Since the proposal of the theory of evolution by natural selection we have come to realize that human beings are products of natural processes, just like every other organism. So why wouldn't humans and their creations be considered natural? If bird nests are natural things, then why aren't human homes? — Harry Hindu

Naturalism opposes itself to the supernatural in that it claims all four causes of being are immanent, not transcendent. So it lays heavy emphasis on lawful self-organisation.

The artificial would then be creations within the natural world that are not the product of holistic self-organisation. Their existence would be the result of causes transcendent to them - particular formal and final causes.

So the machines humans make are artificial in that sense. They are not organisms but are engineered. Cars and laptops can't spontaneously self-organise or grow, develop and replicate. They are artificial in being designed to be completely constrained, with no internal degrees of freedom and thus no autopoietic possibilities for change or adaptation.

Cars used to be more natural. They rusted pretty easily. But now they are so plastic that that freedom has been taken away.

Thus it is easy to define the artificial. It lacks four cause self-organisation. It lacks a dynamical dependence on its context. It lacks holism in being crafted.

Like all dichotomies, the difference between the artificial and the natural would only be relative. It would define a spectrum of possibilities. So there would be borderline cases.

A bird's nest is a clear borderline case. And more on the side of the artificial than the natural when it comes to fancy constructions made of mud, woven with chambers, or decorated with collected shiny objects. A more natural nest would be perhaps bent foliage - just nature momentarily flattened into a bowl.

So naturalism vs supernaturalism is an absolute claim. You can't have a little bit of transcendence anymore than you can be a little bit pregnant.

But natural vs artificial is a relative claim. Even laptops and cars are still prone to natural processes like entropification. We can build them, but nature can still express its more general desires and find ways to erode them, like cosmic rays, or floods, or earthquakes, or whatever.

If God created everything, then doesn't that still make everything artificial, natural or supernatural? — Harry Hindu

In the theistic traditions there's a major difference between the way that God creates, and how humans create. God creates ex nihilo, i.e. 'from nothing' - and if that seems a lot like magic, well....

Humans, on the other hand, fashion things, and combine things, but don't create things in that sense. They take what is already to hand, and then work out how to exploit the attributes of those existing things, so as to make something new. (Although, arguably, the attempt by scientists to create new life forms is driven by the wish to 'play God'. Someone once asked Craig Venter, who is one such, whether he was 'playing God', to which he answered, 'not playing'....)

The difference between artificial and natural isn't so hard to determine, either. The first human-made artefacts (that we know of, anyway) were flint tools - ax- and arrow heads. It was obvious that they couldn't have been generated by natural causes, i.e. water, lava flows, glacial movement, and so on. Then as technology progressed, humans began to devise substances (such as bronze) and artefacts that you would never find in the absence of humans. If in the future we discovered another life-bearing planet, I daresay it wouldn't be hard to tell if there were advanced tool-using species on it; such activities leave traces.

There seems to be a greater magnitude of difference between natural and supernatural, than natural and artificial. But in both cases the difference arises by how we define "natural", and I think a general characteristic of natural-ness is that of being in accord with the way-things-have-been (for a long time). The natural is the historic.

Now we may say that it is natural that there be random events, but this is itself a historical claim: if randomness is natural, then randomness has been the way-things-have-been.

There also seems to be the important element of agency that differentiates the natural from the non-natural (the supernatural or the artificial). By this I mean intentional action, or more generally, teleological systems, which are contentious as they may be only a feature of mental states, or legitimate states of non-mental systems (or perhaps a mix, or an elimination of one, or whatever).

But perhaps "natural", since it is a historical claim, can never be a concrete and unchanging form. If intentional agency is around for a long enough time, it becomes part of the natural. And in fact we see this when we narrow our focus to human civilization. What is natural, anthropologically speaking, is intentional action, the use of tools, language, etc. Compared with the rest of the world, this may be "unnatural", but when we are dealing with human civilization itself, agency becomes the norm.

