing on the other side of it. We just think of it as what there is. Not what we know there is – not what we’ve discovered of what there is – just what there is. So if you think god is, god has to be part of that.
What you say is formally true, but it doesn’t capture the religious feeling that there might be something which is qualitatively very different from nature as we observe it. It might, for instance, be related to our nature as an author is to her text, or as a computer programmer is to his program (which might be a simulation of a universe)
I don’t think any scientist argues that science can completely describe reality. But it sure does a better job of it than mythology.
David Evans,
So? Does this mean the supernatural exists?
Meh. For all conceivable entities X, either X leaves detectable traces in the phenomenal world, or it doesn’t. If it does, then that is evidence for X’s existence, and we can learn at least some of X’s attributes by observation — whether you call that “science” or just “using your head” is an irrelevant question of semantics. If it doesn’t leave traces, then who cares? In such case, saying “X exists” is not so much false as meaningless.Note that I said nothing about “nature”, “super-naturalism”, etc. — I have come to regard those categories as irrelevant and obfuscatory. Propose and define your X, specify what observations would confirm or refute its existence, or STFU.
I think there are several problems with the definition that Haught creates and then plops us all into.
Firstly, we have not established any formal framework where we all ‘fit in’. Secondly, scientific naturalism is not a belief system, more correctly it should be called ‘methodological naturalism’ which is a way to create justified knowledge not a system of knowledge itself. It is not a metaphysical system, and therefore Haught is being deliberately dishonest in using the term “scientific naturalism” when he should mean “metaphysical naturalism”. Metaphysical naturalism is a belief system, it says that nature is all there is. I have no problem with that, but it means that it separates science from theology, so that theologians think that their belief system is perfectly valid and beyond science. Clearly, science makes no metaphysical assumptions and therefore actively refutes supernatural claims. Take away metaphysical naturalism and science then clashes with theology and supernaturalism. It’s a subtle difference.
Again, a subtle use of language meant to establish a strawman position or a position which Haught can try and justify. We’re not dogmatic, religion is dogmatic. We’re sceptics but we accept methodological naturalism, which is free from metaphysics and relies on axiomatic premises such as mathematics and empiricism. This means we’re sceptics but with justified truths, which are not absolute and can be falsified.
Again, establishing a strawman, atheism is not a belief system it’s a sceptical position which rejects the belief in the existence of gods without evidence. There is a subtle but important difference, the difference between injustified belief and justified scepticism. The difference between dogmatic absolute beliefs and critical thinking.
Once again, subtle language leads to strawman positions. Science can never give complete knowledge, as there’s always something new or different to know, and some things are more reliable than others.
So I guess a more correct definition would be:
The belief system that Dennett and the other new atheists subscribe to is known as “scientific naturalism.” Its central dogma is that only nature, including humans and our creations, is real; that God does not exist; and that science alone can give us complete and reliable knowledge of reality.
Nature isn’t a part of reality or a type of reality, it IS reality. It is the religious that assert that there is more to reality than merely nature. They’re acting as though supernaturalism is self-evident and it’s up to atheists to show it doesn’t exist. Douglas Wilson made a similar claim in an appearance with Christopher Hitchens on Joy Behar’s show: God is evident and it’s the atheists job to show it doesn’t exist. It’s a bold move but not really a clever one.
Also, this sentiment seems to be yet another example of the old “science doesn’t tell us everything, therefore religion tells us something” argument. Science may not provide a complete and reliable knowledge or reality, but that still doesn’t mean religion provides anything more than bare assertions.
I think that the Barbara Forrest article linked to in the post “Ontology or epistemology” mentioned above really is of help here, in which she concludes that:
“the relationship between methodological and philosophical naturalism, while not one of logical entailment, is the only reasonable metaphysical conclusion given (1) the demonstrated success of methodological naturalism, combined with (2) the massive amount of knowledge gained by it, (3) the lack of a method or epistemology for knowing the supernatural, and (4) the subsequent lack of evidence for the supernatural. The above factors together provide solid grounding for philosophical naturalism, while supernaturalism remains little more than a logical possibility.”
Wow, what a great post. This totally restates something that I’ve thought for a long time, which is that the supernatural is a logical impossibility. The supernatural cannot possibly exist. You cannot have a set of things called “this is everything that exists” and then have something outside of it, else that thing outside would necessarily also exist and need to be in the set. It’s simple, really, not to mention undeniable.
Mankind’s modern religions are no different than witch doctors cowering at the lightning and thunder.
Modern man persists in confusing “that which I do not understand” with “OMFG THERE MUST BE AN OMNISCIENT OMNIPRESENT OMNIPOTENT DEITY WHO EXISTS IN ANOTHER REALM OTHER THAN THE ONE I CALL REALITY!!! Because that’s the only POSSIBLE explanation for what I can’t explain!!!!”
Is it because humans are (some of us, anyway) innately arrogant and prideful and cannot simply admit that they are ignorant, that they do not know the answer?
…and now I see that Ophelia has already commented (July 13th) on the greatness of Forrests article….
I’m a little annoyed at philosophers that spend so much time trying to prove things in their own head that they forget that their mind is a physical thing, and as much a part of nature as anything else. I’d like to see them argue for the existence of some strange, transmatter mind when they haven’t had a few meals. The mind runs on glucose, and so do all those weird dreams, trips, and imaginings.
Samuel Johnson did it best, when asked to refute a bishops decree that the world wasn’t real, by saying “I refute it thus” and kicking a stone (hopefully at the bishop).
Michael Fugate: My language was deliberately tentative. I do not myself believe either of the scenarios I mentioned. But if this universe were a computer simulation it might make sense to describe the system (and its programmer) running the simulation as supernatural in relation to us. It would not necessarily be bound by our laws of physics and might be effectively omnipotent in relation to us.
Eamon Knight: “STFU”? Is this the language of the courteous and refined gnu atheists of whom we hear so much?
I admire science, and regard the scientific method as our best method for finding out about the universe. But if our universe were a competently written simulation there might be no way of discovering the fact – except, perhaps, by seeing the odd glitch which would not be repeatable or falsifiable. Does this mean the idea is nonsense? Will it still be nonsense when we ourselves are capable of simulating a baby universe?
Dr. Johnson, himself a lexicographer, would also be offended by the rambling inelegance of Haught’s definition.
What you say is formally true, but it doesn’t capture the religious feeling that there might be something which is qualitatively very different from nature as we observe it. It might, for instance, be related to our nature as an author is to her text, or as a computer programmer is to his program (which might be a simulation of a universe)
On the other hand, it might be related to delusional thinking (the feeling that there might be something).
Science, of course, does not claim to “give us complete and reliable knowledge of reality”. Science rather says, “based on all the evidence we have gathered to date, this would appear to be how things are”.
David Evans:
And there is an invisible dragon in my garage, completely impervious to empirical inquiry. I know because I feel it. Obviously these are both ideas we should take very seriously.
