Comments on Alexander Pruss's Blog: Magic, science and the supernatural

I share Paul's thought that magic, historically, i...

2008-08-15T20:51:00.000-05:00

I share Paul's thought that magic, historically, is a sort of alternate science.

But if I had to identify what counts as "supernatural", I would say it involves an ineliminable appeal to mind or persons on the receiving (not performing) end of the ritual. E.g. looking into a crystal ball is just pseudo-science; summoning a demon (or praying to a personal God, appeasing ancestors, etc.) is supernatural.

Maybe. Or maybe that little remark is itself an a...

2008-08-15T14:00:00.000-05:00

Maybe. Or maybe that little remark is itself an adaptation to western ways of thinking. (I don't know if this religion believes in will.)

Ha! That's pretty neat, and it sort of looks like ...

2008-08-14T14:36:00.000-05:00

Ha! That's pretty neat, and it sort of looks like you were right - a "lama...regards the high-tech prayer wheels as an acceptable Buddhist adaptation to Western ways." (Really, the concept of a prayer wheel in and of itself would have sufficed, but this is a much cooler example.) I do have to wonder, though, about the bit where the guy says, "As long as one understands what the mantra means and what its purpose is, the way the wheel is spun is not as important." So maybe there's a little bit of both?

Here's something relevant.

2008-08-14T14:28:00.000-05:00

Here's something relevant.

On robots, I vaguely recall hearing of prayer robo...

2008-08-14T14:26:00.000-05:00

On robots, I vaguely recall hearing of prayer robots in some eastern country--whether as existing or as something to be expected. The idea was that they would be prayer wheels taken one step further.

Yeah, it's also true that I'm not a cultural anthr...

2008-08-14T14:07:00.000-05:00

Yeah, it's also true that I'm not a cultural anthropologist. I wonder, though, if we could somehow get a Hittite (or whoever) to understand the concept of a robot, would that person say that robots could perform these rituals or not? If it were just a physical thing, it shouldn't matter that it's not a person, and they might not even realize that there's the possibility of having the action without the intention unless specifically posed with such a scenario. But, uh, that's something we're probably not going to be able to do. If you somehow pull it off, though, do let me know...

(Just for the record, I think that second option in your last comment just pushes it back a level. If the ritual is a message to the gods to do something, then the ritual itself isn't any more supernatural than a cop waving you to proceed through a construction zone, say.)

Paul:I do think that these days we tend to conflat...

2008-08-14T13:58:00.000-05:00

Paul:

I do think that these days we tend to conflate magic with the supernatural. You are correct that we didn't always.

Larry:

That's a very interesting suggestion. I am not sure if it's true, though. You're right that it does seem to be part of the contemporary literature involving magic. But I am not sure it's a part of the beliefs of the cultures that accept magic. There are ancient descriptions giving instructions as to how to work magic. Do these descriptions say anything about what one must believe or intend when one is going through the ritual? I just skimmed through a couple of Hittite rituals. I didn't see anything about intention. The directions say what to do, and what to say, but that's all.

I would speculate, and of course could be wrong, that the contemporary notion of magic as tied to will is strongly affected by Christian views about the importance of belief and intention.

This is an interesting question. Suppose somewhere a shaman promises rain and rain doesn't happen. Here are some things believing folk could say:
1. He did the ritual wrong.
2. The deities were mad at him (for some independent reason).
3. He wasn't sincere enough.

My gut feeling is that in cultures not influenced by Christianity, Judaism and Islam, we're likely to hear the second, and maybe the first, but not much of the third. But in the case of magical cultures influenced by Christianity (e.g., New Age), we are quite likely to hear the third.

I must, at last, admit: I like this post. I have ...

2008-08-14T13:23:00.000-05:00

I must, at last, admit: I like this post. I have to think, though, that there's a potential explanation that you missed. The connection, it seems to me, between all the candidate-magical acts you describe (and, in fact, among all the ones I can think of off the top of my head) is an emphasis on the will. That is, usually what we call a magical belief won't just say that you need to do a specific dance (i.e., move your body in a specific way) but also have some specific mindset (one, perhaps, of wanting it to rain). Think, too (if you've read it), of the Harry Potter series - magicians in those books can cast spells without wands or hand gestures or even incantations, just by willing it in the right way. So the defining characteristic of a magical belief, I think, is that it attributes far too much power to the will.

The interesting case, for me, is something like Star Wars. Clearly, there's the same sort of exaggeration of the will going on with respect to control of the Force, but they also try to give it something resembling a scientific underpinning (remember all that talk about midichlorians in the bloodstream or whatever). I consider Force powers to be closer to magical fantasy than science fiction, but other people's opinions might differ.

The last question if I'm right, of course, is whether this makes magical claims not scientific ones, or just a specific subset of scientific ones that relate to the will. At least for the time being, I'm not sure we can quantify willpower well enough to test a will-dependent claim scientifically, but I might be wrong about that: I'm not exactly up on the latest neurological research.

I concur with your conclusion, but I must question...

2008-08-13T18:21:00.000-05:00

I concur with your conclusion, but I must question your premise—why would we take it for granted that magic involves the supernatural? The phrase "natural magic" is a very common one in the writings of the Renaissance magi; and the laws that Frazer isolates as underlying all superstition do form a sort of theory about the nature of things. Unless its methods involved summoning or compelling personal entities, gods or demons, I can think of no pre-modern practice of magic with a distinct idea of the "supernatural." This sense of supernatural is an alternative to science, not its predecessor.