Disability rights movement

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Disability_rights_movement

Protestors at a disability rights protest

The disability rights movement is a global social movement, which seeks to secure equal opportunities and equal rights for all disabled people. It is made up of organizations of disability activists, also known as disability advocates, around the world working together with similar goals and demands, such as accessibility and safety in architecture, transportation, and the physical environment; equal opportunities in independent living, employment equity, education, and housing; and freedom from discrimination, abuse, neglect, and from other rights violations.

Disability activists are working to break institutional, physical, and societal barriers that prevent people with disabilities from living their lives like other citizens. Disability rights is complex because there are multiple ways in which a disabled person can have their rights violated in different socio-political, cultural, and legal contexts. For example, a common barrier that disabled individuals face is employment. Specifically, employers are often unwilling or unable to provide the necessary accommodations to enable disabled individuals to effectively carry out their job functions.

History

United States

American disability rights have evolved significantly over the past century. Before the disability rights movement, President Franklin D. Roosevelt's refusal to be publicized using his wheelchair demonstrated and symbolized the existing stigma surrounding disabilities. While campaigning, giving speeches, or acting as a public figure, he hid his disability. This perpetuated the ideology that "disability equates to weakness".

Disability in the United States was viewed as a personal issue, and not many political or governmental organizations existed to support individuals in these groups. In the 1950s, there was a transition to volunteerism and parent-oriented organizations, such as the March of Dimes. While this was the beginning of activism and seeking support for these groups, disabled children were largely hidden by their parents out of fear of forced rehabilitation.

When the civil rights movement took off in the 1960s, disability advocates joined it and the women's rights movements to promote equal treatment and challenge stereotypes. It was at this time that disability rights advocacy began to have a cross-disability focus. People with different kinds of disabilities (physical and mental disabilities, along with visual and hearing disabilities) and different essential needs came together to fight for a common cause. It was not until 1990 that the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) was passed, legally prohibiting discrimination on account of disability, and mandating disability access in all buildings and public areas. The ADA is historically significant in that it defined the meaning of reasonable accommodation in order to protect employees and employers.

United Nations

On a global scale, the United Nations has established the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, specifically discussing indigenous people with disabilities (Lockwood 146).

Issues

People with intellectual and developmental disabilities

Main article: Self-advocacy

People with intellectual and developmental disabilities focus their efforts on ensuring that they have the same human rights as other people and that they are treated like human beings. Since the formation of the self advocacy movement in the 1960s, the largest focus of the movement has been to get people with I/DD out of institutions and into the community. Another main focus is ensuring that people with intellectual and developmental disabilities are in integrated workplaces that pay at least minimum wage. In the US, it is still legal to pay people with I/DD below minimum wage in sheltered workshops. Many people with intellectual and developmental disabilities are put under guardianship and are not allowed to make their own decisions about their lives.

Another issue is the continued dehumanization of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, which prompted the slogan People First, still used as a rallying cry and a common organizational name in the self advocacy movement. Self advocates are also involved in the "R-Word" Campaign, in which they try to eliminate the use of the slur "retard". Self advocates successfully advocated to change the name of the Arc.

Autism rights movement

Further information: Autistic rights movement and Neurodiversity

See also: Autism friendly

The autism rights movement is a social movement that emphasizes the concept of neurodiversity, viewing the autism spectrum as a result of natural variations in the human brain rather than a disorder to be cured. The autism rights movement advocates for several goals, including greater acceptance of autistic behaviors; therapies that focus on coping skills rather than imitating the behaviors of neurotypical peers; the creation of social networks and events that allow autistic people to socialize on their own terms; and the recognition of the autistic community as a minority group.

Autism rights or neurodiversity advocates believe that the autism spectrum is primarily genetic and should be accepted as a natural expression of the human genome. This perspective is distinct from two other views: the medical perspective that autism is caused by a genetic defect and should be addressed by targeting the autism gene(s), and fringe theories that autism is caused by environmental factors such as vaccines. The movement is controversial. A common criticism against autistic activists is that the majority of them are "high-functioning" or have Asperger syndrome and do not represent the views of "low-functioning" autistic people.

People with mental health issues

Advocates for the rights of people with mental health disabilities focus mainly on self-determination, and an individual's ability to live independently. The right to have an independent life, using paid assistant care instead of being institutionalized, if the individual wishes, is a major goal of the disability rights movement, and is the main goal of the similar independent living and self-advocacy movements, which are most strongly associated with people with intellectual disabilities and mental health disorders. These movements have supported people with disabilities to live as more active participants in society.

Freedom from discrimination and abuse

Freedom from abuse, neglect, and violations of a person's rights are also important goals of the disability rights movement. Abuse and neglect includes inappropriate seclusion and restraint, inappropriate use of force by staff and/or providers, threats, harassment and/or retaliation by staff or providers, failure to provide adequate nutrition, clothing, and/or medical and mental health care, and/or failure to provide a clean and safe living environment, as well as other issues which pose a serious threat to the physical and psychological well-being of a person with a disability. Violations of patients' rights include failure to obtain informed consent for treatment, failure to maintain the confidentiality of treatment records, and inappropriate restriction of the right to communicate and associate with others, as well as other restrictions of rights.^{[citation needed]} As a result of the work done through the disability rights movement, significant disability rights legislation was passed in the 1970s through the 1990s in the U.S.

Major events

See also: Timeline of disability rights outside the United States and Timeline of disability rights in the United States

Australia

In 1978, protests outside Australia's Parliament House in Canberra helped force the government to rescind taxes on government payments to people with disabilities. Demonstrations inside and outside parliament have been held regarding various issues, leading to an expansion of the National Attendant Care Scheme in 1992 and helping to convince the federal government to establish the Royal Commission into Violence, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability in 2019. Similar protests outside state parliaments have fed into campaigns for improved rights and funding, leading to improvements in supported accommodation in New South Wales in 1994 and continued support for Queensland disability advocacy services in 2021.

Beginning in 1981, the International Year of the Disabled Person, campaigners targeted beauty pageants such as the Miss Australia Quest in order to, in the words of activist Leslie Hall, "challenge the notion of beauty" and "reject the charity ethic." High-profile demonstrations led to some charities abandoning their use of such contests for fundraising and also saw some remove offensive language from their organisational titles. Following a long nationwide campaign involving hundreds of thousands of people, the National Disability Insurance Scheme was introduced in Australia in 2013 to fund several supports. National campaigns by groups such as Every Australian Counts have since been launched to extend the scheme and protect it from cuts and restrictions on access.

Canada

Canada's largest province, Ontario, created legislation, Accessibility for Ontarians with Disabilities Act, 2005, with the goals of becoming accessible by 2025. In 2019, the Accessible Canada Act became law. This is the first national Canadian legislation on accessibility that affects all government departments and federally regulated agencies.

India

The Rights of Persons with Disabilities Act, 2016 is the disability legislation passed by the Indian Parliament to fulfill its obligation to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities, which India ratified in 2007. The Act replaced the existing Persons With Disabilities (Equal Opportunities, Protection of Rights and Full Participation) Act, 1995. It came into effect on 28 December 2016. This law recognizes 21 disabilities.

United Kingdom

Disability rights activist outside Scottish Parliament, 30 March 2013

In the United Kingdom, following extensive activism by people with disabilities over several decades, the Disability Discrimination Act 1995 (DDA 1995) was passed. This made it unlawful in the United Kingdom to discriminate against people with disabilities in relation to employment, the provision of goods and services, education, and transport. The Equality and Human Rights Commission provides support for this Act. Equivalent legislation exists in Northern Ireland, which is enforced by the Northern Ireland Equality Commission.

Following the introduction of the Bedroom Tax (officially the Under-occupancy penalty) in the Welfare Reform Act 2012, disability activists have played a significant role in the development of Bedroom Tax protests. A wide range of benefit changes are estimated to affect disabled people disproportionately and to compromise disabled people's right to independent living. The Down Syndrome Bill, created by Evan Mitchell OBE, will provide legal recognition to people living with Down syndrome.

United States

Further information: Timeline of disability rights in the United States

Further information: Suffrage for Americans with Disabilities

In 1948, a watershed for the movement was the proof of the existence of physical and program barriers. The proof was provided as a specification for barrier-free usable facilities for people with disabilities. The specifications provided the minimum requirements for barrier-free physical and program access. An example of barriers is: providing only steps to enter buildings; lack of maintenance of walkways; locations not connected with public transit; lack of visual and hearing communications, which ends up segregating individuals with disabilities from independent participation, and opportunities. The ANSI Barrier Free Standard (phrase coined by Timothy Nugent, the lead investigator) called "ANSI A117.1, Making Buildings Accessible to and Usable by the Physically Handicapped", provides the indisputable proof that the barriers exist. The standard is the outcome of physical therapists, bio-mechanical engineers, and individuals with disabilities who developed and participated in over 40 years of research. The standard provides the criteria for modifying programs and the physical site to provide independence. The standard has been emulated globally since its introduction in Europe, Asia, Japan, Australia, and Canada in the early 1960s.

