Culture Influencers: Joshua R. Farris

Joshua R. FarrisDr. Joshua R. Farris, assistant professor of Theology, has recently published the article, “A Critique of Emergent Substance Dualism,” in Philosophia Christi, the journal of the Evangelical Philosophical Society. In it, Dr. Farris raises one significant objection to one variation of emergent substance dualism, what he calls mere emergent substance dualism (i.e., where the soul emerges from a suitably complex neural structure without any special or unique Divine action, but the sufficient conditions are found in the neural and physical conditions being met) based on the problem from the particularity of the soul. According to Farris, emergent substance dualism, on most accounts, lacks the resources to account for the soul’s particularity. With this in mind, Dr. Farris suggests that we consider alternative soul-creationism options (i.e., where God supplies the sufficient condition for the soul’s particularity, and the body/brain supplies the necessary condition(s) for the general features of the soul).