Spiritual Brain - Book Review - Summary

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.

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.

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.

The Spiritual Brain - Book Review - Chapter 5

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

This chapter was a direct attack on the materialist view of the mind. It started out with the claim that neuroscience has undergone much change since its infancy as a science, and insinuates that the materialist neuroscience is unable to progress due to its inability to explain consciousness and the self.

The attack on materialism begins with qualia. Qualia are, to put it simply, the way experiences feel. It seems counterintuitive that qualia arise from the buzz of neurons, and therefore (the claim goes) it is unlikely that the mind is just a product of the brain. The authors don't mention that there are property dualists, who are materialists that believe there are two properties of substances, the physical properties and the mental properties, and it is the mental properties that give rise to qualia. However, I would say that the intuition of qualia are just misleading – the intuition is that we don't feel like "just" a bunch of neurons, but how do we know what it would feel like to be a bunch of neurons? Furthermore, there is no explanation given as to how a magical spirit solves the problem of qualia.

Next up is the self. At the opening of the section about the self, a curious thing occurs.

"The average neuron, consisting of about 100,000 molecules, is about 80 percent water. The brain is home to about 100 billion such cells and thus about 1015 molecules. Each neuron gets 10,000 or so connections from other cells in the brain." (page 111)

Note the incorrect math – 100,000 * 100,000,000,000 = 1016 not 1015 – and as PZ Meyers points out, other things don't seem to add up: "I hit the comment about 10,000 synaptic connections to a single cell and wondered why the authors didn't see the obvious: you mean there are about 10 molecules, total, for each synapse? That's complete nonsense. You can't even make the contents of a single synaptic vesicle with that."

What's even stranger is that this calculation doesn't seem to fit in with the rest of the section – it seems like a completely pointless tangent meant to impress you with big numbers.

Anyhow, the section about the self is complete rubbish. "Within each neuron, the molecules are replaced approximately 10,000 times in an average life span. Yet humans have a continuous sense of self that is stable over time." (page 113). So what? Patterns, memories and design can be kept stable while single parts are replaced. I fail to see how this is an issue for materialists.

Next up is, once again, free will. The fact that they think that free will is a serious problem for materialists (but not, for some unspecified reason, for non-materialists) really does a lot to explain the motivation behind the book. Anyhow, I think I already addressed free will in enough depth in the chapter 1 review, so I have nothing else to add here about it.

On pages 120-123, six fundamental weaknesses of materialism which it is supposedly powerless to address are given. They are:

1. Current materialist accounts aim to preserve materialism rather than account for the evidence.

2. Materialism leads to major disconnects in thinking.

3. Materialism leads to hypotheses that can never be tested.

4. Promissory materialism leads to the promotion of impractical projects in the indefinite future to avoid grappling with current issues.

5. Taken seriously, materialism undermines our capacity to eventually understand the human mind and the human brain,

6. Materialism is out of step with modern physics.

None of these assertions are backed up with any evidence worth mentioning. It should be noted that if you replace "materialism" with "non-materialism" in 1, 2, 3, 5 and 6, you get sentences much more likely to be true. 4 is just a silly claim.

So overall, the case against materialism brought up in this chapter is based on a couple of misleading intuitions and 6 seemingly untenable assertions. No non-materialist solution is given for any of the supposed problems with materialism.

The Spiritual Brain - Book Review - Chapters 2 - 4

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

Chapters 2, 3 and 4 are not nearly as noteworthy (or as long) as chapter 1, and just seem to address some of the perceived threats against "nonmaterialism". As such, I have just grouped them all together for this review.

Chapter 2 – The God Program

This chapter talks about two researchers who attempted to explain religiosity via genetics. I won't comment much. First is the case of Matthew Alper, who seems to make an argument that religiosity is evolutionarily beneficial and therefore it is likely to have been selected for. Apparently his theory is flawed due to his lack of evidence. I don't know enough to comment.

Next up is Dean Hamer, author of "The God Gene". According to "The Spiritual Brain", Hamer's evidence is questionable. The authors also point out that there is definitely no single god gene. However, Hamer explicitly points this out in his book, that there is unlikely to be a single gene controlling religiosity. The authors seem to be criticizing the media's sensationalizing of scientific findings more than the science itself.

Chapter 3 – The God Module

This chapter's thesis is just that temporal lobe epilepsy does not explain all religious experiences, and things are more complicated than there simply being a "god module" in the brain that, when stimulated, creates religious experiences.

Chapter 4 – The God Helmet

Michael Presinger has a "god helmet" which can induce experiences of a sensed presence. The authors admit that his research shows that the experience of a sensed presence can be manipulated by experiment, but deny Presinger's conclusion that such an experience may be the fundamental source for phenomena attributed to visitations by gods, spirits, and other ephemeral phenomena. The authors argue that the media has blown these results out of proportion (because they are in on the big bad materialist conspiracy that wants to turn everyone atheist). The authors also argue that suggestibility was not accounted for in some of the experiments, so Presinger's evidence is pretty weak.

