Veritas Posted November 17, 2007 Report Share Posted November 17, 2007 Does te supernatural exist? How can a person know whether a thing is potentially knowable or not? How can a person prove that the supernatual does not exist? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DavidOdden Posted November 17, 2007 Report Share Posted November 17, 2007 Does te supernatural exist?Meaning, that which is above (or below, or to the side of, but at any rate apart from) that which is in nature? Nature being "that which exists". No, the supernatural does not exist.How can a person know whether a thing is potentially knowable or not?By determining if it can exist. If it can't, it isn't knowable.How can a person prove that the supernatual does not exist?See the previous. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Veritas Posted November 17, 2007 Author Report Share Posted November 17, 2007 Meaning, that which is above (or below, or to the side of, but at any rate apart from) that which is in nature? Nature being "that which exists". No, the supernatural does not exist.By determining if it can exist. If it can't, it isn't knowable.See the previous. So in other words... if the supernatural existed it would exist in nature? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DavidOdden Posted November 17, 2007 Report Share Posted November 17, 2007 So in other words... if the supernatural existed it would exist in nature?Yes, and that contradicts the meaning of "supernatural". Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Carrier of the Zero Posted November 18, 2007 Report Share Posted November 18, 2007 Yes, 'supernatural' is an invalid concept... as we've established, if something exists then it is a part of nature, with a specific nature. It's not outside the realm of possibility that there exist processes, or even entities, at work in the universe that humans are either not aware of yet, or don't have a proper understanding of yet, but the burden of proof is on the person making the claim for their existence. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cmdownes Posted November 19, 2007 Report Share Posted November 19, 2007 (edited) Does te supernatural exist? You have to define your terms first. The way Objectivists use the term word nature - to mean that which exists - clearly the answer is no. Nothing exists beyond what exists, as David points out. If by supernatural you mean an entity which can't be described by the natural sciences, then the answer is less clear and the debate is more interesting. Most Anglo-American philosophers of science deny the existence of the supernatural, and hold to some kind of materialism or physicalism. There are a few folks in philosphy of mind who hold still maintain that the mind isn't physically constituted - David Chalmers notably. And there are number of metaethicists who think value is a non-natural property of objects/states of affairs/people/whatever. Admittedly, Objectivists are going to want to have nothing to do with most of these folks, but that's where you'll find arguments for and against the supernatural in the broader contemporary philosophical literature. How can a person prove that the supernatual does not exist? Simple. For any posited entity or property that somebody argues is supernatural, show how it can be accounted for by the natural sciences (at least in principle) or does not exist. The burden of proof is on the person proposing that some entity exists and has a non-natural property, I should think. Alternately, you can argue that the methodology of the natural sciences is superior to methodologies that admit the supernatural into their ontology. This'll probably involve some argument from the exceptional utility of methodological naturalism and all the cool things that science let's us do - like live in cities instead of in caves. Or, you can argue from parsimony and say that methodological naturalism is more likely to be right because it has the fewest ontological commitments. Or, you can try to show that the second definition of nature above makes "supernatural" contradictory in the same way that the first did. But an argument that'll do that will have to show that the methodology of the natural sciences is inclusive of all things which exist, probably requiring you to show one of the above arguments. Those are the lines of argument that spring to mind. Edited November 19, 2007 by cmdownes Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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