In defence of weak naturalism
The position I propose to defend is weak naturalism. Conforming broadly to the standard of scientific inquiry known as methodological naturalism, it can be distinguished from the stronger position of philosophical naturalism, which claims categorically that the natural world is all there is. I'm also contending that naturalism is more probable than supernaturalism.
Weak naturalism: as far as we know, the natural world is all there is. I defend the claim that naturalism is more probable than supernaturalism, in my essay Naturalism versus Supernaturalism- the false dichotomy – I argue that the observance of the natural world along with its laws combined with the absence of any evidence of the supernatural, amounts to a strong prima facie case for naturalism, and its likelihood in comparison to the sans-evidence claims of supernaturalism.
http://rationalrazor.com/2017/02/08/in-defence-of-weak-naturalism-post-2-a-response-to-gary-robertson/
Weak naturalism: as far as we know, the natural world is all there is. I defend the claim that naturalism is more probable than supernaturalism, in my essay Naturalism versus Supernaturalism- the false dichotomy – I argue that the observance of the natural world along with its laws combined with the absence of any evidence of the supernatural, amounts to a strong prima facie case for naturalism, and its likelihood in comparison to the sans-evidence claims of supernaturalism.
http://rationalrazor.com/2017/02/08/in-defence-of-weak-naturalism-post-2-a-response-to-gary-robertson/
Comments (282)
For instance on the linked blog page, I noticed this statement:
Generally, such arguments are employed as part of the rhetorical armory against religous apologists.
And while the statement is true - unless you live in tribal cultures, where shamans are still frequently consulted - even in modern urban culture, there are such phenomena as psychosomatic effects, like the placebo effect (which has even been shown to be effective for 'sham surgery' procedures.) Not to mention many other phenomena described generally under the title of 'mind-body medicine'. Which is not to say that one ought to trust faith-healers, or reject blood transfusions on account of scripture. But the boundary between what we categorise as natural and supernatural might not be so clear-cut.
Also, there's a debate going on at the moment about what 'natural laws' are, and if you drill down, it's actually quite hard to account for them, in scientific terms. I think the general gist is that 'natural laws' are assumed by naturalism - after all, it could hardly get out of bed without them - but in itself it doesn't account for them. Not that it really needs to - but again, assuming that naturalism accounts for the order which allows it to work, is perhaps a little like 'the rooster taking credit for the sunrise'.
I will endeavour to explain my position better in my next post. When I say weak naturalism, I mean it in the same sense of weak atheism. There is no reason to conclude that there is anything beyond the physical world unless evidence is provided for it.
What exactly do you mean to say about "natural laws"? I don't see how it's a challenge to my argument. My argument doesn't suggest that naturalism must account or explain or cause the natural world. I'm agnostic on whether there is a cause to the natural world.
What do you mean by "natural"? What distinguishes the natural from the supernatural? Is it the apparently-obvious (but actually vague) notion of "spooky" things?
Well, if there is a cause, then the natural world is not 'all there is'.
Exactly, I was explaining how the natural world has no need to account for itself.
It may be, that within the natural world there is a "brute fact" or process which explains it. But we have no need of providing that explanation, to reject claims of a supernatural realm in the absence of evidence.
A supernatural law would have the same problem.
There is a way the world is and then there are the patterns we find in the way the world is, and we call those patterns, "laws".
Any description of the supernatural would have to include it's causal relationship with the natural. When that is done, we will no longer use the term, "supernatural". Everything would simply be "natural".
And then a perfectly useful word like "nature" and its related concepts would have become useless.
To see the point from another angle. "Natural" is often opposed to "artificial". Obviously, everything which is "artificial" is also "natural" (if we are looking at "natural" as a distinction from "supernatural"). But that does not mean that we can discard the notion of artificiality.
Perhaps the notion of "naturality-as-distinguished-from-supernaturality" is useful in a similar way.
Quoting Mariner
"Artificial" is often used to define man-made things, but since man is a natural outcome of a natural process, then everything it makes is also natural. "Artificial" is a term used to distinguish between the "natural" and "man-made". Since the term, "artificial" is a term created when man thought of himself as separate from nature, and we recently find out that we aren't, then the term itself loses its meaning and is relegated to the trash heap of other terms that we have used but found to be useless in the light of new knowledge.
That's the point. It loses its meaning in some contexts (when we are discussing metaphysics) but not in others (when we are discussing, say, environmentalism). "Artificial" is a useful word when it is properly used. When it is not properly used, of course it is less than useful.
Note that "properly" here does not refer to rules of grammar, etiquette, or something like that -- it refers to the transmission of meaning. If a word is useful to transmit some meaning in a given context, then it cannot "lose its meaning" because it is useless in another context.
Quoting Harry Hindu
"Natural", both in Latin and in Greek (phusis), was originally related to birth. Natural was "whatever is born". Many things, not limited to gods, were not conceived as being "birthable" back then. The word was useful; and its derivatives (supernatural, unnatural, preternatural, and the more rarely spotted subnatural) were well defined in accordance to the original meaning, referring to birth.
Translating this ancient worldview to a modern, atheistic worldview, "supernatural" would apply to things like (ironically) natural laws. And the question then becomes, is it important to distinguish between "the world of birthable things" and "the world of non-birthable things?" If this distinction is still useful, and if we still want to discuss these worlds hierarchically, then "supernatural", "unnatural", etc., are still useful. Even within an atheistic worldview. All that is required is for those who profess this view to purge the word from its theistic aroma :).
Or, if they prefer, to coin new words. The main point is, to simply discard a word and not replace it with an equivalent is a curtailment of our semantic possibilities, and this is usually a loss, probably a grievous one.
But is there really an absence of evidence? There is some evidence for the supernatural. Granted that the evidence is open to interpretation, but doesn't weak evidence or uncertain evidence still count as evidence?
How so? "Nature" would then be synonymous with "reality", or "multiverse". So even if "nature" did lose it's meaning (and I don't think it would), we'd still have other words to use.
Quoting Mariner
Meaning isn't derived at all from context, but from the intent of the speaker or writer. It is up to the listener and reader to discover the intent, not the context, being used. When we misunderstand some use of a word, it is because we misunderstood the intent, not the context.
The word, "artificial" would only still be used by those that still hold on to the belief that we are separate from nature. If they don't believe this, then the are unwittingly misusing the word, or using it in a way to communicate something in a way the listener (who still believes that man is separate from nature) can understand. They wouldn't be consistent in their world-view and their use of some term. This happens a lot because most people don't seem to take the time to integrate their varying views on certain subjects together, much less their terms they use with their views.
Meaning is not derived at all from context? Not even a little bit?
Let's test this theory.
Trump.
What do I mean by that word?
Are you just talking about disambiguation? If we're talking about bridge, it'll mean one thing; if about politics another, and so on? Wouldn't you still need to rely on the speaker following Grice's "Be relevant" maxim? And then we're back to intention. Wouldn't it be reasonable to say we look to context for clues to the speaker's intention? (And assume they're following the maxims, etc.)
All that is a long way from saying that the meanings of words are *derived* from either context or speaker's intention. It's important to remember that compositionality is a thing. We use the words we do to form novel assertions (questions, commands, etc.) because of the meanings those words have.
Do you realize what you just asked? You asked, "What do I mean...." In other words, the meaning is related to your intent. What is it that you intended when you typed that word on the screen? Didn't you intend to try and trip me up with an example of a word that has at least two meanings (one is the last name of the President of the United States while the other is a decisive, overriding factor (aka a trump card))? Isn't that the idea you had in your mind just prior to you typing the word on the screen?
It's not that I'm left with trying to figure out the context in which you are using the word. The context is this particular discussion on a internet philosophical forum. I'm left with trying to discover your intent which I believe was simply trying to show me that you need context in order for words to mean things. But I just showed how that is incorrect. Even the speaker can get the context wrong. It is what they intend to say, but don't get it out right, or when the listener doesn't interpret the intent properly, that results in miscommunication.
So, Trump is not merely the person or the card, it is also the idea of tripping someone up -- assuming you interpreted my intent correctly.
Curious.
Words can refer to things that are not in their dictionary definitions ("Trump" just did that), depending on the context. Which means the context (here, a philosophical discussion) has a role. That's all I'm pointing out here.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Yes. I don't disagree with that (not with what Srap Tasmaner said. But it doesn't go far enough when it dismisses any relevance of context.
Perhaps I'm misinterpreting you :D. But you did say that meaning is "not derived at all" from context, and this seems to contradict the experience of any proficient language user.
I'm sure we can reach a formulation that gives the proper weight to the speaker's intent and to context without dismissing one or the other.
After we reach that formulation, we can examine once again whether discarding any word (be it "Trump", a quite ambiguous word, or "artificial", a much less ambiguous one) can be justified on account of it being useless in a given context, even though it is useful in another.
Only if we take evidence to mean absolute incontrovertible proof. People like to say "no evidence" but that's really just rhetoric, there's plenty of evidence for both the natural world as well as the supernatural, it's just that the evidence is open to interpretation and can fit a variety of theories or worldviews.
All ordinary experience is perfectly compatible with everything being 'supernatural.' There's literally no reason to believe one or the other.
I agree that it's compatible but the main objection to ideas like occasionalism or ontological idealism is that they over-explain things and that physicalism is a much more parsimonious explanation. So there is some reason to think physicalism may be the case.
Surely not.
Even if we assume that
that's not at all the same as
Tripping him up was what you intended to achieve by what you said; it's not the meaning of what you said.
Or any of the "infinite number of other hypotheses," it seems.
I'd like to understand this better. Am I right in thinking you're really talking about the relationship between theory and evidence in general, and not just this particular case?
So Theory N has one set of assumptions, and they determine what counts as evidence for Theory N; but Theory S has a different set of assumptions that determines what counts as evidence for Theory S. Since -- by definition -- there's no evidence for the assumptions of either, you can choose whichever assumptions you like, and in that sense all ordinary experience is compatible with either Theory S or Theory N. You cannot possibly have a reason for choosing, say, the assumptions of Theory N, because assumptions -- again, by definition -- are just what we don't have reasons for.
Do I have all that right?
Yep, but what you just said is not what he said :D.
These are not the only possibilities, of course. It is possible that I did not know what I wanted. It is possible that I wanted to take the discussion into self-reference territory (which is not tripping anyone up). It is possible that I wanted to make a point.
What is for sure after an examination of the possibilities is that context is necessary. Words without contexts (in this case, a thread in a forum) don't have meaning. Sure, intent is also necessary, and since the intent is vague in this case, we are fencing in the dark, but the claim that context plays no role has been falsified.
I'm not sure if I'm understanding you here. In every dictionary I've looked at, the word "trump" doesn't have the definition you are ascribing to it. Does this mean that you are using "trump" as an example of your statement that words can refer to things that are not in their dictionary definitions? If this is the case, then again, it is your intent to do so. And the reason I didn't understand your use is because you are using it in a way that we haven't agreed on.
A dictionary is a list of words and their definitions that we all agree on. When you start using rules that we haven't established or agreed on, then even knowing the context isn't going to help me. I'd need to get in your head to see the relationship between some idea and the word your using to refer to that idea that you are intending. Anyone can use any words however they want, but if they intend to communicate, then they would need to use the established rules that everyone has agreed on and learned in grade school.
Quoting Mariner
It doesn't contradict my experience of using my native language. Before I speak, I have the experience of intending to communicate an idea in my head. I then have the experience of converting those ideas into words that I then write down or use noise to transmit to other minds. There is always the intent to communicate a particular idea.
Answer me this: If I could get into your mind, why would I ever need to know the context in which we are communicating? If I simply understood your intent, then why would I ever need to know the context in which we are communicating? If knowing your intent is enough, then context isn't necessary to communicate.
This means that whenever knowing my intent is not enough, context is necessary to communicate. Which is what I'm claiming.
Our differences seem to be more of emphasis than of content.
In any case, we can [begin to] go back to the theme of the thread. Would you say that the word "artificial" should not be used, whatever the context, and whatever the intent of the speaker? This seemed to be your claim, let me know if it stands as formulated.
This doesn't address my answer. Again, if you are using a word in a way that is unfamiliar to me, then even the context isn't going to help me. I did say this in the post you just replied to. Miscommunication occurs as a result of the listener or reader not understanding the speaker or writer's intent, not as a result of them misunderstanding the context. When I misunderstand your words, I'm misunderstanding you, not the context. The speaker or writer's intent precedes even the knowledge of the context. As I said before, even the speaker/writer can get the context wrong, but they still have the intent to communicate a specific idea.
Quoting Mariner
Because there are a lot of people that still believe that humans are separate from nature, "artificial" still has it's uses to communicate with those people. If I wanted to steer away from the use of the word because of the outdated idea that it refers to, then I could use the word, "man-made" instead to distinguish between the things man has made and what other animals have made without separating them from nature.
Ok, then the point made way back when, that "natural" would lose its usefulness (in metaphysical discourse) if the word "supernatural" were discarded is still cogent.
I rolled this answer around in my mind a bit more and it seems that we are agreeing for the most part. Because we are cut off from direct contact with each other's minds, we use context as a tool for getting at the intent of the speaker/writer. So we are always still trying to get at the speaker/writer's intent. Context is an indirect means of doing that. This is why we say things like, "I misunderstood you", not "I misunderstood the context" because as every proficient language user knows, deep down, that it is the intent that we are trying to get at, not the context itself.
I don't remember anyone making that particular point. I made the point that "supernatural" would lose it's meaning in the absence of the natural because the word "supernatural" refers to things (of a manifestation or event) attributed to some force beyond scientific understanding or the laws of nature. So when these other parts are explained scientifically, and the causal relationship between the supernatural and the natural is explained, then "supernatural" won't refer to anything. That is why it will become useless.
If nature is defined as what has been scientifically explained, then once everything is explained, everything would be natural, and then what use would the word, "supernatural" have? Weather is a great example of this. Do we still refer to the weather as a "supernatural" phenomenon?
Let's suppose a dummy universe, with only a few laws (say, 3), which are discoverable by its inhabitants. They discover the first law, and call this the law of nature. And they refer to the events under the influence of the other 2 laws by the word, "supernatural".
In such a universe, once the other two laws are discovered, yes, the word "supernatural" would become obsolete (in talking about physics -- not in talking about history).
Whether or not our universe is analogous to this dummy universe, of course, is a metaphysical (not a scientific) question. Even in the dummy universe, people would never be sure that there weren't new laws waiting to be discovered (the number of laws is not apparent to them). Even if we define supernatural as "whatever has not been explained so far", it seems that there will always be scope for speculating about it.
Worthy of note is that these definitions of natural and supernatural (both referring to explainability) are surely not how the word is used, nor how it was etymologically derived.
What are the assumptions behind it? As far as I can tell physicalism is the assumption, there don't seem to be any underlying assumptions supporting it. It does carry quite a few implications for a range of issues but implications aren't assumptions. I'm with you in that I don't think it's a warranted assumption but then I think metaphysical commitments in general are mostly just philosophically gratuitous presumptions.
It's generally taken for granted that physical things exist and everything else has to prove its existence. But this is a prejudice and so far as I can tell nothing supports it.
