Harmonizing with nature

Living in harmony with nature can be understood in many ways. Here are two:

1. Living in a way that protects and repairs non-human aspects of nature.

2. Living in a way that harmonizes and accords with our own human nature.

The second mode of harmony with nature implies the first at least to some degree, because the nature of each organism—including humans—involves a degree of harmonization with the rest of the environment. But only to some degree. A species can do a great deal of damage to competing species by simply following out the dictates of its nature—its success can imply the failure of others. Still, our own nature probably calls on a fair amount of stewardship of surrounding nature, so the second mode implies quite a bit of the first mode.

The first mode of harmony with nature is more consequentialist than the second. While the second is focused on living a certain way that is not primarily defined in terms of consequences but in terms of accord with our own nature, the first is focused on consequences to non-human nature. Nonetheless, the first mode still implies a certain degree of the second, in that improving our natural surroundings often is an imperative of our nature.

At the same time, the second mode has implications the first does not. For instance, some forms of transhumanism fit very well with the first mode but none fit with the second mode. It might turn out that a version of the singularity—us all getting digitized and then run in a computer—is good for the non-human aspects of nature, because a computer simulation of our lives might turn out to have much lower energy costs than our meaty existence. Similarly, mass sterilization of humans might be good for non-human aspects of nature, but does not accord with our nature.

One might think of certain agrarian movements as instances of the second mode of harmony, though I do not think the second mode requires agrarianism.

How I learned to be a bit less judgmental about social distancing

Earlier in the pandemic, I was very judgmental of students hanging around outside in groups and not respecting six-foot spacing. Fairly quickly I realized that it is inadvisable for the university to rebuke students for doing this, since such rebukes are likely to lead to their taking such interactions to private indoor venues, which would be much worse from a public health standpoint. But that practical consideration did not alleviate my strong judgmental feelings.

Eventually, however, these observations have made me realize that in our species, there is a natural desire to spend time in relatively close physical proximity to each other. And indeed, this is quite unsurprising in warmblooded social animals. Realizing that social distancing—however rationally necessary—requires people to go against their natural instincts has made me quite a bit less judgmental about noncompliance.

It took observation of others to realize this, because apart from practicalities, I find myself to prefer something like two meter spacing for social interaction with people outside my family. Greater physical distance from people outside my family has been quite pleasant for me. A conversation at two meters feels a little bit less stressful than at one meter. But looking at other people, it is evident that my preference here is literally unnatural, and that for other people such distancing is quite a burden.

Of course, sometimes it is morally necessary to go against one’s natural desires. It is natural to flee fires, but fire fighters need to go against that desire. And in circumstances where it is morally necessary to go against natural desires, people like me who lack the relevant natural desires are particularly fortunate and should not be judgmental of those for whom the actions are burden.

Theistic Natural Law and the Euthyphro Problem

Theistic Natural Law (TNL) theory seems to be subject to the Euthyphro problem much as divine command theory (DCT) is. On DCT, the Euthyphro problem takes the form of the question:

1. Why did God command what he commanded rather than commanding otherwise?

On TNL, the Euthyphro problem takes the form of the question:

2. Why did God create beings with the natures he did rather than creating beings with other natures?

In both cases, one can respond by talking of the essential goodness of God, by virtue of which he makes a good choice as to how to fittingly match the non-normative with the normative features of creatures. In the DCT case, God makes the match by benevolently choosing what sorts of creatures to create and what sorts of commands to give them. In the TNL case, God makes the match by benevolently choosing the non-deontic and deontic features of natures and then creating creatures with these natures. Thus, in the DCT case, God has reason to coordinate the sociality of creatures with the command to cooperate, while in the TNL case God has reason to actualize natures that either both include sociality and the duty to cooperate or to actualize natures that include neither.

