I wouldn’t say it’s necessarily mental. But if it’s a huge lump of properties that can’t be explained by the rules that govern everything else, it would be supernatural. Or it could even be simple, but still have an exception to an otherwise universal rule. For example, in a Tegmark universe governed by the factorial function, finding a 10 could be considered miraculous. In our universe, it could be an object that doesn’t cast a shadow, doesn’t glow on the underside, and is not transparent.
Also, rstarkov, see my reply in the thread linked above.
These mathy definitions are, of course, for times when “supernatural” isn’t just a stand-in for “stop thinking about it!”
Your reply and anonym’s are fundamentally right, I believe. To spell it out more, we need to extend the concept of Similarity Clusters to laws. I mean laws as in “natural laws” and perhaps “supernatural laws”, not as in rules passed by legislatures. To take the supernaturalists seriously, we have to hypothesize that there are exceptions, perhaps even regular exceptions, to natural laws. Where natural laws conflict with supernatural ones, the hypothesis goes, the supernatural ones triumph. That’s what makes them super. By the way, supernatural “laws” might just be descriptions of alleged supernatural properties. E.g., telekinesis is the power to move stuff just by wishing.
Doesn’t this just push the puzzle back a step? How do we distinguish natural laws from supernatural ones? By clustering. Natural laws form a tightly knit explanatory framework. For example we can explain lots of chemistry via QM. Natural laws use terms like mass, charge, acceleration. Etc. Supernatural items are claimed not to fit into the same tightly knit explanatory framework. They are described using terms with no apparent relation to mass, charge, acceleration. Etc.
But, let me say where the “ontologically basic mental things” account is onto something. The paradigm examples of supernatural objects and qualities are usually mental. Or if not the paradigm examples, then at least a large and important category. Since it is indeed hard to see how painfulness or the sensation of sweetness relates to mass, charge, acceleration, etc. - especially if one glosses over the difference between epistemic puzzles and metaphysical ones—the mental has long been an attractive zone for claiming that a different constellation of laws are in play.
ETA: I see Manfred beat me to it. I’ll leave mine here because my version is a little further out on a limb.
I wouldn’t say it’s necessarily mental. But if it’s a huge lump of properties that can’t be explained by the rules that govern everything else, it would be supernatural. Or it could even be simple, but still have an exception to an otherwise universal rule. For example, in a Tegmark universe governed by the factorial function, finding a 10 could be considered miraculous. In our universe, it could be an object that doesn’t cast a shadow, doesn’t glow on the underside, and is not transparent.
Also, rstarkov, see my reply in the thread linked above.
These mathy definitions are, of course, for times when “supernatural” isn’t just a stand-in for “stop thinking about it!”
Your reply and anonym’s are fundamentally right, I believe. To spell it out more, we need to extend the concept of Similarity Clusters to laws. I mean laws as in “natural laws” and perhaps “supernatural laws”, not as in rules passed by legislatures. To take the supernaturalists seriously, we have to hypothesize that there are exceptions, perhaps even regular exceptions, to natural laws. Where natural laws conflict with supernatural ones, the hypothesis goes, the supernatural ones triumph. That’s what makes them super. By the way, supernatural “laws” might just be descriptions of alleged supernatural properties. E.g., telekinesis is the power to move stuff just by wishing.
Doesn’t this just push the puzzle back a step? How do we distinguish natural laws from supernatural ones? By clustering. Natural laws form a tightly knit explanatory framework. For example we can explain lots of chemistry via QM. Natural laws use terms like mass, charge, acceleration. Etc. Supernatural items are claimed not to fit into the same tightly knit explanatory framework. They are described using terms with no apparent relation to mass, charge, acceleration. Etc.
But, let me say where the “ontologically basic mental things” account is onto something. The paradigm examples of supernatural objects and qualities are usually mental. Or if not the paradigm examples, then at least a large and important category. Since it is indeed hard to see how painfulness or the sensation of sweetness relates to mass, charge, acceleration, etc. - especially if one glosses over the difference between epistemic puzzles and metaphysical ones—the mental has long been an attractive zone for claiming that a different constellation of laws are in play.
ETA: I see Manfred beat me to it. I’ll leave mine here because my version is a little further out on a limb.