Tosh. If you were to witness an object levitating with no visible means you would want to know how it was happening. You might try and ascertain if there’s an engine involved, or some means of suspending it, or whatever. If you couldn’t find anything that explained such an occurence, you wouldn’t simply add it to your inventory of ‘things that happen naturally’. It would be an anomaly, something for which there is no natural explanation.
I think you are using the word “you” as in “all of us” but you are incorrect. I would admit that while I might not have an immediate explanation for the natural mechanics of such an event, I would not resort to the tosh of supernaturalism as a gapfiller until more information came about.
The ‘promissory notes of materialism’. ‘Hey, we don’t know WHAT caused that, but we know it can’t be anything supernatural. So, you know, we’ll just keep moving the goal posts, so we can claim that it’s “natural”’.
Tosh. I for one think we exist within a created thing, so am not a “Materialist” in the sense your complaint implies.
Rather, I see no necessity whatsoever, and have NEVER had any supernaturalist explain why supernaturalism has to be in any way seriously considered and certainly see no reason to concur simple because of blustering…
If - on the other hand - you have something which would convince others (perhaps share what convinces you) that supernaturalism or supernatural words must be taken seriously, I am all ears and eyes.
I do! Or rather, I did, because we’ve finished the whole series.
‘Supernatural’ is the Latin equivalent of the Greek ‘metaphysical’. And the boundary between the physical and the metaphysical is shifting constantly.
Shifting yes - as knowledge increases.
Like with phenomenon once considered and now considered…such as
Lightning - once considered supernatural (Zeus’s anger) and now considered natural (electrical discharge).
or
Disease - once considered supernatural (curse, possession) and now considered natural (pathogens, genetics).
or
Mental illness - once considered supernatural (demonic) and now considered natural (neurological, psychological).
The boundary has shifted - and it has shifted in one direction: from supernatural thinking through ongoing knowledge to natural thinking. This supports my position.
Observations of flying pigs or levitating objects would naturally receive the same treatment - at least from those not invested in supernaturalism - a gap filler for ignorance rather than a knowledge based supported explanation. A placeholder for ignorance. A stop sign, not a solution.
Q: How did Jesus ascend into the clouds?
Non Explaination: A million invisible angels carried him.
Explains nothing - the angels are unexplained, their invisibility is unexplained, their ability to carry a physical body is unexplained.
or
God did it
Explains nothing - God is unexplained, the mechanism is unexplained, the action is unexplained.
or
Jesus inherited the ability through some means we don’t understand so “therefore supernatural”
Explains nothing - the ignorance is stated, then relabeled as “supernatural.”
Supernaturalism is a non-explanation. A lack of explanation. Devoid of explaination.
The common pattern of supernaturalism is;
- Identify a gap.
- Fill it with an unexplained agent or ability.
- Label the gap-filler “supernatural.”
My argument isn’t about language being conditional to truism, latin or otherwise. The question is not what word we use. The question is what is actually the case.
Sorry Jay - haven’t seen the series so don’t get what the picture represents.
There is a stable operating grammar before life can emerge, therefore unnatural in the sense of the word isn’t possible. We are highly intelligent, pressure reading organisms with a stable state that emerged long before you or I. That same grammar is what makes up the sun, it’s literally the same grammar different domain.
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Fair point! But these historical examples show that these particular supernatural explanations have been displaced by natural explanations. They don’t establish that naturalism is universally true, still less that the metaphysical is merely a temporary placeholder for stuff science hasn’t figured out yet.
While supernatural explanations of mental phenomena have largely been displaced by psychology and neuroscience, there are still outstanding questions in philosophy of mind and cognitive science that may not necessarily admit of a naturalistic explanation. After all, H. sapiens is a part of nature biologically, but human existence also introduces something rather peculiar into the picture: we are capable of reflecting upon nature, representing it, theorising about it, and deliberately transforming it in ways no other species has done. We inhabit a world of meanings, purposes, values and artefacts as well as a world of physical processes which we have altered in ways that naturalism of times past could barely have envisaged. (I’m reminded again of Arthur C Clarke’s famous observation that there is no way to distinguish a sufficiently advanced technology from magic. All the technology that relies on the principles of quantum physics could be said to fall under that description!)