One of the most important developments of the disability rights movement was the growth of the independent living movement, which emerged in California in the 1960s through the efforts of Edward Roberts and other wheelchair-using individuals. This movement, a subset of the disability rights movement, postulates that people with disabilities are the best experts on their needs, and therefore, they must take the initiative, individually and collectively, in designing and promoting better solutions and must organize themselves for political power. Besides de-professionalization and self-representation, the independent living movement's ideology comprises de-medicalization of disability, de-institutionalization, and cross-disability (i.e., inclusion in the independent living movement regardless of diagnoses). Similarly, the Architectural Barriers Act was passed in 1968, mandating that federally constructed buildings and facilities be accessible to people with physical disabilities. This act is generally considered to be the first-ever federal disability rights legislation. Unfortunately for those with cognitive disabilities, their disability made it more difficult to be the best expert of their own needs, hindering their ability to self-advocate as their wheelchair-using counterparts could. Self-representation was much more difficult for those who could not articulate their thoughts, leading to their dependence on others to carry on the movement.

In 1973, the (American) Rehabilitation Act became law; Sections 501, 503, and 504 prohibited discrimination in federal programs and services and all other programs or services receiving federal funds. Key language in the Rehabilitation Act, found in Section 504, states "No otherwise qualified handicapped [sic] individual in the United States, shall, solely by reason of his [sic] handicap [sic], be excluded from the participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving federal financial assistance." The act also specifies money that can be allocated to help disabled people receive training for the work force as well as to assist in making sure that they can then reach work without running into inaccessibility problems. This was the first civil rights law guaranteeing equal opportunity for people with disabilities.

Another crucial turning point was the 504 Sit-in in 1977 of government buildings operated by the United States Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (HEW), conceived by Frank Bowe and organized by the American Coalition of Citizens with Disabilities, that led to the release of regulations pursuant to Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. On April 5, 1977, activists began to demonstrate, and some sat in the offices found in ten of the federal regions, including New York City, Los Angeles, Boston, Denver, Chicago, Philadelphia, and Atlanta. One of the most noteworthy protests occurred in San Francisco. The protesters demanded the signing of regulations for Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973. The successful sit-in was led by Judith Heumann. The first day of protests marked the first of a 25-day sit-in. Close to 120 disability activists and protesters occupied the HEW building, and Secretary Joseph Califano finally signed on April 28, 1977. This protest was significant not only because its goal was achieved, but also because it was the foremost concerted effort between people of different disabilities coming together in support of legislation that affected the overall disability population, rather than only specific groups.

In 1978, disability rights activists in Denver, Colorado, organized by the Atlantis Community, held a sit-in and blockade of the Denver Regional Transit Authority buses in 1978. They were protesting the fact that the city's transit system was completely inaccessible for physically disabled people. This action proved to be just the first in a series of civil disobedience demonstrations that lasted for a year until the Denver Transit Authority finally bought buses equipped with wheelchair lifts. In 1983, Americans Disabled for Accessible Public Transit (ADAPT) was responsible for another civil disobedience campaign also in Denver that lasted seven years. They targeted the American Public Transport Association in protest of inaccessible public transportation; this campaign ended in 1990 when bus lifts for people using wheelchairs were required nationwide by the Americans with Disabilities Act.

Another significant protest related to disability rights was the Deaf President Now protest by the Gallaudet University students in Washington, D.C., in March 1988. The eight-day (March 6 – March 13) demonstration, occupation, and lock-out of the school began when the Board of Trustees appointed a new hearing President, Elisabeth Zinser, over two Deaf candidates. The students' primary grievance was that the university, which was dedicated to the education of people who are Deaf, had never had a Deaf president, someone representative of them. Of the protesters' four demands, the main one was the resignation of the current president and the appointment of a Deaf one. The demonstration consisted of about 2,000 students and nonstudent participants. The protests took place on campus, in government buildings, and in the streets. In the end, all the students' demands were met and [[I. King Jordan was appointed the first Deaf President of the university.

In 1990, the Americans with Disabilities Act became law, and it provided comprehensive civil rights protection for people with disabilities. Closely modeled after the Civil Rights Act and Section 504, the law was the most sweeping disability rights legislation in American history. It mandated that local, state, and federal governments and programs be accessible, that employers with more than 15 employees make "reasonable accommodations" for workers with disabilities and not discriminate against otherwise qualified workers with disabilities, and that public accommodations such as restaurants and stores not discriminate against people with disabilities and that they make reasonable modifications to ensure access for disabled members of the public. The act also mandated access to public transportation, communication, and other areas of public life.

The first Disability Pride March in the United States was held in Boston in 1990. A second Disability Pride March was held in Boston in 1991. There were no subsequent Disability Pride Marches/Parades for many years, until Chicago on Sunday, July 18, 2004. It was funded with $10,000 in seed money that Sarah Triano received in 2003 as part of the Paul G. Hearne Leadership award from the American Association of People with Disabilities. According to Triano, 1,500 people attended the parade. Yoshiko Dart was the parade marshal.^[41]

Exhibitions and collections

To mark the 10th anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act, the Smithsonian Institution National Museum of American History opened an exhibition that examined the history of activism by people with disabilities, their friends, and families to secure the civil rights guaranteed to all Americans. Objects on view included the pen President George H. W. Bush used to sign the Act and one of the first ultralight wheelchairs. The exhibition was designed for maximum accessibility. Web-based kiosks - prototypes for a version that will eventually be available to museums and other cultural institutions - provided alternate formats to experience the exhibition. The exhibition was open from July 6, 2000, to July 23, 2001.

Debates and approaches

A key debate in the disability rights movement is between affirmative action for disabled people versus fighting for equitable treatment. According to a 1992 polling organization, many fear that integrating disabled people into the workplace may affect their company image, or it may result in decreased productivity. This coincides with the 1992 parliamentary review of the Employment Equity Act, which stated that employers should look to implement equity without having an official quota system. This remains an ongoing debate.

An additional debate is between institutionalizing disabled people and supporting them in their homes. In 1963, during John F. Kennedy's presidency, he transformed the national view of mental health by boosting funding for community-based programs and drafting legislation for mental health care. He also created the President's Panel on Mental Retardation, which created recommendations for new programs that governments can implement on a state level, therefore moving away from "custodial institutions". This shift away from institutionalization has generated a long-lasting stigma against mental health institutions, which is why in politics there is often not enough funding for this concept.

According to the US Supreme Court case Humphrey v. Cady, civil commitment laws and eligibility for intervention exist only in the instance when the person is ruled an immediate danger to themself or others. The difficulty of proving "immediate danger" has led to the unexpected outcome that it is harder to commit mentally ill patients to hospital and easier to send them to prison. According to the National Alliance on Mental Illness, about 15% male inmates and 30% female inmates have some kind of serious mental illness that remains untreated.

Another ongoing debate is how to cultivate self-determination for disabled people. The common article 1 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights and the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights asserts that "All peoples have the right to self-determination" with free will. Because this highlights the concept of free and autonomous choice, one argument is that any government interference deters self-determination, thus leaving it to disabled people to seek out any help they need from charities and nonprofit organizations. Charitable organizations, such as churches, believe in helping disabled people with nothing in return. On the other hand, another approach is a participatory, symbiotic relationship, which include methods like professional development and resource provisions. More specifically, one approach is to allow disabled people to self-articulate their needs and generate their own solutions and analyses. Instead of passive participation, which is participation by being told what to do or what has been done, this approach proposes to allow this group to be self-sufficient and make their own decisions. Barriers to this include defining who is a self-sufficient individual with a disability, circling back to the concept of self-determination.

Applied philosophy

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Applied_philosophy 

The Thinker. Attempting to differentiate applied philosophy from pure philosophy.

Applied philosophy (philosophy from Greek: φιλοσοφία, philosophia, 'love of wisdom') is a branch of philosophy that studies philosophical problems of practical concern. The topic covers a broad spectrum of issues in environment, medicine, science, engineering, policy, law, politics, economics and education. The term was popularised in 1982 by the founding of the Society for Applied Philosophy by Brenda Almond, and its subsequent journal publication Journal of Applied Philosophy edited by Elizabeth Brake. Methods of applied philosophy are similar to other philosophical methods including questioning, dialectic, critical discussion, rational argument, systematic presentation, thought experiments and logical argumentation.

Applied philosophy is differentiated from pure philosophy primarily by dealing with specific topics of practical concern, whereas pure philosophy does not take an object; metaphorically it is philosophy applied to itself; exploring standard philosophical problems and philosophical objects (e.g. metaphysical properties) such as the fundamental nature of reality, epistemology and morality among others. Applied philosophy is therefore a subsection of philosophy, broadly construed it does not deal with topics in the purely abstract realm, but takes a specific object of practical concern.

