I claim that explanations of human behaviour by Edward O. Wilsonand Charles Lumsden are constituted by a religiously functioningmetaphysics: emergent materialism. The constitutive effects areidentified using six criteria, beginning with a metaphorical re-description of dissimilarities between levels of organization interms of the lower level, and consist of conceptual andexplanatory reductions (CER). Wilson and Lumsden practice CER,even though CER is not required by emergent materialism. Theypreconceive this practice by a re-description which conflates thelevels of organization and explain failure of CER in (...) terms oftechnical, not ontological or epistemological reasons. Iinterpret these three practices as a reaction of Wilson againsthis early Christian religious beliefs. Statements by Wilsonindicate this reaction ultimately constitutes his explanations ofsocial, moral and religious behaviour.Tested knowledge about matter at the lower level functions as ametaphysical belief when applied to the higher level becausethere it is untested. I offer twelve criteria for the diagnosisof religious functions of this metaphysical materialism, five ofwhich are satisfied. I show that the constitutive effects of thismaterialism in sociobiology are due to its religious functions,are beneficial for science and do not destroy its public nature. (shrink)

There are two widespread beliefs about the use of metaphors in clinical medicine. The first is that military metaphors are harmful to patients and should be discouraged in medical practice. The second is that the metaphors of clinical practice can be judged by and standardized in reference to neutral criteria. In this article, I evaluate both these beliefs, exposing their shared flawed logic. This logic underwrites the false empiricist assumptions that metaphorical language and literal language are fundamentally distinct, play separate (...) roles in communication, and therefore can be independently analyzed, systematized, and prescribed. Next, using the resources of ordinary language philosophy, I lay out a theoretical view of medical metaphors that is grounded in metaphor use within clinician‐patient relationships. Finally, drawing on the work of philosopher Max Black, I diagram a practical conceptual framework for clinicians to use when they consider whether a metaphor is appropriate for a specific patient encounter. (shrink)

In this paper, I argue that there are indispensable and irreducible metaphors in religious language and that this does not threaten a realist interpretation of religion. I first sketch a realist theory of religious language and argue that we cannot avoid addressing the problems metaphor poses to semantics. I then give a brief account of what it means for a metaphorical sentence to be true and how metaphors can refer to something even if what they mean is not expressible in (...) literal terms. Finally, I discuss how this realist theory of metaphor influences our understanding of negative theology and gives a new perspective on religious pluralism. (shrink)

Religious fictionalism is the theory that it is morally and intellectually legitimate to affirm religious sentences and to engage in public and private religious practices, without believing the content of religious claims. This article discusses the main features of fictionalism, contrasts hermeneutic, and revolutionary kinds of fictionalism and explores possible historical and recent examples of religious fictionalism. Such examples are found in recent theories of faith, pragmatic approaches to religion, and mystical traditions in religious theology.

This study reviews some of the principal themes in contemporary work on religious language. Unlike other recent surveys, the most pressing issues about religious language are addressed from the perspective of the philosophy of language; different positions taken on these issues by philosophers of religion and theologians are considered. Topics that are covered include: the subject matter of religious discourse, reductionism and subjectivism, expressivism, the nature of religious metaphor, religious fictionalism and truth in religious discourse. The study also looks at (...) the relationship between questions about religious language and cognate areas of philosophy of religion such as epistemology and metaphysics, and potential future directions of research. (shrink)

An overview of several philosophical issues that arise from the recent growth of interest in the relationships between science and theology. The interactions between theology and science are complex, and often highly contextual in nature. This makes simple typologies of their interaction rather dubious. There are some similarities between religion and science, including the difficulty of defining them. Concerns about the use and meaning of language, and issues of realism and anti-realism, are found in both areas of thought. Epistemology is (...) important to both areas, and there is increasing acceptance of differing epistemologies not only in religion and science, but also within the various scientific disciplines. One central issue is the question of legitimate influence between science and theology given their aims and methods. Another issue surrounds the question of naturalism in natural science. Also important to note is the variety of god-concepts at work in the current dialogue between science and theology. (shrink)

‘Critical realism’ is to some extent an equivocal term, although its ambiguity has rarely been noticed. The reason for this ambiguity is that the term has constantly been reinvented. Nevertheless, the identity of the label and many family resemblances between its uses allowed for a transfer of thought between these different, although similar concepts, bearing the same name. The purpose of this article is to highlight the similarities and differences between the Barbour family of critical realism in science and religion (...) and Roy Bhaskar's understanding of critical realism, and also to show the existing connections between both approaches. (shrink)