So in what way is TNL better off than DCT with regard to the Euthyphro problem? The one thing I can think of in the vicinity is this: TNL allows for there to be deontic features that necessarily every natural includes, and it allows for there to be some deontic features of creatures that are entailed by the non-deontic features. For instance, perhaps every possible nature of an agent includes a prohibition against pointless imposition of torture, and every possible nature of a linguistic agent includes a prohibition against lying. But I am not sure this difference is really relevant to the Euthyphro problem.

I do prefer TNL to DCT, but not because of the Euthyphro problem. My reason for the preference is that many moral obligations appear to be intrinsic features of us.

Of course, the above arguments presuppose a particular picture of how natural law works. But I like that picture.

Agents, patients and natural law

Thanks to Adam Myers’ insightful comments, I’ve been thinking about the ways that natural law ethics concerns natures in two ways: on the side of the agent qua agent and on the of the patient qua patient.

Companionship is good for humans and bad for intelligent sharks, let’s suppose. This means that we have reasons to promote companionship among humans and to hamper companionship among intelligent sharks. That’s a difference in reasons based on a difference in the patients’ nature. Next, let’s suppose that intelligent sharks by nature have a higher degree of self-concern vs. other-concern than humans do. Then the degree to which one has an obligation to promote the very same good–say, the companionship of Socrates–will vary depending on whether one is human or a shark. That’s a difference in reasons based on a difference in the agents’ nature.

I suspect it would make natural law ethics clearer if natural lawyers were always clear on what is due to the agent’s nature and what is due to the patient’s nature, even if in fact their interest were solely in cases where the agent and patient are both human.

Consider, for instance, this plausible thesis:

• I should typically prioritize my understanding over my fun.

Suppose the thesis is true. But now it’s really interesting to ask if this is true due to my nature qua agent or my nature qua patient. If I should prioritize my understanding over my fun solely because of my nature qua patient, then we could have this situation: Both I and an alien of some particular fun-loving sort should prioritize my understanding over my fun, but likewise both I and the alien should prioritize the alien’s fun over the alien’s understanding, since human understanding is more important than human fun, while the fun of a being like the alien is more important than the understanding of such a being. On this picture, the nature of the patient specifies which goods are more central to a patient of that nature. On the other hand, if I should prioritize my understanding over my fun solely because of my nature qua agent, then quite possibly we are in the interesting position that I should prioritize my understanding over my fun, but also that I should prioritize the alien’s understanding over the alien’s fun, while the alien should prioritize both its and my fun over its and my understanding. For me promoting understanding is a priority while for the alien promoting fun is a priority, regardless of whose understanding and fun they are.

And of course we do have actual and morally relevant cases of interaction across natures:

• God and humans

• Angels and humans

• Humans and brute animals.

Moral failure and naturalism

Tripping while walking or acquiring an unjustified belief does not entail that we are in any way defective. It’s just not in human nature to walk steadily all the time—there is a tradeoff between perfect steadiness and the need to look for more distant dangers, or just the need to think about more important matters. Likewise, we sometimes need to acquire beliefs more quickly than checking the evidence carefully allows.

But a moral failure seems different. Acting immorally is always a defect. This tells us something interesting about nature: our nature has tradeoffs, but morality is never among the tradeoffs.

(A curiosity: If it is our nature never to act immorally, but it isn’t our nature never to trip, we would expect that tripping would be much more common than immoral activity. But it’s not like that.)

It is difficult, I think, to reconcile the special role that morality plays in us—the fact that moral failure is always a defect—with naturalism. On an evolutionary picture, we would expect tradeoffs to be everywhere in our nature. If we were meant by nature never to trip, we would expect to have an instinct that makes us always look down in front of us—but of course then we wouldn’t see distant danger, so instead we have a tradeoff where we scan the environment in all directions as well as looking down in front of us.

I have one worry about the above line of thought. Perhaps immoral activity is not always a defect. Maybe it is only a defect when isn’t innocently ignorant. Think of the extremely difficult cases that come up in medical or military ethics where one needs to act very quickly. In those cases, there just isn’t enough time to always figure out what the right solution is, and it does not seem to be necessarily a defect when the conscientious doctor or officer acts immorally, if she has given the matter as much thought and are as there was time for and innocently done what appeared right.

