Spiritual Brain - Book Review - Chapters 7-10

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

The last few chapters didn't have much content, so I have bundled them all together into one review.

Chapter 7

Chapter 7 talks about mysticism. Apparently materialism doesn't account for mystical experiences well enough. The authors claim the differing theories about mystical experiences are silly. By this point in the book, the routine is getting old. "Look, here's a phenomenon that's compatible with non-materialism! Those silly materialists say it's this, but that's clearly wrong! Therefore materialism is false!" The evidence provided by mystical experiences isn't particularly strong. Don't get me wrong – mystical experiences are interesting, but I doubt that all "materialist" theories are wildly wrong (as they are portrayed in this chapter) and that the only way we can account for these experiences is if something magical is going on.

Chapter 8

Do Religious, Spiritual, or Mystical Experiences Change Lives? According to chapter 8, yes. Of course there is the song and dance about materialism being at a loss for an explanation, and a lot of questionable claims about religiosity being linked with higher rates of health, morality, etc. Overall, not impressive or persuasive. These experiences might be interesting, but I don't see why it is a problem for materialism. Experiences change our lives all the time, so why wouldn't a really amazing one change the lives of some people?

Chapter 9

Chapter 9 – The Carmelite Studies – A description of the studies on nuns, which doesn't do anything for the thesis of the book. The "hard problem" of consciousness is brought up (which is the same problem as qualia, brought up earlier in the book), and it is claimed to be irresolvable in a materialist frame of reference, and yet "The hard problem ceases to be a problem once we understand the universe itself is a product of consciousness. We might expect living beings to evolve toward consciousness if consciousness underlies the universe. Consciousness is an irreducible quality." page 277. What?! What does that even mean? This is as close as the book ever gets to explaining what a non-materialist theory of mind is, and it is just a bunch of weird assertions without any content. Why is it that "the hard problem ceases to be a problem once we understand the universe itself is a product of consciousness"? Why might we "expect living beings to evolve toward consciousness if consciousness underlies the universe"? How do you know that "consciousness is an irreducible quality"? This was the only part of the chapter that had anything to do with the rest of the book, and it wasn't even explained.

The last chapter is just a few pages long and just wraps up the book without adding any new information. So… That's the end of the book. My last post in the review will just be a summary.