Rebekah Wallace

I am a DPhil student in Science and Religion working on theology of the mind/soul. I focus on embodied cognition theory, arguing that that this modern cognitive science shows strong resonances with Aristotelian and Thomistic hylomorphism. As part of my research, I examine pre- and post-Cartesian views of the mind, arguing that the so-called Cartesian separation of mind from soul and life principle has caused epistemological problems in the philosophy of mind. A more embodied, biological approach to the mind continued to be advocated in the Early Modern period. However, this period saw such Aristotelian-informed anthropologies lose significant traction. In attempting to reconstruct this trajectory, my research hopes to highlight the implicitly disembodied biases that continue to colour the way philosophy of mind is discussed.