Nousics

Coined by philosopher Tony Montano, the word Nousics (from the Greek, nous, meaning "soul") is defined as “the study of souls.” Particularly, Nousics attempts to discover a hypothetical set of laws that are believed to govern the behavior of souls. In doing so, spiritualists may utilize these laws to derive solutions to such questions as ‘when is a person dead’ or 'when may an abortion be performed.' Or to evaluate the ethics of xenotransplantation or PVS patients.

History

Men have long pondered the laws that govern souls. For example, in the 4th Century, Saint Augustine (Austin) of Canterbury argued that a follower of Christ could avoid excommunication if an abortion was performed when a male zygote was less than 40 days old. For female zygotes, excommunication could be avoided if an abortion was performed before the 80 day mark. This would be an example of a law of Nousics. Incidentally, Contemporary Catholics now believe that Augustine was mistaken in propagating this law. 'Conception' is now considered the point of soul-body unification.

Contemporary Nousics

With the advent of biotechnology and the Cognitive Sciences, the behavior of souls has come under great scrutiny. There are many medical case studies which call into question the traditional laws of nousics. For example, in 1999, 20 year old New England resident Amanda Davis suffered a stroke that partially paralyzed much of the left side of her body. Facing a grim outlook, Davis agreed to participate in an experimental research program in which doctors injected approximately 80 million fetal pig neurons into her brain. Two years after the operation, Davis was able to run short distances without the aid of her leg brace. Later monitoring revealed that many of the transplanted cells seem to have thrived and formed dendritic connections with Amanda’s original neurons. A Nousicist (one who studies soul-body unification) would scrutinize over the status of Amanda's soul. If her entire brain were replaced with fetal pig neurons, most nousicists would agree that Amanda's soul would no longer be unified with her body. Since only a small portion of her brain now hosts pig neurons, few Christian nousicists would argue that Amanda's soul has departed.

A more heated nousics debate recently played out in the Terri Schiavo case. Schiavo suffered a heart attack in 1990 which reportedly completely destroyed her cerebral cortex but left her brain stem intact. Nousicists would be concerned with ascertaining whether or not Schiavo still had a soul. If merely the presence of the brain stem is enough to maintain ensoulment, as some nousicists would claim, then the removal of Schiavo's feeding tube may be considered a murder. If souls only remain unified with human bodies that have developed brains, then Schiavo's body, though biologically alive, would only have the same rights as a cadaver.

Other nousics debates involve the soul status of organ donors, the use of artificial organs, xenotransplantation, chimeras, mosaics, conjoined twins, cloning, artificial intelligence, and neuron modeling.

See also

* cognitive neuropsychology
* cognitive neuroscience
* neural networks
* neuropsychology
* computational neuroscience
* simulated consciousness
* artificial consciousness

External links

* [http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/organfarm/four/#ad Story about pig neuron xenotransplantation recipient Amanda Davis]