Mathematical Proof That The Supernatural

Exists
You should only attempt to read this proof if you have at least read the Wikipedia pages for
Descartes Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy, and Kants Critique
of Pure Reason and Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics.
Otherwise, it wont make any sense like reading a calculus proof when you only know algebra.
The one exception would be if youre the sort of genius who can intuitively grasp an entire field
from a few contextual hints. In this particular case, I estimate such a feat would require a verbal
IQ of at least 150, possibly much higher.
The proof for the existence of the supernatural
Without further ado, here is the proof that demonstrates with mathematical certainty that the
supernatural exists:
(To see the previous version of this proof, that did not address the possibility of supernatural
noumena, click here. Version updated on May 19, 2012.)
Definitions
Definition 1: Noumena Things as they are in themselves, rather than the human minds
perception of them.
Definition 2: Phenomena The perceptions of the human mind, rather than things as they are in
themselves.
Note that these definitions do not preclude Noumena and Phenomena being identical in any
particular case. In fact, any phenomena, considered in itself, would be a noumena.
Definition 3: Material The objective, physical world. Matter, energy, the spacetime continuum.
Physics, chemistry, etc.
Definition 4: Supernatural That which has real, actual existence, yet is not material.

Set A:
1a. You cannot be deceived that your subjective experiential conscious awareness is real and
actually existing.
This is proven in Descartes, and is taken here as given. It is an a posteriori synthetic knowledge
based on analysis plus the experience of consciousness.
2a. Your subjective experiential conscious awareness contains only that which you are aware of
(phenomena), and nothing more.
Purely analytic statement, definitionally true.
3a. Therefore, what you are aware of (phenomena) is real and actually existing.
Law used: Substitution.

Set B:
1b. You are aware of only phenomena, not noumena, except when noumena and phenomena are
identical.
Analytically true. Phenomena are what you experience; so the noumena either matches exactly or
is something different.
2b. The material world is pure noumena.
Purely analytic statement; definitionally true. The material world is objective and physical. (If
you disagree, you are abusing the English language and your outlook is no longer properly
scientific or materialist anyway.)
3b. Therefore, you are aware of only phenomena, not anything material, except possibly when
noumena and phenomena are identical.
(Possibly because the material world is a subset of all noumena. There may also be
supernatural noumena. Thus an identical noumena-phenomena pair might be either supernatural
or material.)
Laws used: Substitution, set/subset.

Set C:
3a. What you are aware of (phenomena) is real and actually existing.
3b. You are aware of only phenomena, not anything material, except possibly when noumena
and phenomena are identical.
3c. Therefore, experienced phenomena are real and actually existing, but are not material, except
possibly when noumena and phenomena are identical.
Law used: Substitution.

Set D:
3c. Experienced phenomena are real and actually existing, but are not material, except possibly
when noumena and phenomena are identical.
(Possibly because noumena might either be natural or supernatural.)
2d. The phenomena you experience do not resemble the material world as it is in itself (as
noumena).
Patently obvious. E.g., you see an apple as bright red skin, but not the inner meat, core and seeds,
much less atoms or photons or biological vision processes. If you attempt to argue that the
material world actually is just as we perceive it, this is no longer scientific materialism, but
magical realism or something equally bizarre. See logical expansion section for more.
3d. Experienced phenomena are real and actually existing, but are not material.
4d. If there is a noumena that is identical to a phenomena, then it must be supernatural.
Law used: Substitution. Set/subset.

Set E
1e. That which is real and actually existing, but is not material, must be supernatural.
Definitionally true.
3d. Experienced phenomena are real and actually existing, but are not material.
3e. Experienced phenomena are supernatural.
Law used: Substitution.

Conclusion: If one supernatural thing exists, then the supernatural exists. Experienced
phenomena exist. Therefore, the supernatural exists.
Note that this is not a proof of the existence of God. For the evidence that Christianity is true, see
the next page.
If you disagree with this proof:
Stop. Take a deep breath.
