What makes a Person?
Clues from Neuropsychology and Evolutionary
Psychology
and
What about the Soul?
Edinburgh - November 16th 2013
1
A Very Timely Event
Science Vol. 342 1 November 2013 Editorial
Seize the Neuroscience Moment
‘…the European Commission launched a Human Brain Project , and the U.S. government
announced its Brain Research through Advancing Innovative Neurotechnologies ( BRAIN)
project.’
‘..neuroscience research has progressed at an explosive rate over the past three decades. Never
before has the often quoted adage of having learned more about the brain in the past decade than
in all of recorded history been more apt.’
Nature 503 - 7 November 2013 Editorial
Head Start
Europe’s mega-project to simulate the human brain has much to offer neuroscience researchwhether or not it delivers on its central promise .
2
Robert Boyle
“Viewed his theological interests and his
work in natural philosophy as forming a
seamless whole and constantly used
results from the one to enlighten matters
in the other”
Macintosh J.T.and Anstey P., 2007
3
TENSION AT THE SEAMS ?
4
• “..fundamental changes in our view of the human brain
cannot but have profound effects on our view of ourselves
and the world” David Hubel ,Scientific American, 1979.
• "The idea that man has a disembodied soul is as
unnecessary as the old idea that there was a Life Force.
This is in head-on contradiction to the religious beliefs of
billions of human beings alive today. How will such a
radical change be received? "
Francis Crick, The Astonishing Hypothesis, 1994
•
“…what is arguably the major cultural question of our
times: can the humanistic and even religious view of human
nature be reconciled with science?” John Horgan , 2003.
• " In the fullness of time educated people will believe there
is no soul independent of the body, and hence no life after
death."Francis Crick .The New York Times, April 13th 2004.
"After the Double Helix: Unravelling the Mysteries of the State of
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Being"
LOCALISING MENTAL PROCESSES
EARLY VIEWS
Hippocrates 5th century BC -
brain and intellect
heart and senses
Empedocles 5th century BC -
heart and mental processes
2000 years of debate between “the brain hypothesis”
and “the cardiac hypothesis”
Galen 2nd century AD
-
supported “the brain hypothesis”
6
Shakespeare
(entertains all the current options)
Portia in The Merchant of Venice ( Act 3 Scene 2)
Tell me where is fancy bred,
Or in the heart or in the head
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Holofernes in Love’s Labour Lost (Act 4, scene 2)
This is a gift that I have,simple,simple,a foolish extravagant spirit, full of forms , figures,
shapes, objects, ideas, apprehensions, emotions, revolutions.
These are begotten in the ventricle of memory, nourished in
the womb of the pia mater, and delivered from the mellowing of
the occasion. But the gift is good in those in whom it is acute, and
I am thankful for it.
8
Sir John Falstaff in Henry IV , part 2 ( Act 4, Scene 2)
Falstaff
This apoplexy is , as I take it, a kind of lethargy , an’t please your lordship, a
kind of sleeping in the blood, a whoreson tripling
Chief Justice
What tell me of it? Be it as it is
Falstaff
It hath it original from much grief , from study and perturbation of the brain.
I have read the causes of its effects in Galen: it is a kind of deafness
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Bottom –Up Approaches
Accidental Brain damage
Animal models
Single cell recording
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Top-Down Approaches
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O’Craven and Kanwisher
Next slide shows activity when
faces or houses are seen or
imagined.
12
% signal change in
Parahippocampal Place Area
13
% signal change in
Fusiform Face Area
Telling whether someone is imagining
faces or places: raw fMRI signal 1 subject
14
“Change the mind and you change the
brain” :
effects of cognitive –behaviour therapy
on the neural correlates of spider phobia
Vincent Paquette et al.,NeuroImage,18
(2003) 401-409
15
16
17
2009 Study
of
Taxi Drivers
Evidence for Plasticity
And
Use it or Lose it
18
Positive outcomes
19
% distance error
Use it or loose it!
