JWG wrote:

Chrisw wrote:

JWG wrote:...it happens, to me, it is natural; understood or not.

Suppose one night the stars that were easily visible from Earth rearranged themselves to spell out a message viewable from Earth, in English. They maintained this formation for one hour and then fippped back to their old positions.

I think you would agree that this violates the known laws of physics. But do you really think we could come up with new laws that would explain normal reality and at the same time explain this bizarre event? Wouldn't we just be forced to give up on the idea that the universe is at all times ruled by natural laws?

It would certainly "violate the known laws of physics", and we would certainly have to realize that our current conception of 'nature' would have to be re-thought and analyzed, but it doesn't mean that it is supernatural, unnatural, or non-natural, to me. Our understanding of nature is not the end all, be all of nature, it is simply what we currently know and understand about it, which is certainly subject to change over time with new knowledge and information.

If the event wasn't repeatable how would we examine it? We would know that our current laws were inadequate to explain everything but we would be unable to fix the situation.

I don't think I'm saying anything that Hume would have disagreed with here. The lawlike nature of reality is a contingent fact that could be otherwise. I'm calling anomalous events that fail to comply with the lawlike regularities that normally hold, "non-natural". I think that's a reasonable usage of the phrase.

iamthereforeithink wrote:

Chrisw wrote:

JWG wrote:...it happens, to me, it is natural; understood or not.

Suppose one night the stars that were easily visible from Earth rearranged themselves to spell out a message viewable from Earth, in English. They maintained this formation for one hour and then fippped back to their old positions.

I think you would agree that this violates the known laws of physics. But do you really think we could come up with new laws that would explain normal reality and at the same time explain this bizarre event? Wouldn't we just be forced to give up on the idea that the universe is at all times ruled by natural laws?

The more parsimonious explanation in this case would be a mass hallucination. We might then be better off investigating what brought on the hallucination.

Absolutely, but that's not really relevant.

As I keep stressing this isn't about epistemology. I'm not saying "What if we observed the stars speling out a message in English?" I'm saying "What if the stars really did jump light years across the universe to spell out a message?" How would we know this? Perhaps we wouldn't. But that doesn't prevent us from saying that if such a thing were actually to happen it would be non-natural.

Your attempt to explain it as a mass halucination would be an attempt to explain it by natural means. We would be attempting to explain the phenomenon in a way that saves our law-bound view of the universe. And I agree that this is a reasonable thing to do, to try all possible natural explanations first. Perhaps in reality we would never acknowledge any phenomenon as being non-natural. Perhaps we'd always prefer to assume that one day we would find a way of explaining it. But that really would be a kind of faith. We couldn't know that there was an explanation waiting to be discovered.

Chrisw wrote:

JWG wrote:...it happens, to me, it is natural; understood or not.

Suppose one night the stars that were easily visible from Earth rearranged themselves to spell out a message viewable from Earth, in English. They maintained this formation for one hour and then fippped back to their old positions.

I think you would agree that this violates the known laws of physics. But do you really think we could come up with new laws that would explain normal reality and at the same time explain this bizarre event? Wouldn't we just be forced to give up on the idea that the universe is at all times ruled by natural laws?

Well, the question becomes did the stars actually rearrange themselves, or did they just appear to do so, or did you just perceive that they did so?

Only the first alternative would violate the "known" laws of physics, and this of course begs the question of the "unknown" laws of physics which might explain the phenomenon.

JWG wrote:

Chrisw wrote:

JWG wrote:...it happens, to me, it is natural; understood or not.

Suppose one night the stars that were easily visible from Earth rearranged themselves to spell out a message viewable from Earth, in English. They maintained this formation for one hour and then fippped back to their old positions.

I think you would agree that this violates the known laws of physics. But do you really think we could come up with new laws that would explain normal reality and at the same time explain this bizarre event? Wouldn't we just be forced to give up on the idea that the universe is at all times ruled by natural laws?

It would certainly "violate the known laws of physics", and we would certainly have to realize that our current conception of 'nature' would have to be re-thought and analyzed, but it doesn't mean that it is supernatural, unnatural, or non-natural, to me. Our understanding of nature is not the end all, be all of nature, it is simply what we currently know and understand about it, which is certainly subject to change over time with new knowledge and information.