Not a single person unfamiliar with the previously mentioned books has successfully formulated
a remotely topical rebuttal to the above proof. They have instead demonstrated incomprehension
of its conceptual foundations.
Academic philosophers specialized in this niche can and do discuss concepts related to the above
successfully, and I have read their papers and considered their positions. While I strongly
disagree with their conclusions, they are at least germane to the subject.
It is EXTREMELY unlikely that you will succeed in bootstrapping yourself to this level of
discourse using only the few hints provided in the eight lines above.
At some point, I will expand this page to include an exposition of the Cartesian and Kantian
conceptual prerequisites. Until that time, I recommend that you read the aforementioned works
before replying. The books are mindblowing and well worth it as one would expect, since they
have shaped philosophical discourse ever since.
Reading order, plus a teaser
Begin with Descartes, since hes much easier. Then read the Prolegomena, then the Critique.
Heres a teaser to whet your appetite. The quotes are taken from top Amazon reviews.
Discourse on Method and Meditations on First Philosophy
The Foundational Work in Modern Philosophy 5/5
Its also a work that Id recommend to anyone who wants to be introduced to philosophy by
reading the work of a great philosopher. And dont worry: it shouldnt take you more than an
afternoon to read through it.
The Meditations has had an incalculable influence on the history of subsequent philosophical
thinking. Indeed, according to nearly every history of philosophy youre likely to come across,
this work is where modern philosophy begins. Its not that any of Descartess arguments are
startlingly originalmany of them have historical precedentsbut that Descartess work was
compelling enough to initiate two research programs in philosophy, namely British empiricism
and continental rationalism, and to place certain issues (e.g. the mind-body problem, the
plausibility of and responses to skepticism, the ontological argument for the existence of God,
etc.) on the philosophical agenda for a long time to come. Moreover, Descartes was capable of
posing questions of great intrinsic interest in prose accessible to everyone.
Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics
Simply put, modern philosophy begins with Kant. If anyone wishes to understand the
development of philosophy after the 18th century, you must have some grounding in Kant. That
said, his works are not easy to read, nor are they well-suited to leisurely reading. While most
individuals try a stab at the Critique of Pure Reason, many seem to get lost in his argument.
Kant wrote the Prolegomena to assist readers who were having trouble understanding his
Critique of Pure Reason. Nevertheless, the Prolegomena itself is difficult reading. In contrast to
much of contemporary philosophy, however, it is worth the effort. One comes away from the
Prolegomena with a different world view. This alternative perspective is not something that one
need accept or reject, but a point of view that one may consider, part of our conceptual
wherewithal for trying to make some sense of life.
Though commonly cast in the role of a philosophical idealist, Kant emphatically agrees that all
knowledge is experientially determined. He parts company with philosophical materialists such
as Marx, however, when he posits the existence of mind as organized a priori in a specific
though unknowable way. Mind, thus, is not a tabula rasa on which our first experiences are
inscribed and then used in making sense of what follows. Mind, instead, shapes all our
experiences in terms of its inherent organization.
This leads Kant to the distinction between noumena, things as they actually are, and phenomena,
things as we apprehend them upon their encounter with the organization of mind. This means
that we can never know the world as it actually is.
Critique of Pure Reason
(Note the Muller translation is the best version, and its not available on Amazon. However,
you can get it for free online at the above link.)
The Critique of Pure Reason is the sine qua non of modern thought, as it incorporates the most
significant earlier critiques of Plato, Aristotle, Hume, and Descartes, in turn becoming the point
of departure (on one hand) for Schopenhauer, and (on the other) for Hegel, Nietzsche,
Heidegger, Wittgenstein, and Deleuzebesides its further influence on social and literary
criticism (e.g., Marx, Mill, Arnold, Eliot, Adorno, et al.).
Of course the Kritik is a very complex and dry text(more readable than Hegel and Heidegger;
less readable than Schopenhauer and Nietzsche)which requires much moisture of psychic
perspiration.
What youre looking for tips to get you started
Much of the Wikipedia pages and the primary texts themselves will be irrelevant, tendentious, or
outright error.
