I would ask the same question as Nominull and Tiiba: Why is a fundamentally mental thing different from a fundamentally physical thing like quarks? If we discovered a spirit in a tree that wasn’t composed of quarks and leptons, is there a reason we couldn’t take that spirit to be a new fundamental particle that behaves in such-and-such a way, just as a down quark is a fundamental particle that behaves in such-and-such a way?
Eliezer: If, on the other hand, a supernatural hypothesis turns out to be true, then presumably you will also discover that it is not inconceivable.
Right. So apart from Occam’s razor, what’s the reason for excluding things that aren’t quarks and leptons from your set of fundamental particles?
I would ask the same question as Nominull and Tiiba: Why is a fundamentally mental thing different from a fundamentally physical thing like quarks? If we discovered a spirit in a tree that wasn’t composed of quarks and leptons, is there a reason we couldn’t take that spirit to be a new fundamental particle that behaves in such-and-such a way, just as a down quark is a fundamental particle that behaves in such-and-such a way?
Eliezer: If, on the other hand, a supernatural hypothesis turns out to be true, then presumably you will also discover that it is not inconceivable.
Right. So apart from Occam’s razor, what’s the reason for excluding things that aren’t quarks and leptons from your set of fundamental particles?