Human beings are in the midst of very powerful shifts in our understanding of what it means to be a human. There is a non-trivial chance that sometime in the future humanity will transform itself, leading to an emergence of posthumans with God-like qualities – Homo Deificatio. Such a transformation has great potential for both good and bad. Posthumanism seeks to improve human nature, increase the human life- and health-span, extend its cognitive and physical capacities, and broaden its mastery (...) over the environment. As such, the notion of posthumanism implies a radical breaking off from, and reconceptualisation of, the state of being human. As neuroscientists, we aim to bring a neuroscientific perspective to this debate. Current scientific and technologic developments (related to brain and its augmentation) clearly demonstrate that what was formerly considered to be science fiction is slowly but firmly becoming a scientific reality. (shrink)

The genesis of actuality from potentiality, with the apparent role of the observer, is an important and unsolved problem which essentially defines science‟s view of reality in a variety of contexts. Observation then becomes lawful and not emergent. Panentheism is needed to provide a mechanism for order outside of blind efficient causality, in a Universal final causality. Classical physics is over a hundred years out of date, yet scientific models remain mechanistic and deterministic. Deism, a remnant of classical cosmology, (...) is examined and rejected by scientists and philosophers, and certain pre-scientific notions of religion are scorned, putting the matter to rest. Quantum physics, in its basic form, is necessary if there is to be any philosophical or scientific notion of free will and self-determination, as potentiality. Quantum metaphysics is also needed because classical physics is fundamentally limited to localized external relations, lacking the internality and non-locality of relatedness. God, or the equivalent, is necessary to complete the equation. Physicists now tell us that reality is fundamentally mental and is created by observation. Observation is here taken to mean experience, with experience going all the way down to the lowest order of a Universal mentality. (shrink)

This chapter contains sections titled: Theism and Physical Cosmogony Theism and Physical Eschatology The Fine‐Tuning of the Universe for Intelligent Life Works cited.

Investigating the nature of our apparent physical reality is a profound challenge. Our models from physics, while powerful, do not treat reality per se. The famous painter Paul Gaugin articulated the relevant existential questions famously in a grand painting - questions that also give the painting its title: D’où venons-nous? Que sommes-nous? Où allons-nous? People of religious faith, of course, assume that one can know the ultimate truth of reality, and, then, know the answers to these (...) questions. But even in such a case, there is the issue of how a believer has obtained their faith, through a revelatory or other epistemological process. Joseph Campbell grasped the difficulty of framing the key questions, noting that, “the transcendent is unknowable and unknown. God is transcendent, finally, of anything like the name ‘God.’ God is beyond names and forms.” This metaphysical puzzle concern, in part, models. Physics uses models, and such models are powerful tools: they allow us to navigate through the physical reality we live in, and manipulate aspects of it. However, the models do not lead humanity closer to any ultimate truth, or even give us a clue that there might be an ultimate truth. The problem of using models and talking about reality can be viewed in a new way however, using certain structures in Chinese philosophy. The ancient Dao De Jing states: “The heavens and the earth are not partial to institutionalized morality”. We can extend that to say, “The universe is not partial to institutionalized models”. (shrink)

This account of the dynamical theory of chaos leads to a metaphysical picture of a world with an open future, in which the laws of physics are emergent‐downward approximations to a more subtle and supple reality and in which there is downward causation through information input as well as upward causation through energy input. Such a metaphysical picture can accommodate both human and divine agency.

