According to a particular interpretation of quantum mechanics, the causal role of human consciousness in the measuring process is called upon to solve a foundational problem called the “measurement problem.” Traditionally, this interpretation is tied up with the metaphysics of substance dualism. As such, this interpretation of quantum mechanics inherits the dualist’s mind-body problem. Our working hypothesis is that a process-based approach to the consciousness causes collapse interpretation (CCCI) ---leaning on Whitehead’s solution to the mind-body problem--- offers a better metaphysical (...) understanding of consciousness and its role in interpreting quantum mechanics. This article is the kickoff for such a research program in the metaphysics of science. (shrink)

Given the enchanted worldview of pentecost-alism, what possibility is there for a uniquely pentecostal intervention in the science-theology dialogue? By asserting the centrality of the miraculous and the fantastic, and being fundamentally committed to a universe open to surprise, does not pentecostalism forfeit admission to the conversation? I argue for a distinctly pentecostal contribution to the dialogue that is critical of regnant naturalistic paradigms but also of a naive supernaturalism. I argue that implicit in the pentecostal social imaginary is a (...) distinct conception of nature that is amenable to science but in conflict with naturalism. (shrink)

Christian Smith's What Is a Person? provides an account of the person from the perceptive of critical realism. As a fellow critical realist, I support that philosophical position and in this response I seek to support it by connecting it to the embodied realism developed by George Lakoff and Mark Johnson. In order to bring the two forms of realism together, I critique both the relativism of embodied realism and the idea, found in Smith, that the person's awareness of the (...) world is mediated by her experience. The goal of this paper, then, is an embodied critical realism, a more coherent realist position that combines the best parts of each. (shrink)

Are there neurobiological reasons why we are willing to trust other people and why ‘trust’ and moral values such as ‘care’ play a quite pivotal role in our social lives and the judgements we make, including our social interactions and judgements made in the context of schooling? In pursuing this question, this paper largely agrees with claims made by Patricia Churchland in her 2011 book Braintrust. She believes that moral values are rooted in basic brain circuitry and chemistry, which have (...) been shaped over evolutionary time. However, these naturalistic claims raise important issues, including the standard philosophical objection that they fall victim to the naturalistic and/or deontic fallacies. This paper provides an overview of the neurobiology of trust and examines some of the main objections, in the belief that recognising the neurobiological substrate of care and trust can deepen our appreciation of the role these play in education. (shrink)

Theists in general and Christians in particular have good grounds for affirming divine action in relation to twenty-first-century science. Although humans cannot perceive with their five senses the causation—both divine and creaturely—at work in our world, they have reasons to believe God acts as an efficient, but never sufficient, cause in creation. The essential kenosis option I offer overcomes liabilities in other kenosis proposals, while accounting for a God who acts personally, consistently, persuasively, and yet in diversely efficacious ways. We (...) can reasonably infer that the love, beauty, and truth expressed in creation derive from divine and creaturely causation. (shrink)

“The day the Enlightenment went out”, is how Gary Wills described the re-election of President George W. Bush in an op-ed column in the New York Times (November 4, 2004). Reflecting upon the conservative religious vote that put Bush back in the White House, Wills wondered if there was any connection between the fact that many more Americans believe in the Virgin Birth than in Darwin’s theory of evolution and that 75 percent of Bush supporters actually believed—without an iota of (...) credible evidence— that Iraq was directly responsible for the terrorist attack on 9/11. Wills asks if a people that have lost respect for evidence and critical reasoning can still be called an enlightened nation. “Belief that does not require proof or evidence” is how the Webster New World Dictionary defines the word “faith”. It also defines “faith” as “faith in God”. The American elections, then, turned out to be a massive faith-based initiative in both these senses of the word. Belief and policies backed not by evidence, but by religious values wedded to an aggressive nationalism are driving American politics. In this America is not alone. India, the subject matter of much of what follows, has had its own brush with faith-driven politics in which an aggressive Hindu nationalism came to color public policies, including science education.1 The question is: how do secular democracies like the United States and India (the world’s first and the world’s largest democracies, respectively), manage to square off their official commitment to enlightened values of openness and religion–state separation with the realities of faith-based politics? How do matters of fact—that is, questions that in principle can be decided by empirical evidence—end up getting decided on the basis of religious faith. This alchemy of turning secular matters of fact into religiouscivilizational matters holds the key to understanding the democratic-populist route to religious fundamentalism.. (shrink)

