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
Overall, as anyone who has read the rest of this review can tell, I was not impressed with this book. Even for a book I knew I wouldn't agree with, I found the thesis poorly argued, the book seemed artificially inflated with parts that didn't really fit (i.e. most of chapter 1, all of chapter 9), and the position they were arguing for was never really explained.
Many of the problems with materialism they brought up seemed to be indicative of their motivation for writing this book and were based on intuitions rather than real evidence (free will, qualia, etc), yet didn't pose a real problem for materialism. For these, I suggest the authors read "The Problem of the Soul" by Owen Flanagan (particularly the chapter on free will), which is a very good book that helps to flesh out how a materialist view of the mind is consistent with our knowledge of how our minds work in everyday life.
Many of the other supposed problems with materialism were based on shoddy evidence, and some (the placebo effect, the effects of religious experiences, or even psi) were not irreconcilable with a materialist view of the mind. It seemed the authors were more intent on attacking straw-men than any real claims. The tone of the book seemed to imply that materialists were woefully mistaken to the point of being laughable, but behind this tough façade, there was very little substance.
Whenever explaining a problem with materialism, it was rarely explained why it isn't a problem for non-materialism – except to say that non-materialist science wouldn't look for an explanation. There was never any fleshed out non-materialist theory of mind, no testable hypotheses, and by the end I was convinced that a non-materialist science of mind really meant not studying the mind at all (or at least not the hard parts).
The most pathetic part about the book was that it endorsed intelligent design and psi. It cited both of them as examples of things that the mean old materialists wouldn't accept because it didn't fit their worldview. The authors were clearly mistaking a "hidden agenda" with a healthy skepticism, and I think if the authors had a healthy skepticism, they never would have written this ridiculous book.
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5 comments:
Have you happened to give a review of "The Problem of the Soul" by Owen Flanagan on your blog anywhere? I love reading about/arguing about the problem of free will and materialism. (For the record, I think free will is an illusion) You really recommend it?
It's a simple truth: I hit you in the head with a ten-pound hammer, assuming you don't die you become a vegetable. How do the non-materialists explain that? Does god take that time to say "hey, sucks for you, I 'm not gonna fix it so you should have had a near fatal blow from a hammer to your head?"
To me it leads to one of two conclusions: either when you die you aren't going to be hanging out with Jesus 'n' Pals, or when you do your ghost is going to have to be wheeled around with life support attached.
The mind arises from the body, any attempt to separate it by means of a magical spirit-soul is simply silly nonsense.
lilmammal - unfortunately I haven't written a review of The Problem of the Soul. I definitely recommend it. It was recommended to me by Dr. Paul Thagard (cognitive scientist/philosopher) and I ended up citing it a bunch in a philosophy essay I wrote on free will and the brain. In it I take basically the same position as Flanagan. He labels himself a "neo-compatibilist", by which he means he doesn't believe in free-will in the traditional libertarian sense but explains why we still have all of the good stuff that people think libertarian free will gives us.
It's not a heavy read, but I found it really useful.
Rowland - That's a big downfall of this book. They only present a (very poor) case against materialism, and they don't even attempt to solve any of the huge problems with dualism. If you destroy the frontal lobes of a person, you drastically change their personality (see Descartes' Error by Damasio). If you add chemicals (i.e. alcohol) to the brain, you change the person's conscious perceptions.
How do dualists explain how physical manipulations of the physical brain result in fundamental changes to what are supposedly the functions of the soul? You won't find an explanation in this book...
A good review. Obviously, the book is concerned with arguing against eliminative materialism which isn't nearly as widely held and defended as it is attacked. Its sort of the "man-on-the-street" view of materialism.
I've noticed a lot of arguments against the scientific study of religious topics like to dwell on the legitimate issue of the 'genetic fallacy'. That how one arrives at a proposition does not directly address the truth value of that proposition. But what most of them miss is that knowing how we come to know something does affect the probability of a proposition's truth. The burden of proof shifts when the probability turns against it.
That being said, the argument of the book sometimes seemed to be that the positive aspects of belief and spirituality indicate they must be the truth since, presumably, always believing in false things harm us. Which I suppose might have been a stronger argument if we'd have been given a bullet list of what those true things were. Instead we were just told that all religions contain a core element of mystical truth which is, I guess, outside the realm of the written word.
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