What should philosophical theology look like after the critique of Onto-theology, after Phenomenology, and in the age of Speculative Realism? What does Kabbalah have to say to Philosophy? Since Kant and especially since Husserl, philosophy has only permitted itself to speak about how one relates to God in terms of the intentionality of consciousness and not of how God is in himself. This meant that one could only ever speak to God as an addressed and yearned-for holy Thou, but not (...) to God as infinite creator of all. In this book-length essay, the author argues that reality itself is made up of the Holy Name of God. Drawing upon the set-theoretical ontology of Alain Badiou, the computational theory of Stephen Wolfram, the physics of Frank Tipler, the psychoanalytical theory of Jacques Lacan, and the genius of Georg Cantor, the author works to demonstrate that the universe is a computer processing the divine Name and that all existence is made of information (the bit). As a result of this ontic pan-computationalism, it is shown that the future resurrection of the dead can take place and how it may in fact occur. Along the way, the book also offers compelling critiques of several significant theories of reality, including the phenomenological theologies of Emmanuel Levinas and Jean-Luc Marion, Process Theology, and Object-Oriented Ontology. Reality in the Name of God explores how the concepts of Jewish mysticism can be articulated and deployed as philosophical theses within current metaphysical debates. It provides a new and dynamic Structural Realist ontology of information. Ultimately, the book aims to deal a death blow to the restriction of philosophy and theology in relation to elaborations of a how a believer relates to a God outside the mind and to return thought to a direct encounter with the divine nature of reality itself and its creator"--Website of the publisher, October 19, 2020. (shrink)

Quantum Physics suggests that life in the world is about engaging with and entangling in its waves. Its concept of complementarity also makes possible the affirmation of God's consistent actions in the universe without violating Scientific findings, an affirmation that offers resources for dealing with life's waves.

The beginning of the journey -- What this book is about : using ideas from mathematics, economics, and physics to tackle the big questions in philosophy : what is real? what can we know? what is the difference between right and wrong? and how should we live? -- Reality and unreality -- On what there is -- Why is there something instead of nothing? the best answer I have : mathematics exists because it must and everything else exists because (...) it is made of mathematics, with an excursion into artificial intelligence -- Unfinished business -- Unfinished business from chapter two : the nature and purpose of economic models -- How Richard Dawkins got it wrong -- Why Dawkins's argument against intelligent design can't be right and a mathematical analysis of the arguments for the existence of God -- Belief -- Daydream believers -- Most beliefs are ill-considered because most false beliefs are costless to hold -- The next several chapters will explore the consequences of this observation before we return to the question of where our beliefs and knowledge come from -- Unfinished business -- Unfinished business from the preceding chapter : how color vision works, sound, and water waves, the sheer craziness of economic protectionism -- Do believers believe? -- Our ill-considered beliefs about religion : why I believe that almost nobody is deeply religious -- On what there obviously is -- Our ill-considered beliefs about free will, ESP, and life after death -- Diogenes's nightmare -- How is legitimate disagreement possible if you're arguing with someone who is as intelligent and informed as you are, shouldn't you put just as much weight on your opponent's arguments as your own? -- The fact that we persist in disagreeing is strong evidence that we don't really care what's true -- Knowledge -- Knowing your math -- Where mathematical knowledge comes from and logic and why evidence and logic are not enough -- Unfinished business -- Unfinished business from the preceding chapter : the tale of hercules and the hydra, with an excursion into the lore of very large numbers -- Incomplete thinking -- Godel's incompleteness theorem and what it doesn't say about the limits of human knowledge -- The rules of logic and the tale of a Potbellied pig -- The power of logical thought, with excursions into the most counterintuitive theorem in all of mathematics and the tale of a potbellied pig -- The rules of evidence -- What we can and can't learn from evidence, with excursions into the value of preschool and how internet porn prevents rape -- The limits to knowledge -- What physics does and doesn't tell us about what we can and cannot know -- Understanding Heisenberg's uncertainty principle -- Unfinished business -- The oddness of the quantum world and why it matters to game theorists -- Right and wrong -- Telling right from wrong -- Some hard questions about right and wrong and about life and death -- The economist's golden rule -- A rule of thumb for good behavior -- How to be socially responsible -- Putting the rule of thumb into practice -- On not being a jerk -- Goofus and gallant on immigration policy -- The economist on the playground -- Our ill-considered beliefs about fairness in the market place and in the voting booth, contrasted with our carefully considered beliefs about fairness on the playground -- Unfinished business -- How ancient talmudic scholars anticipated modern economic theory -- The life of the mind -- How to think -- Some basic rules for clear thinking, mostly about economics, but also about arithmetic, neurobiology, sin, and eschewing blather -- What to study -- Advice to college students : stay away from the English department and approach the philosophy department with caution, with an excursion into the remarkable life of Frank Ramsey. (shrink)

