Open challenge regarding the supernatural

[Alex K]

2 words
Quantum Entanglement

It's the work of the devil I tell ya!
This is supernatural wouldn't you agree?
With no clear reason why it exists.

But it can be tested and shown to exist reliably using conventional means. As such, it wouldn't fall into the definition rob gives, no?

[ignoramus]

Absolutely, the devil doesn't miss a beat, I agree!

[bennyboy]

Rob, I would argue that mind meets your definition of supernatural.

I cannot know that any physical system has a mind without making philosophical assumptions-- assumptions which are not in fact based on physical observations. In other words, I must believe that other humans are sentient BEFORE I have proof. Or if I want to call my observations of people "evidence," not requiring a rigorous proof, I must at least take that same philosophical position about my sense information: that it really does, as it seems to me, represent an objective physical reality.

As for proof-- well, I know that my mind exists, but I understand that someone who doesn't already accept that existence cannot be persuaded through any philosophical, logical, or physical means; in fact, I cannot show that ANY mind exists-- all I can do is sit here smugly in the knowledge that mine at least does, and that anyone who doesn't believe so is wrong, whatever the evidence or lack thereof.

Okay, so that's mind. Now substitute that word out and put in God, or spirit, or the Magic Invisible Space Monkey, and you'll see that we're in trouble. Maybe before struggling to prove that anything supernatural exists, we should attempt to prove that our assumptions about the natural world are valid. Prove, for example, that sense data represent an objective (i.e. "natural") reality at all.

[robvalue]

Hmm. Yes, that's interesting.

Well, if we are going to call the mind supernatural, that is a statement that we will never be able to measure it, we will never find out it doesn't really "exist", and we will never find out it's in some way natural.

Do you think it is possible to be so confident as that? I'm not so sure.

As for do mind's even exist, all I can ever know for sure is I appear to be experiencing something. I have no firm evidence anyone else is.

But can't I test my own mind, to some degree, although indirectly? For example, I can fuck with my brain and such to see what happens to the mind. I'd be the only one getting the results, but if I'm to assume my mind is real, then my experiences of it should be real too? This is fucking tricky stuff!

And do we know the mind is really anything other than the brain? Scientifically, isn't it just an emergent property that may not literally exist?

It's a good one though! This will take some thought. I'm not going to just announce "I win" here This deserves much more discussion.

I'll think about your "prove natural" thing also.

Someone make a shit argument so I can point out a glaring problem.

[ignoramus]

Rob, our physical self is just a life support for the mind.
(This is what woo people tell us because they cannot think of another reason why we exist) Enter old man in sky.
We exist because nobody disturbed nature for 4 billion years and whallah!

[orogenicman]

2 words
Quantum Entanglement

It's the work of the devil I tell ya!
This is supernatural wouldn't you agree?
With no clear reason why it exists.

Virtual particles.  Kinda like Kim Jong Un - pops in and out of reality.

[ignoramus]

[bennyboy]

Well, if we are going to call the mind supernatural, that is a statement that we will never be able to measure it, we will never find out it doesn't really "exist", and we will never find out it's in some way natural.

Do you think it is possible to be so confident as that? I'm not so sure.

Well, let's look at the nature of evidence and of mind.  Evidence is objective, and mind (at least as we normally mean it) refers to something subjective.  So the question is really: can anything objective prove for sure the existence of the subjective?

The answer to that question depends not so much on what we discover, but on how we allow (or push) the meanings of terms to change in order to accommodate it.  For example, if you accept that mind is brain function, then you can obviously find brain function everywhere in human brains.  If you define "mind" as processing information and outputting a meaningful behavior, then you can find mind in machines.

But when I talk about mind, and most people I think define things as I do, I'm talking about qualia-- the ability to experience, rather than simply to process.  And right now, the only way to know something experiences qualia is to determine whether it SEEMS to, and then accept that seeming is sufficient evidence of being.

My point is that ANY physical observations of mind require accepting SEEMS as IS.  Without knowing what observations we'll make in the future, I can pretty confidently say that SEEMS vs. IS cannot be solved by objective observation, and that we are left with a fog of war which is only cleared by our willingness to make assumptions.

[robvalue]

I have to agree that the problem of conciousness is a very unique one. We are analysing the equipment we use to analyse. It's extremely difficult, and I agree, you just can't get around it very easily.

Whether or not it is "supernatural"... I don't know. Again, like you say, it's about definitions. If we define what "qualia" is but then cannot directly demonstrate it to be anything other than an abstract idea, then we haven't established there actually is someing there to be supernatural.

Say, for the sake or argument, that qualia are the emergent property and it "appears" to manifest in certain ways. But if it's actually not manifesting at all in any real sense, then... nothing is there. Picking the right language for this is so difficult!

I have wondered a lot about whether what we perceive as qualia and consciousness is at all unique to life forms. I don't see why it would be. It's just we have absolutely no way of detecting any such things going on in a rock, for example. But maybe that will change! This is my concern with the supernatural label, we assume the things could never be measured and witnessed independently. We can't witness ourselves independent or reliably, but if we could somehow interpret the qualia/emergent properties from anything in an empirical way, then maybe we could analyse them.

Maybe one day we will be able to somehow measure the actual conciousness someone is experiencing, some way of directly transferring that experience to someone else. I have no idea how.

My analysis is totally inadequate, I know. I think this is the most baffling subject we will ever meet and one we may not ever solve. The best I can come up with is that conciousness is a "side effect" of a working brain. It appears to manifest itself in some way that seems real. But trying to say what is real and what is not... brain meltdown.

So I'll totally agree this is the nearest thing to "supernatural" but I feel like actually saying that it is supernatural may be an overstatement. We really don't understand it properly, at all. We're making very vague stabs in the dark at it. We can't yet objectively measure it as a shared experience, but maybe one day we will. We also can't demonstrate that anything is actually going on beyond the physical; so to call something we haven't demonstrated to be real supernatural seems premature. So that's my two objections: is there anything going on at all, and how can we know we could never measure it if so?

Thanks for the very interesting discussion! I hope it will continue. This is a fascinating subject.

Also, I notice no one is bringing any other challenges for me. Feel free to copy and paste arguments you've made (theistic ones if you like) from other threads that you think are sound. This is me backing up my claim that apologetics is dishonesty. Bring it hither and I'll thither it. Or forever hold your peace.

[Pyrrho]

I am unconvinced that the mind is so special.  The way it is decided that a mind exists is through behavior.  The observation of behavior is how the mind is, to use your words, "tested, detected or measured" and such observation is "by natural means."  We make all sorts of determinations of the intelligence of minds (IQ tests, etc.), and there is nothing supernatural about how that is done.  We do the same sorts of things for determining how minds feel about various things.

The fact that it is "indirect" observation, in that one views the behavior rather than the mind itself, does not make the situation special.  We do the same with gravity.  We do not observe gravity as a thing in itself, but as it affects other things.*  That does not make gravity supernatural or unreal.

Additionally, with examinations of damaged brains, we know that the mind is altered by altering the brain.  We can be pretty certain that the mind is a subset of the activities of the brain.  (One also can do a self-test, where one drinks enough alcohol to become drunk, and one can notice the subjective aspect of mind changing, while others can observe differences in our behavior.  The alcohol in the brain affects the activities of the brain.)  Granted, the details are not all worked out yet, but before modern astronomy, we did not know what the stars were and could not be sure about them.  That did not make them supernatural.  That just made the details unknown.  Unknown details is not the same as "supernatural."


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*By all means, ask Alex K, our resident expert on such things, to weigh in on my characterization of gravity.  I'll concede almost anything he says about gravity, if we get him in a serious mood.