Yes, 100%: if you use the definition of nature that physicists use, nothing is therefore outside of nature. This includes all of our technology and everything we have ever done, or will ever do. We live in the universe, and we are subject to the same laws as everything else in the universe.
Some folks get hung up on the word, though, and mean "everything besides humans." It's a pretty common usage, probably a lot more common than the physics-oriented one I tend to prefer using. I'm not sure how useful of a distinction it is to divide "us" and "them", except insofar as (as you point out) that we are likely the only entities who consider our larger role with regard to the planet and cosmos.
I think 95% or more of these types of arguments arise because folks mean different things by words. It's possible to argue about the nature of consciousness, freedom, intelligence, and so on. Here, it's easy to argue about "nature" when you mean two different things by the word.
I think the real philosophical question to ask is: do we have an obligation to preserve the other species on earth if we are the only ones who understand that we're killing them? Does the curse of the Tree of Knowledge give us some kind of moral obligation that other (oblivious) species like cyanobacteria don't have?
That curse of the tree of knowlege is an interesting story which might actually map to our development of a prefrontal cortex. Good and evil do not exist in nature outside of humans. Nothing else has that knowlege. But once you have that knowlege and take action to reduce negatives then you have a concept of sin. Conservation is the opposite of 'sin.'
Oof. I had a very hard time with that lecture. There is so much anthropomorphizing it's hard to take it seriously.
"Each animal is an agent who works for the harmonious correlation of all things in the environment."
I call bullshit on this statement though. It's so the root of the whole thing. There is nothing harmonious in nature. As in sitting around with higher callings more than just brutal checks. Asteroids are part of nature and they just cruise in and destroy. There's no agency, just physics.
We do have the power of modification and conservation. Again, I can't find anything that actually intentionally conserves. Instead they are held in check. Humans actually hold themselves in check.
Yes, the lecture is dated, but as a source it indicates the enduring fascination with these questions. Montessori was fresh off her partnership with Mussolini at this point. An fact her followers like to downplay. I guess the debate hinges on how one defines conservation. Whether it is a conscious act requiring forethought or a more evolutionary prerogative. Perhaps a spectrum of levels of conservation might be preferable. That said, I very much respect the effort to try to define what is distinctive about humanity. This kind of work has fallen out of favor in the academe but with the rise of AI is all the more necessary now than ever!
Very relevant! This sentence is in opposition to some of the examples provided by Michael: “Today’s books on geology and ecology are beginning to address the fact that man has the power of modification. Other living beings conserve the environment, but man’s task is evidently more complex, the modification of the earth.”
The Second Law of Thermodynamics, the concept of entropy, is really the core of any such discussion that attempts to separate what is "natural" from "unnatural." This law holds that universe tends toward the diffusion of energy. On the surface, life seems to counter entropy by creating order from the chaos and concentrating energy. In fact, life does exactly the opposite. Life is a vehicle that while it lowers entropy within itself, actually accelerates the trend toward increasing entropy for everything around it.
We humans are no different, not just in our biological processes, but in modern usage of energy for industrial processes. When we pump oil (concentrated fossilized energy) and burn it in our cars, buses, and trains, we convert low entropy to high entropy far faster than the universe would be able to on its own. From this perspective, everything we do is fulfilling the universe's purposes.
Am working on a write up for Risk & Progress on this very topic.
That's an interesting way to put it. To build on it, we are the univere's ultimate entropy machine performing the role better than anyone else. Not only perfectly natural but the best performer as well! That might make a few heads explode!!
Really interesting article. I tend to agree with your assessment that human behavior is "natural". There is a growing subset of influencers on social media that call for a return to a "primal" or "natural" state of existence. The recent steroid scandal surrounding the Liver King comes to mind. The underlying premise of these influencers seems to be that humanity's progress out of a dysentery-ridden existence was an unfortunate accident.
