Personhood with James Tunney (4K Reboot)

Summary

Irish barrister and author James Tunney joins Jeffrey Mishlove to argue that the very idea of human personhood is under deliberate attack from scientism, transhumanism, and corporate and technological power. He traces a philosophical lineage called personalism, running from Franz Brentano through Husserl, Edith Stein, and Martin Luther King, as a defense of human dignity against an expanding 'technosphere.' Tunney warns that the merging of minds into a networked superintelligence would destroy individual spiritual sovereignty, and he offers parapsychology and inner spiritual evolution, which he calls the 'animosphere,' as the counterbalance.

Key takeaways

• 1Tunney claims a deliberate deconstruction of personhood is underway, driven by scientism, and argues we have already crossed into a 'scientocracy.'
• 2He criticizes Donald Hoffman's conscious-agent theory for treating humans and robots alike as conscious agents and for holding that human consciousness is not fundamental.
• 3He names Pico della Mirandola (Hermetic and Kabbalistic humanism) and Leonardo da Vinci (mathematical ratiocination) as the 'fork in the road' of Western civilization, citing Nikolai Berdyaev.
• 4He traces personalism through Franz Brentano, whose students included Freud and Husserl, then on to Edith Stein, Max Scheler, Karol Wojtyła (John Paul II), William Stern, Kurt Goldstein, Mary Whiton Calkins and Martin Luther King.
• 5He alleges that J.D. Bernal and 1920s scientists envisioned the mechanization of the human body and a 'breakaway civilization' going to Mars while Earth became a 'human zoo,' and that H.G. Wells called for a scientific elite ruling through a biomedical directorate.
• 6He warns that Teilhard de Chardin's noosphere is co-opted by 'network transhumanism,' cites Bernard Charbonneau and Jacques Ellul ('The Technological Society') as critics, and proposes the 'animosphere' as the spiritual counterweight to the technosphere.

Glossary terms

Source

Transcript excerpt

in scientific developments, if we look at people like Douglas Hoffman, who I'm increasingly critical of his model of the world, but in the mathematical reduction of everything to conscious agency, the human person and human personhood is not regarded as special. So the robot and the human will be regarded in the same idea as conscious agents. And because the robots have greater computational power, powers of ratiocination, they will be higher regarded. So there's, and then of course, there's pressure from transhumanism and post-humanism. So there is severe pressure on the idea of personhood. And it's a deliberate process of deconstruction, largely driven, in my view, by scientism. And this is a great threat. Keep watching to learn more. New Thinking Allowed is presented by the California Institute for Human Science, a fully accredited university offering distant learning graduate degrees that focus on mind, body, and spirit. The topics that we cover here, we are particularly excited to announce new degrees emphasizing parapsychology and the paranormal. Visit their website at C-I-H-S dot E-D-U. The New Thinking Allowed magazine issue 10 on UFOs and UAP is now ready for free download. And you can also order beautiful printed copies. Go to newthinkingallowed dot O-R-G. Book four in the New Thinking Allow Dialogue series is Charles T. Tartt, Seventy Years of Exploring Consciousness and Parapsychology. Now available on Amazon. Thinking Allowed. Conversations on the leading edge of knowledge and discovery with psychologist Jeffrey Mishlove. Hello and welcome. I'm Jeffrey Mishlove. Our topic today is personhood. My guest is James Tunney, an Irish barrister. He is author of The Mystical Accord, Sutras to Suit Our Times, Lines for Spiritual Evolution. Also, The Mystery of the Trapped Light, Mystical Thoughts in the Dark Age of Scientism. ...

Excerpt from New Thinking Allowed, Sep 27, 2026. Rights remain with the original creators. Hear the full episode at the source.