Evangelical scholars have recently offered criticisms of mind-body dualism from the disciplines of theology, philosophy, and neuroscience. We offer several arguments as to why these reasons for abandoning mind-body dualism fail. Additionally, we offer a positive thesis, a dualism that brings together the best aspects of the Cartesian view and the Thomistic view of human persons. The result is a substance dualism that treats the nature of embodiment quite seriously. This view explains why we, as souls, require a resurrected body (...) as well as accounting for the great good of our embodiment in general. A human person is at the same time wholly soul and yet fully bodily. (shrink)

Defenders of a priori arguments for dualism assume that the Cartesian thesis that possibly, I exist but no bodies exist and the physicalist thesis that I am identical with my body, are logically inconsistent. Trenton Merricks offers an argument for the compatibility of those theses. In this paper I examine several objections to Merricks’ argument. I show that none is ultimately persuasive. Nevertheless I claim that Merricks’ argument should not be accepted. I next propose a view of persons that is (...) an alternative both to person-body identity and Cartesian dualism and offer a view of the afterlife that is compatible both with the alternative conception of persons I present and the Christian doctrine of resurrection. (shrink)

Green’s book outlines a wholistic vision of human nature, the Christian life, and life after death using “neuro-hermeneutics,” his approach to biblical interpretation integrated with neuroscience and psychology. He argues that a comprehensive vision of Christianity implies body-soul monism and undermines dualism. I respond that these sciences are consistent with dualist as well as monist anthropologies. I examine his exegetical arguments for anthropological monism from the eschatological texts of Luke–Acts and the Corinthian epistles, find them wanting, and show why they (...) actually imply dualism. I conclude that Green has neither undermined dualism nor warranted monism. (shrink)

Over the last two or three decades, puzzles concerning vagueness, identity, and material constitution have led an increasing number of ontologists to “eliminate” at least some of the objects of folk ontology. In the book here reviewed, Trenton Merricks proposes to eliminate any and all material objects that lack nonredundant causal powers. The objects found lacking include statues, baseballs, planets, and all other inanimate macroscopica, including the masses and conjunctive objects favored by some other eliminativists. The objects found to possess (...) the requisite powers include human persons, who are taken to be human organisms, other conscious organisms, such as dogs and dolphins, and the microscopica of which organisms are composed. Merricks doesn’t assume that there are physical simples. But he does assume that there is at least one level of microscopica, and he uses ‘atoms’ as a convenient term for the microscopica of some unspecified level. As regards organisms that lack consciousness, Merricks is agnostic. (shrink)

Huxley’s Explanatory Gap: There can be no explanation of how states of consciousness arise from interaction among a collection of physical things.

Although prominent Christian theologians and philosophers have assumed the truth of mind/body dualism, I want to raise the question of whether the Christian ought to be a mind/body dualist. First, I sketch a picture of mind, and of human persons, that is not a form of mind/body dualism. Then, I argue that the nondualistic picture is compatible with a major traditional Christian doctrine, the doctrine of the resurrection of the dead. Finally, I suggest that if a Christian need not be (...) a mind/body dualist, then she should not be a mind/body dualist. (shrink)

Many Christians assume that there are only two possibilities for what a human person is: either Animalism (the view that we are fundamentally animals) or Immaterialism (the view that we are fundamentally immaterial souls). I set out a third possibility: the Constitution View (the view that we are material beings, constituted by bodies but not identical to the bodies that now constitute us.) After setting out and briefly defending the Constitution View, I apply it to the doctrine of resurrection. I (...) conclude by giving reasons for Christians to prefer the Constitution View of human persons to both Animalism and Immaterialism. (shrink)

Many Christians who argue against Christian materialism direct their arguments against what I call ‘Type-I materialism’, the thesis that I cannot exist without my organic body. I distinguish Type-I materialism from Type-II materialism, which entails only that I cannot exist without some body that supports certain mental functions. I set out a version of Type-II materialism, and argue for its superiority to Type-I materialism in an age of science. Moreover, I show that Type-II materialism can accommodate Christian doctrines like the (...) Resurrection of the Body, the Incarnation, and the intermediate state (if there is one). (shrink)