I believe that Christianity and other widespread religions serve as a rectifying force for humanity's childish tendencies for destruction and wild play in nature. I don't attribute this aspect of religion as the sole reason for the existence of religion, but it is an integral part. They demand personal responsibility from humanity at every level of analysis: personal and political, home and community, individual and group.
Religion is an interesting and super-natural behavior which relies on a belief in the supernatural.
And those influencers you mention are a large part of why I wrote this to start with. It's the idea that somehow we are divorced from nature (and many city dwellers are) and that we need to return to some idylic life. Yet nature isn't nice. It's our modern society that gives us the protections, freedoms, and quality of life we have. Getting back to nature wouldn't be a pretty view.
I can't help but wonder if these influencers are expressing a skewed understanding of Darwin's theories, as if the brutal survival of the fittest (read: only the strongest should live) is the highest good.
I don't think they are even considering what that means. They often express a belief that what was, in the past, was somehow more egalitarian than what we have today. Yet a cursory investigation shows it was brutally unequal.
They also ignore what survival of the fittest means. I've been poking on that a bit in the essays but the same people who 'trust the science' of evolution are the first to ignore it.
The Liver King is an excellent example of an influencer wearing the skin suit of an idyllic hunter-gatherer. Instead of wild animals, he preys on the imaginations of city dwellers who may have never experienced the true wildness of nature, and uses their innate longing for genuine connection with their ancestors and the desire to be strong, virile, and dominant within a simpler ecosystem, to sell them.......supplements.
Very well put. I'm playing around with an idea that we have in our common concious that Native Americans were somehow more attune to nature than anyone else. To me, they were just as warlike and are just a 2000 year phaseshift from the Europeans (for example Mexico even during Spanish conquest, was at a level of High Roman I think).
The irony is that I think it goes back to my generation being raised on Disney Pocahontas and the song The Colors of the Wind:
I don't know much about the culture of Native American tribes, but I believe you may be right, particularly about Disney's role in romanticizing their connection with nature. To further emphasize the point, the Bambi movie terrified children into believing that hunters are true evil, despite the very important role that deer hunters play in managing herd populations in places where they have few natural predators. I believe Disney's anthropomorphization of animals is at least partly to blame for people trying to pet or take selfies with wild animals. A lot of these encounters end with the animal attacking and sometimes killing the person.
Fascinating insight or perspective of what human purpose is, in nature. I've always wondered what that is. One thing I've realized by researching world leaders and inherent Kings, Pharaohs, Emperor's and the like. Is: "just because you can doesn't mean you should." Which I interpret as not abusing one's supernatural abilities to overcome others, but to be empathetically conscious enough to realize your not.
I'm looking forward to reading more of this. Thanks.
I think history is replete with those leaders also failing a shocking number of times when they have the hubris to theink they should because they can.
Wonderful article Michael! I especially loved being reminded of the cyanobacteria. From the page you linked:
> As methane was displaced by oxygen, global temperatures cooled sufficiently to generate ice sheets that extended all the way from the poles to the tropics.
> Since life was totally anaerobic 2.7 billion years ago when cyanobacteria evolved, it is believed that oxygen acted as a poison and wiped out much of anaerobic life, creating an extinction event.
This ties nicely into our discussion on climate change. Your view (if I understand it correctly) is that we shouldn’t try to reduce carbon emissions, and that we might actually benefit from the change, such as by forcing us to move and redesign our cities to better fit our needs.
Most people would say these 2 consequences (global cooling and species extinction) were BAD, but if they hadn’t occurred we wouldn’t be here today and Earth would have been a very different (and perhaps much more desolate) planet.
I'd clarify that I'm not saying we shouldn't reduce our carbon emissions... However, we recognize that CO2 is a fertilizer for plant life and that we've selected a somewhat arbitrary baseline. Only by fully understanding what CO2 is can we make an educated decision about whether we should reduce it or not.
