I've been going through my list of philosophy blogs hoping someone will come up with some topic I find interesting and can respond to. That way I can write something short without having to take the time to delve into all the books I need to write what I keep wanting to. Fortunately a new discussion finally arose. It's not that great. But several blogs are engaging with it. I'll not list all the blogs touching on the subject but I probably ought list at least one. So I'll use Matthew Yglesias' post today on the supernatural.
The basic debate is the context around the silliness over in Kansas and the debate about Intelligent Design. I think ID gets a bit of a bad rap, mind you. I don't think ID proper really requires anything supernatural in the least. Indeed accepting that nature is inherently teleological in some sense would do. No need to postulate a God. Of course I don't feel that sorry for ID since I dislike it a fair bit. Further it bothers me how ID has been embraced by some as a way to simply get rid of evolution in schools. But that's an other discussion which enough people have weighed in on that it'd be pointless for me to try and add anything.
What I think is actually going on is that people are confusing debate about naturalism or materialism with the thesis of supernaturalism. The problem with both naturalism and materialism is that they are hopelessly vague, muddled and confused terms. (I mentioned this here recently, among other places.) If the supernatural is simply what is "left over" from naturalistic explanations then I'm afraid we're not doing too well.
I think what people want to get at is some ultimate scientific description of the universe. If something violates the laws of this science then that's the supernatural. Now this is unhelpful for several reasons. For one, I'm not at all convinced that the our science will converge upon an univocal set of laws regarding the universe. If they don't, then this definition simply won't work. We can't easily separate out the natural from the supernatural. Secondly, since even if such a science were possible, we certainly don't have it yet. Thus as a category, it seems the supernatural is useless since we can't tell what is or isn't the supernatural. One could go on pointing out problems. But it's probably pointless.
What the general idea I think that the natural/supernatural division is getting at is the idea of whether there are some fundamental laws which are necessary or whether they are contingent.
Now most forms of Christianity - at least those that accept creation ex nihilo think all law is contingent. That is, God makes the laws. Since God made them, God could violate them. Of course one can't help but wonder whether this gets into the old debate about whether the good is good because God commanded it or whether God commanded it because it was good. If one believes that an arbitrary divine command theory is false then one is likely to say the same about ultimate natural law. If one does, what does that do to the supernatural category? It seems to render it problematic at best since in a certain sense both the natural and supernatural are necessary, presumably because of some ultimate aim or nature. In which case the divide fails. If one is looking for the ultimate laws one is just looking for God's ultimate reasons.
The issue then becomes whether such reasons could be discerned empirically. I don't know. One might well ask the same of superstring theory - the debate over which there are some eery similarities.
Lest someone think I'm making a play for defending the supernatural, I'm not. I'm merely suggesting that so long as things are normed or habitual in any sense they are ultimately thinkable scientifically. If they aren't then they are pure chaos, as science sees them. (Whether that pure chaos be some kind of ontological interpretation of quantum indeterminacy, an ontological conception of free agents, or any other violation from habit) But if we've merely reduced the supernatural to chaos then I'm not sure we've accomplished much.
Of course as a Mormon who takes the mainstream LDS view that God is embodied within an universe that is co-eternal with him, I tend to discount the supernatural out of hand. God is bound by some ultimate law and thus inherently describable scientifically to the same degree we are. There are a few Mormons who reject this view. I know of at least one person who buys into Ockham's view of laws being totally contingent on God. But I don't. I don't think most do. So to us, the debate about the supernatural is especially useless.
But let's be honest. What the supernatural as a category is there for is to deal with people who, after being told something was impossible, maintain that it happened. The problem with this is that it might be that (1) the people are being silly - what they argue for couldn't happen; (2) the critics are being hasty, having only limited knowledge; or (3) somethings really can't be described much by even an ultimate science. The problem is that I'm not sure how the debate is too useful.
Clark:But let's be honest. What the supernatural as a category is there for is to deal with people who, after being told something was impossible, maintain that it happened. The problem with this is that it might be that (1) the people are being silly - what they argue for couldn't happen; (2) the critics are being hasty, having only limited knowledge; or (3) somethings really can't be described much by even an ultimate science. The problem is that I'm not sure how the debate is too useful.
I think the debate can be useful, and I think your breakdown helps quite a bit. My first question: do we have any reason to believe that there is anything that falls into category 3? That is to say, in category 1 supernatural claims, the claimant is mistaken (and thus the alleged event is either natural, or imagined.) In category 2 supernatural claims, the claim is ultimately subsumed within the category of "the natural", and science is expanded.
Note that neither of these cases permit the existence of "the supernatural", by definition.
If one rules out category 3, the appropriate response to a supernatural claim is "show me the new natural law".
The problem of this "ultimate science" is, however, pretty much identical to the issue of divine command theory and Plato's old comment on ethics. My point is that even a traditional Creedal Christian who thinks physical law is created by God and thus can be violated by God is apt to say that God behaves in a lawlike fashion. Certainly the classic Rationalists did. Thus all we do is push back the ultimate science to a science of God.
As you say the appropriate response is to seek for the new natural law.
Now there might be a few who do fit (3), claiming that God isn't ultimately rational and that all law is contingent on God. I know some major theologians thought that, but I'm not sure too many do.
I think the first problem is that the term "natural" has several relatively incompatible senses:
(1) Pertaining to the physical world
(2) Describing everything other than God ("the Creation")
(3) Essential and eternal
(4) Explainable through physical law alone
This leads to four senses of the term "supernatural":
(1) Pertaining to the spiritual (mental) world
(2) Describing that which is of God (divine)
(3) Exceptional or miraculous
(4) Unexplainable through physical law alone (even in principle)
How coherent these senses are is dependent on context - clearly in the LDS tradition the opportunities for confusion are greater than those in classical theology.
