Dr. Brandon
Rickabaugh
Mind
Meaning
& Formation
Illuminating the soul’s place in who we are and how we live in a technological culture.
About
I am a philosopher working on the nature of consciousness, the soul, and the human person, and on what these realities reveal about wisdom, faith, technology, and human flourishing in contemporary life. Where the future of what it means to be human is being negotiated.​
​Founder & President, NOVUS​
Cultura Fellow, Martin Institute for Christianity & Culture
Public Life Fellow, Center for Christianity & Public Life​
​Beginning with Consciousness and the Human Person
Philosophy often becomes most important where life becomes most difficult to interpret. Consciousness, agency, rationality, and the unity of the self are not technical curiosities. They are the conditions of ordinary life: attention, judgment, responsibility, love, suffering, worship, and hope.
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My academic work focuses on the nature of consciousness and the human person, especially questions about how our mind relates to the world, subjectivity, the unity of experience, and the reality of the soul. I approach theses as part of the larger question of what kind of beings we are.
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If we misunderstand the person at this level, we will misunderstand nearly everything built on top of it: education, politics, family, community, technology, and spiritual life.
Updates
I joined the 2025 For the Good of the Public Annual Summit, hosted by The Center for Christianity and Public Life, speak on a panel, “AI: Promise and Perils." ​
The conversation with two leading experts, Dr. Jimmy Lin, (Founder & President of Rare Genomics Institute) and Molly Kinder (Brookings Institution) was spirited, engaging, and collaborative. I'm looking forward to working with each of them in the future.
The video should be posted on the CCPL website soon.
I recently spoke on a panel at Notre Dame’s Faith-Based Frameworks for AI Ethics summit, a gathering of scholars, technologists, and faith leaders committed to shaping the ethical future of artificial general intelligence (AGI).
This initiative recognizes that as AGI rapidly transforms society, faith-based perspectives bring unique moral and spiritual depth to the urgent questions of human dignity, creativity, and responsibility. Our panel will explore how these frameworks can guide the development and deployment of AI in ways that serve the common good in this era of profound disruption.
The keynote is available to watch HERE.