But I do play the angle of being a global warming advocate just to shift the conversation from denial (I accept that it is warming and any science you want to show me) to one that focuses on why that is bad. Just like the conversation of 'natural' when faced with the problem that if what humans are doing is 'unnatural' must imply that we are supernatural, which is an anathema to those who like to say we are unnatural.
It is interesting to point out, as a meta observation, the human capacity for self-reflection, as evidenced by the writing of philosophical articles, is a unique feature of our species. It is the product of our conscious awareness and ability to reason, which are cognitive abilities that are not shared by other animals. None of the animals you mention, as far as I know, have the ability, nor the need, to sit and examine why they do what they do and if the nature of their abilities is natural or supernatural.
So just so you know how I'm understanding the definitions: Natural refers to phenomena that occur within the natural world and are governed by the laws of nature. Examples include evolution, natural selection, and the activities of other species that impact the environment. In the context of humans, natural processes include our evolution from primates and our use of natural resources. It follows that any processes that further arises due to priors is also natural. If humans evolved a consciousness through millions of years we would then conclude that the ways in which man expresses that consciousness, such as philosophizing and solving man mad problems like pollution, is also a natural occurrence.
Supernatural refers to phenomena that lie beyond the natural world and cannot be explained by the laws of nature.
So religious beliefs about the creation of humans by God(s) and some even peoples having animistic tendencies (believing natural things around them also possesses a spirit) is certainly unique among humans and thanks to our consciousness process but would lean towards the supernatural.
So our ability to actively conserve the environment through laws and stewardship. We could look at this as a natural and supernatural thing. We are natural organisms that are subject to the same laws of biology as other species. However, we also possess unique cognitive abilities that allow us to understand and manipulate the natural world in ways that other species do not. We understand the consequences of not conserving our environment and what this will mean in the future so we have a means and an ends to act.
But do humans engage in activities such as environmental conservation, which can be seen as a form of transcendence of the natural world? I have come across some Native American customs and other spiritualties that have animistic tendencies that oddly enough also conclude, among other things, that the environment must be conserved for reasons that are spiritual and that the reason is deduced through a spiritual kind of contemplation rather than a deduction based on naturalistic observation.
So I think I am with you on humans being natural and supernatural. Someone may point out that for something to supernatural, given the definition earlier, we can extrapolate that natural things follow a cause-and-effect pattern. The supernatural is often viewed as those causes or effects in the world which does not follow this chain; as for example the idea of an uncreated or perhaps a self-created deity suddenly creating the universe that did not previously exist.
I think your argument in the article illustrates this point:
- Cyanobacteria caused a mass extinction event by producing oxygen pollution.
- Beavers terraform landscapes through dam building.
- Ants farm fungi and keep livestock.
∴ Therefore, human activities like pollution, terraforming, farming and livestock are aligned with natural processes exhibited by other species.
And we can further conclude from the argument that all animals including us are reacting to a cause-and-effect chain of events. That is natural. Further:
- Humans evolved through natural selection from primate ancestors
- Everything humans use and create comes from the natural world
∴ Therefore, what humans do must be natural, outside of supernatural implications.
So based on my distinction between what is natural and supernatural I would tweak the argument thusly:
- Human actions are aligned with the broader dynamics of the natural world
- Humans also possess the unique ability to attribute or perceive supernatural traits in the world that cannot be explained by natural processes
- Advanced environmental mastery is a natural tendency of humans, but this tendency can also be motivated by supernatural beliefs and values
∴ Humans exist in a tension between being both natural and supernatural beings.
I think tension is at the crux of the issue and what philosophers, theologians, and scientists struggle with.
Would love to get your thoughts on this and if you think I'm way off base or not.
I think you nailed it down pretty well. The only thing I might add into the convertion is whether humans have a natural check on their activites. I think at the broad level we are already seeing a check on our expansion (like beavers and ants) through our understanding of even larger mechanisms in the environment and I see that we are putting check on our own activites (unlike cyanobacteria)
And yes, I think that tesion is what philosophers, theologians, and scientists struggle with. It's a really odd self-reflection that leads to conservation which nothing, literally nothing else does that I can find. That sounds shockingly super-natural.
