Animalism is the view that human persons are human animals – biological organisms that belong to the species Homo sapiens. This paper concerns a family of modal objections to animalism based on the essentiality of personhood (persons and animals differ in their persistence conditions; psychological considerations are relevant for the persistence of persons, but not animals; persons, but not animals, are essentially psychological beings). Such arguments are typically used to support constitutionalism, animalism’s main neo-Lockean rival. The problem with such arguments (...) is that they wrongly assume that animalism is incompatible with our essentially being psychological beings. In this paper, I discuss a formulation of animalism, what I call psychologically-serious animalism, according to which human persons are essentially human animals and essentially persons. I show how the availability of this neglected formulation of animalism undermines objections based on the essentiality of personhood. (shrink)

David Bohm is a physicist with a broad range of other interests including religion, philosophy, education, art, and linguistics. This book surveys Bohm's physical theories including the quantum potential theory and the implicate order or holomovement theory.

David Bohm's thinking has become widely publicized since the 1982 performance of a form of the Einstein‐Podolsky‐ Rosen (EPR) experiment. Bohm's holomovement theory, in particular, tries to explain the nonlocality that the experiment supports. Moreover, his theories are close to his metaphysical and religious thinking. Fritjof Capra's writings try something similar: supporting a theory (the bootstrap theory) because it is close to his religious beliefs. Both Bohm and Capra appear to use their religious ideas in their physics. Religion, their source (...) for physical hypotheses, provides the motivation to develop and uphold them. (shrink)

Compatibilists respond to the problem of causal exclusion for nonreductive physicalism by rejecting the exclusionist’s ban on overdetermination. By the compatibilist’s lights there are two forms of overdetermination, one that’s problematic and another that is entirely benign. Furthermore, multiple causation by “tightly related” causes requires only the benign form of overdetermination. Call this the tight relation strategy for avoiding problematic forms of overdetermination. To justify the tight relation strategy, modal compatibilists appeal to a widely accepted counterfactual test. The argument of (...) this paper is that the counterfactual test fails to legitimize the tight relation strategy as it fails to adequately distinguish between problematic and benign overdetermination. Contrary to modal compatibilists, modal dependence does not suffice for benignity. I conclude by arguing that adequately addressing overdetermination worries requires a much heavier metaphysical burden than modal compatibilists have typically recognized. (shrink)

Eleonore Stump has recently argued that Thomas Aquinas’s philosophy of mind is consistent with a nonreductive physicalist approach to human psychology. Iargue that by examining Aquinas’s account of the subsistence of the rational soul we can see that Thomistic dualism is inconsistent with physicalism of every variety. Specifically, his reliance on the claim that the mind has an operation per se spells trouble for any physicalist interpretation. After offering Stump’s reading of Aquinas and her case for the supposed consistency with (...) nonreductive physicalism, I use Aquinas’s discussion of the mind’s operation per se to argue that the human mind is incapable of being physically realized. To support this general argument, I offer a detailed examination of Stump’s use of two criteria of physicalism drawn from contemporary functional analyses of the mind and argue that both are inconsistent with Aquinas’s theory. (shrink)

The anthropic principle, that the universe exists in some sense for life, has persisted in recent religious and scientific thought because it derives from cosmological fact. It has been unsuccessful in furthering our understanding of the world because its advocates tend to impose final metaphysical solutions onto what is a physical problem. We begin by outlining the weak and strong versions of the anthropic principle and reviewing the discoveries that have led to their formulation. We present the reasons some have (...) given for ignoring the anthropic implications of these discoveries and find these reasons wanting—a real phenomenon demands real investigation. Theological and scientific solutions of the problem are then considered and criticized; these solutions provide dead ends for explanation. Finally, we pursue the path that explanation must follow and look at the physical details of the problem. It seems clear that the anthropic principle has been poorly framed. Removing the ambiguities surrounding the meaning of “life” may lead to more profitable investigations. (shrink)

We examine the phenomenon of emergence, referring particularly to Arthur Peacocke’s ideas on emergence, the self, and spirituality. He believes that the whole of an emergent structure influences the way its parts cohere and that emergent structures (including minds and persons) and their effects are very important. He thereby hopes to remove the reductionist challenge that seeks to understand a whole fully in terms of its parts. We argue that emergent phenomena are not influential in the above sense. The holistic (...) completeness of these structures at their own theoretical level does not substitute for the causal independence Peacocke suggests by the idea of influence. Some computer simulations that generate emergent complexity follow simple and self-contained sets of rules. Peacocke also adheres to a hierarchical account of reality as a series of levels into which matter is organized, running from atoms through molecules to cells and eventually to whole ecosystems. But influential behavior does not respect this ordering. Further, Peacocke’s opposition to reductionism is unnecessary; any “completeness‘ of lower-level models does not imply the redundancy of higher-level descriptions. Emergence transforms reductionism into a constructive and positive principle. (shrink)

