The Supernatural in Tonga

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...

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...

Kava tonga.

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 ...

Comparing Themes in Supernatural and Left Behind