I don’t believe in magic. At least, I thought I didn’t. Then I started worrying that I might not actually know what the heck it is that I am denying the existence of. So…let’s try to analyze it.
Why Care About This?!
Normally, I don’t feel the need to justify engaging in a conceptual analysis. It’s just fun to try and determine what the underlying nature of some complex concept is. However, since some people who read this blog who might not appreciate the joys of conceptual analysis (especially about a concept like magic) – I thought I’d explain why I think there are good reasons to do this.
Despite the apparent frivolity of the exercise I’m about to engage in, there are some good reasons to be concerned about the concept of magic. First, many people deny the existence of magic. I’m one of them. If you’re going to deny the existence of something, it would be nice to know what it is you’re denying the existence of. If you’re going to use a word as if you know what it means, then it would be good to try and understand the nature of the property picked out by that word. Second, some philosophical thought experiments hinge on magic being metaphysically possible. One example deals with discussions of different analyses of causation. Certain theories of causation are argued against on the basis of some thought experiments that involve the possibility of magic (see for example Schaffer’s Paper Trumping Preemption p. 165; McDermott’s paper Causation: Influence vs. Sufficiency p.89). So, philosophical debates that do matter assume the possibility of magic. Third, there is an interesting tension for various semantic theories if it turns out that (a) there are no actual instances of magic and (b) there are possible instances of magic (think about what Kripke says regarding the possibility of unicorns). Fourth, this is a philosophy blog. I’m allowed to do some fun (apparently silly) conceptual analysis and figure out later if there was any good reason to do it. This is a place to test the waters.
So let’s try and figure out what this concept is that we think we understand.
What is Magic?
First, it’s not clear what magic is supposed to be a property of. In fiction, we hear talk of magical objects and artifacts, magical potions, magical spells, and magical people. I suspect these things are all supposed to be magical in their stories because of their capacity to bring about a magical event. So, my first guess as to what magic is supposed to be is that it is supposed to be a property of events. So let’s try and analyze magic and assume that events are the sorts of things that would be magic (if anything were magic).
Law of Nature Analysis of Magic
(LN)Event E is magic =df.) E violates a law of nature.
This is what I suspect would be a good candidate first stab at an analysis. The problem is that if we’re analyzing the same sort of concept that pops up in fiction (e.g. Harry Potter), then this analysis has a problem. Presumably, the magic that happens in Harry Potter functions according to regular laws. Whenever you utter Crucio and point your wand in a certain direction under the right conditions, your target will experience a tremendous amount of pain. It seems like were these things to occur, they should count as magic.
One might argue that the Cruciatus curse functions according to laws of magic, which are different from the laws of nature. So while magic might happen according to regular laws, we should think of these laws as laws of magic, not laws of nature. So, violating a law and nature (and I suppose following from a law of magic) would qualify an event as magic. This suggests the following analysis.
Magical Explanation Analysis
E is magic = df.) there is a magical explanation for E.
E has a magical explanation =df.) there is a law of magic M (that is not a law of nature) such that M plus events prior to E entail E.
This might work. I was assuming in my argument above that any regularity would qualify as a kind of law of nature. This analysis separates regularities into kinds. But it separates regularities into kinds in a way that is not particularly helpful. We’ve introduced a new notion to analyze magic – a law of magic. I have no idea what that is. In fact, I have a better grasp on what it would be for an event to be magic than what it would be for a law to be a law of magic (in a way that made it something different from a law of nature). Let’s try a third analysis and then I’ll be done with this silly post.
No Scientific Explanation Analysis
E is magic =df.) There is no good scientific explanation for the occurrence of E.
I’ve heard people say that what would make something magical is the lack of scientific explanation. This also seems like a good candidate. However, we better not cash out scientific explanation in terms being entailed by a law of nature. This runs the risk of collapsing into the first definition, and it would entail that what Harry Potter does is not magic
So, let’s assume that whatever we mean by scientific explanation it won’t be cashed out in this way.
What I’m more worried about with this analysis is parasitic on an issue that comes up when we try to offer an account of physicalism or naturalism. Physicalism is the thesis that all facts are physical facts. What counts as a physical fact often gets cashed out in terms of scientific explanation. But there are two options here for the requirement. (1) we require that the explanation be one that our best science accepts or (2) we merely require that there be a scientific explanation out there to be discovered by our best ideal science.