Structural properties are properties something has in virtue of its mereological structure in that they are properties whose instantiation by a particular involves the parts of the particular being propertied and related in the appropriate way. Most of the literature on structural properties has focused on problems that arise from the pairing of two assumptions: (1) structural properties are universals and (2) structural properties are, in some sense, composed of the properties they involve. Chief among these difficulties is David Lewis’ (...) claim that the conjunction of (1) and (2) require non-unique composition and hence entail the denial of the extensionality of parthood: butane, as well as methane, is composed of the universals carbon, hydrogen and bonded, yet they are distinct properties. This is the extensionality problem. In this paper I discuss a different problem for the conjunction of (1) and (2) and propose a single solution to both problems. First, in section two, I introduce the idea of multiple decomposition and suggest that at least some structural properties are multiply decomposable. In section three, I introduce the “problem of multiple decompositions.” This problem arises when it seems possible for a structural property to be composed of some xs and some ys even when the xs ≠ ys. Finally, in section four I show how both problems admit of a single solution by focusing on the parthood relation that holds between structural properties and their constituents. While the solution I propose is theoretically costly, I argue that this cost should be paid to retain both (1) and (2). (shrink)

Michael Ruse's writings explore what sociobiology says about morality. Further, he claims that sociobiology undermines the base for Christian morality. After responding to criticisms of Ruse, especially those of Arthur Peacocke, I lay a base for meeting his challenge.

We propose the camellia model for the integration of science and religion, in which each accepts the knowledge of the other, and they together build a flourishing bush of energetic, inquiring, life-directing, and truthful knowledge. The nature of happiness provides an example of how this model integrates scientific and religious knowledge.

The holomovement metaphysics of David Bohm emphasizes connections and continuous change. Two general movements through space‐time extend Bohm's ideas. One is that the universe was nonlocal when it started but increases in locality. (With nonlocality, two simultaneous but distant events affect each other.) The other is the opposite movement or evolution toward increasingly complex systems exhibiting internal connections and a type of nonlocality. This metaphysics produces a theology when the holomovement is a model for God. Several topics follow, including global (...) nonlocality, God as creator, God's transcendence and immanence, and God as personal. This theology shows promise but needs further development. (shrink)

John Polkinghorne proposes that God interacts with the world by feeding information into chaotic systems. This influences the course of these systems and, since they underlie what goes on in the world, enables God to influence the world. While I applaud Polkinghorne’s insistence that God interacts physically with the world, his model for this faces several problems. Some of these he might rectify, but others look quite thorny. I also suggest an alternative God-world relation where God is the world-as-a-whole. This (...) includes many of the benefits of Polkinghorne’s central chaos idea and avoids its problems. (shrink)

This paper constructs a simple model of decision-making that accounts for the paradoxes of Ellsberg and Machina. It does so by representing decision makers’ beliefs on the vector space $${\mathbb{R}}\times {\mathbb{R}}$$ R × R and by providing a reasonable decision rule with axiomatic foundations. Moreover, the model allows for a characterization that clearly distinguishes between the two paradoxes. The interesting feature of the paper is that the ‘resolution’ of the paradoxes is along the lines suggested by the eponymous authors themselves. (...) This is to say, the decision rule derived from the axioms corresponds to Ellsberg’s own rule in the narrow set of circumstances that he explored, and the decision rule embodies Machina’s injunction that we treat choice under uncertainty in a similar manner to the way we treat standard consumer theory. That the paper cleaves to the advice of both authors is a little surprising given that it utilizes a two-dimensional vector space that neither author deployed. (shrink)

"What is indeed striking is the degree to which the essays reveal a shared set of interests and adopt languages and concerns that reflect back and forth in stimulating ways."--Richard W. Kroll, author of "The Material World".

Disorder and suffering are increasing significantly in our society. Violent crime, unemployment, escape through drug-taking are all on the increase. It is apparent, also, that much of this disorder and suffering, and the anxiety it fosters, is rooted in science and its technological off-spring. The un-employment produced by a micro-technology is only one small example. It is also apparent that one of the principal foundation stones for the scientific enterprise was Christianity.

Time flows. This oft-lamented fact of human existence seems plain enough, but is remarkably difficult to explain scientifically. Physical theory follows a greater goal—symmetry—and the directional nature of time is left adrift. The phenomenon must nevertheless be explained.Scientists since Isaac Newton have searched classical mechanics for answers, but precious little progress has been made on his mystical ideas. The discoveries of thermodynamics, though clearly relevant, have posed more problems than they have solved.Now a new solution presents itself through quantum mechanics. (...) The intimate relation between thermodynamics and time is not in doubt, but now quantum theory is explaining how the laws of entropy arise from a stranger reality. The theory of decoherence begins to explain time as a holistic quantum concept. (shrink)

Gordon Kaufman is a theologian who wrestles with essential theological issues. In a recent amplification of his position, An Essay on Theological Method , 1 he makes an honest attempt to describe the method by which a self-critical theologian might work. This paper sets out a critique of the method Kaufman proposes and from that delineates a path which theologians might choose to follow.

In this article, the author looks at virtues and passions in early modern England as a case study for a new approach to the history of political ideas. The representations of virtues and passions are examined in myriad discourses and languages, metaphors and analogues, images and signs, fictions and imaginings. Emphasising the religious origin of the early-modern discussion of virtues and passions, the author, after a brief overview of some of the canonical texts of political theory, examines a number of (...) lesser-known treatises and the literature of a wide variety of social and cultural practices that contemporaries imbued with ideological meaning, values and preferences, such as music, dance and, especially, horse riding. The significance of representations in painting is also stressed. The insights of the new cultural history should not be disregarded: all the sites of representations of virtues and passions must become the materials of the political theorist. (shrink)