Definitions

General definition

Due to the recent coinage of the term, the full scope and meaning of Applied Philosophy is at times still quite ambiguous and contentious, but generally does interact with the several other general definitions of philosophy. A Companion of Applied Philosophy provides three introductory articles by Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen, David Archard and Suzanne Uniacke that outline general definitions and parameters for the field of Applied Philosophy.

In the first chapter, Lippert-Rasmussen article “The Nature of Applied Philosophy” begins by unpacking the term “applied philosophy”, outlining that to apply is a verb that takes an object, therefore if one were doing philosophy and not applying it to something then one would be grammatically or conceptually confused to say that one is doing applied philosophy. Lippert-Rasmussen provides seven conceptions of Applied Philosophy: the relevance conception, the specificity conception, the practical conception, the activist conception, the methodological conception, the empirical facts conception, the audience conception. These definitions are specified in terms of necessary and sufficient conditions, making the different conceptions incompatible with one another. Lippert-Rasmussen stresses that applied philosophy is much larger than that of applied ethics, therefore applied philosophers should strive beyond just proposing normative moral frameworks, allowing for Applied Philosophy to offer metaphysical frameworks for understanding contemporary results in other sciences and disciplines.

In the third chapter of A Companion of Applied Philosophy, Suzanne Uniacke's article “The Value of Applied Philosophy”, Uniacke outlines that applied philosophy is really a field of philosophical inquiry, differentiating itself from pure philosophy by claiming the former can provide practical guidance on issues beyond the philosophical domain. Within applied philosophy there are generally two modes of focus, it can be academically focused (for an academic audience), or it can be in “out-reach mode” (for a non-academic audience). In drawing on philosophical subdisciplines such as metaphysics, epistemology and ethics, applied philosophers shape their contributions and analysis on issues of practical concern. In this intersection between philosophical theories, principles, and concepts with issues beyond that of the purely philosophical domain (out-reach mode), these problems may give valuable challenges to traditionally accepted philosophies, providing a stress test, feedback or friction on principles that are so often confined within the idealistic philosophical framework.

Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen: seven conceptions

Relevance conception: Claims that philosophy is applied if and only if it is relevant to important questions of everyday life. To be clear this conception claims that applied philosophy need not answer the important questions of everyday life, yet it needs to philosophically explore or at least be relevant to them. There is no requirement on what type of everyday life questions are relevant, it can vary across time and audience, some questions may be relevant to some people at one time and to others at another.

Specificity conception: Philosophy is applied if, and only if, it addresses a comparatively specific question within the branch of philosophy, e.g., metaphysics, epistemology or moral philosophy, to which it belongs. Establishes philosophical principles to then apply and explore their implications in the applied (non-philosophical) specific domains of inquiry.

Practical conception: Philosophy is applied if, and only if, it justifies an answer to comparatively specific questions within its relevant branch of philosophy about what we ought to do.

Activist conception: Philosophy is applied if, and only if, it is motivated by an ambition of having a certain causal effect on the world. Whether that causal effect be to educate, elucidate or edify on a given topic, with real world consequences thereof. As Lippert-Rasmussen points out, much of pure philosophy has quite an impact on the world and yet one would still claim it to be pure rather than applied philosophy, however the distinction of the activist conception lies in their goal, the activist conception has greater emphasis on being an educator and having a causal impact on the world, changing their primary philosophical commitment from “knowledge and truth” to having a causal impact. The change of commitment and goals may result in the change of methods in order to realize their goal.

Methodological conception: Philosophy is applied if, and only if, it involves the use of specifically philosophical methods to explore issues outside the narrow set of philosophical problems.

Empirical facts conception: Philosophy is applied if, and only if, it is significantly informed by empirical evidence – in particular, that provided by empirical sciences. Stresses the interdisciplinary nature of applied philosophy, characterising applied philosophy as drawing on the results of empirical sciences and the evidence thereof to be sufficiently informed in contributing philosophical analysis and input.

Audience conception: Philosophy is applied if, and only if, its intended audience is non-philosophers. Despite the audience conception not always requiring background knowledge of the given audience, it is prudent for philosophers who are engaging with specific scientific disciplines to be well read on the empirical facts of those disciplines the philosopher addresses, thus re-iterating the value of being empirically informed with the facts, especially when engaging with interdisciplinary studies of philosophy with some other subject.

Applied moral philosophy

Applied moral philosophy (or applied ethics) is the branch of moral philosophy concerned with philosophical inquiry into moral issues that arise in everyday contexts and institutional design frameworks (e.g. how social institutions are structured). Applied moral philosophy involves the use of philosophical theories and methods of analysis to treat fundamentally moral problems in non-philosophical subjects, such as technology, public policy, and medicine.^[19] This includes the use of fundamental moral principles and theories to assess particular social practices, arrangements, and norms prevailing in particular societies at particular times. Some key topics in applied moral philosophy are business ethics, bioethics, feminist ethics, environmental ethics, and medical ethics. Beauchamp (1984) notes where applied moral philosophy and theoretical ethics diverge is not in their methodologies, but rather, in the content of their analysis and assessment.

Although interest in topics of applied ethics, such as civil disobedience, suicide, and free speech, can be traced all the way back to antiquity, applied moral philosophy gained mainstream popularity recently. However, the history of philosophy still shows a tradition of moral philosophy more concerned with its theoretical concerns, such as justifying fundamental moral principles and examining the nature of moral judgements. Applied ethics first gained mainstream popularity in 1967, as many professions such as law, medicine and engineering were profoundly affected by social issues and injustices at the time. For example, various environmental movements sparked political conversations about humanities relationship to the natural world, which led to the development of important philosophical arguments against anthropocentrism. As awareness of these social concerns grew, so did discussions of them in academic philosophy. By the 1970s and 1980s, there was a surge in publications devoted to philosophical inquiry of subjects in applied ethics, which were initially directed at biomedical ethics, and later business ethics.

Sub-disciplines of moral philosophy

Moral philosophy is the branch of philosophy concerned with examining the nature of right and wrong. It seeks to provide a framework for what constitutes morally right and wrong actions, and analyses issues surrounding moral principles, concepts and dilemmas. There are three main sub-disciplines of moral philosophy: meta-ethics, normative ethics and applied ethics.

Meta-ethics is the branch of moral philosophy which analyses the nature and status of ethical terms and concepts. It deals with abstract questions about the nature of morality, including whether or not morality actually exists, whether moral judgements are truth-apt (capable of being binary true/false), and if they are, investigating whether the properties of moral statements make them truth-apt in the same way that mathematical and descriptive statements are.

Normative ethics deals with the construction and justification of fundamental moral principles that ought to guide human behaviour. There are three main branches of normative ethical theories: consequentialism, deontology and virtue-based ethics. Consequentialism argues that an action is morally permissible if and only if it maximizes some intrinsic overall good. Deontological theories place rights and duties as the fundamental determinates of what we ought to do, by determining what rights and duties are justifiable constraints on behaviour. Finally, virtue-based theories argue that what one ought to do is what the ideally virtuous person would do.

Applied ethics uses philosophical methods of inquiry to address the moral permissibility of specific actions and practices in particular circumstances. However, applied ethics still requires theories and concepts found in meta-ethics and normative ethics to adequately address applied ethical problems. For example, one cannot confidently assert the moral permissibility of abortion without also assuming that there is such a thing as morally permissible actions, which is a fundamental meta-ethical question. Similarly, the moral permissibility of an action can be justified using a fundamental moral theory or principle found in normative ethics. A conception of these disciplines as such allows for significant overlap in the questions they address, along with their moral theories and ideas.

Methodologies

Main article: Methodology

Applied ethics uses philosophical theories and concepts to tackle moral issues found in non-philosophical contexts. However, there is significant debate over the particular methodology that should be used when determining the moral permissibility of actions and practices during applied ethical inquiry.

One possible methodology involves the application of moral principles and theories to particular issues in applied ethics, and is known as the top-down model of philosophical analysis. Under this model, one must first determine the set of fundamental moral principles which should hold necessarily and universally, in order to apply them to particular issues in applied ethics. The next step is articulating the relevant empirical facts of a situation to better understand how these principles should be applied in that particular context, which then determines the moral permissibility of an action. There are significant issues with this model of how to resolve issues in applied moral philosophy, as it requires certainty in a definitive set of moral principles to guide human behaviour. However, there is universal disagreement over which principles this definitive set consists of, if any, creating issues for a conception of applied ethics using the top-down model. On the other hand, the bottom-up model involves formulating intuitive responses to questions about what one ought to do in particular situations, and then developing philosophical understandings or judgements based on the intuitions one has about a case. We can then revise intuitions in light of these philosophical judgements to reach an appropriate resolution on what one ought to do in a given situation. This model faces similar problems as the previous one, where disagreements about particular judgements and intuitions require us to have some other mechanism to examine the validity of intuitive judgements.

