Belief - repost

[andrewducker]

Question three was borked. Rewritten to actually cover all the bases, and not be internally contradictory. Apologies to the 7 people who already filled it in!

[Poll #1427776]

Comments

[nameandnature]

I think Carrier's argument boils down to saying that substance dualism, if true, defines supernatural things (human souls/spirits, as well as gods).

To me, "mental" means "stuff I experience in my mind", and I'm pretty familiar with that, even if I don't understand how it occurs. Similarly, I'm not aware that substance dualists themselves have a watertight definition of "mental", yet that doesn't stop people from being dualists.

I don't think Carrier has implicitly assumed that minds arise from matter (if that's what you mean by assuming certain things about the nature of mentality), he's just said that if there are minds which don't, that's what makes them supernatural.