If we’re going to analyze magic by appeal to lack of scientific explanation, we really have two versions of the analysis to consider. The first version would hold that lack of an actual explanation that is supported by our best science makes something magic. This version would preserve the intuition that what goes on in the Harry Potter fictions is magic. Perhaps the scientific community in Harry Potter doesn’t actually have a scientific explanation for what goes on in Harry Potter. However, the problem with this first version is that there would be quite a lot of magic in this world.
The second version of the Scientific Explanation Analysis would hold that merely lacking an actual explanation supported by our best science wouldn’t be good enough for something to count as magic. It would have to be, in some sense, not even possible for our best ideal science to ever discover a scientific explanation. However, if the requirement is this loose, then it looks like we have the same problem with Harry Potter that we’ve been trying to avoid. What goes on in Harry Potter might not qualify as magic – if we assume that the best idealized science wouldn’t be able to come up with an explanation.
Conclusion
I’ll stop there for now. I thought I had a reasonably clear grasp on this thing that I deny the existence of, and now I’m not sure that I do.
UPDATE: Bibliography
I mentioned above that one of the reasons to be concerned about the concept of magic is that philosophers assume the metaphysical possibility of it in thought experiments in discussions about causation. I thought it would be good to track down as many articles as I could that at some point discussed a thought experiment involving the possibility of magic. Here’s what I’ve come up with so far.
Björnsson, G. (2007). How effects depend on their causes, why causal transitivity fails, and why we care about causation. Philosophical Studies, 133(3), 349–390.
Collins, J. (2000). Preemptive prevention. The Journal of Philosophy, 97(4), 223–234.
Hitchcock, C. (2001). The Intransitivity of Causation Revealed in Equations and Graphs. The Journal of Philosophy, 98(6), 273. doi: 10.2307/2678432
Lewis, D. (2000). Causation as influence. The Journal of Philosophy, 97(4), 182–197.
McDermott, M. (2002). Causation: Influence versus Sufficiency. The Journal Of Philosophy, 99(2), 84–101.
McDermott, M. (1995). Redundant causation. The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 46(4), 523–544.
Persson, J. (2006). Compartment Causation. Synthese, 149(3), 535–550.
Schaffer, J. (2000). Trumping preemption. The Journal of Philosophy, 97(4), 165–181.
Yablo, S. (2002). De facto dependence. The Journal of Philosophy, 99(3), 130–148.
Another worry: in the religious tradition, ‘magic’ is contrasted with ‘miracle’. I have recently been arguing that religious believers shouldn’t understand miracles as violating the laws of nature but, alas, that’s the standard analysis. Usually the additional conditions for being miraculous are something like having religious significance, or being performed by God either directly or through the mediation of angels. We could take magic to be just any violation of natural law not meeting these criteria, or we could try to make a corresponding definition of magic that would say that the additional conditions are that it be performed by a human being either directly or through the mediation of demons. The ‘directly’ cases would cover most magic in fantasy novels and in Wicca, etc., and the ‘through mediation of demons’ cases would cover the accusations of practicing magic at, e.g., the Salem trials, and also the witch-as-monster characters of some horror stories, etc.
More relevantly, the ‘directly’ case would allow it to cover clairvoyance thought experiments used in epistemology.
Incidentally, my Leibnizian analysis of miracles (linked above) is related to your ‘magical explanation analysis’, though it plays on a consequence of that analysis which I don’t think you intend: depending on how one understands ‘magical explanations’, they need not exclude natural explanations.
Kenny,
Does this accurately capture the suggestion?
Divine Analysis of Magic
E is magic = df.) E is a *direct* violation of a law of nature that lacks divine mediation.
I have a few worries about this. The first is that, in so far as I understand what counts as a law of nature, the regularities involved in the acts of magic in the Harry Potter fictions don’t seem to be violating laws of nature.
More importantly, I’m not sure lack of divine mediation would disqualify something as being magic. JK Rowling could have written it in at the end of the Harry Potter series that Harry discovers that all of the powers bestowed on Gryffindor students are mediated by God. It seems like whatever Harry and his friends are doing still qualifies as magic.
I vaguely remember in C.S. Lewis’s sci-fi trilogy that Merlin is resurrected and the issue comes up as to whether what Merlin’s magic is OK with God. We get some long explanation as to why Merlin’s magic is OK. The short versions is that, in Lewis’ fiction, there is some magic that God is cool with.
In short, it seems conceptually coherent to imagine a world where God create wizards who do magic.
Regarding your point about magical explanations not needing to exclude natural one’s – that seems right – I have to think more about it.
