PERSONS AND THE EXTENDED-MIND THESIS

The extended-mind thesis (EM) is the claim that mentality need not be situated just in the brain, or even within the boundaries of the skin. Some versions take "extended selves" be to relatively transitory couplings of biological organisms and external resources. First, I show how EM can be seen as an extension of traditional views of mind. Then, after voicing a couple of qualms about EM, I reject EM in favor of a more modest hypothesis that recognizes enduring subjects of experience and agents with integrated bodies. Nonetheless, my modest hypothesis allows subpersonal states to have nonbiological parts that play essential roles in cognitive processing. I present empirical warrant for this modest hypothesis and show how it leaves room for science and religion to coexist.     

DIVINE AGENCY AND THE PRINCIPLE OF THE CONSERVATION OF ENERGY

Many contemporary thinkers seeking to integrate theistic belief and scientific thought reject what they regard as two extremes. They disavow deism in which God is understood simply to uphold the existence of the physical universe, and they exclude any view of divine influence that suggests the performance of physical work through an immaterial cause. Deism is viewed as theologically inadequate, and acceptance of direct immaterial causation of physical events is viewed as scientifically illegitimate. This desire to avoid both deism and any positing of God as directly intervening in the physical order has led to models of divine agency that seek to defend the reality of divine causal power yet affirm the causal closure of the physical. I argue, negatively, that such models are unsuccessful in their attempts to affirm both the reality of divine causal power acting in the created world and the causal closure of the physical and, positively, that the assumption that underlies these models, namely that any genuine integration of theistic and scientific belief must posit the causal closure of the physical on pain of violating well-established conservation principles, is mistaken.     

THEISTIC NATURALISM AND "SPECIAL" DIVINE PROVIDENCE

Although naturalistic perspectives are an important component of their accounts of divine action, most participants in the current dialogue between science and theology eschew a purely naturalistic model. They believe that certain events of divine providence require a special mode of divine action, over and above that inherent in naturalistic processes. The analogy of human providential action suggests, however, that a strong theistic naturalism can account for these events. This model does not depend on a particular notion of God's relationship to time and is not inherently implausible from a scientific perspective. Although it can be interpreted deistically, the model also is consonant with a nondeistic theology that may be described as involving a pansacramental or incarnational naturalism.     

EMBODIED TRANSCENDENCE: BONOBOS AND HUMANS IN COMMUNITY

Multiple dimensions and textures of transcendence are evoked not just by reflection on humans in their relationship with God and community but also by encounter with bonobos—primates that are very close genetic kin with humans. The promise for theological reflection is rooted in bonobo social adaptation as a highly cooperative species. Bonobo sexual behavior accompanies and expresses a high level of social intelligence. The point of my project is not a scientific one intended to argue persuasively for individual self-awareness or self-transcendence in bonobos. Instead, it emphasizes connectedness, interdependence, and sociality as windows on transcendence. Such a view does not require consciousness or intellectual recognition of self-in-relation, but it certainly presumes embodiment of self-in-relation. Various textures of transcendence reflect multidirectional relationships among Pan paniscus (bonobos), Homo sapiens , and the Sacred.     

ABUNDANT NATURE'S LONG-TERM OPENNESS TO HUMANE BIOCULTURAL DESIGNS

Not by Genes Alone excellently explains Peter J. Richerson and Robert Boyd's important ideas about human gene‐culture co‐evolution to a broader audience but remains short of a larger vision of civilization. Several decades ago Ralph Burhoe had seen that fertile possibility in Richerson and Boyd's work. I suggest getting past present reductionistic customs to a scientific perspective having an integral place for virtue. Subsystem agency is part of this view, as is the driving role of abundance, whose ultimate origins are in the mysterious, quintessentially energetic Big Bang. The free‐rider problem may not impede higher social organization as inexorably as Richerson and Boyd believe; “the tragedy” of enervating leakage from “the commons” may often be less influential than an invigorating flow of externalities to the commons. Eukaryotic origins mark the origin of inevitable wider sharing as higher living systems evolve. I use a metaphor of flesh and spirit in drawing a parallel between that turning point and the wide sharing that occurs in civilization. This helps solve the enigma of the demographic transition. Why do so many productive participants in first‐world societies severely restrict their selfish‐gene reproduction to below replacement birth rate? It is not because culture is maladaptive but because civilization's brain and womb have become partially differentiated in distinct populations. Considerations of social boundaries, myths of sacrifice, and human creativity help in understanding how human social evolution taps potentials present in reality. Human beings' diverse vigorous activities—the organized ones and the inadvertent ones, the wise and the foolish, the good and the bad, the carefully thoughtful and the merely playful—provide the ground of being, or primordial soup, for cultural entities that transcend our intentions. If we have it right for the most part and are fortunate, we will continue to emerge at higher levels.     

