I think much of Christian tradition has actually affirmed the goodness and beauty of the material world, especially because in a way it is a sacrament of the invisible God.
Traditionally Catholic theology understood the universe borrowing heavily from various areas of Philosophy, including natural Philosophy. These include Neo-Platonic philosophy and mysticism, Aristotle’s philosophy and logic, Arabic Philosophy, and also Stoic philosophy.
However the central Catholic idea has been that there is a relationship between God and the cosmos, but also there is an infinite gap between God and the universe.
I think this dialectical method can be used today in integrating the insights of cognitive neuroscience. Personally, I don’t accept Descartes’s attempts to prove the immortal soul by positing a gulf between the human body and the human mind; I feel it is more correctly Christian to view the human being as an integral whole, an embodied, concious being who unites the material and the spiritual.
The problem with much modern Philosophy of Mind, from the Catholic viewpoint, is it rules out ‘metaphysical’ questions such as whether or not God exists and whether or not humans have a real connection to the transcendant. Catholic Philosophy affirms God exists and humans also have a capacity for the transcendant, and a challenge for Catholic Philosophers in the 21st century will be to integrate the new insights of cognitive science into these beliefs.
I believe Pope John Paul did some good work in this direction, by regarding the embodied human as the created being who brings forth hidden divine reality in a material way. This has good Patristic roots, especially in writers like Maximus Confessor, who held that human beings were made to ‘sum up’ creation and offer it up to God in praise, as human nature encompassed both the material realm of reality (today we would say the material elements and the laws of physics and chemistry) and the divine nature, in which man is made in God’s image and likeness.
In the light of Catholic Philosophy, the brain and mind should be seen as good creations which enable us to participate in divine realities through God’s grace. Neuroscience can help us understand how the mind can encounter the absolute in such a way mediated by the senses, body, and mind. However, the details of this would require quite a few books I imagine.