Yes, I think that's about right. But I'm not sure what physicalists think non-physical things are, except the set of things that don't exist. I suspect that when the existence of a non-physical thing (like a ghost or a number or a law) is 'proven' (by some standard) it is declared to be physical after all. Which is fine but that just renders physicalism a non-interesting all-encompassing monism.
In the context of philosophy of mind, I think physicalism is emergentism. That consciousness is dependent on complex structure and function, and that non-conscious structure and function exists (ontologically and temporally) prior to consciousness. Emergentism is a better word as it better captures what I think physicalists want to claim.
Sure. People have a tendency to keep asking "Why...?", but this isn't evidence that there is more to be discovered. It is simply evidence that we seek explanations for everything. Either the explanations stop somewhere, or there is infinite causation. What would be the term for explanations that underlie the supernatural explanations? What would be the cause of the supernatural? Would we call those laws, "meta-natural?" and then what about the laws that underlie those meta-natural laws? Where do we stop?
If "supernatural" only carried the meaning of being "unexplained", then I could probably come to some agreement with you. But "supernatural" also carries with it the connotation of "divine", or "holy", and of being the domain of gods. Remember, the ideas that religion are based on are preliminary. Religion was our preliminary explanation of the world and humans' place in it. They were explanations based on our very first assumptions - that humans are the most important aspect of creation, and the reason for creation. Humans have a tendency to focus on themselves - of seeing themselves as the important aspect of creation - of seeing nature as created and designed specifically for them. Religions are anthropomorphic in the sense that it places humans as the central focus of nature. All of these baseless assumptions are where the term, "supernatural", was etymologically derived.
Why does it matter what term we use to label the fundamental substance of reality? It seems to me that it is the term that you don't like, as reality has some kind of substance and things that are made of the same substance can interact, or causally influence each other. Would it matter if called it "mental" instead of "physical"? Wouldn't that be based on a plethora of baseless assumptions as well?
If we can agree that what we call "mental" has a causal influence on the "physical" and vice versa, then why are we arguing over the terms used to refer to the fundamental substance? Why would that even matter? Using different terms to refer to different fundamental substances is what creates the problem in the first place. By referring to them as different substances contradicts our own observations of both "substances" being a causal influence on one another. If it is the terms, "physical" and "mental" that set idealists and materialists off, then dispense with both of these terms altogether and let's all use a new word for the fundamental substance of reality. How about, "information"?
It doesn't matter what term you use, but that's not what's being discussed.
Maybe if you told us what would count as a "substantive ontological sense," then we could understand what you mean by this:
Quoting The Great Whatever
I'd guess a lot of us might grant that it's a "prejudice," but a prejudice that comes from being physical beings, so we're pretty attached to it. (We're not talking about thinking you won't like Indian food.)
Gravity, rubble in the driveway, and many other things we encounter daily, we label physical.
I'm guessing things like telepathy, psychokinesis, and sorcery would be outside of physicalism.
[quote=1911 Encyclopædia Britannica/Sorcery]Sorcery, magic, enchantment, witchcraft; the use of supposed supernatural powers by the agency of evil spirits called forth by spells, incantations, &c., on the part of the magician, sorcerer or witch. The word meant originally divination by means of the casting or drawing of lots, and is derived from the O. Fr. sorcerie, sorcier, a sorcerer, Med. Lat. sortiarius, one who practises divination by lots, sortes (see Magic, Divination and Witchcraft).[/quote]
For some reason the mere existence of "physicalities" (as exemplified) is usually not in doubt, but what exactly they are usually is.
When it comes to examples of "non-physicalities", it seems more like we define them first, and then try to figure out if they actually exist (as defined).
The main reason I suspect is that it appears to be physical. It's not much of a stretch to think that it appears that way because it is that way.
A great example is the idea of "God" or "supernatural". Those ideas have so many implications that most people ignore that they end up having an inconsistent world view, and if your world view is inconsistent, and you don't give a damn that it's inconsistent, then what is the point of discussing anything with you?
Could you give an example of someone having a belief in something supernatural that leads them to an inconsistency with other beliefs that you think they would probably have?
- Everything in the natural universe has a cause. We have yet to find an exception to this rule, therefore that becomes the prima facie.
- But then the first natural thing must have a cause, which itself either does not have a cause or is not a natural thing, because otherwise that antecedent thing would be the 'first natural thing', and not the other one.
- Therefore supernatural things exist.
If the terms, "natural" vs. "supernatural" are only related to things that are explained vs. things that aren't, then (1) why is the idea of "divinity" associated with "supernatural"? and (2) is any supernatural explanation really an explanation, because by explaining something it becomes natural?
I'm with you and Aquinas here.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
Whoah... hold your horses. This part seems to be wholly dependent upon an arbitrary, anthropomorphic boundary Aquinas calls, "first". Why must there be a "first" natural thing? Why isn't it natural all the way down?
I really don't know of any other way to make this point, which I have done before in this thread and several times in other threads, If there is a causal relationship with the "supernatural" and "natural" then they must be part of the same reality - the natural one - and any distinction that we make would be arbitrary and anthropomorphic.
I was you until you called the one reality "natural". Why would one use that word? Is it not better to employ a different word and keep the natural/supernatural distinction? It is useful to distinguish between gods and things, even if they are part of the same reality.
Because if the universe has a beginning, then there must be a first thing. The only logical alternative is no beginning. But finiteness is a simpler hypothesis than infinity, and so, as per Occam's Razor, it becomes the prima facie until proven otherwise.
- Then this first natural thing is caused by another thing which has no cause (the first cause), for nothing can be the cause of itself.
- And everything in the natural universe has a cause, as we have established earlier.
- Therefore this first cause must be supernatural.
I also agree with here. Maybe we should find clear definitions of 'natural' and 'supernatural', if it is not already done.
It would be useful to keep the natural/supernatural distinction were it not for the contradictory nature (pun intended) of this distinction, as I pointed out in my last two or three posts in this thread.
If you want to distinguish between gods and other things, then use the terms, "gods" and "things". We could also make the distinction between the two by using the terms, "imaginary" and "real".
If the universe has a beginning, then that would be the first "natural" cause. If the universe was the effect of some cause, then that cause would be "natural" too, as there would be a causal relationship between the cause and the effect. There would be no reason to use the term, "supernatural". This has been my point all along, yet people seem to dense to get it.
So, reality would be composed of real and imaginary beings?
Isn't "reality/real" falling prey to the same problem that you identified with "nature"?
I don't see the difference between your formulation and "nature is composed of natural and supernatural beings" -- which, as you properly say, is a strange phrase.
Much better is the traditional "reality is composed of natural and supernatural beings" (leaving to the side, for the moment, whether imaginary/real is a proper dichotomy).
"Reality can be properly addressed through the use of the word X". You claim that "Nature" is an adequate X. I prefer "Reality", not surprisingly, and I maintain that any X will be less adequate than "Reality", due to the construction of the phrase (i.e., regardless of what you or I think about it).
"Reality and Nature are synonyms" is simply false (nowadays, in 2017), it has been false throughout history, and if it becomes true at any point in the future, a new word (and world) will have to be coined to address what we, nowadays, in 2017, refer to as "Nature".
Good point. Yes, definitions matter. So let's define "imaginings" and "reality" in a way that makes sense and see if we can maintain the gist of their meaning as most people understand them.
Yes, imaginings are real things and therefore part of reality. In this sense we could say that imaginings are real things themselves, but they don't refer to anything out in the world in the way that our experiences of the world do. This is the key difference of what we mean by something being real, or imaginary.
"Real" things we can all objectively experience at once. Imaginary things we cannot. Imaginary things can only be experienced subjectively. Imaginings are real in the sense that they exist, but because they are inaccessible by other minds, they appear to others as if they don't exist, or we know that they exist but they don't provide any useful information about the world other than someone is imagining something. This is probably the key difference - that imaginings don't provide any useful knowledge about the world, other than the knowledge that someone is imagining something.
In this sense, what is "real" is what is objective and what is imaginary is what is subjective, but both the objective (the world as it is without a perspective) and the subjective (a perspective of the world, within the world) are both part of reality. Actually, I would re-word this to say that imaginings are part of the category of what is real, but isn't the only thing that is real. Reality is composed of everything - imaginings and non-imaginings.
Remember that perspectives aren't everywhere. Not only are there a finite number of perspectives in a seemingly infinite world, but perspectives by their very nature are limited in the amount of information they can possess of the world, so they can only represent a small fraction of the world and not the world as a whole, which would be an objective perspective, or the "real" world, or the world as it is that includes all perspectives and all non-perspectives.
Quoting Mariner
I fail to see how "reality" and "nature" aren't synonymous.
na·ture
1. the phenomena of the physical world collectively, including plants, animals, the landscape, and other features and products of the earth
2. the basic or inherent features of something, especially when seen as characteristic of it.
re·al·i·ty
1. the world or the state of things as they actually exist, as opposed to an idealistic or notional idea of them.
2. the state or quality of having existence or substance.
What is the distinction you are seeing that I'm not?
To use your words:
Quoting Harry Hindu
Quoting Harry Hindu
Note that the definition of "nature" addresses the "physical world", i.e., it specifically distinguishes the referent of the world from non-physical aspects.
Note also that "non-physical" is not at all synonymous with "supernatural". Numbers, concepts, values, all of them are non-physical, and most people would not call them supernatural.
I think we're getting side-tracked now by the terms "physical" and "non-physical" (another false dichotomy), which could be a whole other discussion. Let's stick with the terms we've been discussing as we already have enough terms to use as examples to get at what we are talking about.
I can happily leave out the term, "physical" in the definition of "nature". I'd rather point at the second definitions of both "reality" and "nature", as they both seem to be synonymous and the meaning I was thinking about when I think of them being synonymous. "Nature" can refer to the properties of some thing as something inherent - of the properties that make the thing what it is, which could include just one thing (the nature of an organism) or the whole thing (all of nature). "Reality" is simply that same state of affairs or properties that makes the thing what it is, which could include just one thing (a piece of reality), or the whole thing (all of reality).
Ok, let's focus on the second definitions.
"Nature" is strong on "basic", "inherent", "characteristic". The idea here is to distinguish essential from non-essential attributes. "Dogs have four legs", even though we've seen three-legged dogs. The three-legged dogs are "not natural" in the sense of this second definition: having three legs is not a
"basic or inherent features of [dogness], especially when seen as characteristic of it."
The second definition of "Reality" is more abstract. The three-legged dog has "the state or quality of having existence or substance". It is a real three-legged dog.
What about Santa Claus? He lacks the state or quality of having existence or substance... but it has some basic, inherent features. He has a white beard. He wears a red suit. He lives in the North Pole. He can have basic, inherent features even though he lacks the quality of having existence or substance. And the same applies to Frodo, Dracula or Sherlock Holmes.
The bottom line -- according to these two definitions, all beings have "a nature" (basic, inherent attributes), even non-existent beings, i.e., even non-real beings.
***
The core of our disagreement is whether the word "supernatural" can be put to rest in the graveyard of old words. And we've seen that, just because something does not exist (i.e. "lacks the quality of having existence or substance"), we can't assume that it does not have a nature (basic, inherent features).
Let's explore what that means as it pertains to the matter of supernatural beings. Supernatural beings have "a nature" in that sense -- they have basic, inherent features. Why should we call them "supernatural", then? Because "nature" in the composition of the word "supernatural" is not related to "basic, inherent features"; it is related to the first definition ("physical world and its components"). In other words, supernatural beings have basic and inherent features -- one of them is that they are beyond and above (hence, "super") the natural world.
Note that this is true even if they lack the quality of existence or substance (i.e., even if we are talking of beings more akin to Frodo, Dracula and Sherlock Holmes than of beings more akin to you and me).
You are contradicting yourself, because you agreed earlier that "everything in the natural universe has a cause". The first cause, by definition, has a causal relationship, but no cause.
Perhaps there was a misunderstanding and you meant instead that "everything in the natural universe has a causal relationship"? But that statement is false: Miracles have a causal relationship with the thing acted upon, and yet they are not classified as natural events. God has a causal relationship with his creation, and yet is not classified as a natural being.
Whatever is real, does not require our definitions to exist. Rather the opposite, we try to converge on quiddity of whatever is real by means of discovery, something like that. Oftentimes this involves predication. Merely defining quiddity of reality-constituents seems fraught.
Of course, in terms of our language, it's always a good idea to express things concisely, which may involve definitions. Going by dictionaries and encyclopedias, definitions are inherently circular, but that can work wonders in context-building.
[quote=Wittgenstein]For a large class of cases — though not for all — in which we employ the word ‘meaning’, it can be explained thus: the meaning of a word is its use in the language.[/quote]
So, anyway, what are we on about with "natural" and "supernatural" here...?
Here, I would simply use the qualifiers, "normal" and "abnormal". There are normal dogs in nature, and there are abnormal dogs in nature. As a matter of fact, mutations are natural events. Accidents are natural events, too.
Quoting MarinerHere, I just go back to my qualifiers of "imaginary" and "non-imaginary" (notice how I didn't use the word, "real", as that seems to have this connotation that it would not include the imaginary.). To say that Santa Claus doesn't have existence or substance is to fall into the false dichotomy of dualism. As I said before, imaginary things exist, just as non-imaginary things do. They just exist differently, or have different characteristics. You can tell the difference between an imagining and a non-imagining, right, and you would agree that imaginings and non-imaginings exist, right?
I didn't invent the English language. I simply came into the world one day and started learning it. It's not my fault that no one has come along and updated the meanings to reflect our modern knowledge and so that we can be consistent about what talk about.
Quoting Mariner
I thought I already placed "supernatural" within the category of "imaginary" AND that I have shown that imaginary things exist - but only as imaginings. I made the distinction between "imaginary" and the "non-imaginary" quiet clear. It's just that not all imaginings are referred to as being "supernatural". "Supernatural" itself is an imaginary concept. This all seems fairly simple for me to grasp.
.
No problem with that, but there is also -- as per the definitions you required us to use -- no problem in using the word "natural" to refer to a four-legged dog, and "not-natural" to refer to a three-legged dog. Having three legs is not a basic, inherent trait of dogness.
Quoting Harry Hindu
I have no problem with any of this. The point of contention is rather why would you want to discard that word, since you ascribe referents to it, and you emphasize that these referents exist, only in a different way (imaginary) compared to other referents.
"God is an imaginary being", according to you. Ok. But so is Frodo, or Sherlock Holmes. One of them is supernatural, the other is not. (Heck, not even Spiderman, or Superman, would be "supernatural" according to the traditional usage). Why should we stop using the word supernatural to distinguish, say, angels from hobbits?
Well, perhaps the natural is whatever behaves according to the laws of physics, and the supernatural is whatever doesn't behave according to the laws of physics. Thus the argument concludes that the first cause doesn't behave according to the laws of physics.
The problem is that it's quite a leap to go from "the first cause doesn't behave according to the laws of physics" to "the first cause is God".
Quoting jorndoeDiscovery comes first in the scientific process. Then comes that part about communicating your discoveries so that others may test them. How do you communicate your discoveries if not by using visual or auditory symbols to refer to these ideas in your head in a way that others will understand?