The Reflective Equilibrium model combines the top-down and bottom-up approaches, where one should reflect on their current beliefs, and revise them in light of their general and particular moral judgements. A general belief may be rejected in light of specific situations to which it is applied when the belief recommends an action one finds morally unacceptable. A particular belief can likewise be rejected if it conflicts with general moral beliefs one takes to be plausible, and which justifies many of their other moral beliefs about what one ought to do in a given situation. An agent can then reach a state of equilibrium where the set containing their general and particular moral judgements is coherent and consistent.

Business ethics

Main article: Business ethics

Business ethics is the study of moral issues that arise when human beings exchange goods and services, where such exchanges are fundamental to daily existence. A major contemporary issue in business ethics is about the social responsibility of corporate executives. One theory proposed by Friedman (2008) describes the sole responsibility of a CEO (Chief Executive Officer) being profit maximization through their business abilities and knowledge. This is known at stockholder theory, which says promoting the interests of stockholders is the sole responsibility of corporate executives.

Freeman (1998) presents a competing theory of corporate social responsibility by appealing to pre-theoretical commitments about the moral significance of assessing who an action affects and how. Proponents of stakeholder theory argue that corporate executives have moral responsibilities to all stakeholders in their business operations, including consumers, employees, and communities. Thus, a business decision may maximize profits for stockholders, but it is not morally permissible unless it does not conflict with the demands of other stakeholders in the company. Freeman (2008) takes a Rawlsian approach to mediate conflicts amongst stakeholders, where the right action is that which will promote the well-being of the stakeholders who are the least well-off. Other decision-making principles can also be appealed to, and an adequate stakeholder theory will be assessed according to the decision making theory it employs to mediate between conflicting demands, the plausibility of the theory, and its ability to achieve results in particular cases.

Another key issue in business ethics, questions the moral status of corporations. If corporations are the kind of thing capable of being morally evaluated, then they can be assigned moral responsibility. Otherwise, there remains a question of whom to ascribe moral blame towards for morally wrong business practices. French (2009) argues that corporations are moral agents, and that their “corporate internal decision structure” can be morally evaluated, as it has the required intentionality for moral blameworthiness. Danley (1980) disagrees and says that corporations cannot be moral agents merely because they are intentional, but that other considerations, such as the ability to be punished, must obtain when assigning moral responsibility to an agent.

Bioethics

Main article: Bioethics

Bioethics is the study of human conduct towards the animate and inanimate natural world against a background of life sciences. It provides a disciplinary framework for a wide array of moral questions in life sciences that concern humans, the environment, and animals. There are 3 main sub-disciplines of bioethics: medical ethics, animal ethics, and environmental ethics.

Medical ethics

Main article: Medical ethics

Medical ethics can be traced back to the Hippocratic Oath in 500 B.C.E., making it the oldest sub-discipline of bioethics. Medical ethics concerns itself with questions of what one ought to do  in particular moral situations arising in medical contexts. There are a number of key issues in medical ethics, such as end-of-life and beginning-of-life debates, physician-patient relationships, and adequate healthcare accessibility.

The abortion debate remains one of the most widely discussed issues in medical ethics, which concerns the conditions under which an abortion is morally permissible, if any. Thomson (1971) revolutionized philosophical understanding of issues in the abortion debate, by questioning the widespread belief that because a fetus is a person, that it is morally wrong to kill them. She uses the violinist thought experiment to show that even if a fetus is a person, their right to life is not absolute, and therefore provided non-theistic and rational justification for the moral permissibility of abortion under certain conditions. Frances Kamm (1992) takes a deontological approach in order to expand on Thomson's argument, where she argues that factors such as third-party intervention and morally responsible creation support its permissibility.

Another debate in medical ethics is about the moral permissibility of euthanasia, and under what conditions euthanasia is morally acceptable. Euthanasia is the intentional killing of another person in order to benefit them. One influential argument in favour of voluntary active euthanasia and voluntary passive euthanasia is put forth by Rachels (1975), who is not only able to show the permissibility of the latter in cases where someone's life is no longer worth living, but that there mere fact that active euthanasia involves killing someone and passive euthanasia involves letting them die does not make it more just to do one over the other. He presents his argument in response to critics who argue that it is morally worse to kill someone than to merely let them die. However, he considers a case where a husband wants his wife to die, and in one case, does so by putting lethal poison in her wine, and in the second case, walks in on her drowning in a bathtub and lets her die. He argues that his thought experiment shows why killing someone is not always morally worse than letting them die, forcing defenders of only passive euthanasia to also commit themselves to the moral permissibility of active euthanasia, unless they can show why only the former option is morally acceptable.

Environmental ethics

Main article: Environmental ethics

Environmental ethics is the discipline of applied ethics that studies the moral relationship of human beings to the environment and its non-human contents. The practical goals of environmental ethics are to provide a moral grounds for social policies aimed at protecting the environment and remedying its degradation. It questions the status of the environment independently of human beings, and categorizes the different positions on its status as anthropocentrism and non-anthropocentrism. Anthropocentrism is the view that value is human-centered and all other entities are means to human ends. This bears on the question of the value of the environment, and whether or not the environment has intrinsic value independent of human beings. By taking a non-anthropocentric view that it does have intrinsic value, one should question why humanity would try to destroy something with intrinsic value rather than preserve it, under the assumption that agents will try to preserve things with value.

Feminism has an important relationship to environmental ethics where, as King (1989) argues, human exploitation of nature can be seen as a manifestation and extension of the oppression of women. She argues that humanity's destruction of nature is a result of associating nature with the feminine, where feminine agents have historically and systemically been inferiorized and oppressed by a male-dominating culture. King (1989) motivates her argument by examining the historical domination of women in society, and then argues that all other domination and hierarchies flow from this. Her argument justifies the moral wrongness of environmental degradation and human exploitation of nature not by arguing in favour of its intrinsic value, but by appealing to the moral wrongness of female oppression by a male-dominating culture.

Applied political and legal philosophy

Applied political and legal philosophy conducts investigation and analysis using philosophical methods and theories into specific and concrete political and legal issues. Historically, much of the work in political and legal philosophy has pursued more general issues, such as questions about the nature of justice, ideal forms of democracy, and how to organize political and legal institutions. Applied political and legal philosophy uses the insights of political and legal philosophy to critically examine more concrete issues within the disciplines. Some examples include philosophical inquiry into family-based immigration policies, understanding the conceptual structure of civil disobedience, and discussing the bounds of prosecutorial discretion in domestic violence cases. Dempsey and Lister (2016) identify three activist approaches to applied political and legal philosophy.

Activist approaches

The standard activist approach is used when a philosopher presents arguments directed primarily at other philosophers, defending or critiquing a policy or some set of policies. If a policy maker happens to come across the argument, and is sufficiently persuaded to make public policy changes supporting the philosophers desired outcome, then the standard activist philosopher will be satisfied. However, their main goal is to articulate a sound argument in favour of their position on some policy or set of political/legal issues, regardless of if it actually influences public policy.

Conceptual activism is when arguments are directed primarily to other philosophers, and critically analyses and clarifies some concept, where the arguments presented may be relevant in future policy making. The goal of conceptual activists is to motivate a particular understanding of concepts which may later inform policy making. Westen's (2017) work on consent is paradigmatic of this approach, where his analysis of the concept of consent unpacks confusions amongst not only philosophers and academics, but also policy makers, as to the nature and limitations of consent.

Extreme activism is when a philosopher acts as an expert consultant and presents an argument directly to policy makers in favour of some view. Although they still aim to present a sound argument about what should happen in the world, as the standard activist does, this goal is just as important as their goal to persuade policy makers in order to bring about the desired outcome of their work. Thus, the measure of success for an extreme activist consists not only of doing good philosophy, but also of their direct causal contribution to the world. However, the tension between their political and philosophical goals has potentially negative outcomes, such as wasting policy makers' time, who are not convinced by philosophical arguments, the possibility of corruption for philosophers placed in this position, and the potential to undermine the value of philosophy.

Feminist political philosophy

Feminist political philosophy involves understanding and critiquing political philosophy's inattention to feminist concerns, and instead articulates ways for political theory to be reconstructed to further feminist aims. Feminist political philosophy has been instrumental in reorganising political institutions and practices, as well as developing new political ideals and practices which justify their reorganisation. Work in feminist political philosophy uses the various activist approaches to causally affect public policies and political institutions. For example, liberal feminist theorising, whose main concerns are protecting and enhancing women's political rights and personal autonomy, has consistently used conceptual activism to further their aims.

Applied epistemology

While epistemology—the study of knowledge and justified belief—used to primarily be concerned with the seeking of truth and have an individualistic orientation in the task of doing so, recent developments in this branch of philosophy do not only highlight the social ways in which knowledge is generated, but also its practical and normative dimensions. Applied epistemology is the branch of applied philosophy that precisely explores and addresses these considerations.

