… .the case I will develop is resolutely realist ontologically, antireductionistic methodologically, and antifoundationalist epistemologically. It is naturally bent toward opposing naturalism, positivism, and scientistic empiricism. But it is also hostile to strong versions of constructivism, idealism, postmodernism and relativism… . a reality exists independently of our consciousness of it, which science is often well positioned to understand; yet … . human life involves a crucial dimension we must recognize and account for, which all but the most recent generations of intellectuals of our species have called “soul,” “heart,” or “spirit.” Human beings, I will suggest, are free, ensouled creatures of a particular kind, with the kind of nature about which we must get over our mental and emotional difficulties admitting if we hope possibly to understand ourselves. Yet humans are also material, embodied animals, nurtured and sustained in a physical world governed by causal powers and laws and their natural effects that we cannot simply deconstruct away. When it comes to the human, therefore, reductionistic moves toward either the physical or the mental, the material or the ideal, the corporeal or the spiritual are unacceptable and self-defeating. Humans are embodied souls who can only be well understood and explained in light of that complex reality.

He had me at, “resolutely realist ontologically, antireductionistic methodologically, and antifoundationalist epistemologically.”

From Christian Smith’s, What Is a Person?: Rethinking Humanity, Social Life, and the Moral Good from the Person Up