THE HUMAN WORLD

We do not have to choose between belief in a divinely ordained cosmic moral order and the arbitrariness of our moral commitments. The alternative is a secular view that accepts that there is a natural cosmic order, denies that the order is moral, and relies on the values of the human world to provide a moral order by which we can reasonably live. These values are human constructions. Reliance on them is reasonable if they have passed the test of critical reflection. Our well-being depends on living according to the values that passed that test. Natural necessities, the contingencies of life, and our fallibility, however, limit the extent to which we can control how we live. We cannot free ourselves from necessities, but we can reduce the extent to which we are vulnerable to contingencies, and we can, within limits, increase the control we have by correcting mistakes we make when we are insufficiently critical of our attitudes, commitments, and values.     

BRAIN SCIENCE AND THE HUMAN SPIRIT

Abstract. In recent decades of its brief history, brain science has shed light on the source of motives. We review the chemistry and anatomy of the neural core of human motivation; it seems to penetrate the hemispheric cognitive fields asymmetrically, subjecting them to differing evaluations by self-organizing states of mind. The brain core generates and responds to the rhythm and color of emotions, giving moral control to relationships and setting values and meanings in communication. The newborn human mind is ready to share transcendent states with an empathic partner. Fantasy-making play of a child in friendships presages adult rituals. Mystic rites and mythic symbols express feelings essential to time- and space-defying cooperation within the ancestral culture.     

THE HUMAN BEING SHAPING AND TRANSCENDING ITSELF: WRITTEN LANGUAGE,BRAIN, AND CULTURE

Recent theological anthropology emphasizes a dynamic and integral understanding of the human being, which is also related to Karl Rahner's idea of active self‐transcendence and to the imago Dei doctrine. The recent neuroscientific discovery of the “visual word form area” for reading, regarded in light of the concept of cultural neural reuse, will produce fresh implications for the interrelation of brain biology and human culture. The theological and neuroscientific parts are shown in their mutual connections thus articulating the notion that human beings shape and transcend themselves both at the biological and at the cultural level. This will have relevant implications for the timely topic of human uniqueness in science and theology, and in proposing a new research perspective in which theology may consider culture along with its biological import, but not necessarily in strictly evolutionary terms alone.     

BRAIN ROOTS OF THE WILL-TO-POWER

Abstract. The human brain has evolved to its great size while retaining the anatomical and chemical features of three basic formations that reflect an ancestral relationship to reptiles, early mammals, and late mammals. Such considerations must be taken into account in the origin and expression of individual and collective violence, which operationally depend on power and the orchestrated use of power. Aristotle and Friedrich Nietzsche have respectively provided paradigms of a "great-souled man" and a "superman"— both basically ruthless. In neurobehavioral investigations of the triune brain, one finds the basis for the hierarchical development of ruthless power, merciful power, and transcendental power.     

ON THE EVOLUTION OF HUMAN FREEDOM

Abstract. The age–old dilemma of free will and determinism is attacked by proving that both sides are flawed with contingencies, that the notion of eternal law is a theologically tainted projection rather than a reality of the real world that is understood to be evolutionary. Determinism is dissolved into conditionalism. This excludes materialistic scientific explanation of the deterministic style. As it brings forth freedom, evolutionary reality transcends essentially the explanatory possibilities of statistically structured natural laws. The dilemma of determinism and free will based on a logic of contradiction is replaced by an ontology of polarity.     

BODY, BRAIN, AND CULTURE

Abstract. Recent work in cerebral neurology should be used to fashion a new synthesis with anthropological studies. Beginning with Paul D. Madean's model of the triune brain, we explore Ralph Wendell Burhoe's question whether creative processes result from a coadaptation, perhaps in ritual itself, of genetic and cultural information. Then we examine the division of labor between right and left cerebral hemispheres and its implications for the notions of play and "ludic recombination." Intimately related to ritual, play may function in the social construction of reality analogous to mutation and variation in organic evolution. Finally, we consider how our picture of brain functioning accords with some distinctive features of the religious systems dominant in human cultures.     

HOMO RELIGIOSUS AND ITS BRAIN: REALITY, IMAGINATION, AND THE FUTURE OF NATURE

Abstract. “Daddy, is God real or is he a part of people's imagination?” The brain constructs reality by bottom-up, genetically programmed mechanisms. Nature selected the human holistic, symbolically thinking, aesthetic brain using a mechanism of brain-language coevolution. Our religious nature and moral capabilities are rooted in this brain, and in the real images it constructs.     

HUMAN PHENOTYPIC MORALITY AND THE BIOLOGICAL BASIS FOR KNOWING GOOD

Co‐creating knowledge takes a new approach to human phenotypic morality as a biologically based, human lineage specific (HLS) trait. Authors from very different backgrounds (anthropology and biology, on the one hand, and astronomy, philosophy, and theology, on the other) first review research on the nature and origins of morality using the social brain network, and studies of individuals who cannot “know good” or think morally because of brain dysfunction. They find these models helpful but insufficient, and turn to paleoanthropology, cognitive science, and neuroscience to understand human moral capacity and its origins long ago, in the genus Homo. An unusual narrative capturing “morality in action” takes the reader back 900,000 years, and then the authors analyze the essential features of moral thinking and behavior as expressed by early and later species on our lineage. In what has primarily been the province of philosophers to date, the authors’ morality model is presented for further scientific testing.     