Oh, go to hell. Second post and you’re already on the tone trolling kick.
@David Evan:Eamon Knight: “STFU”? Is this the language of the courteous and refined gnu atheists of whom we hear so much?
I hadn’t heard that, myself, but then I tend to hang with a rough crowd (like, there’s this biker bar called Pharyngula…). Nonetheless, my general observation is that sometimes we can be as courteous as you like, and sometimes we can be plain-spoken, blunt, even crude — an axis which is precisely orthogonal to being wrong or right.
And yes, I regard claims for which there can be no possible answer as so much vocus flatus. If the hypothetical super-beings of the hypothetical super-universe in which ours is hypothetically embedded want make their existence known, presumably they could do so. Unless and until they do — or at least, in the absence of a coherent hypothesis of what it might look like if and when — speculation on such is an act of mental masturbation. (Oh, I’m sorry — there I go being crude again. My bad.)
[…] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Thetis, Ophelia Benson. Ophelia Benson said: What is nature http://dlvr.it/74jsc […]
Hi SwedishChef! Good to see you. :- )
Yes, I think Forrest’s article is great.
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/barbara_forrest/naturalism.html
David
Sure. But my post doesn’t deny that. Then the simulation would be what there is. It still wouldn’t be something other than nature (if we understand nature as what there is). I included the part about not knowing everything about what there is. Of course we don’t know everything about what there is – we can’t possibly – most of it is too far away. But it’s still the case that what there is is what there is.
Great post. I’ve been thinking the same thing for a while – that supernaturalism is meaningless. I would not even give it logical possibility, but even if it were possible, it would be a belief of the gaps, what’s left over when the natural world has been completely sorted out.
Man what an interesting group of commenters Benson, you do great work.
I know its not adding, but Benson and readers of Benson give me Faith and hope when I feel like humans will never learn to stop loving ideas outside of what exists.
Apparently acronyms are impolite now! Do what he say do what he say! Perhaps a few asterisks in there will lessen the horror: ST*U. Better?
As for the computer simulation, that would be a hypothesis without evidence, and arguing for it would be arguing from ignorance.
We must remember that theologians are not philosophers but the complete opposite! They start from the premise and then seek any justification or loophole they can to defend it, including lying. It’s all fair game to them. Their psychology is not about the beauty of truth, or the love of searching for truth, it is psychological warfare in their mind, and the monarch they protect is the absolute truth of God.
Thanks vic.
Yes,
mythe commenters here make me simper proudly. They are a Credit to the Organization.Another thing I wanted to point out is that even if a supernatural realm existed, we couldn’t even know it existed. So how could we care about it? It’s like Karen Armstrong’s view of God: “it’s incomprehensible to the human mind but it sure is important to talk about it.” What? How could it be possible to care about something that cannot be even understood? The God of these people may indeed exist, but it might as well not.
Oh, I would say that theologians practice “pretend philosophy.” It’s the philosophy of a fictional universe, like Lawrence Krauss’ The Physics of Star Trek was an examination of the physics of a fictional universe. The key difference is that Krauss DOESN’T ACTUALLY BELIEVE such a universe is real. Haught (presumably) feels differently about his fictional universe.
Ophelia, is the Nefarious Organisation of Materialists and Atheists (NOMA)? Oh wait…..
Egbert:
There you gnu atheists go again, dissing Sophisticated Theology (TM)! Don’t you know that Sophisticated Theology has the most refined arguments?!
On a serious note, I had a faint memory that I’ve heard someone explain to Haught why his characterization of naturalism, which Ophelia quotes, is misguided. I searched my memory after reading this post—then it came to me. Oh, yeah! It was Dan Dennett himself who explained to Haught’s face why he’s all mixed up on this! (See 1:30 to 5:03 of this clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6u3YXvDUqMc&NR=1 )
I guess Haught just forgot?
I really don’t like this way of defining “nature” and “naturalism” — all it does is make the term vacuous, and force us to find a new way to distinguish proposals like disembodied souls and God from the ordinary world as we all know it. I use the term “reality” as equivalent to “whatever is.” What do you have against reality??
Defining away the term “supernatural” by allowing that naturalism can encompass God always seems to me like redefining God to mean “whatever it is you believe in.” You can now get everyone on your side — but it’s a Pyrrhic victory. And this sort of semantic reshuffling is very likely to lead to equivocations.
I just got into a another long argument on this topic on Pharyngula, but it’s probably not fair to complain about your definition without offering a reasonable alternative.
The distinction between naturalists and supernaturalists seems to rest on the fact that one side has a bottom-up “crane-on-crane” view of reality — one which gives mind and meaning no cosmic significance — and the other side has a top-down “skyhook” view of reality — one which puts human concerns and characteristics at the very center. As Creationist Christian Bill Dembski put it, the fundamental divide comes down to how we answer this question: “Is reality fundamentally mindful and purposive or mindless and material?” Or, put another way, is mind an emergent property of matter or is matter an emergent property of mind?
Richard Carrier proposed a general rule to distinguish naturalism from supernaturalism:
So what does that definition do? It picks out these things, and doesn’t just label them ‘supernatural’ — it explains why: disembodied souls, ghosts, ESP, Psychokensis, magical correspondences, vitalism, karma, prana, God, cosmic conscioiusness, mind as “energy force,” spirit beings, a universal tendency towards the harmonic balance of Good and Evil, a “progressive force” that drives evolution, Higher States of existence, mind/body substance dualism, essences, Platonic forms, and holistic idealistic monism.
It seems to me that if any of these proposed phenomenon are true, it would effectively turn the naturalist, materialist, reductionist scientific view of reality on its head. It makes sense, then, to have some useful terms that follow along with this eventuality, and makes naturalism falsifiable by allowing the supernatural an ability to establish itself. And, allowing naturalism the ability to say that supernaturalists are wrong.
It’s easy to quibble with the definition, and find gray areas. I know. But it at least tries to be clear and specific enough to help with communication and understanding. And it also allows us to use science, and the discoveries of science, to rule out at least some of these things by something other than semantic legerdemain. There’s nothing in the methods of science which, up front, rule out the possibility of ESP, or ghosts, or God. We can currently be confident in ruling them out at least partly because they have either failed tests and predictions, or go against the model which we’ve collectively built up through a lot of hard work and that ongoing commitment to try to avoid fooling ourselves.
No, but such a system could only exist within a world that works according to some reasonably constant rules of its own, comparable to our “laws of physics” (otherwise they wouldn’t have anything like computers or programming or even a “they”), and we’d exist as memory patterns within that system. So it doesn’t really refute the idea that everything that exists is part of one reality, even if we are mistaken about its nature.
Sastra – well I think the term “reality” is more loaded than “what there is.” It needs more defending. I’m not a philosopher, so I don’t want to do the work of defending it. “What there is” seems to me to be a helpfully crude way of putting it.