Maybe that’s right. It’s still surprising on a naturalistic picture of our nature and origins that it is always a defect to act knowingly immorally. We would expect our nature to exhibit tradeoffs even there.

And maybe the innocent ignorance cases aren’t a problem. Maybe in such cases, the action is to be described in terms that makes it right, like: “Performing an operation that after the due amount of investigation appeared most in keeping with the salient goods.”

Of course, some naturalists simply deny that there is any coherent concept of “defect” to be applied to us. The above line of thought may be grist for their mill. Another view might be to bite the bullet and say that we are riddled with tradeoffs through and through, and it is no defect when we occasionally act immorally. On the contrary, sometimes (say, when it causes great harm to one’s genes getting passed on) acting morally is a defect—but we should be guided by what is right or wrong, not by what is or isn’t a defect in our nature. This latter view is not, I think, very popular, but one finds it in Andrea Dworkin’s idea that “the God who doesn’t exist” (nature? evolution?) has designed us so that until recent times we could only reproduce by means that, according to Dworkin, are innately oppressive to women.

Feeling cold? Apply to our graduate program!

Are you thinking of grad school and feeling cold? As your December days get colder and darker, you may want to reflect on the warm weather in Waco. It was over 80F today.

Of course, the really great thing is the warmth of the graduate student community.

We've extended our deadline for the Baylor Philosophy PhD program this year until January 2.


The anole photo is from today, from the path by the river on campus (or just off campus?).  The butterflies are from Thanksgiving, though I saw a number today, too.

The vertical harmony of nature?

One kind of harmony of nature is widely noted: laws of nature that hold at one place and time tend to hold everywhere else. This is a kind of horizontal harmony of nature.

But maybe there is also a vertical harmony of nature. Nature has multiple levels. There is the fundamental physics, the chemistry, the biology, the psychology and the sociology of the world; and also, along a parallel hierarchy starting with the chemistry of the world, the geology and astronomy of the world. The unity I am interested in between these levels is subtler: it is that essentially the same scientific methods yield truth at all these levels. Granted, there are modifications. But at all the levels, the same inductive techniques are used, and relatively simple mathematical models are made to fit reality.

Suppose that all the higher levels reduce to the fundamental physics. I think it is still surprising that the methods that work for the reducing level continue to work for the reduced level. And if there is no reduction, then the vertical unity is even more surprising.

There may be a teleological argument here. But I am worried about three flies in the ointment. The first is that perhaps I am exaggerating the unity of methods of investigation between the different levels. In school, we learn about "the scientific method". But in fact the methods of investigation in the different sciences are perhaps rather less similar than talk of "the scientific method" suggests.

The second is that the unity between the levels may simply be an artifact of the method. In other words, we have a certain method of mathematically and inductively modeling reality. And the levels that I am talking about are nothing but areas where the method works fairly well. And there is nothing that surprising that given an orderly fundamental level, among the infinitely many other "levels" (not all in a single hierarchy; just as above we had two separate hierarchies, one going up to sociology and another to astronomy) of description of reality, there will be some that can be modeled using the same methods, and those are the levels we give names like "chemistry" and "geology". In other words, we have a selection bias when we set out the case for vertical order.

If this worry is right, then we should only be surprised by the order we find at the fundamental level. But, my, how surprised we should be by that!

And, further, if we see things in this way, we will see no reason to privilege scientific approaches epistemologically. For there is nothing that special about the sciences. There may be infinitely many levels of description of reality which can be better known using other methods.

The final fly in the ointment is that while there are a number of levels that can be known using the same methods, there seem to be areas where we have genuine knowledge, but the scientific methods do not work: ethics is a particularly important case.

So in the end, I do not know really what to make of the vertical harmony thesis. It bears more thought, I guess.