THE CONCEPT OF DIGNITY IN THE UNIVERSAL DECLARATION OF HUMAN RIGHTS

This essay examines the function of the concept of human dignity (both as an inherent feature of human existence and as an ideal achievement) in the United Nations's 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights. It explains why the key framers of the document affirmed an inherent human dignity in order to provide an explanatory basis for the validity of universal human rights while eschewing any religious or metaphysical justification for this affirmation. It argues that the key framers, while aware of the Christian anthropology informing the modern Western concept of the dignity of the person, grasped (1) that the Declaration, to be ratifiable, would need to be free of religious reference, and also (2) that the notion of inherency suffices to suggest heuristically not only a universal human nature but also, crucially, a transcendent reality in which all persons participate.     

THE WHOLE BRAIN AS THE BASIS OR THE ANALOGICAL EXPRESSION OF GOD

Abstract. As human beings we inevitably try to explain our experience. In philosophical language, we deal with transcendent assertions and aspirations. The issue, then, is: how can we talk about what matters, given the structures inherent in language and basic to the way we are made? Instead of the philosophical category of Being, I advance a case for giving the human brain privileged status as an analogical expression of God, the symbol-concept of what matters most, and then suggest the illumination which can come with using that analogical expression, especially as that analogy connects us with the environment at the limbic level and constructs our world at the cerebral level.     

THE SIMILARITY OF BRAIN ACTIVITY ASSOCIATED WITH TRUE AND FALSE RECOGNITION MEMORY DEPENDS ON TEST FORMAT

Abstract— Event-related potentials (ERPs) were compared for correct recognitions of previously presented words and false recognitions of associatively related, nonpresented words (lures). When the test items were presented blocked by test type (old, new, lure), waveforms for old and lure items were different, especially at frontal and left parietal electrode sites, consistent with previous positron emission tomography (PET) data (Schacter, Reiman, et. al., 1996). When the test format randomly intermixed the types of items, waveforms for old and lure items were more similar. We suggest that test format affects the type of processing subjects engage in, consistent with expectations from the source-monitoring framework (Johnson, Hashtroudi, & Lindsay, 1993). These results also indicate that brain activity as assessed by neuroimaging designs requiring blocked presentation of trials (e g, PET) do not necessarily reflect the brain activity that occurs in cognitive-behavioral paradigms, in which types of test trials are typically intermixed.     

MAKING SENSE OF GOD: HOW I GOT TO THE BRAIN

Abstract. I describe the development of my work in relating brain research and religion from my personal roots in my family of origin through my professional responsibilities as a pastor, a clinician, and a theological educator to my developing what I call “a neurotheological approach” to faith and ministry. My early correlations gave simplistic attention to bimodal consciousness as an interpretive tool for understanding religion. Subsequently came a more sophisticated exploration of whole-brain functioning and suggested cultural correlates. Currently, I am explicating tae humanizing brain as reflective of our living in an open system, a universe that is unfolding and evolving, a universe in the hands of the whole-making, integrating, emerging God whose reality far exceeds the insights of cultural construction. As we humans relate to this God, attachment and aspiration are reciprocal.     

THINKING ABOUT RELIGION AND EXPERIENCING THE BRAIN: EUGENE D'AQUILI'S BIOGENETIC STRUCTURAL THEORY OF ABSOLUTE UNITARY BEING

Abstract. Religious experiences, including mystical states and experience of the divine, are the ultimate reality of human existence that demand an account. Eugene d'Aquili weaves together that account using paradigms of thought which historically have made mutually exclusive claims about the nature of religious experience. While pointing out the deficiencies of the theory from a narrowly scientific point of view, this paper recognizes that neuroscience, or any other solitary discipline, is incompetent to explain religion. This paper emphasizes the significance and truth of d'Aquili's holistic theory, a religious vision which itself explains science and philosophy.     

THE TRANSCENDENT FUNCTION OF THE BILATERAL BRAIN

Abstract. A "transcendent function," which integrates conscious and unconscious elements, can be characterized for the human mind. From Carl Jung's model of four basic functions of the psyche—thinking, feeling, sensation, and intuition—a modified compass of the psyche is constructed to conform to the neurobio-logical structure of the bilateral brain. The transcendent function can be correlated with the principal states of consciousness existent between waking and sleep. Dreams, myth, and the experience of deity, of related unconscious content, are manifest in hybrid states of consciousness. The exercise of the transcendent function is of creative value in the arts and sciences and paramount to human survival.     

