SRB

Paranormal spoon bending is intelligible if and only if it is granted that the sender's brain or body omits some sort of matter or radiation that causes the spoon to bend. So paranormal spoon bending still needs the presence of a body (or a brain at least) to make any sense.

In the absence of a body, what is it that would constitute an action? Suppose that Smith has no body. He desires that his spoon bends, and it subsequently does bend. Granting for now that it makes sense to say that a disembodied person exists and has desires, it is clear that Smith's desire and the subsequent bending of the spoon are not sufficient conditions for him to have caused the spoon to bend. That's because his desire and the bending of the spoon might both have been caused by something else. So something more is required than desire-fulfilment for Smith to perform an action. The problem is that it is unclear how anything more than that might transpire in the case of a disembodied person. In the absence of a body, the best one could ever do is have a desire and have that desire fulfilled. But as we have just seen, on its own that is an insufficient condition for one to have performed an action. How, then, might one possibly perform an action with no body?

SRB

[ October 25, 2002: Message edited by: SRB ]</p>

tergiversant

If something is not physical (e.g. a ghost) it would not be called an object, I imagine.

Levitation might fly. In general, the property of defying natural laws. If a prophet raised the dead and levitated (as Jesus is said to have done) then one might suppose that he was not using natural means to do such things.

I do not see how. Each of those terms denote phenomena which behave in fairly specific ways.

Taffy Lewis

tergiversant,

I don't think it will fly. Here's a link:

<a href="http://www-hfml.sci.kun.nl/levitate.html" target="_blank">The Real Levitation</a>

As I pointed out in my thread on metaphysical naturalism, Arthur C. Clarke famously remarked that "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic."

In the case of levitation, why believe that a SUPERnatural event had taken place rather than simply believe the laws of nature are not what we believed them to be?

No doubt you will respond that in the quote above you explicitly mentioned that an event must defy natural laws. The problem with such a negative characterization is that it doesn't tell us what nonphysical or supernatural events are in themselves. It merely tells us what they are not. Further, the concepts of natural or physical seem to mean nothing more than "whatever there is" or "any intelligible behavior". What sort of properties would a supernatural or nonphysical entity or event HAVE?

In other words, don't simply tell me what it is not (ie. it's NOT consistent with natural law). Tell me some feature it could possess. I think you'll find that you cannot do this. The reason is that the concept of natural and physical are so open-ended that they cannot exclude anything intelligible.

Along with Strawson, the philosopher John Searle agrees. He says:

Searle's point is the same as Strawson's. The term "natural" is an open-ended term that refers to whatever is intelligible to us.

Lastly, I want to make a couple of comments about your remarks on the mind.

You said:

Either this implies a form of mind/body dualism or you expressed yourself poorly. It sounds as though you are reifying the mind. Your use of the expression "a mind" and your use of the plural "minds" seem to support this reading.

If bodies act and minds don't then minds are not identical to bodies (the brain is certainly part of the body).

If you want to avoid dualism, you should say that mindful things act and that intending is something brains do to initiate actions. (But then why isn't intending another action?)

In his An introduction to the philosophy of mind, E.J. Lowe says:

It's not clear to me how you are using the term "mind".

tergiversant

I am well aware that objects may be made to levitate via electromagnetic forces, in fact, I have had the opportunity to do so on occasion. I thought it was clear, however, that I was not speaking of the countering of gravity, but rather the suspension thereof.

This may well be true, but it does not imply that the suspension of natural laws is indistinguishable from technology, however advanced. Even if this were so, it would represent merely an epistemic problem, that is, a difficultly of determination in practice rather than in theory. In theory, it is enough to say that if some natural law (e.g. gravity) ceases to be in effect, then such an abrogation is “supernatural” by definition.

That would depend on specific facts of the situation, one might suppose.

Neither does a negative characterization of God: a mind without any of the ordinary delimitations of mind, that is, one without limitations such as spatial extension or bodily existence, that acts without limitations in its power and knowledge, which exists without limitations in that it is considered existentially non-contingent. Touché! Tu quoque!

In all seriousness, though, I fail to see the problem with negative characterization either in general, or in particular when the goal is to describe that which is not natural.

They might act without regard for natural laws, whatever those might actually be.

D’oh!

In a language designed and adapted to describe our natural world and the natural phenomena therein? You ask too much!

Is it not now intelligible to exclude violations of natural laws? If gravity is in effect everywhere throughout space and time except at the moment and place of Jesus’ ascension, is that not a sufficient condition to intelligibly call said event supernatural?

I would suppose that would depend on the odd occurrence at hand. If ten-thousand bright and shiny new supernovae were to burst forth tomorrow from various parts of the Milky Way galaxy, shining down upon Earth with the words “Jesus lives” in Aramaic (or, for that matter, “Krshna lives” in Sanskrit), I doubt that even John Searle would feign lack of understanding. Certainly I would not. Would you?

