Religious naturalism encompasses thinkers from Baruch Spinoza, George Santayana, John Dewey, Henry Nelson Wieman, and Ralph Burhoe to recent writers. I offer a generic definition of religious naturalism and then outline my own version, the “minimalist vision of transcendence.” Many standard issues in the science‐and‐religion dialogue are seen to fade in significance for religious naturalism. I make suggestions for our understanding of science, including the importance of transcognitive abilities, the need for a revised notion of rationality as an alternative to (...) extreme versions of postmodernism, the value of rational dissensus, and the education of appreciation. Finally, I suggest ways to interpret the religious traditions of the world by religious naturalism. (shrink)

In his theory of interpretation, Peirce’s attention is drawn to the work of “mind,” especially its appropriation of signs. Mind interprets nature by using signs in every form of inquiry. Based on his three categories, Peirce defines interpretation as a determinate process of interpretations of interpretations. Communicative process thus means, instead of just being determined as an interpretant by an object, that the interpreter is determined by a “communicative effort.” In the communicative effort, for Peirce, temporal unit is the necessary (...) condition of meaning. In other words, in order to mean something, the communicative effort has to be performed in a continuum from a past to a future. Concealed possibilities can be actualized when the continuum is “broken,” genuinely divided. Peirce truly acknowledges that the possibility can be actualized when it is broken into parts. (shrink)