Spiritual Brain - Book Review - Chapter 6

This is part of a book review. Here are all of the parts of this review:

Introduction
Chapter 1
Chapters 2-4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapters 7-10
Summary

Chapter 6 was by far the most amusing so far. It was supposed to give the uses of a non-materialist science of mind. I expected a fleshed out explanation of what exactly a non-materialist science of mind would be and how it solves the problems which materialist sciences of mind supposedly have. I couldn't have been further off.

The chapter began by talking about Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, and how it can in some cases be treated to an extent simply by changing the way OCD sufferers think about their compulsions. It goes on to talk about how people can often control their sexual arousal, sadness, and phobias using their minds. Then it talks about the placebo effect – another example of how thinking certain things make a difference. This is all fine, but for some reason the authors seem to think that these things are only accountable for in a non-materialist worldview, and that the evil materialists are missing out on a possible treatment by claiming that these sorts of things don't happen. I guess the authors had never heard of cognitive behaviour therapy.

Oh well, surely the rest of the chapter would show us the uses of a non-materialist science of mind, right? Wrong. The next part of the chapter talked about near death experiences. It boils down to: within a short period of time after cardiac arrest, brain activity ceases. Yet there are cases where people who have undergone cardiac arrest remember things that occurred while they were supposedly dead. The evil materialists want to deny these experiences, and would waste their time trying to find a materialist explanation for near death experiences, but a non-materialist science of mind would realize there is no such explanation. Therefore non-materialism is better.

I don't believe the claim that brain activity ceases shortly after cardiac arrest is one that all neuroscientists would accept – measurable activity ceases, but that is far from all activity. Anyhow, the near death experience reports were all based on fairly sketchy first person accounts and were far from convincing.

The next part was probably the silliest in the book so far – it started talking about psi. I don't mean they had a short little section where they mentioned psi, I mean the section directly talking about psi starts on page 166 and goes until page 178. Basically, it claims there is strong evidence supporting psi (uhhh, what?) and that "Nonmaterialist researchers have a clear advantage here because they have no hidden agenda to discredit all psi claims". I think the authors are mistaking a hidden agenda with a healthy skepticism. Even if there was strong evidence for psi (there isn't), there is no reason to think that a materialistic view of the mind is inconsistent with it. However, we would need to try to explain the mechanism that produces these psi phenomena. No explanation is given how a non-materialistic view of the mind accounts for psi. In fact, no explanation is given about what a non-materialist view of the mind is or how any of it works.

The chapter finishes up by summarizing why a non-materialist science of mind is better than a materialist one ("Nonmaterialist science avoids many unproductive projects, like trying to prove that all RSMEs [Religious, Spiritual, and/or Mystical Experiences] are traceable to a wonky neural circuit" page 179). I got the feeling that what the authors were really saying is that non-materialist science means giving up on finding an explanation for any phenomena that's difficult to explain.