Webinar #117 Dr Antony Latham - The enigma of consciousness

Consciousness is a slippery thing and hard to define. We are not talking about medical ‘levels of consciousness’ but the actual phenomenon of what it is to be a conscious person. Descartes famously proposed a dualism where the mind is a distinct ‘substance’ from the body, even if intimately interacting with it. Indeed, since Descartes philosophers have struggled to explain how something purely physical could have free-will, emotions, sensations and personhood. This webinar hopes to discuss what this means for Christian clinicians who know that we, and our patients, are more than just bodies but are also souls. Dr Antony Latham Dr Antony is a retired GP, originally from Dublin, now living on the Isle of Harris in Scotland. He has worked in Kenya and then, with his family, as a missionary in Tanzania prior to general practice in the Western Isles of Scotland. He has had an interest in philosophy of mind and consciousness for many years and wrote a book on this subject: ‘The Enigma of Consciousness. Reclaiming the Soul’. He has an MA in Bioethics and Medical Law and chairs the Scottish Council on Human Bioethics.