INTRODUCTION TO THE SYMPOSIUM

This paper introduces a symposium discussing Michael Oakeshott's understanding of the relationship of religion, science and politics. Essays by Elizabeth Corey, Timothy Fuller, Byron Kaldis, and Corey Abel are followed by a review of Corey's recent book by Efraim Podoksik.     

OAKESHOTTIAN MODES AT THE CROSSROADS OF THE EVOLUTION DEBATES

I examine Michael Oakeshott's theory of modes of experience in light of today's evolution debates and argue that in much of our current debate science and religion irrelevantly attack each other or, less commonly but still irrelevantly, seek out support from the other. An analysis of Oakeshott's idea of religion finds links between his early holistic theory of the state, his individualistic account of religious sensibility, and his theory of political, moral, and religious authority. Such analysis shows that a modern individualistic theory of the state need not be barrenly secular and suggests that a religious sensibility need not be translated into an overmastering desire to use state power to pursue moral or spiritual ends in politics. Finally, Oakeshott's vision of a civil conversation, as both a metaphor for Western civilization and as a quasi-ethical ideal, shows us how we might balance the recognition of diverse modal truths, the pursuit of singular religious or philosophic truth, and a free political order.     

THE MAGICIAN IN THE WORLD: BECOMING, CREATIVITY, AND TRANSVERSAL COMMUNICATION

This essay interprets the meaning of one of the cards in aTarot deck, "The Magician," in the context of process philosophy in the tradition of Alfred North Whitehead. It brings into the conversation the philosophical legacy of American semiotician Charles Sanders Peirce as well as French poststructuralist Gilles Deleuze. Some of their conceptualizations are explored herein for the purpose of explaining the symbolic function of the Magician in the world. From the perspective of the logic of explanation, the sign of the Magician is an index of nonmechanistic, mutualist or circular, causality that enables self-organization embedded in coordination dynamics. Its action is such as to establish an unorthodox connection crossing over the dualistic gap between mind and matter, science and magic, process and structure, the world without and the world within, subject and object, and human experience and the natural world, thereby overcoming what Whitehead called the paradox of the connectedness of things. The Magician represents a certain quality that acts as a catalytic agent capable of eliciting transmutations, that is, the emergence of novelty. I present a model for process∼structure that uses mathematics on the complex plane and the rules of projective geometry. The corollary is such that the presence of the Magician in the world enables a particular organization of thought that makes pre-cognition possible.     

KNOWLEDGE WORKER TEAM EFFECTIVENESS: THE ROLE OF AUTONOMY, INTERDEPENDENCE, TEAM DEVELOPMENT, AND CONTEXTUAL SUPPORT VARIABLES

This study investigated how autonomy, interdependence, and team development, along with process and contextual support variables, were related to the effectiveness of teams of "knowledge workers." The sample included 231 knowledge workers from 27 work teams. Team members completed surveys measuring the design, process, and contextual factors. Effectiveness measures included multiple key stakeholder evaluations of team performance and self-report measures of attitudinal outcomes. The results suggest that interactions among design, process, and contextual support factors have important implications for team effectiveness. In particular, the positive relationship between team autonomy and team job motivation was reduced as teams worked under more interdependent conditions. This interaction effect also varied across the types of autonomy (e.g., planning-related, product-related, and people-related) the team was given. Results also demonstrated that the relationship between job motivation and team process behaviors (helping, sharing, and innovating) was more positive in teams who were developmental mature. Process behaviors were positively related to effectiveness, but those relationships became more positive in the presence of certain contextual factors (high-quality goals and efficient information transmission), and less positive in the presence of others (feedback and time pressure). Future research needs and practical implications of these results are discussed.