The humanities have begun to embrace self-consciously the idea that our present age has exhausted the plausibility of philosophical humanism. This paper attempts to explain the condition of our posthumanism as the result of a tacit deferral to an exclusively scientific picture of the reality behind all causal explanations. A new role for the philosophy of religion therefore arises in the need and opportunity to reconsider the supernatural, and specifically supernaturalism about mind/body substance dualism, in order to maintain a reasonable (...) optimism about humanity’s identity and significance as a privileged kind, despite the apparent indifference of our universe to personhood. The basis for this optimism is arguably the otherwise inexplicable power and reach of scientific explanation. Ultimately, the resulting supernatural posthumanism is suggested to yield new confidence and motivation towards evaluating competing sources of putative divine revelation philosophically. (shrink)

There are two crucial problems for those who would take existence to be a ‘real’ property. (1) The predication of such a property of a thing appears insufficient to distinguish cases where the thing exists, on the one hand, from those where it does not exist on the other. That is, the property of existence does not add anythingto the concept of a thing. (2) If non-existent things are capable of having properties and identity – which is necessary to avoid (...) an objection made by A. J. Ayer – then the identity of all things with all other things appears to follow. However, if the concept of existence is explained as a primitive property manifest as resistance toontological contradiction then these problems can be solved. The pay-off for considering existence to be a first-order predicate is, therefore, an argument against existing ontological contradictions. (shrink)

The proposed theoretical motivation for legal fictionalism begins by focusing upon the seemingly supernatural powers of creation and control that mere mortals exercise over legal things, as a subclass of socially constructed things. This focus brings to the fore a dilemma of uncharitableness concerning the ontological commitments expressed in the discourse of whole societies about such things. Either, there is widespread equivocation as to the fundamental concept expressed by terms such as ‘existence’ or our claims about legal and other institutional (...) things are never really true. When stated as a dilemma, rather than assuming either horn from the outset, our broader social practice of fiction-telling yields a reason to prefer the fictionalist horn. -/- I differentiate three grades of legal fictionalism and contrast strong legal fictionalism with Horacio Spector’s weak form. Only the stronger form has it that engagement in a fictional discourse of law can provide reasons for legal decision-making independent of moral opinions or policy considerations. This stance relies on the claim that maintaining a fictional discourse with respect for its integrity justifies inferences to conclusions about a fictional domain beyond what is described in existing expressions of the discourse. Focusing on ontology allows an analogy between a fictional discourse of law and literary or popular fiction, in which context such inferences are more obviously persuasive. I argue that this notion of respect for the integrity of such a discourse saves legal formalist jurisprudence from the indeterminacy objections of legal realists. (shrink)