Sunday 30 October, 1.45pm until 3.15pm, Lecture Theatre 1
The spirit, spark or personality - the concept of a soul, self or mind distinct from our physical shell - has long been a cornerstone of our understanding of what it means to be human, in both religious and secular spheres. Increasingly, however, scientific fields such as neuroscience, genetics, epigenetics and psychology continue to provide ever more intricate explanations for human functioning that are rooted in the tangible and the biological. There is a widespread expectation that aspects of our lives that currently elude understanding will eventually yield to scientific explication, given sufficient time and research.
Many now believe human consciousness is a byproduct of biological processes, while others argue consciousness is more numinous, or suffused from the divine in some sense. What is often lost, in this tussle between the physics and the metaphysics of the self, is the social dimension of human existence. Historically, social consciousness has been thought to offer a means of transcending the embodied self, without having to resort to mystification. Is this avenue of realisation now blocked off, perhaps because scientific advances can explain social processes in more basic terms, such as ‘the neuroscience of voting’, for example? Or have we just lost the capacity to perceive or imagine the social as a transcendent sphere? Either way, it is difficult to see how we can aspire to be masters of our destiny, if we believe ourselves subordinate to, or an emergent property of, either a scientific or a spiritual account of nature.
Does today’s science even allow for the possibility of a human self that is not circumscribed by bodily concerns? Can we believe in free will, or hold people responsible for the choices they make, without recourse to social consciousness? Can we establish an empirically sound view of ourselves, without detracting from the importance of morality, responsibility, solidarity and freedom? Does understanding what we are bring us closer to, or take us further away from, understanding who we are?
Listen to session audio:
 | Dr Stuart Derbyshire reader in psychology, University of Birmingham; associate editor, Psychosomatic Medicine and Pain |
 | Martha Robinson neuroscience PhD student, University College London |
 | Richard Swinburne emeritus professor, philosophy of religion, University of Oxford; author The Existence of God and The Evolution of the Soul |
 | Professor Raymond Tallis fellow, Academy of Medical Sciences; author, philosopher, critic and poet; recent books include NHS SOS and Aping Mankind; chair, Healthcare Professionals for Assisted Dying |
| Chair: | |
|
Sandy Starr
communications officer, Progress Educational Trust; webmaster, BioNews |
So how, if at all, might the concept ’soul’ be useful? I think it’s useful precisely because of the aspect that defies natural science and seems to embarrass some of the concept’s exponents, namely the way it conveys a notion of transcendence or transformation.
Sandy Starr, Independent, 2 November 2011
Although no branch of scientific thought has all the answers, we have known for some time that there is no theoretical need to look outside of the human body for a explanation of the many and varied phenomena that we collectively refer to as ‘consciousness’.
Martha Robinson, Independent, 16 October 2011
‘If God does not exist, everything is permitted’. Dostoevsky never actually wrote that line, though so often is it attributed to him that he may as well have.
Kenan Malik, kenanmalik.com, 26 March 2010
Most neuroscientists, philosophers of the mind and science journalists feel the time is near when we will be able to explain the mystery of human consciousness in terms of the activity of the brain. There is, however, a vocal minority of neurosceptics who contest this orthodoxy. Among them are those who focus on claims neuroscience makes about the preciseness of correlations between indirectly observed neural activity and different mental functions, states or experiences.
Ray Tallis, Transcurve, 13 January 2010
Through vivid explorations of tears, snot, earwax and blushing, Ray Tallis’ brilliant new book shows us that ‘being human’ is not a simple stimulus-response thing – it is shaped by history, thought, time and space.
Stuart Derbyshire, spiked, December 2008
The capacity for voluntary action is seen as essential to human nature. Yet neuroscience and behaviourist psychology have traditionally dismissed the topic as unscientific, perhaps because the mechanisms that cause actions have long been unclear. Neuroscientific accounts of voluntary action may inform debates about the nature of individual responsibility.
Patrick Haggard, Nature, December 2008
If you want to describe the world fully, you must also describe not merely which properties are instantiated, but which substances have these properties
Richard Swinburne, Science and Religion News, 2006
Unversed in the subtleties of philosophy, the natural scientists (and some philosophers who preferred to follow them rather than trust philosophy, and who saw their task as “drawing philosophical conclusions from the discoveries of real science”) thought that the basic question of philosophy – the relation of consciousness to being, to matter – should be treated exclusively as a question of the relationship between soul and body, the mental and the Physiological.
Feliks Mikhailov, The Riddle of the Self, 1976
