Human nature without a soul?

Malcolm Jeeves

European Review, 2004, vol. 12, issue 1, 45-64

Abstract: Rapid developments in neuroscience over the past four decades continue to receive wide media attention. Each new reported advance points to ever tightening links between mind and brain. For many centuries, what is today called ‘mind-talk’ was familiar as ‘soul-talk’. Since, for some, the possession of a soul is what makes us human, the challenges of cognitive neuroscience directly address this. This paper affords the non-specialist a brief overview of some of the scientific evidence pointing to the ever tightening of the mind-brain links and explores its wider implications for our understanding of human nature. In particular it brings together the findings from so-called bottom-up research, in which we observe changes in behaviour and cognition resulting from experimental interventions in neural processes, with top-down research where we track changes in neural substrates accompanying habitual modes of cognition or behaviour. Further reflection alerts one to how the dualist views widely held by New Agers, some humanists and many religious people, contrast with the views of academic philosophers, theologians and biblical scholars, who agree in emphasizing the unity of the person.

Date: 2004
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