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We now face what is perhaps the most challenging question of
all: what is an appropriate ontology in light of these epistemic schemes? Most
writers in theology and science seek to avoid two extreme positions: monism in
the form of either reductive materialism or absolute idealism, and dualism in
the form of vitalism (life is a separate, nonmaterial entity, principle or
agency) or Cartesianism (mind and body are independent realities). However,
there are several possibilities which reject both of these forms of dualism and
monism while still remaining monist in character. The three most prominent include:
(1) emergentist monism (nonreductive physicalism,
ontological reductionism): There are genuinely new properties and processes at
higher levels of organization, but the world is still composed strictly of
physical matter (i.e., matter as described by physics);
(2) ontological emergence: The new properties and processes
that emerge at higher levels of organization indicate that the ontology of the
world, though monistic, cannot be reduced to that described by physics alone.
The ontological unity or monism of complex phenomena is thus intrinsically
differentiated (as suggested by the term dipolarity)
(3) organicism (panexperientialism / process metaphysics):
Every real event or actual occasion includes the capacity for experience
(prehension), and thus a mental pole, although this mental aspect produces
consciousness and self-consciousness only when sufficient biological complexity
have evolved in the form of coherent societies of actual occasions.Panexperientialists frequently reject emergence as a category mistake,
thereby sharpening the difference between this approach and the preceding two.
One can find scholars in theology and science who endorse
different combinations among these approaches to epistemology and ontology.
Peacocke, Polkinghorne and Barbour, for example, accept the hierarchy of the
sciences though they differ on its ontological implications (emergentist
monism, dipolar monism, and panexperientialism, respectively). Murphy and I
work with non-foundationalist epistemologies, but she prefers nonreductive
physicalism while I favor ontological emergence.On the other hand, some theists, such as Richard Swinburne and Sir John Eccles,
adopt both epistemic and ontological dualism. The differences between these
positions is relatively minor, though, when compared with the views of atheists
such as Richard Dawkins or Peter Atkins who represent the conflict model of
science and religion and defend both epistemic reductionism and reductive
materialism.
Contributed by: Dr. Robert Russell
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