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Author(s)

Keywords

Materias Investigacion::Teología y Ciencias religiosas, Philip Kitcher, Secular naturalism, The transcendent, Normatively, Sensations, Consciousness, The mental, The physical

Abstract

Philip Kitcher and other secular naturalists assert that we have a problem-free concept of the “mundane physical world” and use the idea of our familiar material world to critique those who recognize a transcendent reality as in theism. It is argued that the naturalist’s concept of the world faces problems involving the primacy of the mental, normativity, sensations and consciousness, and contemporary science. A closing section suggests, contra secular naturalism, that our experience of the mundane world can be suffused with a sense of the transcendent, as we find in Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. This conclusion is supported by reference to other work.