Actions and Agents: Natural and Supernatural Reconsidered: with Mikael Leidenhag, “The Relevance of Emergence Theory in the Science–Religion Dialogue”; Steven L. Peck, “Life as Emergent Agential Systems: Tendencies without Teleology in an Open Universe”; and Joseph A. Bracken, “Actions and Agents: Natural and Supernatural Reconsidered.”
Using a process-oriented understanding of the relation between actions and agents, the author argues that an ontological agent is the ongoing effect or by-product rather than the antecedent cause of actions. Applied to the relation between natural and supernatural in philosophical cosmology, this al...
| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Electronic Article |
| Language: | English |
| Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | Drawer...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Published: |
Wiley-Blackwell
2013
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| In: |
Zygon
Year: 2013, Volume: 48, Issue: 4, Pages: 1001-1013 |
| Further subjects: | B
Paul Ricoeur
B nonempirical causes B LeRon Shults B Jerome Stone B Celia Deane-Drummond B empirical effects B Henri Bergson B Alfred North Whitehead |
| Online Access: |
Presumably Free Access Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
| Summary: | Using a process-oriented understanding of the relation between actions and agents, the author argues that an ontological agent is the ongoing effect or by-product rather than the antecedent cause of actions. Applied to the relation between natural and supernatural in philosophical cosmology, this allows one to claim, first, that agents (whether natural or supernatural) are not sensibly perceived, but only inferred from the ongoing observation of empirical actions; second, that the distinction between the natural and the supernatural is then conceivably a distinction between interrelated processes rather than between independently existing agents; and third, that a higher order process of supernatural origin could be operative in a lower order empirical process without interference even though its existence and activity could only be established on the basis of a faith commitment, not empirical evidence. What Paul Ricoeur referred to as a “surplus of meaning” over and above the scientific explanation of an event would be in play with the claim of divine guidance for the cosmic process. |
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| ISSN: | 1467-9744 |
| Contains: | Enthalten in: Zygon
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1111/zygo.12051 |