Naturalism is false

[robrecht]

Fiction and non-fiction is much more coherent, provided you have a clear understanding of what and why you are labeling some 'thing' as fictitious.

[robertb]

Fiction and non-fiction is much more coherent, provided you have a clear understanding of what and why you are labeling some 'thing' as fictitious.

Observation. Do you propose a better way?

[robrecht]

Observation. Do you propose a better way?

I was speaking of the 'what' and the 'why', no the 'how'. Observation is, of course, an excellent foundation for scientific method.

[robertb]

I was speaking of the 'what' and the 'why', no the 'how'. Observation is, of course, an excellent foundation for scientific method.

I am not sure I understand the distinction you wish to make. Maybe an example or two?

[magellan004]

I would call myself a naturalist and, as such, I usually equate the words 'natural' and 'supernatural' with the words 'non-fiction' and 'fiction' respectively.I am not aware of a more coherent definition of the two terms, at least in normal usage when distinguishing one with regards to the other.

Do you see any distinction between the words 'fiction' and 'non-fiction'? Can't we say, for instance, that both 'fiction' and 'non-fiction' exist, at least under some definition of the word 'exist'? Of course we can and, in turn, I would not say that a distinction between the words 'fiction' and 'non-fiction' is "incoherent and useless" at all. On the contrary, I would say that the concept behind the words 'fiction' and 'non-fiction' is not only coherent, but extremely useful for our day to day survival. Do you disagree?

However, unless you wish to posit some other definitions for these words, I think you can agree that, at least as far as my own interpretation is concerned, there is nothing incoherent in the justification I use to make the distinction between these two terms, natural and supernatural.

It's not that the labels you are using are incoherent - it is your application of 'non-fiction' to naturalism that lacks 'coherent justification' (and the other) . There is a context which you are overlooking.

Magellan

[robrecht]

I am not sure I understand the distinction you wish to make. Maybe an example or two?

Sure. If your intent is to classify as fictional or fictitious God or the supernatural, and I'm not sure that is your intent, then I would be interested in your view of what God is and why you would be doing so.

[ZackMartin]

How about we define it by the term existence?

I'm not sure what you are asking, but as I said, it's not clear that "existence" actually can be defined.

But who are they? Who set up the dichotomy? There is no dichotomy of existence unless one claims a super-existence. So whoever is claiming a super-existence(that would be you)is the one setting up the dichotomy.

Well, this is the interesting question. Some theists have emphasised a nature-vs-supernature dichotomy, but other theists have criticised the very same dichotomy as a questionable distinction. But then "naturalists" have picked up this dichotomy from a subset of theism, and run with it - which doesn't make any sense, given their rejection of theism.

I'm not claiming any "super-existence". I'm not even sure what you mean by "super-existence". It's your concept, not mine.

[ZackMartin]

And now we're actually talking about how to decide what 'in' the universe means as opposed to 'outside' the universe. If a philosopher falls over in the forest, does he still say useless things?

You endorse and make use of the distinction, but then criticise me for asking for it to be defined more clearly? If you have such an objection to philosophy, maybe you should refrain from it yourself.

[robertb]

It's not that the labels you are using are incoherent - it is your application of 'non-fiction' to naturalism that lacks 'coherent justification' (and the other) . There is a context which you are overlooking.

Magellan

You might need to clear this up, a bit. What exactly do you mean when you say that it is my "application of 'non-fiction' to naturalism that lacks 'coherent justification' (and the other)"?

It seems to me that my coherent justification would be justification based on observation. What would you propose in lieu of this?

[robertb]

Sure. If your intent is to classify as fictional or fictitious God or the supernatural, and I'm not sure that is your intent, then I would be interested in your view of what God is and why you would be doing so.

I do not know what God is. I know what some say that God is and what some others say that God is, etc., but I am not sure how they justify such claims, or if in fact the justifications that I have heard, from those that do, actually justifies such a claim.

It seems to me, for the purposes of this discussion, that I will remain agnostic as to any particular classification due to the fact that I am unsure what is actually meant by the term God.

I mean, if one is simply saying that the some unknown is God, then I suppose an agnostic position kinda makes sense. Other observations that you may like to propose not withstanding, of course.

[magellan004]

You might need to clear this up, a bit. What exactly do you mean when you say that it is my "application of 'non-fiction' to naturalism that lacks 'coherent justification' (and the other)"?

It seems to me that my coherent justification would be justification based on observation. What would you propose in lieu of this?

In post 30 you said:

I usually equate the words 'natural' and 'supernatural' with the words 'non-fiction' and 'fiction' respectively.I am not aware of a more coherent definition of the two terms,

In the normal course of a day, I'd say that people do not think 'Natural = Non-fiction.' That's not a definition that I know of, and if it is it's pretty unusual. You might have a dictionary which shows I am wrong.

