What does natural mean? And what is a natural explanation?

Yohan

It seems to me explanations are mental constructs. Mental constructs are immaterial.
Therefor there are only mental explanations, not material explanations.

Is the theory of gravity natural? If we called it a supernatural theory, would it change anything about the basic theory? If we say gravity is physical or non-physical would it change anything about the basic theory?

Is time natural or supernatural?
Is math natural, unnatural, supernatural?

I'm thinking. All that matters is if a theory or modal makes sense and works. While 'natural' doesn't add anything. And 'supernatural' adds even less, giving an unnecessary mystical air.

Experiment.
How do we test if what we are observing is natural, unnatural, or supernatural? Hold something, such as a leaf. And ask yourself...is this a natural object or a supernatural object?

It seems to me 'natural' is a negative term. It means: Not-magical. Or, not brought about intentionally.
Otherwise, its meaningless, because everything has a nature.
The question is not 'Is this natural', but 'What is this thing's true nature' or 'What is this things essential nature, if it has one?'

Discuss?

Srap Tasmaner

Or, not brought about intentionally. — Yohan

The opposite of "natural" is "artificial".

Manuel

↪Yohan

Why isn't the mental natural? The mind is a part of nature.

The mental being immaterial is questionable. It arises out of brains, which are physical systems. Physical stuff is at bottom, quite insubstantial. But we still call it physical. And physical stuff is natural stuff.

Artificial things are modifications of things found in nature. Therefore, artificial things are natural things too, only that we intervened in bringing them about. But not by using some process outside of nature.

Natural explanations are those explanations that give some insight into how the world works via theoretical constructions. But far from everything can be explained theoretically, despite talk of "political theory" or "economic theory". That's another story.

180 Proof

It seems to me 'natural' is a negative term. It means: Not-magical. — Yohan

Natural denotes, at minimum, not imaginary (or abstract).

Natural explanations are those explanations that give some insight into how the world works via theoretical constructions. — Manuel

:up:

Tom Storm

↪Yohan

I don't know of anything that is 'supernatural'. How would we even identify this attribute? I am only aware of claims people make about entities or phenomena for which there is no great evidence. I take the view that whatever we see or experience is likely to be 'natural' or quotidian. But this is provisional.

Joshs

↪Yohan

The natural is what is measurable, calculable, mathematizable within an intersubjective community. We can oppose it to the personalistic , which is perspectival and specific to a contingent context of use.

Yohan

Srap,
Are dams artificial (in the sense of not naturally occurring) because beavers make them, rather than rivers?
Is there a difference in naturalness vs unnaturalness between beavers making dams and humans making dams?

Why isn't the mental natural? The mind is a part of nature. — Manuel

"Nature" is a pretty abstract term. I am not convinced the mind is part of the so called material world.

The mental being immaterial is questionable. It arises out of brains, which are physical systems. — Manuel

Brains being physical and/or being the source of minds is, to me, questionable. I believe intelligence produces the appearance of so called matter, rather than the reverse.

Natural denotes, at minimum, not imaginary (or abstract). — 180 Proof

There is abstract vs concrete, actual vs possible... but 'natural' I think means something else. Nature may or may not be abstract or concrete.

↪Yohan The natural is what is measurable, calculable, mathematizable — Joshs

So what would that make anything which is immeasurable, un-calculatable, or non-mathematizable?

Yohan

Natural denotes, at minimum, not imaginary (or abstract). — 180 ProofThere is abstract vs concrete, actual vs possible... but 'natural' I think means something else. Nature may or may not be abstract or concrete. — Yohan

I'm not sure what I said makes sense. I guess I think that both the abstract and the concrete are abstractions. But that probably sound nonsensical too.

Yohan

My position is that 'concreteness' is meaning we give to some experiences. I don't believe 'concreteness' is an inherent quality.

Manuel

"Nature" is a pretty abstract term. I am not convinced the mind is part of the so called material world. — Yohan

Sure. But mind is too. Unless you assert that consciousness is only mind or exhausts the mental. If there is more to mind than experience, then mind is a broad term too.

Brains being physical and/or being the source of minds is, to me, questionable. I believe intelligence produces the appearance of so called matter, rather than the reverse. — Yohan

Produces the appearance of matter as opposed to what other appearance? It's not as if there is mind in one ontological basket and matter in another.

