dga471
May 10, 2019, 12:20am
7
I think this definition is neither clear nor rigorous enough. What does “visible observable” mean? What sort of observations? Do personal visions count?
We’ve discussed this before:
I was initially inspired by @PdotdQ ’s argument that methodological naturalism is tautological (see Side Comments on Christians in Science ) . Specifically, I was intrigued by this premise:
I disagree with this. I haven’t fully decided yet, but surprisingly, I think atheist blogger Richard Carrier has some good observations when he defines the supernatural (Richard Carrier Blogs: Defining the Supernatural ):
In short, I argue “naturalism” means, in the simplest terms, that every mental thing is entirely caused by fundamentally nonmental things, and is entirely dependent on nonmental things for its existence. Therefore, “supernaturalism” means that at least some mental things cannot be reduced to nonmental things. As I summarized in the Carrier-Wanchick debate (and please pardon the dry, technical wording):
If [naturalism] is true, then all minds, and all the contents and powers and effects of minds, are entirely caused by natural [i.e. fundamentally nonmental] phenomena. But if natur…
Continuing the discussion from How should we define the supernatural? .
The original thread has grown quite long and sometimes off-topic, so I decided to make a summary of some of the important points answering the original topic. Thank you for everyone who shared their thoughts. The original question was, how should we define the supernatural and natural? An auxiliary question: is the supernatural analyzable by science? I am going to classify the responses to this question several categories.
(Note that if I listed a name, it doesn’t necessarily mean they endorse that view fully, only that they brought it up in the thread.)
Regularism: the natural is anything that is regular and predictable, and the supernatural is anything which is not, although people have differing views on whether “supernatural” is a useful term.
Analyzable by science?: No.
Brought up by: @gbrooks9 , @T_aquaticus , @jongarvey
Interactionism: anything that interacts with our senses and possibly tools that extend…
Jim:
So if it’s scientific evidence, and it is allowed in the indirect sense to qualify as scientific evidence in an abductive inference to a scientific claim, why would it no longer qualify as scientific evidence, or evidence from science, in an abductive inference when used to support a metaphysical claim?
Many people would say that if a controlled experiment shows up evidence (direct or indirect - those terms are not rigorously defined either) for the supernatural, then the “supernatural” becomes part of the natural. The evidence becomes regular scientific evidence. This goes back to the issue of defining “supernatural”. One could argue that quantum entanglement is as weird as anything proposed by supernaturalists, yet we regard it as a perfectly natural phenomenon.
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