Body, Soul, and Spirit - Revisited

Mormon Studies Review, 2018

Analecta Husserliana

Reviews in Religion & Theology, 2008

Journal of Philosophy and Culture, 2011

The Scientific World JOURNAL, 2006

For almost a decade, we have experimented with supporting the philosophical development of severely ill patients to induce recovery and spontaneous healing. Recently, we have observed a new pattern of extremely rapid, spontaneous healing that apparently can facilitate even the spontaneous remission of cancer and the spontaneous recovery of mental diseases like schizophrenia and borderline schizophrenia. Our working hypothesis is that the accelerated healing is a function of the patient's brainmind and body-mind coming closer together due to the development of what we call "deep" cosmology. To understand and describe what happens at a biological level, we have suggested naming the process adult human metamorphosis, a possibility that is opened by the human genome showing full generic equipment for metamorphosis. To understand the mechanistic details in the complicated interaction between consciousness and biology, we need an adequate theory for biological information. In a series of papers, we propose what we call "holistic biology for holistic medicine". We suggest that a relatively simple model based on interacting wholenesses instead of isolated parts can shed a new light on a number of difficult issues that we need to explain and understand in biology and medicine in order to understand and use metamorphosis in the holistic medical clinic. We aim to give a holistic theoretical interpretation of biological phenomena at large, morphogenesis, evolution, immune system regulation (self-nonself discrimination), brain function, consciousness, and health in particular. We start at the most fundamental problem: what is biological information at the subcellular, cellular, and supracellular levels if we presume that it is the same phenomenon on all levels (using Occam's razor), and how can this be described scientifically? The problems we address are all connected to the information flow in the functioning, living organism: function of the brain and consciousness, the

Husserl’s phenomenology of the body constantly faces issues of demarcation: between phenomenology and ontology, soul and spirit, consciousness and brain, conditionality and causality. It also shows that dualism is at best a methodological but never an ontological option for the mind-body problem.

The New Bioethics

This monograph rigorously argues for a Thomistic (after the thirteenth century theologian and philosopher St Thomas Aquinas) account of the human person. Each chapter addresses different stages of human existence, considering the metaphysical and philosophical issues arising from these. Dualist and materialist accounts are considered, and Eberl's Thomistic position is carefully elucidated. Eberl argues that the Thomistic account is as a via media between dualism and materialism, combining the strengths, whilst avoiding the weaknesses, of both camps. Chapter One: 'What Am I?' sets the scene. The desiderata for an account of the human person are delineated and justified, and the reader is introduced to the distinct, but closely related, concepts of 'human being' and 'person'. Eberl outlines the many different ways these two terms are used and shows that whilst some thinkers will use them as synonyms, others will use them to refer to very different concepts. Ultimately, Eberl settles on the term human person to allow for the possibility of non-human persons. During this chapter, the outline of the rest of the book is laid out. Chapter Two: 'This is Us' sets out Eberl's Thomistic account of the human person in broad strokes. Along the way, cerebral transplant thought experiments, in which one person's cerebrum is transplanted into a different person's body (I shall return to this topic later), and dicephalic twins are considered. Chapter Three: 'I Think, Therefore … ' introduces the reader to two contemporary alternative dualist accounts, substance dualism and emergent dualism, with Swinburne's substance dualism and Hasker's emergent dualism being used as quintessential representatives of each. Both views are considered and critiqued. Chapter Four: 'Thou Art Dust' introduces the reader to one reductive and three non-reductive materialist alternatives: animalism, constitutionalism, four-dimensionalism and the embodied mind theory. Olson's animalist approach is considered as a representative reductive physicalist account. Baker's constitutionalism, Hudson's four-dimensionalism and McMahan's embodied mind account are the three non-reductive materialist accounts considered. In the process of doing this, teletransporter thought experiments and their correct interpretation are also considered. Chapter Five: Starting Out then applies these accounts to the beginning of human life and the various questions and issues raised therein. Eberl argues that his Thomistic account is superior based on the arguments of previous chapters. He shows how, according to his Thomistic account, a human person comes into existence at conception. In doing this, he also spends quite some time carefully engaging with the new bioethics, 2020, 1-4

Education and Culture, 2007

Rockwell argues in this broad-ranging text that mind ought not to be identified with the brain. More generally, Rockwell argues for the rejection of "Cartesian materialism," his term for any attempt to identify mind with any particular part of the "brain-body-world nexus." It is the partitioning of that nexus that is problematic. Rockwell argues first that, given the inseparability of brain and body processes, mind is not confined to "neurons in the skull" but is pervasively present throughout the body; he then argues that mind cannot be bounded by the skin, either, given the organically necessary interactivity of "inner" processes with "outer." Mind is thus only to be identified with the entire brain-body-world nexus. One problem with the thesis is that the key concept, mind, remains unexplicated. Given this, it is impossible to give an unqualified yea or nay to Rockwell's thesis. It is plausible, indeed, necessarily true, that when "mind" is understood in precisely the way required by his thesis, it is exactly as Rockwell describes it to be. A different conceptualization of mind-say, as a certain set of capabilities of an organism-would lead to a different conclusion, and we are given no compelling and independent reasons for taking the concept of mind in Rockwell's chosen holistic sense. Rockwell rejects pan-psychism; it is only that portion of nature in close interaction with the organism, its "world," that participates in constituting its mind. However, since any narrowly described portion of nature is itself in intimate interaction with larger portions, it would seem by parity of reasoning that we can-

Elenchus, 2016

The purpose of this paper is to argue in for substance dualism originally proposed by Renee Descartes. In this paper I will examine multiple arguments for this view, some strong critiques of these arguments, and a put forward a substantive reply in the hopes of demonstrating that these critiques are not considerable or damaging to the theory as a whole. Furthermore, I accept and am working from the foundation of arguments proposed by David Chalmers, who has philosophically demonstrated adequately (in my mind) the positions of predicate and property dualism.