Below I will highlight some relevant passages from the Wiki pages, to give you an idea of what
you should be looking for.
Ignore the filler, but meditate deeply upon the relevant bits:
The first was never to accept anything for true which I did not clearly know to be such; that is to
say, carefully to avoid precipitancy and prejudice, and to comprise nothing more in my judgment
than what was presented to my mind so clearly and distinctly as to exclude all ground of doubt.
The basis of metaphysical/epistemological skepticism.
Descartes argues that this representational theory disconnects the world from the mind, leading
to the need for some sort of bridge to span the separation and provide good reasons to believe
that the ideas accurately represent the outside world.
More epistemological skepticism.
Since, then, the receptivity of the subject, its capacity to be affected by objects, must necessarily
precede all intuitions of these objects, it can readily be understood how the form of all
appearances can be given prior to all actual perceptions, and so exist in the mind a priori"
A reason that we do not perceive the material world as it is in itself, but only as perceptions.
This proof applies to both the informational-pattern mind and the subjectively-experiencing
mind, both of which cannot be material because they do not perceive matter as it is in itself.
The former is an abstract construction of convenience, the latter is subject.
Ill stop there. Im not going to do the whole reading for you. Thats enough to get you started.
Some miscellaneous logical expansions
Since most people are not grasping the givens, I am dealing with objections in the comments.
Some highlights:
Question begging
You are begging the question of the supernatural by placing perceptions outside of the
physical world.
No. Ghosts are by definition supernatural, but do not necessarily exist, and therefore are not
begging the question.
You are begging the question by defining perceptions as non-material, when everyone agrees
perceptions actually exist.
First, not everyone agrees that perceptions actually exist. Second, it is not question-begging to
define the category of x, then prove that x exists, unless you assign it the category existing.
Your proof is not syntactically formal because you take certain propositions as given.
The goal is to reduce the proof to self-evident propositions, logical transformations, and a
necessary conclusion. Nothing more than that. You are asking for a higher standard of formality
than I am aiming for, and one that would impede brevity and clarity.
The supplemental section below proves what is taken as given, if the propositions are not already
self-evident to you.
Youre abusing the word mathematical
No, Im not:
2.
a. Precise; exact.
b. Absolute; certain.
Youre abusing the word spiritual or material
No, Im not:
supernatural: of, pertaining to, or being above or beyond what is natural; unexplainable by
natural law or phenomena; abnormal.
2.of, pertaining to, characteristic of, or attributed to God or a deity.
material: formed or consisting of matter; physical; corporeal: the material world.
pertaining to the physical rather than the spiritual or intellectual aspect of things: material
comforts.
Higher skepticism
I do not need to know (I am assuming you are, like Kant, priveliging a particular definition of
know to mean something along the lines of have logical necessity, if you would like to taboo
the word a different way, please clarify), I merely need to have justified belief that those things
exist.
This is a philosophical PROOF. We are not talking about practical everyday life. But rather,
what we can know for CERTAIN. There is a higher standard in play. Forget your probabilistic
skepticism; we are at 100% max industrial strength skepticism.
Epistimology should lead me to form beliefs that better anticipate experience.
No, not necessarily. If a demon feeds you experiential lies, epistemology should still arrive at
certain truths.
Epistemology presupposes nothing. Thats the whole point. It does not presuppose that
experience is truthful. That would break epistemology.
Unless you have a suggestion of how believing that my brain is not actually existing can help
me better anticipate experience.
Yes. It can help you know that materialists are incompetent liars, for which copious experiential
evidence exists. It can also help you know that the supernatural exists, for which copious
experiential evidence exists.
as they are excluded by Occams Razor
Occams Razor is merely a rule of thumb, not a rule of truth. Otherwise the original model of
physics would be true by virtue of simplicity. We do not get to play by fuzzy rules here. You
either know something 100% or you dont.
many are no better than the young earth creationist tactic
Absolutely irrelevant example. Elevate yourself to metaphysical discourse. Ditch the mundane.
