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10 - ‘Person’ as Converging Notion for Neuroscience, Philosophy and Religion

from Part III - Contemporary Issues

Juan Francisco Franck
Affiliation:
Universidad Austral, Argentina
Ignacio Silva
Affiliation:
Harris Manchester College, Oxford
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Summary

My aim in this chapter is to discuss a notion (or reality) that is in itself appropriate to engage a neuroscientist, a philosopher and a theologian, or somebody concerned with religion, in a truly interdisciplinary dialogue. A brief initial defnition may be useful here; by converging notion I mean a concept which connects the issues raised by different disciplines in a logical and fruitful way. Logically, because the reality meant by that concept should be naturally relevant to all topics under discussion; and fruitfully because its consideration should be compelling in order to make good sense of the issues raised. Philosophers make use of a large array of notions that have a more or less universal range of application: being, substance, accident, act, potency, subject, object, etc. In principle, the task of first philosophy is to study the properties of being as such and, since everything is some kind of being, its conclusions should be relevant to any science. But here I am interested neither in a general theory of being nor in putting forward some notion that might in one way or other shed light on the discussion. My suggestion does not imply the claim that only the notion of person would qualify for that purpose. I do think, however, that by focusing on the notion of the person and all that specifically belongs to it or has direct relation to it, the discussion becomes highly meaningful for all three partners, probably more than taking any other perspective.

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Publisher: Pickering & Chatto
First published in: 2014

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