The question of the supernatural is pretty much an open and shut case in classical Christian theology where God exists outside of and completely transcends nature, such that any divine intervention is pretty much supernatural in all four senses by definition.
In the LDS case, the question is not so trivial. I think it boils down to two related issues - first, is person-hood durable and self-existent or incidental, destructible, and contingent?
Second, is there a form of causation beyond determinism and tychism (e.g. agent causation) or is intelligence an epiphenomenon of "dumb" matter?
This is basically the same question as involved in the debate between strong AI and weak AI? If living beings are reducable to deterministic and tychistic causation alone, then there is no fundamental restriction on the upper bound of an artificial intelligence, including surpassing the capacity of humans in all respects.
One problem, as I mentioned, with saying that God is beyond the natural is that God might still be knowable. i.e. is God inherently rational and reasonable? If so, then even his "exceptions" to what some might call natural law is knowable. In that case though science might still be able to explain supposed exceptions. But in that case, is God really supernatural at all?
Of course for those who say God in his transcendence is ultimately unknowable or that God is "beyond" logic would deny this. But I don't think everyone takes those two positions.
Personally, as I've said, I think the whole natural/supernatural divide is unhelpful. I'm fully willing to accept stuff essentially beyond being captured in discourse. So in that sense I'm an anti-naturalist. But I'm not sure the distinction is always as helpful as some make it out to be.
"is there a form of causation beyond determinism and tychism (e.g. agent causation) or is intelligence an epiphenomenon of "dumb" matter?" This appears to be a false dichotomy to me. There are epiphenomenalists who accept both. Process philosophers would be among them in significant respects.
It seems that LDS thought is pretty well committed to durable in indestructible. I am at a loss to see why artificial intelligence would be beyond all human capability if AI is possible. After all, humans may well be capable of omniscience and the human nueral networks are capable of being linked so there is no inherent limitation at all.
I am just saying the term supernatural is useful to metaphysical properties that are reducable to those contemplated by modern physics, which generally does not leave any room for agent causation, primal persons, panpsychism, vitalism, or other non-conventional-reductionist accounts of personality.
I understand process metaphysics to be one of these accounts, where each entity evolves in a manner that is more voluntary than deterministic or random, i.e. definitely not "dumb" (as a door nail).
The strong AI position is basically that a computer program of sufficient sophistication is every bit as much a first class "mind" as that of a human being, a position which follows automatically from conventional reductionism, and is reasonable with an appropriate change in technology given process or panpsychist metaphysics.
However, if we have an indivisible, self-existent intelligence or primal personhood of the sort that B.H. Roberts proposed, any sort of artificial intelligence is inherently second class, differing in category not just in incidentals.
I meant useful to describe properties that are _not_ reducable to conventional materialism.
Just one quibble - strong AI need not follow from conventional reductionism. There are more theories of mind than just functionalism which are compatible with traditional materialism. As I think John Searle's own position attests.
I think Searle's position is a variant of strong AI - he holds that stored program computers cannot think, but that biological machines (such as humans) can.
Searle's whole argument is against functionalism, of which strong AI is a component. He argues that AI is impossible for the same reason that a simulation of a car isn't a car. The chemistry is different from the simulation of the chemistry.
I'm not sure how one could call that strong AI.
I agree Searle's position isn't "strong (stored program) AI", but rather what one might call "strong (machine) AI".
Searle is saying that some kinds of machines have minds and other kinds do not without a theory for distinguishing the two classes. Suppose rather than simulating the process in a computer, I hardwire an electrical neural network with billions of nodes. By what metaphysical basis should I conclude that I have a mind, and my creation does not? Without a behavioral or structural classification theory the assertion looks like semantic techno-centrism.
Clark, I have just discovered your blog, and haven't read everything yet, so forgive me if you have already discussed this somewhere else.
The LDS view is that intelligence is co-existent with God, indeed God is in the same class as intelligence that has no beginning or no end. This does not require there to be a concept of "person-hood" from the outset. McKonkie wrote of intelligence as a form of element that is assembled together into spirit. The D&C mentions spirit as also being matter, only "more pure". Thus the LDS view derives "dumb matter" out of intelligence, as indeed it must, in order to have the capacity to respond to influences outside itself. If we model this intelligence substrate as corresponding to quantum particles, we can already see that the ultimate nature of intelligence need not be fully penetrable for it to stay inside a natural framework, as long as higher level organizational substrates are tangible, observable, and predictable (though this is not to say that that baser intelligence substrates can never be penetrable).
Which brings the question: why create a gulf between AI (strong or otherwise) and spirit? Might they both consist of the same thing -- fields belonging to the same intelligence substrate? If we are truly children of God, doesn't that give us the capacity and obligation to begin creating our own spirits of limited intelligence, no matter how simple and "childish"?
Yes, we have discussed the fact that the nature of "intelligence" is very vague. Not only could it be a substance or quasi-substance of some sort rather than B. H. Robert's Cartesian like mind, at the time of Joseph Smith intelligence and spirit were often used synonymously.
I actually wrote a fair bit on this over at the Bloggernacle Times. (I had a weekly column there although the regularity of it is decreasing somewhat) Scroll down a ways since that link doesn't just list the highlights.
I've closed comments in order to avoid spam since I don't check this older blog as much anymore.
and Theology
Number of unique visitors:
Blogged by Clark Goble