By far the best definition I’ve ever heard of the supernatural is Richard Carrier’s: A “supernatural” explanation appeals to ontologically basic mental things, mental entities that cannot be reduced to nonmental entities.
While that’s a pretty good definition, I don’t think it quite captures the nuances of how the word is used.
With respect to the “ontologically basic” part, that’s a fairly abstruse concept for most people, and the intuition I have is people generally decide whether to call proposed entities “supernatural” without thinking very hard about whether such concepts apply. If someone claims to talk to spirits, they may not have any strong opinion on whether the spirits are made of nonmental spirit foam, but saying they’re therefore uncertain about whether the spirits are supernatural sounds off to me. Conversely, I can think of positions in the philosophy of mind that it would sound off to call supernatural regardless of whether they appeal to fundamentally mental things. I think it’s at least partly just a matter of genre: things can be prototypically supernatural or marginally supernatural like they can be prototypically science fiction or marginally science fiction.
With regard to “mental”, it seems to me that word is standing in for a whole class of things that aren’t simple and mechanical. An ontologically basic architectural or legal entity sounds like it should qualify as supernatural, as does an ontologically basic dead rat.
Agreed on ‘mental’ not being a necessary condition. A magical pixie dust used in some new age prosperity ritual would be a purportedly supernatural phenomenon, but there would be nothing mental about that.
The supernatural is that which is believed by its believers to be neither reducible to, nor explainable in terms of, the natural.
Generally, when a person talks about “spirits” they imply the existence of consciousness divorced from a brain (or something similar). This seems to assume “consciousness” as an ontologically basic thing.
They may not describe themselves as having a strong opinion about that, or even thinking of it in those terms, but I don’t see how they could come to the conclusion that spirits exist without the underlying assumption that consciousness is ontologically basic.
With regard to “mental”, it seems to me that word is standing in for a whole class of things that aren’t simple and mechanical. An ontologically basic architectural or legal entity sounds like it should qualify as supernatural, as does an ontologically basic dead rat.
Ultimately, reductionism is just disbelief in fundamentally complicated things.
I think this version of the definition includes more of what we think of as “supernatural” without including anything that we wouldn’t. Under this definition, an ontologically basic dead rat would be supernatural, as I think it should be. Of course, this is assuming I have anything like a correct picture of what you mean. I can’t really envision an ontologically basic dead rat, but neither can I see what good it would do me to do so.
2) The phrase “ontologically basic dead rat” is surprisingly funny.
The essence of magic is to do away with underlying mechanisms. …
What makes the elephant disappear is the movement of the wand and the intent of the magician,
directly. If there were any intervening processes, it would not be magic
but just engineering. As soon as you know how the magician made
the elephant disappear, the magic disappears and—if you started by
believing in magic—the disappointmnent sets in.
William T. Powers (CSGNET mailing list, April 2005)
I wouldn’t say it’s necessarily mental. But if it’s a huge lump of properties that can’t be explained by the rules that govern everything else, it would be supernatural. Or it could even be simple, but still have an exception to an otherwise universal rule. For example, in a Tegmark universe governed by the factorial function, finding a 10 could be considered miraculous. In our universe, it could be an object that doesn’t cast a shadow, doesn’t glow on the underside, and is not transparent.
Also, rstarkov, see my reply in the thread linked above.
These mathy definitions are, of course, for times when “supernatural” isn’t just a stand-in for “stop thinking about it!”
Your reply and anonym’s are fundamentally right, I believe. To spell it out more, we need to extend the concept of Similarity Clusters to laws. I mean laws as in “natural laws” and perhaps “supernatural laws”, not as in rules passed by legislatures. To take the supernaturalists seriously, we have to hypothesize that there are exceptions, perhaps even regular exceptions, to natural laws. Where natural laws conflict with supernatural ones, the hypothesis goes, the supernatural ones triumph. That’s what makes them super. By the way, supernatural “laws” might just be descriptions of alleged supernatural properties. E.g., telekinesis is the power to move stuff just by wishing.
Doesn’t this just push the puzzle back a step? How do we distinguish natural laws from supernatural ones? By clustering. Natural laws form a tightly knit explanatory framework. For example we can explain lots of chemistry via QM. Natural laws use terms like mass, charge, acceleration. Etc. Supernatural items are claimed not to fit into the same tightly knit explanatory framework. They are described using terms with no apparent relation to mass, charge, acceleration. Etc.
But, let me say where the “ontologically basic mental things” account is onto something. The paradigm examples of supernatural objects and qualities are usually mental. Or if not the paradigm examples, then at least a large and important category. Since it is indeed hard to see how painfulness or the sensation of sweetness relates to mass, charge, acceleration, etc. - especially if one glosses over the difference between epistemic puzzles and metaphysical ones—the mental has long been an attractive zone for claiming that a different constellation of laws are in play.
