Intranaturalism

Evidently I hadn't put up my starter post on intranaturalism. I could've sworn I had. Maybe I started writing it, and then lost the draft or something. Oh well. Here goes. I have a philosophy, which I have an which is mine. I also have a word for it, which I also have an which is mine. I invented both of them. Maybe someone else has invented them before, but whatever, I invented them for myself. That philosophy is intranaturalism, or more specifically the word for it is intranaturalism. The word "intranatural" means within nature, and it is a response to the word supernatural. The thesis, I suppose you could say, of intranaturalism is that since nature encompasses everything which is, it is impossible for anything "supernatural" to exist, but that, fortunately, many or most of the things people try to find in the realm of the supernatural can be found within nature, that is, intranaturally.

My argument goes as follows. Suppose that a Native American shaman can dance around in a certain way and chant a certain "spell" and it will genuinely rain the next day, reliably. Suppose that a certain scarred, bespectacled British teenager can point a wooden rod and hex someone. Suppose that at the top of Mount Olympus there reside twelve-plus immortal, highly powerful humanoid beings. Suppose that the universe as we can perceive and explore it was created, let's say some 15 billion years ago, by a powerful, intelligent being, and let's even suppose that a portion of that being was incarnated into a quasi-hippie philosophizing carpenter who lived in Judea two-thousand years ago, was crucified, and was then resurrected.

These, surely, are examples of the supernatural, right? Well, let's try another set. Suppose someone can make giant colorful sparks in the sky, just by willing it to happen. Suppose someone can view events a world away. Suppose someone can conjure a chunk of meat without raising or killing an animal. Suppose someone can cloak an object such that it becomes invisible. Does any of this sound less supernatural, as I've phrased it? I don't think so; in any event, I've tried to frame them such that they sound pretty supernatural. But of course, they are fireworks, television, stem cells (it'll happen, and I can't wait!), and the nascent work being done on actual, functional cloaks of invisibility (it'll happen, and I can't wait!). (Yes, I know there's an objection to one of those items; I'm saving it for later in my argument.)

Obviously, all of those things are found in the real world, and most people wouldn't call them supernatural. I imagine some people would call the stem-cell meat subnatural. So, what is the difference? Am I just reciting the old trope that "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic?" Well, maybe I am. But I think I am actually arguing that any sufficiently advanced technology is magic.

How do we define "magic"? That's a good question. Dictionary.com says that magic is "the art of producing a desired effect or result through the use of incantation or various other techniques that presumably assure human control of supernatural agencies or the forces of nature." Let's cut away some of the weaseling from that definition: the art of producing a result through techniques that assure human control of supernatural agencies or the forces of nature. I believe the strong and weak atomic forces are forces of nature; in fact, they are fundamental forces of nature. And I'm pretty sure we have techniques that produce a result, namely electricity, from these forces: nuclear power plants. We can do the same using the wind, the tides, the sunlight, etc., all conventionally thought of as forces of nature. Are they magic?

Well, they don't seem very magical, so let's exclude these things from the definition. Let's drop the forces of nature, and keep only supernatural agencies, and maybe also supernatural forces. Now, I confess, we don't see any magic around us. But that doesn't surprise me; in fact, it would absolutely shock me if we saw any supernaturally-fueled technology. There's a very simple reason for this. I believe that the only things, agencies, or forces we consider "supernatural" are those that don't exist. In fact, I believe that the supernatural is a strict subset of things which do not exist*. (*There's an exception, which I will also address in a few paragraphs.)

This is the point at which I want to re-introduce the objection from before. I said that we can make giant sparks in the air, just by willing it. I was referring to fireworks. Most people wouldn't say that fireworks happen just by willing it. But what if we examine closely a situation where we would use the phrase "just by willing it." Say someone could cause precipitation, literally just by willing it. I contend that these two situations are not all that dissimilar. Do we really think there wouldn't be some mechanism by which our sorcerer caused the rain? I mean, the sorcerer can do it, and do it reliably. *Something* must be going on, even if we don't know what it is. And what the sorcerer's willing of the rain does is to trigger that mechanism, which then directly causes the rain. There simply must be something that transfers the thought inside the sorcerer's brain to the clouds. Maybe it goes through some other plane of existence. Maybe the energy just jumps. But there's something happening, and evidently it happens reliably. Similarly, something happens in response to the fireworker's willing the sparks in the sky: that person's legs and arms move in such a way as to set a firecracker on a stand, strike a match and light the fuse; then, a mechanism shoots the firecracker into space, and when the fuse runs out, it explodes, causing... sparks!