That is a serious flaw we continue to have regarding our intuitions: that of thinking we know what "physical stuff" encapsulates or even "mental stuff" for that matter.

Tom Storm

↪Manuel

If everything is consciousness, is consciousness regarded as natural?

Manuel

↪Tom Storm

Yeah.

I don't even understand what an alternative to "natural" means. By "natural" I mean belonging to nature,
not meaning reducing everything to science, just to avoid that misunderstanding.

Yohan

I don't even understand what an alternative to "natural" means. By "natural" I mean belonging to nature, — Manuel

Imagine this scenario: You are a conscious robot who spent his whole life on a technologically sophisticated "planetoid" with no organic life. The technologies are capable of self-replication and evolution. You have no idea who created you or the planetoid. For you and the robots, this planetoid may seem natural, rather than artificial.
Eventually, you find planet earth. You observe humans and plants etc. You conclude that the humans and plants must have been created by conscious robots, because it seems inconceivable to you that technology could have naturally(unconsciously) produced these kind of things.

How do we determine if we and our world are 'natural' or artificial?

Manuel

↪Yohan

Yeah, sure. We can also be the dream of God, or the tears of a cosmic turtle or anything else. You've stipulated that there's no organic life, contrary to what we now know.

There may be places in which non-organic life exists. This just complicates things uneasily. I think it is more simple and straightforward to acknowledge that we are part of nature.

Anything else could be the case, but we are just adding unnecessary complications.

Tom Storm

I think it is more simple and straightforward to acknowledge that we are part of nature. — Manuel

Just checking - is your position that everything that is the case is natural?

Srap Tasmaner

Are dams artificial (in the sense of not naturally occurring) because beavers make them, rather than rivers? — Yohan

Yes.

Is there a difference in naturalness vs unnaturalness between beavers making dams and humans making dams? — Yohan

No.

I don't even understand what an alternative to "natural" means. — Manuel

Since I offered one of those, I'll bite: I think there's a difference between, say, a mountain pass carved out by a glacier and an anthill or a bird's nest. The latter are not things that "happened" but things an organism "did" or "made". We're at least moving along a spectrum toward artificial here.

I'd want to be able to distinguish between the tracks beavers might leave in the mud along the shore and the dam they built across the stream. Those are both effects of the presence of beavers, but they don't look like the same sort of thing to me at all.

Roughly speaking, I'm focusing on the process rather than the material (which is always natural) or the agent (likewise). As you move toward the artificial, there's an opportunity for design.

Manuel

↪Tom Storm

Essentially yes.

Manuel

↪Srap Tasmaner

I think I get your point or the gist of it. It might send you down the "wrong picture" of the world to think in terms of natural vs. artificial. I think speaking of complexity and sophistication make is somewhat easier.

So we can say a mountain pass is much less complex than a beaver. A beaver's damn is more complex than a mountain, but less than a beaver, as this creature consists of billions of particles plus all the relevant biological stuff, which is quite complex in itself.

Yohan

I think it is more simple and straightforward to acknowledge that we are part of nature.
Anything else could be the case, but we are just adding unnecessary complications. — Manuel

But the question is what does natural mean. So I am trying to strip the concept of anything that is not necessary. So far, I not seeing the exact difference between natural and artificial. On the one hand, everyone seems to be saying everything is natural. On the other, there seems to be a consensus that, somehow, some things are more or less natural than other things.

Yohan

So we can say a mountain pass is much less complex than a beaver. A beaver's damn is more complex than a mountain, but less than a beaver, as this creature consists of billions of particles plus all the relevant biological stuff, which is quite complex in itself. — Manuel

This leads to intent. A beaver made the dam intentionally. The mountain was formed, perhaps without intention. The more sophisticated something is, the more likely we are to think that thing may possess the quality of having intent.

Joshs

↪Yohan

The natural is what is measurable, calculable, mathematizable
— Joshs
So what would that make anything which is immeasurable, un-calculatable, or non-mathematizable? — Yohan

It would make it the phenomenologically experienced

Yohan

The natural is what is measurable, calculable, mathematizable
We can oppose it to the personalistic , which is perspectival and specific to a contingent context of use. — Joshs

It would make it the phenomenologically experienced — Joshs

So a computer is natural, because it is measururable, calculable, mathematizable? And my personal experience of the computer is not natural?

Manuel

↪Yohan

It gets tricky, quickly.

We don't know if the beaver builds a dam with intent, maybe it does is automatically, the way a baby turtle races to the ocean as soon as its born.

