The concept of person and the naturalistic challenge

The concept of person is of central importance in life. Different accounts of the human person lead to different attitudes in politics, jurisprudence, ethics and worldviews. Neurobiological progress and the newest discoveries of the functions of the human brain support naturalistic accounts of the human person. They are a challenge to the classical Christian understanding of the human person. The project`s aim is to clarify the main accounts of the concept of person in their philosophical presuppositions. These are linked to different approaches to the problems of identity, agency, and causality. The innovation of the project concerns first of all the present debate in ontology, that field of philosophy searching for the last categories of reality. In our project we plead for an ontology that takes into account the presuppositions of practical rationality as well, i.e. the perspective of the first person and indexicality. On the basis of a wider ontology we aim at an answer to the challenge of the naturalistic neurophilosophy. For this purpose we will consider the latest debate about the human self within philosophy of mind and trace the devolvement of the relevant scholastic concepts of materia, habitus and soul in modern times. It is part of the task of the project to clarify this conceptual development and its impact on the ongoing debate. Innovative should be our attempt to actualise the main theses on the human self and the soul of scholastic philosophy in the context and in the terminology of analytic philosophy. We thus hope to bridge the gap to philosophers working on the concept of person in the hermeneutic and phenomenological tradition. By analysing the concept of person in its diverging accounts and their presuppositions we want to contribute to the interdisciplinary and philosophical dialog about the human person and her nature.

The concept of person is of central importance in life. Different accounts of the human person lead to different attitudes in politics, jurisprudence, ethics and worldviews. Neurobiological progress and the newest discoveries of the functions of the human brain support naturalistic accounts of the human person. They are a challenge to the classical Christian understanding of the human person. The project`s aim is to clarify the main accounts of the concept of person in their philosophical presuppositions. These are linked to different approaches to the problems of identity, agency, and causality. The innovation of the project concerns first of all the present debate in ontology, that field of philosophy searching for the last categories of reality. In our project we plead for an ontology that takes into account the presuppositions of practical rationality as well, i.e. the perspective of the first person and indexicality. On the basis of a wider ontology we aim at an answer to the challenge of the naturalistic neurophilosophy. For this purpose we will consider the latest debate about the human self within philosophy of mind and trace the devolvement of the relevant scholastic concepts of materia, habitus and soul in modern times. It is part of the task of the project to clarify this conceptual development and its impact on the ongoing debate. Innovative should be our attempt to actualise the main theses on the human self and the soul of scholastic philosophy in the context and in the terminology of analytic philosophy. We thus hope to bridge the gap to philosophers working on the concept of person in the hermeneutic and phenomenological tradition. By analysing the concept of person in its diverging accounts and their presuppositions we want to contribute to the interdisciplinary and philosophical dialog about the human person and her nature.