I’m not “defining away the term “supernatural” by allowing that naturalism can encompass God” – I wouldn’t dream of it! My point is cruder, plus I specifically said it shouldn’t be called god. But if god does exist, then it belongs in the category of things that exist, not in some other meaningless category. Obviously I don’t think it does exist, but if it did, it would be in the box of jumble along with everything else, not in some palatial gilded thingy called Super.
In other words, Haught was trying to insinuate that “nature” is a small impoverished category and that scientists are stooopid to say only it is real. I was trying to say that it’s not a small impoverished category, it’s everything there is.
I think the “natural/supernatural” division is meaningless. It doesn’t matter if reality is controlled by minds or not; if it is controlled by minds there must still be laws that allow such control, and those laws can be subject to scientific investigation. “Supernaturalism” is nothing but a belief of the gaps. Whatever we discover that exists, that no-longer becomes part of the supernatural realm. So, supernaturalism becomes an anti-definition: we don’t know what it is, or where it is, but it’s wherever we haven’t yet looked, and whatever we haven’t yet found. That kind of “idea of the gaps” is as dishonest as “gods of the gaps”.
There is simply what there is, and the only way to have any confidence about what there is science. And, I don’t care if that makes me a “scientism”-ist.
I’m drawn to Carrier’s definition, and I can see value in it (I think theists buy it), but I can’t see that it works. I don’t see why the natural could not include such immaterial phenomena, To define them as supernatural is to just arbitrarily partition off a bunch of (potential) reality as supernatural. The point of a naturalist (if that term must be used) is that his ontology is based on the best discoveries of methodological naturalism, so, as a consequence is contingent. Inconvenient that may be, but unavoidable, surely, if one is a fallibilist?
This is why the reasonable person cannot accept evidence for the supernatural. As Hume said. That doesn’t mean that it doesn’t exist, but a lawless realm of reality sounds pretty incoherent to me.
It’s not that we want to get rid of God or define God in a comprehensible way, it is all about ‘God’ claims. That’s all that is important. All claims are subject to the methods of reason or science. God becomes just another claim from many other claims. And since there is no true knowledge beyond reason and science, it is a matter of whether the claims are true, and not whether God is true. Since the claims aren’t justified by empirical means, the claims are devalued to below even hypothesis (misunderstanding of alternative hypothesis like God is a fictional character). Theologians absolute hate this reductionist view, because God becomes a ‘God’ claim. They’re absolutely dead in the water when it comes to methodological naturalism.
Who said the supernatural is supposed to be lawless, or that science can’t investigate or discover the supernatural? Don’t mix definitions up. If ESP is in the “supernatural” category, you can run tests on it, and found an entire discipline called “parapsychology” to study it. The fact that parapsychology is currently filled with sad and sorry people desperately trying to find an effect that can’t be found doesn’t mean that it couldn’t be found in principle.
Ophelia said:
But by defining it as “everything there is,” you don’t seem to be telling Haught that there is no good reason to believe in the supernatural, and that only the natural exists. Aren’t you just quarreling with his terminology? If God exists, don’t call it supernatural. If the universe is a fundamentally magic, moral enchanted place with ghosts and realms of mystical enlightenment and science finds this out, then naturalism is intact and unaffected. It would just be … different.
I don’t see the point. It makes naturalism unfalsifiable, and makes atheists seem even more dogmatic. Or, maybe, we just have a fear of certain words.
Yes, for the moment I’m just quarrelling with his terminology. I like to take small bites.
Sastra
Yes, which is another reason for not using the term. But, what can you do; theists like it, and so do some non-theists.
I don’t see how methodological naturalism is doing anything but examining *all* the evidence we can find for reality. What attribute of a phenomenon would define it as supernatural? If it’s magic, that’s lawless, isn’t it? Hume talked about ‘violation of natural laws’, but I’m open to suggestions for what makes something supernatural. Frankly, if it doesn’t violate laws, it doesn’t impress me as particularly supernatural! More importantly, I would wonder why theists would be impressed but just another lawful part of reality.
But more seriously – I don’t see why I’m not telling Haught that there is no good reason to believe in the supernatural. On the contrary, I’m saying that nature=whatever there is, and therefore the supernatural gots nothing in it. That’s a good reason not to believe in it.
Sastra-
The supernatural has to be ultimately lawless, or else what is the point of it? The supernatural is really just a feeling. It’s a need to feel that we aren’t powerless in this big frightening universe. And so, there has to be a “behind the scenes” that we can appeal to to put things right, and where we can live forever. The problem is that there is no way to ever really know how big the stage of nature is, so anyone claims to know where “behind the scenes” is and what is in it is not to be trusted.
One of the objectives of the Scientific Method is to find out how far we can get using the natural explanations produced by the Scientific Method. It’s central dogma is that it has no dogma; all must be established by evidence. No assumptions are made about supernatural beings, just a call for evidence. No takers on that, so far.
Maybe there are two approaches the gnu atheists have taken to justify analyzing the God hypothesis in the light of modern science:
1.) There is no reason we can’t apply the scientific method to supernatural claims. People who say that science studies only the natural domain and supernatural claims are outside of science’s jurisdiction are wrong.
2.) We can’t use science on the supernatural? Fine, then. Take this: there is no supernatural. Everything is natural, including, if it exists, God. Since we can use science on natural things, then we can use science on God. QED.
Is this what’s going on? I don’t know. Both approaches seem to be going after the same thing. How do we tell which one is better? Do we need to all get on the same page, here?
“I think naturalism means that all there is is all there is. There is what there is.”
I’d say rather that naturalism as a metaphysical thesis is the claim that what there is *isn’t* divided into the natural and supernatural, where the supernatural has it’s own special, inscrutable laws and entities and has one-way influence and control over the natural. There’s of course no scientific or otherwise empirical evidence for such a division, which is why naturalism is a very good bet given current knowledge. However, the possibility of such a root division in what exists can’t be ruled out a priori, which is why I think of naturalism as an empirically plausible conjecture, http://www.naturalism.org/Close_encounters.htm
Carrier’s definition of naturalism seems to me a bit arbitrary given that we also can’t rule out the possibility that there might exist categorically non-physical entities in nature, according to some specification that may not be apparent to us now. Philosopher of mind David Chalmers, for instance, is a naturalistic dualist who thinks that consciousness might involve mental phenomena that connect to the physical via psycho-physical laws. No evidence for this, but again we can’t rule it out a priori.
Steve Zara #38 wrote:
I think the “point” of it is to make reality into a structure built around human concerns, and make us part of a network of meaning. The universe cares, it is not indifferent. Most supernatural beliefs seem to follow their own regularities — sometimes very strict regularities. I have yet to meet any supernaturalist who thinks their views make the universe chaotic. On the contrary, they think the supernatural imposes even more order on things — often, a moral order. And what are laws but descriptions of regularities? It would be interesting to see if a supernatural system could be described with math.
Wait, no it wouldn’t. I’ve seen some mathematical “proofs” of God. I’m no good at math, but I’ve been told by people who are that they are painful. Maybe, though, that’s just because they’re always wrong.