A cell is way more sophisticated and complex than a particle. Would we say the cell has intent? Most would not.

Joshs

↪Yohan

So a computer is natural, because it is measururable, calculable, mathematizable? And my personal experience of the computer is not natural? — Yohan

My experience of the computer within the natural
attitude makes the computer appear to me via a description that incorporates measurement and calculation . If I shift my attitude toward a fundamental phenomenological thinking, I can expose my naturalistic account as a derivative abstraction. It is not as if the empirical description simply vanishes, but its condition of possibility in subjective processes is revealed. That is to say, the objective world, along with all the technological
objects that belong to it, is shown to be the product of an intersubjective construction based on a correlation of many subjective experiences. Understanding my experience of ther world most fundamentally, I don’t see enduring objects with measurable qualities , I see a flowing stream of constantly changing events.

Manuel

Understanding my experience of ther world most fundamentally, I don’t see enduring objects with measurable qualities , Isee a flowing stream of constantly changing events. — Joshs

:up:

Not bad at all. And fits in with almost any field of enquiry, which is promising.

Srap Tasmaner

A beaver made the dam intentionally. — Yohan

We don't know if the beaver builds a dam with intent — Manuel

We don't have to fall for this, treating "intention" as a super-concept like "belief". The only reason to say a beaver made the dam "intentionally" would be to rebut a suggestion that the beaver had made it accidentally or inadvertently or mistakenly, something like that.

I sometimes think of organisms as entities that do the non-obvious thing: some bit of the environment impinges on them, all sorts of stuff happens inside the organism and it responds to that impinging in a way an ethologist might predict but not a physicist. Sometimes when a homo sapiens makes sounds with its mouth another home sapiens will fire a gun at them or at someone else. That's non-obvious.

One simple way to distinguish the beaver dam from the beaver tracks is that the beaver tracks arise in an obvious way, just the physics of a beaver-weight body resting on beaver-foot-shaped appendages in the mud. You can't say the same about the beaver producing a dam.

I like sushi

The question is not 'Is this natural', but 'What is this thing's true nature' or 'What is this things essential nature, if it has one?' — Yohan

That.

I like sushi

The issue is more of a cultural one. Manmade versus natural. Humans set themselves apart from the natural world because our temporal appreciation allows it. We know what will exist and what had existed beyond our lifespan. There is no hard evidence that any other creature does this or can do this.

This cosmological view is further driven by various religious impressions passed down through history.

Note: if something can be tested it is isn’t ‘supernatural’. We’ve no idea what gravity is we just take note of a phenomenon and go about trying to find a pattern to explain what we observe.

Mathematics is undoubtedly tied into physical phenomenon because we test, measure and observe mathematical patterns everywhere (eg. golden ratio).

khaled

People tend to say so and so is natural or unnatural to support or condemn respectively, not realizing that they’re making a naturalistic fallacy.

TheMadFool

Natural simply means routine, the usual, normal - the emphasis is on consistency in how the world behaves. For instance, gravity has always been around and constantly been an attractive force. Gravity then is natural.

Unnatural is when there's a deviation from the baseline state, from the normal, it's unusual, that is to say there's an inconsistency. This doesn't necessarily mean some law of nature has been violated, outliers are a common feature in data or so I reckon. Necrophilia is unnatural.

Supernatural is an instance of breaking the laws of nature and the immediate reaction is to ascribe the supernatural event to some kind of being (god/demons/angels/spirits/etc.) Rising from the dead is supernatural.

1. Natural: We get it. :meh:

2. Unnatural: We don't quite get it. :confused:

3. Supernatural: We don't get it at all! :scream:

It's about statistics:

1. All objects fall (natural)

2. Most people aren't necrophiliacs, a few are (unnatural)

3. No one ressurects, Jesus did (supernatural)

Yohan

Supernatural is an instance of breaking the laws of nature and the immediate reaction is to ascribe the supernatural event to some kind of being (god/demons/angels/spirits/etc.) — TheMadFool

I think you lost consistency of definition of 'nature' at this last point.
Per your definition of nature, the the supernatural would mean breaking the laws of normality. I don't think normality has laws...other than like you said, when we experience something enough times, it seems normal.
So the categories could be: normal, un-normal, and super-normal.
Supernormal would very inconsistent with the norm.
Is that right?

What does natural mean? And what is a natural explanation?

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