The ArgumentThis paper is a study of the role of language in scientific activity. It recommends that language be viewed as a community's means of patterning its affairs. Language represents where the boundaries of the community are and who is entitled to speak within it, and it displays the structures of authority in the community. Moreover, language precipitates the community's view of what the world is like, such that linguistic usages can be taken as referring to that world. Thus, language (...) connects on the one side to a community's practical life, and, on the other, to the reality on which it “reports.”The example treated is Robert Boyle's view of the language proper for experimental practice, and his arguments against the value and legitimacy of mathematical representations within the experimental community. Boyle argued that the use of mathematics was inappropriate because (i) it would restrict the number of potential participants; (ii) it would give rise to unwarranted expectations of the certainty and accuracy to be expected of real physical inquiries; (iii) it would suggest views of natural law and God's relations with the natural world which were incorrect and possibly dangerous; and because (iv) the world upon which the experimentalist operated was not such as was represented by mathematical idealizations. I try to establish that decision about the appropriate language for the experimental community was a moral choice. (shrink)

As the dialogue between science and religion has grown more robust, Christians have been led to more nuanced ways of thinking about the connections between these two modes of inquiry. This essay focuses on exploring various deficiencies in naturalistic conceptions of the cosmos, and further exploring how Eastern Orthodox theology provides a more encompassing picture of human beings and their place in the cosmos.

Nobel Laureate in physics Wolfgang Pauli studied philosophy and the history of ideas intensively, especially in his later years, to form an accurate ontology vis-à-vis quantum theory. Pauli's close contacts with the Swiss psychiatrist C.G. Jung gave him special qualifications for also understanding the basic problems of empirical knowledge. After Pauli's sudden death in 1958, this work was maintained mainly in his posthumously published correspondence, which so far extends only to 1939. Because Pauli's view differs essentially from the direction physics (...) research took after the deaths of the founding fathers of quantum theory, this article attempts to describe the main features in Pauli's revolutionary thought, which is based on nature's “epistemological lesson” as revealed by Pauli's atomic research. Pauli's conclusions have important implications for various issues in Western culture, not least with the limits of science and the relation of science to religion. (shrink)

Modern scientific models of cosmological space and the theological concept of God’s immensity seem to exclude the possibility that God himself is personally present with us humans at particular places in space. Are God and our spatial reality incompatible? Or, is it possible to conceive the connection between God and space as ‘positive’, that is, in such a way that God himself can be fully and personally present with us at particular places in space? This essay explores how this (...) question may be addressed in a theology which accepts the results of the natural sciences and acknowledges that God is the free creator of physical space. It describes how space can be conceptualised, and presents an overview of five different views on a positive relation between God and space in recent protestant theology. It concludes by some considerations on the question whether a positive relation between God and space requires that God himself is spatial.Contribution: This article contributes to the conversation between natural science and theology by making three points. The scientific understanding of cosmological space and the biblical witness of God’s personal and local presence with humans require an alternative for the traditional theological view on God and space in terms of God’s immensity and omnipresence. It is argued that new theological models for the interrelation between God and space have serious weaknesses. A ‘positive’ relation between God and space may be articulated in terms of the correspondence among God’s uncreated movement, multiplicity and relationality, and the movement, multiplicity and relationality in the physical space of creation. (shrink)

Scientific debates about the nature of light have nothing to do with the philosophical problem of evil if you focus on the subject matter of those debates, but quite a bit to do with it if you focus on the structure of the reasoning in those debates. Some theories of light have been shown to be improbable, at least other evidence held equal, by comparing them to incompatible theories, both with respect to how well they fit certain data and (at (...) least implicitly) with respect to how probable they are intrinsically. Similarly, (a popular form of) theism can be shown to be improbable, at least other evidence held equal, by comparing it to the incompatible theory that physical reality is the source of mental reality. This theory of “source physicalism” fits a variety of data about good and evil much better than theism does. Further, primarily because of its modesty, source physicalism is many times more probable intrinsically than theism. It follows that, other evidence held equal, theism is very probably false. (shrink)