12
8
4
0
full-time drivers retired drivers
•
Full-time taxi drivers (nZ10) had greater grey matter volume in the posterior hippocampus than retired taxi drivers (nZ9;
voxel of peak difference shown in yellow), while the retired taxi drivers had greater grey matter volume in this region than
the retired control participants (nZ10; voxel of peak difference shown in red). Data are shown at a threshold of p!0.05
corrected for the volume of the hippocampus. Review. Navigation expertise K. Woollett et al. 1413 Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 20
(2009)
ISSUES
• How shall we think about mind-brain
relations?
• What about the ‘spiritual’ dimension to life?
21
• "The distinction between diseases of "brain"and
"mind", between "neurological" problems and
"psychological” or "psychiatric" ones, is an unfortunate
cultural inheritance that permeates society and
medicine. It reflects a basic ignorance of the relation
between brain and mind.”
Antonio Damasio , Descartes Error,1994.
• We should talk of psychiatric illness or disorders rather
than of mental illnesses, and if we do continue to refer to
‘mental’ and ‘physical’ illnesses, we should preface both
with ‘so-called’, to remind ourselves and our audience
that these are archaic and deeply misleading terms.
R. Kendell, B.J.Psychiatry. June 2001
22
Theories which depict experience and its neural basis as
inseparable aspects of a single process may hold out
the greatest promise. But we do not have any clear
understanding of how a single process could have two
such different aspects.
Making sense of their relationship may require us to
rethink the nature of matter, mind, or both.
Adam Zeman , Consciousness, a user's guide, Yale
University Press 2002 p.341.
23
• We may regard mental activity and correlated
brain activity as inner and outer aspects of one
complex set of events that together constitute
conscious human agency.
•Interdependence characterised by an irreducible
intrinsic duality without dualism of substance.
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“ ..I believe …an understanding of how the brain
gives rise to the mind …will require a change at least
as radical as relativity theory , the introduction of
electromagnetic fields into physics-or the original
scientific revolution itself..”
Science and the Mind – Body Problem
Thomas Nagel 2006
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A New trend “Neurotheology”
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27
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The Elusive God-Spot
The temporal lobe is considered "the God
module”, the part of the brain that connects
with the transcendent.
Willoughby Britton, 2004
Hypereligiosity may stem from increased
activity in the medial prefrontal cortex of the
brain... my theory is that the medial prefrontal
cortex plays the role of the conductor of an
orchestra in religiosity"
Osamu Muramoto, 2004
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"Obviously, the external reality of "God" can
neither be confirmed nor disconfirmed by
delineating the neural correlates of
religious/spiritual/mystical experiences. In
other words, the neuroscientific study of what
happens to the brain during these experiences
does not tell us anything new about God."
Christopher Stawski, The Spiral, March 2004,
Vol.4, No.3. p.4.
30
But what about the Soul?
31
“ The theologians of the early church began to use
ideas from Greek philosophy, and the conception
of immaterial and immortal soul found its way
into Christian thinking and has tended to stay
there ever since.”
Leslie Stevenson , Ten Theories of Human
Nature, 4th Edition ,2004
32
“the question of how the transcendental
soul acted upon the physical body
became replaced by the question of how
the immaterial mind could arise out of
fleshly matter. It still remains a central
question for the science of mind”.
Kenan Malik, Man, Beast and Zombie, 2000
33
The Soul and its faculties
It would be foolish to seek a definition of “soul”
from the philosophers, of them hardly one,
except Plato, has rightly affirmed its immortal
substance…….
Indeed from Scripture we have already taught
that the soul is an incorporeal substance….”