Thanks for the wonderful comment. I really enjoyed it.
> The only thing I might add into the convertion is whether humans have a natural check on their activities.
Hmm, that is interesting. Let me throw another example at you that I think illustrations the tension between natural and supernatural for humans compared to other animals. Let's take pattern recognition.
Here's a passage from Sun Tzu, The Art of War: “The rising of birds in their flight is the sign of an ambuscade. Startled beasts indicate that a sudden attack is coming.”
Here he was demonstrating a pattern recognition that follows from causes and effects in the natural world. Once a person learns to do this they can reliably demonstrate that this pattern recognition will either always or often enough result in the expected outcome that we attached meaning to.
I think we can come up with some examples where animals out in the wild, either as a result of instinct or learning, do pattern recognition that enhances their survival.
Now here I think is a supernatural use of pattern recognition: I got outside and I see the birds flying around. I observe the type of birds that are flying around and the type of flying pattern they fly in and even their cries they make. I surmise from this pattern that it has a particular omen meaning to me (Ornithomancy). So pretty much all the divination systems are pattern recognition systems but the patterns generated would, to a naturalist observer, have no logical connection between that the events in the world. This is also not something that I have observed other animals participating in.
There is a phrase I love, used by Alan Watts, which does an astonishing job of identifying both mindsets: "Do you say 'I was born into this world...' or do you say 'I was born out of it...'"
I was raised to think of myself as born into the world, but over the years I have found the born out of the world thinking is more amenable to logic. I found the results of the born into mindset required either many more axioms, or particularly tricky ones (e.g. "everything I say is true"). Eventually that became less satisfactory to me, so the born out of argument started to gain my support.
Yes, 100%: if you use the definition of nature that physicists use, nothing is therefore outside of nature. This includes all of our technology and everything we have ever done, or will ever do. We live in the universe, and we are subject to the same laws as everything else in the universe.
Some folks get hung up on the word, though, and mean "everything besides humans." It's a pretty common usage, probably a lot more common than the physics-oriented one I tend to prefer using. I'm not sure how useful of a distinction it is to divide "us" and "them", except insofar as (as you point out) that we are likely the only entities who consider our larger role with regard to the planet and cosmos.
I think 95% or more of these types of arguments arise because folks mean different things by words. It's possible to argue about the nature of consciousness, freedom, intelligence, and so on. Here, it's easy to argue about "nature" when you mean two different things by the word.
I think the real philosophical question to ask is: do we have an obligation to preserve the other species on earth if we are the only ones who understand that we're killing them? Does the curse of the Tree of Knowledge give us some kind of moral obligation that other (oblivious) species like cyanobacteria don't have?
Thorny questions.
That curse of the tree of knowlege is an interesting story which might actually map to our development of a prefrontal cortex. Good and evil do not exist in nature outside of humans. Nothing else has that knowlege. But once you have that knowlege and take action to reduce negatives then you have a concept of sin. Conservation is the opposite of 'sin.'
Interesting stuff. I immediately thought of Maria Montessori’s lecture on nature vs supernature when I saw this post. First delivered in 1946: https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1077012.pdf
Oof. I had a very hard time with that lecture. There is so much anthropomorphizing it's hard to take it seriously.
"Each animal is an agent who works for the harmonious correlation of all things in the environment."
I call bullshit on this statement though. It's so the root of the whole thing. There is nothing harmonious in nature. As in sitting around with higher callings more than just brutal checks. Asteroids are part of nature and they just cruise in and destroy. There's no agency, just physics.
We do have the power of modification and conservation. Again, I can't find anything that actually intentionally conserves. Instead they are held in check. Humans actually hold themselves in check.
