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As a Hypothetical...
- Thread starter Sunstone
- Start date
Yes, but I would prefer the phrase "reasonable grounds" -- logical grounds implies an unstated premise.
Daemon Sophic
Avatar in flux
Yes. Logically and statistically, if we consider all the times throughout history when a mystical/magical experience was later determined to have been a natural event.
Compared to all the times that something was considered to have been an ordinary natural event, but was later realized to have been the product of elfin magic.
Obviously one is forced to recognize that whatever the experience was, it was probably not a supernatural event.
Well, logic alone says very little about the real world.
In your scenario, you would certainly have sufficient grounds for concluding the mystical experience is entirely natural. Just like the fact that we can wholly explain the properties of light in terms of electromagnetic waves shows that light is a type of electromagnetic wave.
Brian2
Veteran Member
More great music. Who cares about the OP when I can listen to the music.
Do mystical experiences mean that the brain is not working at the same time? Who is to say that a mystical experience can be explained away as solely brain function?
Yes and no.
The story that would sing of things this way is already going to ignore and dismiss anything that isn't "entirely natural in origin" because that song assumes there is nothing other than that for everything. Mystical experiences present no special challenges for this story, as it would only be explained and understood from a naturalistic perspective from the get go. Yet there's no particular reason to sing of things that way. It's just one story among many that humans tell themselves, and they can sing whatever particular tune they want.
Personally, I don't think that story makes much sense. It forgets that all experiences are rooted outside the self. The attributed qualities of self and other need not be the same. But to be honest, I think the designation "natural" is not particularly useful. "Supernatural" has never made sense to me because of the problem of interaction. I don't "believe in" the supernatural and classify all those things as "natural."
The story that would sing of things this way is already going to ignore and dismiss anything that isn't "entirely natural in origin" because that song assumes there is nothing other than that for everything. Mystical experiences present no special challenges for this story, as it would only be explained and understood from a naturalistic perspective from the get go. Yet there's no particular reason to sing of things that way. It's just one story among many that humans tell themselves, and they can sing whatever particular tune they want.
Personally, I don't think that story makes much sense. It forgets that all experiences are rooted outside the self. The attributed qualities of self and other need not be the same. But to be honest, I think the designation "natural" is not particularly useful. "Supernatural" has never made sense to me because of the problem of interaction. I don't "believe in" the supernatural and classify all those things as "natural."
