Recent Articles

 

Physcomp Douglas College, A-Z, Philosophy and Humanities, Faculty, Leonard Angel, Recent Articles, {placed, July 2007}

Abstract: There are good reasons to think that the philosophical position called physical completeness obtains. This is most easily grasped through reviewing how three processes took place over the last four hundred years in the natural sciences of physics, chemistry, and biology, namely, the mathematization of physics, the physicalization of chemistry, and the chemicalization of biology. A summary of this evidence, suitable for undergraduate students of whatever discipline, is offered.

Two Questions for Ken Wilber and the Wider Transpersonal Audience: A Philosophical Perspective Journal of Transpersonal Psychology, 2006, 38: 1, 73-94.

Abstract: Ken Wilber's writings are lively, beautifully executed, and vast in their scope. At the same time, some features of his work, as this paper illustrates, present problems for some academic philosophers. Yet it would be good for transpersonal theory to appeal to a broad academic philosophical audience. In the enterprise of opening some doors to such an audience for transpersonalism, some of the philosophical difficulties in a few of the main tenets of Sex, Ecology, Spirituality, are explored, and, based on them, two questions are raised.

An Interview With LA Universal Self? Sophia 45:1 May 2006: 79-93.

Abstract: LA Universal Self reports his phenomenology, according to which, as he puts it, "I am the universe." The Interviewer challenges the report in a variety of ways, and LA Universal Self responds to each challenge. A traditional Universal Self mysticism is given a new physicalist interpretation.

Evens and Odds in Newtonian Collision Mechanics British Journal for Philosophy of Science, 56(2005), 179-188.

Abstract: Pérez Laraudogoitia [2003] proposes that self-excitations can prevent non-contact interactions in Newtonian collision mechanics. The proposal is weakened by the apparent arbitrariness of what will be shown as the requirement of only an odd number of sets of some ex nihilo-created self-exciting particles. There is, however, an initial condition such that, without the ex nihiloself-exciting particles, either there is a contradictory outcome, or there is a non-contact configuration law, or there are odds versus evens indeterminacies. With the various odds versus even arbitrarinesses and other such difficulties, there seems to be an ontological unsatisfactoriness in the speed-unbounded Newtonian collision system.

Compositional science and religious philosophy Religious Studies, 41, 125-43, 2005.

Abstract: Religious thought often assumes that the principle of physical causal completeness (PCC) is false. But those who explicitly deny or doubt PCC, including William Alston, W. D. Hart, Tim Crane, Paul Moser and David Yandell, Charles Taliaferro, Keith Yandell, Dallas Willard, William Vallicella, Frank Dilley, and, recently, David Chalmers, have ignored not only the explicit but also the implicit grounds for acceptance of PCC. I review the explicit grounds, and extend the hitherto implicit grounds, which together constitute a greater challenge to contemporary religious philosophy than has been realized. Religious philosophers need to find a better way around PCC than has been found, or, if PCC is unavoidable, religious philosophers need to work toward a worldview that both accepts PCC and defends strong forms of religious experience.

God, Mysticism, and Libertarianism Versus Physical Completeness? Philosophical Inquiry, 24: 4, 2004: 89-113 [This paper was apparently scanned in to the journal's system, and then published, without acknowledgement to the author of his submission of the paper in any form]

Abstract: A significant number of current metaphysicians want to facilitate belief in an interactive God, mystical insight, or human libertarian freedom by implicitly or explicitly holding that there is energy exchange between the irreducibly mental and the physical. Yet there is a gap in the literature on the plausibility of this view. Proponents of physical completeness take most of the arguments for interactionist energy exchange to be so weak as not to need rebuttal. And the arguments given for physical completeness are plausibility based rather than fully articulate. This paper provides the much needed detailed argumentation against interactionist energy exchange. Proponents of an interactive God, mysticism through energy exchange, or human libertarian freedom need to argue for energy exchange between the mental and the physical on grounds much stronger than have been offered, or, if that's impossible, they need to revise their views.

Universal Self Consciousness mysticism and the physical completeness principle International Journal for Philosophy of Religion 55: 1-29, 2004.

Abstract: Philosophers promoting a version of Universal Self Consciousness mysticism (including Wainwright, Alston, Hick, Wilber and Forman) take it that their interpretations of mysticism are consistent with current scientific findings. However, their theories have been implicitly or explicitly against the central claim arising from science, namely, the physical causal completeness principle. There is strong ground to accept physical causal completeness for human functioning, and the assessment of physical completeness is independent of the phenomenology of Universal Self Consciousness mystical experience. Further, there is a positive account of Universal Self Consciousness mysticism that accepts physical causal completeness. Such an account is preferable to the many accounts that both require its denial and yet give no basically satisfactory evidence to ground that denial.

Emancipatory Spirituality for Everyone Tikkun18:3 May/June 2003: 85-88.

Abstract: Many proponents of spirituality also advocate channeling, afterlife survival and suchlike claims. Yet those claims go against physical completeness, which has been more or less universally accepted in the philosophical understanding of the sciences, and for good reasons. A new way of integrating spirituality and physical completeness is offered for the general reader.

Zeno's Arrow, Newton's Mechanics, and Bell's Inequalities British Journal for the Philosophy of Science 53 (2002), 161-82

Abstract: A model of a new version of Zeno's arrow paradox is presented in a plausible extension of Newtonian collision mechanics. In exploring various avenues for resolution of the paradox, it becomes evident that a pre-relativistic classical physical topology which is locally deterministic can mechanically generate nonclassical ontological properties such as the appearance of a particle in many places at once. It can also mimic some properties of quantum physics, including unprepared spatially-separated correlations.

Mystical Naturalism Religious Studies38, (2002) 317-38

Abstract: This paper suggests that an ontologically reductionist view of nature which also accepts the completeness of causality at the level of physics can support (1) the blissful transfiguration of the moral, (2) mystical release from standard ego-identification, and (3) psyco-physical transformation cultivated through meditative practice. This mystical naturalism provides the basis for a thicker, more vigorous institutional religious life, including religious life centred around meditation practices, personalist meanings, and the theology of incarnation, than current proposals for strongly naturalist religions allow.

Reincarnation All Over Again: Evidence for reincarnation rests on backward reasoning. Skepticvol. 9#3 (2002) 86-90.

Abstract: A review of Ian Stevenson's two volume Reincarnation and Biology, this article shows how Ian Stevenson relies on `backward reasoning? that assumes the truth of the theory he is trying to prove, and then uses this assumption in tabulation of supposed primary data for the theory.

A Physical Model of Zeno's Dichotomy British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, 52(2001), 347-58.

Abstract: A model of Zeno's dichotomy paradox is presented in Newtonian collision mechanics. One of several resolutions of the paradox illustrates the point that even in Newtonian ontology there is a spacetime weave. In a Newtonian system in which the base rules permit only spatial contact interactions, we find the mechanical emergence of action-at-a-distance effects.

Can Jewish Renewal Be Rooted In A Scientific Perspective? New Menorah 64(summer 2001)

Abstract: The article briefly outlines the history of the relationship between the non-science of Kabbalah, and the science of Haskalah (enlightenment), showing a sort of contradiction between the two contrary pulls in Jewish Renewal. The article also shows a way to resolve this contradiction in a mystical Jewish Renewal that accepts current science.