(June 2, 2020 at 7:27 pm)Belacqua Wrote:(June 2, 2020 at 6:56 pm)Grandizer Wrote: It's a bit weird to me when people seem to be equating naturalism to something that could be aptly labeled "possibilism".
That's fair.
I have been defining "natural" as that set of things which it is possible for a given thing to do. If we see it doing something which we take to be impossible, that is evidence for the supernatural, for people who don't rule it out a priori.
And in this view, since it is possible for Zeus to shoot lightning from his fingertips (or would be if he existed), then it would be natural for him.
I think our whole category of natural/supernatural is likely modern and misleading. The Greeks thought that daemons, muses, and gods were a normal part of the world. In their view, there was no separation between the part of nature we observe and gods with powers greater than human. I can't think of any ancient text that talks about the supernatural -- only the super-human, the hidden, the greater-than-we-can-know.
I think the way you have defined "natural" here is making everyone else here confused. In some posts you make it clearer what you mean by natural like in your response to LFC. It's easier to understand if nature is linked to scientific prediction or something and the supernatural is what cannot be predictable through science. But like I implied before, I don't have any clear definitions here, only an intuition which may very well be a modern thing regarding the distinction between natural and supernatural.
By "possibilism", I meant it in an unofficial sense, something akin to "if it can exist, it can exist". Not to be confused with modal realism which can also be named that.