The concept of ultimate reality has an important role in the metaphysics of religious pluralism. John B. Cobb—a process philosopher in the Whiteheadian tradition—has suggested not only two ultimates, like other process philosophers, but three ultimates: God, creativity, and the cosmos. Based on this, I argue, firstly, that Cobb’s tripartite conception of the ultimate offers greater conceptual resources for inter-religious dialog than, for example, John Hick’s conception of ultimate reality or ‘the Real’. In support of this first claim, I will (...) apply Cobb’s conception of the ultimate to Zen-Buddhism, thus exemplifying the resources of this conception. Secondly, given the conclusion that Cobb’s conception of the ultimate does indeed offer greater conceptual resources, I further explicate how panentheism, understood as the thesis of a transcendent, immanent divine being who is bilaterally related to the world, can be read in terms of Cobb’s conception of the ultimate. I thus argue that panentheism in general inherits and retains many of the conceptual resources of Cobb’s understanding of the ultimate, and can be seen as a preferable position in relation to religious pluralism. Finally, I conclude from the example of Zen-Buddhism that, although Cobb’s conception offers greater resources for engaging in a dialog from a metaphysical point of view, work has to be done to adequately address questions on the level of soteriology. (shrink)

In this article, I offer a critical evaluation of non-reductive physicalism as articulated and defended by Nancey Murphy. I argue that the examples given by Murphy do not illustrate robust emergence and the philosophical idea of downward causation. The thesis of multiple realizability is ontologically neutral, and so cannot support the idea of the causal efficacy of higher-level properties. Supervenience is incompatible with strong emergence. I also argue for the fruitful relationship between emergence theory and panpsychism pertaining to the metaphysical (...) issue of the origin and nature of mind. (shrink)

This body of work is motivated by an apparent contradiction between, on the one hand, Darwin’s testimony in his autobiographical text about a supposed perceptual colour blindness before the aesthetic magnificence of natural landscapes, and, on the other hand, the last paragraph of On the Origin of Species, where he claims to perceive the forms of nature as beautiful and wonderful. My aim is to delve into the essence of the Darwinian perception of beauty in the context of the Weberian (...) concept of “disenchantment of the world”, assumed as a possible conceptual axis that enables the unravelling of the core of this contrast of perceptions. In acknowledging the theory of evolution as one of the most prominent scientific theories likely to have contributed to disenchantment, a number of questions arise: Is disenchantment compatible with aesthetic experience and sensibility before natural beauty? Was it Darwin’s disenchanted conception of the world that led him to believe he was colour blind? To answer these questions, a computer-assisted semantic analysis of lexical frequency and variability, most especially focused on aesthetic-emotional and religious or spiritual adverbs and adjectives, has been undertaken across the six editions of The Origin. The semantic analysis demonstrates that, although disenchanted, Darwin’s descriptions of, mainly, the adaptational excellence of living beings, reflect an aesthetically enriched perception of nature. It is concluded that Darwin’s perceptual colour blindness, then, might be based on a confusion rooted in the equation of equality between aesthetic sensibility in nature and the perception of its beauty as part of the vestigia Dei. (shrink)

This essay critically engages the concept of transcendence in Charles Taylor's A Secular Age. I explore his definition of transcendence, its role in holding a modernity-inspired nihilism at bay, and how it is crucial to the Christian antihumanist argument that he makes. In the process, I show how the critical power of this analysis depends heavily and paradoxically on the Nietzschean antihumanism that he otherwise rejects. Through an account of what I describe as naturalistic Christianity, I argue that transcendence need (...) not be construed as supernatural, that all of the resources necessary for a meaningful life are immanent in the natural process, which includes the semiotic capacities of Homo sapiens. Finally, I triangulate Taylor's supernatural account of transcendence, naturalistic Christianity, and Dreyfus and Kelly's physis-based account of “going beyond” our normal normality in All Things Shining: Reading the Western Classics for Meaning in a Secular Age. (shrink)

In this brief essay, we will argue that modern neuroscience and Whitehead’s process thinking arrive at rather similar conclusions about the essence of human experiences. Important issues evolving from neuroscientific research, specifying the identity of human beings, are explained as resulting from the development and stepwise changes of highly dynamic neuronal networks. These conclusions appear to fit the physical concepts developed by Whitehead, who claims that the elucidation of immediate experience, proceeding from objectivity to subjectivity, is the sole justification of (...) our thought. Both lines of thought assume that our bodily experience, emerging from the perception of various bodily organs, is the basis of our existence. (shrink)

There is a well known debate between those who defend a traditional (or classical) concept of God and those who defend a process (or neoclassical) concept of God. Not as well known are the implications of these two rival concepts of God in the effort to understand religious experience. With the aid of the great pragmatist philosopher John Smith, I defend the process (or neoclassical) concept of God in its ability to better illuminate and render as intelligible as possible mystical (...) experience. (shrink)

I introduce a distinction between global and local versions of atheism and theism, where global ones are about all notions of God and local ones are about specific notions. Current expressions of atheism are ambiguous between the two. I argue that global atheism is difficult to enunciate and even more difficult to defend, so much so that global atheism is not yet justified. Until it is, atheists should be local atheists.