A philosophy of management that incorporates the big picture of human experience, all levels, and degrees of awareness in relationship with the world, will better develop and sustain an environment conducive to creative contributions that meet organizational goals. Quantum physics reveals the nature of reality to be connection and creativity engaged in a process of actualizing possibilities. Human beings participate in this process of actualization, as both observer-creator and experiencer of the universe through multiple domains of knowing – a (...) collaborator in Alfred North Whitehead’s panexperientialism. Whitehead’s God of process, the primordial field of creative possibilities, and the consequent nature which holds all the experiences of every actualization, supports human consciousness, as it self-actualizes by engaging and integrating the experience of external and internal events and their effects on awareness. Through understanding the participatory nature of consciousness with God and the world as experienced, deep meaning emerges for human life. Tapping into this deeper meaning through a philosophy of management that acknowledges the full human experience, including the embedded spiritual connection to the creative energy that is God, strengthens an organization’s vision, mission and contributions to a community. This brief overview traces a path toward a preliminary framework for a philosophy of management based on God and the ideas of connection, creativity and process. (shrink)

We reconsider briefly the relation between "physical quantity" and "physical reality in the light of recent interpretations of Quantum Mechanics. We argue, that these interpretations are conditioned from the epistemological relation between these two fundamental concepts. In detail, the choice as ontic level of the concept affect, the relative interpretation. We note, for instance, that the informational view of quantum mechanics (primacy of the subjectivity) is due mainly to the evidence of the "random" physical quantities as (...) ontic element. We will analyze four positions: Einstein, Rovelli, d'Espagnat and Zeilinger. (shrink)

This work addresses the challenge of contemporary materialism for thinking about God. The book examines contemporary theories of consciousness and defends a non-materialist theory of persons, subjectivity and God. A version of dualism is articulated that seeks to avoid the fragmented outlook of most dualist theories. Dualism is often considered to be inadequate both philosophically and ethically, and is seen as a chief cause of denigrating the body and of promoting individualism and scepticism. Charles Taliaferro defends a holistic understanding of (...) the person-body relationship in which the two are distinguishable yet integrally related. This integrated dualism is spelled out in a way that avoids the ethical and philosophical problems associated with other dualistic accounts, especially in its Platonic and Cartesian forms. A defence is then made of the intelligibility of thinking about God as non-physical, yet integrally present to creation. Charles Taliaferro is co-editor of the forthcoming A Companion to Philosophy of Religion, with Philip Quinn. He has had work published in, among others, The Philosophical Quarterly, Metaphilosophy, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, and Philosophia. (shrink)

This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it. This work is in the public domain in the United States of America, and possibly other nations. Within the United States, you may freely copy and distribute this work, as no entity has a copyright on the body of the work. Scholars believe, and we concur, that this work is important enough to be preserved, reproduced, and (...) made generally available to the public. To ensure a quality reading experience, this work has been proofread and republished using a format that seamlessly blends the original graphical elements with text in an easy-to-read typeface. We appreciate your support of the preservation process, and thank you for being an important part of keeping this knowledge alive and relevant. (shrink)

The later Wittgenstein’s approach to philosophical inquiry has influenced a number of philosophers who have reflected on the significance of evil for a Christianview of creation. The strengths and shortcomings of this influence are considered here, with particular attention to the work of D. Z. Phillips. Wittgenstein’s legacyemerges as a decidedly mixed blessing. On the one hand, a sensitive analysis of the religious use of language reveals the anthropomorphic confusion inherent in attempts to depict God as acting, or as failing (...) to act, for morally sufficient reasons. On the other, a sharp distinction between the natural and the spiritual domains, and the opposition to metaphysics with which it is associated, obscure rather than assist the search for understanding. By way of contrast, the paper concludes with a discussion of Simone Weil’s (profoundly metaphysical) conception of Christ’s mediation between creature and Creator; a conception which points the way to a resolution of the intellectual tension to which evil gives rise in the order of creation. (shrink)