Yes, the lecture is dated, but as a source it indicates the enduring fascination with these questions. Montessori was fresh off her partnership with Mussolini at this point. An fact her followers like to downplay. I guess the debate hinges on how one defines conservation. Whether it is a conscious act requiring forethought or a more evolutionary prerogative. Perhaps a spectrum of levels of conservation might be preferable. That said, I very much respect the effort to try to define what is distinctive about humanity. This kind of work has fallen out of favor in the academe but with the rise of AI is all the more necessary now than ever!
Very true.
Very relevant! This sentence is in opposition to some of the examples provided by Michael: “Today’s books on geology and ecology are beginning to address the fact that man has the power of modification. Other living beings conserve the environment, but man’s task is evidently more complex, the modification of the earth.”
The Second Law of Thermodynamics, the concept of entropy, is really the core of any such discussion that attempts to separate what is "natural" from "unnatural." This law holds that universe tends toward the diffusion of energy. On the surface, life seems to counter entropy by creating order from the chaos and concentrating energy. In fact, life does exactly the opposite. Life is a vehicle that while it lowers entropy within itself, actually accelerates the trend toward increasing entropy for everything around it.
We humans are no different, not just in our biological processes, but in modern usage of energy for industrial processes. When we pump oil (concentrated fossilized energy) and burn it in our cars, buses, and trains, we convert low entropy to high entropy far faster than the universe would be able to on its own. From this perspective, everything we do is fulfilling the universe's purposes.
Am working on a write up for Risk & Progress on this very topic.
That's an interesting way to put it. To build on it, we are the univere's ultimate entropy machine performing the role better than anyone else. Not only perfectly natural but the best performer as well! That might make a few heads explode!!
It's crazy really.
Really interesting article. I tend to agree with your assessment that human behavior is "natural". There is a growing subset of influencers on social media that call for a return to a "primal" or "natural" state of existence. The recent steroid scandal surrounding the Liver King comes to mind. The underlying premise of these influencers seems to be that humanity's progress out of a dysentery-ridden existence was an unfortunate accident.
I believe that Christianity and other widespread religions serve as a rectifying force for humanity's childish tendencies for destruction and wild play in nature. I don't attribute this aspect of religion as the sole reason for the existence of religion, but it is an integral part. They demand personal responsibility from humanity at every level of analysis: personal and political, home and community, individual and group.
Religion is an interesting and super-natural behavior which relies on a belief in the supernatural.
And those influencers you mention are a large part of why I wrote this to start with. It's the idea that somehow we are divorced from nature (and many city dwellers are) and that we need to return to some idylic life. Yet nature isn't nice. It's our modern society that gives us the protections, freedoms, and quality of life we have. Getting back to nature wouldn't be a pretty view.
I can't help but wonder if these influencers are expressing a skewed understanding of Darwin's theories, as if the brutal survival of the fittest (read: only the strongest should live) is the highest good.
I don't think they are even considering what that means. They often express a belief that what was, in the past, was somehow more egalitarian than what we have today. Yet a cursory investigation shows it was brutally unequal.
They also ignore what survival of the fittest means. I've been poking on that a bit in the essays but the same people who 'trust the science' of evolution are the first to ignore it.
The Liver King is an excellent example of an influencer wearing the skin suit of an idyllic hunter-gatherer. Instead of wild animals, he preys on the imaginations of city dwellers who may have never experienced the true wildness of nature, and uses their innate longing for genuine connection with their ancestors and the desire to be strong, virile, and dominant within a simpler ecosystem, to sell them.......supplements.
Very well put. I'm playing around with an idea that we have in our common concious that Native Americans were somehow more attune to nature than anyone else. To me, they were just as warlike and are just a 2000 year phaseshift from the Europeans (for example Mexico even during Spanish conquest, was at a level of High Roman I think).
