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The Thomistic Institute

The Neuroscience of Vice and Virtue I Dr. Paul LaPenna

The Thomistic Institute

The Thomistic Institute

Christianity, Religion &Amp; Spirituality, Society & Culture, Catholic Intellectual Tradition, Catholic, Philosophy, Religion & Spirituality, Thomism, Catholicism

4.8729 Ratings

🗓️ 29 August 2025

⏱️ 58 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Dr. Paul LaPenna delves into the neuroscience of vice and virtue, explaining how neuroplasticity, habit formation, and philosophical insights from figures like Aquinas inform our understanding of humility, magnanimity, pride, and vainglory in the development of moral character.


This lecture was given on May 2nd, 2025, at Thomistic Institute in New York City.


For more information on upcoming events, visit us at thomisticinstitute.org/upcoming-events.


About the Speakers:


Dr. Paul LaPenna is a neurologist based in Greenville, South Carolina, specializing in the care of patients with neurological emergencies. He is also an award-winning professor at the Edward Via College of Osteopathic Medicine, where he teaches neuroscience and has been recognized as the Professor of the Neuroscience Block from 2019 to 2025. Dr. LaPenna’s professional and academic work is deeply informed by the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas, particularly regarding the integration of faith and reason, science and religion, and the Thomistic understanding of the human person. Through his lectures and writings, he explores how modern neuroscience complements classical philosophy and theology, offering insights into human cognition, virtue formation, and the relationship between mind, brain, and soul. Dr. LaPenna lives in Greenville with his wife Nicole and their three daughters, Catherine, Susanna, and Lucia, who daily remind him of life’s greatest joys and deepest blessings.


Keywords: Addiction Neuroscience, Aristotelianism, Habit Formation, Humility, Magnanimity, Moral Psychology, Neuroplasticity, Summa Theologiae, Teleology, Vice and Virtue

Transcript

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0:00.0

Welcome to the Tumistic Institute podcast. Our mission is to promote the Catholic intellectual tradition in the university, the church, and the wider public square. The lectures on this podcast are organized by university students at Tumistic Institute chapters around the world. To learn more and to attend these events, visit us at

0:21.7

Thomistic Institute.org. So we're going to start by just talking about the fact that the brain

0:28.7

changes, okay? And this includes when we form habits. So when we form habits, the brain changes.

0:37.4

And that vice and virtues are habits,

0:40.5

as defined by Aquinas. And then we're just going to, because the talk is relatively short,

0:47.0

we're just going to focus on two related virtues and two related vices. So we're going to focus on

0:52.7

humility and magnanimity as the two virtues.

0:58.9

And then we're going to focus on two vices, pride and vain glory. And then we're going to look at

1:05.6

some practical steps and how we can grow in these things.

1:20.6

So the brain, I've dedicated much of my life to studying this and trying to fix the brain when things go wrong with it.

1:22.8

That's my main job as a neurologist.

1:28.3

And the brain is just overwhelmingly complex for anyone. There are 86 to 100 billion neurons in the human brain.

1:34.3

And every neuron has potentially 10,000 connections,

1:40.3

which means there is a quadrillion connections in the brain,

1:45.2

which is just staggering.

1:49.0

We think of neurons as maybe just one thing,

1:52.4

but there are actually hundreds of different types of neurons as well

1:55.4

that have different functions.

1:57.8

We don't understand how they all work.

2:02.6

There's much that we don't understand. When we think about neuroscience, there's what we actually know, and we know a ton.

2:10.6

We can fill libraries with information of what we know about the brain, but then there's

2:15.6

also what could potentially be known.

...

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