Saturday, February 19, 2022

The Explanatory Value of Disembodied Agents

 Supernatural phenomena such as poltergeists, clairvoyance, etc. are strong-if not decisive-evidence against naturalism (so long as we are defining naturalism as physicalism plus causal closure.) In his landmark book, "The Existence of God" (2nd ed.), Richard Swinburne has useful thoughts about how disembodied agents can provide a good, and simple, explanation of various supernatural events, like the ones mentioned above.

"It is possible that we might find certain otherwise inexplicable phenomena that could be explained by the action of a non-embodied agent, such as a ghost or a poltergeist. The phenomena to be explained may be that books, chairs, inkwells, etc. start flying about my room. We postulate a poltergeist P with certain intentions, beliefs, and powers to be responsible. Clearly we have to suppose P to be very unlike other rational agents known to us both in his powers and in his ways of acquiring beliefs…But we can suppose P to have beliefs influenced as are ours by how things are, and to have intentions of the kind that we have— for example, intentions of a kind typical of human beings with certain characters and histories. For example, we can suppose P to have previously been a certain embodied person who had been greatly injured by X and who had greatly loved Y, X and Y both being still alive. Then we suppose P to be like many of us if we suppose him with such a history to have the intention to harm X and to save Y from harm, and to communicate with Y.” pp. 63-64

 “If we suppose P to be in these ways similar to us, the supposition that P exists fits in to some extent with our background knowledge, al- though, in postulating a non-embodied person, clearly to a large extent it does not. The supposition is more probable in so far as it is simple—that is, postulates few constant intentions, simple ways of acquiring beliefs, and unchanging powers. Above all, the supposition will be rendered probable if it has high explanatory power.” p. 64

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