The Nour Foundation

Technology, Neuroscience & the Nature of Being:
Considerations of Meaning, Morality & Transcendence (Part III)
The Nour Foundation
Blackfriars Hall, Oxford University
Georgetown University Symposium Series

The aim of this three-part symposium series is to provide a forum for the launch of high-level interdisciplinary discussions intended to address and overcome the increasing isolation and fragmentation of the disciplines devoted to the science and advancement of the human person. The conferences, which will take place at Georgetown, Oxford University, and the United Nations in New York, will seek to incorporate recent advances in neuroscience into a more comprehensive paradigm that is consistent with what is known of the human condition from a philosophical, psychological, and theological perspective. In so doing, they will also examine the phenomenological and spiritual dimensions of human experience that have often been absent from or subordinated within contemporary technologically-oriented approaches to models of the human person and the psychology of the self. The discussions will strive to reconcile the neuroscientific perspectives of the human person with the naturalistic values of ethical and moral action by examining the possibilities for establishing a system of common morality as a grounding human ecology that will enable multidisciplinary investigations into the full spectrum of human experience.

Part III: Toward a Common Morality

Discoveries in neuroscience and in particular neurotechnology have provided a unique window through which we can glance into the intricate workings of the human brain. Technologies such as brain scanning using positron emission tomography and functional magnetic resonance imaging have enabled us to now monitor and understand the detailed geographical representation of human emotions, feelings, and thoughts within the brain. Yet, as these technologies have evolved, they have also highlighted the fundamental limitations that currently exist in our understanding of the human mind; namely, what is the nature of the relationship between the brain and the mind? What is it that makes us human and provides us with the qualities that distinguish us from all other beings? And how do the myriad of electrical and chemical processes we know of within the brain lead to an individual with unique feelings, thoughts, and emotions?

In this third and final conference, the participants will discuss the phenomenological and spiritual characteristics of human subjective experience, the neurophysiological and psychological basis of these domains, as well as the roles they play in the process of practical reasoning and moral decision making. The emphasis will be upon elucidating how and why an understanding of the integrative neuroscience of the brain-mind not only compels but sustains an appreciation for reverence and virtue—in the sense of cognitive intention and expressed actions—while providing a natural foundation for the emergence of a system of common morality. In addressing the empirical record for the moral and spiritual dimension of human experience, participants will discuss the viability of neurocentric justification for reverence and virtue, neuro-phenomenological explanations for intellectual and moral virtues, and the concept of morality and ethics as a core human ecology.

Featured Speakers

Leili Anvar Max Bennett

William Casebeer Martha Farah

Kevin Fitzgerald Bernard Gert

James Giordano Farhad Mechkat

Andrew Newberg Donald Pfaff

Roger Scruton

Time:   9:30 a.m.
Date:   September 11, 2009
Location: United Nations
              Conference Room 3
              New York, New York

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