Quoting jorndoeIt would only be circular if you are using the word you are defining in the definition of the word.
The idea in someone's head that triggered the use of the word is what the word means, as the intent to communicate that idea existed prior to the use of the word. The meaning of words has nothing to do with their use. It has everything to do with the intent of the communicator. If "meaning" were use, then the word, "God", wouldn't refer to anything - not even the idea in someone's head. It would only refer to the use. So, god isn't a divine entity, not even an imaginary one? God is simply some use of some scribbles? Does that make sense?
Quoting jorndoeDid you read the thread? Are you asking Mariner and I to repeat ourselves?
I don't think that's right. Consider something like shaking your head. Does shaking your head mean what you intend it to mean ("no") or does its meaning depend on how it's used in the given community (e.g. in Bulgaria it means "yes")?
Even if you intend to express disagreement by shaking your head, shaking your head doesn't mean "no" in Bulgaria; it means "yes".
So I think there needs to be a distinction between what you mean by the expression and what the expression means. The former is a matter of intention, but the latter is a matter of convention.
Quoting MarinerWhat makes angels supernatural, and hobbits not? "Divinity"? - another imaginary word?
How do you know that?
I'd bet 99.99% of people (including the dictionary, encyclopedias, etc.) would say that dogs have the inherent trait of having four legs. There is even a scientific term for that -- they are quadrupeds, so say the wise scientists.
Quoting Harry Hindu
And what if it stops barking? And then licking your face? And then smelling other dog's rear ends? This is a sorites problem that could only appear in a philosophy forum.
Frankly, if your argument hinges upon "having four legs is not a basic, inherent, natural trait of being a dog", then there isn't much more to discuss.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Look at the dictionary. Your answer is there. (And by the way, neither Supernatural nor Divinity is an imaginary word. I can see it with my eyes in my screen. Stick to your definitions).
If having four legs were an inherent trait of being a dog, then what prevents you from labeling all four-legged animals, "dogs"?
Quoting Mariner
Ok.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/hobbit
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/angel
Neither definition includes the term, "supernatural". So where do we go from here?
Oh, and by the way, the definition of "dog" doesn't include the mention of four legs.
https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/dog
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/DAJV5kOUIAArzDz.jpg
...too funny.
Logic.
What do you learn when you learn the meaning of a word? Is it the idea that is in your head? Is it the idea that is in someone else's head?
To say that the inherent feature of some thing is that it has four-legs is to say that it is the only thing that has four legs. Because dogs are not the only thing with four legs (chairs have four legs to), means that four legs aren't the single, defining feature of dogs. There is more to being a dog than just having four legs.
If intent isnt related to meaning then why do we say things like, "What did [I]you[/i] mean?" or, "what [I]I[/i] meant was..." as if meaning is related to the idea in someones head and the correct string of scribbles or sounds were not used properly to transmit that idea to another mind.
When we translate words from other languages, what are we translating? The fact that you can translate at all, when you think about it, shows that meaning is more than word use because what would it mean for two sentences in different languages to be translations of each other if not for the fact that both of them have the same meaning?
If "the idea in someone's head that triggered the use of the word is what the word means," how can this be shared?
Maybe you mean something different by "the idea in someone's head" than I think you do. (I think of that as, more or less, "what comes to mind," when you hear a word.)
By "the idea in someone's head," do you mean an intention of theirs? (The intention to speak, to communicate a thought, to be understood to be attempting to communicate--there are lots of intentions.)
It is. But we can bridge that gap a couple of ways:
1. In Revelation 22:13: "I am the Alpha and the Omega, the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End". God himself says he is the first cause.
2. God is traditionally defined as 'that which nothing greater can exist'. Combine this with the principle that 'no effect can be greater than its cause(s)', and we deduce that the first cause is that which nothing greater can exist, and therefore the first cause is God.
No we don't.
I see your point. We just need to differentiate between the epistemological order and metaphysical order of the two words. Epistemologically, we humans first experience the natural world and then may call some things supernatural when these don't behave as per the laws of our natural world. Metaphysically however, the supernatural is the cause of the natural, and thus existed prior to it. Sure, you can switch the labels around if desired, as long as the definitions are clear to everyone. For practical purposes though, I would stick to the conventional definitions.
I guess if I had to pick something, I'd say, "All of the premises and inferences."
Premise 1: God is traditionally defined as 'that which nothing greater can be conceived'. You can look it up; I did not come up with the definition.
Premise 2: No effect can be greater than its cause(s). This is a principal in causality. If you object, you would need to find an exception to this principal.
Premise 1 is a claim about language use among I don't know what community of speakers, which doesn't seem like it would suit what seems to be a metaphysical argument. There's also something there about this community's imaginative capacity, and I don't know what to do with that that either. I don't know how to verify any of those claims, or what I would have if I did. Even if Premise 1 is true in some specified sense, what good is it?
I don't have the faintest idea what Premise 2 means. I guess that's on me. What does "greater" mean here? That would help. I'm not even sure what kind of statement it's supposed to be. Is it a natural law, or some sort of metaphysical law?
Whatever sort of statement Premise 2 turns out to be, it seems like a different kettle of fish from Premise 1, so I don't see how they're supposed to be linked.
How is the word "greater" even being used there? What is that saying, exactly, about the relationship of causes and effects?
Begging the question by assuming that there is a God and that the Bible is his words.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
Firstly, what does it mean for an effect to be greater than its cause? Secondly, what justifies the claim that nothing can be greater than its cause? And thirdly, it wouldn't follow that the first cause is that which nothing greater can exist, only that the first cause is that which nothing greater does exist.
You are arguing against this:
Quoting Harry Hindu
When the claim that is being made (in accordance with your proposed definition of nature) is
Quoting Harry Hindu
You should revise your arguments accordingly.
Because we share ideas. I can have the same idea in my head as you without you communicating it. Why do you think people congregate into like-minded groups that use the same language as others in different groups? Isn't it because they have different ideas than those in another group, but the same ideas as the group they associate with? Conservatives and Liberals both speak English yet congregate into different groups. How could that be, if we only think in words and not ideas?
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
So, prior to typing something on the screen, you don't have an idea composed of a visual of how things actually are, and then use that idea to come up with words to communicate that idea? Are you seriously saying that the only thing that comes to your mind is words that get typed out on a screen? Are you a computer or a human being? You have an idea AND you have the intention to share that idea. The only way to share it is through language. If you had no intention to share it, you'd still have the idea, and the idea is composed of visual imagery of some state-of-affairs that you intend to communicate, not words.
Are you also saying that you experienced the word, "mother" before you experienced your mother? Didn't you experience your mother, in all her visual, auditory, olfactory and tactile glory, first, and then learned the word, "mama", which was just a sound you repeated that didn't have any meaning for you at the time until you learned to associate the sound with everything else that you know about your mother? Isn't that the process in which that happened and for all the other words like, "ball", "toy", "monster", "cookie", etc. In order to learn a language didn't you first have to be able to see and hear things and then to understand how to associate certain things you see and hear with other things you experience?
But, as I said before, "supernatural" carries with it the connotation of "divinity". If supernatural was only related to things that haven't yet been explained, then why the connotation of "divinity"? I also asked that if "supernatural" is related to things not being explained and by explaining them they change from "supernatural" to "natural" then is there such a thing as a "supernatural" explanation?
Quoting Samuel LacrampeEvery religious person would disagree with you. They would insist that God and his domain existed prior to the natural world and that the natural world was an effect of the supernatural world. As I have pointed out earlier in this thread, the meanings are backwards.
You are arguing by yourself, since no one here ever disputed this.
And I didn't say the definitions of angels and hobbits included the word supernatural/natural.
You have to read more carefully.
We are also in agreement that to define something properly, you need to include ALL of it's inherent features or qualities. You can't just say, "This particular thing has four legs. What is it?" and expect someone to know what you are talking about. We are in agreement that an inherent feature of all things is that they possess more than one inherent feature or quality that distinguishes it from some things, and shares with some other things, and it is this unique combination of features and qualities that some thing has that we refer to in our definitions of them.
(Whew!) Now that's over with, what were you saying about "supernatural" again?
I don't agree with that.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Don't agree with that either.
Quoting Harry Hindu
Bordering on tautological, so yes, I could agree with that, but I haven't agreed backthread, and it would be offtopic anyway.
Quoting Harry Hindu
I'll stick with "you have to read more carefully", given your interpretation of what I agree with.
Let's look at a specific example.
Suppose I tell you, "I have to be at work by 2:30 today."
Maybe as I say this, there are various images in my mind--flashes of my workplace, the people there, driving, getting ready for work, saying goodbye to the kids. Maybe all of these and a lot more, maybe only some, maybe interspersed with other images and thoughts--I am conscious at the moment and also thinking about other things, taking in my surroundings and so on.
I want to say, just to start with, that none of this stuff going on in my head is the meaning of the sentence "I have to be at work by 2:30 today." I want to distinguish all that stuff from, as you put it, the idea I intend to communicate to you.
Can we agree on that much?
If that is your answer, then I obviously didn't understand your point you were trying to make when I asked you why angels are supernatural and hobbits aren't. You asked me to look at their definitions but neither definition explains why angels are supernatural and hobbits aren't. It's not that I have to read more carefully, it's that you have to do a better job of making your point. So maybe you might care to be less vague.
The origin of Hobbits has not been explained so that makes them supernatural, no?
What made you say, "I have to be at work by 2:30 today."? Why are you saying it? Isn't it because there is a state-of-affairs that needs to happen in the future? Isn't it a prediction that you are referring to? After all, there could be an accident on the way to work and you could be late. How is it that you could be wrong about being at work by 2:30 that doesn't have to do with how you used your words?
No. Supernatural (according to the dictionary, Merriam-Webster for example) is
[b]1 : of or relating to an order of existence beyond the visible observable universe; especially : of or relating to God or a god, demigod, spirit, or devil
2
a : departing from what is usual or normal especially so as to appear to transcend the laws of nature
b : attributed to an invisible agent (such as a ghost or spirit)[/b]
Hobbits fall into none of these possibilities.
Note that you are operating with a concept of "supernatural" which involves "the origins of", something which is clearly not present in the dictionary definition.
To recap (since my first post in the thread): natural pertains to birth. Supernatural pertains to what is beyond and above the realm of birth. This is the originary meaning of the word.
What matters for our discussion (which has been going round and round): is the supposition that "nothing supernatural exists physically" (i.e., that everything that exists in an observable, physical sense is natural) enough to suggest that we should stop using the word "supernatural"?
Curiously enough, since the word has just been used by you in reference to the unknown origin of hobbits, you have just confirmed the point being made all along -- "supernatural" as a word performs a useful role and hence should be kept, regardless of whether supernatural beings exist physically.
Well, if you are asking about the idea of "supernaturality", then it has been from the beginning associated with divinity, since deities were pretty much defined as being immortal (i.e. beyond the realm of birth -- and death). But if you are asking about the word itself, and about the hierarchical relationship implied in the prefix "super", this is clearly related to the "dedivinization of nature" which took place through the influence of Christianity.
To an ancient Egyptian, it was obvious that the gods were beyond the realm of impermanence; the stories about the birth of the gods took place in the time before time, and their death was a contradiction. But this ancient Egyptian would not have a concept of "nature", bereft of all divinity, to contrast with the gods.
It is obvious once you think of it, there can't be language referring to the supernatural before there has been a distinction between the natural and the supernatural, and this distinction will always take the form of a retreat of the gods, since the original viewpoint of mankind was one in which deities interacted with non-deities constantly.
Yes, of course. It wasn't clear to me what you were saying, so I wanted to focus on one thing at a time, make sure we're talking about the same thing, and then it would be clearer where we agreed and where we disagreed.
Yes, I believe I experienced my mother before I learned the word "mother." (I don't know why you would think I had claimed otherwise, but no biggie.)
Here I disagree. I'm not aware of having "an idea composed of a visual of how things actually are" before I speak, or write, except when I'm trying to describe something I'm imagining visually.
I honestly thought some of them were rhetorical, and I'm still not sure which is which.
Fair enough, and in that spirit I have directly answered the questions you mentioned, and I will answer each of the questions in the last paragraph:
We don't know. There are quite a few possible scenarios. For the record, I would take "what made me say it" as something different from "what I meant by it," which is in turn different from "what the sentence means."
Also don't know, and now we can add "why I said it" to that list. These things are all different to me.
Maybe? That's an odd way to put it. It's also possible that I was lying when I spoke, which would change "why I said it" but not "what it means."
I really hadn't thought of that one. It doesn't sound like a prediction to me. I would have assumed most English speakers would hear "I have to be at work by 2:30 today" as expressing an obligation. (For comparison: "I will be at work today by 2:30" I would hear as a prediction, or more likely an expectation.)
[As an aside, and I sincerely hope you don't take offense here, but may I ask if English is your native language? I only ask because I might mistakenly rely on our hearing things the same way, and if we don't there could be needless misunderstanding.]
I really don't hear that sentence as a prediction, but if it were then of course it would be vulnerable to going wrong in the usual ways, as you suggest, which don't have to do with how I use words.
So I've answered your questions as best I could. I hope it helps.
Of course they do. Hobbits existence beyond the visible observable universe, don't they? Where have you seen a hobbit, or a devil, for that matter?
Hobbits also transcend the laws of nature, too. Did they evolve like every other organism? How did they come to exist? The same can be asked about devils.
What does "observable universe" entail, anyway? If god created the natural world, then that is an observable effect of a supernatural cause.
Quoting Mariner
I'm operating with the concept of "supernatural" which involves how others in this thread have associated "supernatural" with things that haven't been explained, or are unexplainable.
Quoting MarinerHypocrisy. Did you not point out that because "supernatural" wasn't part of the definition of "hobbit" then hobbits aren't supernatural? The definition of "supernatural" you provided doesn't include the term, "birth". Whose definitions are we sticking with here, Merriam-Webster, or making up our own?
Quoting MarinerNo, no, no, no. It is you that needs to read more carefully. I have said numerous times and you have simply danced around it, that the distinction between "natural" and "supernatural" is meaningless when you define them both has having a causal relationship with each other. God, a supernatural thing, after all, is the ultimate cause. Everything that follows would be supernatural as well. So, reality itself is supernatural. The only problem is that we have this term, "natural" which seems to imply that the natural existed prior to the supernatural and the supernatural is dependent upon the existence of the natural. Please stick to this particular point. Either way, one of these words loses it's meaning. Which one do we stop using?
Quoting MarinerSo, then hobbits are supernatural? The discussion going around in circles is the result of your inability to remain consistent. The word, "supernatural" was used in an effort to get an clear-cut definition nailed down - something you have yet to do.
So in all the eternity before the creation of the natural world, the gods, angels, devils and spirits never communicated the idea of the reality in which they live among themselves before the creation of a natural world? How do you know that?
Some people even say that God is the alpha and omega, the beginning and the end, and everything. So, there was a term used before the creation that referred to all of reality, and that would be "God". But then how does God, a supernatural thing, include the natural world, and that doesn't make the natural world supernatural?
Of course it's a biggie because it shows that your words refer to other things, and that is what you mean when you say them. I should just drop the microphone here, but I'll indulge you a bit more.
