Adam Goetz

10-25-2020

Dr. Phillipson, PHI 350

Evaluative Essay 2

The topic of what characterizes a person has been long debated. Some that believe a

person is defined as one who can understand and express their own being and identity. This,

however, would exclude those who cannot put words together or that lack intrapersonal intellect,

such as those with mental disorders or disabilities, thusly robbing them of legal rights and

representation from their respective countries. Further, who is to say that those with physical

disabilities are not to be counted as people? They possess the same genetic makeup and

according organ systems, such as the nervous, cardiovascular, digestive, among others, but other

organisms possess similar systems that produce the same effect: the question surfaces again:

what makes humans persons and different from other animals? This paper will explore the

neuroscientific aspect of what grants personhood as discussed by Malcolm Jeeves, but will

propose that personhood is not only defined by the brain and materiality of the nervous system.

Increases of neuroscientific research in the recent decades have led the neuroscience and

psychology communities to characterize personhood by brain regions and activities

corresponding to typical behaviors. Neuropsychology has tried to create a “distinction between

diseases of ‘brain’ and ‘mind’ between ‘neurological’ problems and ‘psychological’ problems or

‘psychiatric’… reflects a basic ignorance of the relation between brain and mind”1, leaving a
1
Malcolm Jeeves, “Brain, Mind, and Behavior (1998)” in Whatever Happened to the Soul?, ed. Warren S. Brown,
Nancey Murphy and H. Newton Malony (Minneapolis: Augsburg Fortress, 1998), 74.
topical mist in the air about whether or not a top-down relationship exists between behaviors

affecting brain chemistry, a bottom-up relationship between brain chemistry or structural activity

correlating to elicited behaviors, or whether or not these actually are related to personhood.

Consider Phineas Gage who had a railroad spike sent through his frontal lobe, “he was still

conscious and made a remarkable recovery… but afterwards his personality had clearly

undergone a dramatic change.”2 Phineas’ interests and character changed drastically as result of

the damage caused to systems that are associated with these, but it didn’t change his identity.

Further, just because an area’s activity associates with a certain behavior does not mean that an

entire behavior will be completely changed when damaged. As has been found “psychological

functions are not discreetly localized in particular cerebral areas… behavioral outcome of

cortical lesions depends more on the amount of the brain removed.”3 This establishes that

personhood is not necessarily linked to one are of the brain or its activity, but at least possessing

a brain to function through.

This establishment leads to the debate of what grants human’s personhood over animals,

since both possess brains. Many neurobiologists propose the idea that the vast amount of brain

tissue has granted humans elevated intelligence considering “the human brain is unique in…

overall size in relation to body weight”4, since a human-sized ape would have a brain more than

three times smaller than humans. However, possessing more brain mass won’t necessarily

correlate to possessing more intelligence, albeit an evolutionary trend. In the case of

macrocephalic individuals, they are seldom more intelligent than humans with typical brain size,

although one could argue the rare case of Kim Peek who possessed incredible recall. Conversely,

just because one possesses incredible recall does not entail that they are more intelligent or any
2
Ibid, 77
3
Ibid, 78
4
Ibid, 85
more of a person, for Kim Peek possessed an IQ of less than ninety. Personhood is therefore

more than having a particular amount of nervous tissue.

Pushing brain size aside, particular features of the human brain that have been proposed

to qualify personhood. In human brains, there are “cerebral asymmetries and the existence of

speech areas”5 that are different than animals. These differences are as close as it gets for a

materialist to argue that human’s brain structures are what define their personhood, though

language is not isolated to a particular area or not entirely at stake for personhood as mentioned.

It seems that it is not merely the speech areas in humans that defines personhood, but rather the

capacity for language itself: humans can govern themselves, form rules and regulations, pass on

cultural heritage through myths and fables, all of which forms the sociocultural aspect of

personhood. This raises the question of what part of language differentiates humans from

animals, since animals can also communicate via subtle cues or actions. It would seem that the

“aspect of language that enables us to handle not just symbols- chimps and apes can do that- but

to represent words to ourselves, to manipulate internal symbols”6 can register personhood. This

shows humans are able to draw conclusions and make abstractions about the ideas and symbols

they encounter instead of the superficiality of considering the associations within the context of

the encounter. This results in reflection and language as elements of personhood.

Moving beyond the neuropsychological aspect and addressing the neuroscientific view of

the person head-on, a person is more than their corporeal matter. A reductionist or materialist

would view a person as “nothing but a pack of neurones… no more than the behavior of a vast

assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules”7, which defeats the identity and

5
Ibid, 85
6
Ibid, 85
7
Ibid, 87
individuality of the person by deducing consciousness down to active corticothalamic

connections. Considering the fact that a clump of neurons, grown and strengthened or potentiated

together, cannot possess any motivating force to coordinate activities or become an independent

consciousness without at least the aid of external stimuli, there is no way to create life with

consciousness. This shows an inadequacy of a sheer materialistic or reductionist view.

The best neuroscientific view that most accurately depicts the composition of personhood

is a nonreductive physicalist view. This holds “Consciousness… to be a dynamic emergent

property of brain activity, neither identical with nor reducible to, the neural events of which it is

mainly composed.”8 This ultimately elevates to the level of the spiritual unity of the human

person as held in Christian Scripture, raising the intriguing point that aberrant brain activity or

damage has never caused one’s religiosity or conversion experience, which has been proposed as

the reason for Saint Paul’s his beliefs and preaching. This spiritual aspect of people is consistent

with them no matter what damage they have done to their brain, leaving mystery about free will

and maintaining belief religious beliefs. Personhood is therefore more than neural circuits as

there is a spiritual aspect that steps outside of the realm of materiality. This is in accord to most

views of personhood considering most of the world possesses a certain faith or can at least

conceive of a God, morality, and this other-ness beyond themselves. Beyond a person’s neurons,

“This very important and intangible quality gives a person her special significance… what it is

that inspires her for her daily living.”9 Of course, if there was no spirit to a person, what else

would they have to live for? Superficial material encounters with no moral value? Dopamine

releases? Overall, personhood is spiritual, conscious, and dependent on but more than the neural

systems that humans possess.

8
Ibid, 88
9
Ibid, 91