Dr. Michael Egnor to Speak at Cornell University on “The Immortal Mind”

Dr. Michael Egnor, CSC Senior Fellow and Professor of Neurosurgery and Pediatrics at Stony Brook University, will speak at Cornell University on the premise of his new book, The Immortal Mind: A Neurosurgeon’s Case for the Existence of the Soul.

This event is sponsored by the Heterodox Academy Campus Community at Cornell University and Chesterton House and is both free and open to the public. To RSVP or to learn more, visit the Cornell events page.

A message from the organizers:

Although classical philosophers and theologians affirmed the existence and immortality of the human soul, modern neuroscientists generally deny that the soul exists or that it is a proper object for scientific study. The scientific evidence, however, suggests that the soul does exist and that it may be studied using the methods of science. It is common experience in neurosurgical practice that the correlation between mental states and brain states is not nearly as close as is presumed in neuroscience textbooks. Furthermore, over the past century much seminal research in neuroscience suggests that while homeostasis, arousal, movement, perception, memory and emotion are clearly generated by brain function, reason and free will are not generated by the brain. Reason and free will are never spontaneously evoked by seizures or by direct brain stimulation in awake patients. Research on patients who have undergone split brain surgery shows that the capacity for reason is not altered by separation of the brain hemispheres. Conjoined twins who share brain structures remain separate people with separate capacities for reason and free will. Important research on free will by several investigators shows an immaterial capacity to choose based on reason that does not appear to be generated by the brain. Extensive research on near death experiences supports the conclusion that the mind can function during complete loss of brain function.

The existence and nature of the soul is perhaps the most important thing about us. The best framework to understand the mind-brain relationship in modern neuroscience is that of Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas. Neuroscience clearly points to the existence of the human soul and its survival after death.