For instance, even if traditional epistemology often investigates what we are justified in believing—the most paradigmatic case being the tripartite analysis of knowledge, i.e. that S knows that p if and only if p is true, S believes that p, and S is justified in believing that p—, applied epistemologists have argued that those questions are equivalent to queries about what we ought to believe: stressing that epistemology is fundamentally a normative subject. Coady (2016) claims so by recognizing that this branch of philosophy is not merely interested in how things are, but also in how they ought to be. As a result, there might be different (and more preferable) methods for acquiring knowledge depending on whose values guide one's orientation in life or what goals direct their pursuit of truth.

Social epistemology, in its focus on the social dimensions of knowledge and the ways that institutions mediate its acquisition, often overlaps with and can be seen as a part of applied epistemology. But one cannot equate those fields of research as social epistemology has been, so far, a lot more investigated through a consequentialist lens—i.e. it has been exploring the epistemic consequences of our social institutions that generate knowledge—than other normative predispositions. Coady (2016) claims that social epistemology has not sufficiently addressed questions of what individuals ought to believe and how they should pursue knowledge. And, while this social and consequentialist orientation has great value, applied epistemology also encompasses other normative orientations—like deontology, utilitarianism, and virtue ethics, amongst others—and explores individualistic questions of practical epistemic concerns.

The potential topics of applied epistemology include, but are not limited to: feminist epistemology, the epistemology of deliberative democracy, freedom of expression and diversity, conspiracy theories, the epistemological dimensions and implications of sexual consent, information markets, and more.

Feminist epistemology

Main article: Feminist epistemology

Feminist epistemology studies how gendered practices and norms contribute to social oppression—including, but not limited to the enforcement of heteropatriarchy, racism, ableism, and classism—and proposes ways for agents to revise them in light of this. This branch of feminist philosophy also contributes to the scope of social epistemology as it identifies several ways in which conventional knowledge practices and processes disadvantage women, such as excluding them from inquiry, denying them epistemic authority, and producing theories of women which misrepresent them to serve patriarchal interests.

Feminist epistemology is not only applied in the sense that its liberatory goals are explicitly political and, as a result, seek a certain causal effect on the world. But this branch of epistemology is also greatly relevant since, to be effective activists, Wylie (2001) stresses that it is necessary “to understand the conditions that disadvantage women with as much empirical accuracy and explanatory power as possible.”

A demonstration of this necessity is that, since the Black and lesbian feminist theorizing of the 1980s, it is not effective anymore for feminists to investigate the conceptions and phenomena related to gender without the concept of intersectionality: which does not only make visible how the lived experiences of an individual and social group are shaped by their interdependent and overlapping identities, but also that, ultimately, their access to power and privilege is structured by those. Crenshaw (1989) coined this interpretative framework by investigating the failures of the legal courts in DeGraffenreid v General Motors (1976), Moore v Hughes Helicopter (1983), and Payne v Travenol (1976) to recognize that Black women were both discriminated on the basis of gender and of race.

Epistemology of deliberative democracy

The deliberative conception of democracy claims that public deliberation is necessary for the justification of this political system and the legitimacy of its decision-making processes. Broadly put, public deliberations refer to the open spaces where free and equal citizens share and discuss their reasons for supporting different policy proposals and societal ideas.^[43] This emphasis on public deliberation differentiates the deliberative conception from the aggregative conception of democracy: which understands the democratic process as a tool to gather and track the preferences and beliefs of citizenry at the moment of voting. This area of applied epistemology explores the epistemic values, virtues, and vices that underscore and can be observed to emerge from deliberative decision-making.

For instance, in the case of a referendum or an election, the Condorcet jury theorem (CJT) articulates that: if each voter is more likely than not to be correct on a topic on which they are asked to vote (i.e. the competence condition) and if each votes independently from one another (i.e. the independence condition), then it is not only the case that a majority of people is more likely to be correct than a single individual on the outcome of their vote. But it is also the case that the probability that a majority will vote for the correct outcome increases with the number of voters.

On the one hand, the CJT provides a solid defense and empirical argument for the importance of voting in democracy: this procedure leads decision-making bodies to make better decisions because of more accurate epistemic inputs. On the other hand, it also creates a debate on the influence of public deliberations on the well-functioning of voting procedures. While Estlund (1989) and Waldron (1989) claim that public deliberation, in its exchange of reasons and information about the outcomes under discussion, improves the competence condition of the votes, Dietrich and Spiekermann (2013) raise concerns about the fact that: if voters engage with one another too much prior to or at the moment of making a decision, the independence condition of the CJT is undermined and its optimistic results become distorted.

Many have also raised the ‘public ignorance’ objection to the deliberative conception of democracy: holding that most people are too ignorant for deliberative democracy to be an effective and viable practice. Talisse (2004) responds to this proposed limitation by claiming that it is unclear about what exactly ‘ignorance’ refers to — according to him, this objection conflates the states of being uninformed, misinformed, and uninterested — and that attributing culpability to those that ‘do not know’ takes responsibility away from the democratic institutions (like media and academia) that fail them.

While social epistemology takes a closer look at the roles of institutional practices to generate, mediate, or prevent knowledge acquisition, a substantial debate in the epistemology of deliberative democracy concerns the legal sanctions on speech, behavior and freedom of expression. The contribution of J.S. Mill (1859) is frequently referenced on this issue, notably supporting that free speech and public deliberation help to eliminate wrong opinions, permit correct beliefs to prevail, and, as a result, promote truth. Censorship and strict limitations of the public sphere would prevent different parties, in a disagreement, from even perceiving the truthful elements of their opponent's argument and could reinforce dogmatic tendencies in a given society. Landemore (2013) also supports that diversity is epistemically beneficial in deliberative democracies; there are higher chances to reach a correct truth if considering more diverse perspectives than few. Even if one can think of the dimensions of diversity that social and feminist epistemologies refer to, Kappel, Hallsson, and Møller (2016) also bring to the forefront of the discussion: diversity of knowledge, diversity of opinion, cognitive diversity, epistemic norm diversity, and non-epistemic value diversity.

If diversity may help to neutralize biases, ‘enclave deliberations’—a communicative process amongst like-minded people “who talk or even live, much of the time, in isolated enclaves”— can lead to group polarization. Sunstein (2002) defines group polarization as the phenomenon in which members of a group move towards a more extreme position during the process of deliberating with their peers than before doing so. For him, two reasons explain the statistical regularity of this phenomenon. On the one hand, he points to the fact that people do not usually discuss with groups that share different inclinations and predispositions on a particular topic: greatly limiting their ‘argument pool’. On the other hand, he acknowledges that group polarization also arises from the desire of group members to be perceived favourably by their peers.

Sunstein also points to the empirical evidence that diverse and heterogeneous groups tend to give less weight to the views of low-status members — the latter also being frequently more quiet in deliberative bodies. This area of deliberative inequalities overlaps with applied political philosophy and can be explored in the works of: Bohman (1996) and Young (2000), amongst others.

Applied philosophers also propose epistemic virtues and valuable practices to cope with these epistemic vices and deliberative dysfunction. Starting from the premise that there is nothing wrong with changing and being convinced by others about our views, Peter (2013) suggests that it is how one navigates disagreements that matters. For her, well-conducted deliberations are those in which participants treat each other as epistemic peers, that is, they recognize that they are as likely to make a mistake along the way as their peers. As a result, they should not be closed to revising their original beliefs (especially if they realize that their arguments are not sufficiently robust) while holding themselves mutually accountable to one another.

Other topics that explore the epistemology of deliberative democracy include, but are not limited to: epistemic proceduralism, the value or disvalue of disagreement, epistocracy, and social integration, among others.

Applied ontology

Main article: Applied ontology

See also: Ontology (information science)

Applied ontology involves the application of ontology to practical pursuits. This can involve adopting ontological principles in the creation of controlled, representational vocabularies. These vocabularies, referred to as 'ontologies', can be compiled to organize scientific information in a computer-friendly format.

One of the primary uses of ontologies is improving interoperability of data systems. Data within and between organizations can sometimes be trapped within data silos. Ontologies can improve data integration by offering a representative structure which diverse data systems can link up to. By representing our knowledge about domains through classes and the relations between them, ontologies can also be used to improve information retrieval and discovery from databases.

When an ontology is limited to representing entities from a specific subject or domain, it is called a domain ontology. An upper-level ontology (or top-level ontology) represents entities at a highly general level of abstraction. The classes and relations of an upper-level ontology are applicable to many different domain ontologies. Criteria to count as an upper level ontology are defined by ISO/IEC 21838-1:2021. Some examples of upper-level ontologies include Basic Formal Ontology (BFO), Descriptive Ontology for Linguistic and Cognitive Engineering (DOLCE), and TUpper. There are also mid-level ontologies, which define terms that are used in different domains and are less general than those in upper-level ontologies, which they extend from and conform to, such as the Common Core Ontologies.