Yes, given the right evidence it is always possible that we may need Dr. McCoy to come in and say “It’s a deity, Jim, but not as we know it.” I don’t expect such evidence any time soon, but we must always keep it in mind. Feynman once remarked about the theory that angels pushed the planets around their orbits saying, “we now see that this theory has been modified.”
@Tom Clark
Thanks for weighing in; I think you had an exchange with Carrier on this very topic?
That’s not bad. What do theists say to this? I can imagine some disagreeing. It still means that Hume stands; no reasonable person could accept any event as supernatural, even if it came from this realm. How could it be identified as supernatural?
Tom Clark #41 wrote:
Maybe Carrier would simply say that Chalmers is mistaken, and is actually a variation of a ‘supernatural dualist.’ I suppose it might depend on how purely mental these mental phenomenon are, and how special to mentality the laws are. And whether they would now “explain” life after death or something.
Or, maybe he might just say that Chalmers’ claim falls into a gray area that doesn’t quite fit into either of his definitions. I’m not sure that particularly bothers me: reality is so fuzzy, I’d maybe be a little suspicious of any definition that is too pat. I still think it an improvement on empty distinctions between inside/outside nature, or what science can/can’t study.
I agree that naturalism ought to be falsifiable.
“I have yet to meet any supernaturalist who thinks their views make the universe chaotic.”
That’s not what I meant. It is that the supernatural has to be able to be beyond any rules we can think of. It has to be more powerful that any laws we discover. The supernatural could not be the ultimate security blanket otherwise.
Is this what’s going on? I don’t know. Both approaches seem to be going after the same thing. How do we tell which one is better? Do we need to all get on the same page, here?
I prefer a different approach, which is that the supernatural/natural division is meaningless. There is simply stuff that exists, and we have to find out ways to investigate that stuff that mean we aren’t fooling ourselves. This may be Ophelia’s approach, or it may go a bit further, I’m not sure. I see the “supernatural” as a ploy; an attempt to set a philosophical boundary to protect vulnerable ideas from science.
Grrr! Metaphysical naturalism isn’t a dogma in any sense of the word! It is simply the most reasonable viewpoint to espouse, and furthermore is only provisional! (Why is it that provisionally assenting to the truth of a proposition is so mis-understood?!)
Check out these two essays which argue for naturalism in a philosophically rigorous way.
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/keith_augustine/thesis.html
http://www.infidels.org/library/modern/richard_carrier/rea.html
Additionally, “scientific naturalism” (although I prefer “metaphysical” or “philosophical” naturalism as a term), is no where close to the claim that “science alone can give us complete and reliable knowledge of reality.” No one that I’ve ever heard has claimed that science can give us complete knowledge of the world; a few Gnu Atheists may be inclined to claim that only science can give us knowledge of the world, but whether science is the whole of rationality or only part of it (as Massimo Pigliucci argues, for example) is irrelevant to Haught’s point. Whether one takes a scientistic view, or a philosophical view, Haught is still full of nonsense.
Sastra: You (and Carrier) seem to be defining “supernatural” as substance dualism (or something fairly similar). If so, then we’ve already got a perfectly good (and more precise, and untainted by historical usage) term to use, and “supernatural” is superfluous. And if mental substance behaves lawfully, then it is investigable by science.
This clown John Haught is clearly setting up a straw man by claiming that the “new atheists” (are you as tired as I am of hearing that most meaningless of expressions?) subscribe to a belief system. Which then allows him to dismiss them as just being “faith-based” too, and thus no better than those they criticize.
If you buy that argument, you are falling for his trick. You shouldn’t. Being fooled into debating his claims is a pure waste of time. One should either demolish his fraudulent premise or forget him altogether.
I think I’m with Sastra on the notion of the supernatural, and its historical usage is the entire point. We’re actually pretty familiar with supernatural entities. They permeate our culture, from the Bible to the popular song, television, movies, books, Sunday services. Nearly anything desirable is designated a miracle; every touchdown and home run is credited to The Big Guy Up There. Most Americans believe in angels and demons. The common theme is that willful entities, unconstrained by everyday reality, intervene in our lives from time to time.
It’s not a trivial finding that this does not appear to be the case. Methodological naturalism is not a keystone of science, it’s an incidental observation: it turns out we don’t need a fudge factor for divine influence.
Perhaps the worst problem with the accommodationist approach that the natural and supernatural are necessarily disjoint, guaranteeing the compatibility of science and religion, is that it’s entirely unsatisfactory to believers who insist God makes a difference in this world, meaning that God willfully changes things occasionally. They’re not going to agree that He can’t, even if we concede the conceptual possibility of an eternal soul.
It seems to me that there’s a problem with terms like supernatural, spiritual, (and “mental” when used to describe substance rather than merely processes). If there’s nothing empirical to which the word refers, there’s no objective way to settle disputes on what the word could mean; one can only discuss whether or not a particular definition describes something of interest. I’ve overheard a disturbingly heated discussion about whether the characters in Twilight are “really” vampires; since there are no vampires and Twilight is fiction, one cannot appeal to anything other than tradition or common usage to find a convenient definition of “vampire”. The word “vampire” gains its meaning through understanding its relationship to some hypothetical world where the things are actually present and observable.
Now, it may be possible to objectively define something which is merely theoretical, by using empirical criteria. So perhaps one could say that a vampire is a human being that has suffered clinical death, drinks blood, is harmed by sunlight, fears garlic and crosses, has elongated canines, and can spread this disease through bites. Then one could talk in a limited way about vampires, although certain questions (“How does sunlight harm a vampire?”) would be unanswerable and fairly meaningless without an existing and empirically observable vampire to study. Some answers would be more or less plausible, more or less connected with the workings of the real world. But the more they stray into theoretical or fictional concepts like “vampire” and away from criteria grounded in the empirically testable, the more all answers become equally speculative and unjustified.
Non-empirical criteria are even worse; defining a zombie as a “soulless being” does not help you to recognize one unless one knows what a soul is (at least well enough to detect one). The definition is vacuous without that understanding.
Until the category “things we know to be supernatural” can connect to the empirical world, it’s fairly useless to define a natural world as being merely whatever is in opposition to that idea. I think it’s far more reasonable to say “everything we know about right now has certain properties” (for example, subject to mathematical laws such as the laws of physics) and go ahead and say that the things with these properties are “nature”. Then the claim “something is supernatural” could be understood if and only if someone determines how to empirically distinguish between things with these properties and things without (some of) them (hopefully producing examples of such objects in the process). Until then, things like the supernatural or psychic “energy” or souls or mental “substance” are all rooted in mere vague collections of ideas people find appealing to combine; one can’t really say anything for certain about these concepts generally, only about the particular versions of them which people give empirically grounded criteria for recognizing.