In a theological sense, the "supernatural" would be something that has qualities or powers that could never be that of the "natural" world around us, which is the collection of "material objects". It can do the impossible - or at least, do what we normally, usually see as impossible. We can then, presumably, specify (if we are inclined) by reference to a metaphysical system, perhaps Aristotle's, in which natural, material objects have potency and actuality, whereas a supernatural entity is pure actuality. But this also might just be a bunch of mumbo jumbo. Someone get Carnap in here. Or maybe Wittgenstein.

I'm rather curious, apokrsis. With respect to distinction you make between artifacts and organism, I find myself worry about the distinction when it comes to computers that might be able to "self-organise or grow, develop and replicate." Where there would be a holistic account for how the computer operates, and that in a sense goes outside the concept that created it. Do you think this is possible, and at that point blurs the distinction between things like organisms and machines?

It seems like I'm in agreement with most of what you said, however.

I agree true AI would look to blur the lines. But consider that we would still be likely talking of hardware that is manufactured rather than grown. It wouldn’t be self organising development like the growth of a body. It would be some kind of factory assembly.

So we are talking about a mentality that might be natural in being self organised via a purposeful interaction with a world, yet running on a machinery that is not natural.

An interesting hybrid situation. Yet I’m not advocating for a hard line between what is natural and what is artificial. Although also, I doubt that true AI is going to be achieved in a hurry.

Well, the point for me would be in virute of what makes one a assembly machine instead of a self-organizing development? Presumably the concept in an assembly machine is fixed, the gears only act in accordance with someone else's intent. But I mean, there are certain computers which run evolution simulations, or create patterns that's might resemble an organism. I'm not necessarily talking about an advanced AI pre'se.

It seems that this dichotomy [natural/artificial] is the result of the outdated belief that humans are specially made, or separate from, nature, which stems from ancient religious beliefs. — Harry Hindu

Does it stem from religious beliefs, or is it a fact?

Human beings are natural organisms which are categorically different from all other natural organisms by virtue of possessing the faculty of language acquisition, production, and use.

Unique to the Animal Kingdom, the faculty of language in the genus Homo evolved from a strictly communication function to include a verbal modelling function. With this new functionality came new potential. Homo sapiens accurately models its environment, adding to its knowledge base to an extent not possible in Homo erectus or Homo habilis (due to less brain capacity), and enabling the development of technology which radically changes its environment. Changes in environment cause new adaptations, and the cycle repeats itself.

It is the development and implementation of technology which provides criterial evidence that humanity is categorically different from the rest of nature. So, the natural/artificial distinction is a reasonable one. It is also a useful one in that it enables humanity to measure, mitigate, and otherwise manage, the impact of that technology on its environment.

Naturalism opposes itself to the supernatural in that it claims all four causes of being are immanent, not transcendent. So it lays heavy emphasis on lawful self-organisation.

The artificial would then be creations within the natural world that are not the product of holistic self-organisation. Their existence would be the result of causes transcendent to them - particular formal and final causes.

So the machines humans make are artificial in that sense. They are not organisms but are engineered. Cars and laptops can't spontaneously self-organise or grow, develop and replicate. They are artificial in being designed to be completely constrained, with no internal degrees of freedom and thus no autopoietic possibilities for change or adaptation.

Cars used to be more natural. They rusted pretty easily. But now they are so plastic that that freedom has been taken away.

Thus it is easy to define the artificial. It lacks four cause self-organisation. It lacks a dynamical dependence on its context. It lacks holism in being crafted.

Like all dichotomies, the difference between the artificial and the natural would only be relative. It would define a spectrum of possibilities. So there would be borderline cases.

A bird's nest is a clear borderline case. And more on the side of the artificial than the natural when it comes to fancy constructions made of mud, woven with chambers, or decorated with collected shiny objects. A more natural nest would be perhaps bent foliage - just nature momentarily flattened into a bowl.

So naturalism vs supernaturalism is an absolute claim. You can't have a little bit of transcendence anymore than you can be a little bit pregnant.