Forces are non-intentional by definition and by nature. This hypothetical “divine force” is clearly not. That difference alone should suffice to make the conceptual distinction between the natural and the supernatural.

I respectfully submit that you have put the cart before the proverbial horse. I would contend that whatever is intelligible to us must be natural, since our language (and indeed our minds themselves) have been adapted for use in this natural world.

Taffy Lewis

tergiversant,

It seems that your account of the "supernatural" just boils down to "a violation of a natural law". So there was nothing really special about levitation. You could have just tacked the expression "that involves the violation of natural law" onto the end of the description of any event. "Walking that involves the violation of natural law" or maybe "Talking that involves the violation of natural law" or even "Thumb twiddling that involves the violation of natural law". Any event would do just as long as you add the above negative expression to it.

Your account of the supernatural has some interesting consequences. Any cosmologist who accepts the "oscillating universe model" believes that the laws of physics "break down" at the big bang singularity and the big crunch singularity. Since the laws of physics "break down" at these singularities then these cosmologists seem to accept something that qualifies as a suspension of natural law.

In addition, physicists often reflect on how the universe would be different if certain physical constants or laws varied. Given your account of "supernatural", they are reflecting on the supernatural. Normally, we don't think physicists are reflecting on the supernatural when they are doing science. Also, if they accept the "many worlds" interpretation of quantum mechanics, they may very well believe that an indefinite number of supernatural worlds exist. Assuming that these other worlds follow different laws.

But being "without limitations" doesn't seem to imply that something is supernatural. Many cosmologists have believed that the universe is without spatial and/or temporal limitations. They also suggest that the universe began from a point of infinite density (ie. density without limitation). Surely this doesn't imply that they believed the universe is supernatural.

Your examples of Jesus' ascension and the supernovae seem to fall under the category of "whatever is intelligible". If your above quote is correct, doesn't that mean they are "natural"?

No distinction can be made if you define "supernatural" negatively as "not natural" and then define "natural" in such open-ended terms that necessarily anything you could ever think of would qualify as "natural". You can't give me a positive description of what it means to be supernatural because your understanding of "natural" just means "any characteristic whatsoever which something could possess".

Thank you for your response.

tergiversant

I have not defined "natural" in such an open-ended fashion. The universe is evidently governed by certain forces which may be described by certain laws (e.g. universal gravitation). If these forces are rescinded in some special case, such an event may be correctly described as supernatural.

That was your description of nature, not mine.

Taffy Lewis

tergiversant,

You quote me as saying:

Then you responded:

However, in your last post on the 1st page you said:

I pointed out that you seem to think that your examples of Jesus' ascension and the supernovae are "intelligible to us". But you said that these events would be 'supernatural' because they could violate natural law. How can they be intelligible and supernatural since, on your understanding, one excludes the other?

Also, the oscillating universe cosmological model suggests that the laws of nature "break down" at the big crunch. Do those physicists and cosmologists who accept this model thereby accept the existence of the 'supernatural'?

One further consequence of your view is that God would be 'natural' as long as he upheld the laws of nature and never violated them. If God decided to simply act in the world through 'natural' laws rather than violating them then no 'supernatural' events would ever occur. So God could exist even if the 'supernatural' didn't exist.

Apikorus

As a physicist, this line of reasoning strikes me as misguided. The breakdown of physical law at the big crunch is something which takes place under extreme conditions (i.e. extremes of physical parameters such as energy density, gravitational curvature, etc.). A physical model of such events would not entail capitulation to the "supernatural", but rather the extension of our current mathematical and physical understanding of Nature. That is, we presume that such cases are still described by a dispassionate mathematical model, even if it be one which has not yet been articulated. We may need to include extra dimensions or Grassmann variables or string theory or supersymmetry or whatever, but I don't know of any colleagues working on e.g. quantum gravity who say that the answer requires a belief in God or "miracles" or "the supernatural".

Furthermore, there is a continuity to Nature. If energy density is diverging at a particular point (thinking classically, for the moment), then it should also be large in a neighborhood of that point.

Hence there is a big difference, as I see it, between the "breakdown" of (our understanding of) Physical Law in these aforementioned extreme conditions, and the miracle claims of those who insist that Jesus was resurrected, or that Mohammed rode to heaven astride El Buraq, or that Joseph Smith was visited by the angel Moroni. There were no reports of people being incinerated in the presence of Jesus. Presumably space-time in the vicinity of Jesus was not highly curved. In short, there is nothing to suggest that Jesus' body was not subject to the same physical laws which operate on the usual length, time, and energy scales typical of biological systems.

[ November 25, 2002: Message edited by: Apikorus ]</p>