This is of course a problem for the theology about big, fluffy, abstract God as well (not so much a problem with Zeus or Thor or even Yahweh which supposedly hung/hang around to actually do observable things in the real world). If you can’t actually show me anything he’s done, or any possibility for looking at him, he may as well be a fantasy you’re speculating about. “Does God let unbaptized infants into heaven?” is just a disturbing version of “What’s Superman’s favorite color?” (Or, as Andrew B. noted, Star Trek physics).
I think I’m with Sastra on the notion of the supernatural, and its historical usage is the entire point. We’re actually pretty familiar with supernatural entities.
The mental/non-mental distinction is very useful in explaining how people develop ideas about supernatural entities, but I’m not sure that it’s correct to elevate it to a theory of ultimate causation. If I yell at my car when it won’t start, I am unconsciously attributing it some mental characteristics (a similar category mistake is probably at the heart of most supernatural beliefs), but am I expressing a belief that reality is fundamentally mindful?
The fact that there are no vampires is actually relevant. Their purported properties are not.
Agency is the issue. Does God mess with us? Do angels and demons load the dice? Are we playthings of the gods? Je n’avais pas besoin de cette hypothese-la [I didn’t have no need of that there hypothesis].
If there are supernatural beings messing with us then science doesn’t work. We’re at their mercy. Science does seem to work, though, and we can draw certain conclusions from that.
There are all sorts of things we don’t know, of course, which keeps life interesting. WTF is dark matter, anyway?
What’s odd is that there is a prevalent belief that we need new physics to explain consciousness. See, for example, the comments to Sean Carroll’s The Laws Underlying the Physics of Everyday Life Are Completely Understood and its successors. It’s apparently widely acknowledged that a working brain requires assistance from dimensions as yet only dimly discerned, and presumably entirely distinct from the average rodent intellect.
For any who are under the misapprehension that a simulation of reality becomes a reality let me disabuse you of the notion. A simulation is a mathematical description of some aspect of the real world. Unlike the real world which originates change from within, a simulation in order to change must be stopped, the parameters reconfigured and then the program restarted.
Thus a simulation needs an outside controller. The real world does not. Whether there is an outside creator is a question that is unanswerable without evidence which we do not have. The opinions of atheists, agnostics and theologians may all be wrong but at least the atheists and agnostics are grounding their opinions in rationality; the theologians are grounding their opinions in fantasy. The sooner theology is relegated to a branch of mythology and taught as such the better.
And yes, if we can describe a baby universe mathematically we can simulate it now
Let us not forget what is implied in John Haught’s “science alone”: that religious people who do not reject science carry all the epistemological assumptions that us naturalists do, in addition a bunch of ad-hoc assumptions that only exist to get around the fact there’s no evidence for a god. They talk about our less complex epistemology as if it’s a defect, when in fact it is a great advantage, as they have no greater understanding of the world despite their more complex epistemology.
I am just a bit concerned at the direction the discussion has taken — well, from the very start! I wonder whether anything is being said. If what we are saying is that what there is is what there is, then we have a tautology, but do we have much more?
I am just reading over Philip Kitcher’s piece in 50 Voices of Disbelief. There, speaking of what many people are tempted to call “religious” experiences, which are taken as intimations of Something Beyond, he writes:
Of course, those entities would then be parts of what there is, but is it altogether true to say, without knowing, that they would be like the parts that we now know? I am just a little worried that we are may be claiming to know something which we are not in a position at the moment to say that we know.
One of Haught’s mistakes, and possibly the reason he sees dogma where there is none is in confusing “can” and “does.” Where he says “science alone can give us complete and reliable knowledge of reality” ought to read “science alone *does* give us reliable (but not complete) knowledge of reality.” Its quite typical of theologians to make us atheists sound absolute in our approach to naturalism in order to pretend there is something there (god) we’re missing in our obstinacy. It lets him get away with not explaining and demonstrating the effectiveness of his “other ways of knowing.” Yet, until he does, we’re fully justified in sticking with my modification of his definition and doing so doesn’t make us dogmatic in the least.
@Eric
The very notion of claiming “I do not know” is unthinkable! People would have to admit to being wrong! That religious belief isn’t based on prophecy, supernaturalism, gnosis, or sound theological principles but on complete ignorance! Perish the thought.
But the empiricists, scientists, intellectuals were so used to admitting to things like “I do not know” that they became guilt-ridden with self-doubt. Hence why most sceptics are a little timid to speak up, please pass the salt.
Over the last century, we’ve learned so much about physics and biology that we now have a bit of self-confidence about what we can say, even though we add the little “probably” in there. But how dare we ever challenge such certain opinions as God or creation! With our scientific knowledge!
This is basically what we’re facing. We are sceptics with confidence! And the religious people are sceptical about scepticism, certain about the uncertainty of science.
In their minds, opinion is the monarch over reason. In our minds, reason is the monarch over opinion.
Oh but I’m not saying that. I said the opposite. I think one advantage of the idea that naturalism=saying that what there is is what there is, is that it reminds us that we don’t know everything that there is, to put it mildly.
But I don’t see religion as having any real relationship to that category of Stuff We Don’t Know about what there is. Religion tells stories; what there is really is – it’s not stories. It could be weird beyond imagination, but that doesn’t mean religion has a good shot at guessing what it is.
It is (I think) of vital importance also to realize that our gracious hostess has made a mistake: science does indeed use a metaphysics – those debating over whether lawfulness is the answer to demarcating the allegedly supernatural from the natural are using a metaphysical category. The answer to bad, wooly, theologically inspired nonsense metaphysics is not no metaphysics (because conceptual and cultural space at least abhor vacua) but better, science-and-technology oriented metaphysics. This approach is taken by several philosophers who have divergent but ultimately largely compatible views. M. Bunge and D. Armstrong have the most general work in this area but the field is pretty vast. There are also many “neutral” views which could be pressed into service.
As for “supernatural”, I think the term is sort of one of “family resemblance”. Most views (disembodied spirits, gods, cartesian minds, etc.) run afould of various very basic and well established (now!) laws, most notably conservation ones. (See Bunge or Armstrong on what laws are.) Even Descartes was confronted with this, and pointed out that Descartes’ own conservation law allowed for non-conservation of *direction* in motion. Unfortunately, Descartes was simply wrong; the true conservation laws include one of momentum, which rules out this hypothesis. At least the suggestion was testable; which is not always true – sometimes the claims aren’t even logically or semantically well-formed.
I see the problem as a misunderstanding about whether “naturalism” is an inclusive category meant to contain everything found, or an exclusive one defined by what is not allowed. I think it’s the former, an “open architecture” scheme that says whatever proves itself is in, whether any dualist/naturalist likes it or not. The question here is what counts as “proving itself”.
Dualists have never answered this except by saying what doesn’t prove itself can’t be ruled out either, which somehow rules it (what?) in. I say you don’t have to rule out supernatural entities, you just stop assuming them and they go away, like old gods no one prays to. There no reason to have a separate argument for every imagined entity. That’s the point of Russell’s Teacup, isn’t it? Dualists think arguing for the possibility of the Teacup argues for the Teacup, which misses the point so badly one might think it’s deliberate.