You are in an alternate dimension. If you cannot find the wormhole, you will never get home.
Logical vs physical impossibility
Being able to imagine something, does not make it so.
If you can conceive it without logical contradiction, it is by definition logically possible. If you
cant grasp this, give up philosophy now. But I suspect you can.
why do you think a mind is possible without some kind of substrate on which to exist?
Because I cannot demonstrate that the concept contains an inherent logical contradiction. Same
as I can imagine that a unicorn created the universe in 3 days.
Your thought experiment does not prove anything other than that human cognitive architecture
can find impossible things conceivable.
There are different kinds of impossible. The two relevant ones here are logically impossible
and practically impossible.
You do not actually know that a mind without physical processes is physically impossible. You
do not even know that your own physical brain exists, or that anyone else is conscious but you.
You therefore flunk epistemology, and your critique of human reason is revealed to be hasty
judgment and emotional preference.
I can find many types of perpetual motion machine conceivable (My brain can imagine them
and insist that they should work as claimed, that doesnt make them possible.
Once again, you do not even know that motion exists, so how can you pretend to know its laws?
Different kinds of existence
2d is wrong. Numbers, ideas, laws, stories, distances, nations are not material, yet they are not
called supernatural.
You are unfamiliar with this area of philosophy.
Numbers are true but dont exist.
, laws, stories, distances, nations to the extent they exist, they are material, to the extent they
arent material, they dont exist.
ideas when they are perceptions, they exist but are not material.
Exist here is used in the sense of actual, real existence.
Let me clarify my sentence here. We have representations of numbers. The representations
exist. This 3 is actually a few magnetic dots sitting on a hardrive somewhere.
Yes, and in that sense it is not a 3, it is dots.
You cant prove noumenos exists
I dont need noumenos to exist for this proof to work. SOMETHING exists, namely your
consciousness. Thats all I need to prove.
If the material world doesnt exist, then obviously we cant be the substrate of perception
anyway. I have no idea why anyone thinks this hurts the argument.
If we cant ever know Noumena, than how can we know that they exist?
We infer its existence without being certain of it. Just as we infer the existence of the material
world.
The informational pattern mind vs the subjective experiencing mind
The mind is a pattern of information, so in that sense it is distinct from its physical
implementation. In that sense the information pattern associated with a mind is separate from
its physical representation.
You are talking about the informational pattern mind. I am talking about the experiential,
subjective mind. Totally different. The IP mind is no different than a computer. To the extent it
exists, it is material; to the extent its not material, it exists only as a convenient human
abstraction.
Why is the experiential, subjective mind distinct from the IP mind?
Because IP minds can be conceived of as existing without generating corresponding subjective
minds. E.g., a computer.
You claim that there is something to the mind that is more than its informational pattern. What
evidence could you gather from a high-fidelity neuron-by-neuron simulation of a brain that
would dis-confirm your hypothesis?
No simulation is necessary. You are experiencing one subjective mind. By logical analysis, we
demonstrate its non-material nature.
Also, the IP mind is different than the material mind. Information flow does not require a
material substrate either. If my subjective mind were sufficiently capacious, I could run a
simulation of another IP mind inside my own. This mind would not have an independent
consciousness. Novel writers do this.
Also isnt your criticism of the ES mind equally a convenient human abstraction?
No, because it necessarily has real actual existence according to Descartes proof.
What if the simulation mentioned above allows us to trace the things we lable as the ES mind to
particular synaptic junctions, and particular electrical activity.
It surely should, since I believe a continuous connection exists between the spiritual and material
world.
Phenomena differ from material reality
Anyone who has ever bitten into an apple knows that phenomena differs from noumena. We see
the outer red skin of the apple, not the meat, core, and seeds. Thus we perceive the apple, and
that perception, or phenomena, is not identical to the apple in itself.
The question may be raised: Granted the perception of the apple is not the apple, but the
perception itself may be nonetheless composed of material elements; a purely material process.
