We know that the concept of “supernatural” doesn’t make sense. I think we need to replace it. Here’s why, and here’s my proposal for its replacement.
Without the concept of supernatural, there is still this whole genre of “the unexplained” that falls outside of science-y things like theoretical dark matter or space travel; stuff that intrigues people, like magic spells and ghosts. Where does that fit?
Most skeptics would put it all in a bucket labeled “bullshit.” I won’t go that far.
Much of the supernatural that people believe in is demonstrably false, that’s true, but I think there are mysteries out there that have some physical underpinning, and I’d go so far as to call those things “magic,” for all the connotations it brings of child-like wonder.
I think about mundane experiences, like sight, for example, that evoke such majesty and emotion in us, and how it’s so limited. We see a tiny fraction of the radiation around us, and we call that the visible spectrum, but there’s no fundamental difference between the visible spectrum and an X-Ray, for instance. Yet, before we invented some fancy equipment to “see” X-Rays, we didn’t know they existed. I think being able to “see” the full range of energy would be totally magical. That we can detect the existence of these without being able to directly perceive them is inspirational, and it gives one pause.
What other mysteries lie beyond our perception? We know, because we’ve studied these things, that our perception falls within a very narrow band of available inputs. That our eyes are dim, our ears are dull, our nose is weak. At least those organs, which we evolved just coincidentally, gave us a hint that such inputs exist. It gives us a mental platform to imagine what it might be like to perceive the full spectrum.
What about those inputs that our frail bodies do not even hint at us about?
What physical dimensions and energies lie outside our ability to perceive them, and even (so far) outside our calculations to predict that they exist at all?
To me, these things are totally magical… but they are not supernatural. They are part of our physical reality, subject to laws and observation just like we are. What we perceive in our daily experience is what we call “natural,” but our “natural” is actually a subset of “real reality” — nature as it truly is, in all its complex glory. That larger, unknown, untapped reality, is what I propose we call “Hypernatural”: more than our concept of natural; an overarching natural, that covers everything the universe is.
What strangeness like multiple universes, we find in this larger reality, we must remember: that is what is normal. What we perceive is wrong; it’s we who live in the dark closet, warped by our bizarre, arbitrary perceptions.
There are at least two dangers in expelling “supernatural” from our vocabulary without replacing it:
(Article image is by Alex Grey)
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Hi,
It would be nice to know if any books, philosophers influenced these articles.
That would encourage the readers to explore these ideas more deeply.
Similarly, which books,philosophers on social nihilism influenced you?
Ray
What a great question, Ray. I’ll have to think about it because no one author in particular led me down these paths.
I think I’m just wired to wonder how things work, and to figure out the underlying patterns.
One thing does come to mind though. An influence for me was Elizier Yudkowsky and to a lesser extent, Robin Hanson.
I was researching something called “Radical Honesty,” and the blog they wrote called OvercomingBias.com came up. I got hooked during a period of about a year in which Eli wrote mind blowing posts every, single day. I still don’t really get how he did that. It became a sort of addiction.
They have since moved over to LessWrong.com which is a little different format, but I think it’s also valuable. I stopped reading right around that transition, not because the quality diminished, but more because after a year of reading I think I finally “got” the thought process being used, so the marginal utility of reading new posts had diminished enough to more or less stop reading.