[ExI] vampires

jameschoate at austin.rr.com jameschoate at austin.rr.com
Fri Jan 22 22:08:04 UTC 2010


I'll have to disagree here, preternatural means 'abnormal' and does not carry necessarily any connotation of transcendence. Supernatural however does as in 'beyond nature'.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preternatural (which matches both my understanding as well as several other references I checked).

Any distinction one can make here would in fact be rather arbitrary and driven by the particular social group expectations rather than some objective measure. Hence the ontological significance is rather specious.

---- Damien Broderick <thespike at satx.rr.com> wrote: 

> especially the latter). The word for this sort of thing, by and large, 
> is preternatural. "Supernatural" requires a strict ontological divide.

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