John Calvin, Institutes of Christian Religion. Book 1 chapter XV section 6
34
"The idea that man has a disembodied
soul is as unnecessary as the old idea
that there was a Life Force. This is in
head-on contradiction to the religious
beliefs of billions of human beings
alive today. How will such a radical
change be received? "
Francis Crick, The Astonishing
Hypothesis, 1994
35
• "from a neuroscientific perspective, it is
now unnecessary to postulate a second,
metaphysical entity, such as a soul or
spirit, to account for human capacities
and distinctives. Joel Green, 2004
• "if the immortality of the soul and, hence,
dualism are essential to Christian thought,
then the church should be bracing for an
encounter with science far overshadowing
debates about creation and evolution."
Lawson Stone, 2004
36
N.T.Wright (2000)
Should we continue, then, to speak of 'souls' at all? I see no problem
with the word in principle (as Lewis Carroll suggested, you can use
words however you like as long as you pay them extra on Thursdays);
you can say 'soul', as long as you are committed to meaning by
that ‘a whole human being living in the presence of God’ Soullanguage, within a Christian context, is a shorthand for telling
a story of that sort, a story about the way in which human beings
as wholes are irreducibly open to God. It is not, within Christian
theology, a shorthand for a story in which a partitioned human being
has a soul in one compartment, a body in another, and quite possibly
all sorts of other bits and pieces equally divided up. We can then
continue to use the word ‘soul’ with fully Christian meaning; but we
should be careful, because the language has had a chequered history,
and may betray us.
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EVOLUTIONARY
PSYCHOLOGY
38
Evolutionary psychology refers to the
study of the evolution of behaviour and of
the mind using principles of natural
selection.
The presumption is that natural selection
has favoured genes that designed both
behavioural tendencies and information
processing systems that solved problems
faced by our ancestors, thus contributing
to their survival and the spread of their
genes.
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•"From the beginning philosophers have agonised over the
question of what makes a human, is there a difference in kind
or merely a difference in degree between ourselves and other
animals? Direct comparisons between people and animals
are often seen as demeaning, even offensive”
Frans de Waal,1996
"It is dangerous to show a man too clearly how much he
resembles the beast, without at the same time showing him
his greatness, it is also dangerous to allow him too clear
vision of his greatness without his baseness. It is even more
dangerous to leave him in ignorance of both.”
Blaise Pascal, 17th century
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41
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Even if animals other than ourselves
act in ways tantamount to moral
behaviour, their behaviour does not
necessarily rest on deliberations of
the kind we engage in. It is hard to
believe that animals weigh their own
interests against the rights of others,
that they develop a vision of the
greater good of society, or that they
feel lifelong guilt about something
they should not have done'
(de Waal,1996)
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Evolutionary Psychology and Human Uniqueness
The trap of unthinking reductionism
1. Because two behaviors are similar, the mechanisms underlying them are
necessarily similar or identical.
2. “Even if animals other than ourselves act in ways tantamount to moral
behavior, their behavior does not necessarily rest on deliberations of the kind we
engage in. (de Waal)
3. “To communicate intentions and feelings is one thing; to clarify what is right,
and why, and what is wrong, and why, is quite something else. Animals are no
moral philosophers.” (de Waal)
4. “The fact that the human moral sense goes so far back in evolutionary history
that other species show signs of it, plants morality firmly near the center of our
much-maligned nature.”(de Waal)
5. The repeated take-home message :
There is nothing remotely scientific about oversimplifying complex scientific
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issues in the interests of an ideological agenda. Unthinking reductionism can
at
times be a lazy response to avoid facing up to challenging scientific problems.
Lessons here for us all.
1. Avoid make sweeping statements about similarities between animals
and humans that are not
only misleading but simply untrue. There are important issues here
concerning the benefits for medical advances using animal subjects .
Both similarities and differences are important in properly interpreting
research findings.
For example , a 2006 report of a working group of the Academy of
Medical Sciences in Britain, “On the Use of Nonhuman Primates in
Research.” Notes that:
“Primates, both human and non-human, embody a major evolutionary
step-change in vertebrate brain architecture with the massive expansion
of the neocortex. . . . Only the non-human primate brain has a cellular
composition of divisions that is in any way directly analogous to that
found in humans.”
