You know, the very title of the lecture, the compatibility of neuroscience and the soul,

it would seem to tell you that we wouldn't expect these two things to be compatible,

that somehow that the results of the modern neurosciences are incompatible with the

original view of the soul. And I think that is the view of the proverbial person on the street, that there's some problem here.

And what I want to do tonight is to say at least from the tradition of philosophy that I work from in the broadly Aristotelian to mystic tradition,

that appearance of incompatibility is based on a confusion. It's based on a very deep confusion of what it is we even mean by a soul.

Okay.

So I want to talk first about what we don't mean my soul.

All right.

And I want to begin with a quotation from Herbert McCabe, who is a deceased Dominican,

I think in the early 2000s. Is that right?

So quoting Father McCabe, Christians are sometimes thought to believe that people have souls rather in the way

that others believe in Father Christmas or fairies at the bottom of the garden. I mean souls are

thought to be extra entities beside what are recognized by other,

perhaps more skeptical, and tough-minded people. We all know about bodies, but Christians are

thought to tell us that, besides the visible bodies that we can scientifically examine, there are

other invisible things called souls, more or less loosely attached to those bodies."

End quote.

Okay.

And I mean, McCabe is maybe being less than fair to certain views there.

But the idea is when we say soul today, we typically think of something like a ghost. And, you know, in the popular mind,

we think of maybe it looks like me, but you can see through it. Right. And, but we, what,

...