The Neurodynamic Soul

This book is an analysis and discussion of the soul as a psychophysical process and its role in mental representation, meaning, understanding and agency. Grant Gillett and Walter Glannon combine contemporary neuroscience and philosophy to address fundamental issues about human existence and living and acting in the world.  Based in part on Aristotle's hylomorphism and model of the psyche, their approach is informed by a neuroscientific model of the brain as a dynamic organ in which patterns of neural oscillation and synchronization are shaped by biological, social and cultural factors inside and outside of it.  The authors provide a richer and more robust account of the soul, or mind, than other accounts by framing it in neuroscientific and philosophical terms that do not explain it away but explain it as something that is shaped by how it responds to the natural and social environment in enabling flexible and adaptive behavior.  

"The Neurodynamic Soul is fascinating and thought provoking. An especially compelling theme is how individuals go on to reorganise and persist in the face of neural loss and extreme neural pathology." (Elaine Reese, Fellow of the Royal Society of New Zealand Te Apārangi, Department of Psychology, University of Otago)

“Unlike the popular Platonist take on the soul, the novel synthesis of this book gives an account of the soul in terms of its emerging and changing neuroscientific, interpersonal, discursive, agentive, and virtuous expressions. It embraces non-reductively and with extensive reach the current yield of neurosciences as well as the philosophical work of Aristotle and Wittgenstein. This book is an eye-opener to the epistemological gaps in our current scholarly understanding of what human beings constitutively and dynamically are and become in a value-laden interpersonal world.”  (Werdie van Staden, Professor of Philosophy and Psychiatry, Director of the Centre for Ethics and Philosophy of Health Sciences, Faculty of Health Sciences, University of Pretoria, and Honorary Consultant Psychiatrist, Weskoppies Psychiatric Hospital, South Africa)

 

“Gillett and Glannon’s analysis of the neurodynamic soul reveals some of the limitations of established philosophical conceptions of mind and brain, replete with metaphors that misrepresent human neurocognition and generate metaphysical and logico-mathematical paradoxes. This has prompted their return to Aristotle as a founding voice of non-dualistic psychophysical naturalism.” (Giovanni Stanghellini, University of Florence, Italy)

"A key idea in Wittgenstein’s later philosophy is that making sense of determinately correct and incorrect ways of 'going on' in applying a rule requires us to think of human speakers and thinkers as embodied and essentially embedded in social and cultural practices.In The Neurodynamic Soul Wittgenstein’s idea is put to novel and creative use by Gillet and Glannon in an impressive and wide-ranging attempt to resist currently dominant models of cognitive science via an inclusively naturalist framework for understanding mentality that transcends both dualist and narrowly scientistic accounts of the mind."   (Alex Miller, University of Otago, New Zealand)

"The Neurodynamic Soul is a dark, dazzling leap into the depths of the human mind, guided by two of the most experienced philosophical explorers in the world." (Carl Elliott MD PhD, Professor, Department of Philosophy, University of Minnesota) 

Grant Gillett is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy and Biomedical Ethics at the University of Otago and Professor in Law and Medicine at AUT University.  He is the author of 11 books and is now working in the area of postcolonialism and indigenous, specifically Maori, perspectives on health, law and philosophy.  He received an MBChB in Medicine from the University of Auckland, and an MSc in Psychology and a DPhil in Philosophy from Oxford University.  He was a practicing neurosurgeon at Dunedin Hospital from 1988 to 2010.

Walter Glannon is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Calgary.  He is the author or editor of 13 books.  He received a PhD in Philosophy from Yale University.