Human nature

Human flourishing includes a number of central goods such as friendship with God, friendship with neighbor, understanding of the world, appropriate autonomy, etc. Take any two goods, G and H, other than friendship with God. We could imagine an alien race of intelligent beings that are approximately as capable of humans in terms of goods other than G and H, but that normally are much, much more capable than we in respect of G and much, much less capable than we in respect of H. Maybe these are a race of individualistic scientists and philosophers who are barely capable of friendship with their fellows. Or maybe these are a race of very friendly and socially intertwined beings who are much less good at understanding the world. Call these aliens "xens".

There is nothing morally repugnant about xens, in the way that it would be repugnant to imagine a race of beings whose flourishing consists in causing misery to others (if such flourishing is possible). If we ever meet such a race of alien beings, the reaction we should have is "Vive la différence!" We ought not think ourselves superior to them and they ought not think themselves superior to us.

But now imagine that there were a form of neurosurgery that greatly increases one's capabilities in respect of G at the cost of one's capabilities in respect of H. It would be clearly wrong to perform this surgery on one's child, and it would be dubious if it were appropriate to have it be performed it on oneself. Why? If the life of the xens is no worse than ours, but merely different, what's wrong with such surgery? I think the obvious answer is: The life of the xens is great--if you're a xen. But we are not xens, and their life isn't for us. For the xens, less of H is normal. For us, less of H is abnormal.

So, thinking about xens and neurosurgery suggests we need a notion of normalcy. And this notion had better be morally significant. Merely statistical notions of normalcy lack moral significance. Why be like everyone else? (One might worry that being different from others leads to misery. But I deny this. My childhood was a very happy one, but I was very different from others.) This suggests a natural law intuition: a life with the particular pattern of emphases among pursuits that is characteristic of normal humans is something that has a moral call on us, unlike the pattern of goods embodied in the life of xens.

Football excellence

I sent the following in an email to a former student. He knows a lot more about the subject—both first-order and second-order—than I do, and for some reason he found it hilarious, and perhaps true, so I'm posting it (with some typos fixed):

Jon K and Mike B were talking football. And I was finding their discourse very interesting. It was a mix of descriptive and evaluative language, with the two inseparable, in the way natural law theorists like. Understanding almost none of the first order content of their conversation, I wondered what sorts of claims they were making. My first thought was that the evaluative language could be reduced without remainder to means-end stuff: a criticism might be a claim that such and such an action did not contribute to winning, or was not likely to contribute to winning, etc.

But on reflection, no such reduction is possible. Suppose player x does not take an action A such that x's taking A would have increased the chance of victory. This is only a criticism if we add some further claims. For instance, it is not a criticism of a player that he did not run at 90% of the speed of light, though had he done so, it might have increased the chance of victory. Maybe we want to say: we criticize x for not doing A only when x could have done A. But while that may be the case for moral evaluation, it's not the case for sports evaluation. For instance, if I was due to some freak in a football game, it would be appropriate to criticize me for not doing all sorts of things that I am incapable of doing. For while I'm incapable of doing them, they're expected of a football player. The criticism might be phrased: "That Pruss guy shouldn't have been put on the team." But it could just be phrased: "He didn't run fast enough."
 
Moreover, some of the criticism is probably rather mild. The person isn't being criticized for falling short of what it takes to be a competent football player. The criticism is for falling short of excellence. Maybe that's not entirely fair, but maybe it is. So we need a concept of football excellence. Football excellence is a concept that goes beyond the empirical. [I]f all the players in the world were as incompetent as I'd be, we should say that even the best players fall short of excellence. There may be games like that, say newly invented games that no one is excellent [as] yet. So what measures excellence here? I can't help but think it's some kind of a notion of human nature. Football excellence is a kind of human excellence. Thus, it is not a part of football excellence to run at 90% of the speed of light or to throw a ball with millimeter accuracy at 100 meters. For that's asking for more than human nature can be expected to yield even in the truly excellent. That would be asking for the superhuman, and we don't ask for that (though in a way God does—but he also gives the grace for it). This means that the notion of football excellence depends on a notion of human nature. Moreover, this notion of human nature does not appear to be merely empirical: there is an irreducible normative component. 