Quoting Srap TasmanerThen what are you talking about when you say or write anything about some state-of-affairs that exists?
Quoting Srap TasmanerI don't ask rhetorical questions. They may seem obvious but some people tend to ignore the obvious, which is why I ask the questions. Some people don't take into account how their ideas have implications on the simplest things.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
No offense. English is my native language.
Okay. I understand what you're saying about predictions. I'll restructure my point. "I have to be at work by 2:30 today" refers to a state-of-affairs that exists right now. If it was tomorrow, you wouldn't have said that sentence, or if you had to be at work at 3:30, you wouldn't have said that, if you were already at work and it was 2:35 you wouldn't have said that, and if you didn't have a job, then you wouldn't have said that. If you were not in a state of having to be at work at 2:30 today, would you have said that?
If you didn't intend to lie, then you wouldn't have said that you have to be at work at 2:30 when you have to be there at 2:00. Sure, to the listener, the sentence means you have to be there at 2:30, but when they find out you lied, then they will know what you meant with your words - to deceive them.
What about what I said about translating words from different languages. What are we translating if not the meaning of the words?
No, I didn't.
But enjoy your thread. If you are happy to discard "supernatural" even while you use the word, I won't hold any grudges.
It's true the Sumerians appear to have been preoccupied with immortality (Gilgamesh searches for it, Adapa is offered immortality, but doesn't realize it and turns it down.) The Gilgamesh epic specifically states that the difference between gods and humans is the matter of immortality. But one of the prime divinities of the Sumerian world was the moon god (father of the sun). It's believed that the dominance of this divinity may have to do with the use of the moon as a time piece, so we might understand it as a fusion of magic, religion, and science. I think if we could convey to an ancient Sumerian what we mean by natural, he would not see divinity as distinct from that concept.
Quoting Mariner
Exactly. I think naturalists take care to define divinity as supernatural. I don't know who else narrows it down in that way.
Quoting Harry Hindu
You seem to be under the impression that I denied words can be used to refer. As I said before, I don't know how you got that impression, but I hold no such view, and do not believe I have expressed such a view here.
(If you could point out to me what I said that gave you that impression, I would be grateful; perhaps I expressed myself poorly. It happens.)
Quoting Harry Hindu
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Quoting Harry Hindu
I simply do not understand how these are connected. If I talk about something I am visually imagining, that's what I'm talking about. If I talk about something I'm looking at, I'm not talking about something I'm imagining. I can talk about having an obligation, even though I don't know how to visualize an obligation. I talk about music all the time without ever visualizing it.
I just really have no idea why you would think I have to visualize something in order to talk about it. Maybe I've misunderstood you.
Quoting Harry Hindu
If you're suggesting that I think words don't have meanings, I'm once again at a loss, as I don't think I've said anything to suggest I think that.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I thought it was your argument that meaning is related to word use. If it isn't then we have no disagreement.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
I don't see how you can say that when you talk about something that you're referring to visual imagery, or a sound, or a feeling, etc. but when it comes to obligations, you aren't? An obligation is one of those things that are composed of many different concepts and sensory impressions - like the feeling you get when you don't uphold your obligations, or the feeling you have when you do, or what that obligation is composed of, like going to work, your co-workers who depend on you, your clients who you've built a nice relationship with, etc. - all of which are composed of visual imagery, etc.
Thinking and imagining are composed of sensory impressions. I'm arguing that you cannot think without your thoughts taking some form. Words are simply other visuals and sounds that we associate with other things. We even associate other things that aren't words with other things, like the taste of a cookie with the visual of a cookie, or maybe even your mother who makes the best cookies - associations that one can establish without even knowing a language.
Here's evidence:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Man_Without_Words
This man went through most of his life without language because he's deaf and no one took the time to teach him, yet he was still able to feed, dress and take care of himself. He just couldn't communicate or understand what it was that others were doing when moving their mouths at each other. When he finally understood, he wasn't surprised that he could suddenly think, he was surprised to find that there were shared words that he could use to communicate his thoughts.
As we go through life and have experiences we are basically establishing connections between our sensory impressions. So, to say anything is to communicate some state-of-affairs. This is why phrases like, "We can never know anything." itself is a claim of knowledge of referring to some state-of-affairs (which is just what is going on in your mind, but your mind is a representation of what is going on in the world. This is why when someone says, "look at that beautiful sunset." we don't go looking in their head for the sunset. We instinctively know that they are talking about something in the world that we all can experience.). It just so happens that this is why the phrase is contradictory because it refers to some state-of-affairs (that we can't know anything) while at the same time saying a different state-of-affairs - that we know something.
This is my starting point:
The "meaning" and "reference" bits there are the least fleshed out because they're the interesting (i.e., hard) bits. What's certain, though, is that the meaning of a word is not whatever associations you have with that word.
Quoting Harry Hindu
I will not pretend to know how thinking, taken broadly, works, or how language use and thinking go together. Just as, above, we were drifting into linguistics, here we drift into psychology. I'll make just a few "points" that seem to apply to much of our thinking and language processing:
We tend to be aware of the exceptions, trying to find words to express a thought, puzzling out what someone means, etc. With thinking as well, the exceptions, where the incessant flow is interrupted, seem to be where conscious rationality finds room to work.
But that also means that the sort of empiricist view you express here is missing a whole lot of data. I love Hume too, but linguistics and psychology have moved on.
Apropos, it seems we spoke past each other. :D (Too few definitions?)
Here's another expression of my inquiry regarding existential claims:
Is x something you can show us first (without having to define it), or is x something you have to define for us first (without having shown existence)?
The former is easily exemplified, e.g. the Sun. The depreciation I expressed was towards the latter.
Quoting jorndoe
Perhaps I can turn it into a thesis:
x is real ? x exists irrespective of anyone's definitions
I'm not sure that holds, though.
Regarding 'an effect cannot be greater than its cause(s)'. You've all asked what it means and how to back it up. Here goes.
'Greater' here means that the effect cannot possess a property that was not present in its cause(s). This follows from the self-evident principle that 'nothing can come from nothing', or 'nothing can bring itself into existence'. Therefore, whatever property the effect has (be it physical or not) must come from its cause(s). Now if we assume that a single first cause exists, then it must possess all properties that its effects possess, because the effects' properties must have been received by the first cause.
You could use this as a definition, something like:
I'm not sure what use this is, but okay.
On the other hand, you could be making the following claim:
This is patently false, as a moment's reflection would show.
That's okay if you have not heard of God being defined in that way before. You just need to 'buy' into the definition for us to have a meaningful argument; because we cannot argue if we are not on a common ground when it comes to the terms used. We could technically replace the word 'God', with the word 'X', and this would not change the validity of the syllogism, as long as we agree on the meaning of the terms.
Just nitpicking: Your definition makes the cause 'equal', not necessarily 'greater'.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Can you show me why?
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
That would be true if I said "all and only," which I didn't.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
If A caused B, whatever that amounts to and whatever you take as A and B, then B has the property of "being caused by A," but A doesn't.
If that seems too clever, here's another: striking the nail with a hammer causes the nail to enter the board. The nail entering the board has the property of wood being displaced by steel; the hammer striking the nail does not. (That's awkward, but I don't really know how to talk about cause and effect perspicuously.)
[As an aside: I did some googling, and it looks like a lot of your ideas come from apologetics. I just want to commend you for coming here to test them out among people with different backgrounds and commitments.]
Cool. I'm glad you see the distinction. What's important is (a) not to assume that what carries the authority of common usage is true, and (b) not to assume every definition, however clear, has some object answering to it.
I agree. But my intent was not to prove God's existence, merely to answer the question of 'how do people go from the first cause to God?' This is my answer for believers.
Quoting Michael
Mmm... You may have a point here... But I'll attempt to refute it anyways.
Can we agree that 'anything that can exist' is 'anything that can be conceived' without contradiction? Now I summon Hume's principle that there are no innate ideas, that all conceptions must come from experience; and thus anything that we can conceive must exist at some point. This does not mean that just because I can imagine a unicorn, that unicorns exist, but that the basic components of the unicorn (colours, shapes, sounds, ...) must exist.
Now if 'all that can exist' is 'anything that we can conceive', and 'anything that we can conceive' is 'anything that must exist', then 'all that can exist' is 'anything that must exist'. (wow that was hard).
You're on the verge of reinventing S5.
There is a lot of prior art here, and a lot of disagreement, even controversy, among philosophers on the interpretation of modal logics.
Your premise is that everything has a cause. It is very much debatable that this is a self-evident truth or that we have no choice but adopt this a metaphysical axiom. In any case, your conclusion (that the cause must possess all properties of its effects) obviously does not follow.
Indeed, it is hard to even think of a single example, while counterexamples are easy to come up with (especially since "cause" and "effect" are such vague concepts).
Almost forgot--as soon as I wrote that, it occurred to me that anything qualifying as a "greater cause" in the defined sense, would have to be self-caused. Coincidence?
This is not the causal relationship between the hammer and the nail. The only effect to the nail caused by the hammer is the energy from the hammer received to the nail. And we know that the energy received is not greater than the original energy due to the second law of thermodynamics, which states that no energy can be created.
Agreed. Common usage or common sense determines the prima facie or default position, but is not a proof.
I haven't spent a lot of time thinking about causation, but it seemed most natural to me to describe it as a relation that held between events rather than objects, so there you have me trying to describe a property of an event, which, as I said, is awkward, for me at least.
I still think it makes sense though.
Actually, I don't think that 'everything has a cause'. Only that 'everything in the natural universe has a cause'. There is no need to extend the principle further than the data set that we can observe, which is only the natural universe.
Quoting SophistiCat
Logically, either a thing has a cause or else it is an eternal being which has always existed, because everything that begins to exist requires a cause for its existence. It could be that eternal things exist in the natural universe but I cannot think of one off the top of my head.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
While it may be hard to pronounce, the argument is really a simple syllogism in the form:
If A is B, and B is C, then A is C.
- Replace A with 'all that can exist'
- Replace B with 'anything that we can conceive'
- Replace C with 'anything that must exist'
You know you just emptied the predicate "has a cause" of all content by extending it to everything, right?
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
Some of us are going to balk at extending the principle of bivalence to propositions that, as you just told us, are in principle unverifiable. I might.
Sure, but the event without the object is only the movement of the objects, that is, the movement of the hammer causing the movement of the nail. And movements are quantified by energy (kinetic), which brings me back to my first point, that there can be no greater energy in the effect than in the cause.
Maybe I am misunderstanding what you are saying, or you are misunderstanding me, because I am with you, that we cannot say that 'everything has a cause', only that 'everything that we can observe (the natural universe) has a cause'.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
But the law of non-contradiction is an absolute. "A is B" and "A is not B" are mutually exclusive. And this is true regardless of what A and B are.
Thanks bro. I hope this will not be seen as a fight between theists vs non-theists, but merely philosophers looking for truth.
Sure, so long as you understand that now you're not saying anything about what's in the natural universe--your predicate is coextensive with it.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
Not what I'm talking about. Bivalence is different. We do not have to accept that "has a cause" is either true or false of entities that are in principle unobservable.
I don't know what to say about the event vs. object stuff. Causation between objects--or all this talk about objects having or not having a cause, which even I fell into--it doesn't make any sense to me. I'll stick with events.
We can clean this up, even without resorting to quantified modal logic, into an actual Barbara like so:
Everything that can exist can be conceived of.
Everything that can be conceived of must exist.
[math]\therefore[/math] Everything that can exist must exist.
Remember universals are really conditionals:
If something can exist, then it can be conceived of.
If something can be conceived of, then it must exist.
[math]\therefore[/math] If something can exist, then it must exist.
See how the second premise is not what you were trying to use Hume for?
Even S5 only says that anything that is possible is necessarily possible (IIRC), not that anything possible is necessary.
(I think someone, maybe Alvin Plantinga, has argued that if God is possible then he must exist--that his existence in some possible world would be necessary in that world, and that if he's necessary in that possible world then he's necessary in all of them, and therefore he exists. It was something like that.)
"Everything that begins to exist requires a cause for its existence" is just a variation on the Principle of Sufficient Reason, which I don't think we are obligated to accept as a dogma.
But that was just an aside. Even if we provisionally accept the PSR, it still doesn't logically follow that a cause must have all the properties of its effects (whatever that might even mean). The most that PSR entails in this case is that there must be a cause for any property, which is a plausible (though not necessary) principle if by that we mean that the property is either entailed or made more probable by a prior state of the world combined with dynamical laws. But conservation of properties does not follow from this.
It depends on whether or not you's seen x before. If you have never seen x, then it requires that I define x for you, so that you may picture x in your mind. Of course, in defining something, one has the capacity to indulge or leave things out. One also has the capacity to project their own likes and dislikes in the definition. To acquire a more direct definition requires that you observe x for yourself. But you can project your own feelings onto what you observe as well. This requires that we have as many observe x as possible (scientists who test another scientist's theory) and be more aware of how we project ourselves onto our observations and limit that (being more objective).
But, there are no running elephants in dictionaries, for example. You might, however, show evidence of a stampede or whatever, and that's "real" in this sense at least:
Quoting jorndoe
(may or may not be a worthwhile thesis, don't know)
On the other hand, dictionaries excel at context-building, e.g. may state where elephants live or something. You won't find flying pink elephants in dictionaries either, by the way, but that didn't stop me from just mentioning them. :)
Anyway, I've just noticed there are some relations among ...
... when it comes to epistemic claims.
Definitions are fine; my depreciation is just when some such x is defined only (possibly invented).
Sufficient reason can't apply to existence, the lot, everything, without circularity (e.g. existence is self-explanatory).
Thus, if you want to apply sufficient reason to the universe, then you'd have to show that the universe isn't everything first (which could make the principle kind of redundant in this respect, who knows).
At least that's how it seems to me.
Otherwise you just get the usual structure of "everything and then some".
I disagree. I will explain my same point (original here) in smaller steps: Using the law of noncontradiction, either a thing has a cause or not. This is true regardless if the thing is observable or not, because the law of noncontradiction is an absolute. If it does not have a cause, then it does not have a cause for its existence. But everything that begins to exist requires an external cause for its existence, and cannot cause itself into existence, because to cause something, one must first exist. Therefore if a thing has no cause, then it cannot begin to exist, therefore it must possess eternal existence.
Kool! I will accept either the first or second correction. And so if we buy into the assumption that a first cause exists, then this first cause is 'that which nothing greater can exist or be conceived'. I'll recap:
- An effect cannot be greater than its cause(s) (I defend this here)
- A first cause exists (we assume this)
? The first cause it that which nothing greater exists
- If something can exist, then it can be conceived of, because we can conceive all logical possibilities.
- If something can be conceived of, then it must exist. (as defended by Hume)
? If something can exist, then it must exist.
? The first cause is that which nothing greater can exist.
Side note: this is what christians mean by 'God'.
Very interesting. I will stay away from it because its complexity makes it hard to convince.
I think this is logically provable: Once again, let's start with the self-evident principle that 'nothing can come from nothing'. Therefore the event 'a thing begins to exist' must come from something. And a thing cannot cause itself into existence, because to cause something, one must first exist, which is self-contradictory. Therefore everything that begins to exist requires an external cause for its existence.