Arguments about the existence of a being who is infinite and perfect involve claims about a being who must appear in all the orders and dimensions of reality. Anything else implies finitude. Ideas about goodness seem inseparable from arguments about the existence of God and Kant's claim that such arguments ultimately belong to moral theology seems plausible. The claim that we can rely on the postulates of pure practical reason is stronger than many suppose. But one must show that (...) a being who is infinite and perfect is even possible, and any such being must be present in the physical world as well as in what Pascal called the orders of the intellect and morality. Indeed, locating God in the various orders without creating conflicts is problematic. Such arguments are necessarily difficult and sometimes self-defeating but I argue in this paper that there is a promising path. (shrink)

I consider whether there are philosophical developments which can deepen our understanding of God. I focus upon the relation between experience and physical things and the nature of value. I reject the narrow limits of experience presupposed by the verificationist, and the related monopoly of science on reality. I recommend a conception of reality which is rich enough to accommodate physical things and also the intertwining of value in the natural world. I detect structural similarities between (...) these two problems and the problem of God, and consider how they might be related at the level of content. (shrink)

It is shown that the wave equation of anN-body problem can be transformed into a system of “hydrodynamical equations” in a3N-dimensional space. The projections of the hydrodynamical variables in three-dimensional space do not obey strict equations of motion. This is shown to be connected with the fact that the mathematically possible solutions of the wave equations are much more numerous than the states of the system that are usually realized in nature. It is pointed out that the many-body wave equation (...) has to be supplemented with thermodynamic principles, so as to obtain a satisfactory description of real phenomena. (shrink)

Abstract -/- This paper has three contrasting sections. The first starts with a description of the academic context that has led researchers like Stewart Kauffmann to introduce "God" into respectable discourse. It then goes on to juxtapose his schema with similar others that his work does not reference. It is proposed that, since humanity is the cutting edge-for good and evil-of emanation/revolution, it is human development that we must focus on. This, in turn cannot properly be discussed without reference to (...) first person descriptions and their contrast with third person descriptions. Likewise the role of those contrasting accounts within and outside the academy, which is currently under threat, must be referred to. -/- -/- Accordingly, the second section begins with the delineation of subjectivity suggested by current neuroscience. It is argued that the cluster sampling of EEG will yield significantly more meaningful results than other competing methods. -/- This paper makes the admittedly radical contention that it may be intellectually responsible to engage in forms of thought and practice that engage the whole of life in a manner heretofore addressed by “religions”. Such forms of life cannot responsibly emerge from an insight into the nature of physical reality, which is the province of the academy. Rather, these forms emerge from consideration of the human psychophysical unity as it engages with a succession of different contexts and attempts to reflect on and refine its responses to them. -/- The nature of the academy early in the 21st century is a confounding factor. The corporate pressure to attenuate academic freedom is real, as is the fact that academic freedom in liberal democracies would immediately migrate to other, initially unfunded structures in civil society with the internet offering myriad opportunities for dissemination and immediate critique of ideas. Orthogonal to this is the attempt to specify and refine one's psychological life, the bane of academic psychology from 19th century German research onwards. It is argued that academic psychology has an asymptote at this point; better to distinguish between the “academy' and the “real world” in a way that best does justice to both, and allows the layperson participate in a genuine attempt to seek knowledge by providing him with a veridical cosmology and psychology, than risk a new absurdity rivaling ontological behaviourism. Many salient facts about human psychology can be discovered by oneself in the “real world”, if only because the imperatives there will always be more compelling, try as we might. -/- -/- Finally, a synthetic narrative is proposed, one in which the evolutionary ethos of the first section is interrelated with the signs of the second section. This final section may yet be read independently of its predecessors. Kauffman’s imperative “reinventing the sacred” indicates something is awry in our conceptual and political systems; it is argued that historically authentic religious movements have preserved something they considered divine, and done so on the margins of society. In fact, this marginalization may be the essence of the religious impulse. (shrink)

