FWIW, this line of reasoning comes up pretty regularly (especially in response to that survey question), so if the surveyors fail to realize the associated difficulties, it’s not through failure to have it pointed out. I suspect they realize it just fine.
For my own part, I just skip questions that I don’t know how to answer and move on.
Incidentally, LW has a preferred local understanding of “supernatural,” which derives from this post. That’s not to say everyone here thinks it’s a good definition—I don’t, for example—but it’s probably the best Schelling point to use when a shared understanding is important.
FWIW, this line of reasoning comes up pretty regularly (especially in response to that survey question), so if the surveyors fail to realize the associated difficulties, it’s not through failure to have it pointed out. I suspect they realize it just fine.
Continuing to complain about it may still have an effect though. I personally think they should post the definition they’re using for “supernatural” in the description for the question, maybe right below their current description.
Incidentally, LW has a preferred local understanding of “supernatural,” which derives from this post.
Ah. Hardly incidental. I wish I’d known about that. I hold that the definition (if it belongs to anyone at all) belongs to those who self-identify as believers in the supernatural, this form feels far more like what I’d expect to find in their heads. Great clumbering atomic concepts that can’t be broken down to the stuff of ordinary reasoning.
For my own part, I try to avoid using words whose definitions are saliently ambiguous, and when I am listening to others do so I try as well as I can to understand what they mean to convey by using the phrase, and otherwise try to avoid getting too tangled up in questions of what ambiguous phrases really mean.
When it comes to “supernatural”… the people I listen to who (claim to) believe in the supernatural mostly just seem to be referring to events that aren’t explicable by or are inconsistent with modern scientific consensus beliefs. That is, it seems to be an epistemological category, not an ontological one.
And while it’s certainly possible to get into a whole discussion of whether any given event falls in that category or not, on a broader level it doesn’t matter much to the broader question of whether such events can occur. I mean, of course such events occur with regularity, since the modern scientific consensus at any given moment is always an incomplete (and to a lesser extent outright inaccurate) and evolving model of reality. I agree with that much completely.
They don’t, as far as I can tell, have any consistent beliefs one way or the other about whether ontologically basic mental entities are at the core of those events. For example, I have several friends who (claim to) believe that the spirits of dead people can manifest themselves physically in various contexts, but they have no more of a notion of whether those spirits are ontologically basic mental entities than I have of the mineral composition of Ceres.
Of course, there’s also a subset of those folks who argue that since scientific consensus is incomplete/inaccurate, they’re allowed to hold on to whatever explanations they’re most comfortable/familiar with, which frequently includes traditional occult legends and memes from various cultures. But that’s a fallacy of reasoning that seems entirely orthogonal to the question of what they mean by “supernatural.”
the people I listen to who (claim to) believe in the supernatural mostly just seem to be referring to events that aren’t explicable by or are inconsistent with modern scientific consensus beliefs.
I somehow doubt that if it was suddenly discovered that cigarette smoking was good for your health, many people would refer to that as supernatural, even though that would be inconsistent with modern scientific consensus beliefs.
FWIW, this line of reasoning comes up pretty regularly (especially in response to that survey question), so if the surveyors fail to realize the associated difficulties, it’s not through failure to have it pointed out. I suspect they realize it just fine.
For my own part, I just skip questions that I don’t know how to answer and move on.
Incidentally, LW has a preferred local understanding of “supernatural,” which derives from this post. That’s not to say everyone here thinks it’s a good definition—I don’t, for example—but it’s probably the best Schelling point to use when a shared understanding is important.
Continuing to complain about it may still have an effect though. I personally think they should post the definition they’re using for “supernatural” in the description for the question, maybe right below their current description.
Ah. Hardly incidental. I wish I’d known about that. I hold that the definition (if it belongs to anyone at all) belongs to those who self-identify as believers in the supernatural, this form feels far more like what I’d expect to find in their heads. Great clumbering atomic concepts that can’t be broken down to the stuff of ordinary reasoning.
(nods)
For my own part, I try to avoid using words whose definitions are saliently ambiguous, and when I am listening to others do so I try as well as I can to understand what they mean to convey by using the phrase, and otherwise try to avoid getting too tangled up in questions of what ambiguous phrases really mean.
When it comes to “supernatural”… the people I listen to who (claim to) believe in the supernatural mostly just seem to be referring to events that aren’t explicable by or are inconsistent with modern scientific consensus beliefs. That is, it seems to be an epistemological category, not an ontological one.
And while it’s certainly possible to get into a whole discussion of whether any given event falls in that category or not, on a broader level it doesn’t matter much to the broader question of whether such events can occur. I mean, of course such events occur with regularity, since the modern scientific consensus at any given moment is always an incomplete (and to a lesser extent outright inaccurate) and evolving model of reality. I agree with that much completely.
They don’t, as far as I can tell, have any consistent beliefs one way or the other about whether ontologically basic mental entities are at the core of those events. For example, I have several friends who (claim to) believe that the spirits of dead people can manifest themselves physically in various contexts, but they have no more of a notion of whether those spirits are ontologically basic mental entities than I have of the mineral composition of Ceres.
Of course, there’s also a subset of those folks who argue that since scientific consensus is incomplete/inaccurate, they’re allowed to hold on to whatever explanations they’re most comfortable/familiar with, which frequently includes traditional occult legends and memes from various cultures. But that’s a fallacy of reasoning that seems entirely orthogonal to the question of what they mean by “supernatural.”
I somehow doubt that if it was suddenly discovered that cigarette smoking was good for your health, many people would refer to that as supernatural, even though that would be inconsistent with modern scientific consensus beliefs.
I agree.