That's fine. I too have trouble coming up with clear examples to illustrate general statements. But then let's provisionally accept that the statement 'no effect has a property not possessed by its cause' is not patently false, until either a clear exception arises, or a flaw is found in the reasoning of the original argument here.
Quoting SophistiCat
I tried to prove this here. Where do you see a flaw in the reasoning?
I'm still in the "patently false" camp.
Maybe you could give me an example of an object causing another to exist, so I know what you mean.
The law of contradiction would say, roughly, that nothing is both caused and uncaused. You're using the law of the excluded middle. I know it might seem like they're the same thing but they're not.
I think we would get too far into the weeds going through this here, but here's a quote from Michael Dummett that should give you some idea what I have in mind:
So you should at least be aware that there are philosophers who have qualms about drawing "logical" conclusions about matters we can in principle know nothing about.
Nevermind, I've got it.
I just caused that sentence to exist. It has the property of being composed of words; I am not composed of words.
I have been unable to find a source for the clause beginning "thus." I don't think Hume says anything like this, and it clearly does not follow from the summary of Hume's view of the imagination that you've presented. If you want to keep relying on this idea, you'll need to argue for it without Hume's help.
No, let's not. I keep telling you that I don't regard the PSR, in any of its forms, as a necessary truth, something that any possible world must conform to. You just go from one form of it to another, firmly convinced that I must subscribe to at least one such principle. I am telling you that I do not. That's not to say that I believe that things happen for no reason. I just don't think that they are obligated to happen for a reason by some a priori principle. (And, as points out, you can push the principle to absurdity if you apply it to the world as a whole or to the putative first event, but I don't think you are doing this, yet.)
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
Unfortunately, you can't link to specific posts this way. I think I have read all that you wrote concerning the principle of conservation of properties (as I call it) in this thread, but I don't see where you have given a sound argument for it. You just say, in effect, that it follows from some principle of sufficient reason, but I honestly cannot see how.
And it is such an odd principle! You might find one or two examples that work, more-or-less (considering that causation talk is generally pretty loose and there is no universally accepted account of causation). But isn't it obvious that in general there is no such conservation of properties? Indeed, it often isn't even clear just what might be conserved and in what way. But if you want clear counterexamples, phase transitions work particularly well. A boiling pot, for instance: neither the fire under the pot nor the water prior to the onset of boiling have the property of boiling. For that matter, the fire that brings the water to a boil does not have the property of being at 100C.
My position, from a non-religious point of view, is that supernaturalism is much more probabilistic than either form of naturalism. I base this on my studies of near death experiences, which is based on the consistent testimonial evidence of NDEs across a wide variety of religious and non-religious cultures; across a wide variety of age groups; and occurring across a wide variety of experiences that can bring on an NDE. I haven't seen any argument from a naturalistic point of view that can explain these experiences away. The testimonial evidence, I would contend, which is based on literally millions of accounts of these experiences is very difficult to dismiss, i.e., based on the numbers, variety, and consistency of the testimony.
From a scientific point of view one may be able to dismiss the testimonial evidence, but that is only because of the nature of the scientific method. I would contend that testimonial evidence is a valid way of obtaining knowledge, viz., being justified that a certain conclusion is probably true. Testimonial evidence can be weak, but it can also be very strong if you have a large enough sampling across a wide variety of people, and as long as it remains relatively consistent.
My conclusion from NDEs is that there is life after the death of our bodies, i.e., that consciousness survives the body and is not dependent on the brain.
Already had a go at this, and I would like to add that I also have a problem with both these premises.
The first premise is, at best, a rather optimistic statement about our cognitive faculties. But, even if it happens to be true, I wouldn't take it as a metaphysical first principle: the world has no obligation to be comprehensible to the human intellect. And if you take it definitionally (possibility is conceivability) then you are trivializing your conclusion.
The second premise is obviously false and doesn't follow even from the simplistic "blank state" account of cognition that you attribute to Hume.
I could hand you a dictionary/encyclopedia, but wouldn't you prefer to experience x for yourself? Why is a dictionary full of pictures better than one without? It's because words are simply scribbles that refer to x. Words are an indirect way, but better than nothing (like when you don't know the language of the person you are trying to share x with so you resort to showing pictures of x), of showing x. Even pictures only get you part of the way - something that words can then be used to supplement (but even then still don't get you all the way there to everything that entails x). To truly know x, requires an experience of x over time.
How would you define flying pink elephants to someone who has never seen the color pink? You might define, "pink" as "faded red", but then what if they've never seen "red"? How would you define flying pink elephants to someone who is congenitally blind? If you were to ask someone to draw a picture of x as you define it, you would find that you'd have to be extremely detailed in your definition and it also requires that the one drawing understand your terms as you are intending.
If it wasn't obvious, I'm a realist, so of course I can agree that our definitions of x exist independently of x. Definitions of x are made of words, while x is made of colors, shapes, sounds, etc. One can also say that words themselves are made of shapes and colors or sounds, which is why we can see and hear them. But in order to understand that there are more to the shapes, colors, and sounds of words than just them being words, requires that you understand associations where words refer to x in order to communicate (the primary use of words) the features and qualities of x for someone who has never experienced x. This is why it would be redundant to define x for you when you're standing right next to me looking at x yourself.
Another relation you might notice is how most of our terms are visual terms, which is related to how we think the world is. We often refer to our visual experiences as how the world really is. This is because our sense of vision provides us with the most detail, or information, of x. So it is no surprise that most of our words are visual in nature and refer to visual experiences, or trigger visuals in our mind when we hear or see them. We don't just see words and words are the only thing in our minds that we see. Words seem to be the catalyst for triggering in our minds what it is that the words refer to.
I wonder if the universe were infinite, then wouldn't what is actually possible have to become actual at some point?
I think some philosophers have said something similar in the past; but this seems absurd to me. Here is an example: I have never been to China. It is possible for me to go there. But say that I die in my sleep tonight. Then this possibility will never be actualized, even with infinite amount of time, past or future.
This sounds like a self-contradiction: Do you (or Michael Dummett) have a means which would in principle decide the truth-value of that very statement? If not, then according to that statement, we do not have for it a notion of truth and falsity which would entitle us to say that it must be true or false.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
While I take your statement in consideration, I do not base truth on philosophers and their authority, but rather on philosophy. I trust you do the same.
No probs. I was just paraphrasing. Here is the link. Additionally, I can summarize the argument on how he got to that conclusion, if requested.
Hume claims that
(1) any complex thing we can imagine is built up out of simple things, and
(2) any simple thing we can imagine is directly derived from our experience, as a faint copy, in fact.
If you accept these claims, you will reason thus:
(1) if I imagine something complex, then what I imagine has simple components;
(2) the simple components of what I imagine must be derived from my experience.
Hume doesn't suggest that the gold mountain we imagine must be real, only that we must have experience of gold and mountains.
Ok, but if the universe is truly infinite, then all sorts of weird shit is possible and we apparently we don't know if it is finite or infinite.
https://phys.org/news/2015-03-universe-finite-infinite.html
Interesting article. So what it says is that if I died tonight, another "me" could still go to China, thus making that possibility actualized somewhere in this infinite universe. But I would like to refute that there are other "me" out there. The reason I am an individual is because my attributes are unique. Not all of them are unique (probably most of them are not) but the entire configuration is. There may be another being that looks identical to me, but at least we do not share the same position (x,y,z) attributes, thereby making that being "not me".
Still an incorrect causal relationship. The words have a physical property (say pixels on the screen), and a meaning. The meaning of the words is caused by you directly, and they are also a property of you because you can think (i.e. you meant what you wrote). You are not composed of pixels, but the direct cause of the pixels is the computer, which has the ability to create these pixels.
The fire emits the energy received by the water to boil, and the "boiling" effect is just the combination of the energy (caused by the fire) and the potential of water molecules to boil (not caused by the fire). And we know the energy received cannot be more than the energy emitted, due to the first law of thermodynamics.
Quoting SophistiCat
Indeed. The fire has a property of being greater than 100C, which agrees with my point that the cause(s) may be greater or equal to the effect.
Yep. I stand corrected. Upon further thinking, I too don't actually believe that all that exists can be conceived. Thanks for finding the flaw in that reasoning.
Corollary: God (should he exist) should be defined as "that which nothing greater can exist", and not merely as "that which nothing greater can be conceived". The latter implies maximum possibility, where as the former implies that we could conceive such a being, which is incorrect from a christian standpoint.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
Does it make my reasoning invalid?
Yes. What you got from Hume, as summarized here, doesn't support the conclusion you draw, namely that everything we can conceive of must exist. (Hume didn't draw this further conclusion either, for what that's worth.)
Some common characteristica are known from other reports, like "sensing a presence", when being subject to generated magnetic fields, fluctuating similarly to brain scans.
Individual self-comprehension has always been troublesome.
Jumping to the conclusion that "supernaturalism is much more probabilistic than" something a bit more "down to Earth", as it were, seems a stretch; I'm guessing what we might call the "natural" world is significantly richer than our thinking.
I suppose several independent, credible, well-justified reports of somehow "seeing" something that the experiencer couldn't possibly otherwise have known (or inferred/guessed), would lend more merit to the hypothesis.
How about putting together an organization of spies using OOBEs? :D
Seems vaguely like modal realism?
Quoting Cavacava
Well, it would have to be infinite in all possible aspects, at least, wouldn't it?
Even then, I'm not quite convinced; infinitudes aren't that easy to reason about.
I tend towards realism (or anti-idealism) as well; alternatives just don't stack up.
But of course the conundrums you brought up still apply. Who doesn't like a good mystery? (Y)
Anyway, my comment was just an attempt to point out a potential problem with some propositions.
Say, there's not much doubt that the Sun exists, and we may then come up with sufficient definitions thereof (converging on quiddity). Such definitions can be found in dictionaries and whatnot.
If, on the other hand, we only have definitions to go by, then things become more questionable, which was what I meant by defining quiddity (like flying pink elephants perhaps).
Come to think on it, Hume may actually have agreed.
If the potential problem holds up, then it would go towards naturalism of some sort.
Depends on what kind of possibility you have in mind. Nomological possibility combined with infinite probabilistic resources results in all possibilities being "almost surely" realized. But a planet made of cheese, for example, is not any more likely with an infinite universe than with a finite one, even though such a thing is conceivable.
The knowledge argument seems to be fallacious to me. Why would we need to know how something is experienced in order to know that something? The color of bananas informs us of the state of the banana (that it's ripe or rotten). If I knew the banana was ripe, then why do I need to also know how others see the banana? The knowledge argument doesn't take into account how our experiences inform us of some state-of-affairs in the world. Knowing a banana is ripe is the same as seeing a banana is yellow. How else would you know the banana is ripe? Your knowledge of the banana must take some form, which could be colors, or something else, as long as there's a relationship between the state-of-affairs and the way some entity is informed of that state-of-affairs.
Quoting jorndoe
But we don't seem to ever only have definitions to go by. The words, "flying pink elephants" refer to some mental image. Even if I had an flying pink Asian elephant in my mind when I say it, which then triggers a flying pink African elephant in your mind, we'd still both be thinking of flying pink elephants, that is unless I stated specifically, that it was an Asian elephant. This is why it is important that we get our definitions right so that we can be on the same page when talking about something.
Recall your own explanation:
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
The fire underneath the boiling pot has neither the energy nor the temperature of the boiling water. It also does not possess the property of boiling. So while what you say here is correct, it does not mesh with your premise. Do not pass Go, do not collect $200. Go back to your premise and make it conform to these facts, on which we both agree.
I don't understand your position. Are you denying that there is energy transfer from the fire to the water? If yes, then what is the causal relationship between the two, if any? If no, then what is wrong with my premise? That energy is the common property between the cause and the effect.
(Insert witty comeback with a monopoly reference here)
We can just modify the premise slightly, to say "Everything that we can conceive must exist in their simple components". The argument then becomes:
- No effect can be greater than its cause(s). (I still defend this)
- A first cause exists. (assumed)
? The first cause contains all properties from all effects, and to an equal or greater degree.
- Everything that we can conceive must exist in their simple components. (Hume)
- All that exists must be an effect from the first cause, directly or indirectly. (by definition)
? The first cause is composed of all simple components of all that we can conceive.
? ? The first cause is that which nothing greater can be conceived. (drops mic)
We agree on the facts, but the facts do not support your case. The energy transferred from fire to water is neither the energy of the cause (fire) nor the effect (boiling water). It is also distinct from the property of temperature, which the cause and the effect do not share, and the property of boiling, which only the effect possesses. Nothing here fits your premise of property conservation between cause and effect. Something is conserved, but it is not what you need for the premise to be true. The cause does not have all the properties of the effect: it does not have the energy of the effect, it does not have the temperature of the effect, it does not have the property of boiling.
Perhaps the problem here is that 'cause', 'effect' and 'property' have not been defined and thus it is not clear what it means for the cause to have all the properties of the effect. As I already mentioned, talk about causality is usually pretty loose. We say that fire underneath the pot causes the water in the pot to boil. Is fire the cause and boiling water the effect? Or should we rather be talking about events? Processes?
And then there are properties. The simplest definition of a property is anything that can be predicated of the thing in question. Thus "has the temperature of 100C" and "is boiling" are both properties of boiling water at normal conditions. But on this definition "does not have the temperature of 100C" and "is not boiling" can also be properties of something. It is clear then that for the cause to have all the properties of the effect, cause and effect will have to be identical. (Suppose that the cause has a property P not possessed by an effect. Then the effect has the property not-P, which the cause cannot possess. Thus the cause does not have all the properties of the effect.)
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
Just to be absolutely clear, you're saying that
(1) I created the meaning of the sentence, but
(2) the computer created what's usually called the "inscription" of it, the physical instance,
and
(1a) I was able to create that sentence-meaning because I can think (thank you), and
(2a) the computer is able to create the physical inscription of the sentence.
It's not my intention to hold you to details of the formulations given here. (Also not my intention to get into details about the example itself, about what a sentence meaning is, etc.) Just want to be clear what you're saying.
You also make the additional claim, I think, that
(3) I did not create the inscription, because
(3a) I can't.
Is that the gist of it? Change anything you like in the wording.
That is the gist of it. "Inscription" is a better fit for the property too.
Indeed, you are not the direct cause of the inscription because if we remove the computer, then unless you write with blood, there can be no inscription. On the other hand, being the author of the sentence, you are the direct cause of the meaning the words are intended to hold.
Okay. So how do you see the connection between what I did and what the computer did? (Still just clarifying here, not arguing.)
Well we are getting into small details, but it goes something like this:
The computer has the potential to inscribe words, and remains passive until you give it some input. To put it simply, that potential is actualized by the transfer of energy from your hands to the computer. (Really, your motion only causes a closed circuit in the keyboard-to-word system, and the energy is mainly brought up by the power socket, but this is too specific to this example only.)
To say the same thing with a clearer example, let's use a typewriter instead of a computer. Words on the paper are caused by the ink and the motion of the typewriter. The ink is from the cartridge, and the motion gets its energy from you. The ink is the shared property between the words and the cartridge. The energy is the shared property between you and the typewriter.