But natural vs artificial is a relative claim. Even laptops and cars are still prone to natural processes like entropification. We can build them, but nature can still express its more general desires and find ways to erode them, like cosmic rays, or floods, or earthquakes, or whatever. — apokrisis

What exactly is self-organizing? What exactly organizes itself based on it's own properties and without help from something else? Human beings and other organisms don't self-organize. If they did, then they could exist in any environment, but they don't.

What about the stars, rocks, water, air? Do any of those things self-organize? Are they not natural? What about fire?

I really can't see your distinction between cars that rust and cars that don't be natural vs. artificial. Plastic may not have been around prior to humans but neither was iron around prior to stars creating it in their centers and exploding spilling out their contents to the universe. Natural things have created new materials, so I fail to see how that makes the things we make artificial.

Again, I think that the word, "artificial" is antiquated as it stems from our old knowledge that we are specially made and separate from nature.

The difference between artificial and natural isn't so hard to determine, either. The first human-made artefacts (that we know of, anyway) were flint tools - ax- and arrow heads. It was obvious that they couldn't have been generated by natural causes, i.e. water, lava flows, glacial movement, and so on. Then as technology progressed, humans began to devise substances (such as bronze) and artefacts that you would never find in the absence of humans. If in the future we discovered another life-bearing planet, I daresay it wouldn't be hard to tell if there were advanced tool-using species on it; such activities leave traces. — Wayfarer

But human beings are natural things themselves. It makes no sense to call the things that they create, "artificial".

As I have already pointed out to Apo, iron and other heavy elements didn't exist prior to the stars making them by pressing lighter elements together in their centers and then ejecting those elements out into the universe when they explode. If the new material that stars create isn't artificial, then why are the new materials that humans make artificial?

There also seems to be the important element of agency that differentiates the natural from the non-natural (the supernatural or the artificial). By this I mean intentional action, or more generally, teleological systems, which are contentious as they may be only a feature of mental states, or legitimate states of non-mental systems (or perhaps a mix, or an elimination of one, or whatever). — darthbarracuda

So stars, rocks, water, etc. aren't natural? This seems to be the same thing Apo said. I don't think that minds are a necessary requirement for some thing to be natural.

In a theological sense, the "supernatural" would be something that has qualities or powers that could never be that of the "natural" world around us, which is the collection of "material objects". It can do the impossible - or at least, do what we normally, usually see as impossible. We can then, presumably, specify (if we are inclined) by reference to a metaphysical system, perhaps Aristotle's, in which natural, material objects have potency and actuality, whereas a supernatural entity is pure actuality. But this also might just be a bunch of mumbo jumbo. Someone get Carnap in here. Or maybe Wittgenstein. — darthbarracuda

To say that the supernatural can do the impossible is to say that it can be random, which you attributed earlier to being natural. Did the natural world stem from the supernatural world? Which existed prior? If the supernatural world existed prior to the natural world, then you could say that is existed for a long time and is historic, which then makes it fall under your definition of "natural". You seem to be inconsistent in your descriptions. I'll wait for you to think more clearly about what it is you want to say and read your adjusted post.

Does it stem from religious beliefs, or is it a fact? — Galuchat

It stems from religious beliefs which I don't share, so I don't believe it is fact. But others do, and I was hoping to get at the distinction between the two as it seems related to the supernatural/natural distinction.

Human beings are natural organisms which are categorically different from all other natural organisms by virtue of possessing the faculty of language acquisition, production, and use.

Unique to the Animal Kingdom, the faculty of language in the genus Homo evolved from a strictly communication function to include a verbal modelling function. With this new functionality came new potential. Homo sapiens accurately models its environment, adding to its knowledge base to an extent not possible in Homo erectus or Homo habilis (due to less brain capacity), and enabling the development of technology which radically changes its environment. Changes in environment cause new adaptations, and the cycle repeats itself.