Looking back over the last 40 years of work in the philosophy of religion provides a fascinating vantage point from which to assess the state of the discipline today. I describe central features of American philosophy of religion in 1970 and reconstruct the last 40 years as a progression through four main stages. This analysis offers an overarching framework from which to examine the major contributions and debates of process philosophy of religion during the same period. The major thinkers, topics, (...) positions, and controversies are presented, analyzed, and critiqued. In the concluding section I offer a critical appraisal of the state of the field today based on the results of these historical analyses. (shrink)

Among the philosophical and theological responses to the phenomenon of religious diversity, religious pluralism has been both prominent and influential. Of its various proponents, John Hick and John Cobb represent two important figures whose respective positions, especially that of Hick, have done much to shape the debate over religious pluralism. This article critically analyses their positions, arguing that, by unhelpfully homogenizing religious perspectives, each of them fails to do justice to the radical diversity that exists. As an alternative to these (...) homogenizing tendencies, the article builds upon D. Z. Phillips’ contemplative conception of philosophy to develop a radical pluralist approach, which prioritizes a deepening of understanding of religious diversity rather than the promotion of one’s own theological preferences. (shrink)

Among the philosophical and theological responses to the phenomenon of religious diversity, religious pluralism has been both prominent and influential. Of its various proponents, John Hick and John Cobb represent two important figures whose respective positions, especially that of Hick, have done much to shape the debate over religious pluralism. This article critically analyses their positions, arguing that, by unhelpfully homogenizing religious perspectives, each of them fails to do justice to the radical diversity that exists. As an alternative to these (...) homogenizing tendencies, the article builds upon D. Z. Phillips’ contemplative conception of philosophy to develop a radical pluralist approach, which prioritizes a deepening of understanding of religious diversity rather than the promotion of one’s own theological preferences. (shrink)

On the assumption that theistic religious commitment takes place in the face of evidential ambiguity, the question arises under what conditions it is permissible to make a doxastic venture beyond one’s evidence in favour of a religious proposition. In this paper I explore the implications for orthodox theistic commitment of adopting, in answer to that question, a modest, moral coherentist, fideism. This extended Jamesian fideism crucially requires positive ethical evaluation of both the motivation and content of religious doxastic ventures. I (...) suggest that, even though the existence of horrendous evil does not resolve evidential ambiguity in favour of atheism, there are reasonable value commitments that would preclude those who hold them from satisfying extended Jamesian fideist conditions for committing themselves to classical theism. I then begin a discussion of a possible revisionary theistic alternative (in the Christian tradition) which – one might hope – may meet those conditions. An earlier, shorter, version of this paper was delivered as a keynote address at the APA Pacific 2007 Mini-Conference on Models of God. (shrink)

This thesis philosophically examines, critically discusses, and proposes how a plausible philosophical framework of consciousness and free will should be formulated. This framework takes into account contemporary scientific research on human consciousness and free will and its possible challenges; also it is examined how this framework should be related to theistic beliefs – especially those connected to human and divine consciousness and free will. First, an overview of important research within the natural sciences about the conscious mind is presented together (...) with its challenges to a theistic worldview. Next, questions related to reductive physicalism and dualism as a thesis and an antithesis are discussed. This dialectical approach leads to two lines for possible alternatives: emergence theories and process panpsychism. The subsequent analysis suggests that a form of process panpsychism in combination with a weaker form of emergence is most plausible. After a discussion of some central ideas about determinism and indeterminism, together with a brief overview of standard arguments within the philosophical free will debate, the proposed emergent process panpsychism is related to these standard arguments in the free will debate and scientific research about decision-making. As a result it will be suggested how free will should be understood in relation to the emergent process panpsychism. The consequences of these results are then discussed in relation to a theistic worldview. Here panentheism will be suggested as the most reasonable conception of God. Also, the consequences for divine consciousness, divine action and interaction, the human soul, life before birth and after death, and more briefly a personal relationship with God, theological determinism, omniscience, and omnipotence will be discussed specifically in relation to panentheism in an emergent process panpsychist setting. (shrink)

Gender greatly impacts access to opportunities, potential, and success in corporate leadership roles. We begin with a general presentation of why such discussion is necessary for basic considerations of justice and fairness in gender equality and how the issues we raise must impact any ethical perspective on gender in the corporate workplace. We continue with a breakdown of the central categories affecting the success of women in corporate leadership roles. The first of these includes gender-influenced behavioral factors, such as the (...) requirements and expectations of gendered verbal and nonverbal communication styles as well as appearance. We move on to address the impact of family on corporate leadership opportunities and success, discussing the asymmetrical evaluation of an individual’s potential, authority, and competence based on gender stereotypes of familial obligations and expectations. Finally, we address how gender impacts access to networking and sponsorship opportunities and the long-term effects of systematic limitations on women’s inclusion in the upper echelons of corporate leadership. We conclude with a summary of the questions and issues raised by our discussion and direct individuals to consider how different ethical systems and moral requirements might influence their interpretations of gender and leadership in the corporate workplace. (shrink)

Theism does not require substance ontology but is compatible with an alternative ontology which I call stuff ontology.