Your example currently only hypothetical of course, and not the reality of things as far as we know now.

In standard Christian theology (and probably Setian theology) everything is basically supernatural, because it's all run by God, but theologians make a distinction between "natural" things (e.g. law, philosophy) where God takes a hands-off approach and lets things get on by themselves, and "divine" or "revealed" things like signwriting in stars, where God is actively intervening. Scientists follow this usage, and would call things "natural" where there is no sign of any humanlike power overriding the mathematical laws of science, and would call signwriting in stars non-natural or supernatural. It seems to me that Chrisw has a point, and you are using the word "natural" in a way most people don't use it, if you would call an actively intervening deity a natural phenomenon. ? Or perhaps the meaning of the word has now shifted, and you're using it in the more modern sense of something that actually happens as opposed to something which is imagined but doesn't happen (the scientists' view of starwriting), while your Setian friend is using it in the traditional theological sense. It may well be that the word "natural" is currently used with several overlapping meanings.

As far as I can reconcile, my Setian colleague(s) signify the "mechanical, unconscious, instinctual" aspects of nature as "Nature/Natural" and our "conscious, non-mechanical, abstract" aspects of the intellect as "Non-Nature/Natural." Semantically, I have a hard time accepting the word "non-natural" as a useful way of describing it, but I do see what they are trying to communicate with the natural/non-natural dichotomy.

Teuton wrote:

Jef wrote:
It is a feature of our language and thought that for any proposition it is possible to make an automatic negation of that proposition simply by adding the prefix 'non-'. This is not conceiving. It is negating a concept that already exists. To conceive of a thing is to formulate in ones mind some image or proposition of its positive characteristics. The purely non-x has no characteristics; it is generated only by consideration of the absence of such. It is not, therefore, conceivable.

For example, souls as nonphysical substances have mental properties by definition, and that is doubtless a positive aspect.
And something's having mental properties is very well conceivable, isn't it?

I can say the words 'square triangle'. I consider the term 'non-physical substances' about as meaningful a term. That 'non-physical substances' have mental properties is a claim, not a definition.

Jef wrote:That 'non-physical substances' have mental properties is a claim, not a definition.

Yes, it is. Substances are concrete by definition, such that abstract nonphysical objects, which lack mental properties by definition, do not count as substances. So the only nonphysical substances are mental substances, which have mental properties by definition.

Teuton wrote:

Jef wrote:That 'non-physical substances' have mental properties is a claim, not a definition.

Yes, it is. Substances are concrete by definition, such that abstract nonphysical objects, which lack mental properties by definition, do not count as substances. So the only nonphysical substances are mental substances, which have mental properties by definition.

I think you're going to have to find some longhand way of writing that, given that I have already stated that I consider terms such as non-physical to be meaningless, and you are trying to convince me they are not. Everything after 'Substances are concrete by definition'.. is pretty much gibberish.

I'm confused also, are there any examples of a mental substance?

shh wrote:I'm confused also, are there any examples of a mental substance?

Consciousnesses/minds/souls/spirits which are not just conceived as bundles, clusters or sets of mental properties had by physical things but as concrete nonphysical "things-in-themselves" are mental substances.
If substance dualism were true, we would all be such mental substances!
(For in that case, I would be a soul that has a body without being one.)

Teuton wrote:

shh wrote:I'm confused also, are there any examples of a mental substance?

Consciousnesses/minds/souls/spirits which are not just conceived as bundles, clusters or sets of mental properties had by physical things but as concrete nonphysical "things-in-themselves" are mental substances.
If substance dualism were true, we would all be such mental substances!
(For in that case, I would be a soul that has a body without being one.)

As you are describing them, mental substances and substance dualism are predicated on the assertion that the term non-physical makes sense, and only make sense themselves if that prior assertion is accepted, so I don't really see how they can be used as support for that assertion.

Jef wrote:

Teuton wrote:

shh wrote:I'm confused also, are there any examples of a mental substance?

Consciousnesses/minds/souls/spirits which are not just conceived as bundles, clusters or sets of mental properties had by physical things but as concrete nonphysical "things-in-themselves" are mental substances.
If substance dualism were true, we would all be such mental substances!
(For in that case, I would be a soul that has a body without being one.)

