Making the Case for the Soul in an Age of Neuroscience
Modern philosophy has been inhospitable to the soul. In the English-speaking world, the dominant tendency, since Hobbes and Locke, has been to subordinate the mental to the physical. Even where mental phenomena are granted real existence, they are construed as effects of underlying physical processe...
Main Author: | |
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Format: | Electronic Review |
Language: | English |
Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
Journals Online & Print: | |
Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
Published: |
Cambridge Univ. Press
2014
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In: |
Harvard theological review
Year: 2014, Volume: 107, Issue: 4, Pages: 485-493 |
Further subjects: | B
Book review
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Online Access: |
Volltext (JSTOR) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
Summary: | Modern philosophy has been inhospitable to the soul. In the English-speaking world, the dominant tendency, since Hobbes and Locke, has been to subordinate the mental to the physical. Even where mental phenomena are granted real existence, they are construed as effects of underlying physical processes. To explain them is to identify their physical causes. Physicalist approaches to the mind cannot but see the soul as, in Gilbert Ryle's derisive phrase, a “ghost in the machine.” It is an unwanted leftover from a religious age with a bygone philosophical psychology. To the extent that mental entities do any explanatory work, modern philosophy favors “mind” over “soul.” |
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ISSN: | 1475-4517 |
Contains: | Enthalten in: Harvard theological review
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Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1017/S0017816014000388 |