In this paper, I take a critical look at the Davidsonian argument that metaphorical sentences do not express propositions because of the phenomenological experience—seeing one thing as another thing—involved in understanding them as metaphors. According to Davidson, seeing-as is not seeing-that. This verdict is aimed at dislodging metaphor from the position of being assessed with the semantic notions of propositions, meaning, and truth. I will argue that the phenomenological or perceptual experience associated with metaphors does not determine the propositional contentfulness (...) or truth-evaluability of metaphors. Truth-evaluability is not inconsistent but compatible with a perceptual model for metaphors. I argue for this partly by showing that seeing-as does not constitute understanding of metaphors when understanding is appropriately construed in terms of being able to use an expression. (shrink)

In this paper, I take a critical look at the Davidsonian argument that metaphorical sentences do not express propositions because of the phenomenological experience—seeing one thing as another thing—involved in understanding them as metaphors. According to Davidson, seeing-as is not seeing-that. This verdict is aimed at dislodging metaphor from the position of being assessed with the semantic notions of propositions, meaning, and truth. I will argue that the phenomenological or perceptual experience associated with metaphors does not determine the propositional contentfulness (...) or truth-evaluability of metaphors. Truth-evaluability is not inconsistent but compatible with a perceptual model for metaphors. I argue for this partly by showing that seeing-as does not constitute understanding of metaphors when understanding is appropriately construed in terms of being able to use an expression. (shrink)

In this paper, I take a critical look at the Davidsonian argument that metaphorical sentences do not express propositions because of the phenomenological experience—seeing one thing as another thing—involved in understanding them as metaphors. According to Davidson, seeing-as is not seeing-that. This verdict is aimed at dislodging metaphor from the position of being assessed with the semantic notions of propositions, meaning, and truth. I will argue that the phenomenological or perceptual experience associated with metaphors does not determine the propositional contentfulness (...) or truth-evaluability of metaphors. Truth-evaluability is not inconsistent but compatible with a perceptual model for metaphors. I argue for this partly by showing that seeing-as does not constitute understanding of metaphors when understanding is appropriately construed in terms of being able to use an expression. (shrink)

This two-part article presents the research program for a theory and empirical analysis of religious evolution. It is assumed that religion isprimarilya co-evolution to societal evolution, which in turn is a co-evolution to mental, organic, and physical evolution. The theory of evolution is triangulated with the systems theory and the semiotically informed theory of communication, so that knowledge can be gained that would not be acquired by only one of the three theories: The differentiation between religion and its environment can (...) be reconstructed based on the theory of evolution. The elements of the theory of evolution can be understood as the formation of systems. The semiotically informed theory of communication clarifies the conditions of the combination of both the systems theory and the theory of evolution as well as its objects. In turn, the combination of the systems theory and the theory of evolution can describe how communication—including religion and science—evolves and is structured. (shrink)

The justification of cognitive claims in theology can be dealt with adequately only if the epistemological issues of metaphorical reference, experiential adequacy, and explanatory progress are seen as crucial problems for the more encompassing problem of rationality in theology. In order to guarantee any claim to reality depiction the theologian will have to argue for a plausible theory of reference on the basis of interpreted religious experience. In this discussion important analogies between the rationality of theological theorizing and the rationality (...) of science are revealed. (shrink)

Work on analogy has been done from a number of disciplinary perspectives throughout the history of Western thought. This work is a multidisciplinary guide to theorizing about analogy. It contains 1,406 references, primarily to journal articles and monographs, and primarily to English language material. classical through to contemporary sources are included. The work is classified into eight different sections (with a number of subsections). A brief introduction to each section is provided. Keywords and key expressions of importance to research on (...) analogy are discussed in the introductory material. Electronic resources for conducting research on analogy are listed as well. (shrink)

Excerpts from Chapters 1 and 3 of New Maps for Old: Explorations in Science and Religion (Gerhart and Russell 2001) explore the ramifications of metaphoric process for changes in thinking, especially those changes that lead to a new understanding of our world. Examples are provided from science, from religion, and from science and religion together. In excerpts from Chapter 8, a double analogy—theology is to science as science is to mathematics—is proposed for better understanding the contemporary relationship between science and (...) religion. A conservation of epistemological sufficiency is disclosed as one moves from mathematics to empirical science to theology—a move from one discipline to another that involves a sacrifice of one aspect of thought to gain another. (shrink)

Metaphorical language has an ideological function that needs to be investigated. In this paper, I show how some of the prophetic metaphors are deliberately used to represent a well-defined statement of beliefs that constructs Islamic doctrine based on early Arabs’ beliefs and experiential knowledge. This statement is represented in terms of metaphors from the metaphoric domains of journeying, the heart, slavery or servitude, brotherhood, shepherds, and light.

