27 October 2022

Contemporary Neuroscience and the Spiritual Soul

Lecture Two in The Spiritual Soul and Contemporary Neuroscience, with Daniel De Haan, DPhil, Frederick Copleston Senior Research Fellow, Lecturer in Philosophy and Theology, & Lector, Blackfriars Hall, Research Fellow, Ian Ramsey Centre for Science and Religion, Faculty of Theology and Religion, University of Oxford.


The Catholic Church teaches that each human being possesses a spiritual soul, made in the image of God, and that is the form of the body. Today advances in modern neuroscience unveil profound connections that exist between the structure and functioning of the brain and our cognitive and sensate activity. In this context how can the thought of Thomas Aquinas and his hylomorphic account of the spiritual soul help us to understand advances in neuroscience and their profound compatibility with a traditional Catholic understanding of the human person?

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