I start by way of clarifying briefly the problem of special divine intervention. Once this is done, I argue that laws of nature are generalizations that derive from the dispositional behaviour of natural kinds. Based on this conception of laws of nature I provide a metaphysical model according to which God can realize acts of special divine providence by way of temporarily changing the dispositions of natural entities. I show that this model does not contradict scientific practice and is consistent (...) with the assumption that the physical realm is causally closed. I then argue that prima facie any putative candidate for an act of God could also be seen as a random event or as indicating that there is something wrong with our formulation of the corresponding law of nature. While there is no sufficient philosophical or scientific reason to prefer one of these models, I argue that there are sufficient and legitimate theological reasons to endorse a framework in which at least the obtaining of some anomic states of affairs is seen as the effect of special divine intervention. Doing so, theology has the hermeneutic resources to uncover a dimension of meaningful reality, which without faith could not be seen. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:September 27, 2008 (1:09 pm) G:\WPData\TYPE2801\russell 28,1 048RED.wpd Reviews 81 CAUSATION: A PREMATURELY DEPOSED MONARCH? Chad Trainer 1006 Davids Run Phoenixville, pa 19460, usa stratof{[email protected] Huw Price and Richard Corry, eds. Causation, Physics, and the Constitution of Reality: Russell’s Republic Revisited. Oxford: Clarendon P.; New York: Oxford U. P., 2007. Pp. x, 403. isbn: 978-0-19-927819-0. £58 (hb); £19.99 (pb.). us$35 (pb). In 1911 the Aristotelian Society elected Bertrand (...) Russell its president, and in November of 1912 Russell’s presidential address to the Society was “On the Notion of Cause”, which, in addition to being published in the Society’s Proceedings, was later included in Russell’s book Mysticism and Logic. Russell’s address to the Aristotelian Society occurred during an interesting, brief era in the history of physics. This was a stage after the science of gravitational astronomy had beneWted from the use of diTerential equations but before the British physics community was aware of the German physicists’ advances. Less than three years after Russell delivered “On the Notion of Cause”, Einstein revolutionized the Weld of gravitational astronomy; and the quantum physicists were to eventually unearth phenomena that proved to be especially recalcitrant to comprehensive mathematical analysis. At the time of “On the Notion of Cause”, though, physics was understood as providing a thorough account of all the phenomena within its domain. In this address, Russell speaks of how Certain diTerential equations can be found, which hold at every instant for every particle of the system, and which, given the conWguration and velocities at one instant, or the conWgurations at two instants, render the conWguration at any other earlier or later instant theoretically calculable. … This statement holds throughout physics, and not only in the special case of gravitation. But there is nothing that could be properly called “cause” and nothing that could be properly called “eVect” in such a system.… [T]here is merely a formula. (ML, p. 194, Papers 6: 202; my emphasis) Russell further remarked: All philosophers, of every school, imagine that causation is one of the fundamental axioms or postulates of science, yet, oddly enough, in advanced sciences such as gravitational astronomy, the word ‘cause’ never occurs…. To me it seems that … the reason September 27, 2008 (1:09 pm) G:\WPData\TYPE2801\russell 28,1 048RED.wpd 82 Reviews why physics has ceased to look for causes is that, in fact, there are no such things. The law of causality, … like much that passes muster among philosophers, is a relic of a bygone age, surviving, like the monarchy, only because it is erroneously supposed to do no harm. (ML, p. 180; Papers 6: 193). What Russell has in mind here when saying “in advanced sciences such as gravitational astronomy, the word ‘cause’ never occurs” is that it is rash to infer from the observation of particular uniformities that there necessarily is a legitimate apriori category of causality (ML, p. 205; Papers 6: 209). Rather, “the law of causality, as usually stated by philosophers, is false, and is not employed in science” (ML, p. 207; Papersz 6: 210). Huw Price and Richard Corry’s Causation, Physics, and the Constitution of Reality: Russell’s Republic Revisitedz features thirteen chapters from diTerent contributors (except for Huw Price who authors one and co-authors another) who address diTerent aspects of this matter. Price and Corry explain: One key theme of the volume turns on the possibility that in presenting philosophy with a stark choice between Wnding causation in physics and rejecting it altogether, Russell missed an important range of intermediate views. In particular, he missed what, by a natural extension of his own constitutional analogy, we may call the republican option. In the political case, rejecting the view that political authority is vested in our rulers by God leaves us with two choices: we may reject the notion of political authority altogether ; or we may regard it, with republicans, as invested in our rulers by us. Arguably, the republican option exists in metaphysics, too. Causal republicanism is thus the view that although the notion of causation is useful, perhaps indispensable, in our dealings with... (shrink)