Is there any place in this description for the word "cause"?
Sorry--I was unclear.
In the typewriter example, there's no causal connection between what I do and what the typewriter does, right?
I think I see where the misunderstanding lies. Let's go back to the principle:
"No effect can be greater than the sum of its causes (with an 's'). An effect can be have many causes, and thus only the properties in the causal relationship are found in both cause and effect. One of the only times a cause has all properties of the effect, is when the cause causes the effect into existence, because the effect has a single cause.
In the fire-to-water example, the fire did not cause the water into existence, and so the water may have several properties not found in the fire. The only causal relationship between the fire and water is the energy transfer. To break down the process into basic steps:
The energy from the fire (property 1) causes an energy increase in the water (property 1). Then the energy increase in the water (property 1), combined with the potential of water molecules to boil at 100C (property 2), causes the water to boil (property 2 actualized).
Another example where the cause causes the effect into existence: I am the product of my parents. All my genes are found in my parents. And if I never interacted with anyone or anything other than my parents, then I would never know anything more than what my parent know.
Sure there is. The effect of the word inscription on paper is caused not only by the typewriter but also by the writer using the typewriter. No writer = no inscription, because the typewriter does nothing on its own.
The motion of the typewriter keys onto the paper is caused by the motion of your hands. Or to generalize a bit more, there is energy transfer from you to the device.
Okay. I thought you had been saying energy transfer is not causal.
Energy transfer is causal. I may have miswrote something along the way. In fact, I think we can generalize that in the natural world, all the properties passed down from cause to effect always come down to either matter or energy, because things in the natural world fit into either categories of matter or energy. Therefore properties of causal relationships of natural things must fit either of these two categories as well.
So does your thesis of "conservation of properties," if we're calling it that, come down to a restatement of the first law of thermodynamics (with a nod to the second), once you've reduced everything to matter and energy? What does the argument look like stated in those terms?
You also mentioned genes, so there's an issue about information...
...says materialism. The thing it leaves out is meaning and that turns out to be just as fundamental.
The rings in a tree stump mean something to an observer who is capable of interpreting it.
The reason meaning is fundamental is not because it is a constituent of objects, but because it is a constituent of experience. We attribute meaning, and explain and understand the world in terms of meaning. This is the case whether or not it exists in the sense that the objects of scientific analysis exist. In that sense it is epistemically prior to what we categorise as 'objectively real'.
I think that indeed we can reduce the thesis "conservation of property" to "conservation of mass and energy" when it comes to the natural or material world.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Information or knowledge is neither matter or energy, because it can be shared without being lost by the emitter. Thus information fits the "conservation of property" thesis in the sense that the receiver may not receive more than what is emitted, but it does not follow the laws of thermodynamics because the information is not merely transferred, but duplicated.
It changes my argument drastically if we only consider material things, but we can try it out for fun anyways:
- The first cause possesses all properties from all effects, and to an equal or greater degree.
- If all that exists is material (matter and energy), then all properties from all effects are material things.
? The first cause possessed all the matter and energy that currently exists in the world, to an equal or greater degree.
I say possessed (past tense), because due to the law of "conservation of mass and energy", the first cause no longer possesses the matter and energy that have been passed down to the effects.
I was referring only to natural or material things. Indeed, non-material things like meaning, information, knowledge, values, moral law, etc., do not necessarily fit into the categories of either matter or energy.
If natural = material then you're advocating materialism. If as you say, knowledge, meaning, information cannot be reduced to material things, then you're not. It's a pretty clear choice.
Whatever this is, it no longer looks much like a proof of the existence of God.
Interesting. I am not advocating materialism, but I also thought that naturalism and materialism were interchangeable words. What is the difference between the two?
Yeah. Materialism does not leave room for the existence of God. God is conventionally considered a spiritual, non-material being, because a material being has limitations, whereas God does not.
I think all this new argument proves is that the Big Bang (assuming it is the first cause) was very massive and powerful.
There is something quite natural about the approach you took. I think for a lot of people, the argument for the existence of God has just one step:
(1) All this must have come from somewhere.
(2) God.
Your attempt to combine the cosmological and ontological proofs fills in some steps. It might be worth figuring out why that made it harder to get from (1) to (2).
Define 'natural world'
'Naturalism' is a bit more soft-edged than materialism, although in practice they're often used interchangeably. But the referent of 'naturalism' is 'what is subject to study by the natural sciences', whereas materialism is the belief that only material objects and forces are real.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
But why didn't it simply culminate in wreckage, 'greater entropy'? Why did it give rise to the exquisite order of nature? 'Just happened' doesn't strike me as any kind of hypothesis.
Of course, natural theology will say that the Big Bang was the work of the divine intelligence. In fact, the scientist who first came up with the idea (although he didn't call it the 'Big Bang') was a Catholic - and the Pope seized on the idea, because to him it seemed to validate 'creation ex nihilo', creation from nothing. The scientist was actually dismayed by this, as he wanted to keep religion and science separate, although I think the whole idea of the Universe emerging from a single, infinitesimal point in an instant, seems unavoidably religious to a lot of people.
And besides, science knows that it can't know what, if anything, was 'before' (not that there was a 'before') the Big Bang.
He just did. It's all there is.
Everything around you, you, everything beyond what you can see and that has a causal relation with everything that you do see and with yourself.
So, the rings wouldn't actually "mean" the age of the tree if an observer wasn't there to observe the rings?
It's funny then, that meaning becomes a process in which the observer never observed (the tree growing through each year, making each ring) only when the observer observes the effect (the multiple tree rings).
I wonder still if the definitions are not essentially saying the same thing in different ways. Aren't natural sciences dealing only with things that are empirical; and all that is empirical is material? Maybe math is the exception, but I can't think of another one.
I'm with you on that one: The undeniable order in the universe strongly points to an order-giver.
I think an objector might say that "while improbable, this current configuration of the universe could have happened at random, and maybe countless of different random configurations failed before that one happened". Now maybe this hypothesis is not possible if, as you say, there can be no 'before' prior to the big bang. I just don't know much about this.
Your 2-step argument is a good summary. It is however based on a lot of presuppositions that objectors will demand to defend. To name a few:
1. The universe has a beginning, to deduce that a first cause or causes exist.
2. This beginning has a single first cause, and not many.
3. 'Nothing can come from nothing', to deduce that the first cause itself has no beginning.
4. 'No effect can be greater than the sum of its causes', to deduce that the first cause is the greatest of all.
5. Time has a beginning, so that the first cause caused it to existence and therefore transcends it.
6. The first cause has no end. I think we can deduce this from the premises 4 or 5, but I am not sure.
Empiricism—arguably, much like Cynicism and Skepticism—no longer means in today’s popular culture what it initially meant. Empiricism—what the natural sciences are founded on—is rooted in experience. One nowadays has to invoke different terms—such as “experiential” or “experientialism”—to evoke the same semantics that gave rise to the notion of natural sciences. Empiricism as initially intended, then, addresses experiential knowns (as in, knowledge by acquaintance)—including those regarding matter—but is in no way limited to matter as a topic of interest.
You will find this in empiricists such as Lock and Hume, among others—although I haven’t yet read the works of Francis Bacon (an earlier empiricist who is credited as the father of the scientific method).
Math is a pretty major one, isn't it? Science couldn't get going without maths and the rules of inference, and the like - so maths is prior to the sciences. In other words, for there to be science, we must first know how to count, compare, and quantify. Sure there can be evolutionary accounts of how humans developed the capacity for maths, but the Law of Identity is not a product of evolution, even if our ability to grasp it is.
Actually the fact that maths or number seems to be non-material bothers a lot of modern philosophers. There have been elaborate arguments developed to account for this fact in a way that doesn't violate physicalist explanations. On the other hand, there are always some mathematical Platonists, i.e. those who believe that number is real but not material. But once you admit that there can be anything real that is not material, then you've admitted materialism is false or at least incomplete.
What actually is meant by 'empirical' is simply 'something tangible' i.e. something that can be touched, felt, measured, either by the senses or by scientific instruments, which are extensions to the senses. There is no reality beyond that, or, if there is, we can't know it, so it ought to be disregarded, as, according to empiricist dogma, 'knowledge is derived from sensory experience'. It is generally the view that the science is the only valid form of knowledge, but it doesn't take into account other forms of knowledge, in my opinion.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
That is one of the main motivations behind the so-called 'multiverse' speculation - the idea that the Universe we know, is one of countless 'bubble universes' that never come into contact with one another. There's a lot of controversy around such arguments, but I can't see them being resolved any time soon. If you read online magazines like Aeon, NPR Cosmos and Culture, and Quanta, there are quite a few discussions of these ideas on them.
You don't have to have been alive in the Jurassic age to know there were dinosaurs. But then, humans know such things, because we're capable of such knowledge. Dinosaurs never knew they were dinosaurs.
A finite material being has limitations; but it does not follow that an infinite material being would have limitations. The limitation of a finite material being is its physical boundary and all the attendant limitations due to the forces that act upon it by virtue of that boundary; but an infinite material being would have no physical boundaries, and hence no forces acting upon it, by definition.
Right. But how do we come to know such things? What does it mean to find the bones of some dead animal, that we've never seen, buried in ancient rock?
But what I was commenting on was the role that the mind of the observing scientist plays in the understanding. I think that normally, science believes that the observing mind is not a part of the picture - that the evidence, ancient rocks, etc, exist in their own right, 'speak for themselves', as it were. Whereas, what I'm saying is that whatever evidence there is, even the most apparently concrete, exists in an interpretive matrix and gains its meaning from that. And that matrix is not wholly objective, it is not simply given, but is also 'constructed' in the mind of the observer - which is something that comes out strongly in philosophy of science, such as Kuhn, Feyerabend, Polanyi, etc.
Here is one illustration that shows why I find your argumentation unconvincing:
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
So the move here is to point to a transient property, such as "boiling," and say that it always existed in potentia, and needed only a suitable cause to be actualized. This clever get-out-of-jail clause can paper over any difficulty with properties that appear to be new in effects. But why not use the same move on every property? Well, then it would be hard to link back to the original idea, that of invariant property transfer from cause to effect. For that you have appealed to energy, matter and other more-or-less conserved quantities, chosen ad hoc for each particular case.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
The key here is that you take a physicalist view of the world as a common ground with your presumably physicalist audience, and try to extract from it an evocative metaphor. This is a dubious endeavor at best, because the metaphor will never be adequate to the actual meat of the physical theories from which it is extracted. And if you try to use it to reach conclusions with physical, empirical implications, you will most likely run into trouble, as you did in this case.
Indeed, it is inaccurate to say that the early post-Big Bang universe (the closest thing we have to the "first cause") "possessed all the ... energy that currently exists in the world, to an equal or greater degree." The issue with energy at macro-scale becomes complicated when you get to General Relativity and non-flat, expanding spacetime. In some interpretations it seems that energy is conserved only in local interactions, but not globally. With careful analysis you can recover a globally conserved quantity, but it is no longer just energy, and it is "conserved" only in a special sense that requires a lot of exposition to explain (like I said, it is complicated). It would be hard to translate all this into a simple metaphor.
Yes, I like this approach as well. I think the key to naturalism/materialism/physicalism is not a commitment to a particular ontology, but a commitment to empiricist epistemology.
Great. So then we agree that what something means has to do with the causal relationship between what we see (the effect) and the cause of what we see.
Quoting WayfarerOf course the science believes that the observing mind is part of the picture. You haven't read any books on biology, and how the eyes function and interact with light, have you? Nor have you read anything about QM which implies that our own observations have an effect on what we are observing?
I don't understand how meaning isn't objective being that we all instinctively seek to eliminate our subjective view in favor of a more objective one - one where we all have the same meanings for the same observations - where we all test the hypotheses of others' to find if we find the same causes to what we observe.
The evidence exists objectively. It is the interpretation of the evidence which makes us right or wrong in understanding the meaning (the causal relationships) of what we observe.
This objector would not say this. What does it mean to say that this [organization of the universe] is improbable? Probability is meaningful either in the context of a statistics built up from multiple observations, or in the context of a stochastic model (which in turn is based on observations). Neither of these contexts exist in the case of the universe. One could speculate that some random mechanism is responsible for the particular shape of the universe that we see (and some speculative cosmologies suggest something of the sort), but an atheist need not be committed to this view. And, as you say, this hypothesis does require for there to be something prior to or outside of the known (post-Big Bang) universe - but the option of a pre-Big Bang history is still open (hence the speculative cosmologies that I mentioned).
So there is no basis for saying that this configuration of the universe is improbable, any more than any other configuration. And in any event, nothing points to a magic order-giver.
I wonder if you could point us to the scientific evidence for this 'instinct'.
Isn't it just the social instinct to be aligned with peers?
That's an interesting point. Here are thought experiments to show that the claims are not arbitrary:
1. Keeping the same source (fire), and replacing the receiver from water to another liquid (say oil), it follows that the energy increase will be the same for both receivers. Therefore the energy effect is independent of the receiver, and the property must come from the source.
2. Keeping the same source (fire), and replacing the receiver from water to another liquid (say oil), it follows that the property of boiling will not be the same for both liquids (different boiling points). Therefore the boiling effect is dependent of the receiver, and the property must come from the receiver.
The scientific evidence is plain to see. Look right in front of you at what you are reading as virtually every member on this forum, in every thread, make numerous attempts to share their beliefs and positions as they attempt to get others to agree with them.
I quite agree belief and position-sharing is what I read. I'm amazed you would suggest that this being 'plain to see' is 'scientific evidence' for an 'instinct' of any kind. I would expect papers, hypotheses and evidence. You're an advocate for naturalism, surely that's what you'd expect too?
So you say that empiricism encompasses all experiential things, which includes but is not limited to material things. Could you provide an example of an experiential thing which is not a material thing? Note: I think Aristotle was considered an empiricist because he claimed that experiences precedes our knowledge of universals, and he also believed in forms or essences which are not material things. However, the topic of essences in not part of the natural sciences.
I agree with this. Science presupposes logic, and math is the logic of numbers.
Quoting Wayfarer
That's me. We cannot conceive a universe where 2+2?4. Therefore math is part of eternal truth.
Quoting Wayfarer
That is why I ask if the natural sciences can deal with anything that is not material, because it seems that all that can be touched, felt or measured is either matter or energy. This would make naturalism and materialism equivalent terms.
Quoting Wayfarer
At first glance, I see only two logical possibilities in that multiverse hypothesis:
1. The universes are connected in some way. Thus we can think of the whole as one big system, which would be equivalent to our view of our universe, where the laws of physics might be more diverse, but the laws of logic would be the same. Therefore the argument from first cause would still apply to the system.
2. The universes are not connected in any way. In which case, Occam's razor would deem this as an unnecessary hypothesis and shave it off.
Good point. But by limitations, I meant that God would not be above all things if he was a material being. As all matter and energy is subjected to the spatial and temporal laws, so too would be a being made of matter and energy, regardless of the amount.
Another argument for fun: If an infinite material being existed, then as you said, no material boundaries would exist outside of that being. But boundaries exist: I occupy a space and time and I am not part of that being. Therefore an infinite material being does not exist.