Theists argue against the exclusivist version of naturalism, not the open one. They do this in part because they find it easier to cope with and argue against, not because it’s what naturalists believe. This is a kind of “mirroring”, where you imagine your opponent resembles you while you’re blind to the difference that matters most.
But I didn’t say science doesn’t use a metaphysics. I’m not sure I think it does, but that’s partly because I’m never sure what people mean by the word, especially since it originally meant just “next to physics” as in “next to the physics scroll on the shelf.” But anyway, I didn’t say here that science doesn’t use a metaphysics; I left the subject alone.
“The idea that there is nature, and then there is something else, or more, or outside nature, or supernature, or metaphysic,”
Perhaps I was mislead by the final word; people often use “metaphysics” as a near synonym for “religion” or the like … As for what I mean by it, I mean the same thing that is suggested by the study of Aristotle’s work we now know by that name. The content, is however, different, since we know the basic categories and concepts common to all scientific fields (etc.) having to do with the most general fetaures of reality are not what he thought they were.
Ah right. That is how I was using it there – it has invisible quotation marks on it. :- )
I know of people who use “metaphysics” to mean just plain woo. I’ve seen it in bookshops marking the alt med/New Age shelves. Srsly.
I am reminded of Douglas Adams. “Isn’t it enough to see that a garden is beautiful without having to believe that there are fairies at the bottom of it too?”
Ophelia, I hope you’re being coy that you don’t know what metaphysics is (funny as that comment is!) If one holds a naturalist viewpoint, one ought at least to know what metaphysics is, since (metaphysical/philosophical/scientific) naturalism is a metaphysical viewpoint, since the content of the viewpoint has to do with what sorts of things exist (ontology). You’re not a logical positivist are you?! ;D
C.Dude, I didn’t say I don’t know what it is (I’m not sure I think it’s an is!), I said I’m never sure what people mean by the word. That’s partly ignorance but partly because I think some people use the word to equivocate. I could be wrong though. If so, it’s wholly ignorance!
People generally use the word ‘metaphysics’ to mean ‘ontology’ (I think), so in that sense any field of enquiry at least implies an ontology, whether it’s really worked out or not. Like Hawking’s ‘model dependent realism.’
I know I’ve lost the thread because I jumped in and then left for awhile. But when I suggested that perhaps we need to leave something open as the possible object of religious knowledge (as distinct from scientific/empirical knowledge), I had in mind basically what Kitcher entertains the possibility of, what Arthur Peacocke stakes his life on, namely, that there may be something that corresponds to the experiences that people have when they speak of religious experience.
For example, Eric Reitan in his book Is God a Delusion? A reply to religion’s cultured despisers (trying unconvincingly to be a modern Schleiermacher), takes his departure from religious experience, then uses the cosmological argument to suggest that it is reasonable to take some religious experiences as veridical… etc. (well, you get the point).
Of course this doesn’t work. But I suppose the point is that there may come a time — a sceptic might want to suppose that there is a logical possibility here — that it will be possible to distinguish veridical from non-veridical religious experiences, like Schleiermacher’s absolute dependence, or Otto’s numinous. I don’t think it will happen, but I think we have to acknowledge that there is a possibility that someone might come up with the means of verifying something like that, even though we can’t now imagine anyone doing it, and that the “reality” it would confirm is somehow at another level, or in another dimension, from what we now speak of in terms of nature, as what there is.
I feel a bit uncomfortable tautologously denying this possibility. It was once thought that the atom was strictly, as the Greek word implies, unsplitable, uncutable, but the deeper particle physics goes the more the atom seems to fade away from that hard unsplitable form into energy fields. Since James religious people have been talking in terms of religious experience. I don’t think there’s even a way of individuating an experience as being uniquely religious, but it is at least a logical possibility. Can we simply define that away? I don’t know, but I think it’s probably worth thinking about as an exercise in metaphysics! Not a whole lot hangs on this, except the question of dogmatism. I assume that’s why Jerry Coyne always keeps it as an outside chance that it might be possible to convince him that there is a god. I’m not so sanguine as to the means as Jerry seems to be, but I think the possibility needs to be an open one.
That one bugs me, too. There is an assumption anyone positing an incorporeal intelligence makes: that a mind can exist without a brain (if so, then they must be able to explain how it could be possible), which is perhaps because of an oversight on their part of an important fact: minds are products of evolution. Minds do not get a special exemption from the Tree of Life on this planet. “From so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved,” including minds.
That one bugs me, too.
The position that the mind is “only” the processing of information by brain cells seems to be considered an extreme philosophical point of view, and question begging. But, in reality, it has to be the default position of anyone who considers reason and science valid. The idea of vitalism was demolished centuries ago, but some seem to bizarrely think that the brain was excluded from the laws of physics. It isn’t. It just isn’t reasonable to assume that there is anything in religious experiences except thoughts arising from biological neural networks. We have to base all our understanding of human experience on the pure physicality of the mind, unless centuries of physics is shown to be utterly wrong. It seems that theology and much of philosophy is hundreds of years out of date.
Eric
I don’t see any of this as ‘denying the possibility’ of some as yet undefined reality at another level, unless it’s incoherent. It is about denying the possibility of accepting evidence for it, if one is being reasonable. For me, that is not even a matter of opinion, just fact. If evidence for the supernatural accumulated (and no-one has told me how such phenomena could be identified as supernatural) it would become part of our canon of evidence about reality, and even if it’s at some other level, it would still be part of reality. The quantum reality is different to the macro reality we experience, but we see no reason to call it supernatural. So, I have to ask again, why would we call anything supernatural?
Because we are fallibilist, we can’t deny any possible reality, that is coherent; that would rule out a lawless other reality. So a theist can claim this ‘other’ lawful reality causes ructions in ‘our’ natural laws but we cannot detect that other reality (per Tom Clark’s definition). We could detect those phenomena, but not be able to see the cause. Without a way of identifying these phenomena as emanating from this other reality, we have no option, as reasonable people, to attribute it to ‘natural’ causes, based on the massive weight of induced evidence. And then, even if this other reality exists, it’s still part of reality, which can be part of a scientist’s ontology, since reality’s all she’s interested in. I could posit any number of other non-detectable realities to trump theists’ other realities; they couldn’t deny it (well, they could, if they were being inconsistent, which they like to be).
So the whole thing is pointless!
I notice Prof Massimo Pigliucci makes exactly the same blunder in his blog in February:
http://rationallyspeaking.blogspot.com/2010/02/podcast-teaser-great-atheist-debate.html
He calls himself a philosopher (which supposedly gives him some greater authority) and then begins to assume that philosophy or his form of criticism falls outside of naturalism, then equates philosophical naturalism with methodological naturalism (a bigger blunder from a supposed philosopher).
It is not that philosophical naturalism (metaphysical naturalism) is methodological naturalism, but that philosophical naturalism arises from methodological naturalism.