ETA: I see Manfred beat me to it. I’ll leave mine here because my version is a little further out on a limb.
From Excluding the Supernatural:
While that’s a pretty good definition, I don’t think it quite captures the nuances of how the word is used.
With respect to the “ontologically basic” part, that’s a fairly abstruse concept for most people, and the intuition I have is people generally decide whether to call proposed entities “supernatural” without thinking very hard about whether such concepts apply. If someone claims to talk to spirits, they may not have any strong opinion on whether the spirits are made of nonmental spirit foam, but saying they’re therefore uncertain about whether the spirits are supernatural sounds off to me. Conversely, I can think of positions in the philosophy of mind that it would sound off to call supernatural regardless of whether they appeal to fundamentally mental things. I think it’s at least partly just a matter of genre: things can be prototypically supernatural or marginally supernatural like they can be prototypically science fiction or marginally science fiction.
With regard to “mental”, it seems to me that word is standing in for a whole class of things that aren’t simple and mechanical. An ontologically basic architectural or legal entity sounds like it should qualify as supernatural, as does an ontologically basic dead rat.
Agreed on ‘mental’ not being a necessary condition. A magical pixie dust used in some new age prosperity ritual would be a purportedly supernatural phenomenon, but there would be nothing mental about that.
The supernatural is that which is believed by its believers to be neither reducible to, nor explainable in terms of, the natural.
Generally, when a person talks about “spirits” they imply the existence of consciousness divorced from a brain (or something similar). This seems to assume “consciousness” as an ontologically basic thing.
Do you disagree, then, that “they may not have any strong opinion on whether the spirits are made of nonmental spirit foam”?
They may not describe themselves as having a strong opinion about that, or even thinking of it in those terms, but I don’t see how they could come to the conclusion that spirits exist without the underlying assumption that consciousness is ontologically basic.
1) In “Excluding the Supernatural”, Eliezer says:
I think this version of the definition includes more of what we think of as “supernatural” without including anything that we wouldn’t. Under this definition, an ontologically basic dead rat would be supernatural, as I think it should be. Of course, this is assuming I have anything like a correct picture of what you mean. I can’t really envision an ontologically basic dead rat, but neither can I see what good it would do me to do so.
2) The phrase “ontologically basic dead rat” is surprisingly funny.
Carrier’s definition of the supernatural deserves a direct link.
Terry Pratchett, “Nation”
William T. Powers (CSGNET mailing list, April 2005)
I wouldn’t say it’s necessarily mental. But if it’s a huge lump of properties that can’t be explained by the rules that govern everything else, it would be supernatural. Or it could even be simple, but still have an exception to an otherwise universal rule. For example, in a Tegmark universe governed by the factorial function, finding a 10 could be considered miraculous. In our universe, it could be an object that doesn’t cast a shadow, doesn’t glow on the underside, and is not transparent.
Also, rstarkov, see my reply in the thread linked above.
These mathy definitions are, of course, for times when “supernatural” isn’t just a stand-in for “stop thinking about it!”
Your reply and anonym’s are fundamentally right, I believe. To spell it out more, we need to extend the concept of Similarity Clusters to laws. I mean laws as in “natural laws” and perhaps “supernatural laws”, not as in rules passed by legislatures. To take the supernaturalists seriously, we have to hypothesize that there are exceptions, perhaps even regular exceptions, to natural laws. Where natural laws conflict with supernatural ones, the hypothesis goes, the supernatural ones triumph. That’s what makes them super. By the way, supernatural “laws” might just be descriptions of alleged supernatural properties. E.g., telekinesis is the power to move stuff just by wishing.
Doesn’t this just push the puzzle back a step? How do we distinguish natural laws from supernatural ones? By clustering. Natural laws form a tightly knit explanatory framework. For example we can explain lots of chemistry via QM. Natural laws use terms like mass, charge, acceleration. Etc. Supernatural items are claimed not to fit into the same tightly knit explanatory framework. They are described using terms with no apparent relation to mass, charge, acceleration. Etc.
But, let me say where the “ontologically basic mental things” account is onto something. The paradigm examples of supernatural objects and qualities are usually mental. Or if not the paradigm examples, then at least a large and important category. Since it is indeed hard to see how painfulness or the sensation of sweetness relates to mass, charge, acceleration, etc. - especially if one glosses over the difference between epistemic puzzles and metaphysical ones—the mental has long been an attractive zone for claiming that a different constellation of laws are in play.
ETA: I see Manfred beat me to it. I’ll leave mine here because my version is a little further out on a limb.