This is a beautiful interview. I wonder what philosophers have to say about ontological reductionism. It has been extremely successful on some fronts (eg. heat) but not others (consciousness). When would one want to be ontologically reductionistic?
The short answer would be that, when dealing with material realities, ontological reductionism can be useful, but when dealing with immaterial realities that are unreductible by their own nature, you're getting into trouble.
As a neurosurgeon, I enjoyed this interview very much. 34 years in the front lines of clinical neuroscience has only increased my faith in God ---the domain of science, as the brilliant Dr. Stanley Jaki has observed, is quantification, which leaves a whole lot out! And Sofia Carozza's comment that much of what passes for neuroscience popularization is junk is spot on - I would say most of it is junk, and agenda driven.
Beautiful interview. Tangentially, my non-scientific assessment is that scientific answers generate more questions than they resolve, as if understanding of creation runs away from us - with increasing knowledge of our universe comes a bigger backlog of unanswered questions. A most poetic way for God's creation to remain mysterious despite our increasingly powerful exploration of it, a powerful demonstration that He is God and we are not.
Is there behind this great interview an implicit call for the renewal of catholic philosophy? It seems to me to have got a bit stuck, trying to re-hash past insights.
As she is working in England, Sofia may well have come across the writings of the late Herbert McCabe OP in this area. If not, I would recommend his long essay on 'Soul, Life, Machines and Language' in his posthumously published collection, Faith Within Reason (2008). To simplify his argument, he says that mental acts, while they are concomitant with electro-chemical activity in the brain, and to a large extent shaped by it, are not reducible to it. He enlists Wittgenstein's private-language argument to reinforce the traditional Thomistic position that mental acts are immaterial because concepts and meanings are in the language, the system of signs (i.e. trans-individual and therefore immaterial), before they are in the brain circuitry of any individual speaker of the language.
That is an amateur oversimplification, but the original repays close study. Herbert also had a gift for the bon mot. The reductionist view that 'the brain thinks', he said, is as ridiculous as to say that my left ear is in love.
This is a fantastic interview; thank you so much. Really appreciated Dr. Carozza's insights and instructions.
One quick note on the new mechanist philosophers - from what I've read of them, the prevailing opinion is that interlevel causation is at best a convenient fiction. Craver calls it "spooky" to assume that a higher level of organisation can order a lower level (so like, me "deciding" to move my arm); rather, he thinks that the higher levels of organisation are in fact constituted of those lower levels (so instead of me "deciding", the fact that I'm moving my arm constitutes my will but is not determined by it). I'm using somewhat of a slipshod analogy, but I think it's a rather peculiar way of doing an end-run around causation (and ultimately denies the existence of a final cause, a.k.a. God). So are there great places where NMPers can and should dialogue with Catholic anthropologists? Yes, absolutely, and there are some very promising developments! But I would caution that it's not as quick as saying, "oh look they're saying the same thing as us, just with different words!".
Yes, of course. On the Catholic side of the discussion, Daniel DeHaan has studied the points of encounter with NMP. I understand that Craver is what we would call a "perspectivist" regarding teleology and causation but he admits we cannot escape teleological explanations with regards to the brain, whereas classical mechanicism is a full-on denial of teleology. So, there's a significant difference: NMP takes causation and teleology seriously. And there are some NMPers who do take a realistic approach to teleology.
What a fantastic & living example of what it means to be a missionary disciple “in the world.” Her sense of mission, vocation, accompaniment, and call to evangelize come across so strongly in this interview - all of which is happening outside the walls of her parish.
I love it when people do the "consciousness is an illusion" bit, because I always want to know who is being tricked?
This is a beautiful interview. I wonder what philosophers have to say about ontological reductionism. It has been extremely successful on some fronts (eg. heat) but not others (consciousness). When would one want to be ontologically reductionistic?
The short answer would be that, when dealing with material realities, ontological reductionism can be useful, but when dealing with immaterial realities that are unreductible by their own nature, you're getting into trouble.
As a neurosurgeon, I enjoyed this interview very much. 34 years in the front lines of clinical neuroscience has only increased my faith in God ---the domain of science, as the brilliant Dr. Stanley Jaki has observed, is quantification, which leaves a whole lot out! And Sofia Carozza's comment that much of what passes for neuroscience popularization is junk is spot on - I would say most of it is junk, and agenda driven.
Great to see Fr Jaki’s work remembered
Beautiful interview. Tangentially, my non-scientific assessment is that scientific answers generate more questions than they resolve, as if understanding of creation runs away from us - with increasing knowledge of our universe comes a bigger backlog of unanswered questions. A most poetic way for God's creation to remain mysterious despite our increasingly powerful exploration of it, a powerful demonstration that He is God and we are not.
Is there behind this great interview an implicit call for the renewal of catholic philosophy? It seems to me to have got a bit stuck, trying to re-hash past insights.
Maybe! That's something I'm beginning to explore in my academic work.
I studied math and philosophy undergrad; this article made me glad that I just re-subscribed. Thank you.
As she is working in England, Sofia may well have come across the writings of the late Herbert McCabe OP in this area. If not, I would recommend his long essay on 'Soul, Life, Machines and Language' in his posthumously published collection, Faith Within Reason (2008). To simplify his argument, he says that mental acts, while they are concomitant with electro-chemical activity in the brain, and to a large extent shaped by it, are not reducible to it. He enlists Wittgenstein's private-language argument to reinforce the traditional Thomistic position that mental acts are immaterial because concepts and meanings are in the language, the system of signs (i.e. trans-individual and therefore immaterial), before they are in the brain circuitry of any individual speaker of the language.
That is an amateur oversimplification, but the original repays close study. Herbert also had a gift for the bon mot. The reductionist view that 'the brain thinks', he said, is as ridiculous as to say that my left ear is in love.
I omitted to say that this is an excellent article and I agree with everything that Sofia has said.
This is a fantastic interview; thank you so much. Really appreciated Dr. Carozza's insights and instructions.
One quick note on the new mechanist philosophers - from what I've read of them, the prevailing opinion is that interlevel causation is at best a convenient fiction. Craver calls it "spooky" to assume that a higher level of organisation can order a lower level (so like, me "deciding" to move my arm); rather, he thinks that the higher levels of organisation are in fact constituted of those lower levels (so instead of me "deciding", the fact that I'm moving my arm constitutes my will but is not determined by it). I'm using somewhat of a slipshod analogy, but I think it's a rather peculiar way of doing an end-run around causation (and ultimately denies the existence of a final cause, a.k.a. God). So are there great places where NMPers can and should dialogue with Catholic anthropologists? Yes, absolutely, and there are some very promising developments! But I would caution that it's not as quick as saying, "oh look they're saying the same thing as us, just with different words!".
Yes, of course. On the Catholic side of the discussion, Daniel DeHaan has studied the points of encounter with NMP. I understand that Craver is what we would call a "perspectivist" regarding teleology and causation but he admits we cannot escape teleological explanations with regards to the brain, whereas classical mechanicism is a full-on denial of teleology. So, there's a significant difference: NMP takes causation and teleology seriously. And there are some NMPers who do take a realistic approach to teleology.
What a fantastic & living example of what it means to be a missionary disciple “in the world.” Her sense of mission, vocation, accompaniment, and call to evangelize come across so strongly in this interview - all of which is happening outside the walls of her parish.
Thanks so much for sharing this rich witness.