David Ray Griffin develops a third form of realism, one that resolves the basic problem (common to dualism and materialism) of the continued acceptance of the Cartesian view of matter.

Religion, science, and naturalism -- Perception and religious experience -- Panexperientialism, freedom, and the mind-body relation -- Naturalistic, dipolar theism -- Natural theology based on naturalistic theism -- Evolution, evil, and eschatology -- The two ultimates and the religions -- Religion, morality, and civilization -- Religious language and truth -- Religious knowledge and common sense.

Describes the move from modern, mechanistic science to a post-modern, organismic science.

Through both an historical and philosophical analysis of the concept of possibility, we show how including both potentiality and actuality as part of the real is both compatible with experience and contributes to solving key problems of fundamental process and emergence. The book is organized into four main sections that incorporate our routes to potentiality: (1) potentiality in modern science [history and philosophy; quantum physics and complexity]; (2) Relational Realism [ontological interpretation of quantum physics; philosophy and logic]; (3) Process Physics (...) [ontological interpretation of relativity theory; physics and philosophy]; (4) on speculative philosophy and physics [limitations and approximations; process philosophy]. We conclude that certain fundamental problems in modern physics require complementary analyses of certain philosophical and metaphysical issues, and that such scholarship reveals intrinsic features and limits of determinism, potentiality and emergence that enable, among others, important progress on the quantum theory of measurement problem and new understandings of emergence. (shrink)

Examines the postmodern implications of Whitehead’s metaphysical system.

The intractable mind-body problem, which involves accounting for freedom as well as conscious experience, is created by the assumption that the brain is comprised of insentient things. Chalmers is right, accordingly, to suggest that we take experience as fundamental. Given this starting-point, the hard problem is twofold: to see sufficient reason to adopt this long-despised approach, and to develop a plausible theory based on it. We have several reasons, I suggest, to reject the notion of ‘vacuous actuality’ and to adopt, (...) instead, the view that all true individuals have experience and spontaneity. After suggesting criteria for an acceptable theory, chief among which are ‘hard-core common-sense notions’, I point out why dualism and materialism have been unable to fulfil these criteria. The strength of dualism has been its organizational duality, the strength of materialism its rejection of ontological dualism. I suggest that panexperientialist physicalism, by allowing for ‘compound individuals’ and thereby a ‘nondualistic interactionism’ that combines these strengths, can provide a theory that overcomes the problems of materialist physicalism. (shrink)

Challenges the conventional view of the nature of time.

A collection of essays by prominent physicists, biologists, geneticists, zoologists, philosophers and other thinkers about the relationship between science and philosophy, particularly the teleological versus the mechanistic explanation of the universe.

Paper edition (unseen), $14.95. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR.

Process thought refers to the mode of thinking rooted in the philosophies of Alfred North Whitehead and Charles Hartshorne. Drawing heavily on Whitehead and Hartshorne, this chapter presents an account of process natural theology. The discussions cover the decline of natural theology's reputation in modern times; process theology in the broad sense; panexperientialism's avoidance of materialism's mind–body problems; sensationism's knowledge problems; how prehensive perception solves sensationism's knowledge problems; and process theology in the narrow sense.

This chapter contains sections titled: Works cited.

Willem Drees endorses not only minimal naturalism, understood as the rejection of supernatural interruptions of the world's normal causal processes, but also maximal naturalism, with its reductionistic materialism. Besides arguing that this reductionistic naturalism provides the best framework for interpreting science, he believes that it is compatible with religion (albeit of a minimalist sort). The “richer” naturalism advocated by Whiteheadians is, accordingly, unnecessary. Drees's position, however, cannot do justice to a number of “hard‐core commonsense notions,” which we inevitably presuppose in (...) practice and thereby in science as well as religion. His naturalism is too poor, in particular, to account for subjectivity, freedom, and mathematical, religious, and moral experience. (shrink)

The fact that many who are currently interested in spirituality tum to non-Christian sources is related to Augustine’s view of divine omnipotence. which was expressed supremely in his anit-Donatist and anti-Pelagian writings. Distinguishing cosmological, theological, and axiological freedom helps us see Pelgius as right on the second even though Augustine was right on the third. Process theology, by defending cosmological freedom against modem thought, theological freedom against pre-modem thought, and an element of truth in Donatism, provides the basis for a (...) post-modem spirituality. (shrink)

Accession Number: ATLA0001712244; Hosting Book Page Citation: p 453-471.; Language(s): English; General Note: Bibliography: p 469-471.; Issued by ATLA: 20130825; Publication Type: Essay.

Although attempts to explain religious experience in terms of brain processes usually presuppose the identification of scientific naturalism with the sensationist, atheistic, materialist version of naturalism (naturalismsam), this version is inadequate for science, and human experience more generally, for numerous reasons. An alternative version, based on panexperientialism, panentheism, and a prehensive doctrine of perception (naturalismppp), not only avoids those problems but also allows for religious experience understood as the soul's direct experience of a Holy Reality.

Although Ian Barbour endorses process organicism in Issues in Science and Religion, his rhetoric against vitalism and dualism makes his discussion of life, mind, and the part-whole relationship sound like relational emergentism and hence like a denial of process philosophy's nondualistic interactionism. Also his rhetoric against a God of the gaps seems to exclude the God-shaped hole in Alfred North Whitehead's philosophy. A more consistent articulation of Whitehead's postmodern position would lead to greater adequacy and consistency on these issues, and (...) perhaps also to a more radically postmodern view of science—a view which Whitehead himself only sometimes suggested. (shrink)

Argues that the planetary crisis, which has been produced by modernity, demands a postmodern politics.