Are you saying that the laws of thermodynamics don't apply to the early post-Big Bang universe? I thought they were called laws because they applied to all cases (in physics).
To be clear, my statements addressed what empiricism once was upheld to be. Plainly stated, empiricism is/was the stance that knowledge develops from experience and is thereby a posteriori. Of itself, it has nothing to do with materiality.
I’m not now sure if your question intends historic examples taken from former empiricists. If so, as an overview, Hume was not a materialist. Neither was George Berkeley, another well-known empiricist. Locke was a Christian, which I take to entail that he was not a materialist either.
Rather than provide specific examples from former empiricists (I haven’t read the three just mentioned in a while, so I’d be a bit rusty) I’ll give this observation: The general question of which experiential thing is not itself a material thing places the cart before the horse if one is addressing this question from a metaphysical point of view: to the physicalist all things are material/physical things. REM dreams, sensations, expectations, intentions, imagined unicorns, the non-reasoned apprehension of (or awareness of) abstractions in adults which cannot be represented by particulars without at best diminishing the given abstraction (e.g., animal … encapsulating everything from sponges to blue whales, etc.)—to list only a few things experiential—are then all part and parcel of matter in relation to matter to the physicalist. Hence, to the physicalist, there is nothing of experience which is not material/physical—this by the very definition of physicalism.
If, however, the question intended commonsense notions of material objects, I’ll specify the experience of happiness. It is an experiential thing which is not of itself a representation of any particular material thing or set of such. (I’m limiting it to this example in case disagreements ensue.)
[edit: corrected a laughable typo about horses and carts ... if anyone noticed]
First, to be clear, by 'configuration' I meant the narrow range of settings (such as the gravitational constant G) that allow for life to be possible. I am assuming this statement to be true, as I am no expert on the necessary ingredients for life. Let's just buy into it for now.
Now if I understand correctly, [the probability of an outcome] = [the number of desired outcomes] / [all possible outcomes]. In this case, the number of desired outcomes, that is, the configuration with all settings that allow for life to be possible, is close to 1 (assuming a really narrow range of settings). And the number of all possible outcomes is the number of combination of all possible settings. It appears to me that this number is infinite, if each setting has logically an infinite possibility of values. This results in a very low probability of our configuration to occur. Thoughts?
I'm amazed that you would agree but then be amazed at what I'm suggesting, which is what you agreed with.
Why do you need papers describing what I just wrote? Making observations and integrating what you see with the rest of what you know to form hypotheses and theories in order to make predictions is the basic process of "science", not providing links to papers. I provided a hypothesis and evidence. What more do you want?
I don't accept this.
What is the scientufic, and/or naturalist, case for this instinct. On what evidence does it rest?
You make a good point that empiricism is classified as an epistemology, whereas materialism is classified as a metaphysics, and so they are not synonymous. As such, I was mistaken in saying that all that is empirical is material.
Back to the original question, I wonder if all things that fit under the umbrella of natural science must be material. I am now leaning towards no, by thinking about your example of experiencing happiness: The statement "studies show that those who live in this particular way tend to be more happy" is a valid scientific statement, and does not necessarily lead to materialism.
I don't know what you think you are getting out of this line. Your initial premise has been reduced to well-known conservation laws (i.e. if you care to generalize from the examples that have been considered so far; otherwise you don't even have that). I don't think it gets you anything interesting.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
No, I am saying that it's more complicated than you suppose and can't be adequately summed up by a simple aphorism. In General Relativity energy of a macroscopic volume isn't even well-defined. Thermodynamics still works - but locally. It's when you try to integrate over volume that you run into trouble.
Laws, by the way, are formulated within a particular theoretical framework, which usually has some limited scope of application. Classical laws of thermodynamics, strictly speaking, work in classical non-relativistic physics. They do generalize to quantum mechanics and relativity, but with some caveats and complications. For example, in Relativity energy (or rather that entity to which energy generalizes) of a finite volume very annoyingly becomes tangled up with the choice of coordinates - a big red flag for anything that is supposed to be a genuine physical quantity and not just a modeling artefact. That's not to say that conservation laws are dead, but the picture becomes a good deal more complicated.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
Your reasoning depends on the following assumptions:
These assumptions seem to be completely unjustified, and, in the case of (2), perhaps even incoherent. Why should an atheist be committed to them?
An alternative to (2)-(3) could be not a non-physical universe-generating stochastic process but ignorance: we don't know why the values of fundamental constants are what they are; we have no reason to a priori favor one assignment of values over another; therefore, we assign ignorance priors: a uniform distribution of epistemic probability. But ignorance is not a theory but a state of knowledge. All that this formulation says is: "We don't know why the universe is the way it is; we have no rational warrant to propose a theory; for all we know, it could be different."
Quoting mcdoodle
What are you, a broken record? If you ask the same question, I'm going to supply the same answer. Do you really need a "scientist" to tell you that it's instinctive for animals to have sex, or can you observe this for yourself? I described the basic process of "science" which, like philosophy, anyone can do. You don't have to be a professional scientist or philosopher to do science and philosophy. Observing a shared behavior of all members of a species would imply that this behavior is instinctive. Look around you at all the people that attempt to legitimize their ideas and beliefs by getting others to agree with them. Pointing to the number of people who believe as they do is often used as evidence that what they believe is true. It's illogical, but still a behavior that we all engage in. Just look at this forum.
Well, I believe you've used this phrase 'would imply' before. It seems to me unsatisfactory in an explanation. I remain, as you say, a broken record. I don't think what you call an instinct is in this case an instinct. Your explanation for this supposed instinct is that you believe you have observed a certain behaviour, therefore it must be universal and an instinct. That seems a tad weak to me.
The thought experiments refute your claim that the principle 'no effect can be greater than the sum of its causes' fails in the example of water boiling. As such, the principle still stands. I have apparently failed to convince you of it, but it has yet to be refuted. I can provide more supporting examples upon request.
Quoting SophistiCat
I am not sure if you are saying yes or no. Either the law of conservation of mass and energy applies in the case of the big bang, or it does not. If it does, then the big bang necessarily possessed all the mass and energy found in the universe today. If not, then not. While the laws of physics may change, logic does not.
Quoting SophistiCat
You are correct that the argument is founded on these assumptions, but they also seem rather common sensical. As such, they are the prima facie and the onus of proof is on the other side.
Regarding assumption 2: We don't need to know what is outside of the universe. We can just use logic: either the process is random or it is not. If random, then it results in the existence of our configuration to be highly improbable, therefore making the 'random' hypothesis highly improbable in return. If not, then the process is deterministic or designed, which in turn points to a designer.
I like this summation; it’s pithy. Far better than my ramblings. Sometimes, though, it takes time to edit concepts into more pithy statements (see below). :-}
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
What makes this question so hard for me to appraise is the underlying supposition of what is and what is not material. This, though, gets into philosophy of mind … of which materialism is only one formal stance.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
As to science and its evidencing of materialism, I’ll offer my own perspective, right or wrong as it may be.
First as a general background, science can either be interpreted as A) “knowledge gained through study or practice”, which I take to then have derivative meanings such as “a particular discipline or branch of learning” or, else, B) “the collective discipline of study or learning acquired through the scientific method”. [These three quoted definitions are taken verbatim from Wiktionary; although other specific meanings for science can also be found there, I take these two to be the most pertinent].
As to denotation A and its derivatives: to me this sense of science may or may not hold personal value … Compare “the science of farting silently in public” (yes, this usage fully conforms to denotation A) to “the science of mathematics” … which also only pertains to denotation A: Mathematics (as with logics) is neither studied nor learned through the scientific method—i.e., (in my own attempt at pithy summation) i) falsifiable hypothesis on that which can be observationally scrutinized by all, ii) reproducible experiment (itself experiential) with no significant confounding variables which holds the potential to conclusively falsify the hypothesis, and iii) inferred conclusions of the experiment.
Then there’s the much touted and too often little understood “empirical sciences” category which pertains to denotation B. It is not mathematics, nor technology, nor logics… though it of course integrates all three in the process of empirically/experinetially/synthetically discovering new, observationally, and universally, verifiable knowledge. [e.g., gravity is a theory, but it is empirically scientific because no verifiable observation has ever been made of gravity not being the case—though just one such verifiable observation (thereby evidencing that the observation is not a willful lie, a hallucination, etc.) would be enough to conclusively falsify the theory]. In sense B of science, scientific knowledge in all cases is, again, empirical—and, hence, a posteriori—knowledge. [But notice that now stating “empirical” becomes disassociated with the branch of philosophy termed empiricism—which, again, claims that all (or, else, “nearly all”, according to Wikipedia) knowledge is a posteriori, i.e. gained after experience of that which it regards.]
While I’m certain that others will disagree with at least some aspects of this just stated appraisal regarding science, I’m again offering it as my own perspective—here, nothing more—and have only provided it to better contextualize the following opinion:
IMO: With one singular, possible exception, there is absolutely nothing of scientific knowledge (in sense B) that “necessarily leads to materialism”.
As one extreme example of this—though I disagree with Berkley’s metaphysics in multiple ways—Berkley’s metaphysics when taken in its complete, mature form (thereby including the omni-perceiving Berkleian God) is fully compatible with all scientific knowledge (of the sense-B type) of today—again, with the one exception I’ve previously alluded to. (And kicking a rock about is not going to refute this claim.) … In saying this, however, one ought to be careful to distinguish inferences drawn from scientific knowledge (e.g., quantum physics’ multiple worlds) from the scientific knowledge itself (e.g. particles have been observed to predictably behave in certain ways).
So, that one exception I’ve so far alluded to is simply this: the mainstream paradigm in most fields of empirical science contains the inference that awareness has developed from out of a perfectly non-aware universe (such as in, life having developed from nonlife) … thereby implying the metaphysical primacy of matter, i.e. the metaphysics of materialism. [However, certain metaphysical suppositions, such as panpsychism as one often mentioned example, can remain noncontradictory to all scientific knowledge without relying upon this just mentioned inference … thereby having the potential of both holding on to scientific knowledge without in any way “leading to materialism”.]
It’s a very tangled philosophical subject … this issue regarding the relation between scientific knowledge and the metaphysical subject specified by the philosophy of mind (again, of which materialism/physicalism is only one variant of).
I think your definition A is the old definition prior to an established 'scientific method', back when the words 'science' and 'philosophy' were interchangeable. B sounds like the modern use of the word, and I agree with the three points as being the necessary ingredients. I would also add 'quantifiable' as an ingredient, but it may not be necessary.
Quoting javra
I agree, and I think it can be proven: If a non-materialist philosophy is about things that are not observable, and science deals only with things that are observable, then science could never prove or disprove such a philosophy, as the things in question stand outside of the data set of science.
Quoting javra
Science could indeed prove that life (at least simple living things) is material, if it can create life out of non-life in a test; but this would not prove or even suggest that everything is material. For this to be a valid inference, science would have to prove through testing that all things we can think of can be created out of material things.
You can always rescue a vague premise by retreating to less controversial, though usually less interesting positions, and this is what you've done by reducing what sounded like a universal and far-reaching metaphysical principle to some particular references to popular physics. I think we have explored this avenue as far as it would go.
If I were to give my most generous summary, it would be something like the principle of causal closure: The universe evolved from its earlier states according to some constant (though not necessarily deterministic) laws. Any earlier state of the universe had the potential to evolve into its present state, with no outside influx or interference, nothing other than its instantaneous state and the timeless laws. And we can trace this process to the earliest times that are open to empirical investigation, beyond which we can only speculate. That early post-Big Bang universe, that undifferentiated "particle soup," was already energized with potential to bring about the present world, complete with stars, planets, cellphones and Donald Trump.
But this potential cannot be located in any one attribute, such as energy (which, as I tried to explain, is difficult to apply beyond local interactions, to the universe as a whole). Already from classical thermodynamics we know that no amount of energy is sufficient to bring about change: there also has to be a disequilibrium. And even then the change is not guaranteed to result in anything interesting (from our subjective, biocentric point of view): as you must have read somewhere, if, for instance, fundamental constants were different, we could have ended up with a universe full of nothing but black holes, or a universe with no complex chemistry.
Which brings me to your fine-tuning argument:
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
No, what may be regarded as "commonsensical" is the original statement: that the (putative) initial configuration of the universe was extremely improbable. That seems like a very common idea. I cannot tell now whether it ever seemed commonsensical to me, because I have since given it a closer look and went beyond common sense - which is what a philosopher is supposed to do, you know. And when I deconstructed the implicit assumptions, they turned out to be quite arbitrary and contrived. I do not accept the burden of disproving them, because I cannot see any reason to hold them true in the first place.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
You are assuming that there was a process, which is the assumption that I challenge. If we are talking about the physical universe as all there is that is physical, then there could not be any physical process that brought it about. To assume a process is to beg the question, because such process could only be supernatural (and yet somehow having physical effects).
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
You are kidding, right?
You keep saying that the principle has been reduced to the laws of physics. When in our conversation has it been reduced? Here is an example that uses the principle without it being reduced to the laws of physics: knowledge and information. If I give you info, you gain the info, and I don't lose it; thus this causal relation does not follow the law of conservation of mass and energy. And yet, it follows the principle that 'no effect can be greater than its causes', because you can gain the exact amount of info I give, or less (by not listening or forgetting), but cannot gain more from me than what I give. This is also implied in Hume's work when he claims that 'each simple idea is derived from a simple impression, so that all our ideas are ultimately derived from experience'.
I suggest we drop the big bang conversation because it was always just a thought experiment on my end to see what conclusion to draw if only the laws of physics exist; which I don't believe to be the case.
If there is a cause to the existence of the universe, then there is a 'process' from the cause to the effect. If not, then not. I suppose this brings us back to the original disagreement on the 'Nothing comes from nothing' principle. Do you really believe this principle to be false? If so, then we should focus on this fundamental point before anything else.
Too soon?
Granted, you never did commit to it being a physical principle. But then you never did commit to any systemic explanation. Rather, for some specific examples you found a specific property that fits, be it energy or material or information. Meanwhile, it seems that when we look at any causal process, most of the properties involved do not fit into the scheme of being handed down from the cause in a diminished form, for various reasons. Which is why I remain of the opinion that this principle is an ill-fitting and unhelpful metaphor.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
Rather than saying that I deny the "nothing comes from nothing" principle, I would say that I find it unclear and unhelpful. The principle that I would be comfortable with is the principle of causal closure that I outlined above. I wouldn't say that causal closure is necessarily the case, but it is something I am comfortable accepting as a working assumption, seeing that it fits well with experience and that without it any empirical conclusion would be on shaky ground.
However, the causal closure principle characterizes the physical world and its states or events in relation to each other. Any cause in this context would necessarily be of this world. Which is why it would be incoherent to talk about the cause of the universe. If you have something else in mind, some other rending of the "nothing comes from nothing" principle, then you would have to explain it and motivate its acceptance.