This means that a naturalist can't consistently talk football. 

How's that sound? I may be fudging too much, since I didn't really understand many, or maybe any, of their first order claims.

Templates for relationships

I wonder if human nature might not come along with a finite number of more or less flexible normative templates for love-relationships. These templates would define the basic forms of love that are appropriate to us. An attempt to create new basic relationships, or to transcend the boundaries between these, would then be failures insofar as a relationship is defined normatively. Thus, two siblings might attempt to enter into a romantic relationship, and they might behave romantically together. But, nonetheless, they would not be having a romantic relationship, because the normative features of a romantic relationship would be objectively absent: thus, there would in fact be no obligation—but only a false belief in the obligation—to nurture the kind of intimacy that a romantic relationship calls for. We would say that the siblings are not in a valid romantic relationship, where we use "valid" in the technical sense in which we say that only an "invalid promise" (i.e., no promise at all, but only the appearance of one) results from coercion.

One way to make plausible such a story would be through a scepticism about the possibility of our creating new normative facts, other than by simply by making the antecedents of pre-existing conditional ones true.

Of course the difficulties then are epistemological: how do we know what all the templates are?

It is not good for a man to be alone

Christ is in heaven, with a glorified body. Glorification does not destroy what is essentially human. A glorified body, thus, has a mouth, eyes, ears, and all that. There is more to it than that. But what normal human beings have, Christ has in heaven. But there would be something unnatural, something lacking in the glorification, if Christ had a mouth and ears, but there was no fellow human being there for him to talk to. Our bodies exist in large part for interaction with others (that our bodies are signs of our being-for-others is a central insight of John Paul II's theology of the body). A single embodied human being just does not make all that much sense.

But if there is a fellow human being in heaven for Christ to be in human communion with, then who is this fellow human being? It is right and proper to confer honor upon our parents. Thus, his mother is a very plausible candidate. There would be something unfitting about his conferring that honor on someone other than his mother, and not on his mother, given the commandment of filial devotion, unless his mother were not a disciple of his—which, the Christian tradition insists, she was. (Indeed, I think it is right to read the New Testament as presenting her as the paradigmatic disciple.)

Objection 1: This argument proves too much. For a glorified body also includes reproductive organs, and so a parallel argument would show that to live a full, glorified human life requires reproduction.

Response: Probably, reproduction is only a natural function of a human being for a limited portion of the human being's life. Moreover, there is a way in which we can transcend the physically reproductive life through spiritual reproduction—through devoting our lives in celibacy to spreading the Gospel. But some form of bodily interaction with other human beings—whether through talking or hugging or just looking in another's eyes—seems essential to a naturally fulfilling human life at just about all its mature (and maybe even immature) stages.

Objection 2: The need for bodily communion is satisfied through Christ's giving of himself to us bodily in the Eucharist.

Response: Christ's giving of himself to us in the Eucharist does not seem to make use of any of the natural faculties of his glorified body. There is a kind of natural bodily communion with others that is called for.

Objection 3: Mary survived at least some time past Christ's ascension into heaven. So if Mary is the only one assumed into heaven, for a while Christ was bodily alone in heaven, only surrounded spiritually by the souls of those he brought out of Sheol.

Response: Maybe then we have to say that more people were assumed bodily into heaven. Moses and Elijah are good candidates on Scriptural grounds. But the argument that it would unfitting for Mary not to be assumed as well if anybody is, given the special honor to be paid to parents, still remains. Or, maybe, we should say that there is nothing deeply unnatural in a human being's being alone for a while, even for a couple of years. But to be alone for a significantly greater amount of time would be unnatural.

Objection 4: Maybe time runs at a different rate in heaven, and it'll only be five minutes of heavenly time between Christ's ascension into heaven and the Last Judgment.

Response: Could be. I think such a difference in the rate of time, though, weakens the way in which Christ is in human communion with us. But I acknowledge that the different-rate hypothesis is a viable one, and hence weakens the argument.