This book is a clear and concise history of the soul in western philosophy, from Plato to cutting-edge contemporary work in philosophy of mind. Packed with arguments for and against a range of different, historically significant philosophies of the soul Addresses the essential issues, including mind-body interaction, the causal closure of the physical world, and the philosophical implications of the brain sciences for the soul's existence Includes coverage of theories from key figures, such as Plato, Aquinas, Locke, Hume, and Descartes (...) Unique in combining the history of ideas and the development of a powerful case for a non-reductionist, non-materialist account of the soul. (shrink)

Descartes' Discourse marks a watershed in European thought; in it, the author sets out in brief his radical new philosophy, which begins with a proof of the existence of the self (the famous "cogito ergo sum"). Next he deduces from it the existence and nature of God, and ends by offering a radical new account of the physical world and of human and animal nature. Written in everyday language and meant to be read by common people of the day, it (...) swept away all previous philosophical traditions. This new translation is an ideal introduction to Descartes for the general reader. It is accompanied by a substantial introductory essay from Renaissance scholar Ian Maclean that is designed to provide in-depth historical and philosophical context. The essay draws on Descartes' correspondence to examine what brought him to write his great work, and the impact it had on his contemporaries. A detailed section of notes explain Descartes' philosophical terminology and ideas, as well as historical references and allusions. Any reader can feel comfortable diving in to this classic work of Renaissance philosophical thought. (shrink)

One of our most original thinkers addresses the scientific world's premier question: What is the nature of consciousness?

Profoundly important ethical and political controversies turn on the question of whether biological life is an essential aspect of a human person, or only an extrinsic instrument. Lee and George argue that human beings are physical, animal organisms - albeit essentially rational and free - and examine the implications of this understanding of human beings for some of the most controversial issues in contemporary ethics and politics. The authors argue that human beings are animal organisms and that their personal identity (...) across time consists in the persistence of the animal organisms they are; they also argue that human beings are essentially rational and free and that there is a radical difference between human beings and other animals; criticize hedonism and hedonistic drug-taking; present detailed defenses of the prolife positions on abortion and euthanasia; and defend the traditional moral position on marriage and sexual acts. (shrink)

By far the most widely used translation in North American college classrooms, Donald A. Cress's translation from the French of the Adam and Tannery critical edition is prized for its accuracy, elegance, and economy. The translation featured in the Third Edition has been thoroughly revised from the 1979 First Edition and includes page references to the critical edition for ease of comparison.

"Seymon Lyudvigovich Frank, the author of the volume here made available for the first time in English translation, was one of the leading Russian philosophers of this century; some authorities consider him the most outstanding Russian philosopher of any age...._ " _Man's Soul__ is a book which perfectly exemplifies the generous conception of the mission and competence of philosophy characteristic of Frank and the other members of the Russian metaphysical movement. Frank's stated aim in the treatise is to reclaim for (...) philosophy a field of investigation which, from the time of Plato and Aristotle to that of the Russian Idealists, philosophers had viewed as properly theirs, but which, since the mid-nineteenth century, they had allowed to fall into almost complete neglect: the study of the nature of the human soul...._ "The moral message of _Man's Soul__ is well summed up by its epigraph, quoted from St. Augustine: 'Let man first of all return to his own self, so that once he has, as it were, stepped therein, he may rise from thence and be elevated to God.'" -- from the foreword by Philip J. Swoboda. (shrink)

This book carefully and courageously revisits a notorious problem at the heart of Descartes's dualistic metaphysics - the problem of mind-body interaction - and shows how it is not a problem for Descartes after all.

Philosopher Davis argues that Christian belief in the resurrection is rational on historical, philosophical, and theological grounds. Each of the book's ten chapters takes up a different aspect of the Christian concept of bodily resurrection and subsequently deals with such matters as perservation of personal identity and soul-body dualism, issues in biblical scholarship, and the reliability of New Testament accounts.

What happens to us when we die? According to Christian faith, we will rise again bodily from the dead. This claim raises a series of philosophical and theological conundrums: Is it rational to hope for life after death in bodily form? Will it truly be “we” who are raised again or will it be post-mortem duplicates of us? How can personal identity be secured? What is God's role in resurrection and everlasting life? In response to these conundrums, this volume presents (...) joint work of leading philosophers and theologians on life after death. So this volume is an impressive demonstration of interdisciplinary cooperation between philosophy and theology. Various models are offered which depict what resurrection into an incorruptible post-mortem body might look like. (shrink)

Presents a new way of looking at what it means to be human, offering a convincing case that humans are more than immaterial souls or "biological computers".