“A recent review of the evolution of intelligence places more emphasis on
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the continuity of humans with other primates: ‘The outstanding
2. As evolutionary psychologists we
must be prepared to be agnostic or silent
on metaphysical issues, and as
Christians we should try to rid ourselves
of the fear of naturalistic explanations of
treasured aspects of our behavior. Both
perspectives—the evolutionary
psychological and that of Christian
ethics—should keep their focus on the
common ground between them without
slipping into the error of inappropriately
mixing their languages.
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3. Searching for ‘unique ‘ properties to
underpin a belief in human
distinctiveness thought to be
necessary to help define ‘the Imago
dei’ is to misunderstand what it means
to be made in the image of God.
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Humankind
and
The Imago Dei
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•The imago Dei as the capacity for moral behaviour and
moral agency.
•... herein does very much consist that image of God wherein
he made man ...viz. in those faculties and principles of nature,
whereby he is capable of moral agency.
Jonathan Edwards
• "Aiding others at the cost or risk to oneself is widespread in
the animal kingdom"
Frans de Waal
•The fact that the human moral sense goes so far back in
evolutionary history that other species show signs of it,
plants morality firmly near the centre of our much maligned
nature.’
(de Waal,1996)
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The imago Dei as the capacity to reason
111. The Knowledge of God according to the Church
36. “God…can be known…by the natural light of reason”.
“Man has this capacity because he is created ‘in the image
of God’”.
From a Catechism of the Catholic Church
For Descartes" the human mind, by virtue of its rationality,
provides evidence both of a kind of image of God and at the
same time a criterion of radical discontinuity from the rest of
creation. The animals are merely machines, and it is said that
some of the enlightened believe that their cries of pain were no
more than the squeaks of unlubricated machinery.”
(Colin Gunton,The Promise of Trinitarian Theology.
2nd.ed. 1997) page 101
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THE IMAGE AND THE LIKENESS OF GOD:
A THEOLOGICAL APPROACH
Anthony C. Thiselton
1. Humankind was originally called to represent God to the world.
2. This explains how in the New Testament Christ is said to be the true image and likeness
of God, whereas humankind failed in this vocation. Hebrews 2:6-9 makes this explicit.
3. Many identify the image and likeness of God with specific qualities or dispositions which
they see in humankind and also in God. The favourite candidates down the centuries have
been rationality (or wisdom); kingship or dominion over the earth; freedom, or ability to
make decisions in self-determination; ability to communicate, to address, or to use
language: and a capacity to enjoy relationships with others, or relationality.
4.The Biblical narrative gives no precise account of the nature of the image
( Anthony Thiselton Chapter in The Emergence of Personhood:A Quantum Leap? Ed . Malcolm
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Jeeves , Eerdmans 2014)
• The image is not located in any of these but
in our human vocation , given and enabled by
God, to relate to God as God's partner in
covenant. To join in companionship with the
human family and in relation to the whole
cosmos in ways that reflect the covenant love
of God. This is realised and modelled
supremely in Jesus Christ.
• Joel Green, 2004
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......to be in the image of God is at once to be
created as a particular kind of being - a
person - and to be called to realise a certain
destiny.
Colin Gunton, The Promise of Trinitarian
Theology, 2nd edition, T.and T. Clark, 1997
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FOR FURTHER REFLECTION
1. Recognising the rapidly accumulating evidence of the tightness of links
between brain and mind, how can we best think about and model the
complexity and diversity of personhood without embracing substance
dualisms or substance pluralisms?
2. How can we integrate the profound insights of theologians and
philosophers about spirituality with the neuropsychological evidence that
spirituality is firmly embedded and embodied in our physical make-up?
3. Which aspects of our complex personhood are key to a proper
understanding of the imago dei?
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