Many of the complaints the authors make seems to be more against the media hype around certain discoveries as well as the research itself. Perhaps the research isn't as sensational as the media makes it out to be, but their arguments for completely disregarding the studies are questionable.

Even if we accept the authors' arguments (which we probably shouldn't, considering the credibility issues), all this means is that religious experiences are complicated and there is no single answer for them. I think genes, brain disorders, and magnetic manipulation of temporal lobes all help to explain spirituality, though I don't think any single one of those completely explains them. I don't doubt that there are pieces missing, but the leap to assuming that they are caused by magical spirits is a bit unfounded.

The Spiritual Brain - Book Review - Chapter 1

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
Before I start the review, I want to make a couple comments of my impression of the book after reading the first chapter. The style is quite annoying – it seems to have tangents running off of tangents, and only slightly relevant quotes scatter the pages. It really seems that the authors were just trying to make the book long. The entire first chapter seems like a bunch of straw man fallacies mixed in with irrelevant tangents. The book seems to lack a coherent structure – a huge improvement could be made if the sections that should be grouped together were categorized under a larger section title. Now, on to the content.

Right off the bat, I was quite concerned about the treatment the author gives to free will. "Let us progress, [fans of materialism] say, toward a more humane system that both expects less of humans and blames them less for their failures – failures they can't help anyway, really" (Page 2). The example given of this is that the Center for Naturalism explicitly denies the existence of free will.

Denying free will is not in any way the same as expecting less of humans or not blaming them for their failures, but the authors seem oblivious to this (more about free will near the end of this chapter's review). Perhaps a somewhat childish treatment of free will is warranted in a non-philosophy book, so let's move on to some of the more serious theses of this chapter.

The book brings up that a lot of people claim to be spiritual ("Not many people have enough faith to be atheists", page 6 – I didn't realize it took faith to lack a belief), and materialists need to explain that. Fair enough. The book focuses its gaze on the field likely to offer an explanation: evolutionary psychology.

Bringing up altruism (as it is "usually, though not always, related to spiritual beliefs"), an attack is laid on evolutionary psychology. Well, perhaps it is not so much an attack as an assertion that evolutionary psychology is wrong. The treatment of evolutionary psychology is extremely naïve – the authors seem convinced that a single example of people helping other people who aren't related constitutes a fatal blow for evolutionary explanations of altruism (pages 10-11), and thus evolutionary psychology can't possibly explain human nature.

The next part of the book I found very strange. It spends quite a few pages on the relation between humans and chimpanzees, including a surprisingly lengthy tangent about chimpanzees not being able to breed with humans. The entire point of this lengthy tangent is to try to show how different humans are from chimps.

After a naïve romp through Artificial Intelligence, the authors turn their attention to gathering evidence against materialism. And that's when it happened. The authors cited intelligent design as an example of evidence that the evil materialistic scientists dogmatically ignore. Mentioning Guillermo Gonzalez and Richard Sternberg (both of whom had their stories explored in Expelled, so you can read about them here). The book paints a picture of some giant materialist conspiracy where scientists are all out to protect their fragile little naturalistic framework, despite the evidence. At this point, the credibility of the authors dropped significantly.

Finally, on page 29, the authors decide they should provide some support for the spiritual nature of humans. The support lasts about a page, and a good portion of that is taken up by the random quotes they decided to throw in. It boils down to the authors claiming that since people don't use the words "mind" and "brain" interchangeably, they can't be the same thing, and since people feel free, they must have free will, and if they have free will, they must have a soul.

Not all materialists deny free will – compatibilists accept that we live in a universe determined by laws and random chance, but claim free will is compatible with such a universe. Others deny free will gives us anything we can't have anyways – the ability to choose is not equivalent to the ability to choose freely, because every choice we make is constrained by our tastes and the result of our choices. If our choices were not constrained (i.e. free), and our choices were arbitrary, they would lack any sort of significance. It is only when you add constraints (and take away metaphysical "freedom") that choices are worth making. Denying free will is not the same as denying that people make choices – on the contrary, in some views it is the only way to make choices have any meaning.

So, in summary, I am not impressed yet. There is no serious argument put forward for spiritualism, nor is there a serious criticism of any materialist claims. The authors simply appeal to folk-psychological ideas of the self and free will to back up their assertions. Hopefully future chapters will flush out the argument.

The Spiritual Brain - Book Review

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

A while ago I was looking through some of the books in a Coles, and a particular book caught my eye: "The Spiritual Brain" by Mario Beauregard and Denyse O'Leary. Being interested in religion, superstition, and cognition, it isn't surprising that the title stood out to me. The subtitle, "A Neuroscientist's Case for the Existence of the Soul", intrigued me further. I've read many books on philosophy of mind, but I had never seen a serious argument for substance dualism (as opposed to property dualism, which is a common subject in books on consciousness and is completely separate from the idea of spirits/souls).

The fact that it was a neuroscientist authoring the book surprised me – as I understand it, the majority of neuroscientists, cognitive scientists, and philosophers of mind are quite convinced there is no such thing as a soul.

Anyhow, I decided to give this book a try. It should be interesting. I will be doing my reviews one blog post per chapter, and adding the posts as I read.