What defines a person?

IF 3.6 3区 哲学 0 RELIGION
A. Newberg
{"title":"What defines a person?","authors":"A. Newberg","doi":"10.1080/2153599X.2022.2050797","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"McNamara’s (2021) book, Religion, Neuroscience, and the Self: A New Personalism, is a unique read in that it blends a variety of important elements that include theology, psychology, and neuroscience, along with a broader perspective on the future of humanity. This latter point is particularly true in the context of the interaction between human beings and machines. Part of the goal of McNamara‘s book is to alert us to the possibility of losing our personhood to various machines or machine interactions. For this problem, he argues that we need to develop a new type of personalism that will protect the dignity and well-being of all people. He states that part of the necessity of such a personalism is that if we are considered to be created in the image of God, the imago Dei, many of the characteristics that have been argued to be unique to humans “cannot withstand the challenge of the rise of intelligent machines.” He goes on to state that machines already exhibit many of the characteristics previously proposed to reflect the imago Dei such as rationality, creativity, emotions, mind-reading abilities, calculating abilities, and even consciousness itself. Of course, it is currently uncertain as to whether machines will be able to achieve consciousness in the same manner as experienced in human beings. But suffice it to say that, given the rapid advances in computer sciences and artificial intelligence, it is important to carefully consider how to define a person. His argument begins with philosophical and theological perspectives of the person. This of course, is essential since we need a starting point to understand what it means to be a person and how we understand our relationship with others, the world at large, and God. He references a number of theologians and philosophers such as Borden Parker Bowne, Edgar Brightman, and Bernard Lonergan, to name a few. He also indicates the need for an eschatological personalism that is based on ultimate things such as purpose or the “final destiny of the individual, humankind, history and the cosmos.” He argues that the ultimate end of any individual cannot be fully known, but develops as part of a process via interacting with God. For McNamara, this interaction is derived in large part from a number of brain functions that he elaborates throughout the book. The notion of a person, McNamara points out, can be based on a variety of approaches in terms of how we define ourselves as individuals, how a sense of agency plays a role in who we are, and how we develop a sense of meaning and purpose. The unity of the person comes from our sense of agency that utilizes memory to create an entire temporal order of the person; quoting Browne, “Each new experience leaves the soul other than it was; but, as it advances from stage to stage it is able to gather up its past and carry it with it, so that at any point, it possesses all that it had been. It is this fact only which constitutes the permanence and identity of the self” (1898). Thus, the agentic mind is able to “assemble” the self which is based on our experiences, emotions, cognitions, and memories. In my own work, we have discussed the basis of beliefs as depending on these very factors. And these beliefs are what help us construct our sense of self (Newberg & Waldman, 2006). These processes can also be attributable to various brain functions, which McNamara also realizes. Thus, while the above mentioned philosophical and theological perspectives are important, McNamara turns toward an understanding of the person from a neuroscientific perspective. This perspective explores how the human brain contributes to our sense of personhood. Neuroscience also helps us to understand the variety of ways in which we understand our own self through the process of agency/free will, emotional reactions, memory, and experience. Thus, brain structures such as the frontal lobes that contribute agency, the limbic system that supports emotions,","PeriodicalId":45959,"journal":{"name":"Religion Brain & Behavior","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":3.6000,"publicationDate":"2022-05-31","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Religion Brain & Behavior","FirstCategoryId":"1085","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1080/2153599X.2022.2050797","RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"哲学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"0","JCRName":"RELIGION","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0