He (like most philosophers) mistakenly think that his rational inquiry falls outside of nature in some dualistic way, allowing him some neutral scepticism where philosophy can sit comfortably with knowledge about both natural things and unnatural things.
@Mark
I guess my point is simply that it does not seem reasonable to deny the possibility of accepting evidence for something for which no evidence has yet been found (and you must not forget that you added, for good measure, the words ‘at another level’). And I don’t think that is a blunder. I’m not an accommodationist, like Pigliucci, who wants, in some sense, to accommodate naturalism to supernaturalism now. What I am saying is that you simply cannot close the door on the possibility of demonstrating that there is (in some sense of ‘is’) a religious dimension to the universe, whether, if it were shown to exist (in some sense of ‘exist’), it would be a part of what there is or something which in some sense transcends what there is. If you close the door — and I don’t really think there’s a door there — then you can be simply dismissed as being dogmatic. You have decided that this is the limit of what there is for you.
Whereas I am simply saying that, while I think there is nothing that will ever be discovered or proved about entities which correlate — in some transcendent (and thus supernatural) realm — with religious beliefs, it is simply wrong to say, by definitional fiat, that they do not exist. What you can say is: “I don’t think there is any evidence for such entities, therefore it is irrational to believe in them. However, if you produce the evidence, I’ll take another look.”
But to say, without having this evidence, that it would be, if produced, simply evidence for what there is, and “part of our canon of evidence about reality”, is already to assume that it is not, in some sense, and as religious believers believe, something which transcends nature. I don’t think that there is a supernatural, or that evidence for it will ever be found, but I don’t think you can make any decisions about its ontological standing before you’re looking at the evidence and are facing whatever it is that this evidence is evidence for.
Very little hangs on this. It’s just a way of saying: We’re not being dogmatic about this. You show us the evidence, and then we’ll see. This is the appropriate epistemological humillity to adopt when faced with any outré claims that someone wants to make: “Show me the evidence, and then we’ll see. Until then some form of naturalism is as far as the evidence we have will carry us.”
What I hear the “accommodationist” saying is that there is some modus credendi in terms of which religious belief and scientific knowledge can be shown to be compatible (now). I don’t think this is true. Religious believers still have to show that their beliefs are reasonable, and so far, they haven’t been able to show this. I think it is highly unlikely that they ever will.
but I don’t think you can make any decisions about its ontological standing before you’re looking at the evidence and are facing whatever it is that this evidence is evidence for.
I think we can make such decisions, firstly, because the supernatural isn’t just some realm that is beyond the natural world, but a deliberate moving target. There is a definition of Artifician Intelligence: “whatever we haven’t built yet”, because when we have developed technology it no longer has the mystery associated with intelligence. The supernatural stands in the same relationship with the natural: it’s whatever we haven’t discovered yet, even though we have discovered things that would certainly have been considered supernatural in the past, such as the strecthing of time and space, and how to transmute elements in nuclear reactors.
The supernatural isn’t a thing, but a desire – a desire for there to be magic behind the scenes. Because it isn’t a known target, it is acceptable to reject it.
“The supernatural isn’t a thing, but a desire” – now that’s a quotable.
@Eric
Your position is the classic sceptical position, and understandable. I think the reasons you articulate are why the ‘no evidence can convince me’ view is a harder sell than the ‘suspend judgement until evidence’ view you hold. Jerry Coyne has just posted a response to PZ, with examples of evidence for God, which I don’t find convincing; although I admit I sometimes think they should be! Before I think them through.
Konrad Talmont-Kaminsky makes the point that the supernatural is a function of our neuroscience, which I guess all naturalists think is probably true. So even if Jesus came down and performed miracles, some would then posit a new supernatural outside this new reality (that Jesus charlatan!) – something that Steve mentions in #74. And the empirical evidence shows this to be true – theists restate their supernatural ideas in line with scientific gap closing (and gap creating – consider quantum woo).
This is defining the problem away to an extent, but, on the other hand, it could well be true. I agree that your approach has the benefit of not being as dogmatic (demanding evidence is considered dogmatic by theists). But then, Steve is trying to be strident :-).
That should be Konrad Talmont-Kaminski, apologies.
I’m not open to God existing, at some point you have to look at the evidence for one side: zero and the evidence for the other side: nature and then conclude: God does not exist. It isn’t right to consider it an open claim for eternity, this is yet another privilege that religious claims get away with.
It may be a quotable, but, in my case at any rate, it isn’t true. I don’t want the world to be like that! In fact, I want very much for it not to be like that. All this wonder and horror, and a god too! That’s simply beyond reason to actually desire. Additionally, of course, I don’t think the world is like that.
But I still don’t think we can make ontological decisions. So far, aside from abstract entities like numbers and universals, there’s no reason to think that there is anything more than we can know by means of our five senses (which includes theory-related entities confirmed by observation). Anyone who wants to claim more than this still has to do a lot of work.
This seems to me both more epistemologically sound, but it’s also, I think, better strategy. We can define gods out of existence if we want, but they can just define them back into existence again, and everything remains the same. But if we put the onus on the believer to give us the evidence, maybe s/he’ll even think about it. Everyone who moves from belief to unbelief must pass this way. Let’s help them along.
We can define gods out of existence if we want, but they can just define them back into existence again,
But here’s the thing. I consider that believers have defined God out of existence, perhaps not deliberately, but it what has happened. God is beyond evidence because He has to be a matter of faith and not falsifiable, because a falsifiable God is too vulnerable. This is why God usually retreats into his shell of obscure theology when predatory reason is around.
When I said that the supernatural is a desire I was not trying to be flippant – I honestly believe it. If you will excuse mixed metaphors, we are being led up the garden path in order to chase rainbows. The supernatural makes no sense and neither does the concept of God, at least as far as I can tell. This whole debate about the possibility of the supernatural is, in some ways, assisting believers in that it gives credibility to ideas that would not gain any traction if they were suggested today without their history.
That’s my strident position. Of course, any evidence for the possibility of evidence of the supernatural would be welcomed.
I’m way late to this thread, but heres my $0.02.
Sastra’s right, and everybody should read Pascal Boyer’s Religion Explained.
The supernatural is clearly not the complement of the natural, in the sense that science studies the “natural” world.
The supernatural is not lawless; it’s lawful in a qualtatively different way. If it wasn’t lawful, you couldn’t tell comprehensible and humanly interesting stories about it, and the stories wouldn’t get remembered and passed on. Supernatural concepts have a peculiar kind of structure that makes it easy to tell humanly interesting stories, which is why supernatural concepts stick around.
“Supernatural” is a family resemblance term of sorts, but there’s generally a consistent underlying theme of things being fairly directly related to interesting categories of things, like Truth, Beauty, Love, Anger, War, Righteousness, Evil, Power, Knowledge, Wisdom, etc.
(I’m oversimplifying a bit here and focusing on concepts of the supernatural that typically survive in Western culture. There’s a more general category that’s cross-cultural, but this is the one that’s crucial for most modern Western religion and theology.)