As you are describing them, mental substances and substance dualism are predicated on the assertion that the term non-physical makes sense, and only make sense themselves if that prior assertion is accepted, so I don't really see how they can be used as support for that assertion.

As I said before: if physical makes sense then non-physical must make sense. If "non-physical" literally says nothing then "physical" must say nothing too.

You have just decided that by "the world" you mean "the physical world". You aren't saying anything about the nature of the world by calling it physical, you are instead defining physical as being being a description of whatever the nature of the world is.

So this just sidesteps the question in the OP: nothing is non-natural (or non-physical) because you have decided to define natural/physical in this way. But what if I decide to define physical (as many people would) as meaning "extended in space and time"? Non physical things are then conceivable, though they would have to produce physical effects before we were aware of them. A Cartesian mind, for example, would not be physical but it would be real (eliminating it would make a physical difference in the world). We can define it functionally, but unlike the functions of natural objects the function would not be instantiated in a physical mechanism.

Imagine outputs operating according to a functional description but when we look for the mechanism that drives them we find nothing. This is conceivable. We are presented with examples of this whenever we watch fictional "supernatural" effects in a horror movie. We don't think our world contains such supernatural phenomena but we can imagine what it would be like if it did. So obviously the notion of "supernatural" isn't meaningless.

Chrisw wrote:But what if I decide to define physical (as many people would) as meaning "extended in space and time"?

I've no idea why you think I would define it any other way, although I might quibble about whether it should be an 'and' or an 'or'.

The next person to say 'A Cartesian mind, for example...' or somesuch wins the grand 'Absolutely Missing the Point Prize' for the Cart-before-horse section, by the way. Just how musch sense do you think the idea of the Cartesian mind makes without a prior acceptance of the meaningfulness of the term 'non-physical'?

Also, believing we can imagine something is not equivalent to being able to conceive of it in any kind of sufficiently rigorous manner. As I said before, just because I can say the words, 'square triangle', it doesn't make square triangles conceivable. Nor does being able to define it as being a two-dimensional polygon with the properties of both a square and a triangle.

Jef wrote:

Chrisw wrote:But what if I decide to define physical (as many people would) as meaning "extended in space and time"?

I've no idea why you think I would define it any other way, although I might quibble about whether it should be an 'and' or an 'or'.

Matter is apparently reducible to fundamental particles. These themselves cannot be 'extended' into space and time, because they are indivisible. That is, it seems logical to say that within an indivisible entity, there cannot be separate points of existence.
If correct, then matter is apparently something that is NOT extended in space and time. Rather, matter is many things between which space and time are extended.

jamest wrote:

Jef wrote:

Chrisw wrote:But what if I decide to define physical (as many people would) as meaning "extended in space and time"?

I've no idea why you think I would define it any other way, although I might quibble about whether it should be an 'and' or an 'or'.

Matter is apparently reducible to fundamental particles. These themselves cannot be 'extended' into space and time, because they are indivisible. That is, it seems logical to say that within an indivisible entity, there cannot be separate points of existence.
If correct, then matter is apparently something that is NOT extended in space and time. Rather, matter is many things between which space and time are extended.

I was just about to edit my post to reflect that the idea of physicality posited therein might be somewhat out of date. The point particles of certain quantum theories are definitively physical objects despite of their lack of extension.

Jef wrote:

jamest wrote:Matter is apparently reducible to fundamental particles. These themselves cannot be 'extended' into space and time, because they are indivisible. That is, it seems logical to say that within an indivisible entity, there cannot be separate points of existence.
If correct, then matter is apparently something that is NOT extended in space and time. Rather, matter is many things between which space and time are extended.

I was just about to edit my post to reflect that the idea of physicality posited therein might be somewhat out of date. The point particles of certain quantum theories are definitively physical objects despite of their lack of extension.

But what makes them "definitively physical" then?

jamest wrote:
But what makes them "definitively physical" then?

They are the substrate which gives rise to the observables that supervene upon them.

Jef wrote:

jamest wrote:
But what makes them "definitively physical" then?

They are the substrate which gives rise to the observables that supervene upon them.

So, the definition of the physical amounts to that which can be observed to exist?