Now if I am right, then ascribing 'Non-fiction' to 'Natural' involves more than 'It is defined as such'.
You attached the label 'Non-fiction' to a word 'Natural'. Was that attaching justified? That is what I meant.


Magellan

[robertb]

In post 30 you said:

In the normal course of a day, I'd say that people do not think 'Natural = Non-fiction.' That's not a definition that I know of, and if it is it's pretty unusual. You might have a dictionary which shows I am wrong.

Now if I am right, then ascribing 'Non-fiction' to 'Natural' involves more than 'It is defined as such'.
You attached the label 'Non-fiction' to a word 'Natural'. Was that attaching justified? That is what I meant.


Magellan

The whole point of this thread is that the term "supernatural" is a bit incoherent. I simply use the word "fiction" in place of the word "supernatural", for coherency.

You can, however, provide me with a definition of supernatural that you prefer to use instead. Then we can be sure we are discussing the same concept, at least.

[magellan004]

The whole point of this thread is that the term "supernatural" is a bit incoherent. I simply use the word "fiction" in place of the word "supernatural", for coherency.

You can, however, provide me with a definition of supernatural that you prefer to use instead. Then we can be sure we are discussing the same concept, at least.

I think Zack's point in this thread is that people who reject Supernatural - the Naturalists - say what they are rejecting.

I proposed a test (rather than talk) . Will a Naturalist allow an hypothesis 'There are ghosts in this house.'? Or is that prohibited, not science, not this , not that ...? 'Thou mayest not investigate this in the name of science.'

Magellan

[ZackMartin]

I would call myself a naturalist and, as such, I usually equate the words 'natural' and 'supernatural' with the words 'non-fiction' and 'fiction' respectively.I am not aware of a more coherent definition of the two terms, at least in normal usage when distinguishing one with regards to the other.

OK, so Wuthering Heights is a work of fiction - does that make Wuthering Heights supernatural? And Heathcliffe is a fictional character - is he a supernatural one? Hey, Al Bundy is a fictional character - is Al Bundy supernatural? And The Oxford Introductions to U.S. Law: Constitutional Law is a work of non-fiction - is it therefore natural? US Constitutional Law seems far from being natural; and if a cultural object like that counts as natural, it's at least as natural as Wuthering Heights or Heathcliffe or Al Bundy are. However people use the "natural" and "supernatural" distinction, to try to link it to the "non-fiction"/"fiction" one is a vast oversimplification, and ultimately just wrong.

And, is a fiction anything that is false? Or is it something which is known to be false by its creators? The later describes most works of fictional literature, but does not describe most traditionally "supernatural" ideas like God or ghosts or angels or demons or so on - even if these beliefs are false, it seems they much more likely originated from honest mistake than deliberate fiction. But if anything that is false is fictional, then that means that disproven scientific theories are fictional, and thus by your equation of "fictional" and "supernatural", disproven scientific theories are supernatural. Take a scientific theory whose truth is still open - let's say string theory. It's not implausible to suppose, that within the next few years, some bright theoretical physicist might discover some easily testable consequence of this theory, which might be tested and found to be false, and thus string theory might be disproven. Would that make string theory suddenly become supernatural? Is phlogiston theory supernatural? How about the luminiferous aether?

If you can't coherently define "naturalism", why not stop calling yourself a "naturalist"?

Do you see any distinction between the words 'fiction' and 'non-fiction'? Can't we say, for instance, that both 'fiction' and 'non-fiction' exist, at least under some definition of the word 'exist'? Of course we can and, in turn, I would not say that a distinction between the words 'fiction' and 'non-fiction' is "incoherent and useless" at all. On the contrary, I would say that the concept behind the words 'fiction' and 'non-fiction' is not only coherent, but extremely useful for our day to day survival. Do you disagree?

Sure there's a distinction between them. As normally defined, a "fiction" is an intentional and open work of deliberate falsehood, a creative work describing events that never actually happened, but which the audience will pretend (to a limited extent) are real for its enjoyment. (Sometimes the word "fiction" is extended to include non-open works of deliberate falsehoods, i.e. frauds, but that isn't the primary meaning.) "Non-fiction" means a work which claims to describe reality, and it is usually a requirement that the authors genuinely believe it describes reality - but of course, non-fiction books are often far from error free, and many non-fiction books will contain many false statements. Some non-fiction books are almost completely wrong. These distinctions are rather far apart from the natural-supernatural distinction. Most "supernatural" claims are generally considered non-fiction, because whether they are true or not, either the authors believe they are, or the authors are reporting (rather than endorsing) the beliefs of others. Go to a library; in which section are books on religion, theology, the paranormal, philosophy, metaphysics, and other supposedly "supernatural" topics shelved? Not in the fiction section - in the non-fiction one.

