Harvard Medical School

TMEC Room 250 (Tosteson Medical Education Center)
260 Longwood Ave., Boston MA 02115

12:30 PM - Free Lunch Provided

A lecture by Dr. Daniel De Haan (University of Oxford)

Free and open to the public.

About the Event:

Many people conceive of humans as simply brains on a stick.  We are our brains/neural functions.

However, it this were true, how are we to think of neurodegeneration or memory loss?  Are individuals with Alzheimer's, schizophrenia, or even autism, "less human"?  How do the recent findings in neuroscience affect our views of consciousness and free will?  How are we to think of cases like Phineas Gage, whose brain injury led him to have an extreme personality change.  Did he become a different person?

CMDA (Christian Medical and Dental Association), the Catholic Students Organization (CSO), and the Thomistic Institute (TI) invite you to a talk by Dr. Daniel de Haan, who will address these questions and provide some thoughts on how one's view of personhood affects clinical care.  There will be a lot of time for questions, so come ready to ask anything on your mind!

Speaker Bio:

Daniel De Haan is a Research Fellow in Natural Theology at the Ian Ramsey Centre for Science and  Religion and the Faculty of Theology and Religion at the University of Oxford. Before coming to  Oxford he was a postdoctoral fellow working on the neuroscience strand of the Templeton World  Charity Foundation’s Theology, Philosophy of Religion, and the Sciences project at the University of  Cambridge. He has a doctorate in philosophy from the Catholic University of Leuven and University  of St Thomas in Texas. His research focuses on philosophical anthropology and the sciences, natural  theology, and the thought of Thomas Aquinas.