AUGUSTINE AND NEUROSCIENCE

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Welcome to the Philosopher's Circle. The Philosopher's Circle attempts to
answer the most profound questions we all have in life.
It is your guide to the fundamental nature of existence, society,
and how we think. Joined doctor Carlos as he discusses
philosophy with leading philosophers, theologians, and more. And now here

(00:25):
is doctor Carlos.

Speaker 2 (00:28):
Welcome everybody. Today're going to be talking about Augustine and
his locus of control theory. Before we get started. If
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(00:50):
in the next two weeks you don't want to miss out.
Augustine shifted the locus of control of human behavior from
the outside the city of Man to the inside through
his writings The City of God and the Confessions The
Inside of Man he called the City of God and
outside the City of Man. Psychology, they call it the
external locus of control, as he would refers to as
the city of Man and then the internal locus of

(01:11):
control the City of God. Augustine examined the validity of
the inner subjective self. He felt the internal sense, not
external experience, could be trusted. His writing focus on examining
the experiences with God. He believed that when people did
something wrong or a sin, they were to feel guilty. However,
in psychology we know a couple of things. You can
have cognitive dissonance with challenges out where you're doing something

(01:32):
you know is not right, but you continue to do
it anyway, or we have a different distortive version of
what's good and wrong, what's good and bad anyway. We'll
go back to Augustine. Through introspection of examining yourself or
your own experiences, you can find the truth. According to Augustine,
he focused on the internal sense and examination of their experiences.
He also felt the acceptance of free will also made

(01:53):
individuals capable of being responsible for their actions. He was
a big proponent of free will, even though he was
also a proponent of predestination. Augustine modernized the view of
free will as he saw that it had many determinants.
Augustine understands human agency has linked to both gone in
the world invariably, It's not as simple as that we
can really choose to be good and do good. Though

(02:15):
Augustine Augustine de mythologized evil, it had not a demonic origin,
but derived from man's sinful nature and the contingency of life.
Evil is mundane according to him. He was a believer,
as we mentioned in free will and responsibility, and that
people are responsible for their own actions. Augustine saw that

(02:36):
humans can know God through intense introspection and believe that
people have an internal sense to help them judge and
to provide an awareness of the truth. Deviation from this
causes guilt, as we mentioned earlier in psychology that sometimes
can be challenged, but in most people it does work
because he comes in the form of thinking about a
bad act and it can deter the person from moving
forward with committing the act. A lot of this activity

(02:58):
is actually found in the frontal cortex. Many criminals or
inmates have been found to have an underdeveloped prefrontal cortex,
which could cause problems when making moral judgments. Executive functions
such as problem solving, coping skills, and inhibition and impulse control,
as well as emotional regulation. So we can see here.

(03:21):
Augustine has a philosophical insight into neuroscience in a sense right.
He understood that we did have a prefrontal cortex in
a sense, even though he attributed this one to the
spiritual nature of God. For example, a person who want
to steal an object but may feel guilty simply by
thinking about the sinful act, and there should be enough
to deterro the person from stealing as such as internal

(03:42):
control behavior should lead to feelings of virtue rather than
guilt or sin. So there you have it, folks, Augustine's
concept of locus of control. When the matching up in neuroscience,
we could see it happens in the prefrontal cortex. But
morality is also kind of fluid at times in situations
as well. It could be textual. As you remember that
philosophical challenge where the individual's wife was sick and the

(04:06):
one and the man went to the pharmacist and he
didn't have any money to get the medication with the
pharmacist wouldn't give it to him, so he ended up
stealing it. So sometimes people will justify their actions depending
on the consequences or the situation at hand. I wish
Augustine would be able to handle those questions as well,
but unfortunately can't access him anymore. And there you go, folks,

(04:27):
Thank you for listening, thank you for joining us. We're
going to have another one coming up in a few
minutes