It is the development and implementation of technology which provides criterial evidence that humanity is categorically different from the rest of nature. So, the natural/artificial distinction is a reasonable one. It is also a useful one in that it enables humanity to measure, mitigate, and otherwise manage, the impact of that technology on its environment. — Galuchat

Sure human beings are different than other organisms. But so is every organism different from other organisms. We each have special abilities that aid our survival and procreation. Other animals can devastate their environment and cause other species to become extinct. The environment itself changes and can drastically alter the environment that was before and can cause species to go extinct. Such is the way of natural selection. So I still don't see the distinction you are trying to make between the artificial and the natural.

I agree that all that we experience is natural, all our works, thoughts and actions, but this concept is non-differential, and therefore I don't think it is useful. It is in drawing distinctions between nature made, animal made or man made that differences can be significant and useful for us.

There are some that seem to think that anything that humans produce are of the category, "artificial", while the things that nature produces are "natural". — Harry Hindu

Here's a definition of "artificial" from the web - "made or produced by human beings rather than occurring naturally." So, things produced by humans are artificial by definition. If they are not produced by humans, they are natural by definition.

I guess the correct question here is whether the human/nature distinction is a useful one. I think saying that human productions are artificial does not mean that humans are not part of nature.

But human beings are natural things themselves. It makes no sense to call the things that they create, "artificial". — Harry Hindu

Why do you claim this? It doesn't make sense to me, and appears like a claim that what is true of the creator is also true of the creation. And that's not sound logic. So if human beings are a product of nature, how does this preclude the possibility that the things which human beings create are artificial? All that is necessary is to understand the human being as a boundary between the natural and the artificial.

As I have already pointed out to Apo, iron and other heavy elements didn't exist prior to the stars making them by pressing lighter elements together in their centers and then ejecting those elements out into the universe when they explode. If the new material that stars create isn't artificial, then why are the new materials that humans make artificial? — Harry Hindu

Things produced by human beings are artificial by definition. To be artificial means to have been produced by human beings, and this is why things produced by stars are not said to be artificial. An important aspect of "the artificial" is that it is created with intent, a reason, purpose, and that the intent is attributable to the human beings which make it.

I guess the correct question here is whether the human/nature distinction is a useful one. I think saying that human productions are artificial does not mean that humans are not part of nature. — T Clark

Right, that's what I just explained to Harry, that human beings make artificial things does not mean that human beings are not part of nature. As for the question of whether the natural/artificial distinction is useful, I believe that it is. It is useful because it gives us an approach to the nature of intention, purpose. Intent and purpose is evident in artificial things, and since it is essential to them, it becomes a defining feature of artificial things. On the other hand, intent and purpose are not evident in natural things so the purpose of the thing cannot be used as a defining feature of the thing.

Obviously there is a difference between a real flower and an artificial flower, but no one suggests the artificial flower was created by something outside of the natural world. It's also not clear that what the non-natural world would be.

The question to be asked is whether using certain terms are useful. Is it useful to refer to human manufactured products as artificial? If we call plastics natural, does that help with noting that plastics are source of major pollution in the oceans?

Of course ontologically speaking, everything humans make is natural, as in it's all part of the universe. But we use artificial to distinguish stuff we make from stuff that nature produces for a lot of reasons. And we do the same for hypothetical alien civilizations. SETI is searching for artificial signals. Calling them natural won't help with distinguishing radio signals or heat signatures produced by alien technologies.

Or take archaeology. How do we know some artifact was human produced? Does calling that natural help with making distinctions between clothing and animal hide?

And if we wanted to, we could call spider webs or beaver/bird nests artificial. They don't undergo biological evolution, and are the products of organisms that do, like us. And those sorts of things wouldn't spontaneously emerge without spiders, beavers or birds to build them.

It's also not clear that what the non-natural world would be. — Hanover

I think it's "supernatural" which is used to refer to what is outside the natural. Whether there is anything which is truly supernatural, or this is just an imaginary category, is another issue.

So stars, rocks, water, etc. aren't natural? This seems to be the same thing Apo said. I don't think that minds are a necessary requirement for some thing to be natural. — Harry Hindu

Well, no, I just said that inanimate objects that haven't been made by humans are usually the most obviously "natural" thing. But these objects don't exist by themselves, they exist within a broader teleological system, which I imagine this is what apo was saying.