This is a sustained critique of materialism. The contributors offer arguments from conscious experience, rational thought, the interaction of mind and body, and the unity and persisting identity of human persons, and develop a wide range of alternatives.

In _Consciousness and the Existence of God_, J.P. Moreland argues that the existence of finite, irreducible consciousness provides evidence for the existence of God. Moreover, he analyzes and criticizes the top representative of rival approaches to explaining the origin of consciousness, including John Searle’s contingent correlation, Timothy O’Connor’s emergent necessitation, Colin McGinn’s mysterian ‘‘naturalism,’’ David Skrbina’s panpsychism and Philip Clayton’s pluralistic emergentist monism. Moreland concludes that these approaches should be rejected in favor of what he calls ‘‘the Argument from Consciousness.’’.

In this innovative study of the relationship between persons and their bodies, E. J. Lowe demonstrates the inadequacy of physicalism, even in its mildest, non-reductionist guises, as a basis for a scientifically and philosophically acceptable account of human beings as subjects of experience, thought and action. He defends a substantival theory of the self as an enduring and irreducible entity - a theory which is unashamedly committed to a distinctly non-Cartesian dualism of self and body. Taking up the physicalist challenge (...) to any robust form of psychophysical interactionism, he shows how an attribution of independent causal powers to the mental states of human subjects is perfectly consistent with a thoroughly naturalistic world view. He concludes his study by examining in detail the role which conscious mental states play in the human subject's exercise of its most central capacities for perception, action, thought and self-knowledge. (shrink)

Frank Jackson champions the cause of conceptual analysis as central to philosophical inquiry. In recent years conceptual analysis has been undervalued and widely misunderstood, suggests Jackson. He argues that such analysis is mistakenly clouded in mystery, preventing a whole range of important questions from being productively addressed. He anchors his argument in discussions of specific philosophical issues, starting with the metaphysical doctrine of physicalism and moving on, via free will, meaning, personal identity, motion, and change, to ethics and the philosophy (...) of color. In this way the book not only offers a methodological program for philosophy, but also casts new light on some much-debated problems and their interrelations. (shrink)

Consciousness emerges as the key topic in this second edition of Owen Flanagan's popular introduction to cognitive science and the philosophy of psychology....

The piece of wax takes on the form of the seal; but this occurs in a way that is largely indifferent to the particular constitution of the seal. Similarly, Aristotle says, ‘the sense is affected by what is coloured or flavoured or sounding, but it is indifferent as to what in each case the substance is’. We show that Brentano takes this Aristotelian account of the relation between sense and its objects as the basis for his theory of mind in (...) the Psychology from an Empirical Standpoint. (shrink)

I argue that, unlike your brain, you are not composed of other things: you are simple. My argument centers on what I take to be an uncontroversial datum: for any pair of conscious beings, it is impossible for the pair itself to be conscious. Consider, for instance, the pair comprising you and me. You might pinch your arm and feel a pain. I might simultaneously pinch my arm and feel a qualitatively identical pain. But the pair we form would not (...) feel a thing.1 Pairs of people themselves are incapable of experience. Call this The Datum. What explains The Datum? I think the following exhaust the reasonable options. (1) Pairs of people lack a sufficient number of immediate parts. (2) Pairs of people lack immediate parts capable of standing in the right sorts of relations to each other and their environment. (3) Pairs of people lack immediate parts of the right nature. (4) Pairs of people are not structures (they are unstructured collections of their two immediate parts). (5) Some combination of (1) – (4). Finally, (6) pairs of people are not simple. (shrink)

The most well-known arguments for the simplicity of the soul - i.e., for the thesis that the subject of psychological states must be an unextended substance -are based upon the logical possibility of disembodiment. Descartes introduced this sort of argument into modern philosophy, and a version of it has been defended recently by Richard Swinburne. Some of the underlying assumptions of both arguments are examined and defended, but a closer look reveals that each depends upon unjustified inferences from the conceivability (...) of a certain state of affairs to the logical possibility of that state of affairs. (shrink)