DOUBLE DISSOCIATION BETWEEN MEMORY SYSTEMS UNDERLYING EXPLICIT AND IMPLICIT MEMORY IN THE HUMAN BRAIN

Abstract— Amnesic patients have impaired explicit memory that is evident in poor recall and recognition of words, yet can have intact implicit memory for words as measured by repetition priming, the enhanced efficiency for reprocessing those word's. The dissociation between explicit and implicit memory for words is a fundamental characteristic of normal cognition that could reflect two different functional architectures of the human brain two separate processing systems or two levels of operation of a single system with implicit memory less demanding of that system. We present a patient who has a lesion in the right occipital lobe and who showed intact explicit and impaired implicit memory for words. The deficit was specific to visual priming. The double dissociation between explicit and implicit visual memory for words indicates that separate processing systems mediate these two forms of memory, and that a memory system in right occipital cortex mediates implicit visual memory for words.     

THE INTERPLAY OF THE TWO HEMISPHERES OF THE BRAIN IN PSYCHOANALYSIS

Several authors have written intriguingly about the right and left hemispheres of the brain. Each hemisphere perceives the world differently, impacting that which it looks upon and reinforcing our particular world view. Notably, the left hemisphere, has always been assumed to be the dominant hemisphere, but only because it has language and is so adept at formulating arguments. The detached mode of the left hemisphere, while useful and necessary to get distance, is no more real than the engaged, imaginative approach of the right hemisphere. Having written about self-sufficiency as a defense against feeling alone and helpless, I now consider these rational, problem solving, answer generating, and planning activities as products of the left hemisphere. The approach that I am suggesting is of calling our patients’ attention to how their left hemisphere overpowers the new, more uncertain voice of the right hemisphere just after it speaks in a session.     

COGNITIVE AND EVOLUTIONARY FACTORS IN THE EMERGENCE OF HUMAN ALTRUISM

One of the central tenets of Christian theology is the denial of self for the benefit of another. However, many views on the evolution of altruism presume that natural selection inevitably leads to a self‐seeking human nature and that altruism is merely a façade to cover underlying selfish motives. I argue that human altruism is an emergent characteristic that cannot be reduced to any one particular evolutionary explanation. The evolutionary processes at work in the formation of human nature are not necessarily in conflict with the possibility of altruism; rather, aspects of human nature are uniquely directed toward the care and concern of others. The relationship between altruism, human nature, and evolution can be reimagined by adopting an emergent view of the hierarchy of science and a theological worldview that emphasizes self‐renunciation. The investigation of altruism necessitates an approach that analyzes several aspects of altruistic behavior at different levels in the hierarchy of sciences. This research includes the study of evolutionary adaptations, neurological systems, cognitive functions, behavioral traits, and cultural influences. No one level is able to offer a full explanation, but each piece adds a unique dimension to a much larger puzzle.     

EXAMINING THE BODHISATTVA'S BRAIN

Owen Flanagan's The Bodhisattva's Brain aims to introduce secular‐minded thinkers to Buddhist thought and motivate its acceptance by analytic philosophers. I argue that Flanagan provides a compelling caution against the hasty generalizations of recent “science of happiness” literature, which correlates happiness with Buddhism on the basis of certain neurological studies. I contend, however, that his positive account of Buddhist ethics is less persuasive. I question the level of engagement with Buddhist philosophical literature and challenge Flanagan's central claim, that a Buddhist version of eudaimonia is a common core conception shared by all Buddhists. I argue that this view is not only a rational reconstruction in need of argumentation but is in tension with competing Buddhist metaphysical theories of self, including the one Flanagan himself endorses.     

On the mathematical representation of phenomena of emergence

This paper is a philosophical enquiry into the role that mathematics play in the articulation of science. It is conducted, in its essentials, in the spirit of Wittgenstein's views on the nature and function of philosophy, which are to lay bare, as it were, the manner in which we do whatever it is that we do, and then to examine the claims that we make for the deed. My conclusions should be easily accessible to those familiar with his thinking on the subject of science.

The case that has inspired the writing of this paper is not that of biology, nor is it the biological theory of evolution; rather, the case I have kept in mind while writing this paper is that of cognitive science, sometimes presented as a “science of mind” by its practitioners. It is primarily a computational theory characterized by two distinct approaches, one internal, the gist of which is that the brain/mind distinction is definitely passé; the other external, based on the view that the mark of human mentation is to be found in the ordinary use of old expressions to convey new meanings, i.e. in the Cartesian test for the existence of other minds, and its simpler computational version, the Turing test. Two intuitions underlie the paper: one, that language is obviously an adaptive characteristic of human organisms: one learns one's own mother's tongue, and feral children cannot conceptualize if first exposed to language after reaching puberty; two, empirical evidence supports the view that the “knowing brain” is different architecturally from the “untutored” one. These intuitions warrant regarding man's cognitive apparatus as an evolutionary system, and the “mind” as an emergent property.     

PRINCIPLES OF BUDDHISM

Abstract. This paper presents Buddhism as a path theory in which the adherent practices mindfulness in order to see the world as-it-is. The world as presented in a human situation is an interdependently originating process to which one can bring meaning but in which meaning is not inherent. The conceptualizing process by which one concretizes reality is the foundation on which human frustrations and disease arise. However, it is by this conceptualizing process that one establishes a cosmological view of the universe. The soteriological consideration in Buddhism is to realize that reality created by the mind is like an illusion, a concretization of an interdependently originating process into a substantive reality. Through this realization one can remove the delusion created by mind and see reality as-it-is.