To say that the supernatural can do the impossible is to say that it can be random, which you attributed earlier to being natural. — Harry Hindu

Well, supernatural agency would probably be seen as random, but impossibility =/= randomness. But we could see that God's intervention, if he exists, in the natural world is "natural" but that probably isn't what we want to see here, since it threatens to break down the very distinction we were trying to make. Again, remember I said natural-ness makes the most sense when constraining our thought to a certain region. Like how agency is natural when we're talking about human civilization, but is not natural, at least when compared to the bigger cosmos at large.

Did the natural world stem from the supernatural world? Which existed prior? If the supernatural world existed prior to the natural world, then you could say that is existed for a long time and is historic, which then makes it fall under your definition of "natural". You seem to be inconsistent in your descriptions. — Harry Hindu

If a supernatural being exists outside of time, it is eternal and has no "history".

I think saying that human productions are artificial does not mean that humans are not part of nature. — T Clark

Well it's a clear separation. it's a view that most people in the world have without even thinking about it, nothing is unnatural because everything we have made is of natural things. it's a weird concept that we seemed to have made 'true' that all we make is artificial. i think it's that we think of ourselves as far more superior so that we think what we make isn't natural, and in part that is true, there isn't anything close to humans and so the separation is real and so i think people separate everything we do from things that nature does because there really isn't much in common and also because we abuse nature that most likely adds to the feeling that we are separate from it and not part of everything we call natural.

i don't believe this as I've always said that everything we make is of natural things so that means the things we create are also natural but i can see this point of view and why others would automatically see us as a separate force to nature because we are almost as powerful and really we rival nature in the way we treat the world.

But human beings are natural things themselves. It makes no sense to call the things that they create, "artificial". — Harry Hindu

You’re mistaken, Harry. ‘Artificial’ comes from ‘artifact’, ‘something made by art’. It’s what the word means.

i think it's that we think of ourselves as far more superior so that we think what we make isn't natural, — David Solman

I don't disagree that many humans think of humankind as special and outside of nature in some way. I also think that way of thinking can lead to destructive behavior. Still, I don't think that means that the artificial/natural distinction is not useful.

Natural has become a term used by bullshit artists to sell things.

As such, it has lost most of it's meaning - along with fresh, live, and many other bullshit terms.

What exactly is self-organizing? — Harry Hindu

Dissipative structure. So mountains, tornadoes and tomatoes are all natural in that they are expressions of the structure that arises to dissipate entropy gradients. That is what nature has in common. It rearranges itself into the forms that best serve entropy production.

Human beings and other organisms don't self-organize. If they did, then they could exist in any environment, but they don't. — Harry Hindu

Nature is a hierarchy of entropy production. So life and mind are just the complex expression of a general principle. The environment is already entropifying with a physical simplicity. Life and mind can then build on that. That is why we would regard ourselves as part of nature. Our existence serves the second law of thermodynamics.

What about the stars, rocks, water, air? Do any of those things self-organize? Are they not natural? What about fire? — Harry Hindu

Exactly. They are dissipative structures. So they are natural. As processes, they are all expressions of the one common imperative. Entropification is the essence of what it is to be natural.

I really can't see your distinction between cars that rust and cars that don't be natural vs. artificial. Plastic may not have been around prior to humans but neither was iron around prior to stars creating it in their centers and exploding spilling out their contents to the universe. — Harry Hindu

Iron was produced by super-novas as an entropic outcome. Oxidation of iron is an energetically-favoured dissipative process. So all natural.

But humans building cars are trying to halt entropification as much as practical. We want our machines to last - to not be subject to self-organised erosion.

Plastic is an artificial material. Well, so is sheet iron protected by enamel. But plastic is more artificial in this context as it is more enduring, less prone to natural decay processes. It holds whatever form its human designers had in mind rather better.