Fittingness arguments, like the one I offer, are not meant to be conclusive. But they do increase the probability of the claim. Or, at least, the argument could help explain why it is that the doctrine of Mary's assumption is not something weird, unexpected and ad hoc, if the doctrine actually can be seen as helping to solve a genuine problem, the problem of Christ's bodily aloneness.

Magic, science and the supernatural

We take for granted that magic involves the supernatural and science does not. At the same time, we believe that there is no such thing as magic. Hence, we believe that magical claims are somehow different from merely false but scientific claims, such as that phlogiston makes things burnable. I want to argue that this belief is questionable.

Consider three different claims:

1. Dancing a certain kind of dance typically causes rain.
2. Shooting UV light into clouds typically causes rain.
3. Shooting silver iodide into clouds typically causes rain.

Claim (1) certainly seems magical. Claim (3) is not a magical claim, because, I shall assume, it is true, and there is no magic. I shall assume that claims (1) and (2) are false.

But now here is the puzzle. Why is (1) supposed to be a supernatural claim (being on the face of it a claim of magic), while (2) is not?

There is, after all, another way of looking at this. We simply have three cause-and-effect claims, two of them false, and each claim is just as much a "scientific kind of claim" as the others. Observe, for instance, that each of the claims is just as much subject to empirical confirmation or disconfirmation as the others. Each of the claims posits a causal relationship between physical events.

Suggestion 1: Claim (1) is supernatural because it is presumed to be believed on non-scientific grounds, while (2) and (3) are presumed to be believed on scientific grounds.

Response: that a claim is believed on non-scientific grounds does not make it a supernatural claim. If Francine hallucinates Apollo telling her that the structure of benzene is a ring, the object of her belief about benzene is still a quite natural fact. Nor will talking about esoteric traditions be relevant, since purely natural scientific facts can be and in fact are passed through esoteric traditions (think of trade secrets through the ages up to the present). It is a variant of the genetic fallacy to think that a claim has a particular content because it comes from a particular source.

Suggestion 2: The person who believes (1) has a causal story connecting the dance to the rain by means of supernatural entities, while those who believe (2) or (3) either have no story as to the connection between the shooting of UV or silver iodide into clouds (they might simply have noticed, respectively, a spurious or genuine correlation) or else their story involves natural entities.

Response: One problem with this solution is the assumption that the culture that believes in a particular magical action, say a magical dance, needs to have a theory as to how the action produces its effect. But the culture need not have any kind of theory. They may simply believe that dancing a waltz causes rain to come, and that rain causes corn to sprout. We would not say that the second part of this belief involves the supernatural, and why should we say that the first part does? It is not uncommon for scientists to have no explanation for an effect, and so if the culture believes (1) but has no explanation for it, that does not suffice to make the claim supernatural.

Perhaps, though, the difference is that the scientist thinks there is a further explanation, and that this explanation is natural. But this is not characteristic of all science. A scientist may believe that a certain law, such as the law of gravitation, is basic and lacks any further explanation. Or a scientist may be agnostic on whether the law has any further explanation.

If I am right, then either magical claims need not involve the supernatural, or else what seem to be paradigmatic cases of magical claims are not always magical claims (claims such as that a dance causes rain, that a spell causes blindness, etc.).

Let us go a bit further, though, and consider the case where the proponent of (1) does have a further explanation. Do we have to conclude that then the claim is supernatural? Not at all—it surely depends on what that further explanation is. If the further explanation is that the dance stirs up the air, and the stirred up air stirs up the clouds, promoting condensation, then plainly the explanation is not magical. But let us take a more magical explanation. Maybe the idea is that the dance exudes a power that goes upward and pulls the clouds in. Again, though, this need not be a supernatural claim.

