Dr. Brandon Rickabaugh
New Site Launch Aug. 28, 20205
About
I work where questions about the mind, technology, and God converge. Where the future of what it means to be human is being negotiated in real time.
My conviction is simple: we are losing our understanding of the soul, and with it the knowledge, imagination, and courage to say who we are, how we are formed, and what it means to flourish together.
This vision unifies my work across AI and technology, philosophy and culture, and spiritual formation. At the center is one unified task: recovering the depths and dynamics of the soul as a source of public knowledge for a generative way of life, love, and creativity together.
My work—whether through books, essays, public forums, or consulting—is to help create new cultural and institutional possibilities that emerge when the soul is taken seriously again.
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​Founder and CEO, NOVUS​
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Cultura Fellow, Martin Institute for Christianity & Culture.
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Former Associate Professor of Philosophy
Overlapping Spheres
Academy & Culture
Academic Sphere
My research begins with the nature of consciousness and the dynamics of the embodied soul. I apply this research to understand the nature of knowing and being known by God, others, and ourselves, and what happens when technologies mimic that knowing.
This means testing the boundaries of AI’s potential while mapping its limits, and tracing how technological systems shape our moral and spiritual formation.
My work has become books, peer-reviewed publications, and grant-funded projects. I’m currently finishing two more books, both on human nature, consciousness, and AI, pressing toward what cannot be automated.
Public-Facing Sphere
My public-facing work applies my research to live a brilliant and beautiful life. To help us become the kind of person skilled at:
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Discerning truth among all the distractions.
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Living in the wisdom and way of Jesus as a public source of knowledge.
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Meeting the challenges of AI with clarity and hope.
My aim is simple: to help us recognize and resist the ways we mechanize ourselves, each other, and God, by provoking more imaginative, intellectually rigorous, and deeply human conversations about pursuing what matters most.
UPDATES
Book Award Announcement
I'm honored to share that The Substance of Consciousness received the 2024 Dallas Willard Book Award from the Martin Institute for Christianity and Culture and the Dallas Willard Research Center.
This award recognizes original work that carries forward Dallas Willard’s conviction that invisible realities, such as the soul, spirit, and the Kingdom of God, are not only real but also accessible through direct, lived experience.
To receive this recognition in light of Willard’s intellectual and spiritual legacy is deeply meaningful. Thank you to the MIDWC for your commitment to scholarship that nurtures both the mind and the soul.
In The Substance of Consciousness: A Comprehensive Defense of Contemporary Substance Dualism, two distinguished philosophers deliver a unique and powerful defense of contemporary substance dualism, which makes the claim that the human person is an embodied fundamental, immaterial, and unifying substance. Multidisciplinary in scope, the book explores areas of philosophy, cognitive science, neuroscience, and the sociology of mind-body beliefs. The authors present the most comprehensive, up-to-date, and rigorous non-edited work on substance dualism in the field, as well as a detailed history of how property and substance dualism have been presented and evaluated over the last 150 years. Alongside developing new and updated positive arguments for substance dualism, they also discuss key metaphysical notions and distinctions that inform the examination of substance dualism and its alternatives.
Reviews
"This book is a tour de force on the topic of consciousness. The authors offer a depth of analysis that interacts with the latest and best work on this topic in recent years."
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Joshua Rasmussen, PhD
Associate Professor of Philosophy, Azusa Pacific University
“Rickabaugh and Moreland have written the most comprehensive, up-to-date, and sophisticated defense of substance dualism available today. They tackle quite successfully every anti-dualist argument in the literature, demonstrating both the variety of options available to dualists and the fruitfulness of the dualist framework for future research, both scientific and philosophical. Especially impressive is their skill in drawing on Aristotelian, scholastic, and 19th century sources (Brentano, Husserl) to develop an attractive synthesis of dualism with hylomorphism. They bring to philosophy of mind theoretical resources, including the metaphysics of mereology, that are badly needed in today’s debates.”
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Robert Koons, PhD
Professor of Philosophy, University of Texas, Austin
“Rickabaugh and Moreland have produced a tour de force in this brilliant, systematic case for substance dualism. It is a treasure trove of arguments, objections and replies that should be required reading in philosophy of mind today, challenging the current, ingrained prejudice against dualism.”
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Charles Taliaferro, PhD
Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Philosophy, St. Olof College
Member, Cambridge Centre for the Study of Platonism, Cambridge University
"Moreland and Rickabaugh's monograph is a first-rate treatment of the important issues concerning the existence and nature of the soul. The book will be of interest to philosophers and theologians alike. I highly recommend it."
Stewart Goetz, PhD
Professor of Philosophy Ursinus College