Supernatural

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supernatural

Supernatural phenomena or entities are those beyond the laws of nature. The term is derived from Medieval Latin supernaturalis, from Latin super- 'above, beyond, outside of' + natura 'nature'. Although the corollary term "nature" has had multiple meanings since the ancient world, the term "supernatural" emerged in the Middle Ages and did not exist in the ancient world. Many cultures around the world lack concepts or reject distinctions between the natural and supernatural.

The supernatural is featured in religious and folkloric contexts, but can also feature as an explanation in more secular contexts, as in the cases of superstitions or belief in the paranormal. The term is attributed to non-physical entities, such as spirits, angels, demons, gods, and goddesses. It also includes claimed abilities embodied in or provided by such beings, including magic, telekinesis, levitation, precognition and extrasensory perception.

The supernatural is hypernymic to religion. Religions are standardized supernaturalist worldviews, or at least more complete than single supernaturalist views. Supernaturalism is the adherence to the supernatural (beliefs, and not violations of causality and physical laws).

Etymology and history of the concept

Occurring as both an adjective and a noun, antecedents of the modern English compound supernatural enter the language from two sources: via Middle French (supernaturel) and directly from the Middle French's term's ancestor, post-Classical Latin (supernaturalis). Post-classical Latin supernaturalis first occurs in the 6th century, composed of the Latin prefix super- and nātūrālis (see nature). The earliest known appearance of the word in the English language occurs in a Middle English translation of Catherine of Siena's Dialogue (orcherd of Syon, around 1425; Þei haue not þanne þe supernaturel lyȝt ne þe liȝt of kunnynge, bycause þei vndirstoden it not).

The semantic value of the term has shifted over the history of its use. Originally the term referred exclusively to Christian understandings of the world. For example, as an adjective, the term can mean "belonging to a realm or system that transcends nature, as that of divine, magical, or ghostly beings; attributed to or thought to reveal some force beyond scientific understanding or the laws of nature; occult, paranormal" or "more than what is natural or ordinary; unnaturally or extraordinarily great; abnormal, extraordinary". Obsolete uses include "of, relating to, or dealing with metaphysics". As a noun, the term can mean "a supernatural being", with a particularly strong history of employment in relation to entities from the mythologies of the indigenous peoples of the Americas.

History of the concept

Saint Peter Attempting to Walk on Water (1766), painting by François Boucher

The ancient world had no word that resembled "supernatural". Dialogues from Neoplatonic philosophy in the third century AD influenced the development of the concept of the supernatural, which later evolved through Christian theology. The term nature had existed since antiquity, with Latin authors like Augustine using the word and its cognates at least 600 times in City of God. In the medieval period, "nature" had ten different meanings and "natural" had eleven different meanings. Peter Lombard, a medieval scholastic of the 12th century, explored causes beyond nature, questioning how certain phenomena could be attributed solely to God. In his writings, he used the term praeter naturam to describe these occurrences. In the scholastic period, Thomas Aquinas classified miracles into three categories: "above nature", "beyond nature" and "against nature". In doing so, he sharpened the distinction between nature and miracles more than the early Church Fathers had done. As a result, he had created a dichotomy of sorts of the natural and supernatural. Though the phrase "supra naturam" was used since the 4th century AD, it was in the 1200s that Thomas Aquinas used the term "supernaturalis". Despite this, the term had to wait until the end of the medieval period before it became more popularly used. The discussions on "nature" from the scholastic period were diverse and unsettled with some postulating that even miracles are natural and that natural magic was a natural part of the world.

Epistemology and metaphysics

See also: Anthropology of religion

The metaphysical considerations of the existence of the supernatural can be difficult to approach as an exercise in philosophy or theology because any dependencies on its antithesis, the natural, will ultimately have to be inverted or rejected. One complicating factor is that there is disagreement about the definition of "natural" and the limits of naturalism. Concepts in the supernatural domain are closely related to concepts in religious spirituality and occultism or spiritualism.

For sometimes we use the word nature for that Author of nature whom the schoolmen, harshly enough, call natura naturans, as when it is said that nature hath made man partly corporeal and partly immaterial. Sometimes we mean by the nature of a thing the essence, or that which the schoolmen scruple not to call the quiddity of a thing, namely, the attribute or attributes on whose score it is what it is, whether the thing be corporeal or not, as when we attempt to define the nature of an angle, or of a triangle, or of a fluid body, as such. Sometimes we take nature for an internal principle of motion, as when we say that a stone let fall in the air is by nature carried towards the centre of the earth, and, on the contrary, that fire or flame does naturally move upwards toward firmament. Sometimes we understand by nature the established course of things, as when we say that nature makes the night succeed the day, nature hath made respiration necessary to the life of men. Sometimes we take nature for an aggregate of powers belonging to a body, especially a living one, as when physicians say that nature is strong or weak or spent, or that in such or such diseases nature left to herself will do the cure. Sometimes we take nature for the universe, or system of the corporeal works of God, as when it is said of a phoenix, or a chimera, that there is no such thing in nature, i.e. in the world. And sometimes too, and that most commonly, we would express by nature a semi-deity or other strange kind of being, such as this discourse examines the notion of.

And besides these more absolute acceptions, if I may so call them, of the word nature, it has divers others (more relative), as nature is wont to be set or in opposition or contradistinction to other things, as when we say of a stone when it falls downwards that it does it by a natural motion, but that if it be thrown upwards its motion that way is violent. So chemists distinguish vitriol into natural and fictitious, or made by art, i.e. by the intervention of human power or skill; so it is said that water, kept suspended in a sucking pump, is not in its natural place, as that is which is stagnant in the well. We say also that wicked men are still in the state of nature, but the regenerate in a state of grace; that cures wrought by medicines are natural operations; but the miraculous ones wrought by Christ and his apostles were supernatural.

— Robert Boyle, A Free Enquiry into the Vulgarly Received Notion of Nature

Nomological possibility is possibility under the actual laws of nature. Most philosophers since David Hume have held that the laws of nature are metaphysically contingent—that there could have been different natural laws than the ones that actually obtain. If so, then it would not be logically or metaphysically impossible, for example, for you to travel to Alpha Centauri in one day; it would just have to be the case that you could travel faster than the speed of light. But of course there is an important sense in which this is not nomologically possible; given that the laws of nature are what they are. In the philosophy of natural science, impossibility assertions come to be widely accepted as overwhelmingly probable rather than considered proved to the point of being unchallengeable. The basis for this strong acceptance is a combination of extensive evidence of something not occurring, combined with an underlying scientific theory, very successful in making predictions, whose assumptions lead logically to the conclusion that something is impossible. While an impossibility assertion in natural science can never be absolutely proved, it could be refuted by the observation of a single counterexample. Such a counterexample would require that the assumptions underlying the theory that implied the impossibility be re-examined. Some philosophers, such as Sydney Shoemaker, have argued that the laws of nature are in fact necessary, not contingent; if so, then nomological possibility is equivalent to metaphysical possibility.

The term supernatural is often used interchangeably with paranormal or preternatural—the latter typically limited to an adjective for describing abilities which appear to exceed what is possible within the boundaries of the laws of physics. Epistemologically, the relationship between the supernatural and the natural is indistinct in terms of natural phenomena that, ex hypothesi, violate the laws of nature, in so far as such laws are realistically accountable.

Parapsychologists use the term psi to refer to an assumed unitary force underlying the phenomena they study. Psi is defined in the Journal of Parapsychology as "personal factors or processes in nature which transcend accepted laws" (1948: 311) and "which are non-physical in nature" (1962:310), and it is used to cover both extrasensory perception (ESP), an "awareness of or response to an external event or influence not apprehended by sensory means" (1962:309) or inferred from sensory knowledge, and psychokinesis (PK), "the direct influence exerted on a physical system by a subject without any known intermediate energy or instrumentation" (1945:305).

— Michael Winkelman, Current Anthropology

Views on the "supernatural" vary, for example it may be seen as:

• indistinct from nature. From this perspective, some events occur according to the laws of nature, and others occur according to a separate set of principles external to known nature. For example, in Scholasticism, it was believed that God was capable of performing any miracle so long as it did not lead to a logical contradiction. Some religions posit immanent deities, however, and do not have a tradition analogous to the supernatural; some believe that everything anyone experiences occurs by the will (occasionalism), in the mind (neoplatonism), or as a part (nondualism) of a more fundamental divine reality (platonism).
• incorrect human attribution. In this view all events have natural and only natural causes. They believe that human beings ascribe supernatural attributes to purely natural events, such as lightning, rainbows, floods and the origin of life.

