Jonathan Loose

Jonathan Loose is a lecturer at Heythrop College, University of London, contributing to programmes in Philosophy, Religion and Ethics as well as Psychology/Philosophy, and Psychology/Theology. He earned a first class BSc in cognitive science and then a PhD in psychology from University of Exeter, UK, publishing computational and experimental work in psychology. His subsequent teaching at the Universities of Exeter and London has focused on historical and philosophical issues. Recently Jon’s work has focused an interdisciplinary exploration of the nature of the human person. Jon has also studied theology at the London School of Theology and University of Oxford, and served for a number of years as pastor of an independent evangelical church in Suffolk, UK.

2011 Forum Sessions

Standard Workshops

Do We Need to Save the Soul? The Human Person in Philosophical and Biblical Perspective

Does a person consist of both a material body and an immaterial soul? Most Christian thinkers down the ages have believed as much, and have thus embraced a dualistic view of the person. However, the twentieth century witnessed the widespread rejection of dualism in psychology and philosophy in favour of attempts at explanation in entirely physical terms. More recent developments in neuroscience have only enhanced the unpopularity of dualism in some quarters, and the idea that a person is an entirely physical thing has increasing popular currency. However, if “the highest of human intellectual and cultural achievements can ... be counted as the mere outworking of the laws of physics, this is utterly devastating to our ordinary understanding of ourselves, and of course to theological accounts, as well…” (Murphy, 1998). This workshop aims to help Christians develop an adequate understanding of the nature of the human person by presenting a number of alternatives to reductive physicalism in the light of the current debate about the place of the soul in evangelical Christian anthropology. Whilst all Christian scholars reject reductionism, some nevertheless accept physicalism and deny the existence of the soul. In contrast, contemporary emergent and integrative dualists affirm the existence of the soul, but emphasise the profound importance of embodiment and the functional unity of soul and brain. It is argued that a satisfactory account will be minimally dualistic in nature.

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