The irony is that I think it goes back to my generation being raised on Disney Pocahontas and the song The Colors of the Wind:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O9MvdMqKvpU&ab_channel=Disney
I don't know much about the culture of Native American tribes, but I believe you may be right, particularly about Disney's role in romanticizing their connection with nature. To further emphasize the point, the Bambi movie terrified children into believing that hunters are true evil, despite the very important role that deer hunters play in managing herd populations in places where they have few natural predators. I believe Disney's anthropomorphization of animals is at least partly to blame for people trying to pet or take selfies with wild animals. A lot of these encounters end with the animal attacking and sometimes killing the person.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mBY0y3ph8og
Fascinating insight or perspective of what human purpose is, in nature. I've always wondered what that is. One thing I've realized by researching world leaders and inherent Kings, Pharaohs, Emperor's and the like. Is: "just because you can doesn't mean you should." Which I interpret as not abusing one's supernatural abilities to overcome others, but to be empathetically conscious enough to realize your not.
I'm looking forward to reading more of this. Thanks.
I think history is replete with those leaders also failing a shocking number of times when they have the hubris to theink they should because they can.
Precisely. Equality is a lost art.
Wonderful article Michael! I especially loved being reminded of the cyanobacteria. From the page you linked:
> As methane was displaced by oxygen, global temperatures cooled sufficiently to generate ice sheets that extended all the way from the poles to the tropics.
> Since life was totally anaerobic 2.7 billion years ago when cyanobacteria evolved, it is believed that oxygen acted as a poison and wiped out much of anaerobic life, creating an extinction event.
This ties nicely into our discussion on climate change. Your view (if I understand it correctly) is that we shouldn’t try to reduce carbon emissions, and that we might actually benefit from the change, such as by forcing us to move and redesign our cities to better fit our needs.
Most people would say these 2 consequences (global cooling and species extinction) were BAD, but if they hadn’t occurred we wouldn’t be here today and Earth would have been a very different (and perhaps much more desolate) planet.
I'd clarify that I'm not saying we shouldn't reduce our carbon emissions... However, we recognize that CO2 is a fertilizer for plant life and that we've selected a somewhat arbitrary baseline. Only by fully understanding what CO2 is can we make an educated decision about whether we should reduce it or not.
But I do play the angle of being a global warming advocate just to shift the conversation from denial (I accept that it is warming and any science you want to show me) to one that focuses on why that is bad. Just like the conversation of 'natural' when faced with the problem that if what humans are doing is 'unnatural' must imply that we are supernatural, which is an anathema to those who like to say we are unnatural.
It is interesting to point out, as a meta observation, the human capacity for self-reflection, as evidenced by the writing of philosophical articles, is a unique feature of our species. It is the product of our conscious awareness and ability to reason, which are cognitive abilities that are not shared by other animals. None of the animals you mention, as far as I know, have the ability, nor the need, to sit and examine why they do what they do and if the nature of their abilities is natural or supernatural.
So just so you know how I'm understanding the definitions: Natural refers to phenomena that occur within the natural world and are governed by the laws of nature. Examples include evolution, natural selection, and the activities of other species that impact the environment. In the context of humans, natural processes include our evolution from primates and our use of natural resources. It follows that any processes that further arises due to priors is also natural. If humans evolved a consciousness through millions of years we would then conclude that the ways in which man expresses that consciousness, such as philosophizing and solving man mad problems like pollution, is also a natural occurrence.
Supernatural refers to phenomena that lie beyond the natural world and cannot be explained by the laws of nature.
So religious beliefs about the creation of humans by God(s) and some even peoples having animistic tendencies (believing natural things around them also possesses a spirit) is certainly unique among humans and thanks to our consciousness process but would lean towards the supernatural.
So our ability to actively conserve the environment through laws and stewardship. We could look at this as a natural and supernatural thing. We are natural organisms that are subject to the same laws of biology as other species. However, we also possess unique cognitive abilities that allow us to understand and manipulate the natural world in ways that other species do not. We understand the consequences of not conserving our environment and what this will mean in the future so we have a means and an ends to act.