But wait, you say. That's such an obvious mechanism. It even involves some action by the agent. Yeah, so? I just don't see the categorical difference. Suppose I could hook my brain up to electrodes that transmitted my thoughts into a computer, not that far out of the realm of possibility. Now I can make robots do my bidding, just by willing it. What's the difference? Is it that I know what I'm doing? Well, maybe the sorcerer doesn't know the mechanism by which he causes the rain with his thoughts, and maybe I do know the mechanism for my robot-thought-reading machine. But hang on, does anyone really know how gravity works? Or electromagnetism? Or the nuclear forces? I don't think anyone really does. Neither does anyone entirely understand what's really going on with quantum mechanics. So the argument from comprehension is not a categorical difference, either.

I argue that there is no difference. When something that sure as hell seems magical happens, we consider it science, or technology. The paranormal are only phenomena lacking explanations, but no phenomena truly lack explanations, we just don't know them yet. Therefore, the supernatural cannot exist, because if it did exist, it would just be natural. The exception I talked about earlier is god, which many people claim exists and also claim is supernatural. But I contend that there is no good reason to think god exists, and that if he/she/it did exist, he/she/it would be within the jurisdiction of nature. See my previous post for that logicking. I might revise my previous statement to "those things we call supernatural are a subset of those things we have no reliable reason to believe exist."

Now for the second part of intranaturalism. I believe in magic. I believe in love, and right and wrong, and probably some sort of notion of the soul. But aren't these supernatural, or at least super-materialist, notions? Well, they might be commonly conceived of as supernatural. But I have an intranatural view of them. Magic is not something inexplicable or supernatural; if it were, it wouldn't exist, as I showed above. Magic is, instead, something which is rather tricky to define (though I know it when I see it), but involves some combination of being counterintuitive in existing and inducing a sense of wonder. Subjective? Yeah, but at least a concept that isn't confined to the non-existent. Right and wrong? Well, I basically assume that suffering is bad, and especially unnecessary suffering, and morality flows from there. Why do I make that assumption? I don't like suffering when it happens to me, I really don't like unnecessary suffering when it happens to me, and I think there is reasonable grounds to assume that other people don't like it either. This is a morality that is not imposed from above, as that of god, but from within: it looks at the experience of existing in nature and asks what this experience tells us about good and bad. Love may just be a set of chemical reactions, but the feeling is really, really real while it lasts, and sometimes it lasts for a lifetime. Soulmates destined for each other? No, just two people whom circumstances happened to bring together in such a way that they made each other wildly happy. Of course it's happening in their heads, but why on earth should that mean it isn't real? And as for the soul, there is something which thinks the thoughts in my head, there is something which feels my emotions and my sensations. When I say, "I think that..." there is something I mean by "I". I don't know what it is. My hunch is that it is some sort of emergent property of the neurons firing in my brain that somehow manages to create the subjective experience of "I". But if that experience isn't real, what is? I believe the soul is whatever it is experiencing that experience.

And as for "purpose," as for the claim that we materialistic atheists shouldn't be motivated to get up in the morning because the world is so gloomy and mechanistic and pointless, I like Richard Dawkins' quote: "The universe doesn't have a purpose. But I do." There is no higher purpose, no purpose inherent to the universe or imposed on life from above. There are only purposes from within:  I, whatever I am, want to live my life in such-and-such a way; suffering is bad and is present in vast excess in this world, so those who wish a good world have the purpose and the task of reducing suffering.

So, to sum up, the supernatural cannot exist, because nature encompasses everything which is. Furthermore, many of the values and concepts that people find in the supernatural can be found in somewhat modified form by looking within nature as it is. That is intranaturalism, my philosophy, which I have and which is mine.