What if the claim sounds even more supernatural? Perhaps the people believe that the clouds are intelligent and respond to requests when these requests are made in a particular way. But why should that be a magical claim? Suppose Patrick believes that his goldfish is intelligent and responds to requests when these requests are made in a particular way. He need not thereby be attributing any supernatural qualities to the goldfish. In fact, we can go a bit further. Patrick either believes this of all goldfish or of just some. In the latter case, it may well be that he thinks these goldfish are special, supernaturally gifted, etc. But if he believes all goldfish are intelligent and respond to appropriately made requests, he most likely (though not necessarily) thinks that it is a natural feature of goldfish to be intelligent. Since the members of the culture I described probably believe all clouds, or all clouds of some specific type (maybe they think you need to be more wispy to be intelligent?), to be intelligent, they seem to be ascribing a natural property to the clouds.

But suppose that the folk have a story involving intermediate causes that are powerful beings like demons. Maybe the dance somehow binds demons to do their will, and the demons fly up to the sky and wring rain out of clouds. If that is so, we have more hope of thinking that the explanation involves the supernatural—but only if we have some reason to think that the demons which the folk believe in are supernatural (it would not be a supernatural explanation if the folk falsely believed vultures to be intelligent and to fly up to the clouds and wring rain out of them in response to a dance). If the folk believe they can bind the demons through dances, then they are likely to believe that causes within the realm of nature (a dance) affect the demons. Moreover, it seems likely that they think there are rules that govern demonic behavior, and the magician, by knowing these rules, is able to get the requisite results. But demons like that, manipulable demons, sound like are part of the natural realm, interacting with the natural realm in lawlike ways. What reason do we have for thinking that the laws that are alleged to bind their behavior should be thought of as supernatural laws as opposed to natural laws? Sure, some of these laws apply to the demons but don't affect birds, bees and mountains, and some of the laws that apply to birds, bees and mountains don't apply to demons. But there is nothing absurd about the idea of natural laws that govern only particles of a certain type—e.g., charged particles, or particles of dark matter.

So even fairly elaborate alleged explanations of (1) involving entities like demons or intelligent clouds do not render (1) supernatural.

Suggestion 3: Intelligence is supernatural, and explanations involving intelligent beings like demons are thus supernatural.

Response: If so, then we have to admit that at least one of the sciences—psychology—deals with the supernatural, and the distinction between the supernatural and the scientific falls apart. This suggestion seems a non-starter.

Suggestion 4: It would require a violation of a law of nature for dances to cause rain, and hence the mechanism behind (1) must be taken to be supernatural.

Response: I think something like this suggestion may be what is going on in our minds when we assume that (1) involves the supernatural. But I think here we have a serious confusion. Claim (1) is in fact false. Now if we found out that (1) is true, we might be tempted to posit a supernatural explanation for it. But that is beside the point. Consider claim (2) which is just as much contrary to the laws of nature as (1) is (I assume). We do not consider (2) to be supernatural because it is contrary to the laws of nature. Rather, we consider it to be false.

Final comments: I think (and this is by no means original) that one of the characteristics of magic is a lawlikeness. You do this, and that results. This lawlikeness of magic makes for a prima facie claim that claims of magic are not at all supernaturalistic. We read them as supernaturalistic simply because they violate the laws of nature we believe in, but they need not violate the laws of nature that the believers in magic believe in.

This shows a crucial difference between magic and monotheistic beliefs in miracles, creation, answers to prayer, etc. The monotheist (typically—there are some unfortunate exceptions) believes God acts freely. He creates as he chooses, not because he is bound to by some necessitating law. He is supernatural because he has a freedom to act that transcends nature. At the same time, the miracles are not forced on him by anything like a law of nature, in the way that someone might believe a dance forces a demon to cause rain. The more personal freedom, including freedom to act not in accord with the laws of nature, we attribute to the deity, the less magical the belief becomes.

Granted, on traditional monotheistic views, God must keep his promises. Thus, there is a kind of law that is binding on him. But it is a moral law, binding on him because of his perfect goodness, and in light of promises freely and knowingly undertaken.

If anything, then, typical magical beliefs are closer to scientific beliefs about nature than to monotheistic beliefs about divine action.