Hmm… You are right about it being conceptually coherent that something be both magic and not opposed to God. (Lewis goes through a lot of contortions in That Hideous Strength to make this consistent with Christian doctrine, but the problem is a doctrinal one, not a conceptual one.)
I’m not sure I like the phrase ‘divine mediation’ for this, but your definition seems to capture my basic idea that if someone prays and God performs a miracle, that isn’t magic, even if it does violate laws.
Your Harry Potter counter-example seems to depend on construing ‘mediation’ very broadly. If God gave some causal powers to the magicians, then that would surely be magic. Or, if the magicians had some formula they could recite which (according to some divine decree) always resulted in God acting a certain way, that might be magic (I’m not sure). But if the ‘magicians’ are simply praying and God is performing miracles, that is surely not magic.
I’ve offered some thoughts on magic in historical context here:
http://pasot.blogspot.com/2009/11/its-magic.html
My sense is that the notion of magic as understood by the folk who took it seriously is actually quite complex and hard to get a grip on without looking at it through a different lens than we’re inclined to these days.
s
Here is another shot at this analysis:
Another Analysis of Magic
E is magic = df.) E is an actualizing of an event (or property?) that would not have been actualized had the natural order been left untampered.
My hope is that a definition along these lines is sufficiently vague to allow magic acts that seem to utilize the natural laws but do not exclude an act that might appear/be contrary to natural laws.
Regarding the miracles/magic implication, however, the above analysis is still inadequate. Initially, I would want to say that miracles carry with it some quality of contributing to the divine purpose. But that would seem to allow ‘magic’ the same kind of power as an act of God…
Hmmm I’ve been an avid fan of magic for quite sometime now and seeing how this is all for fun am taking a shot at creating an analysis.
E is magic = df.) E is an event where unexplained energies are used in the manipulation of physical/natural laws thus the manipulation of casters surroundings.
Ummm not sure on myself on this, but I’ll welcome any criticisms and/or contradictions on my analysis. Thanks.
Kin: ‘unexplained’ would seem to be a relative term. If someone was able to use (say) the weak nuclear force to manipulate her surroundings prior to the discovery of that force by science, would that be magic?
I think we want a phrase like ‘scientifically (or physically) inexplicable’. So we would say something like “an event in which a finite being uses scientifically (or physically) inexplicable energies (or forces) to manipulate her surroundings.”
This also takes care of my concern about miracles: if the individual prays and God does something, then it is not correct to say that the individual used divine power to perform that action. It is God who performs the action, and there is no sense in which a finite being performed it.
@Kenny
Hey thanks.
Adding the finite quantity would help add to the accuracy of the said analysis. But in response to the question of using a undiscovered force of science, it would be considered magic to some like I read in this one thread of how you would bring a match to the past. People considered solar eclipses some kind of dark magic in the times when science was still in its pregnancy.
Also, just wondering though seeing how we can base contradictions off fiction, is it still counted in RPG’s that when lets say some one uses holy magic or healing skills that its still in relation to the act of God and not of the skills of the caster themselves? Or should we consider it a gift bestowed to the caster by their higher deity. By lets making this more fun by trying to construct a few fundamental laws concerning magic from what people used to believe to the fiction we see fit to entertain us.
‘Scientifically inexplicable’ is actually a very puzzling notion. Is Schroedinger’s equation scientifically explicable? It’s a fundamental regularity. Physics doesn’t *explain* it. To be sure, it happens to have some nice symmetry properties, but what if it didn’t?
More generally, what if we discover that there are simply some brute regularities, some of which happen to involve human intentions or the use of certain words or whatever? The regularities could be confirmed empirically. And if they turned out to be persistent and usable, we would no doubt get used to them.
Would they be magic? My claim — hinted at but not detailed in the post I gave a link to above — is that this isn’t really a very good question. Magic is a sort of cluster concept. People beklieved that certain sorts of phenenoma were genuine — spell-casting, potions, etc. — and they fit together in a not very tidy network of family resemblances. Some of the phenomena turned out not to be real; others turned out to be real but we now just think of them as non-magical (e.g., magnetism) because they got assimilated into frameworks very far from paradigm cases of magic. BUt asking what magic is apart from the history of how people who took the idea seriously actually talked won’t yield much pay-off. Further, there *is* a history, and a well-studied one at that. But it’s not a tidy one. It crosses bounedaries of natural/supernatural, intentional/non-intentional, subject to theorizing/merely part of folk tradition… And as is often the case, it’s interesting in ways that our armchair attempts to do conceptual analysis don’t anticipate very well.