Cross cultural studies

Anthropological studies across cultures indicate that people do not hold or use natural and supernatural explanations in a mutually exclusive or dichotomous fashion. Instead, the reconciliation of natural and supernatural explanations is normal and pervasive across cultures. Cross cultural studies indicate that there is coexistence of natural and supernatural explanations in both adults and children for explaining numerous things about the world, such as illness, death, and origins. Context and cultural input play a large role in determining when and how individuals incorporate natural and supernatural explanations. The coexistence of natural and supernatural explanations in individuals may be the outcomes two distinct cognitive domains: one concerned with the physical-mechanical relations and another with social relations. Studies on indigenous groups have allowed for insights on how such coexistence of explanations may function.

Supernatural concepts

See also: Religion and Magic and religion

Deity

Main article: Deity

A deity (/ˈdiːəti/ ^ⓘ or /ˈdeɪ.əti/ ^ⓘ) is a supernatural being considered divine or sacred. The Oxford Dictionary of English defines deity as "a god or goddess (in a polytheistic religion)", or anything revered as divine. C. Scott Littleton defines a deity as "a being with powers greater than those of ordinary humans, but who interacts with humans, positively or negatively, in ways that carry humans to new levels of consciousness, beyond the grounded preoccupations of ordinary life." A male deity is a god, while a female deity is a goddess.

Religions can be categorized by how many deities they worship. Monotheistic religions accept only one deity (predominantly referred to as God), polytheistic religions accept multiple deities. Henotheistic religions accept one supreme deity without denying other deities, considering them as equivalent aspects of the same divine principle; and nontheistic religions deny any supreme eternal creator deity but accept a pantheon of deities which live, die and are reborn just like any other being.

Various cultures have conceptualized a deity differently than a monotheistic God. A deity need not be omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient, omnibenevolent or eternal. The monotheistic God, however, does have these attributes. Monotheistic religions typically refer to God in masculine terms, while other religions refer to their deities in a variety of ways – masculine, feminine, androgynous and gender neutral.

Historically, many ancient cultures – such as Ancient India, Ancient Iraq, Ancient Egyptian, Ancient Greek, Ancient Roman, Nordic and Asian culture – personified natural phenomena, variously as either their conscious causes or simply their effects, respectively. Some Avestan and Vedic deities were viewed as ethical concepts. In Indian religions, deities have been envisioned as manifesting within the temple of every living being's body, as sensory organs and mind. Deities have also been envisioned as a form of existence (Saṃsāra) after rebirth, for human beings who gain merit through an ethical life, where they become guardian deities and live blissfully in heaven, but are also subject to death when their merit runs out.

Angel

Main article: Angel

The Archangel Michael wears a late Roman military cloak and cuirass in this 17th-century depiction by Guido Reni.

Schutzengel (English: "Guardian Angel") by Bernhard Plockhorst depicts a guardian angel watching over two children.

An angel is generally a supernatural being found in various religions and mythologies. In Abrahamic religions and Zoroastrianism, angels are often depicted as benevolent celestial beings who act as intermediaries between God or Heaven and Earth. Other roles of angels include protecting and guiding human beings and carrying out God's tasks. Within Abrahamic religions, angels are often organized into hierarchies, although such rankings may vary between sects in each religion, and are given specific names or titles, such as Gabriel or "Destroying angel". The term "angel" has also been expanded to various notions of spirits or figures found in other religious traditions. The theological study of angels is known as "angelology".

In fine art, angels are usually depicted as having the shape of human beings of extraordinary beauty; they are often identified using the symbols of bird wings, halos and light.

Prophecy

Main article: Prophecy

Prophecy involves a process in which messages are communicated by a god to a prophet. Such messages typically involve inspiration, interpretation, or revelation of divine will concerning the prophet's social world and events to come (compare divine knowledge). Prophecy is not limited to any one culture. It is a common property to all known ancient societies around the world, some more than others. Many systems and rules about prophecy have been proposed over several millennia.

Revelation

Main article: Revelation

In religion and theology, revelation is the revealing or disclosing of some form of truth or knowledge through communication with a deity or other supernatural entity or entities.

Some religions have religious texts which they view as divinely or supernaturally revealed or inspired. For instance, Orthodox Jews, Christians and Muslims believe that the Torah was received from Yahweh on biblical Mount Sinai. Most Christians believe that both the Old Testament and the New Testament were inspired by God. Muslims believe the Quran was revealed by God to Muhammad word by word through the angel Gabriel (Jibril). In Hinduism, some Vedas are considered apauruṣeya, "not human compositions", and are supposed to have been directly revealed, and thus are called śruti, "what is heard". Aleister Crowley stated that The Book of the Law had been revealed to him through a higher being that called itself Aiwass.

A revelation communicated by a supernatural entity reported as being present during the event is called a vision. Direct conversations between the recipient and the supernatural entity, or physical marks such as stigmata, have been reported. In rare cases, such as that of Saint Juan Diego, physical artifacts accompany the revelation. The Roman Catholic concept of interior locution includes just an inner voice heard by the recipient.

In the Abrahamic religions, the term is used to refer to the process by which God reveals knowledge of himself, his will and his divine providence to the world of human beings. In secondary usage, revelation refers to the resulting human knowledge about God, prophecy and other divine things. Revelation from a supernatural source plays a less important role in some other religious traditions such as Buddhism, Confucianism and Taoism.

Reincarnation

Main article: Reincarnation

In Jainism, a soul travels to any one of the four states of existence after death depending on its karmas.

Reincarnation is the philosophical or religious concept that an aspect of a living being starts a new life in a different physical body or form after each biological death. It is also called rebirth or transmigration, and is a part of the Saṃsāra doctrine of cyclic existence. It is a central tenet of all major Indian religions, namely Jainism, Hinduism, Buddhism and Sikhism. The idea of reincarnation is found in many ancient cultures, and a belief in rebirth/metempsychosis was held by Greek historic figures, such as Pythagoras, Socrates and Plato. It is also a common belief of various ancient and modern religions such as Spiritism, Theosophy and Eckankar and as an esoteric belief in many streams of Orthodox Judaism. It is found as well in many tribal societies around the world, in places such as Australia, East Asia, Siberia and South America.

Although the majority of denominations within Christianity and Islam do not believe that individuals reincarnate, particular groups within these religions do refer to reincarnation; these groups include the mainstream historical and contemporary followers of Cathars, Alawites, the Druze and the Rosicrucians. The historical relations between these sects and the beliefs about reincarnation that were characteristic of Neoplatonism, Orphism, Hermeticism, Manicheanism and Gnosticism of the Roman era as well as the Indian religions, have been the subject of recent scholarly research. Unity Church and its founder Charles Fillmore teaches reincarnation.

In recent decades, many Europeans and North Americans have developed an interest in reincarnation, and many contemporary works mention it.

Karma

Main article: Karma

Karma (/ˈkɑːrmə/; Sanskrit: कर्म, romanized: karma, IPA: [ˈkɐɽmɐ] ^ⓘ; Pali: kamma) means action, work or deed; it also refers to the spiritual principle of cause and effect where intent and actions of an individual (cause) influence the future of that individual (effect). Good intent and good deeds contribute to good karma and future happiness, while bad intent and bad deeds contribute to bad karma and future suffering.

With origins in ancient India's Vedic civilization, the philosophy of karma is closely associated with the idea of rebirth in many schools of Indian religions (particularly Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism) as well as Taoism. In these schools, karma in the present affects one's future in the current life, as well as the nature and quality of future lives – one's saṃsāra.

Christian theology

The patron saint of air travelers, aviators, astronauts, people with a mental handicap, test takers and poor students is Saint Joseph of Cupertino, who is said to have been gifted with supernatural flight.

Main article: Supernatural order

In Catholic theology, the supernatural order is, according to New Advent, defined as "the ensemble of effects exceeding the powers of the created universe and gratuitously produced by God for the purpose of raising the rational creature above its native sphere to a God-like life and destiny." The Modern Catholic Dictionary defines it as "the sum total of heavenly destiny and all the divinely established means of reaching that destiny, which surpass the mere powers and capacities of human nature."

Process theology

Main article: Process theology

Process theology is a school of thought influenced by the metaphysical process philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead (1861–1947) and further developed by Charles Hartshorne (1897–2000).

It is not possible, in process metaphysics, to conceive divine activity as a "supernatural" intervention into the "natural" order of events. Process theists usually regard the distinction between the supernatural and the natural as a by-product of the doctrine of creation ex nihilo. In process thought, there is no such thing as a realm of the natural in contrast to that which is supernatural. On the other hand, if "the natural" is defined more neutrally as "what is in the nature of things", then process metaphysics characterizes the natural as the creative activity of actual entities. In Whitehead's words, "It lies in the nature of things that the many enter into complex unity" (Whitehead 1978, 21). It is tempting to emphasize process theism's denial of the supernatural and thereby highlight that the processed God cannot do in comparison what the traditional God could do (that is, to bring something from nothing). In fairness, however, equal stress should be placed on process theism's denial of the natural (as traditionally conceived) so that one may highlight what the creatures cannot do, in traditional theism, in comparison to what they can do in process metaphysics (that is, to be part creators of the world with God).