Abstract

McNamara’s (2021) book, Religion, Neuroscience, and the Self: A New Personalism, is a unique read in that it blends a variety of important elements that include theology, psychology, and neuroscience, along with a broader perspective on the future of humanity. This latter point is particularly true in the context of the interaction between human beings and machines. Part of the goal of McNamara‘s book is to alert us to the possibility of losing our personhood to various machines or machine interactions. For this problem, he argues that we need to develop a new type of personalism that will protect the dignity and well-being of all people. He states that part of the necessity of such a personalism is that if we are considered to be created in the image of God, the imago Dei, many of the characteristics that have been argued to be unique to humans “cannot withstand the challenge of the rise of intelligent machines.” He goes on to state that machines already exhibit many of the characteristics previously proposed to reflect the imago Dei such as rationality, creativity, emotions, mind-reading abilities, calculating abilities, and even consciousness itself. Of course, it is currently uncertain as to whether machines will be able to achieve consciousness in the same manner as experienced in human beings. But suffice it to say that, given the rapid advances in computer sciences and artificial intelligence, it is important to carefully consider how to define a person. His argument begins with philosophical and theological perspectives of the person. This of course, is essential since we need a starting point to understand what it means to be a person and how we understand our relationship with others, the world at large, and God. He references a number of theologians and philosophers such as Borden Parker Bowne, Edgar Brightman, and Bernard Lonergan, to name a few. He also indicates the need for an eschatological personalism that is based on ultimate things such as purpose or the “final destiny of the individual, humankind, history and the cosmos.” He argues that the ultimate end of any individual cannot be fully known, but develops as part of a process via interacting with God. For McNamara, this interaction is derived in large part from a number of brain functions that he elaborates throughout the book. The notion of a person, McNamara points out, can be based on a variety of approaches in terms of how we define ourselves as individuals, how a sense of agency plays a role in who we are, and how we develop a sense of meaning and purpose. The unity of the person comes from our sense of agency that utilizes memory to create an entire temporal order of the person; quoting Browne, “Each new experience leaves the soul other than it was; but, as it advances from stage to stage it is able to gather up its past and carry it with it, so that at any point, it possesses all that it had been. It is this fact only which constitutes the permanence and identity of the self” (1898). Thus, the agentic mind is able to “assemble” the self which is based on our experiences, emotions, cognitions, and memories. In my own work, we have discussed the basis of beliefs as depending on these very factors. And these beliefs are what help us construct our sense of self (Newberg & Waldman, 2006). These processes can also be attributable to various brain functions, which McNamara also realizes. Thus, while the above mentioned philosophical and theological perspectives are important, McNamara turns toward an understanding of the person from a neuroscientific perspective. This perspective explores how the human brain contributes to our sense of personhood. Neuroscience also helps us to understand the variety of ways in which we understand our own self through the process of agency/free will, emotional reactions, memory, and experience. Thus, brain structures such as the frontal lobes that contribute agency, the limbic system that supports emotions,
是什么定义了一个人?
麦克纳马拉(2021)的书《宗教、神经科学和自我:一种新的人格主义》是一本独特的读物,它融合了各种重要的元素,包括神学、心理学和神经科学,以及对人类未来的更广阔的视角。后一点在人与机器交互的背景下尤其如此。麦克纳马拉这本书的部分目的是提醒我们,我们的人格可能会被各种各样的机器或机器交互所失去。对于这个问题,他认为我们需要发展一种新型的人格,以保护所有人的尊严和福祉。他指出,这种人格论的部分必要性在于,如果我们被认为是按照上帝的形象创造的,那么许多被认为是人类独有的特征“无法承受智能机器崛起的挑战”。他接着说,机器已经表现出许多先前提出的反映上帝形象的特征,比如理性、创造力、情感、读心术、计算能力,甚至意识本身。当然,目前还不确定机器是否能够像人类一样获得意识。但我只想说,鉴于计算机科学和人工智能的快速发展,仔细考虑如何定义一个人是很重要的。他的论证从哲学和神学的角度出发。当然,这是必不可少的,因为我们需要一个起点来理解作为一个人意味着什么,以及我们如何理解我们与他人、整个世界和上帝的关系。他引用了许多神学家和哲学家,如博登·帕克·鲍恩、埃德加·布莱曼和伯纳德·洛纳根等。他还指出需要一种末世论的人格主义,这种人格主义建立在终极事物的基础上,比如目的或“个人、人类、历史和宇宙的最终命运”。他认为,任何个体的最终目的都不可能完全知道,而是通过与上帝的互动作为过程的一部分而发展起来的。对于麦克纳马拉来说,这种互动在很大程度上源于他在书中详细阐述的一些大脑功能。麦克纳马拉指出,一个人的概念可以基于多种方法,包括我们如何将自己定义为个体,代理感如何在我们是谁的过程中发挥作用,以及我们如何形成意义和目的感。这个人的统一性来自于我们的能动性,它利用记忆来创造这个人的整个时间秩序;引用布朗的话:“每一次新的经历都会让灵魂焕然一新;但是,随着它从一个阶段发展到另一个阶段,它能够收集它的过去并随身携带,因此在任何时候,它都拥有它曾经拥有的一切。正是这一事实构成了自我的恒久性和同一性”(1898)。因此,代理心灵能够“组装”基于我们的经验、情感、认知和记忆的自我。在我自己的工作中,我们讨论了信仰的基础取决于这些因素。而这些信念正是帮助我们构建自我意识的东西(Newberg & Waldman, 2006)。这些过程也可以归因于各种大脑功能,麦克纳马拉也意识到了这一点。因此,虽然上面提到的哲学和神学观点很重要,但麦克纳马拉转向从神经科学的角度来理解人。这一观点探讨了人类大脑如何影响我们的人格意识。神经科学还帮助我们理解我们通过代理/自由意志、情绪反应、记忆和经验的过程来理解自我的各种方式。因此,大脑结构,如贡献能动性的额叶,支持情绪的边缘系统,
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
求助全文
约1分钟内获得全文 求助全文
来源期刊
CiteScore
3.00
自引率
13.60%
发文量
93
×
引用
GB/T 7714-2015
复制
MLA
复制
APA
复制
导出至
BibTeX EndNote RefMan NoteFirst NoteExpress
×
提示
您的信息不完整,为了账户安全,请先补充。
现在去补充
×
提示
您因"违规操作"
具体请查看互助需知
我知道了
×
提示
确定
请完成安全验证×
copy
已复制链接
快去分享给好友吧!
我知道了
右上角分享
点击右上角分享
0
联系我们:info@booksci.cn Book学术提供免费学术资源搜索服务,方便国内外学者检索中英文文献。致力于提供最便捷和优质的服务体验。 Copyright © 2023 布克学术 All rights reserved.
京ICP备2023020795号-1
ghs 京公网安备 11010802042870号
Book学术文献互助
Book学术文献互助群
群 号:481959085
Book学术官方微信