I am not convinced that everyone who uses the term means the same thing—or even compatible things—by it, actually.
Some people seem to mean a combination of subtle, unexplained, and sacred… that is, E is a supernatural event if it’s hard to notice, they don’t know why it happens, and they approach it with awe (rather than, say, with curiosity).
Other people seem to mean inconsistent with natural law. Most of the people who believe the supernatural doesn’t exist seem to adopt this meaning, although many people adopt this meaning and believe it has a real referent.
On this site, the idea that the supernatural involves the irreducably mental (“ontologically basic mental entities”) is popular; I’m not sold on it myself. For example, if someone told me that they believed in a Law of Karma that caused events to occur in a way that reflects Cosmic Justice, I would understand that to be a belief about the supernatural, but it would not be clear to me that they consider the entities being described either mental or ontologically basic, nor that it matters in either case. (Of course, nothing prevents either of those things from being true.)
The Law of Karma would need to determine which events are concordant with Cosmic Justice and which are not. I suppose your hypothetical friend would agree that the Law of Karma behaves as if there were a god with a sense of Cosmic Justice. So their cosmology is a theist’s cosmology except with the “exists” tag removed from all gods.
I’m not sure what Richard Carrier’s definition makes of this.
ETA: Looking a second time at this post, it seems clear that Richard Carrier would regard a Law of Karma as a mental property of the universe, even if there is no mind controlling it. Eliezer’s interpretation of this definition is more clear.
I mean, I’m really not sure what it means for something to be theism except without any gods, but I suppose that describes my hypothetical friend’s cosmology.
Then again, I suppose it describes my cosmology as well.
I mean, I believe the universe is arranged in such a way that (for example) particles attract one another with a force that is proportional to their mass and inversely proportional to the square of their distance, but I suppose I would agree (albeit queasily) that the Law of Gravitation behaves as if there were a god with the desire to cause things to attract one another in this way.
Ah, I could have been more clear. My point is that “ontologically basic mental things” is shorthand for a more nuanced definition of supernatural which does include your Law of Karma, even though the Law of Karma doesn’t talk about disembodied minds.
By this definition, “the Universe computes whether an event is just” is a supernatural hypothesis, but “the Universe computes the inverse square of distance” is not.
I agree that the ability to insert a god into a hypothesis doesn’t have much to do with whether the hypothesis was supernatural to begin with.
While I have some understanding of what “ontologically basic mental things” might be (and I am not convinced that “supernatural” is routinely used to mean that), I do not have the vaguest beginnings of a clue what the nuanced definition you are asserting it actually serves as a shorthand for might be, so it’s conceivable that I would agree that “supernatural” means it, if I ever did find out what it was.
(I’ve made a couple of attempts to read the post you link to, but I keep wandering off before I get to the end. IMHO it takes way too long to get to any point worth making.)
I am not convinced that everyone who uses the term means the same thing—or even compatible things—by it, actually.
Some people seem to mean a combination of subtle, unexplained, and sacred… that is, E is a supernatural event if it’s hard to notice, they don’t know why it happens, and they approach it with awe (rather than, say, with curiosity).
Other people seem to mean inconsistent with natural law. Most of the people who believe the supernatural doesn’t exist seem to adopt this meaning, although many people adopt this meaning and believe it has a real referent.
On this site, the idea that the supernatural involves the irreducably mental (“ontologically basic mental entities”) is popular; I’m not sold on it myself. For example, if someone told me that they believed in a Law of Karma that caused events to occur in a way that reflects Cosmic Justice, I would understand that to be a belief about the supernatural, but it would not be clear to me that they consider the entities being described either mental or ontologically basic, nor that it matters in either case. (Of course, nothing prevents either of those things from being true.)
The Law of Karma would need to determine which events are concordant with Cosmic Justice and which are not. I suppose your hypothetical friend would agree that the Law of Karma behaves as if there were a god with a sense of Cosmic Justice. So their cosmology is a theist’s cosmology except with the “exists” tag removed from all gods.
I’m not sure what Richard Carrier’s definition makes of this.
ETA: Looking a second time at this post, it seems clear that Richard Carrier would regard a Law of Karma as a mental property of the universe, even if there is no mind controlling it. Eliezer’s interpretation of this definition is more clear.
I guess so?
I mean, I’m really not sure what it means for something to be theism except without any gods, but I suppose that describes my hypothetical friend’s cosmology.
Then again, I suppose it describes my cosmology as well.
I mean, I believe the universe is arranged in such a way that (for example) particles attract one another with a force that is proportional to their mass and inversely proportional to the square of their distance, but I suppose I would agree (albeit queasily) that the Law of Gravitation behaves as if there were a god with the desire to cause things to attract one another in this way.
I guess.
I suspect I’ve altogether missed your point.
Ah, I could have been more clear. My point is that “ontologically basic mental things” is shorthand for a more nuanced definition of supernatural which does include your Law of Karma, even though the Law of Karma doesn’t talk about disembodied minds.
By this definition, “the Universe computes whether an event is just” is a supernatural hypothesis, but “the Universe computes the inverse square of distance” is not.
I agree that the ability to insert a god into a hypothesis doesn’t have much to do with whether the hypothesis was supernatural to begin with.
OK, fair enough.
While I have some understanding of what “ontologically basic mental things” might be (and I am not convinced that “supernatural” is routinely used to mean that), I do not have the vaguest beginnings of a clue what the nuanced definition you are asserting it actually serves as a shorthand for might be, so it’s conceivable that I would agree that “supernatural” means it, if I ever did find out what it was.
(I’ve made a couple of attempts to read the post you link to, but I keep wandering off before I get to the end. IMHO it takes way too long to get to any point worth making.)