Returning to the 'process' that is responsible for the shape of the universe, perhaps I was too dogmatic in arguing that it is necessarily non-physical. I can imagine a cosmological model in which the universe has a beginning in time, and in which some of its attributes are randomly selected at T=0. If this model of the beginning is continuous with the model of the evolution of the universe, then it could be viable. But it would need to be argued for, it's not something we should all assume as a default.
Here is my attempt to demonstrate that the principle 'Nothing comes from nothing' is necessary:
Let nothing=0. Let something=x, where x>0.
Mathematically, 0?x, and 0+0?x
Therefore x cannot result out of 0; otherwise 0=x, or 0+0=x would be possible.
Therefore nothing can come from nothing.
The analogy is not even a good one. A mathematical 0 is not nothing - it is an entity with its arithmetic properties. Your analogy suggests that prior to the universe there was something, some kind of an empty state - a vacuum, a void? And that void was transformed into the universe as we know it. That sounds like some of our religious creation stories, but this would not be consistent with the universe, the totality of all physical being, having a beginning. Because, just like zero is a mathematical entity with properties, that void, that primordial state that was transformed into the universe-as-we-know-it is a state of something, and therefore it should still be considered as belonging to the universe-at-large.
As it happens, the astrophysicist Laurence M. Krauss wrote a popular book provocatively titled A Universe from Nothing, in which he, to the annoyance of some philosophers, draws on that same ex nihilo dictum to outline some actual, though still speculative, cosmological proposals, in one of which the Big Bang universe arises from a kind of primordial void state. Except, as critics were quick to point out, that "nothing" is very much a something, characterized by physical properties (the laws of relativistic quantum mechanics), even though it lacks many of the attributes that we conventionally associate with physicality, such as spacial extension.
The moral is that if you are going to make something out of the "nothing comes from nothing" principle, you cannot take it too literally, on the pain of self-contradiction.
I disagree with your claim that 0 is only analogous to nothing, and I claim they represent the same concept. 'Nothing' means 'no things', means 'zero things' means 'zero'. 0x = 0y = 0z = 0, and this is true for whatever x, y, or z may be, including properties.
I will grant you that at least one thing remains: the laws of logic; since I rely on mathematics (logic of numbers) to demonstrate that 'nothing comes from nothing' is true. But I trust you agree that logic transcends the physical world, as opposed to being dependent on it.
Yes; that is because there is 1 way to arrange 0 objects. But then it is also true that there is 1 way to arrange nothingness, and so this does not prove that 0 and nothingness are not the same thing.
Quoting Srap Tasmaner
Wow. I had no idea some people thought that. Who knew that arguing about math would be so hard. I guess Descartes was over-optimistic when he claimed that math was the one field without any ambiguity.
Possibly. Let me try one last attempt from a different approach: If you believe that the principle 'nothing comes from nothing' is not always true, then does it follow that you would not be surprised, when putting one apple and another apple in an empty bag, to sometimes find three apples later?
It's worse than you think. Math is fairly unambiguous once you lay down all the rules, but the rules are completely up to you. There is no the logic of numbers: you are free to make up any logic; you are even free to define what numbers are. Math is a pure play of imagination. And that is why you are never going to get any empirical or metaphysical argument out of math alone. We make up mathematical axioms and construct mathematical models, but their application to reality is an extra-mathematical, extra-logical step. Arithmetical operations with zero do not inherently represent anything other than the mechanics of a formal system. If you want to say that they stand for some metaphysical idea, you have to argue metaphysics, not math.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
Of course not. Why would you ever think otherwise? I expect the familiar world to be orderly and to function in certain ways, and the situation that you describe would not be compatible with my expectations. That's not to say that there is something logically wrong with that scenario, but nomologically I would not expect it to happen.
And you have once again locked yourself into this faulty analogy in which nothing is like an empty bag. But if there is a bag, then there already is something, and the only something that we know is our physical world that seems to operate according to certain rules, such as conservation laws.
Regarding math: I wouldn't disconnect it from reality. Engineers design planes to stay in the air using math. Furthermore, it seems to me that 2+2=4 is a necessary truth, as I cannot imagine it to be otherwise. For my knowledge, could you give an example of an axiom that would change the classic logic? I have heard that claim before but never saw an example of it.
Quoting SophistiCat
Very well, but if you expect things in the universe to behave that way, (i.e. apples don't just appear by themselves) then why not expect it for the universe as a whole? The universe is just the sum of its parts.
Quoting SophistiCat
This is a misunderstanding. I was merely using the empty bag to represent a closed system. The nothingness is represented by the non-existence of the third apple, before it coming to existence by itself; and this non-existence state is independent of the bag.
As far as pure mathematics and logic are concerned, their plurality is not even controversial. A mathematical or logical system is given by its axioms and definitions, and those can certainly be varied. Indeed, mathematicians have explored numerous mathematics and logics - either for their utility to solving problems, or just for their interesting features and possibilities.
Of course, when we use mathematics to construct empirical models, we have less freedom, since presumably there is only one way in which the world is, and not every model will be equally suitable for describing it. There also are quite definite ways in which we structure our thought and discourse, though here we also confront the question of normativity.
These constraints still leave us with a considerable choice of mathematics and logics of varying utility, but my point is that there is nothing necessary about the constraints themselves (leaving out normativity of logic, as that opens another can of worms).
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
My expectations with regard to apples and other things in the universe are justified in the context of my expectation of the universe's regular, lawful constitution. But what would be the context for the universe as a whole? It doesn't emerge from summing up the parts; all you get are boundary conditions.
Is it possible to change the math axioms such that 1+1=3 is mathematically possible? If not, then the scenario of 3 apples resulting from 2 apples is logically impossible. [Note: this is a lot like the argument 0?x above, except here we don't need to agree about what 0 really is. I trust that numbers 1, 2 and 3 are much less ambiguous.]
Quoting SophistiCat
Maybe I was not clear. Let me rephrase what I meant in a syllogism:
- The prima facie for all things in the universe is to expect that things don't come from nothing.
- The universe is just the sum of all things in it. (Just like the ocean is just the sum of all water drops in it).
- Therefore, the prima facie for the universe is to expect that things don't come from nothings.
You could start here.
This is certainly true, and with logic there can even be controversy about different systems because there's already controversy about what the systems are for. Is the same thing true in mathematics? I've just never gotten that sense, but maybe I missed the really juicy controversies. For example, it's my impression that Bayesians and frequentists never end up accusing each other of not really doing mathematics.
Well, 6 + 6 = 10 in the duodecimal system.
So it does. But this is merely changing the symbols of numbers, not the concepts the symbols represent. The number 4 can be symbolized as 4, four, IV, or really anything as long as we are clear and consistent. But its actual concept, which we can approximate as "IIII" does not change. (Note: the real concept is not necessarily made of bars, but we've got to write it down somehow.) Thus whether we write 6+6=12 in decimal system, or 6+6=10 in duodecimal system, we still mean "IIIIII"+"IIIIII"="IIIIIIIIIIII" when simplified to its concept.
Reducing the symbols to their concepts, I'll ask again:
Is it possible to change the math axioms such that I+I=III is mathematically possible? If all that is meant by 'changing axioms' is things like changing the decimal system, then I am leaning towards no.
Thanks. I have ventured in that weird place before. I am no expert at this non-classical logic thing, but my understanding is that, although different, no system of logic contradicts any other system. Rather, they each have their unique strength suitable to different applications; much like calculus is different than statistics while not contradicting each other. That said, I wonder if "changing axioms of mathematics" means something different.
Some systems, like intuitionistic logic, set tighter restrictions on how you get from A to B. There's a sense in which it "gets along" with classical logic, but some of the things you can't do in intuitionistic logic are things people are pretty attached to.
Using more than the usual two truth-values is obviously more of a game-changer.
Logic can be treated as, in essence, of branch of mathematics, the investigation of structures for their own sake, but many are interested in logic primarily for its usefulness in formalizing reasoning. The standard classical logic was invented expressly for the purpose of formalizing mathematical argument. Some non-standard logics are of the mathematical sort, but many are attempts at remedying perceived shortcomings in classical logic as a tool for reasoning.
You could say something similar I suppose about axiomatic set theory: in some cases, it's just pure investigation, but in some cases the goal is providing a foundation for the rest of mathematics. That means at least one question that naturally arises is just how much of the existing superstructure of mathematics can be built on a given proposed foundation.
No, you were clearer before, and going back to vague expressions like "things don't come from nothing" or "just the sum of all things in it" is not helping.
All things in the universe are part of one causal structure - not necessarily so, but I am willing to accept this as a premise. This is the only sense of "things don't come from nothing" that I understand and am willing to accept. But this premise doesn't scale up to the universe as a whole. The universe is not a part of any structure, assuming the universe is all there is.
Quoting Samuel Lacrampe
Not possible if what you are trying to model is intuitive arithmetics. Otherwise, of course, you can redefine any of the symbols and introduce different axioms. We invent mathematics, but we often invent it for particular ends - for ordering and measuring, for instance, for which we have invented numbers. In that sense numbers and arithmetics cannot be much different than what they are, since we know in advance what they are supposed to be like.
If "natural" means "not man-made", then Naturalism is obviously incorrect, because there are many man-made things.
If "natural" doesn't mean "man-made", then what does it mean??
What would then be an example of something unnatural?
I suggest that the unstated definition of "Natural" is "Physical". Naturalists are evidently using an unstated assumption that what's natural consists only of what's Physical. ...meaning the physical world is the Ground of All Being, and the fundamentally existent and primary thing. ...the thing that is metaphysically prior to everything else (if there is anything else).
That's implied merely by the use of "Natural" to mean "Physical".
I suggest that, as has been suggested elsewhere, "Naturalism" is being used as a currently-more-popular word for "Physicalism". ...more vague in meaning, but that vagueness makes it less criticizable (To criticize a position, you first have to pin-down what its proponents mean.)
Also, if Naturalists can succeed with establishing, in the conversation, the assumption (presumably so obvious that it needn't be stated :D ) that all that's natural consists of what's physical, then their (however-labeled) Physicalism is sold without explicit labeling of it.
As nearly as I can guess, then, "Natural" means "Physical", and "Supernatural" means "not Physical".
So, just by definition, then, anything that doesn't agree with Physicalism is a belief in the Supernatural :D
And that's literally true, by the definitions (in the paragraph before last) of "Natural" and "Supernatural".
What's the point of that? Well, maybe that "the Supernatural" is usually taken to mean superstition, and contravention of physical law.
So, by (intended?) implication, when you call every Idealism a belief in the Supernatural, your audience is supposed to equate Idealism with the contravention of physical law, that takes place in the familiar movies about the Supernatural. ...you know, vampires, werewoleves...and anything other than Physicalism :D
So these two different meanings for "Supernatural" can serve to make it sound as if anything other than Physicalim is like Vampires, walking mummies, werewolves, witchcraft...etc.
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I'll add that Physicalism (by any name, including "Naturalism") loses, by the Principle of Parsimony, to Skepticism, the metaphysics that I propose in my discussion-thread "A Uniquely Parsimonious and Skeptical Metaphysics", in the Metaphysics and Epistemology forum.
I'm also contending that naturalism is more probable than supernaturalism.
You said:
Well, taken literally, doesn't that mean that everyone is a Naturalist? I can say that I don't believe in anything that isn't natural (unless "natural" means not manmade).
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It's just that "Naturalists" presume the authority to say what "natural" means.
Yes, I agree that there are no vampires or werewolves.
But no, that doesn't support Physicalism, however labeled.
What there is "no evidence for" is the claim that the physical universe is the Ground of All Being, the reason for everything else, or maybe just all that there is. There's "no evidence for" the brute-fact of that fundamental, primary Existent that you regard this physical universe as.
Is Idealism "Supernaturalism" by your meaning?
The Idealist metaphysics that I propose in the post that I've referred you to (above) doesn't need or make any assumptions, or posit any brute-fact(s). ...unlike Physicalims, or "Naturalism" (regardless of whether or not there's some difference between the two).
Michael Ossipoff
Can you offer up a tight definition of "nature" so that I can try to evaluate my thoughts on weak naturalism?
I will put this argument on hold to focus on the next one for now.
Quoting SophistiCat
You can change the symbols (such as from decimal system to duodecimal system as discussed above) but the concept of the number remains the same. For simplicity, we can strip the symbol away from the number, and thus 1=I, 2=II, 3=III, 4=IIII as so on. Thus the question can phrased as:
Is it possible to change the math axioms such that I+I=III is mathematically possible?
I will go with no. Objections?
That is my thought as well. Non-classical systems are an addition to the classical system when classical logic has reached it limits, and not in opposition to it. What follows is that if one was able to logically prove a case using classical logic, then no non-classical systems would be able to disprove it.
Not possible if the numbers represent an already given concept of "counting numbers" (or similar). The concept then shapes the pattern, gives the requirements for the mathematical formalism.
Glad to see we can still find some solid ground in math. But now I see a possible contradiction with what you said earlier, regarding the apple scenario. I asked if, by denying the principle that 'nothing comes from nothing', you expected that 3 apples could result out of 2 apples; and you said it was logically possible: Quoting SophistiCat
But if we agree that I+I=III is mathematically impossible, then it is impossible for 3 apples to result from 2 apples. We just need to replace the bars "I" with apples to see this.
Here is my point: If the necessary consequence of a hypothesis is impossible, then the hypothesis is false. For the hypothesis 'Something can come from nothing', a necessary consequence is that 3 apples could logically result from 2 apples; because the third apple could come into existence from nothing. But we agree that "I+I=III" is mathematically impossible; thereby making the event of 3 apples resulting from 2 apples impossible.
Conclusion: the hypothesis of 'Something can come from nothing' is false.
It's so not a necessary consequence. I thought you knew how to use quantifiers.
To be more specific, which following statement do you disagree with?
1. If a thing can come from nothing, then an apple can come into existence from nothing.
2. I put 1 apple and another 1 apple in a closed system. Then a third apple comes into existence from nothing, thereby resulting in 3 apples in the closed system.
3. From statement 2, we conclude that "1 apple + 1 apple = 3 apples" is possible in practice.
4. I+I=III is impossible.
Alright. See you later.
Interesting claim. If I understand you correctly, you reject the proposition that "anything can come from nothing", and say that "some things can come from nothing, and some things cannot". I also take it you agree that apples are part of the things that cannot, as demonstrated in the I+I?III argument (unless you see a flaw in that argument).
What follows is that the things that can come from nothing must escape the I+I?III argument. Is that correct so far?
I expressed no opinion on the apples and don't intend to. It's just logic: "I can eat something" is not equivalent to and does not entail "I can eat anything" or "I can eat everything."
I agree with you that 'some' does not necessarily mean 'all'. But it is also just logic that there are only 3 ways to see the proposition: (1) everything can come from nothing, or (2) some things can come from nothing and some things cannot, or (3) nothing can come from nothing.
Looking at (1): the I+I?III argument must be addressed, because it contradicts that proposition.
Looking at (2): those things that can come from nothing must escape the I+I?III argument.
Looking at (3): it is compatible with the I+I?III argument, and unless (1) and (2) can be defended against the I+I?III argument, then (3) becomes the only possibly true proposition.
Sorry, man, there's no way I'm going to discuss whether "Nothing comes from nothing" is true. Best of luck to you, Sam.