I answer thusly: A perception is only that which is perceived, nothing more. One does not
perceive any material processes that might generate a perception, when one sees an apple. One
does not perceive optical neurons, light photons, corneal diffraction, mental rearrangement of
image data, etc. One experiences only the final picture of the apple. Thus the experience is not
material. For the experience contains only that which is experienced, and nothing more.
One might object: A digital camera displays only an image of an apple on the back viewscreen,
yet this is a purely material process.
I answer: That is because the distinction of picture on the back viewscreen is arbitrary; it is all
one interconnected material universe of apple and camera. However, in the case of the subjective
experience of consciousness, the distinction of that which you experience is non-arbitrary, but
rather necessary. You in fact do only experience what you experience, and nothing more.
If one is to doubt, one must doubt the existence of anything real corresponding to the image of
the apple; but one cannot deny the experience itself. Thus the material world and the experience
are of entirely different epistemological orders.
Moreover, the interpretation of the back camera panel as a picture of an apple is itself
arbitrary. It is no such thing; but merely a collection of matter. Thus it is not actually a
perception of anything. However, the perception of an apple in your own consciousness
undeniably exists, in a non-arbitrary way. It is not an abstract interpretation read into matter, but
a real experience, which, however one labels its contents, nonetheless exists as perception.
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Supernatural in this sense is not meant to imply divine intervention, but merely of the
substance of the spiritual plane. All experiences are in this sense supernatural phenomenon.
To demonstrate a material computer, no matter how sophisticated, can never be proven to be
conscious by any material test, because consciousness is not a material phenomenon. To any test
result, the philosopher may reply, Yes, but how do you know that a self-perceiving awareness is
really there, and not just an excellent simulation of ones behavior?
The only consciousness we can know for certain exists is our own.
Perceptions are not material
What is the material composition of the color red? Or the feeling soft? Or the emotion sad? Or
the awareness of self?
It is a category error, which you can verify by a process of infinite regress. No matter if you
infinitely describe the associated material processes, yet the philosopher always answers, Yet
this is not the thing itself.
This gets back to Kants point about the Ding an sich (thing as such) vs. our perception of the
thing. The thing in itself is matter in this case; our perception of it is something else entirely.
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I dont need to explain the basis or process of red. You experience it. It has a name. You know
what Im talking about.
You assume that there IS a basis and lots of processes associated with red, but there may not
be. The material world may be entirely fictitious. Your consciousness and perceptions may be all
that exists. That is the ultimate proof.
-
When I experience an emotion, I look at it on two different levels. Emotions are often caused by
purely biochemical processes. For example, depression may be due to lack of sunlight or eating
wheat. However, the experience of depression itself is NOT a biochemical process, but rather
something experienced in my consciousness, which is a monadic spiritual entity.
-
A perception is an experience you are aware of, and only that. Unless you experience some
material object like an atom in itself, an absolute grokking so profoundly perfect that it is the
thing itself existing in your awareness, then it is merely an experience, not a physical entity or
process.
Do not confuse the associated biological processes of the brain with the experience of
consciousness. Logically speaking, one does not require the other. They are distinct.
To prove this, perform the thought experiment what if no material world exists, and I am
merely a very deceived disembodied consciousness? It is conceivable; therefore nothing youre
experiencing is material.
Perhaps you could explain (at least give a sketch of)how he proves that perceptions cannot be
hosted on material reality.
Perceptions, by definition, are that which you experience, and nothing more. The material world,
by definition, is a thing in itself. Unless you perceive a material thing as it is in itself, your
perception is not material. You do not perceive quarks. Therefore, your perception is not
material.
More generally, any arrangement of objects does not logically necessitate the existence of a
subject. Therefore, objects are not subjects. The two are distinct.
The reason I have not given a rationale for accepting Kants premise, is that the alternative is so
fundamentally impossible and stupid. If anyone actually did experience the tiniest fragment of
material noumenous, he would immediately rack up double digit Nobel prizes transforming
chemistry, physics, biology, and Lord knows what else with his first-hand experience of the most
intimate nature of the physical universe.