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CATEGORIES:The Faraday Institute for Science and Religion
SUMMARY:The Emergence of Human Persons: Bewteen the Scylla
  of Dualism and the Charybdis of Reductionism - Pr
 of. Tim O'Connor\,  Indiana University
DTSTART;TZID=Europe/London:20130528T130000
DTEND;TZID=Europe/London:20130528T140000
UID:TALK44244AThttp://talks.cam.ac.uk
URL:http://talks.cam.ac.uk/talk/index/44244
DESCRIPTION:Is there nothing new under the sun?\n\nConsider th
 e great variety of complex structures and patterns
  of activity that have appeared over time within o
 ur universe—physical\, chemical\, and (much later)
  biological and psychological. Is there reason to 
 say that all such systems are\, at bottom\, nothin
 g more than atoms in motion? This question has bee
 n with us\, unresolved\, ever since the seventeent
 h century\, when the strongly anti-reductionist ph
 ilosophy of nature handed down from the ancient Gr
 eek Aristotle was displaced by the successes of th
 e new mechanical-reductionist philosophy.\n\nObsta
 cles to simple versions of the mechanical philosop
 hy soon became apparent\, but the basic ‘reduction
 ist’ vision of the natural world as fully describa
 ble solely in terms of the properties and forces t
 hat govern the world’s most elementary constituent
 s continues to be embraced by many thinkers. Oppos
 ition to this vision is generally rooted in its ma
 nifest inability to explain the conscious mind. Bu
 t the common ‘dualist’ alternative to reductionism
  is equally extreme: minds are wholly distinct sub
 stances from bodies\, possessed of their own causa
 l powers\, which include the power to affect and b
 e affected by the brains and bodies that belong to
  individual minds in a happy but theoretically str
 ange ‘monogamy’.\n\nI will argue for the scientifi
 c viability of a middle path\, on which human pers
 ons (and other sentient animals) are wholly physic
 ally composed objects having ‘emergent’ capacities
  of consciousness\, thought\, emotion\, and will: 
 capacities that are causally sustained by but irre
 ducible to the properties and relations of our ele
 mentary parts.
LOCATION:Garden Room\, Library Building\, St. Edmund’s Coll
 ege
CONTACT:
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