Unity of Body and Soul or Mind-Brain-Being? : Towards a Paradigm Shift in Modern Concepts of Personhood

The relationship between our living body and our soul, our mental expressions of life and our physical environment, are both classical topics for discussion and ones which currently present themselves as part of a truly exciting philosophical debate: are we today still able to speak of a “soul”? And what is meant by a (living) body (German: “Leib”)? Does our brain dictate what we will and do? Or do we have free will? Why are we the same people tomorrow that we were yesterday? Given the discoveries of the modern neural sciences, can human beings still be understood in the context of the unity of body and soul? Or should we rather define ourselves as mind-brain beings (German: Gehirn-Geist-Gestalten)? Marcus Knaup explores these questions and discusses the most relevant approaches and arguments concerning the (living) body-soul debate. His own approach to current chal-lenges presented by modern brain research emanates from his bringing together Aristotelian Hylomorphism and phenomenology of the living body (German: “Leibphänomenologie”). Contents 6 List of Abbreviations 10 Acknowledgements 12 Introduction 13 Part 1 20 A. Dualism 21 1. Descartes and the modern man 22 1.1 Father of the lived body-soul debate: René Descartes 22 1.2 Descartes on the threshold of the modern age 24 1.3 Descartes and scholasticism – »Where Descartes has doubts,the Middle Ages are at their wits’ end!« – 27 1.4 In search of certainty 29 1.5 Cartesian (methodical) doubt 30 1.6 How doubt is not having the last word 33 1.7 Res cogitans and res extensa 35 1.8 Made in the image of a machine 38 1.9 About fellow human beings and animals 40 1.10 The passions of the soul 43 1.11 Descartes and free will 46 1.12 Descartes and his followers 47 1.12.1 The first highlight: From Cartesian understandings of nonphysicality to the ghost in the machine: Gilbert Ryle and the lived body-soul problem 51 1.12.2 The second highlight: Mere brains in a vat? 57 1.12.3 The third highlight: John Eccles, Karl R. Popper and Antonio Damasio about Descartes and dualism 61 Appreciation and criticism 69 B. Monistic Concepts 71 I. The substance monism of Spinoza 72 2. Spinoza’s parallelism and the one divine substance 72 2.1 Psychophysical parallelism as a response to Descartes 72 2.2 Mos geometricus 75 2.3 Indispensable vocabulary: Causa sui, substance, attribute, modus 76 2.4 Spinoza and the one divine substance 79 2.5 Spinoza’s world of the imperative and the question of freedom 82 2.6 Causa sui and the problem of lived body-soul unity 83 Appreciation and criticism 89 II. Mental monism 91 3. George Berkeley: Esse est percipi et percipere 92 3.1 Berkeley on human perception and reality 92 Appreciation and criticism 98 III. Material monism 99 4. Processes of the soul: symptoms of the bodymachine – Julien Offray de La Mettrie 102 5. Behaviorism 107 6. Identity theory 113 A digression: Anomalous monism 120 7. Epiphenomenalism 123 8. The emergence theory 127 9. Supervenience 133 10. Eliminative materialism 136 11. Of computers and men: Functionalism 140 Critique and outlook 148 C. Hylemorphism 150 12. Aristotle and hylemorphism 150 12.1 In search of a soothing midrange in the concert of physicalists and dualists 151 12.2 De Anima: What Aristotle has to say about lived body and soul 153 12.3 In the footsteps of Aristotle: Hylemorphism’s counterproposal to physicalism and dualism 168 Conclusion 173 Conclusion of Part 1 173 Part 2 174 A. Man and his brain 175 1. The human brain: An extraordinary organ 175 1.1 Ecce cerebrum! 175 1.2 What do brain researchers know today? An expedition through the neuron jungle 176 1.3 A journey through the history of brain research 185 1.4 I can see what you see. Is mindreading possible? 201 1.5 Brain injury and its consequences for human experience and behavior 205 2. Philosophy and brain research. A complicated relationship? 211 2.1 Brain research: The fourth narcissistic affront? 212 2.2 Quo vadis brain research? The Manifest of Brain Researchers 216 2.3 The premises and limits of brain research 223 2.4 The necessity for a multitude of perspectives: The relationship between philosophy and the neurosciences 228 Conclusion 231 B. The rediscovery of the lived body (Leib) 233 Preliminary Remarks 233 3. I am where my lived body is 235 3.1 The lived body and the physical body (Leib and Körper) 235 3.2 My lived body is always »here« 240 3.3 My lived body is a moving body 241 3.4 The phenomenon of expression 244 4. You are where your lived body is 246 4.1 Empathy 246 4.2 The lived body of the other as the carrier of free movement and orientation center of the spatial world 248 4.3 The lived bodies of others and the phenomenon of expression: The human gaze 250 4.4 Empathy and mirror neurons 255 Conclusion 257 C. Paths to consciousness 259 5. Brain research and the question of consciousness 259 5.1 Consciousness: A mysterious phenomenon 259 5.2 F. Crick and C. Koch in search of neural correlates for conscious manifestations of life 263 5.3 Consciousness as the result of the human brain. Gerhard Rothabout human consciousness 272 5.4 Phenomenal experiencing as a challenge for brain research. The works of Ramachandran and Hirstein 278 5.5 The conscious organism: Antonio Damasio about an astonishing phenomenon 283 5.6 From brain research to a new culture of consciousness: The theses of Thomas Metzinger 285 Conclusion 294 D. Lived body and soul or mind and brain? 296 6. The mind-brain paradigm as a threat 296 6.1 Downsizing man to a mind-brain being 296 6.2 The world as a construct of the brain 299 6.3 Of linguistic confusion and philosophical fallacies in the mind-brain paradigm 302 6.3.1 Referential fallacy 307 6.3.2 The fallacy of localization 308 6.3.3 The mereological fallacy 309 6.4 Lived body-soul unity or mind and brain? 311 6.5 Man the incarnate 315 6.5.1 The origins of mankind 315 6.5.2 Brain death = soulless? On the problematic definition of brain death in the mind-brain paradigm 321 Conclusion 334 E. Brain research and the question of human freedom 335 7. Threatened liberty 335 7.1 Preliminary remarks and problem definition 335 7.2 The question of freedom as a multi-layered affair 338 7.3 How to see the current free-will debate in a wider context 340 7.4 About the »able to choose« freedom and the »able to act« freedom 344 8. The Libet experiments 345 8.1 Mind Time 345 8.2 The experiments of Benjamin Libet 349 8.3 One-sided interpretations of the Libet Experiments 354 8.4 Are other interpretations possible? 363 9. Can we do what we want? Or do we want what has been determined? 368 9.1 Our brain circuitry determines us! W. Singer’s position 368 9.2 Compatibilism versus incompatibilism? 375 9.3 Searle’s gap theory 377 9.4 Michael Pauen: Freedom and determinism 382 9.5 Determination and the indeterminate nature of quantum physics 389 9.6 Why the determinism thesis does not allow real dialogue 390 10. The freedom of man 394 10.1 Man in action 394 10.2 Freedom needs commitment: A thought experiment 402 10.3 Our freedom as conditional freedom 404 10.4 In all freedom: A brief conclusion 408 Conclusion 411 Bibliography 415 Front Matter ....Pages I-X Unity of Body and Soul or Mind-Brain-Being? (Marcus Knaup)....Pages 1-442 Back Matter ....Pages 409-442