There’s a big difference between a god or God or godhead and an alien, which most people can’t articulate but can tell the difference.
For example, The Force in Star Wars is pretty clearly supernatural because it has a mindlike ability distinguish between humanly interesting things, such as skill and clumsiness and truth and falsity and good and bad. It is overtly mindless and impersonal, yet it can reliably make distinctions that only a mind could understand. It’s not like an actual force or energy or vibration in physics, because it’s sensitive to high-level phenomena like accuracy in achieving a particular goal or kind of goal.
Notice that when Obi Wan says “use the Force, Luke,” Luke would never say “I used the fucking Force, Obi Wan, but the stupid Force fucked up.” We can recognize that the Force is supernatural because it pretty clearly is directly and reliably keyed in to interesting and important things, without having to do a lot of complicated and error-prone knowledge gathering and reasoning. It just knows or something. It has a superhuman ability to do humanly interesting things like knowing. (Or something functionally equivalent to knowing; it may not actually “know” anything itself, but you can nonetheless extract useful knowledge from it fairly directly.)
Now consider a thunderbolt-throwing god like Thor. Thor can do that because he’s that kind of god. He’s not an alien who figured out how to control electricity in a nerdy way. He’s a different kind of being, and lightning is a different kind of thing, and he’s the kind of being who can more or less just do that kind of thing.
(I’m oversimplifying somewhat. Various gods may acquire skills and technologies, e.g., armor made by Hephaestus, but still it is generally assumed that gods have a special kind of essence suited to godly kinds of things, and usually that a God of X has some kind of essential connection to an essence of X. They’re not just overachieving human-like technologists.)
Notice that until we figured out that lightning was an electrical discharge and obeyed boring rules, many people did think it was supernatural. It did bizarre things like traveling invisibly through solid matter, dramatically jumping through air and zapping things, etc. Weird, weird stuff… but notice that when we did figure it out, people who understood stopped thinking of it as supernatural. Not because it obeyed rules, but because it obeyed boring rules of no intrinsic human interest. It didn’t seek out evil and zap it, it wasn’t directed by the force of a special mind whose essence allowed that, etc. It wasn’t all that different from other sometimes invisible things, like air pressure, heat, mechanical force, etc.
Now consider telepathy. If telepathy actually existed, would it be “supernatural”?
It depends. It depends a whole lot on how it works.
Suppose, for example that it turned out that parts of the brain act as spread-spectrum radio antennas, by fortuitous happenstance, like tooth fillings contacting each other just right can sometimes transduce AM radio signals into sound. And suppose some people could unconsciously learn to decode others’ brain transmissions to some extent, and get some idea what they were thinking, without knowing how.
That would not be supernatural. It’d just be surprising and weird, like tooth fillings recieving Top 40 songs, but a bit more interesting.
On the other hand, suppose substance dualism astonishingly turned out to be right, and we have some special soul thing made out of a very different kind of stuff than normal matter or energy, that gets locked into our brains temporarily, and those soul things had direct nonspatial connections to each other. Suppose it turned out that love was actually like a substance that could flow between or envelop two minds, and that all the information processing going on in the two brains was only correlated with that more essential connection between souls. And suppose those soul things did not operate like brains made of different stuff, e.g., by information processing in a different medium, but in irreducibly mindlike ways involving essences with what we normally consider “high level” properties, not made of boring stuff like matter and energy.
That would be a much better candidate for being “supernatural”—not because it’s not lawful, but because it’s irreducibly mind-related. The basic laws are at a higher semantic level, e.g., irreducibly about Will and Love and so on.
Supernatural categories generally involve big category mistakes—e.g., thinking that a mind is a fairly simple object or substance rather than an astonishingly intricate process in boring stuff, thinking that Truth or Beauty or Love is an essence or irreducibly simple feature of things, rather than an subtle regularity among regularities among regularites among less interesting things, etc.
On this view, the supernatural things people generally think of may in fact be impossible because they’re incoherent, in light of actually understanding things like minds and love and truth. For example, it doesn’t seem that something like The Force could exist, because simple essence-like things just can’t do very complicated information-intensive things like distinguishing truth and falsity.
That’s a very different kind of impossibility than the simple idea that if we understood it it wouldn’t just count as supernatural anymore, just because we understood it.
“Supernatural categories generally involve big category mistakes—e.g., thinking that a mind is a fairly simple object or substance rather than an astonishingly intricate process in boring stuff, thinking that Truth or Beauty or Love is an essence or irreducibly simple feature of things, rather than an subtle regularity among regularities among regularites among less interesting things, etc.”
This generally makes sense to me, and I think it is in fact related to why I get frustrated with first cause arguments for the existence of God (there seems to be an assertion that God is more fundamental than the universe and thus less in need of explanation, but of course a mind capable of creating the universe should be complex).
The way I think of it, is that much of the time we are fairly aware of what the people around us are thinking and feeling. Under ideal circumstances we might almost feel that we are “just connected” or can almost read each other’s minds, and because that requires very little conscious effort, it seems like it must be a very simple process. But anyone with an autistic spectrum disorder can tell you that the process is anything but simple; what superficially seems like a very basic skill is actually one of the most complicated and detailed functions of the brain, anything but fundamental.
“The supernatural isn’t a thing, but a desire” doesn’t claim or imply or depend on the implication that the desire is universal, Eric – it just calls it what it is. It just points out that it’s a name for a wish rather than for a thing.
I too don’t desire “the supernatural” as such – but I wouldn’t mind a bit of magic now and then. The ability to fly; a cloak of invisibility; a magic table; you know.
@Paul W., OM
Well, (amongst many interesting points!) Boyer talks about violations of our ontological categories (animal, person, plant) as the core of our supernatural concepts, so in that sense it is breaking laws (consider ghosts passing through walls), if not lawless, which I think is important. He links this (and other issues) to omniscient strategic knowledge for more religious supernatural concepts. And he ends by saying (p.379 in my copy):
As I said before, I guess all naturalists must think something like this, and Boyer certainly makes a persuasive case, with which I’m in no position to disagree. Those ‘ontological categories’ have evolved as a consequence of our environment, and I suppose it’s possible that events could occur that conform to this idea of the supernatural simply because other environments in the universe are quite different to this one, and evolution more advanced, or progressed differently. I would say, however, that any such category violations that occurred in reality would only be supernatural in that strict sense – for example, an alien race could have figured out how to pass through walls, or somehow evolved to do it! Surely no naturalist would actually categorise that as supernatural, since it would be a part of empirical reality – its supernaturalness a quirk of our environment and experience. On this, ironically, I suspect theists would agree.
One could imagine another world where, due to the type of atmosphere (??) flying was not possible. In such a world, birds would be a supernatural concept for a primate who had evolved with a similar brain to us. Does that make birds supernatural? I don’t think so.
So once again, I must concede the impossibility of the supernatural, in all but an academic sense.