Atheist VS Naturalist - the latter sounds more appealing to me...

[Succubus#2]

understand those laws using the scientific method.

...I'm talking about things which are entirely unavailable to us, which the scientific method can't analyze.

If these 'things' can affect the way the universe works they need a power supply, an energy source. Science would detect it.

It doesn't.

[possibletarian]

It's possible that aliens would understand some of these things -- not through advanced science but through methods which humans can't conceive of. In that case I guess the traditionalists would say that the aliens understand the supernatural. They often posited that there would be higher beings who understood what is beyond nature. 

Maybe you reject the notion that there could possibly be anything unavailable to the scientific method. But that's unprovable.

But you are still creating an unnecessary world with no reason to believe it exists. How would aliens understand it if it was beyond their science ?

[The Grand Nudger]

-and what about the aliens further up the scale than those aliens?

Our supernatural is alien 1 natural, but whatever they don't know, their supernatural, is just alien 2 natural....and whatever they don't know is...

Natural, supernatural, meganatural.....

It seems as though we're incapable of defining the supernatural as anything other than a cascading description of relative ignorance. There's nothing fundamentally different about the objects in the sets - the only thing that changes is the level of knowledge or technical ability of a given observer. Or, we could be just a tad bit more honest in our definitions, and concede that the supernatural is and has always meant ghosts, pixies, goblins, curses, and innumerable mysterious forces believed to effect human lives. Fundamentally different from the natural world and other things in the natural world, a requirement of needing some second (or third, or fourth, or fifth) term to describe them.

I'm sure that someone will pop up to say that the above describes the supernatural as shit that turned out to be nonexistent, but that's just the way the cookie crumbles. Just because the proponents of the supernatural were wrong, doesn't mean that this wasn't what they were discussing, what they believed. Being in error is not equivalent with incoherence. That contention is just as much a doomed attempt at posturing as any of bels incompetent definitions.

The supernatural has nothing to do with what we don't or can't know and is coherent as a concept. It's an explicit claim to knowledge of those things x. A cognitive proposition that can be true or false, and is false.

[polymath257]

understand those laws using the scientific method.

A very large prime number which is currently unknown to us has the same ontological status as one which is known.

A law of physics which is not known to us has the same ontological status as one which is known. 

Numbers, laws, physics -- all these are concepts which humans are comfortable with. That's not what I'm talking about. 

I'm talking about things which are entirely unavailable to us, which the scientific method can't analyze. This is a traditional meaning of the terms natural/supernatural. 

It's possible that aliens would understand some of these things -- not through advanced science but through methods which humans can't conceive of. In that case I guess the traditionalists would say that the aliens understand the supernatural. They often posited that there would be higher beings who understood what is beyond nature. 

Maybe you reject the notion that there could possibly be anything unavailable to the scientific method. But that's unprovable.

 I wasn't just talking about large prime numbers. I was talking about mathematical *concepts* that are beyond us because of our limitations. Ones that we simply don't have the brain capacity to grasp.

In saying that an unknown physical law (one that could be found by a super-intelligent alien using the scientific method) has the same ontological status as the ones we know, you negate your own earthworm analogy: in that, it was simply the inability of an earthworm to grasp neoliberal economics, NOT that it was a different type of knowledge all together.

In your analogy, we would be the intelligent aliens using the scientific method and the earthworms would be the human race unable to grasp the new laws of physics. But those laws are *still* found by the scientific method.

So, your definition has even more problems. It isn't simply that we are earthworms, but you want to say something exists that cannot be found, no matter how intelligent the actor, using the scientific method.

And, at that point, your argument that we can't ignore the possibility because it might still affect us goes out the window: if we allow super-intelligent beings that can notice any patterns that exist, then that is no longer a possibility: if it affects such beings, then the pattern would be detectable by such beings and thereby studied by the scientific method.

If a pattern can be found, then that pattern can be studied by the scientific method. If you allow intelligence great enough to discover all available patterns, then all patterns can be studied.

And if there is no pattern *at all*, even in the probabilities (quantum mechanics!), then it is meaningless to say the phenomenon even exists.

[Belacqua]

If you allow intelligence great enough to discover all available patterns, then all patterns can be studied.

It depends on what we mean by "nature." 

The definition I've borrowed here from the Neoplatonic mystics says that nature is a portion of the world. It is the portion which can be known by the senses -- or the scientific method. But there is more to the world than this, and the part which is not known by the senses is the supernatural. 

So to them, the supernatural has patterns and its own ways of doing things which are not a part of nature. These patterns can be known -- and indeed are known by beings that are higher than people. But not through empirical repeatable quantifiable methods, which is the scientific method. 

And it includes much that is knowable only to higher beings, not people. 

You've been talking about numbers as if they were part of nature. Are they really? Do we know about numbers through the scientific method? Or do we know of them in other ways -- through pure logic, for example? Do we conduct scientific tests that are empirical, repeatable, quantifiable, and published in scientific journals, to know about numbers? I don't think so. And if something as important as mathematics is not known through the scientific method, then it is false to say that everything is known that way. 

As all polymaths know, Plato's God is much like a number. 

