- Windesheim University of Applied Sciences, Theology, Department Memberadd
- Thomism, Free Will and Moral Responsibility, Neuropsychology, Virtue Ethics, Theological Ethics, Science and Theology, and 8 morePsychology, Neurophilosophy, Cognitive Sscience, Evolutionary Theology, Philosophy of Science, Catholic Moral Theology, Comparative Ethics, Religious Education, Philosophy of Life, and Zingevingedit
The European Society for the Study of Science and Theology (ESSSAT) is pleased to announce that the ESSSAT Research Prize 2022 has been awarded to Dr Mateusz Jarmuzewski, for his PhD thesis "Neurobiology and the free Will. Implications... more
The European Society for the Study of Science and Theology (ESSSAT) is pleased to announce that the ESSSAT Research Prize 2022 has been awarded to Dr Mateusz Jarmuzewski, for his PhD thesis "Neurobiology and the free Will. Implications for catholic theological ethics", that earned him in 2021 the doctorate at the Catholic University of Leuven (Belgium).
The ESSSAT Student Prize 2022 has been awarded to Dr Tim Middleton, PhD student in the Faculty of Theology and Religion at the University of Oxford and Research Assistant at the Laudato Si’ Research Institute, Campion Hall, Oxford, for his essay “Christology and the Temporal Trauma of the Anthropocene”
The ESSSAT Student Prize 2022 has been awarded to Dr Tim Middleton, PhD student in the Faculty of Theology and Religion at the University of Oxford and Research Assistant at the Laudato Si’ Research Institute, Campion Hall, Oxford, for his essay “Christology and the Temporal Trauma of the Anthropocene”
Research Interests:
The notion of free will, which supports moral responsibility in various accounts of Catholic moral theology, is in a particular way situated at the intersection of theological and non-theological disciplines. Early studies on volition... more
The notion of free will, which supports moral responsibility in various accounts of
Catholic moral theology, is in a particular way situated at the intersection of theological
and non-theological disciplines. Early studies on volition in cognitive neuroscience, inspired by Libet’s experiment (1983), suggested that free will is an illusion because our conscious intentions do not cause corresponding actions: these are initiated beforehand by unconscious brain processes. Although this seems to contradict basic anthropological and ethical assumptions, a closer look at this thesis renders it immature. At the same time, new developments in the multidisciplinary science of human volition draw attention to several aspects of freedom and agency that may be central to the way people take action and control their lives. The implications of this research may provoke some reformulations on the side of theological ethics. They may also point to certain schools and traditions, such as Christian virtue ethics, as theologically preferable.
Catholic moral theology, is in a particular way situated at the intersection of theological
and non-theological disciplines. Early studies on volition in cognitive neuroscience, inspired by Libet’s experiment (1983), suggested that free will is an illusion because our conscious intentions do not cause corresponding actions: these are initiated beforehand by unconscious brain processes. Although this seems to contradict basic anthropological and ethical assumptions, a closer look at this thesis renders it immature. At the same time, new developments in the multidisciplinary science of human volition draw attention to several aspects of freedom and agency that may be central to the way people take action and control their lives. The implications of this research may provoke some reformulations on the side of theological ethics. They may also point to certain schools and traditions, such as Christian virtue ethics, as theologically preferable.
Research Interests:
Neurobiology and the Free Will: Implications for Catholic Theological Ethics This dissertation addresses the notion of free will in Catholic theological ethics and puts it in the context of current knowledge about human neurobiology.... more
Neurobiology and the Free Will: Implications for Catholic Theological Ethics
This dissertation addresses the notion of free will in Catholic theological ethics and puts it in the context of current knowledge about human neurobiology. While the notion remains central to Christian ethics – supporting personal responsibility and accountability – it is presently being challenged by contemporary cognitive neuroscience, psychology and evolutionary biology, and becomes largely reappropriated by philosophy of mind and philosophy of science.
Assessing the most burning points of these critiques, the present work is a comparative study of the philosophical/theological positions and the rapidly evolving scientific paradigms that surround voluntary moral agency, critically bringing them into conversation with theological ethics. The goal is to develop a balanced understanding of natural human freedom in the context of moral agency and moral responsibility. We strive after the notion of free will that on one hand can be supported by natural sciences, and on the other hand remains rooted in Catholic moral tradition and is reconcilable with Christian personalist anthropology.
