PEIRCEAN APPROACHES TO EMERGENT SYSTEMS IN COGNITIVE SCIENCE AND RELIGION

Author: Graves, Mark

Source: Zygon, Volume 42, Number 1, March 2007 , pp. 241-248(8)

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Abstract:

Cognitive science and religion provides perspectives on human cognition and spirituality. Emergent systems theory captures the subatomic, physical, biological, psychological, cultural, and transcendent relationships that constitute the human person. C. S. Peirce's metaphysical categories and existential graphs enrich traditional cognitive science modeling tools to capture emergent phenomena. From this richer perspective, one can reinterpret the traditional doctrine of soul as form of the body in terms of information as the constellation of constitutive relationships that enables real possibility.

Keywords: Aristotelian form; cognitive science; cognitive science and religion; constitutive relationship; emergence; emergent systems theory; existential graphs; information theory; informative soul; C. S. Peirce; pragmatism; soul; systems theory; theological anthropology

Document Type: Research article

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9744.2006.00818.x

Affiliations: 1: Visiting faculty at the Center for Theology and the Natural Sciences, Graduate Theological Union, 2400 Ridge Road, Berkeley, CA 94709; mgraves@ ctns.org.

Publication date: 2007-03-01