But do humans engage in activities such as environmental conservation, which can be seen as a form of transcendence of the natural world? I have come across some Native American customs and other spiritualties that have animistic tendencies that oddly enough also conclude, among other things, that the environment must be conserved for reasons that are spiritual and that the reason is deduced through a spiritual kind of contemplation rather than a deduction based on naturalistic observation.
So I think I am with you on humans being natural and supernatural. Someone may point out that for something to supernatural, given the definition earlier, we can extrapolate that natural things follow a cause-and-effect pattern. The supernatural is often viewed as those causes or effects in the world which does not follow this chain; as for example the idea of an uncreated or perhaps a self-created deity suddenly creating the universe that did not previously exist.
I think your argument in the article illustrates this point:
- Cyanobacteria caused a mass extinction event by producing oxygen pollution.
- Beavers terraform landscapes through dam building.
- Ants farm fungi and keep livestock.
∴ Therefore, human activities like pollution, terraforming, farming and livestock are aligned with natural processes exhibited by other species.
And we can further conclude from the argument that all animals including us are reacting to a cause-and-effect chain of events. That is natural. Further:
- Humans evolved through natural selection from primate ancestors
- Everything humans use and create comes from the natural world
∴ Therefore, what humans do must be natural, outside of supernatural implications.
So based on my distinction between what is natural and supernatural I would tweak the argument thusly:
- Human actions are aligned with the broader dynamics of the natural world
- Humans also possess the unique ability to attribute or perceive supernatural traits in the world that cannot be explained by natural processes
- Advanced environmental mastery is a natural tendency of humans, but this tendency can also be motivated by supernatural beliefs and values
∴ Humans exist in a tension between being both natural and supernatural beings.
I think tension is at the crux of the issue and what philosophers, theologians, and scientists struggle with.
Would love to get your thoughts on this and if you think I'm way off base or not.
I think you nailed it down pretty well. The only thing I might add into the convertion is whether humans have a natural check on their activites. I think at the broad level we are already seeing a check on our expansion (like beavers and ants) through our understanding of even larger mechanisms in the environment and I see that we are putting check on our own activites (unlike cyanobacteria)
And yes, I think that tesion is what philosophers, theologians, and scientists struggle with. It's a really odd self-reflection that leads to conservation which nothing, literally nothing else does that I can find. That sounds shockingly super-natural.
Thanks for the wonderful comment. I really enjoyed it.
> The only thing I might add into the convertion is whether humans have a natural check on their activities.
Hmm, that is interesting. Let me throw another example at you that I think illustrations the tension between natural and supernatural for humans compared to other animals. Let's take pattern recognition.
Here's a passage from Sun Tzu, The Art of War: “The rising of birds in their flight is the sign of an ambuscade. Startled beasts indicate that a sudden attack is coming.”
Here he was demonstrating a pattern recognition that follows from causes and effects in the natural world. Once a person learns to do this they can reliably demonstrate that this pattern recognition will either always or often enough result in the expected outcome that we attached meaning to.
I think we can come up with some examples where animals out in the wild, either as a result of instinct or learning, do pattern recognition that enhances their survival.
Now here I think is a supernatural use of pattern recognition: I got outside and I see the birds flying around. I observe the type of birds that are flying around and the type of flying pattern they fly in and even their cries they make. I surmise from this pattern that it has a particular omen meaning to me (Ornithomancy). So pretty much all the divination systems are pattern recognition systems but the patterns generated would, to a naturalist observer, have no logical connection between that the events in the world. This is also not something that I have observed other animals participating in.
I like it.
There is a phrase I love, used by Alan Watts, which does an astonishing job of identifying both mindsets: "Do you say 'I was born into this world...' or do you say 'I was born out of it...'"
So which way were you born?
I was raised to think of myself as born into the world, but over the years I have found the born out of the world thinking is more amenable to logic. I found the results of the born into mindset required either many more axioms, or particularly tricky ones (e.g. "everything I say is true"). Eventually that became less satisfactory to me, so the born out of argument started to gain my support.