One point of departure for these considerations is the widely cited experiment by Benjamin Libet (1983), who used EEG recordings to measure the timing of the conscious intention to act and its preceding brain potentials. The neuroscientific and philosophical interpretations of this study provoked an increased interest in free will during the past few decades, as the results suggest that our brains make decisions unconsciously, before we become aware of it. This has led thinkers such as Daniel Wegner or Derk Pereboom to conclude that free will is an illusion, and supported determinist and even fatalist views of the human person. While scepticism towards free will is as old as human reflection, it is now based not only on philosophical speculations, but on concrete empirical results.
This work moves beyond the Libet-style argumentation by consulting new paradigms in cognitive neuroscience of volition, neurophilosophy and philosophy of science, and by including results from the rapidly developing fields of evolutionary and systems biology. The aspects of moral agency covered in that way include: long-term and indirect freedom of action, context-sensitive and distributed understanding of volitional control, as well as the moral importance of unconscious and non-rational layers of acting which are a direct continuation of our evolutionary past.
The results point to virtue theory and Christian virtue ethics as the most suitable framework for accommodating the emerging notion of free will in fundamental moral theology. Even if a person’s actions now are largely pre-determined, one not only retains some indirect control at the moment of choice, but can effectively exercise long-term free will by developing moral dispositions of character. Such freedom is supported by natural autonomy of living organisms, and can be related to Aristotelian, Thomistic and Confucian virtue theories, in which long-term influence over one’s character remains central. Based on this, one can argue for a distributed, yet in fact broader and ethically real notion of moral responsibility, pointing to multiple causes of human moral acts, among which personal voluntary agency is to be carefully situated.
This dissertation addresses the notion of free will in Catholic theological ethics and puts it in the context of current knowledge about human neurobiology. While the notion remains central to Christian ethics – supporting personal responsibility and accountability – it is presently being challenged by contemporary cognitive neuroscience, psychology and evolutionary biology, and becomes largely reappropriated by philosophy of mind and philosophy of science.
Assessing the most burning points of these critiques, the present work is a comparative study of the philosophical/theological positions and the rapidly evolving scientific paradigms that surround voluntary moral agency, critically bringing them into conversation with theological ethics. The goal is to develop a balanced understanding of natural human freedom in the context of moral agency and moral responsibility. We strive after the notion of free will that on one hand can be supported by natural sciences, and on the other hand remains rooted in Catholic moral tradition and is reconcilable with Christian personalist anthropology.
One point of departure for these considerations is the widely cited experiment by Benjamin Libet (1983), who used EEG recordings to measure the timing of the conscious intention to act and its preceding brain potentials. The neuroscientific and philosophical interpretations of this study provoked an increased interest in free will during the past few decades, as the results suggest that our brains make decisions unconsciously, before we become aware of it. This has led thinkers such as Daniel Wegner or Derk Pereboom to conclude that free will is an illusion, and supported determinist and even fatalist views of the human person. While scepticism towards free will is as old as human reflection, it is now based not only on philosophical speculations, but on concrete empirical results.
This work moves beyond the Libet-style argumentation by consulting new paradigms in cognitive neuroscience of volition, neurophilosophy and philosophy of science, and by including results from the rapidly developing fields of evolutionary and systems biology. The aspects of moral agency covered in that way include: long-term and indirect freedom of action, context-sensitive and distributed understanding of volitional control, as well as the moral importance of unconscious and non-rational layers of acting which are a direct continuation of our evolutionary past.
The results point to virtue theory and Christian virtue ethics as the most suitable framework for accommodating the emerging notion of free will in fundamental moral theology. Even if a person’s actions now are largely pre-determined, one not only retains some indirect control at the moment of choice, but can effectively exercise long-term free will by developing moral dispositions of character. Such freedom is supported by natural autonomy of living organisms, and can be related to Aristotelian, Thomistic and Confucian virtue theories, in which long-term influence over one’s character remains central. Based on this, one can argue for a distributed, yet in fact broader and ethically real notion of moral responsibility, pointing to multiple causes of human moral acts, among which personal voluntary agency is to be carefully situated.