Abstract The idea that God must relate perfectly to our subjectivity is central to Linda Zagzebski’s work on omnisubjectivity. There is a hitherto undiagnosed tension, however, between different criteria one might use to judge what perfectly relating to our subjectivity consists in. God’s relationship to what Zagzebski calls ‘counteractuals’, individuals that do not exist but that could have,...
This issue of Agatheos has its origins in an important passing of a torch within the philosophy of religion.Linda Zagzebski was the Kingfisher Chair in Religion and Ethics at the University of Oklahoma for over twenty years until her retirement in 2021.She was succeeded in January of 2024 by Yujin Nagasawa, who left a research chair in Birmingham for the honor.Zagzebski and Nagasawa, in...
Abstract: In this article, I use the extended mind literature to elucidate religious phenomena that are normally left well outside the purview of analytic philosophy of religion. I show that the extended mind literature casts light on how the potential relationships of the ordinary believer to extra-natural power dictate cross-culturally re-occurring ways of structuring religious praxis. This...
The extended mind thesis holds that the mental is not restricted to what happens in the brain. Rather, one can think of the extended mind thesis as an outgrowth of broader, physicalist commitments. In particular, views of the mental that tie it very strongly to consciousness seem to be in a position to resist the extension of mind. One way of taking the origin and force of the extended mind...
Abstract Alston's perceptual account of mystical experience fails to show how it is that the sort of predicates that are used to describe God in these experiences could be derived from perception, even though the ascription of matched predicates in the natural order are not derived in the manner Alston has in mind. In contrast, if one looks to research on shared attention between individuals as...