— Donald Viney, "Process Theism" in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Heaven

Main article: Heaven

Heaven, or the heavens, is a common religious, cosmological, or transcendent place where beings such as gods, angels, spirits, saints, or venerated ancestors are said to originate, be enthroned, or live. According to the beliefs of some religions, heavenly beings can descend to Earth or incarnate, and earthly beings can ascend to heaven in the afterlife, or in exceptional cases enter heaven alive.

Heaven is often described as a "higher place", the holiest place, a Paradise, in contrast to hell or the Underworld or the "low places" and universally or conditionally accessible by earthly beings according to various standards of divinity, goodness, piety, faith, or other virtues or right beliefs or simply the will of God. Some believe in the possibility of a heaven on Earth in a world to come.

Another belief is in an axis mundi or world tree which connects the heavens, the terrestrial world and the underworld. In Indian religions, heaven is considered as Svarga loka, and the soul is again subjected to rebirth in different living forms according to its karma. This cycle can be broken after a soul achieves Moksha or Nirvana. Any place of existence, either of humans, souls or deities, outside the tangible world (Heaven, Hell, or other) is referred to as otherworld.

Underworld

Main article: Underworld

The underworld is the supernatural world of the dead in various religious traditions, located below the world of the living. Chthonic is the technical adjective for things of the underworld.

The concept of an underworld is found in almost every civilization and "may be as old as humanity itself". Common features of underworld myths are accounts of living people making journeys to the underworld, often for some heroic purpose. Other myths reinforce traditions that entrance of souls to the underworld requires a proper observation of ceremony, such as the ancient Greek story of the recently dead Patroclus haunting Achilles until his body could be properly buried for this purpose. Persons having social status were dressed and equipped in order to better navigate the underworld.

A number of mythologies incorporate the concept of the soul of the deceased making its own journey to the underworld, with the dead needing to be taken across a defining obstacle such as a lake or a river to reach this destination. Imagery of such journeys can be found in both ancient and modern art. The descent to the underworld has been described as "the single most important myth for Modernist authors".

Spirit

Main articles: Spirit (supernatural entity) and Spirit (animating force)

Theodor von Holst, Bertalda, Assailed by Spirits, c. 1830

A spirit is a supernatural being, often but not exclusively a non-physical entity; such as a demon, ghost, fairy, jinn or angel. The concepts of a person's spirit and soul, often also overlap, as both are either contrasted with or given ontological priority over the body and both are believed to survive bodily death in some religions, and "spirit" can also have the sense of "ghost", i.e. a manifestation of the spirit of a deceased person. In English Bibles, "the Spirit" (with a capital "S"), specifically denotes the Holy Spirit.

Spirit is often used metaphysically to refer to the consciousness or personality.

Historically, it was also used to refer to a "subtle" as opposed to "gross" material substance, as in the famous last paragraph of Sir Isaac Newton's Principia Mathematica.

Demon

Main article: Demon

Mephistopheles (a medieval demon from German folklore) flying over Wittenberg, in a lithograph by Eugène Delacroix.

A demon (from Koine Greek δαιμόνιον daimónion) is a supernatural and often malevolent being prevalent in religion, occultism, literature, fiction, mythology and folklore.

In Ancient Near Eastern religions as well as in the Abrahamic traditions, including ancient and medieval Christian demonology, a demon is considered a harmful spiritual entity, below the heavenly planes which may cause demonic possession, calling for an exorcism. In Western occultism and Renaissance magic, which grew out of an amalgamation of Greco-Roman magic, Jewish Aggadah and Christian demonology, a demon is believed to be a spiritual entity that may be conjured and controlled.

Magic

Main article: Magic (supernatural)

Magic or sorcery is the use of rituals, symbols, actions, gestures, or language with the aim of utilizing supernatural forces. Belief in and practice of magic has been present since the earliest human cultures and continues to have an important spiritual, religious and medicinal role in many cultures today. The term magic has a variety of meanings, and there is no widely agreed upon definition of what it is.

Scholars of religion have defined magic in different ways. One approach, associated with the anthropologists Edward Tylor and James G. Frazer, suggests that magic and science are opposites. An alternative approach, associated with the sociologists Marcel Mauss and Emile Durkheim, argues that magic takes place in private, while religion is a communal and organised activity. Many scholars of religion have rejected the utility of the term magic and it has become increasingly unpopular within scholarship since the 1990s.

The term magic comes from the Old Persian magu, a word that applied to a form of religious functionary about which little is known. During the late sixth and early fifth centuries BC, this term was adopted into Ancient Greek, where it was used with negative connotations, to apply to religious rites that were regarded as fraudulent, unconventional and dangerous. This meaning of the term was then adopted by Latin in the first century BC. The concept was then incorporated into Christian theology during the first century AD, where magic was associated with demons and thus defined against religion. This concept was pervasive throughout the Middle Ages, although in the early modern period Italian humanists reinterpreted the term in a positive sense to establish the idea of natural magic. Both negative and positive understandings of the term were retained in Western culture over the following centuries, with the former largely influencing early academic usages of the word.

Throughout history, there have been examples of individuals who practiced magic and referred to themselves as magicians. This trend has proliferated in the modern period, with a growing number of magicians appearing within the esoteric milieu. British esotericist Aleister Crowley described magic as the art of effecting change in accordance with will.

Divination

Main article: Divination

Divination (from Latin divinare "to foresee, to be inspired by a god", related to divinus, divine) is the attempt to gain insight into a question or situation by way of an occultic, standardized process or ritual. Used in various forms throughout history, diviners ascertain their interpretations of how a querent should proceed by reading signs, events, or omens, or through alleged contact with a supernatural agency.

Divination can be seen as a systematic method with which to organize what appear to be disjointed, random facets of existence such that they provide insight into a problem at hand. If a distinction is to be made between divination and fortune-telling, divination has a more formal or ritualistic element and often contains a more social character, usually in a religious context, as seen in traditional African medicine. Fortune-telling, on the other hand, is a more everyday practice for personal purposes. Particular divination methods vary by culture and religion.

Divination is dismissed by the scientific community and skeptics as being superstition. In the 2nd century, Lucian devoted a witty essay to the career of a charlatan, "Alexander the false prophet", trained by "one of those who advertise enchantments, miraculous incantations, charms for your love-affairs, visitations for your enemies, disclosures of buried treasure and successions to estates".

Witchcraft

Main article: Witchcraft

Depiction of witchcraft in John William Waterhouse's painting The Magic Circle (1886)

Witchcraft or witchery broadly means the practice of and belief in magical skills and abilities exercised by solitary practitioners and groups. Witchcraft is a broad term that varies culturally and societally and thus can be difficult to define with precision, and cross-cultural assumptions about the meaning or significance of the term should be applied with caution. Witchcraft often occupies a religious divinatory or medicinal role and is often present within societies and groups whose cultural framework includes a magical world view.

Miracle

Main article: Miracle

A miracle is an event not explicable by natural or scientific laws. Such an event may be attributed to a supernatural being (a deity), a miracle worker, a saint or a religious leader.

Informally, the word "miracle" is often used to characterise any beneficial event that is statistically unlikely but not contrary to the laws of nature, such as surviving a natural disaster, or simply a "wonderful" occurrence, regardless of likelihood, such as a birth. Other such miracles might be: survival of an illness diagnosed as terminal, escaping a life-threatening situation or 'beating the odds'. Some coincidences may be seen as miracles.

A true miracle would, by definition, be a non-natural phenomenon, leading many rational and scientific thinkers to dismiss them as physically impossible (that is, requiring violation of established laws of physics within their domain of validity) or impossible to confirm by their nature (because all possible physical mechanisms can never be ruled out). The former position is expressed for instance by Thomas Jefferson and the latter by David Hume. Theologians typically say that, with divine providence, God regularly works through nature yet, as a creator, is free to work without, above, or against it as well. The possibility and probability of miracles are then equal to the possibility and probability of the existence of God.

Skepticism

Main article: Skepticism

Skepticism (American English) or scepticism (British English; see spelling differences) is generally any questioning attitude or doubt towards one or more items of putative knowledge or belief. It is often directed at domains such as the supernatural, morality (moral skepticism), religion (skepticism about the existence of God), or knowledge (skepticism about the possibility of knowledge, or of certainty).

In fiction and popular culture

Main article: Supernatural fiction

Supernatural entities and powers are common in various works of fantasy. Examples include the television shows Supernatural and The X-Files, the magic of the Harry Potter series, The Lord of the Rings series, The Wheel of Time series and A Song of Ice and Fire series.