Imagining the Supernatural North

The Supernatural and the Miraculous

Both intention-based and causation-based definitions of the miraculous make reference to the term ‘supernatural’. Philosophers who define the miraculous appear to use this term in a loose way, perhaps meaning the nonnatural, perhaps meaning a subcategory of the nonnatural. Here I examine the aetiology of the term ‘supernatural’. I consider three outstanding issues regarding the meaning of the t...

Imagining Clp(, ) Imagining Clp(, )

We study under which conditions the domain of-terms (() and the equality theory of the-calculus () form the basis of a usable constraint logic programming language (CLP). The conditions are that the equality theory must contain axiom , and the formula language must depart from Horn clauses and accept universal quantiications and implications in goals. In short, CLP((,) must be close to Prolog. ...

Naturalism, Science and the Supernatural

There is overwhelming agreement amongst naturalists that a naturalistic ontology should not allow for the possibility of supernatural entities. I argue, against this prevailing consensus, that naturalists have no proper basis to oppose the existence of supernatural entities. Naturalism is characterized, following Leiter and Rea, as a position which involves a primary commitment to scientific me...

Imagining the Impossible

Reducing the Spectral Index in Supernatural Inflation

Supernatural inflation is an attractive model based just on a flat direction with soft SUSY breaking mass terms in the framework of supersymmetry. The beauty of the model is inferred from its name that the model needs no fine-tuning. However, the prediction of the spectral index is ns > ∼ 1, in contrast to experimental data. In this paper, we show that the beauty of supernatural inflation with ...