However, unless you wish to posit some other definitions for these words, I think you can agree that, at least as far as my own interpretation is concerned, there is nothing incoherent in the justification I use to make the distinction between these two terms, natural and supernatural.

You won't find me proposing a definition for those words, since I don't believe they can be coherently defined. But as I've explained above, there are good reasons to suppose that your proposed definitions are the wrong. (Since I believe they lack a coherent definition, my position is that all proposed definitions are wrong.)

What do you mean by the "ultimate laws of nature"?

Whatever actual patterns, regularities or relations exist in nature independent of our knowledge of them. Do the laws of physics somehow exist "out there", in the universe, beyond our mental concepts of them? If so, then the ultimate laws of physics exist independently from our minds, but the laws of physics in our minds are just imperfect approximations to those unknown (and quite possibly unknowable) ultimate laws. And quite a few naturalists do believe that the laws of physics exist in this sense.

Of course, if you believe that physical laws are purely human constructs, and have no existence outside our minds, then there is no such thing as "ultimate laws of nature". But then, the attempt of some naturalists (e.g. Tassman) to define the supernatural in terms of "violations" of the laws of nature must fail, because then there could only be violations of our understanding of the laws of nature, and it seems peculiar to claim that the orbit of Mercury is "supernatural" or "miraculous", since it did for over fifty years violate our understanding of the laws of nature.

Doesn't it seem that the "laws of nature" are a description of what has been observed? As such, wouldn't an observation that violates some particular theory, in this case Newtonian Gravity, indicate a problem with said theory? You realize, I hope, that a theory is also based on what has been observed and will, as such, be open to modification as observation dictates, not vice versa, right?

Sure, but then you can't define the supernatural as violating the laws of nature, as some naturalists propose, since by that definition observations of violations of the law of nature are impossible by definition. I have no problem with the concept of the laws of nature you are presenting; but many naturalists other than yourself do.

In fact violating the "laws of nature" may, from time to time and case by case, be one of the aspects of the supernatural, but surely this is not always the case, nor even really necessary for a supernatural attribution, or so it seems to me.

Well, this is part of my point - I don't believe the concept of "supernatural" is coherent, and thus any theory which relies on it - including naturalism - must be wrong. It's impossible to give a definition to it that makes any sense. You've tried, but your attempted definition produces all sorts of really peculiar consequences, as I've explained. If the concept can't be rescued, we are best to eject it.

Would you say that unexplained cancer remission violates the "laws of nature"? I probably would not. Has such an occurance ever been attributed to the "supernatural", at least by some? I am pretty sure that we can agree that it has, (supernatural attribution), and perhaps rather commonly, again by some, when such odd events, (unexplained cancer remissions), do occur.

Did they attribute it to God, or to the supernatural? One can believe in God without believing in the supernatural; I believe in God, but I don't call God supernatural, since I consider the word "supernatural" to be without any coherent meaning. I think this fuzziness in the way people use the term "supernatural" - some using it to refer to claimed violations of the law of nature; others using it to refer to actions by God that don't necessarily violate any laws of nature - is a sign of the term's fundamental incoherence.

Miraculous can simply mean unexpected and it seems to me that most of the time that this word is used, that is exactly the sense in which it is meant. So again, I think your assertion here is kind of bunk.

That's not how many naturalists use the term miraculous. As I noted, I'm not talking about how I use the term, or even how other theists use the term, but how many naturalists use the term. And as many naturalists use the term, the term "miraculous" means a lot more than just "unexpected". The theory of relativity was unexpected - who would have thought that time slowed down as velocity increased? - but few would call it "miraculous". I certainly doubt many naturalists would.

Miracle, in the sense that it is used by "non-naturalist" and if I understand your reference, is what I refer to, once again, as fictional. Just for coherencies sake.

As I said, I'm not talking about the numerous ways in which theists or other religious believers use "miracle"; I'm talking about how naturalists specifically use the term. And they don't use it to mean simply "fictional" - Al Bundy is fictional, but he isn't miraculous.

As you might by now have guessed, using the terms 'fictional' and 'non-fictional' in place of the terms supernatural and natural might help you understand why your statement above might be quite funny, at least for a naturalist.

Save for the fact that your attempt to define "natural"/"supernatural" in terms of "non-fictional"/"fictional" just doesn't work.

[robertb]

I think Zack's point in this thread is that people who reject Supernatural - the Naturalists - say what they are rejecting.

I thought I did exactly that.

I proposed a test (rather than talk) . Will a Naturalist allow an hypothesis 'There are ghosts in this house.'? Or is that prohibited, not science, not this , not that ...? 'Thou mayest not investigate this in the name of science.'

Magellan

I think that there is no problem with asking the question.

It would be interesting to see how you would go about demonstrating such an idea, but nothing wrong with the statement, as far as the question goes.