With the emergence of quantum theory, the Newtonian idea that matter is inert, devoid of creativity and sentience, becomes questionable. Yet, physicists have by no means agreed upon an alternative understanding that can replace the Newtonian paradigm. Henry Stapp and others argue that Whitehead’s thought provides a peculiarly appropriate framework for a new understanding of matter in light ofquantum theory. The implications for a theology ofecology are manifold. No longer are matter and mind utterly discontinuous, nor is matter devoid of (...) value until assigned value by humans or by God. Even the divine reality is, in a certain sense, “material.” This calls for a new sensitivity within Western religion, in which religion itself becomes openness to, and appreciation for, physical matter. (shrink)

With the emergence of quantum theory, the Newtonian idea that matter is inert, devoid of creativity and sentience, becomes questionable. Yet, physicists have by no means agreed upon an alternative understanding that can replace the Newtonian paradigm. Henry Stapp and others argue that Whitehead’s thought provides a peculiarly appropriate framework for a new understanding of matter in light ofquantum theory. The implications for a theology ofecology are manifold. No longer are matter and mind utterly discontinuous, nor is matter devoid of (...) value until assigned value by humans or by God. Even the divine reality is, in a certain sense, “material.” This calls for a new sensitivity within Western religion, in which religion itself becomes openness to, and appreciation for, physical matter. (shrink)

What, precisely, are the ‘changing perspectives on reality’ in contemporary scientific thought? The topics of the lecture are the scope and the limits of science with emphasis on the physical foundations of biology. The laws of physics in general and the physics of molecules in particular form the basis for explaining the mechanism of reproduction, the generation of structure and form in the course of the development of the individual organism, the evolution of the diversity and complexity of (...) organisms by mutation and selection, and the control of behaviour by information processing in the nervous system. However, the application of scientific thought to its own foundations reveals some basic limitations in science: indeterminacy in quantum physics, the limits of decidability in mathematics, and, most likely, the limitations of an algorithmic theory of the brain-mind relationship. In all these cases, the application of scientific methods to their own presuppositions leads us to recognize their intrinsic limitations. These limits, in turn, are closely related to fundamental philosophical questions on the relationship between human knowledge and reality. Modern science is consistent with different, though of course not all, interpretations of man and the universe, including the religious interpretations of the universe as God’s creation and man as God’s (mentally creative) image. (shrink)

The paper offers a general critique of physicalism and of one variety of nonphysicalism, arguing that such theses are untenable. By distinguishing between the absolute conception of reality and the causal completeness of physics it shows that the 'explanatory gap' is not merely epistemic but metaphysical. It defends the essential subjectivity and unity of consciousness and its inseparability from a self-conscious autonomous rational and moral being. Casting a favourable light on dualism freed from misconceptions, it suggests that the only (...) plausible way forward in the search for an understanding of both physical and mental reality is a recognition of the mind as a metaphysically distinct entity. (shrink)

The ?language of the gods? is conceived as a kind of language more complex than what we associate with human tongues in the strict sense of the term. Certain arbitrary regularities throughout the rational disciplines appear to indicate the existence of this language. The present article explores this new concept and applies it in an attempt to provide a logical clarification of the notions of individual consciousness and physical reality.

Alexej Remizov is usually regarded by literary critics as a Symbolist rather than a Futurist writer. However, I would posit that Remizov similarly to the Futurists viewed language as “logos,” bozhestvennii glagol. According to the mystical interpretation of the famous words “At the beginning there was Word and the Word was with God and the Word was God”, when God was creating the world he named the objects, and these abstract names became a force for the appearance of an object (...) in physical reality. In the light of these words, The Medieval mystical and magical philosophers claimed that one could restore the divine language of Creation, possess the ability to create objects anew, and thereby become Creator himself. One can argue that a major goal of Remizov was similar to that of hisMedieval predecessors: to reveal the mystical power of language in order to create, not to describe reality. The paper analyzes three chapters from Alexej Remizov’s Rossiya v pis’menah, a book which can be read as a manifesto of Remizov’s attitude toward language and reality, and discuss possible sourcesthat might have influenced Remizov in his attitude towards language. (shrink)