Böcker av Walter Glannon

This book is an analysis and discussion of the soul as a psychophysical process and its role in mental representation, meaning, understanding and agency. Grant Gillett and Walter Glannon combine contemporary neuroscience and philosophy to address fundamental issues about human existence and living and acting in the world. Based in part on Aristotle's hylomorphism and model of the psyche, their approach is informed by a neuroscientific model of the brain as a dynamic organ in which patterns of neural oscillation and synchronization are shaped by biological, social and cultural factors inside and outside of it. The authors provide a richer and more robust account of the soul, or mind, than other accounts by framing it in neuroscientific and philosophical terms that do not explain it away but explain it as something that is shaped by how it responds to the natural and social environment in enabling flexible and adaptive behavior.

This Element considers the potential benefit and harm from vaccines against addiction and viruses, immunotherapy for cancer, neuro-immunomodulating drugs to prevent or treat neurodevelopmental and neurodegenerative diseases, and gene editing of immunity to enable xenotransplantation and prevent infectious disease.

This book aims to move philosophers, bioethicists, and readers in general to reflect on the extent to which genes determine our identities as persons, the quality of our lives, our moral obligations to future generations of people and whether we are healthy or diseased.

The book is a sustained philosophical reflection on some of the metaphysical and moral issues presented by genetics and different forms of genetic intervention.