Dombrowski and Murdoch offer versions of the ontological argument which aim to avoid two types of objection – those concerned with the nature of the divine, and those concerned with the move from an abstract concept to a mind-independent reality. For both, the nature of the concept of God/Good entails its instantiation, and both supply a supporting argument from experience. It is only Murdoch who successfully negotiates the transition from an abstract concept to the instantiation of that concept, however, and (...) this is achieved by means of an ontological argument from moral experience which, in a reversal of the Kantian doctrine, depends ultimately on a form of the cosmological argument. (shrink)

The field of science and religion is undergoing a transition today requiring assessment of its past movements and identifying its future trajectories by the next generation of science and religion scholars. This essay provides such assessment and advice. To focus efforts on the past, I turn to Ian Barbour's own stock taking of the field some forty years ago in an essay entitled “Science and Religion Today” before giving some personal comments where I argue that much of the field has (...) traditionally focused on the conversation between Christianity and the natural sciences. At present, however, we are beginning to see that the future of the conversation lies beyond the dialogue between the natural sciences and Christianity. I suggest that the future dialogue will and ought to expand in several directions: into non-Christian religions and theology, into the human sciences, into science and technology Studies, and into the humanities more broadly. (shrink)

Considerations from evolutionary biology lead Michael Ruse, among others, to a naturalistic turn in philosophy. I assess some of the pragmatic and skeptical conclusions concerning ethics, religion, and epistemology that Ruse draws from his evolutionary naturalism. Finally, I argue that there is an essential tension between science and religion which forecloses the possibility of an ultimate reconciliation between the two as they are now understood.

This paper examines how Heidegger's view that language is poetry might provide a helpful way of understanding the nature of religious language. Poetry, according to Heidegger, is language in its purest form, in that it both reveals Being, whilst also showing the difference between word and thing. In poetry, Heidegger suggests, we come closest to the essence of language itself and encounter its strangeness and impermeability, and its revelatory character. What would be the implications for viewing religious language in this (...) way? Through examining Heidegger's view that poetry is the purest form of language, I suggest that it would also be possible to view religious language as poetry in this way, in that it also shows the transcendence of what cannot be brought to presence in language, except as concealed. Such a view of religious language does not regard it as a problematic type of language, deserving special treatment, but rather suggests that in religious language the inarticulable relationship between word and world is revealed. (shrink)

The absorption of the Greek world into the Roman empire created intellectual problems on several levels. In the first instance, Greek confidence in the superiority of Hellenic culture made explanations for the swiftness of Roman conquest all the more necessary. In accounting for Rome's success, Greeks focused on the structure and character of the Roman state, on Roman attitudes towards citizenship, and on the nature of the Roman constitution. Greeks initially attempted to understand Roman institutions and beliefs by assimilating them (...) to paradigms within Hellenistic political thought. On the one hand, this process tended to obscure substantial differences between Greek and Roman political theory. At the same time, appreciation of Rome's relations with Italy created a means through which Greeks could imagine their own integration into the Roman community. Among the conceptual models available to Greeks of this age, only the polis provided a paradigm for a collectivity in which individuals had equal rights and toward which they directed their patriotic sentiments. That Roman Italy was not a polis did not force the coinage of new terminology: the polis formed a conceptual boundary that Hellenistic political philosophy never truly escaped. Repeated construals of Roman ideas and institutions on analogy with polis-based models ultimately forced a shift in the semantic fields of Greek political terminology and altered Greeks' conceptual archetype of the political collectivity. This process provided a framework within which Greeks could justify their wholesale participation in imperial culture and political life: they could, on these terms, argue that the gradual evolution of the world toward a single, unified empire actualized man's natural tendency to center his life around a single polis. (shrink)

The main purpose of this dissertation is to examine critically and discuss the role of imagination in science and religion, with particular emphasis on its possible epistemic, creative, and meaning-making functions. In order to answer my research questions, I apply theories and concepts from contemporary philosophy of mind on scientific and religious practices. This framework allows me to explore the mental state of imagination, not as an isolated phenomenon but, rather, as one of many mental states that co-exist and interplay (...) in our cogntive architecture. Based on the philosophical discourse of philosophy of mind, four types of imagination are indentified and conceptualized: sensory, propositional, experiential, and creative imagination. These categories are then employed on five phenomena that can be found in scientific and religious environments: metaphors, models, thought experiments, aspect perception, and - in the religious case - rituals. In relation to the concept of religious "seeing" I consider how imaginings may influence visionary experiences and visualization, and compare these phenomena with cases of scientific visualization and eureka experiences. In regard to scientific and religious models, a distinction is made between, on the one hand, two notions of truth and, on the other hand, truth-independent meaning-making. In light of these categories, I differentiate between, and critically discuss, the use of imagination in doxastic, non-doxastic and fictionalist accounts. In light of this investigation, I formulate and defend the position of interactivism, which acknowledges a constant interplay between different attitudes and mental states. In my examination of rituals and scientific and religious thought experiments, special attention is given to the mental capacity to recreate the experiences that are entailed in an imagined scenario. At the end of the investigation, I consider the possible impact that my study might have on how we view science and religion as well as the dialogue bewteen these two fields. (shrink)