Blake made a traditional Neoplatonic statement by saying that the body is a portion of the soul. It is the portion of the soul which is perceived by the body's own senses. But this part (which is knowable by science) is not all. The rest of the soul, and the rest of the world, is knowable in part but not through the senses. It is not a part of the sensible world, which is by definition that part which science studies. If a scientist made assertions about the non-sensible part of the world -- that part which is not known through empirical repeatable quantifiable testing -- then he wouldn't be doing science. 

So yes, the supernatural has its patterns and is knowable in principle by beings more intelligent than us. That's a part of what the supernatural is, according to this very traditional definition.

[The Grand Nudger]

Failing to stick the dualist landing, we're now arguing for supernatural monism.

Why is it that scientists are the only people who can't comment on the non-sensible world™? Do philosophers possess non-sensible senses?

All cognitive propositions can be true or false. Science supplies sound propositions that we employ to make such a determination through logical inference. As to whether or not the rules of logical inference are testable, or the rules of mathematics....

I suppose that we could see whether or not adding four coins to three coins ever gives us ten coins. We could check and see whether or not there are any married bachelors. How, exactly, do you think that we arrived at the current rules of logical inference? Do we imagine that they're now complete? If they aren't, or if some portion is in error, how do you imagine that we'll arrive at this realization, one which we have arrived at many times in the past? In context of logic and math, both. Oh sure...sure sure sure, the systems of logic and math are good at producing positivist statements to support any given position, but do they also produce falsifiable statements? This would be a competent application of popper et als pancritical philosophy.

Logic tells us that a thing cannot be itself and not itself. From this it follows that a thing cannot be natural and other than natural, or vv. How certain are we that the law of identity is an accurate description of how reality functions? Let's see some commitments, so we know exactly what it is we're discussing, and what an acceptable metric of truth or knowledge to those claims might be, between us, lol.

[Mr.wizard]

So the Supernatural is the portion of the world that cant be sensed or known by us? I guess the obvious question is, how do you know its there and how can anyone be justified in believing that its there. Because if there something humans cant know or even detect it is indistinguishable to us from that which does not exist.

[polymath257]

If you allow intelligence great enough to discover all available patterns, then all patterns can be studied.

It depends on what we mean by "nature." 

The definition I've borrowed here from the Neoplatonic mystics says that nature is a portion of the world. It is the portion which can be known by the senses -- or the scientific method. But there is more to the world than this, and the part which is not known by the senses is the supernatural. 

So to them, the supernatural has patterns and its own ways of doing things which are not a part of nature. These patterns can be known -- and indeed are known by beings that are higher than people. But not through empirical repeatable quantifiable methods, which is the scientific method. 

And it includes much that is knowable only to higher beings, not people. 

You've been talking about numbers as if they were part of nature. Are they really? Do we know about numbers through the scientific method? Or do we know of them in other ways -- through pure logic, for example? Do we conduct scientific tests that are empirical, repeatable, quantifiable, and published in scientific journals, to know about numbers? I don't think so. And if something as important as mathematics is not known through the scientific method, then it is false to say that everything is known that way. 

As all polymaths know, Plato's God is much like a number. 

Blake made a traditional Neoplatonic statement by saying that the body is a portion of the soul. It is the portion of the soul which is perceived by the body's own senses. But this part (which is knowable by science) is not all. The rest of the soul, and the rest of the world, is knowable in part but not through the senses. It is not a part of the sensible world, which is by definition that part which science studies. If a scientist made assertions about the non-sensible part of the world -- that part which is not known through empirical repeatable quantifiable testing -- then he wouldn't be doing science. 

So yes, the supernatural has its patterns and is knowable in principle by beings more intelligent than us. That's a part of what the supernatural is, according to this very traditional definition.

No, numbers are NOT part of nature, at least not in the sense most people think about them. They are part of the *language* of mathematics. So, numbers are like words in any other language: they are ways that we organize our ideas to be better able to talk about the world around us.

And no, we do NOT know about math from pure logic alone. We have *axioms* that are simply assumed. Sort of like rules of a game. And then we have rules of deduction from those axioms which are sort of like the valid plays in the game.

But, it is quite possible to have very different axioms for math and/or logic.

I know that Plato made a very fundamental philosophical mistake when he suggested the 'forms' and pointed to math as an example of such. I also know that, unlike Socrates' belief, our learning is not the same as remembering.

So, in math I am most certainly NOT a Platonist. I am a formalist.

And once again, the problem is that the term 'nature' or 'world' is ill-defined. And when attempts are made to define it (like those you have made), it is quickly found that the whole notion of a supernatural is simply incoherent.

Plato believed that logic alone could give us information about the real world. And that is simply false. In order to find out anything about the real world, we have to actually look at the real world.

[The Grand Nudger]

-and in order for our logical systems, or math, to confidently model the real world, their products must point to some real world observation as validation, and must make falsifiable predictions that remain unobserved in the real world.

A single married bachelor would be the end of reason. A precambrian rabbit would be the end of biology. If one plus one equaled three, it would be the end of math.

[Rhizomorph13]

I keep returning to this post to see if anything new has emerged.

NOPE still a dead simple, stops where it starts, there is zero value in the word AND the concept of supernatural.

Stop flagellating this non-living equine.