Persons have objective, not socially defined, identity conditions. I shall argue that robots do not, unless they have souls. Hence, robots without souls are not persons. And by parallel reasoning, neither are we persons if we do not have souls.

Events are the instantiations of properties in substances at times. A full history of the world must include, as well as physical events, mental events (ones to which the substance involved has privileged access) and mental substances (ones to the existence of which the substance has privileged access), and, among the latter, pure mental substances (ones which do not include a physical substance as an essential part). Humans are pure mental substances. An argument for this is that it seems conceivable that I could exist without my body. An objection to this argument is that ‘I’ refers to my body, and so what seems conceivable is not metaphysically possible. My response to this objection is that ‘I’ is an informative designator and so necessarily we know to what it refers, and it does not refer to my body.

The paper begins with a restatement of Chalmers’s “hard problem of consciousness.” It is suggested that an interactionist approach is one of the possible solutions of this problem. Some fresh arguments against the identity theory and epiphenomenalism as main rivals of interactionism are developed. One of these arguments has among its corollaries a denial of local supervenience, although not of the causal closure principle. As a result of these considerations a version of “local interactionism” (compatible with causal closure) is proposed. It is argued that local interactionism may offer a fruitful path for resolving the “hard problem.”

There is a post-modernist myth that metaphysics has always been an exclusively Western heritage. This article refutes such a view by reviewing the many centuries of debate between Indian mind-body dualists and champions of reductionist physicalism. It also suggests the relevance of the Indian dualistic arguments for contemporary discussions of the mind-body issue.

People have intuitively assumed that many acts of volition are not influenced by unconscious information. However, the available evidence suggests that under suitable conditions, unconscious information can influence behavior and the underlying neural mechanisms. One possibility is that stimuli that are consciously perceived tend to yield strong signals in the brain, and this makes us think that consciousness has the function of sending such strong signals. However, if we could create conditions where the stimuli could produce strong signals but not the conscious experience of perception, perhaps we would find that such stimuli are just as effective in influencing volitional behavior.

The rapid, perplexing increase in the incidence of autism has led to a correlative increase in research on it and on normally developing children as well. In this paper I consider some of this research, not only for what it shows us about human cognitive capacities but also for its suggestive implications regarding the ability of science to teach us about the world.

Both religion and science provide powerful images of human origins and human nature. Often these images are seen as incompatible or irreconcilable, with the religious image generally marginalized vis-à-vis the scientific image. Recent genetic studies into human origins, especially in terms of common cellular features like the mitochondrion from females and the Y-chromosome from males, provide evidence for common ancestors called mitochondrial Eve and Y-chromosomal Adam. The aim of this paper is to expound upon the Judeo-Christian and western scientific images of humanity with respect to human origins and human nature, especially in terms of possible reconciliation of the two images.

The idea of the genetic unity of all mankind is an integral part of Christian teaching. The purpose of this brief survey is to illustrate its role within the Greek patristic tradition, and then to point to a few examples from modern science which lend support to this ancient idea.

One of the most intriguing features of Eastern Orthodoxy is its understanding of the mind and the heart. Orthodox authors such as St. Gregory Palamas speak of “drawing the mind into the heart” through prayer. What does this mean, and what does it indicate about the eastern Christian understanding of the human person? This essay attempts to answer such questions through a comparative study of the eastern and western views of the mind and the heart, beginning with their common origin in the Bible and continuing through their later divergence.

Some biblical texts suggest that man consists of two parts—body and soul—whereas others seem to indicate instead three parts—body, soul, and spirit. This paper examines how the Church Fathers dealt with this apparent contradiction. It finds that although they generally favor the body-soul dichotomy, they did not see it as contradicting a trichotomous view, for “spirit” can be interpreted in a number of ways: as another term for the soul, or as the lowest imaginative part of the soul, or as its highest rational part, or as the grace of the Holy Spirit. Different approaches can be found in different patristic authors depending on their theological interests and the biblical passages at issue.

Although foreign—and perhaps shocking—to many in the west, the doctrine of theosis is central to the theology and practice of Eastern Orthodoxy. On the Orthodox view, the goal of human existence and the purpose of creation is that God unite himself to creation with humanity at the focal point. In this paper, I explore an account of human nature inspired by a robustly metaphysical reading of the Orthodox conception of theosis.

Russian Orthodoxy during the twentieth century presented a rich and varied body of thought about the nature of humanity and the human condition. This article surveys the major thinkers within this tradition, beginning with its background in the Slavophile movement and culminating in the work of more recent Orthodox thinkers such as Sergei Bulgakov, Georges Florovsky, Vladimir Lossky, and Alexander Schmemann.

The Argument from Fine-Tuning, a relatively new version of the Design Argument, has given rise to an objection, based on what is known as the An­thropic Principle. It is alleged that the argument is fallacious in that it involves an observation selection effect—that given the existence of intelligent living observers, the observation that the universe is fine-tuned for the existence of intelligent life is not surprising. Many find this objection puzzling, or at least easily refutable. My main contribution to the discussion is to offer an analysis of what is wrong (and what is right) in the objection.

I argue that, contrary to the opinion of Wes Morriston, William Rowe, and others, a supremely perfect God, if one should exist, would be the freest of all beings and would represent the clearest example of what it means to act freely. I suggest further that, if we regard human freedom as a reflection of God’s ideal freedom, we can avoid some of the pitfalls in both the standard libertarian and the standard compatibilist accounts of freewill.

The traditional view of heaven holds that the redeemed in heaven both have free will and are no longer capable of sinning. A number of philosophers have argued that the traditional view is problematic. How can someone be free and yet incapable of sinning? If the redeemed are kept from sinning, their wills must be reined in. And if their wills are reined in, it doesn’t seem right to say that they are free. Following James Sennett, we call this objection to the traditional view of heaven ‘the Problem of Heavenly Freedom’. In this paper, we discuss and criticize four attempts to respond to the Problem of Heavenly Freedom. We then offer our own response to this problem which both preserves the traditional view of heaven and avoids the objections which beset the other attempts.

Based on views she draws from Anselm, Katherin Rogers mounts an extend­ed attack on my account of God’s relationship to human sin. Here I argue first that if Anselm’s view of the relationship in question is different from my own, then Rogers fails to locate any reason for thinking his account is correct. I argue further that Rogers fails to demonstrate her claim that my account of God’s relation to sin makes him a deceiver, that her criticisms of my theodicy of sin are misguided, and that she is mistaken in claiming a world in which God has full sovereignty over human willing is less safe for the repentant than I hold it to be.

Consider the following three-step dialectics. (1) Even if God (consistently) commanded torture of the innocent, it would still be wrong. Therefore Divine Command Metaethics (DCM) is false. (2) No: for it is impossible for God to command torture of the innocent. (3) Even if it is impossible, there is a non-trivially true per impossibile counterfactual that even if God (consistently) com­manded torture of the innocent, it would still be wrong, and this counterfac­tual is incompatible with DCM. I shall argue that the last step of this dialectics is flawed because it would rule out every substantive metaethical theory.

Over the past decade there has been a burgeoning of work in philosophy of religion that has drawn upon and been oriented by “continental” sources in philosophy—associated with figures such as Martin Heidegger, Jacques Derrida, Emmanuel Levinas, Jean-Luc Marion, Gilles Deleuze, and others. This is a significant development and one that should be welcomed by the community of Christian philosophers. However, in this dialogue piece I take stock of the field of “continental philosophy of religion” and suggest that the field is developing some un-healthy patterns and habits. The burden of the paper is to suggest a prescription for the future health of this important field by articulating six key practices that should characterize further scholarship in continental philosophy of religion.