Likewise, the displacement of vitalism by biochemistry didn’t establish that all questions about life and organisation are thereby subsumed under the principles of physics and chemistry. And we can’t expect science to adjudicate such questions without falling back on the discredited attitudes of positivism and verificationism.
All of which points back to the original question: what exactly do we mean by natural? I’ve already said that the blanket declaration that “everything is natural” risks making the word vacuous. If everything that exists is, by definition, natural, then “natural” no longer distinguishes anything.
And that is really where I think the interesting philosophical question lies. I’m not arguing that supernatural explanations are automatically correct. I’m questioning the assumption that the only alternatives are natural explanation or ignorance awaiting scientific explanation. There may be dimensions of reality—consciousness, meaning, value, intentionality, life, form, perhaps even the conditions of intelligibility themselves—that require philosophical investigation without thereby becoming “supernatural” in the traditional sense (although, again, describing them in terms of metaphysics lacks the negative connotations of that term.)
She’s a character named Tosh. 
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The problem with this I have found is that “naturalism” became something of a word in opposition to supernaturalism in that those who use it that way accept supernaturalism conceptually without placing any thought as to why that is even necessary to do.
With that in mind, it is not “naturalism” I am arguing for - rather I am focused on the thread topic Is anything actually unnatural? and the opening post where Quellcrist asks “is the concept of unnatural even real or just a human notion?”
My argument(s) are not coming from the naturalist sector and while similar are not precisely what naturalism argues.
For example, naturalists do not think that we exist within a created thing. At least I have never encountered any who have or do so.
While that may be true it is not necessarily permanent. Philosophy should always be open to new ideas. I would even argue that is the task of philosophy/philosophers
If this is the case, we can examine those as they are exampled and see if indeed there presents any condition of such views which would compel us to consider supernatural concepts as being necessary.
This is true as far as we are collectively aware. However, I do not see where this may mean “supernatural”.
Indeed. And even that we may enjoy being entertained by illusions, not knowing how a rabbit is pulled from a previously empty top-hat, does not compel us to reason “therefore supernatural”.
Rather we understand mechanism is involved, even if we do not know how that mechanism achieves the illusion we get to enjoy.
I think at this point it would be better to define what we are referring to as “life” - and ask ourselves if we actually know what “life” is, (and isn’t) before we can move forward but we can at least say or agree together that it is not supernatural.
But I do agree that everything has not been explained about this thing called life that we are living but why we can’t expect collective science to help us eventually provide those answers seems to de a definite statement. It may not be a matter of “falling back on the discredited” but reevaluating those things both in the light of new information and ways of thinking about such things - all without resorting to the language of supernaturalism.
And this is where I think the problem is. I myself have never heard or seen any “supernatural explanation” - just supernatural claims. Those are very different things.
If such dimensions exist (I don’t doubt that they do) we can look at it this way - if minds in those dimensions somehow discover the existence of our own, and thought of us as being in a “supernatural” dimension, would we accept their thinking of us in this way as justified or as a silly miscomprehension?
Please explain what you mean by ‘a created thing’. Do mean ‘created’ in the sense understood in Christian thought i.e. ‘God’s creation’? Is that why naturalists would not agree with it, because it has religious implications?
If anyone wants to claim that some things are “unnatural”, then just make a list of said things.
Plastic. The square root of -1. Christmas cards. Bourbon.
I could go on.
Christian thought is generally based in supernaturalism, so no.
My thought is simply that anything which has a beginning = “was created”.
There are good reasons for this thinking but not sure that this is (or isn’t) the right thread to branch off on that subject. It deserves a thread of its own imo.
How? By what?
The “what” and the “how” are not two separate realities. They are two aspects of the same process. The formless substance is consciousness, and its morphing into form is the expression of conscious intent.
It does sound very much like the Creator, then. And this is not meant as a provocation. Genuinely interested in exploring the question.
Those are the questions which philosophy seeks to answer.
I would say that these could have the same answer. “How” and “What” not being two different things.
Like some *thing* which morphs from formless to form. It has substance even though it has no form in the way we think of things which do have form - the forms come from the stuff of the formless.
That is the “what” part.
The “How” part must have to do with conscious intent.