I sometimes get stuck on words. Ever use a word over and over and then someone asks you to define what it means and you discover that maybe you weren’t so clear on the meaning of the word to begin with? (This has become painfully more frequent with children.)
The one I’m thinking of at present is ‘supernatural’.
The definition I see is ‘attributed to some force beyond scientific understanding or the laws of nature’.
Well science is the rigorous study of nature.
But what is ‘nature’? How do you know what is ‘natural’ or ‘supernatural’? Should that depend on what we know from science so far or is there a more rigorous way to define these terms so we could easily say one thing is natural and another supernatural?
So let’s see what we can do. Nature is about what exists. Unfortunately the only thing you the reader can be certain of is your existence. “I think therefore I am.” You could be a simulation, but you still think and therefore exist. Let’s start there then and make an initial set say S0 containing you, the thinker.
How do we get to S1? Well, let’s take everything that acts on what is in S0 and everything that is in S0 and acts on other things. S1 then includes what drives you, brain, simulation, soul, etc.
From there we construct S2 from S1 the same way. Everything that acts on what is in S1 and everything S1 acts on. Such acting includes both known and and unknown means of one element acting on another.
We can keep iterating until we run out of ‘stuff’1*. The closure of S.
S is all that is natural. The ways and constraints of how members interact with each other are the laws of nature.
What does that do to ‘supernatural’ then? Well if it is beyond S, it doesn’t act on anything in S nor does anything in S act on it. So while that doesn’t mean ‘supernatural’ things don’t exist, they aren’t relevant (such as fully disjoint universes).
Perhaps this isn’t a good definition of ‘supernatural’ though. Perhaps the better one is ‘beyond scientific understanding’. But does that mean now, or ever? How do we determine the limits of scientific understanding to determine if we have gone beyond?
It seems incredibly likely to me that our scientific pursuits are limited insofar as we are part of the universe and experience constraints that may prevent us from a complete understanding because of it. However that doesn’t exactly tell us where those limits are.
It is like the first explorers of the oceans not knowing the extent of the oceans nor how far they could traverse them. And just like them, just like they didn’t know the limits of both the ocean and what they were capable of until they pursued it, the same is true for science. We won’t know the limits until we pursue it.
Given the number of theoretical limits we have already broken in terms of pursuing a greater understanding of our universe, I am wary of claims to such.
Given that ‘supernatural’ as beyond the laws of nature is irrelevant and ‘supernatural’ as beyond scientific understanding isn’t determinable, it seems the word ‘supernatural’ is a useless and unnecessary word.
However, the above is constructed on logical arguments and perhaps there is a flaw I do not see in these arguments.
This is where the problem opens up to you, the reader(s) I assume exist.
The potential argument I am aware of is:
1. A problem with construction of the sets. To describe this, imagine the real number line. Start at 0 on the line. This is S0. S1 is S0 and the real numbers adjacent to any numbers in S0, and so on. However the adjacent real number isn’t well defined in the real number line and you run into a problem with the set definition relying on countable infinity while the domain is uncountably infinite. Our universe may be uncountably infinite in in a similar way. But there is a way to rearrange the set definitions so they are based on metrics of the space instead and be rendered continuous to remedy the issue. It just a little more involved. So this is not a barrier. The construction presented though is more intuitive.
2. Even if the universe is illogical and doesn’t follow any rules (allowing for spontaneously popping into existence as you read this) doesn’t make it any less natural. It just makes it incomprehensible as any conclusions drawn by *any* method would immediately be invalidated (including the potential to spontaneously become ordered and comprehensible rendering incomprehensibility an invalidatable claim).
So it doesn’t mean that souls, ghosts, gods, psychic powers etc don’t exist–it only means they would be natural (if they did), and certainly under the purview of rigorous study: science.