Again, I think that the word, "artificial" is antiquated as it stems from our old knowledge that we are specially made and separate from nature. — Harry Hindu

As Wayfarer says, just check the dictionary. It means something humans make as opposed to something humans might find. It is a form that is mechanically constructed rather than a form that organically grows.

The old religions were animistic - everything, even the trees and the wind - were alive and mindful. If it moved or made a noise, it had an inner spirit. So there was no real separation from nature at all.

Then the theistic religions arose. Man became separate from nature. But now because man was touched by the divine. He had a soul. Or whatever.

The question to be asked is whether using certain terms are useful. Is it useful to refer to human manufactured products as artificial? If we call plastics natural, does that help with noting that plastics are source of major pollution in the oceans?

Of course ontologically speaking, everything humans make is natural, as in it's all part of the universe. But we use artificial to distinguish stuff we make from stuff that nature produces for a lot of reasons. And we do the same for hypothetical alien civilizations. SETI is searching for artificial signals. Calling them natural won't help with distinguishing radio signals or heat signatures produced by alien technologies.

Or take archaeology. How do we know some artifact was human produced? Does calling that natural help with making distinctions between clothing and animal hide?

And if we wanted to, we could call spider webs or beaver/bird nests artificial. They don't undergo biological evolution, and are the products of organisms that do, like us. And those sorts of things wouldn't spontaneously emerge without spiders, beavers or birds to build them. — Marchesk

This is a good post and sums up the other points that have been made on the artificial vs. natural distinction. It seems that most people are saying that just because something is artificial doesn't mean that it isn't natural, which is fine with me. As long as the distinction isn't one of natural vs. unnatural, but rather intentional vs. unintentional, I think we can all agree.

With that being said though, why not dispense with the term, "artificial" as it does imply (for many people) a distinction between humans and nature. You made a good point on the usefulness of the term, but we could use other terms to be even more accurate, and therefore more useful. For instance, an "artificial" signal from space could be man-made or alien-made - a distinction that is useful and doesn't use the term, "artificial". We could use the same wording with Earth-based lifeforms, as this nest is bird-made, not man-made. This word-use seems more apt and omits the implication that most others have when hearing or seeing the term, "artificial".

Well, supernatural agency would probably be seen as random, but impossibility =/= randomness. But we could see that God's intervention, if he exists, in the natural world is "natural" but that probably isn't what we want to see here, since it threatens to break down the very distinction we were trying to make. Again, remember I said natural-ness makes the most sense when constraining our thought to a certain region. Like how agency is natural when we're talking about human civilization, but is not natural, at least when compared to the bigger cosmos at large. — darthbarracuda

It's the distinction between supernatural and natural (and artificial and natural) that I'm calling into question. When I think about it, it seems that either everything is natural, or supernatural (if there is such a thing as God and it's realm.). But to say that everything is supernatural doesn't make sense as supernatural requires the existence of the natural to make sense.

If there is a causal relationship between God and the world, then how can they be different realms (God and his creation)? So, I guess my point for all the God-believers is that there is no distinction between supernatural and the natural, and the point made for all the philosophers is that there is no distinction between artificial and natural, only intentionally made vs unintentionally made. Now that I think about it, if God created everything, then everything isn't man-made or bird-made, etc. It is all God-made.

If a supernatural being exists outside of time, it is eternal and has no "history". — darthbarracuda

I don't know what it means for something to exist outside of time. Does God change. Does he have thoughts that change? Does he create things? If so, then it seems that God exists in "time" as much as everything else.

Obviously knowledge has progressed immensely since the time of the ancient Greeks. Yet philosophical disputes remain. Those disputes often find their origin in the fundamental differences between the views of Plato and Aristotle. In particular, whether ideas have a reality apart from the natural world or whether they are grounded in the natural world. In general terms, this is the problem of universals. — Andrew M

Interesting. If ideas are apart from the natural world, would that place them into the "artificial" or the "supernatural" category?

I don't think it makes sense to suppose that ideas are apart from the natural world. Aristotle's view was that they were not.