Re: What is supernatural?

[LARA]

Good answers,  myleviathan.  I think that my brainstorming in trying to categorize math, imagination and learning as supernatural is really perturbing the definition of the supernatural quite a bit.  

Maybe a more valid question is where do these things fit into the scheme of a mechanistic reality?  And there your answers take me to other questions.  Is the physical pattern that we see as a manifestation of intelligence equivalent to the intelligence itself?  

Forgive my following analogies if you will.  Is a vinyl record equivalent to the music that it plays?  Are the chromosomes equivalent to the organism?  Are the lines of of code that form a program equivalent to experience of playing a game?

In each of these instances you have the pattern that is the physical manifestation of reality, but you also have a reader of some sort that creates something out of the pattern. The reader can be mechanistic as well, but the process becomes complex and unique at each reading.

So maybe these things aren't supernatural, in the sense of gods, goblins and demons, etc. and in fact the supernatural in that sense does not to exist at all, but where exactly does information fit into the scheme of a mechanistic nature?

[myleviathan]

Is the physical pattern that we see as a manifestation of intelligence equivalent to the intelligence itself?

That's an interesting question. Maybe intelligence is based in the finite cognitive processes that sense patterns in nature? And the manifestation of intelligence is only the speed at which it takes place, or the motor neurons that fire subsequently to take action after the cognitive processes have occured.  

but where exactly does information fit into the scheme of a mechanistic nature?

I see what you mean by comparing that which is mechanistic with that which is natural. Since the information, or patterns themselves are not necessarily mechanistic then they are in a sense supernatural. I can't get away from the thought though, even though there is a magical moment when patterns meet with the readers, the transaction is anatomical, chemical, and mechanistic in nature.

[SteveS]

Hi guys - I'm inclined to agree with myleviathan here.  Ultimately, even "thoughts" and "information" exist as mechanical/physical entities.  They are, for lack of a better description, biological functions of the mind.  When a thought is written, or information is written, it exists as a physical pattern.  These patterns, upon viewing by a person who understands the language, induces the same biological function in the recipient as it existed in the originator (or at least mostly the same function).  This is how we communicate.

I certainly would not consider these things to be supernatural.  In short, just because an idea is abstract, I don't think the idea itself is supernatural.  The idea of supernatural, the concept of supernatural, is itself a natural thing.

[Martian]

1: of or relating to an order of existence beyond the visible observable universe; especially : of or relating to God or a god, demigod, spirit, or devil

This is probably the best of the definitions provided, but I think that it's still pretty bad. Most of the time, dictionaries don't give good definitions for philosophical discussion, and in this case it's true. Here's what I think. Calling something supernatural as opposed to natural is saying that the supernatural thing is the first cause (acausal). For example, the concept "soul" is supernatural, because it is defined as a thing that is fundamentally acausal, hence it being unnatural. Conversely, anything which is acted upon is considered natural.

Simply put, something supernatural is that which is immune from the ebb and flow of nature. (You could also go with "Determinism vs Indeterminism" for to be the same as "Natural vs Supernatural".

Naturalism is the most evidenced metaphysical world view thus far, because everything we can see, has a cause. Though, you could always say that the things which haven't been figured out yet are supernatural. But we must keep in mind that, so far, many of the things held to be supernatural have been shown to have been caused (natural). As a principle, I think it would be best to assume that everything is natural, and the stuff we haven't studied yet is probably natural, but we don't know for sure until it is studied further.

But this goes back to the thing most people have said, about calling something supernatural as being the same as calling it non-existent. I say that this is just a secondary effect of most supernatural concepts, but not defining them as being supernatural. That is because the things which people propose to be supernatural must be defined as not being detectable themselves so that they can explain the lack of observations of them. This tactic, which is important for the survival of the belief in the supernatural, leads to their supernatural concepts to not exist by their own definition of not being observable. But as you can see, it's not what makes them supernatural.

Any disagreements?

[SteveS]

Any disagreements?

Only a very slight one.  I don't think you can map Natural vs. Supernatural to be the same as Deterministic vs. Indeterministic.  For example, if quantum events are truly random, then the natural world would be indeterministic, but there wouldn't be any reason to say quantum events are supernatural.

[Martian]

Any disagreements?

Only a very slight one.  I don't think you can map Natural vs. Supernatural to be the same as Deterministic vs. Indeterministic.  For example, if quantum events are truly random, then the natural world would be indeterministic, but there wouldn't be any reason to say quantum events are supernatural.

If the world was truely random it would be impossible to see any causal behavior, but that's not the case. The situation is that there are either causes that we haven't see yet, or the behavior of the small is truely based on probability. In either case, you don't get a truely random behavior. We know that this is true because we have found causal relationships on he macro scale.

So we must either conclude that there is naturalistic explaination for the behavior of atomic structures, or that it is partially natural but partially supernatural at the same time.

There is no better definition for "supernatural" to my knowledge. If you can find one that you think is better than the one I provided, then let me know.

[SteveS]

Hey Martian - I certainly don't disagree with your definition of "supernatural" - I think that it is fine.

My point about quantum events was meant to be individual quantum events.  I certainly agree that probability works to describe them.  We could, for example, compute a probability that a single radioactive atom will decay in a given amount of time --- but if/when it does, what "caused" it?  I don't deny that there may be a cause of which we are simply currently unaware, but I also won't deny that it could be there is not.  They could simply happen --- the likelihood of them happening could be described probabilistically, but that wouldn't make the world deterministic.

In other words, rewind time and start the universe up again and the same exact thing would not necessarily recur (if individual quantum events are "uncaused").  This would not destroy the rest of the causality that we do observe, nor would we end up with totally random results (the universe would be mostly the same, just slightly different), its just that we could not completely determine every detail of how things would play out.  Knowing the initial conditions precisely, we could not precisely determine an arbitrary future state (which is the sense in which I'm using the word "deterministic").

It seems to me like this argument about the causality of quantum events is a question of world-class-physics proportions, and I certainly don't claim to know the answer.  All I do claim is that if the universe contains uncaused events I don't feel its necessary to adopt a belief in the supernatural.  If there is no cause to something, then I would hold this to simply mean that there is no cause; not necessarily that there is a supernatural (god or spiritual) cause that came from "an order of existence beyond the ... observable universe".  It could just mean that some of our assumptions about causality are incorrect.

That's all I mean.